What the Occupy protests tell us about the limits of democracy

By Anne Applebaum, Published: October 17, 2011 On paper, it isnt easy to reproduce the oddity of the Occupy the London Stock Exchange rally that took place on the steps of St. Pauls Cathedral last weekend. Its all very British people are cooking pots of porridge on the sidewalk yet reverent homage is being paid to the original Occupy Wall Street protests, too. The London demonstrators have even adopted the human mic used in New Yorks Zuccotti Park the crowd in front repeats whatever the speaker says, so that the crowd in back can hear despite the fact that megaphones and microphones have not been banned in London. The effect, as can be heard on a Guardian online video, was something like this: We need to have a process. (We need to have a process!) This meeting was called for a reason! (This meeting was called for a reason!) We know that you are there! (We know that you are there!) And we have solidarity with you. (We have solidarity with you!) Unintentionally, it sounds a lot like a scene from the Monty Python movie Life of Brian, the one in which Brian, who has been mistaken for the Messiah, shouts out at the crowd, You are all individuals! The crowd shouts back: We are all individuals! To my American ear, the resemblance is reinforced by the fact that the speakers are British and thus sound as if they belong in a Monty Python movie anyway. But this isnt unusual: Inevitably, the Occupy movements also known in Europe as the indignados, after Spanish protests that started last spring have taken on different national flavors in different places. The Occupy Tokyo marchers shouted slogans about nuclear power. The Occupy Sydney protests fizzled out because, as a spokesman regretfully admitted, we dont have the depth of crisis here in Australia. In Rome, where radical politics has historically had a violent fringe, marches have already turned into riots and caused millions of euros worth of damage. Of course these international protests do have a few things in common, both with one another and with the anti-globalization movement that preceded them. They are similar in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions. In New York, marchers chanted, This is what democracy looks like, but actually, this isnt what democracy looks like. This is what freedom of speech looks like. Democracy looks a lot more boring. Democracy requires institutions, elections, political parties, rules, laws, a judiciary and many unglamorous, time-consuming activities, none of which are nearly as much

fun as camping out in front of St. Pauls Cathedral or chanting slogans on the Rue Saint-Martin in Paris. Yet in one sense, the international Occupy movements failure to produce sound legislative proposals is understandable: Both the sources of the global economic crisis and the solutions to it lie, by definition, outside the competence of local and national politicians. As I wrote at the time of the first Greek riots a few years ago, nobody much admires powerless leaders. Nobody much sees the point in voting for people who cant stop another wave of economic pain rolling in from Beijing, Brussels or New York. If youre upset about the austerity program being imposed on your country by indebted banks on the other side of the world, it doesnt seem logical to complain to the mayor of Seville. The emergence of an international protest movement without a coherent program is therefore not an accident: It reflects a deeper crisis, one without an obvious solution. Democracy is based on the rule of law. Democracy works only within distinct borders and among people who feel themselves to be part of the same nation. A global community cannot be a national democracy. And a national democracy cannot command the allegiance of a billion-dollar global hedge fund, with its headquarters in a tax haven and its employees scattered around the world. Unlike the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, to whom the London and New York protesters openly (and ridiculously) compare themselves, we have democratic institutions in the Western world. They are designed to reflect, at least crudely, the desire for political change within a given nation. But they cannot cope with the desire for global political change, nor can they control things that happen outside their borders. Although I still believe in globalizations economic and spiritual benefits along with open borders, freedom of movement and free trade globalization has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies. Global activists, if they are not careful, will accelerate that decline. Protesters in London shout,We need to have a process! Well, they already have a process: Its called the British political system. And if they dont figure out how to use it, theyll simply weaken it further.

Democracy is the enemy

Slavoj iek 28 October 2011

The protests on Wall Street and at St Pauls Cathedral are similar, Anne Applebaum wrote in the Washington Post, in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions. Unlike the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, she went on, to whom the London and New York protesters openly (and ridiculously) compare themselves, we have democratic institutions. Once you have reduced the Tahrir Square protests to a call for Western-style democracy, as Applebaum does, of course it becomes ridiculous to compare

the Wall Street protests with the events in Egypt: how can protesters in the West demand what they already have? What she blocks from view is the possibility of a general discontent with the global capitalist system which takes on different forms here or there. Yet in one sense, she conceded, the international Occupy movements failure to produce sound legislative proposals is understandable: both the sources of the global economic crisis and the solutions to it lie, by definition, outside the competence of local and national politicians. She is forced to the conclusion that globalisation has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies. This is precisely what the protesters are drawing attention to: that global capitalism undermines democracy. The logical further conclusion is that we should start thinking about how to expand democracy beyond its current form, based on multi-party nation-states, which has proved incapable of managing the destructive consequences of economic life. Instead of making this step, however, Applebaum shifts the blame onto the protesters themselves for raising these issues: Global activists, if they are not careful, will accelerate that decline. Protesters in London shout: We need to have a process! Well, they already have a process: its called the British political system. And if they dont figure out how to use it, theyll simply weaken it further. So, Applebaums argument appears to be that since the global economy is outside the scope of democratic politics, any attempt to expand democracy to manage it will accelerate the decline of democracy. What, then, are we supposed to do? Continue engaging, it seems, in a political system which, according to her own account, cannot do the job. There is no shortage of anti-capitalist critique at the moment: we are awash with stories about the companies ruthlessly polluting our environment, the bankers raking in fat bonuses while their banks are saved by public money, the sweatshops where children work overtime making cheap clothes for high-street outlets. There is a catch, however. The assumption is that the fight against these excesses should take place in the familiar liberaldemocratic frame. The (explicit or implied) goal is to democratise capitalism, to extend democratic control over the global economy, through the pressure of media exposure, parliamentary inquiries, harsher laws, police investigations etc. What goes unquestioned is the institutional framework of the bourgeois democratic state. This remains sacrosanct even in the most radical forms of ethical anti-capitalism the Porto Allegre forum, the Seattle movement and so on. Here, Marxs key insight remains as pertinent today as it ever was: the question of freedom should not be located primarily in the political sphere i.e. in such things as free elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, respect for human rights. Real freedom resides in the apolitical network of

