So here’s my list of ten predictions for the coming year in the form of a retrospective on 2012:

1. Martin Ferguson is revealed as a double agent for both the mining industry and the Greens

The Member for Batman, is revealed to be leading a triple life as a Labor Minister, mining industry operative and deep cover Green plant. In an ironic twist Ferguson’s conflicting loyalties were only revealed after he ordered intensive monitoring and surveillance of Green groups.

“We had our suspicions when some senior members of various environmental groups referred to a Federal Government mole known only as Robin.” Stated Senior Detective Sergeant Smith of the AFP. AMMA were reported to be livid when news of Ferguson’s Green loyalties emerged, a spokesperson said “We definitely thought he was our man. Honestly, we don’t know what has happened to the sanctity of market transactions in this country.”

An unnamed Greens source has said that Ferguson’s antics as a Minister were part of a plot to ensure that the Federal Seat of Batman went to the Greens, “I was amazed with how long we could get away with it. I would have thought the Labor Party would have cottoned on to the damage they were doing to their brand having Ferguson represent the peoples of Brunswick, Northcote and Thornbury?”

2. The Australian comes out as a  satirical news publication

“I looked at Chris and said, ‘mate let’s see how long we can get away with this shit.’” Clive Mathieson in an exclusive Fairfax interview. Mathieson went on to outline amongst other things that columnist Paul Kelly is actually singer song writer Paul Kelly. “We just slapped on a photo of my dad who lives up in Tweed Heads for the byline and told Paul to make shit up. If you go through his columns carefully you see coded references to Aussie Rules, Aboriginal Rights and how Melbourne kicks Sydney’s arse.”

The news devastated The Australian‘s 5 online and 14 paper subscribers .

3. Grooveshark is a Republican Party Trojan Horse

Karl Rove is understood to have set up the front after carefully going through demographic data. Seeing the Republican base shrink as rich old people die off – he came up with the Great White Shark project. Grooveshark, set up with GNC funds, worked by pumping through subliminal Republican messages. News of the fraud was broken on Twitter when a lapse in the program actually made a group of college students genuinely bat-shit crazy rather than just Republican voters. Karl Rove was despondent when his scheme was discovered, “How else are we going to convince people to destroy the environment and lose all their assets? The old stuff’s just not working anymore.”

4. The end of the Mayan Calendar on 21 December 2012 causes great confusion

Although this is only because the local butcher who puts out the Mayan calendar was a day late in delivering it.

5. A new mental disorder hits the news – Rich Old White Men Syndrome

This follows hot on the heels of the revelation of The Australian being a satirical publication. When an inquiry into The Australian-gate fiasco finds that the prank lasted so long only because the readers were exclusively rich old white men. A treating clinical psychological to one of the subscribers stated, “They used the paper as a crutch so they didn’t have to deal with reality. I mean who wants to be told that they hold positions of privilege and influence in a system that is basically destroying the planet, and with it any hope of a functional prosperous civilisation? Rather than deal with the choice, they used the paper  to retreat into a make believe world where science doesn’t exist and money is always right.”

6. Ben Lee makes a good album again

“Look, I’ll admit it now – Ripe was a steaming pile of dung. I just thought that everything I did was perfect after the reception I got for Awake is the New Sleep. I realised it was time to start actually making music again.” Ben Lee said in a publicity interview for the new album called Damaged Fruit.

7. Alan Jones is possessed by the ghost of FDR

After playing FDR in the musical Annie, Alan Jones underwent an emotional breakdown. “I’d been repressing myself for so long that I’d forgotten what it was like to care about people, but sitting in the wheelchair of this inspirational figure and getting into his mindset just released all those pent up feelings.” (This is an excerpt to Jones’ forthcoming autobiography)

8. Tony Abbott is replaced as Liberal Leader

Allegedly it was because Abbott was just not extreme enough. “With the Labor Party the state it’s in, we’ve got a once in a generation opportunity to really fleece the people.” Said an unnamed senior Liberal source, “I mean they just lost the by-election in Batman. So it was time to flick Tony out and draft in Rick Santorum.”

The move was controversial given that Santorum was not yet an Australian citizen but Campbell Newman’s successful transition to LNP Premier in Queensland provided the inspiration.

