Book Review: Occupy World Street 284
jsuda writes "For those billions of people for whom the current political-economic system doesn't work–the Occupy Wall Street people, the Tea Partiers, the 99%-ers and have-nots, the middle and lower classes, and the rest of the unwashed masses, Occupy World Street is a starburst of enlightenment and a practical vision of hope for a new and advanced society." Read on for jsuda's review
The book is subtitled appropriately "A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Order." It functions in a substantial way as the missing "content" for the Occupy Wall Street movement people who know that global capitalism and its political elite are screwing the middle and lower classes and the world environment but don't know exactly how they are doing it and how to change things. The book provides an unusually lucid analysis of the American political-economic system which should make clear to the Tea Partiers what their real targets of rage should be (it's not merely the Democrats nor the federal government.) Nearly everyone else who wants a "big picture" comprehensive analysis of the global economic system will be educated by this book.| Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform | |
| author | Ross Jackson |
| pages | 336 |
| publisher | Chelsea Green Publishing |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | jsuda |
| ISBN | 1603583882 |
| summary | shows how a handful of small nations could take on a leadership role; create new alliances, new governance, and new global institutions; and, in cooperation with grassroots activists, pave the way for other nations to follow suit. |
The author, Ross Jackson, identifies who and what is responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown and many other problems in society. Most prominent are a seriously-flawed "neo-liberal economic philosophy" and the political-elite class which sponsors that philosophy for self-interested reasons at the expense of the rest of us. Jackson makes clear that economic philosophical theory is not value free and is class politics in disguise. But way more importantly than the mere class versus class struggle, the neo-liberal economic philosophy has created severe energy and environmental problems which are almost certain to lead soon to major economic and political disruptions affecting the entire globe.
The author's main perspective is as an environmentalist; he utilizes a systems approach of an overarching environmental model where the global environment is a closed, finite system and the economic, political, and other topics are subsystems of the whole. The book explains (in six parts and 17 chapters) how and why our existing economic model is failing and will create environmental, economic, and political chaos unless it is replaced soon with an economic model emphasizing "sustainability" and "development" versus simple "unlimited growth." Jackson explains in the second half of the book what we can do about it, hopefully before it's too late for future generations to have a chance for civilized life.
I have never heard before of Mr.Jackson, but he is bound to be (or at least should be) hailed as a top-notch public intellectual. He is a brilliant analyst of global economics, politics, and environmental matters; and a clever synthesist of the relevant economics, politics, philosophy, environmental science, psychology, sociology, history, physics, and biology, which apply to his examination.
He has an unusually broad and diverse background as a global currency trader, executive of a nonprofit environmental organization, software designer and businessman, and degrees in engineering physics, industrial management, and operations research. This may explain, in part, his ability to see major categories of human life with such a wide lens while also being able to analyze the subcategories and the factual data.
Part One explains the scientific and economic reasons why the neo-liberal approach of unending growth is unsustainable and a lie. It is a lie because it implies, at least, that everyone has a chance ultimately to achieve the high level of consumption of the successful capitalists and that the high consumption gravy train will go on forever. He uses biological, environmental, and mathematical data to show that the neo-liberal assumption of infinite natural capital has already resulted in net deficits of global energy resources, and that the world (and the neo-liberal economic system) will end frightfully unless we reduce population, give up the idea of "more of everything is better," redesign and downsize our economies, use less fossil energies, and emphasize sustainability.
The next two parts explain the politics and human factors which drive the irrational economic policies. He goes into good detail about historical economic theory from the mercantile period, to the classical free trade period, to our existing neo-liberal period. He clearly explains how and why the 2008 financial crisis occurred and why it is likely to repeat itself, and how the current debt crisis in Europe (and elsewhere) happened and why the European Union is not equipped even now to successfully deal with it. Any effort to address it (using the existing neo-liberal strategies) will be temporary and the crises will deepen.
His discussions on the neo-liberal insistence on a deregulated economic environment, free flow of global capital, and the use of exotic financial instruments and transactions, especially naked short sales, are the clearest I've read about how these elements de-stabilized the global economy. They will continue to do so as long as those who (very lucratively) benefit from them (the political elite) insist upon them regardless of the consequences to hapless small nations and their economies, small businesses, and people like you and me. He thoroughly and lucidly explains how this political-economic philosophy destroys real democracy, including in America. What we have, he says, is a corporatocracy which dominates much of political and social life through the forces of wealth and ideology.
Mr. Jackson is also a political-economic visionary of the highest order as shown in the second half of the book by his "break away" strategy where he sets out his alternative environmentalist paradigm. It is a new worldview emphasizing the finite reality of our natural resources, especially energy ones, and how we should alter much of what we do to comply with that reality. He argues for a new set of social values harmonious with a holistic sense of people and nature being part of one "system." The values of that system include smallness, localization, quality versus quantity, interrelationships, and long-term perspectives.
