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Is the OWS against Capitalism?

Is the OWS Movement against Capitalism?


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Wake when are you going to learn you cannot generalize a whole movement?
Remember when people generalized the whole Tea Party as racist rednecks?
You cannot generalize a movement.

I would say (from being at occupy KC and occupy Manhattan) that the majority are social democrats. They just want a more fair system of capitalism. More regulations. They also want to get corporate money out of politics. The movement is mostly progressives. There are however a good amount of socialists. There are a few communists, and anarchists also however in the group.

So please learn you cannot generalize a whole group like the corporate ran media does.
 
Wake when are you going to learn you cannot generalize a whole movement?
Remember when people generalized the whole Tea Party as racist rednecks?
You cannot generalize a movement.

I would say (from being at occupy KC and occupy Manhattan) that the majority are social democrats. They just want a more fair system of capitalism. More regulations. They also want to get corporate money out of politics. The movement is mostly progressives. There are however a good amount of socialists. There are a few communists, and anarchists also however in the group.....


thank you. you said it all.
 
Wake when are you going to learn you cannot generalize a whole movement?
Remember when people generalized the whole Tea Party as racist rednecks?
You cannot generalize a movement.

I would say (from being at occupy KC and occupy Manhattan) that the majority are social democrats. They just want a more fair system of capitalism. More regulations. They also want to get corporate money out of politics. The movement is mostly progressives. There are however a good amount of socialists. There are a few communists, and anarchists also however in the group.

So please learn you cannot generalize a whole group like the corporate ran media does.

Already have, AEB the other thread.

However, that's not the point. The question was whether or not the OWS was against capitalism in their precepts, and it would seem that some are and some aren't.
 
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Already have, AEB the other thread.

However, that's not the point. The question was whether or not the OWS was against capitalism in their precepts, and it would seem that some are and some aren't.

Its very simple: Occupy Wall Street has no official stance against Capitalism.
 
Does the OWS movement have an official spokesman ?
Do they have any manifesto ?
At least, Adolf Hitler was kind enough to write a book....had this only been read by those in power...
These are things I do not know.
I do know that we have many problems, and that these have been festering for a long time.
I ,for one, think that a man should work for a living - today we do have some who actually disagree - showing up, then doing nothing of value is good enough for them....
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Declaration of the Occupation of New York City | NYC General Assembly # Occupy Wall Street
We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Principles of Solidarity | NYC General Assembly # Occupy Wall Street

Statement of Autonomy | NYC General Assembly # Occupy Wall Street
We provide a forum for peaceful assembly of individuals to engage in participatory as opposed to partisan debate and democracy. We welcome dissent.

Any statement or declaration not released through the General Assembly and made public online at NYC General Assembly # Occupy Wall Street should be considered independent of Occupy Wall Street. [.....] Any organization is welcome to support us with the knowledge that doing so will mean questioning your own institutional frameworks of work and hierarchy and integrating our principles into your modes of action.

SPEAK WITH US, NOT FOR US.

Occupy Wall Street values collective resources, dignity, integrity and autonomy above money. We have not made endorsements. All donations are accepted anonymously and are transparently allocated via consensus by the General Assembly or the Operational Spokes Council.

We acknowledge the existence of professional activists who work to make our world a better place. If you are representing, or being compensated by an independent source while participating in our process, please disclose your affiliation at the outset. Those seeking to capitalize on this movement or undermine it by appropriating its message or symbols are not a part of Occupy Wall Street.

We stand in solidarity. We are Occupy Wall Street.

General Assembly Guide | NYC General Assembly # Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society.

the only solution is WorldRevolution
Click here for NYCGA committee meeting times.

[...] The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to fight back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.
Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for World Revolution

The NYCGA assumes the roll as the leader of the occupy movement. They assert that they call shots and no one else can. The NYCGA are Anarchists and are the core of the movement and and they are Anti-Capitalists. The people in the movement that are not Anti-Capitalists are not recognized by the leading group that started OWS. REad at the following link how and who started OWS. David Graeber: On Playing By The Rules
This is where I must admit my own position is particularly confusing. On the one hand, this is exactly the kind of attitude I have been arguing for for years. I like to describe myself precisely as a “small-a anarchist.” That is, I believe in anarchist principles—mutual aid, direct action, the idea building the new, free society in the shell of the old—but I’ve never felt a need to declare allegiance to any particular anarchist school (Syndicalists, Platformists, etc). Above all, I am happy to work with anyone, whatever they call themselves, willing to work on anarchist principles—which in America today, has largely come to mean, a refusal to work with or through the government or other institutions which ultimately rely on the threat of force, and a dedication to horizontal democracy, to treating each other as we believe free men and women in a genuinely free society would treat each other. Even the commitment to direct action, so often confused with breaking windows or the like, really refers to the refusal of any politics of protest, that merely appeals to the authorities to behave differently, and the determination instead to act for oneself, and to do what one thinks is right, regardless of law and authority. Gandhi’s salt march, for example, is a classic example of direct action. So was squatting Zuccotti Park. It’s a public space; we were the public; the public shouldn’t have to ask permission to engage in peaceful political assembly in its own park; so we didn’t. By doing so we not only acted in the way we felt was right, we aimed to set an example to others: to begin to reclaim communal resources that have been appropriated for purposes of private profit to once again serve for communal use—as in a truly free society, they would be—and to set an example of what genuine communal use might actually be like. For those who desire to create a society based on the principle of human freedom, direct action is simply the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.