9. President Obama announces that he really is a Socialist

“They kept calling me one, and I won the 2012 Presidential election. So I thought why not flick the switch to Marx?” – President Obama, 13 December 2012.

10. The Rapture comes

After returning to Earth, Jesus Christ trawls through the data to find that culturally the more secular a society the more Christian economic and social outcomes it produces. ” I decided I needed to carry out radical action. I  needed to take 144,000 of my most motherfucking craziest followers, and get them off this planet. I mean humanity deserves a chance right? The crazies will be alright – my cribb is so huge it’s pretty much a kingdom and there’s a corner where they can believe they’ve won forever.” (I’d like to thank Rolling Stone for allowing me to reprint this quote from their interview with JC)

Anyway, it’s fashionable, almost a right of passage, in left circles to dismiss religion, God and all that. After all, it is the opiate of the masses.  However, highlighting how organised religion is used as a tool of hegemonic control does not mean we should just abandon the field. The history of religion is as much the history of revolutionaries, radicals and heretics as it is the history of reactionaries, conservatives and ideologues. Besides, how can we win the war of position without claiming some of the religious ground?

And today is supposed to be JC’s birthday. Christmas, now though, functions as a celebration of consumerism. We are encouraged to consume. Buy commodities.  Eat them. Give them to others. Give them to yourself. Wallow in glorious overconsumption as you have completed your duty to grow the economy and inflate retail sales. Nominally it’s supposed to be the celebration of the birth of the Messiah (I’m sure some very naughty boys were also born on this day too). That probably ended around the time Coca-Cola marketed a big fat guy in a red suit distributing commodities, and more commodities. Only the real ones though.

Although, having this major Christian feast so close to the winter solstice is surely no accident. In pagan times this was also a major winter festival around the time of the northern hemisphere’s shortest day of the year. The darkest depths of winter were a period of starvation. So on the day the night was longest you’d sacrifice a lamb or two to get you through the long nights – the sacrificial lambs died so the village may live on (sound familiar). It was also helpful that the alcohol you brewed in the summer was ready about now. It also helps that life (Easter) is reborn around spring time in the northern hemisphere.

Today we are left with a celebration of capitalism, founded on the birth of the Messiah built on an ancient celebration of the winter solstice – your wine had fermented and you culled the cattle to get through the depths of winter so why not have a celebration? But we should not abandon the symbolism, texts, stories and traditions of pre-capitalist times. While they are not the signs of proto-utopian societies, if we stretch our minds past our present way of seeing and into the past, it can provide a way of slinging us into the future.

Take this Jesus guy. Whether Messiah, historical teacher or a collection of stories there is some interesting lessons in accounts of his life written well after his life. Take for example the story of the money changers in the Temple. He was outraged at the usury going on his Father’s temple – that traders could be profiting off people’s worship that he overturned their tables. He took violent direct action against the exploitation of ordinary people. That’s not something you hear evangelical preachers talking about that often when they tell your money is a reward for your morality (and that God hates fags).

Another example is the feeding of the 5,000. We can’t really be expected to think that 5,000 people were fed with a handful of loaves and fishes. But it’s a powerful account of how far a little bit of sharing and generosity can go towards making sure there’s enough for all of us. Today for me though it feels as if every time I go to drink some water it’s actually magically wine (read beer).

If I’ve learned anything over the course of the year though, is that if you want to advance the cause of justice then you have to have blatant disregard for the world of Caesar.

If Christmas teaches us anything it is this – we need to be prepared to give up all worldly attachments in the fight for justice. Sitting in the Supreme Court of Victoria, being accused of a union thuggery and violence I never felt more just in my life. I was at peace with losing any meagre possessions I had. It’s not that I’m sort of super moral aesthete – it’s that I came to realise that you should enjoy worldly experiences while they’ll slip past you pretty quickly as you keep going down the river of life.

If we really count ourselves as serious about creating change, we must be prepared to sacrifice our possessions, our property and our bodies. Without being prepared to give up everything we cannot hope to gain anything. We must be prepared to enjoy the feast before the long famine of the dark night.

For the only way to win the world is to be prepared to lose it.

[a] low tax nation with high quality, public funded institutions. A low debt nation with world leading human development and infrastructure. The wealthiest nation in the world where even though our rich get richer, our poor have income growth so extraordinary that it increases at a faster rate than the rich expect to experience anywhere else in the world but Australia. A nation where we enjoy the highest minimum wages in the world.