These values are organized into a moderately sophisticated set of new global political and economic institutions modeled much like the European Union but emphasizing environmental issues and designed to satisfy long-term environmental needs. This process will also lead to enhancing of true human values in the political sphere, especially in more effective democracies.
The "breaking away" strategy starts with small nation states building a new economic paradigm based upon the environmental perspective, rejecting the flawed and elitist global institutions we have now (the WTO, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund), and even developing new currency systems. The nation states will be supported by a grassroots activist movement which will create local eco-communities and more self-reliant economies while lobbying existing political powers to get on board with the new paradigm. The measurements of success will not be GNP or GDP but the broader-based measures of social happiness and human rights. (Take the case of the nation of Bhutan which measures its activity by a standard called "Gross National Happiness Index.")
The parts of the book explaining the roles of the neo-liberal economic philosophy and the political elite are solidly presented and not really new. The program of change he proposes, however, is new and intellectually sound. Being intellectually sound, however, is not sufficient to affect change. There is a gap, it seems, between the ideas and what is necessary to activate people at the grassroots level. Relatively few people in reality will even read this book. The ideas need to be connected to "street-level" understandings, perhaps tied to basic human values of respect and dignity. The roadmap proposed here, Mr. Jackson acknowledges, needs much more development.
You can purchase Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Oil will run out, but energy will not (Score:3, Interesting)
We will not run out of energy until the Sun expands and swallows the Earth. Oil will run out, but by then, long before then, solar, wind, and geothermal will replace it. We don't have to go back to the stone age. Population will level off as new population's are educated. All governments need to do is get out of the way and just regulate the commons, to avoid tragedy :-P
Review Bias? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:1, Interesting)
Because joblessness at 4 year lows, Multiple dictators either killed or unseated, american buisinesses going from bankrupt to record profits, the stock market up higher than when he took office and taking a negetive GDP to positive clearly spells out his failures right?
Problem is that most people rightly attribute those positives as being accomplished in spite of Obama and not because of Obama.
Re:OWS: Obama Wasn't reSponsible (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. I'm sure the author goes on and on about the evil banks and corporations, without acknowledging the fact that they would never have had the power to do so much evil in the first place if the government hadn't given it to them. The notion of an entity that's "too big to fail" is the farthest thing imaginable from a capitalistic perspective... yet look who gets blamed.
Regardless of the question you're asking, more gatekeepers and middlemen are not the answer. That applies to governments as well as corporations.
which is why Washington hated the Tea Party (Score:5, Interesting)
both the RNC and DNC hated it, oh the RNC liked it for the fact it helped them win control of the House but they resented the fact that those people didn't have the decency to go away. When the RNC tried to gain control, either directly or through sycophants they kept getting rebuffed.
That is why I found the OWS so distressing. It was a fake protest, one that the politicians could control. Nothing made this more obvious than having "unions" suddenly appear to add their voice; you notice how fast these same people vanished? When the real down and out people showed up they were scorned (the homeless and such). The OWS was needed when the previous "Tea Party" counter protests organized by unions; complete with bus loads paid for by the same; came to Washington but only trashed the place and didn't put up real numbers, nor did they have any lasting group - it all faded away as any generated for the moment organization does.
Washington and their press sycophants are desperate to shut down or vilify any true protest to the status quo. Wall Street toes the line because they love their money and Washington politicians love the same.
The Democrats need a true grass roots organization similar to the Tea Party to spring up. The problem is again, how can they tell when it truly from the grass roots and not manufactured. The key to knowing will be how those in power react to it and how the press reacts.
Simple rule : If the politicians and press both lap it up then its probably not real.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Interesting)
The movement needs more than a leader. It needs a point. By the time the Occupiers were finished, you had everybody from homeless advocates (and homeless) to raving Marxists, neither of which represent in any way the alleged 99%. At least the Tea Partiers had a tangible set of principles and goals. Being reactionary Libertarian, I despise much of what the Tea Party stands for, but there was at least some sense that there was a direction beyond "we're just against those guys".
Political movements that cannot solidify a single set of goals die out. It's not the leaders alone that do it. The problem with the Occupiers is the same as the peace movement of the 1970s. At the core, one of the founding principles is that everyone has their own idea of where the movement should go. There's a core kind of philosophical anarchism which means that no one is ever really going to become a leader, and if they did, they'd just end up fracturing the movement if they ever did anything faintly leader-like.
Beyond that, revolutions are dangerous things. Smashing existing economic, political and social structures rarely actually ends with something stronger. The American Revolution is an exception, rather than a rule. I much prefer the more evolutionary approach that lead to democracy in Britain, from the Glorious Revolution to the greater and lesser reform acts of the 19th to the 20th century. No burning down buildings or taking emperors and their families out into the woods and gunning them down.
