Abstract
This research uses the Occupy Movement as a springboard to discuss contemporary political struggles in Canada. Drawing on the recent experiences of Occupy activists, the author discusses the limitations of non-hierarchical, consensus and prefigurative strategies within social movements. In particular, I suggest that such practices, which are meant to challenge routine social inequalities, actually tend to reproduce them. I then ask how those who are exploited within capitalism can consciously and collectively push contemporary struggle in a socialist direction. Drawing on the works of Marx and Marxist theorists, the paper examines how an understanding of class, capital and hegemony are significant to the contemporary social justice agenda. Thus, insights from the empirical experiences of the Occupy movement are used to explore the broader question of how it is possible to bring about revolutionary transformation to a world capitalist system that is in crisis.
Highlights
Ny “WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT” was the slogan that echoed throughout city streets in Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and many other Canadian cities in 2011 and 2012.1 T
Occupy Movement, its activists and its supporters were the voices behind the slogan and the bodies and minds that helped to build the broad-based social movement founded in consensus, anti-hierarchy and prefigurative politic
Occupy’s adherence to prefigurative and consensus strategies served to obscure the coercive role played by the capitalist state in the repression of social movements
Summary
Ny “WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT” was the slogan that echoed throughout city streets in Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and many other Canadian cities in 2011 and 2012.1 T. Occupy Movement, its activists and its supporters were the voices behind the slogan and the bodies and minds that helped to build the broad-based social movement founded in consensus, anti-hierarchy and prefigurative politic.
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