The first claim is that according to the major indicators of economic success Australia is pretty freakin’ awesome. We are the land of milk and honey (and gold and iron ore).

The second limb of Possum’s argument is that this is no mere accident but due to “30 years of hard, tedious, extraordinarily difficult policy work that far, far too many of us now either take completely for granted, or have simply forgotten about”. For Possum there is one overriding political implication: “we’ve actually solved most of the big problems that other nations are still grappling with”. But this is not utopia, and we are not angels (well I know I’m not at least).

Possum is a philosophical liberal, and he is viewing Australia through such a framework. For Possum, the growing gap between the top 10 percentile and the bottom 10 percentile are not a problem. The same policies that have caused this have also apparently increased the gross wealth of the least well-off. This is a clear application of Rawls’ Difference Principle (see A Theory of Justice (1971)) whereby inequality is justified where it advantages the poorest. This is one way political liberalism justifies the private and unequal control of capital. Inequality allows the cream to rise to the top and benefit everyone. Looking at prosperity from such a liberal perspective leads one to emphasize the role of the individual. Possum locates the cause of world-beating prosperity to 30 years of hard policy work, or in other words the leadership of Hawke/Keating/Howard and a narrow group of policy wonks.

Sitting in this garden of plenty our liberal Possum is equally mystified by the rise of a Right seemingly decoupled from reality, and the continued bleating of the broad Left. As Zizek wrote “[t]he problem with liberalism is that it cannot stand on its own”. Rather it relies on a network of collective values it corrodes as it develops. The result of 30 years of liberal economic policy application is the emergence of an unhinged fundamentalist Right, and a Left resistance to this corrosion. That or we are just a nation of irrational whingers.

But this post is not just a political critique of Possum’s empirical economic analysis. Rather, it a critique of how Possum’s liberal analysis has led this marsupial to miss three giant elephants sitting in our room and having tea together.

(1) Private debt – Australia is chocked up with private debt. But the liberal dichotomy between public/private means that for Possum this is not really an issue. In response to a comment Possum wrote,  “I didn’t mention private debt as I’m talking about public policy”. Ignoring at once (a) how deliberate public policy choices have contributed to rising underlying asset prices and levels of private debt (capital gains tax anyone?), and (b) how quickly a seemingly private problem becomes a public problem when it affects the right people. Remember that thing recently when the private debts of a bunch of American mortgage holders became an issue that threatened the very existence of everything? And then that austerity thing happened. This kind of matters when the wealth you are extolling is partially dependent on land value.

(2) Equality matters, there I said it and I’m not going to apologise for it. Once a society gets to a certain level of wealth it’s no longer a question about gross domestic product but the quality of wealth distribution that is the prime determinant of health, well-being and quality of life (you know all that stuff that economics is supposed to serve). Australia has become more unequal over the last 30 years and it causes anxiety, anger and a political backlash.

(3) Our ecological impact. As Marx wrote, quoting somebody else, “labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother” (Capital, Volume 1). The natural world is not that great big never ending Other that we must strive to conquer. Rather, aside from our own labour it is the ultimate source of all our prosperity. Possum just kind of ignores all that. But we’re 20 million people on a continent full of riches, and we have a lot of what the rest of the world needs more and more. Congratuwelldone to us for so far not fucking that free kick up according to the major indicators of economic success. Any analysis of wealth though that ignores what getting the wealth did to the environment is cloistered in a bio-dome of unreality.

Yeah, in a narrow sense Possum is right, we’ve never been more loaded. But are we really prosperous or are we just preparing to put the gun to our collective head?

I’m highly doubtful, as Kroger appears to suggest,  if Victoria Police beating up on workers is a just solution to the whole tent monster fiasco at #omel though!

To borrow a line from a classic of the cinema, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Predator, “If it bleeds, we can kill it” (metaphorically and non-violently of course). The 1% are ultimately a coalition/network of individuals in positions of considerable (but limited) influence. They are vulnerable and can be stopped. To push this Predator metaphor for all its worth, the first challenge and purpose of today’s post is to highlight in broad daylight this otherwise invisible network of predators picking off ordinary hardworking people in our society.