Small-a anarchists such as myself were at the core of the anti-nuclear movement in the ‘70s and the global justice movement between 1998-2001, and over the years, we have put much of our creative energy into developing forms of egalitarian political process that actually work. I should emphasize that this is not just an anarchist project. Actually, the development of consensus process, which is probably the movement’s greatest accomplishment, emerges just as much from the tradition of radical feminism, and draws on spiritual traditions from Native American to Quakerism. This is where the whole exotic language of the movement comes from: facilitation, “the people’s microphone,” spokescouncils, blocks; though in the case of Occupy Wall Street, augmented and transformed by the experience of General Assembly movements across the Mediterranean.[....] Say what you will about Americans, and one can say many things, this is a country of deeply democratic sensibilities. The idea that we are, or are supposed to be, a democratic society is at the very core of what makes us proud to be Americans. If Occupy Wall Street has spread to every city in America, it’s because our financial overlords have brought us to such a pass that anarchists, pagan priestesses, and tree-sitters are about the only Americans left still holding out for the idea that a genuinely democratic society might be possible.

OWS engages in deception to fool the masses. The core speaks of direct democracy and Anarchist principles while people not in the core try to assert that OWS is not Anti-Capitalist. The NYCGA already gave the answer: "Those seeking to capitalize on this movement or undermine it by appropriating its message or symbols are not a part of Occupy Wall Street." The Pro-Capitalists are not part of OWS.
 
The above post shows that OWS does not oppose Capitalism and seeks to impose a Socialist or Communist economic system.
 
Personally, I believe most OWSers would be MORE than satisfied if we simply brought back Glass-Steagall, had more tax-brackets for the wealthy, millionaires, 7 billioniaires, had more regulations on banks & the mortgage industry, had a national health care system, had govt. funded college education to public colleges, had publicly financed elections and stripped corporations of personhood rights.

Ohhhhh...so if we just simply significantly changed our health care industry, educational system, and election system they'd be happy. Wow, how amazingly simple.
 
They're only against capitalism until they get jobs.

In other words, for a large portion of these losers, they have always been against capitalism, and they always will be.

Frankly, I think a majority of them simply aren't intelligent enough to understand what capitalism is, and to really be for or against it. All they get is that because of capitalism, there are people who have more than they do, and they want more of what they perceive as other people's excess wealth taken from those who have earned it, and given to themselves.
 
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Rules and regluations.... we need a huge improvement here...a shame the conservatives are so against this....IMO, they are also against the American people....the middle class, but not the 1%, the super wealthy.

Not the 1%. The 53%. Conservatives, in general, are on the side of all of us who seek to earn honest livings, through honest work, and wish to be allowed to enjoy the fruits of our labors; rather than having more and more of our own rightfully-earned wealth taken from us and given to the 47% who are represented by the OWS movement.

It's the classic, eternal struggle between makers (those who actually support themselves, creating wealth through honest work) and takers (those who, rather than being willing to do any honest work and create any wealth of their own, simply want “excess” wealth taken from the makers and given to themselves).

Conservatives are on the side of those of us who are content to carry our own fair share of the burden, but who are fed up with being demanded to carry the 47%'s share on top of our own.
 
Not the 1%. The 53%. Conservatives, in general, are on the side of all of us who seek to earn honest livings, through honest work, and wish to be allowed to enjoy the fruits of our labors; rather than having more and more of our own rightfully-earned wealth taken from us.....

if that were true, they wouldn't support policies that makes lives harder for the Middle-class and working-class.
 
Ohhhhh...so if we just simply significantly changed our health care industry, educational system, and election system they'd be happy. Wow, how amazingly simple.

Sounds to me as if Thunder favors the Libyan system. We just bombed the shiite out of them and killed a whole bunch of women and children there, so I would guess the gov't has vetoed that possibility. Sort of like an armed filibuster, don't you think? Actually, I favor the Libyan system. You know, gov't financed housing, education, healthcare and food according to monetary returns on gov't controlled assets, and get rid of 80% of the military. Change businesses to bottoms-up organizations where possible. Start with energy and banking and centralized distribution networks that override regulatory control.
 
Karl said:
Marx argues that commodities have both a use-value and an exchange-value, and that their exchange-value is rooted in how much labor-power went into them. While traditionally people bought commodities in order to use them, capitalists use commodities differently. Their final goal is increased profit. Therefore, they put out money and buy commodities, in order to sell those commodities for a profit. The cycle then repeats itself. The reason why the capitalists are able to make a profit is that they only need to pay workers their value (how much it takes to keep them functional), but the workers produce more than that amount in a day. Thus, the workers are exploited. The capitalists are able to do this because they have more power, and control the means of production. Furthermore, the workers' character is negatively affected by the system. They don't own the products of their labor, and the repetitive work they have to do makes them little more than machines.

plucked from: SparkNotes: Das Kapital: Summary

I find it hard to disagree with this short synopsis.

