<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div id="title-top"><div id="title-top-inner"><div id="block-theweek_contexts-article-type-top"><div><div>ALEXANDER COCKBURN</div></div></div><div id="block-theweek_contexts-top-share-toolbar"><div><div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div id="title-group"><div><b><u>Capitalism in crisis: what if the protesters got serious?</u></b></div></div><div id="content"><div id="content-inner"><div id="block-system-main"><div><div><div><div id="node-top"></div><div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• </div><div><i>When capital feels it is being pushed to the wall, it will stop at nothing to crush the challenge</i></div><div>COLUMN LAST UPDATED AT 07:31 ON THU 3 NOV 2011</div><div><div><div><p align="">"...Do any of the present candidates, Obama included, offer an answer to America’s dreadful situation - a crisis caused by 40 years of neo-liberal onslaught? They do not, because there is no answer available within the terms and boundaries of the present system.<br> <br>"The middle class is – at least two-thirds of it – crashing into penury. Americans’ store of value and savings – the house – is worthless; social safety nets have eroded; students emerge from higher education crushed by debt.</p><p align="">"Thirty million Americans are without work or working part-time. Nearly six million manufacturing jobs in the United States have disappeared since 2000, and more than 40,000 factories have closed. African-Americans have endured the greatest loss in collective assets in their history. Hispanics have seen their net worth drop by two-thirds. Millions of whites have been pitch-forked into penury and desperation.<br> <br>"This is the mulch that has created the Occupy Wall Street movement.</p><p align="">"Its strength lies in the simplicity and truth of its basic message: the few are rich, the many are poor. In terms of its pretensions, the capitalist system has failed.</p><p align="">"But for all its simplicity and truth, how much staying power does the OWS message have as presently deployed? In terms of its powers of repression, the system has not failed. To date, the OWS movement has not even confronted the moneyed elite with a threat on the scale of the 1999 protests in Seattle. Indeed, right now most people love OWS. The Financial Times ran an editorial in favour of it. But in the end, to reform finance capital you have to offend people and institutions, including the Financial Times.<br> <br>"Writing these lines at the start of November, after digesting the daily reports from the national OWS battlefield (Zuccotti Park in Manhattan, Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland, and kindred venues in Austin, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Nashville, Portland…), my eyes flicker across the world map to Greece, and my heart beats a lot faster. Now there, surely we can savour the whiff of a pre-revolutionary situation! </p><p align="">"...Having briefly tasted batons and pepper spray, OWSers should know that when capital feels it is being pushed to the wall, it will stop at nothing to crush any serious challenge. The cop puts away his smile. The indulgent mayor imposes a curfew. "Exemplary" sentences are handed down. The prisons fill up.</p><p align="">"Organised repression can only be defeated by organised resistance, nationwide. How to mount this is the OWSers' urgent, immediate challenge. In Oakland, on Wednesday, OWS staged a rally calling for a General Strike. That's at least thinking along the right lines."</p><p align=""><i>Full text at <<a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/news-opinion/occupy-movement/35931/capitalism-crisis-what-if-protesters-got-serious">http://www.theweek.co.uk/news-opinion/occupy-movement/35931/capitalism-crisis-what-if-protesters-got-serious</a>>.</i></p><p align=""><br></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>