Tanya Cirkovic/Stuart Wood SC

Cirkovic and Wood targeted me personally with an injunction in the Supreme Court of Victoria. I guess the idea was to make me fearful that I might lose everything I had in terms of possessions – which doesn’t really work when (a) you don’t have money to begin with, and (b) you don’t care what you lose anyway. Cirkovic goes way back with Michael Kroger and Peter Costello on the right of the Liberal Party in Victoria. Wood, appears to be a player in the Liberal Party as well.

You see Wood is Chairman of Great Southern Press (GSP). It mainly publishes industry based material such as The Australian Pipeliner for the petrochemical industry. His Managing Director is Chris Bland, President of the University of Melbourne Liberal Club in 1999. And former The Australian Pipeline Editor of 8 years (he left in June) as well as GSP Sales and Marketing Manager, and Executive Director is none other than Life Member of the University of Melbourne Liberal Club, Scott Pearce (he was also Club President in 1998).

The Kroger connections extend beyond just Baiada’s litigation team and into its Public Relations team.

Jason Aldworth/Hamish Jones – Civic Group

Andrew Crook has already written extensively on the Jason Aldworth and Hamish Jones’ foray into the Baiada campaign. Hamish Jones is yet another former member of the University of Melbourne Liberal Club, while Aldworth is a  CIS Research Scholar and a known Krogerite in the Victorian Liberal Party, who was very close to becoming the Member for Higgins. Interestingly, Aldworth was involved with Imperial, British American Tobacco and Philip Morris’ ill-fated “Alliance of Australian Retailers” campaign against the Federal Government’s cigarette plain packaging legislation. While Wood worked at a six-month placement with Philip Morris in the mid-90s. I’d wonder if I bothered to trawl through Wood’s list of cases if I’d find more tobacco related work?

The involvement of the Liberals, however, extends into those who actually managed to successfully enter Parliament.

Senator Eric Abetz – Shadow Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations

I’m fairly sure that Abetz’s office has been monitoring this dispute for awhile. He came out early on Thursday 10th November with a press release condemning union violence on the picket line. Although if you actually watch the footage of the incident you’ll see an NUW official (me) running into the middle of the incident to separate the unmarked security guard from the members after he drove into the workers a second time. But there’s a reason the Liberal and National Party are in Coalition.

Peter Ryan MLA – Police Minister/Minister for Regional and Rural Development/Leader of the Nationals in the Victorian Parliament

Peter Ryan is Leader of the Victorian Nationals. I don’t know for sure what role he played during the dispute but I can’t help but think that his dual role as Police Minister and Minister for Rural Development was well and truly noticed and called upon by the Krogerite network. After the Supreme Court injunction against NUW officials, employees and agents as well as myself was issued on the afternoon of Friday 11 November 2011 the police presence was increased significantly. I remember rushing out to the site after the proceedings as more and more police cars and vans arrived. I remember pleading with the police present but it was of no avail – they appeared to have orders that they were bound to carry out. I’ll never forget speaking with one police officer, and as I looked around seeing another officer calmly put on his gloves. The rest was on the front cover of the Herald Sun where lines of migrant workers and community supporters standing their ground against a phalanx of 80 advancing police officers was described as a ‘clash’.

Some may hold grudges against the police. I don’t. They will always carry out their orders and to believe otherwise is folly. But that Friday night was a significant operation, and while I don’t claim to understand the chain of command within the police force, I can’t help but suspect that the Minister played some sort of role. In addition, you didn’t hear a lot from the farmers during the dispute but there is strong reason to believe thatmany of the chicken farmers are doing it tough as well. I wonder what role the Nationals played in attempting to placate the farmers?

News Limited/Miranda Devine

Interestingly the only press photographer who was there on Friday night was from the Herald Sun. Who tipped them off? I’m really not sure but I know it wasn’t the Union. Interestingly both ends of Pipe Road were blocked off only after the photographer arrived. What was truly fascinating was how a Herald Sun journalist arrived on site the next day to speak with the workers about their stories and experiences, all of which was sidelined in the Sunday paper the next day. Clearly that must have been an editorial decision.

