Book Review: Mark Bray, Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street

Abstract

Book Review: Mark Bray, Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street. Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2013. ISBN: 9781782791263 (Paperback). 342 Pages. $18.75.[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www. transformativestudies, ors O2014 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]In Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street, Mark Bray accomplishes a few important tasks for critical students of social movements-including participants and scholars. The (arguably) largest and most important task he performs is his investigation and central focus on the anarchism of Occupy Wall Street. This is important for a couple of reasons.First, as Bray carefully outlines, [t]he mainstream consensus was that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a liberal response to Obama's failure to do more to soften the blows of the economic crisis (2). This same analysis-rooted in a liberal ideological hope for an ideologically liberal alternative to the conservative Democratic Party in the U.S.-can also be found in many scholarly portrayals of OWS. But, according to Bray, this was and is wishful thinking. Rather, [a]t its core, Occupy Wall Street was an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian movement run by predominantly anarchist and anarchistic politics (2-3). And he should know-Bray was a core org. (In fact, I saw him doing an interview CNN during the May Day march in New York City in 2012 on a television that I passed in a restaurant while I marched through the streets in support.) He did interviews for OWS with every local and national affiliate of all major TV networks, all the CNNs, NBC cable stations, Fox News, BBC, RT, Al Jazeera all the TV, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, etc. Also local and national radio, Radio Free Europe, BBC radio. While liberal scholars of social movements write out their wishful thoughts about OWS, Bray provides an insider's account by someone who actually left his desk and office. Astonishing, I know.Secondly, to be frank, it's about time. While I don't expect scholars of social movements to pay much attention (to anything not taking place in a journal somewhere that hardly anyone reads), there is a certain validation reading this book. Anarchists have provided the backbone of some of the most vibrant movements all over the globe since the Battle of Seattle, where anarchist property destruction and the ensuing (and sometimes exasperating) debates about violence (against windows?) took center stage for a while and was eventually somewhat resolved into what is now typically a taken-for-granted assumption: a respect for a diversity of tactics. And where anarchism hasn't been center-stage, often it has been anarchist-inspired organizational forms and that have embedded themselves in contemporary movements. This is likely more a result of the demise of the various Leninist experiments in revolutionary socialism than any great effort of anarchists, but if one thinks we need to rid ourselves of capitalism and that doing so will likely require confrontations and conflict, the Leninist models have proven globally a failure. What's left is various forms of anti-state Marxism (such as council communism, autonomism, or the other forms of Marxism that Lenin denounced as infantile disorders when he was alive, excoriating them for their anarcho-syndicalist ideas); some ideas that have emerged from feminist, queer, anti-racist struggles, indigenous and post-colonial movements; and, of course, anarchism. In Occupy, all of these ideas had some influence, but as Bray carefully and painstakingly outlines, anarchism tended to be a primary inspiration.Thirdly, Bray carefully navigates the return of the question of violence in social movements that were a pre-occupation in the WTO years and returned a vengeance during Occupy, despite the adoption of the diversity of tactics approach post-Seattle '99 by most social antagonists (sorry - the terminology is a bit slippery here, but for reasons outlined elsewhere, using terms like activists or organizers doesn't always quite fit anymore). …