But I'm hardly the whole group. I don't even camp out.
 
I have heard that the OWS is not against capitalism at all, though I have seen many OWS groups and signs that indicate they are indeed against capitalism. What is the truth? Are they against capitalism or not? I wuld reason that during their earlier days they came to protest against businesses and corporations, which are all a part of capitalism. What do you think about this? I see OWS members on YouTube chanting against the crimes of capitalism while holding their signs that reflect their belief.

Can you spot the logical flaw in the following? (Please refer to The List)

I have heard that the Tea Party is not racist at all, though I have seen many Tea Paty groups and signs that indicate they are indeed racist. What is the truth? Are they racist or not? I wuld reason that during their earlier days they came to protest against a black president, which is racist. What do you think about this? I see Tea Party members on YouTube chanting against the crimes of black people while holding their signs that reflect their belief.
 
Let's make this very simple: OWS has some members who are against Capitalism. But as a whole, the movement is not seaking the total downfall of capitalism in the USA.

Just as while there are a few racists in the Tea Party, they are not as a whole a racist movement.
 
It's the classic, eternal struggle between makers (those who actually support themselves, creating wealth through honest work) and takers (those who, rather than being willing to do any honest work and create any wealth of their own, simply want “excess” wealth taken from the makers and given to themselves).

That's true enough. The irony here is that you're on the side of the takers (even though you're not one of them), and you don't even know it.
 
There are many people who oppose capitalism, so I'm curious why people who support OWS seem defensive if OWS is perceived as being anti-capitalism.
 
There are many people who oppose capitalism, so I'm curious why people who support OWS seem defensive if OWS is perceived as being anti-capitalism.

The are many teabaggers who are racist, so I'm curious why people who support the Tea Party seem defensive if the Tea Party is perceived as being racist
 
There are many people who oppose capitalism, so I'm curious why people who support OWS seem defensive if OWS is perceived as being anti-capitalism.

I think the issue comes not from the possibility that some elements of OWS might have anti-capitalist tendencies (which is both true, and obvious, if you spend any time around them), but with the notion that all they're bringing to the table is stereotypically rabid and irrational anti-capitalism not backed up by any kind of coherent knowledge or thought.
 
The are many teabaggers who are racist, so I'm curious why people who support the Tea Party seem defensive if the Tea Party is perceived as being racist

Even though I strongly disagree with it, I thought being anti-capitalism was a legit political stance. Thanks for clarifying that it's actually just as bad as racism.
 
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I think the issue comes not from the possibility that some elements of OWS might have anti-capitalist tendencies (which is both true, and obvious, if you spend any time around them), but with the notion that all they're bringing to the table is stereotypically rabid and irrational anti-capitalism not backed up by any kind of coherent knowledge or thought.

No matter how coherent or thoughtful they are (you must be seeing something I'm not) about it, if they want to replace capitalism with something else you and others might think is a better idea, the result is the same - they're anti-capitalism.
 
No matter how coherent or thoughtful they are (you must be seeing something I'm not) about it, if they want to replace capitalism with something else you and others might think is a better idea, the result is the same - they're anti-capitalism.

As I've said multiple times in this thread (including in the post to which you're responding) some of them are anti-capitalism. Most of them are not. Most of them are upset by a regulatory scheme that seems to increasingly benefit the very wealthy in ways that are, in fact, very much anti-free market, and by the fact that our political system seems bound to perpetuating such problems. Some of them are more interested in the fact that they've been lead their whole lives to believe that if they work hard and apply themselves, they'll be able to thrive in the US, but have now discovered that for quite a lot of people, that's just not true anymore; and that there are bad, systemic reasons why this is the case.

You're making the mistake of assuming that they all think alike. They don't.
 
Even though I strongly disagree with it, I thought being anti-capitalism was a legit political stance. Thanks for clarifying that it's actually just as bad as racism.

And thank you for clarifying that the teabaggers are all racists :roll:
 
No matter how coherent or thoughtful they are (you must be seeing something I'm not) about it, if they want to replace capitalism with something else you and others might think is a better idea, the result is the same - they're anti-capitalism.

umm, Aderleths remark about "coherent knowledge or thought" was not about the OWS.

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As I've said multiple times in this thread (including in the post to which you're responding) some of them are anti-capitalism. Most of them are not. Most of them are upset by a regulatory scheme that seems to increasingly benefit the very wealthy in ways that are, in fact, very much anti-free market, and by the fact that our political system seems bound to perpetuating such problems. Some of them are more interested in the fact that they've been lead their whole lives to believe that if they work hard and apply themselves, they'll be able to thrive in the US, but have now discovered that for quite a lot of people, that's just not true anymore; and that there are bad, systemic reasons why this is the case.

You're making the mistake of assuming that they all think alike. They don't.

I know, I know, OWS has this great, thoughtful, coherent message, that is until a decent amount of people actually disagrees with them, then they're all individuals who actually have no common message at all. LOL

Anyway, my question has more to do with why you think it's a bad thing if OWS is perceived as being anti-capitalist.
 
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