Miranda Devine also had an opinion piece ready to go about union thuggery for the Sunday edition. Somehow we were endangering the very existence of a $1 billion company. Although Devine’s article does highlight how absurd the politico-industrial nutter complex had become, while attacking union violence on the one hand and having to mention on the other:

“Baiada, the main supplier of chickens to Coles, has had a string of terrible accidents in the past six years, including the decapitation of 34-year-old Sarel Singh last year while cleaning a processing line.”

This is where this network continually ran into trouble though. By drawing attention to the dispute no one could ignore the fact that this was a site where a worker had been decapitated. That one  single fact implies a lot. These were the people that the big end of town were continually attacking. Workers who had played by the rules – worked hard and paid their taxes. Only  to see themselves get injured and go backwards,and others get richer. What this highlights is that these people are still using the same basic strategy as the 1980s  - the world has changed since then. We have changed. It’s a different playing field now with different conditions and dangers.

The Krogerite network’s ultimate power is as gatekeepers to power, money and influence. They control whether you are acceptable to the big end of town. This only matters if you care about being accepted by the big end of town. Me though, I don’t care about my seat at the table but in making sure the millions without a voice crack open the secret places where all the decisions are made.

I’d also like to apologise to the Predator, it is bound by a strict code of honour, and it does not exploit or kill innocent bystanders or the vulnerable.

As a post-script Miranda Devine has shifted position somewhat in her News Limited column today going after both Unions, Coles and Woolworths in defence of squeezed processers and farmers. I doubt this article would have been written without the #baiadastrke and now News Limited is participating in a (very limited) discussion about corporate power in Australia. There is now some division in the 1% – interesting, very interesting. What do you make of it?

I should be writing up a post on Sunday morning at the latest.

On Friday afternoon Baiada sought and was granted an injunction in the Supreme Court of Victoria against two defendants; (1) the National Union of Workers, and (2) myself as an individual. As such I will not be blogging, until I receive any advice otherwise, about this dispute either.

If you would like to educate yourself about all the issues over and above vulnerable migrant workers being called “union thugs” go to www.nuw.org.au

Standing’s central argument is that neoliberal restructuring has shifted economic risk onto workers, and in turn created a new class – the precariat. It is a class which can expect neither stability nor security. It is a class which is angry and divided. As such it is a dangerous class susceptible to the influence of neo-fascist and/or authoritarian leaders. Only a new type of emancipatory politics which speaks to the needs and experiences of the precariat has chance of achieving any lasting positive change.

For Standing, the precariat is the Other of the working class. It is the growing class of workers (and their families) who cannot access the multifaceted forms of labour security built up during the 20th century by the union movement and social democratic parties. The creative dynamism of The Precariat, however, lies not in its identification of this new class but in mapping out the political implications of this fundamental economic shift. In the context of recent political developments such as the UK riots, Standing at times writes with an uncanny prescience:

   “Many in the precariat have lost (or fear losing) what little they had and are lashing out because they have no politics of paradise to draw them in better
    directions.”

Another interesting aspect of The Precariat is Standing’s resurrection of the ancient Greek differentiation between both work/labour and leisure/play. Standing sees work as being a “reproductive” activity necessary for the strengthening of the household as well as familial and social relationships. Work is the platform from which one can even begin to engage in paid labour. Leisure, in contrast to unthinking play, is “participation in public life” whether that is in the cultural, artistic or political sphere. For Standing, it is the higher value that Western society accords to labour over work, and play over leisure that informs the precariat’s malaise. Part of Standing’s motivation, in writing The Precariat, is “to rescue work that is not labour and leisure that is not play”.

With the marginalisation of true leisure comes the commodification of education. It may just be my own personal bias (with my enormous student debt), but one of the strongest aspects of The Precariat is how Standing describes how the commercialisation of higher education feeds “disappointment and anger”. Education has gone from being an intrinsic to a contingent good subservient to the process of profit-making. This means pushing through more students to graduation in any course where there is sufficient demand regardless of the underlying merits.

It is unsurprising then that further education is trumpeted as a source of hope in a market economy – an individual can invest in their skills and thereby receive a higher income over time. Education is thus seen as contemporary alchemy – the magical answer to being dealt a raw start in the birth lottery. Standing, however, hits this myth hard. He calculates that in the US alone “only a third of all new jobs will be available for young people who complete tertiary education.” The result is a generation of young graduates filling insecure and mindless jobs (if they’re lucky) burdened by the debt of a substandard education. As Standing highlights, the response of a contemporary graduate is almost akin to that of Soviet worker; “They pretend to educate us, we pretend to learn”.