The last thing you want is fanatics. The Tea Party almost brought the US debt into discredit for the first time in the history of the United States through some sort of mad desire to remain ideologically pure. No thanks, don't want that kind of revolution.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Interesting)
Both GWB's and Obama's economic advisers had a historical model; the Hoover administration, which chose to keep its head above the economic crisis during its early stages at a point when intervention might have at least stabilized the economy (despite what people the, crash of 1929 didn't lead to a decade-long down, it lead to high volatility, which is in many ways much worse, and it was that that lead to the Depression). By targeted bail outs to prevent a complete freeze up of the movement of global credit, both GWB and Obama prevented a nightmare scenario. Yes, it sucks that some really incompetent bastards got saved from their own wickedness and idiocy, but history will show, I think, that as bad as the 2008 collapse was, it was the actions of the outgoing and incoming American administrations which prevented it from becoming another Depression.
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Interesting)
Healthcare... WTF? Who was asking for that? We wanted jobs and economic stability not government mandated health care.
Polls, at the time, showed 80% of respondents saying "yes" to "do we need healthcare reform?" So, in response to your question, EVERYBODY is who the fuck was asking for it.
As for the jobs? That was the whole point of the stimulus bill -- you know, the one that passed in like the first month he was in office? Oh, but that's right -- the stimulus bill was nothing but government waste. He had to do something else to create jobs that didn't involve spending money, such as go beg CEOs and other job creators to hire more gardeners for their personal estates.
There are lots of legitimate gripes about Obama. Yours? They're bullshit.
--Jeremy
What sacrifices? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a lot of the masses, which have already lost quite a bit, are starting to ask, "When are the controllers going to start sacrificing as much as we have?"
You said, "...not one single President or politician has asked *any* American to sacrifice *anything* in over 40 years." Obama suggested that the tax rates for the top earners go back to the place where they were ten years ago, and he was branded a job-killer and capitalism-hater. Maybe it's not the masses that are your problem here.
Well, that settles it... not chance in hell (Score:4, Interesting)
emphasizing "sustainability" and "development" versus simple "unlimited growth."
You know? I've been saying that for close to 10 years... that there is something mathematically wrong with using "growth" as a metric of success. But at a company I once worked for, we read "From good to great" and listened to our C-level executives came back from business conventions saying things like "if you're not growing, then you're dying." The logical failure in these ideas were all too plain for me to see.
There's a whole lot of crazy and stupid in our society from the very top to the very bottom. People think drugs are a good idea for helping them to feel better at all levels, for example. But it's pretty much everywhere you look where conventional wisdom which our grandfathers lived under successfully after surviving the great depression is being cast aside for "new ideas" which are just short-sightednees and greed in shiny wrapping paper. It's like saying "hey! eat all the candy you want! you're going to feel great and be happy! It's all that matters in life!" Forget about getting diabetes, getting your feet cut off and bieng unable to take care of your children because of your new disability.
Only one thing will cause a turn-around. Things will have to get bad on a global scale and pretty much apocalyptic before things can even come close to turning around. The ruiners of the world are still in charge and will not stop to think that they are dooming themselves as much as the rest of us even though they won't feel it until a much larger amount of us will have died from it and their first symptoms will be "unable to get enough servants to do their work for them."
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:5, Interesting)
I lost my job in the recession, too. I make 86% of what I was making in 2009.
I suck. Although, I will hazard a guess that you're the exception and I'm the rule.
Re:yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why these ideas will not gain traction (Score:4, Interesting)
The Tea Party almost brought the US debt into discredit for the first time in the history of the United States through some sort of mad desire to remain ideologically pure. No thanks, don't want that kind of revolution.
Yeah I mean it couldn't have ANYTHING to do with Obama's failed economic plan of Keynesian economics of blow lots of money without any plan at all right? I mean how the hell do you blow ~$4 trillion in under 3 years alone except by being an idiot? That you blame the tea party simply says you're wallowing in what you're being told instead of understanding the metrics and economics of what Obama and his panel of idiots pulled.
That plan: Throw money at it. Tell me, does throwing money at something ever work? And does cutting 1% to 'save' yourself while in debt up through your asshole work either? Of course it doesn't. At best the US needed to take direct spending cuts, at worst they needed to properly prioritize, the entire government bureaucracy is top heavy and start gutting. Want to know how I can say this? Because we had someone here in Ontario by the name of Bob Rae(now Liberal leader) who did exactly the same thing that Obama is doing. It ended with our rating cut here, and it should only be another 20 years or so before the province pays off his debt. And he only doubled it.
Enjoy your taste of socialism. Because that's all it was.