social relations, from the market to the family, where the change needed in order to make improvements is not political reform, but a change in the social relations of production. We do not vote concerning who owns what, or about the relations between workers in a factory. Such things are left to processes outside the sphere of the political, and it is an illusion that one can change them by extending democracy: say, by setting up democratic banks under the peoples control. Radical changes in this domain should be made outside the sphere of such democratic devices as legal rights etc. They have a positive role to play, of course, but it must be borne in mind that democratic mechanisms are part of a bourgeois-state apparatus that is designed to ensure the undisturbed functioning of capitalist reproduction. Badiou was right to say that the name of the ultimate enemy today is not capitalism, empire, exploitation or anything of the kind, but democracy: it is the democratic illusion, the acceptance of democratic mechanisms as the only legitimate means of change, which prevents a genuine transformation in capitalist relations. The Wall Street protests are just a beginning, but one has to begin this way, with a formal gesture of rejection which is more important than its positive content, for only such a gesture can open up the space for new content. So we should not be distracted by the question: But what do you want? This is the question addressed by male authority to the hysterical woman: All your whining and complaining do you have any idea what you really want? In psychoanalytic terms, the protests are a hysterical outburst that provokes the master, undermining his authority, and the masters question But what do you want? disguises its subtext: Answer me in my own terms or shut up! So far, the protesters have done well to avoid exposing themselves to the criticism that Lacan levelled at the students of 1968: As revolutionaries, you are hysterics who demand a new master. You will get one.

Green Berets with a Human Face

March 2010

Slavoj iek 23

The victory at the Oscars of Kathryn Bigelows The Hurt Locker over James Camerons Avatar was generally perceived as a good sign of the state of things in Hollywood: a low-budget, independent film overcomes a superproduction whose technical brilliance cannot cover up the flat simplicity of its story. So Hollywood is not just a blockbuster machine, but still knows how to appreciate marginal creative efforts. Well, maybe. But its also the case that, with all its mystifications, Avatar clearly takes the side of those who oppose the global military-industrial complex, while The Hurt Locker presents the US army in a way which is much more finely attuned to its own

public image in our time of humanitarian interventions and militaristic pacifism. The film largely ignores the debate about the US military intervention in Iraq, and instead focuses on the daily ordeals, on and off duty, of ordinary soldiers forced to deal with danger and destruction. In pseudo-documentary style, it tells the story or rather, a series of vignettes of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad. This choice is deeply symptomatic: although soldiers, they do not kill, but risk their lives dismantling terrorist bombs destined to kill civilians can there be anything more sympathetic to our liberal eyes? Are our armies in the ongoing War on Terror, even when they bomb and destroy, ultimately not just such EOD squads, patiently dismantling terrorist networks in order to make the lives of civilians everywhere safer? But there is more to the film. The Hurt Locker brought back to Hollywood the trend which also accounts for the success of two recent Israeli films about the 1982 Lebanon war, Ari Folmans animated documentary Waltz With Bashir and Samuel Maozs Lebanon. Lebanon draws on Maozs memories of being a young soldier; most of the action claustrophobically takes place inside a tank. The movie follows four inexperienced soldiers dispatched to mop up enemies in a Lebanese town that has already been bombarded by the Israeli air force. Interviewed at the 2009 Venice festival, Yoav Donat, one of the actors, said: This is not a movie that makes you think: Ive just been to a movie. This is a movie that makes you feel like youve been to war. Maoz has said his film is not a condemnation of Israels policies, but a personal account of what he went through: The mistake I made is to call the film Lebanon because the Lebanon war is no different in its essence from any other war and for me any attempt to be political would have flattened the film. This is ideology at its purest: the focus on the perpetrators traumatic experience enables us to obliterate the entire ethico-political background of the conflict. The Hurt Lockers depictions of the daily horror and traumatic impact of serving in a war zone seems to put it miles apart from such sentimental celebrations of the US armys humanitarian role as John Waynes infamous Green Berets. However, we should bear in mind that the terse-realistic presentation of the absurdities of war in The Hurt Locker obfuscates and thus makes acceptable the fact that its heroes are doing exactly the same job as the heroes of The Green Berets. In its very invisibility, ideology is here, more than ever: we are there, with our boys, identifying with their fear and anguish instead of questioning what they are doing there.