Curiously though what makes The Precariat so fascinating is that which makes it so frustrating – Standing threshing out the implications of the growth of the precariat. There were points in the book where I wanted to jump into the pages and start arguing with the author there and then. He writes of the need for the precariat to organise and have a collective voice in the public domain but he quickly considers and dismisses the utility of trade unions in this regard; “Progressives must stop expecting unions to become something contrary to their functions”.

At the heart of this dismissal of the union movement lies Standing’s positioning of the precariat as a new class with “interests [that] are not the same as those of…core employees”. In attempting to illuminate the novelty of the precariat Standing marginalises aspects of continuity. For example, he does not consider how perhaps the precariat is a novel way of keeping a reserve army of labour in labour – thereby maximising both productive activity and placing downward pressure on wages. After all, the rise of precariousness has had a negative impact on the welfare and income of the ‘old’ industrial working class. Perhaps this is because Standing conflates how capital has changed the way it disciplines and controls labour since the 1970s with the creation of a new, discrete class that is separate from the rest of the working class.

This in turn influences Standing’s treatment of the evidence he presents in The Precariat. Two examples are particularly jarring. Firstly, Standing writes that “more UK youth say they belong to the working class than think their parents belong to it.” Yet this claim is given no further consideration. I would have thought that an upswing in youth self-identifying as part of the working class would effect how to organise a generation. Secondly, Standing examines the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) 2010 inquiry into meat and poultry processing factories – contrasting the appalling documented conditions and practices in the industry (from 17-hour shifts to being unable to take toilet breaks) with the EHRC’s recommendation that “the industry should improve its practices voluntarily”. Yet Standing does not even ask why this inquiry started in the first place. The answer is that it was the State’s response to UK trade union Unite’s “Every Worker Counts” campaign – a campaign that was directed towards UK supermarket giant Tesco. The aim of the “Every Worker Counts” campaign was to pressure Tesco to alter its meat supply chain so that no worker was employed by precarious or unethical means. For Unite, complaining to the EHRC was but one component of a campaign that united (largely white) core employees and migrant agency workers.

This dismissal of the trade union movement then hampers the rest of Standing’s strategic thinking. In outlining a politics of paradise, Standing puts forward both worker cooperatives and the universal basic income as positive policy solutions for the precariat. In dismissing the trade union movement and then moving to worker cooperatives what Standing misses is how the interrelation and synthesis between the two movements could build a better future. As an example, US union the United Steelworkers and the giant Spanish group of cooperatives, Mondragon, are in partnership to establish and invest in union cooperatives in the US. While back in Australia, the Earthworker cooperative has launched (at the Victorian Trades Hall) a union and community campaign to gain enough investors to build a solar heater factory. As far as the universal basic income is concerned though, it’s hard to see how such a measure could become law without the support of organised labour. It can be no accident that Brazil, under the administration of the Workers Party (PT) President Lula da Silva (himself a former union leader) became the first nation of earth to pass a commitment to introduce a basic income into law in 2004.

Strategically what Standing does recognise though is that the precariat, as a class, cannot be organised in the same manner and with the same language as the 20th century industrial working class. The wider Australian progressive movement needs to propose more innovative solutions to growing precariousness than site rates for all workers or casual conversion clauses in Awards/enterprise agreements. I also found Standing’s proposed ‘paradise’ compelling; reconstructing dominant notions of ‘work’ so as to create a new economic system that (a) avoids the constraints of the industrial era, and (b) addresses the chronic and multifaceted insecurity of the fast declining neoliberal age.

Overall, The Precariat provides one of the more compelling structural explanations going around for a rise in right-wing populism through out the Western world. Buy it, read it, debate it.

This review originally appeared in Arena Magazine (October/November edition). See www.arena.org.au

From www.occupymelbourne.org

I had great fun yesterday during the @OccupyMelbourne protest running around in a chicken suit. Being a B-grade serial pest, I’ve been to a few protests and what not over the years but this one felt different. It wasn’t just that we were only one of 951 other occupations around the world. It wasn’t just the family friendly atmosphere with kids running around making signs (incidentally a good friend of mine’s daughter painted 99% Angry on a pink sign). It wasn’t just the food or diversity of different groups and people who showed up. It was that it felt like a beginning. It’s like we met, nervously at first, and decided we’d take a journey together.

Anyone who tells you they know what will happen as a result of these occupations is either a fool or deluded.  One thing is certain though, things will be different if and when the Occupations end. And here’s why. Within this broad feeling of a new beginning lies the organising principles and methodology that is driving the Occupy Movement  to build a better world.

Do you remember the Iraq War protests? I do. Millions of us around the world turned out on message for peace. We made our point loud and clear. Then we went home and the war started. With the occupation though we decided against going home. And if you’re going to hang around anywhere you need to find a way to make it work. And as media theorist Douglas Rushkoff points out, the occupation itself models an alternative economic system. It might well be the first large scale example of a real world wiki community. The occupation demonstrates “a post-market, collaborative approach to creating and exchanging value”. Appeals for assistance are sent out via Twitter. Participants donate their own time, resources and skills to building the occupation. Professors teach classes, tradespeople ply their craft and artists entertain. All for the good of the organic whole of the occupation that in turn supports the participants.

The building of a distinct alternative to the prevailing system of extreme corporate power based on solidarity is the operating meta-principle but there’s a number of ways in which this plays out across  worldwide occupations.

(1) There’s a vanguard but it’s based on participation and not personality

This movement may be leaderless but it does have a vanguard. Think of the way numbers ebb and flow as people turn up during the day on weekends and more go home to sleep at night. It you drew a diagram on a graph mapping out participation and personnel across the occupations you would find a similar dynamic to all social movements and organisations. There’s a smaller percentage of highly active individuals and a long tail of members/supporters. What’s different about the occupations though is that any one person could join this vanguard because it’s open – all you have to do is participate. This gives the occupation additional strength because as some highly active individuals grow weary others can take their place. It also prevents charismatic individuals from capturing the movement and turning it to their own advancement.

(2) Creativity and momentum are built into the method

The General Assemblies are the radical democratic heart at each  occupation. What it allows is a method by which everyone who cares enough to turn up to have a say. Thus, there’s an incentive for people to participate and share their ideas. As more ideas from different people from all sorts of perspectives are discussed there’s a greater chance truly innovative actions will emerge. As more ideas are discussed and implemented around the world most will fail. The ones that work though can be easily and rapidly shared to all 950 occupations.

(3) Like Capitalism, the movement can co-opt

There was and is a lot of talk in the mainstream media about how the Occupation movement lacks a clear and distinct message. This perceived weakness though hides one of its greatest strengths. As a revolt against the glaring power and wealth of the 99%, the occupations have the ability to stand in solidarity with every single group, class or interest that is dudded by the richest 1%. The way this looks initially though is a dizzying array of messages around labour rights, environmental issues, refugee rights, patriarchy, consumer rights and well I could keep going on. What this means though is that any time something happens in an occupied city such as a  strike or a case of police brutality the movement has an opportunity to highlight the underlying systemic violence of what has occurred and build even more strength.

This stands in marked contrast to the disciplined single issue movements over the last 30 years, which has allowed capitalism to co-opt at least some of their demands but funnel ever greater amounts of power and wealth to an oligarchic few at the top.

(4) The movement poses an impossible question to the system: left to its own devices it will grow, crack down on it and it will grow even faster

I think Keith Olbermann got it pretty right when he tweeted earlier today, “I’d like to again suggest we put up a statue to Mayor Bloomberg for consistently doubling the credibility of #OWS with each of his mistakes”. You have to wonder if Mayor Bloomberg or leading officers at the NYPD are actually secret revolutionaries. Every large scale crackdown, incident of kettling, police brutality or instigation of mass arrests has pushed the occupations further and farther afield. Without the NYPD’s brilliant revolutionary strategy people like myself might not have had the opportunity to turn up to #OccupyMelbourne yesterday.

(5) The movement is an iceberg – only 10% of it is visible at any one time

This one should be pretty obvious – it’s not only what you see in any one square at any one time but the way each square is linked to each other and the rest of the world.

(6) The occupation draws strength from the system’s weaknesses

Over the last 30 years we’ve seen an ever growing number of homeless, unemployed and underemployed people emerge. These are people like you and I who have been discarded by the system – smart people, funny people and creative people who have been at the wrong places at the wrong times. This is what “rationalist” economists call the “natural rate of unemployment”, i.e. the number of human lives that need to be wasted at anyone point in time so that a tiny few at the top can reap their desired amount of profit.  The occupations provide these people an opportunity to find community, a safe place to shelter and an outlet for their abilities/time.

On the flip side, some “lucky” good people have been caught up in a pin strip prison with a relatively decent amount of money but no time and no prospect of doing anything more meaningful in their lives other than serving the interests of <insert name of your corporate overlord here>. The occupations provides them with a positive outlet to funnel their money to build up a meaningful and realistic alternative way of living.

These are just some initial thoughts, to my fellow nerds of social change let the discussion begin.

Change might be constant but there will always be haters. And with the growing #occupywallstreet movement, it’s no different. There are those who criticise the Wall St Occupation because there is no clear demand, or that the occupiers are somehow hypocrites for using the goods and services of corporations. Both criticisms miss the point. Attacking an occupier because they are taking photos with a digitial camera or talking on a smartphone would be like attacking a Parisian revolutionary in 1789 for eating produce that was grown on the land of an aristocrat. Like fish we can only swim in the system we live in, but unlike fish we can change it.

We live in a world where all of the important decisions are made on the basis of one dollar, one vote. What we are seeing on Wall St and globally is the beginning of a new system. A system that places people over profit. Replacing a system as complex as global finance is today with its networks, institutions, and rules cannot be reduced to a single bumper sticker. We have gathered up our courage to begin a journey but we are not yet wise enough to know where it will take us. What is clear though is the process. The occupation movement is not a campaign as traditionally we understand it. The occupation is not just the collective action. The occupation is where together we can learn, talk, debate and decide. The #occupywallst movement is directed by the New York General Assembly. The NYGA describes itself as “an open, participatory and horizontally organized process through which we are building the capacity to constitute ourselves in public as autonomous collective forces within and against the constant crises of our times”.

As media theorist Douglas Rushkoff points out, the occupation itself models an alternative economic system. The occupation demonstrates “a post-market, collaborative approach to creating and exchanging value”. Appeals for assistance are sent out via Twitter. Participants donate their own time, resources and skills to building the occupation. Professors teach classes, tradespeople ply their craft and artists entertain. All for the good of the organic whole of the occupation that in turn supports the participants. No longer is another world possible, it’s under construction.

That might well be good you say for the United States. But in Australia it’s different. In the US 16.5% of the labour force is unemployed, and joblessness is a strong theme at Liberty Park with one clever sign reading “Lost my job, found an occupation”. In Australia though most of us still have jobs. There will be many who will claim sympathy for the Wall St Occupation but who claim that either it’s not needed here, not yet, or that it can’t work in Australia because things aren’t bad enough yet. To that I say Wall Street is everywhere, including Australia. And Wall Street’s grip has been slowly suffocating us as well.

We too have a system that can only be ‘healthy’ when over half a million Australians are unemployed. We too have a system that has pushed risk onto the rest of us in the 99%. The 1% have been busy making the rest of us suck up their risk. Australia is a world leader when it comes to ‘flexible labour markets’ – over 40% of us are pushed into insecure working arrangements as casuals, contractors, labour hire workers, temps, or fixed termers. The names and the different arrangements are potentially limitless but the result is always the same – short-term profit for them, long-term pain for us. And there’s no respite at home anymore either. Australian household debt ratios have sky-rocketed by a six-fold rate between 1990 and 2008 to reach $1.1 trillion. Who can afford to even contemplate buying a house anymore? And those who have managed to scramble their way into the property market continually pray to the Gods of the Reserve Bank  not to raise interest rates. We’re close to the edge in Australia, and we shouldn’t have to fall off the cliff to discover its existence.

People are worried about sky rocketing levels of corporate power and now we know there is a language of resistance that we can start to learn toghether – it is the language of the occupation. Let’s not pretend that this is about a struggling nation on the other side of the world. Wall St is everywhere and we will only be free of its corporate grip when we occupy all streets.

In Australia it begins on Saturday October 15th. Click here to see what’s happening for Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth as well.