(In the memory of Vladimir Ilyich, who in spite of everything was a great political man.)

The Occupation of Wall Street has already done important things. It has put the very important issue of inequality on the collective American agenda. It has experimented with forms of direct democracy and in ways of seriously influencing the political system outside the official channels. It has the potential of becoming not only the forerunner, but also a key component of a new American movement for more democracy and more justice. But, as all movements, it must confront its own worst tendencies to realize its genuine potential.

By tendencies I mean strategies rather than people or individuals or groups.  Such a negative strategy is symbolized by the slogan that appeared just before the taking of a part of the New School: “occupy everything.” I regard it as a childhood ailment not to denigrate any participants or to represent their age (they were adults!), but to indicate problems of an early, developmental phase that can still be overcome.

“Occupy everything” is a slogan and a program incompatible with a non-violent movement aiming to raise moral as well as political consciousness. The idea of “seizing public or quasi-public spaces to make broad claims about the overall (mis)direction of our society” cannot be justified as a general right in the name of which the law is violated to transform or improve it. It is incompatible with productively addressing “the public at large.” Finally, and most clearly “occupy everything” is deeply contradictory with the creative slogan “we are the 99%.”

“Occupation” as against “sit-in” is a military metaphor. Occupation easily calls to mind the occupation of Iraq, and of the West Bank of the Jordan River. Sit-in means that we enter and stay in the space of an institution, non-violently, space where we have some kind of right to be and exercise civil disobedience, accepting to pay a price when arrested. For example, African Americans who sat in had a right to be served in public lunch counters, a right that was then formally denied. Sit-ins bear moral witness to unjust laws that need to be changed. Occupation means the forcible taking and holding of territory. Literally speaking, while most of the events taking place all over the country were sit-ins, despite their name, a few were attempted and (mostly) failed occupations. Sit-ins can lead to only one-sided use of open force, while occupations involve potentially two-sided violence. We can even have sit-ins in the space and territory of friends, in the sense of space to which they have some right, but only with their democratic consent. But it is always the territory of enemies that is occupied. This is a matter of force alone, and not right. Conversely, when force alone without right is the basis of a presence in a space or territory, it is an occupation and not a sit in.

Words matter. While an occupation can be effectively a sit-in, and a sit-in can be an occupation, or be turned into one, when the word “occupy” is used that in itself produces facts and outcomes. Nancy Fraser makes the general claim that OWS implies the strategy (and implicitly the right) of “seizing public or quasi-public spaces.” This claim represents just a slightly limited version of the slogan “occupy everything.” Our apartments are not offered as spaces that can be occupied for the purpose of generating more public discussion. Still the claim means that not only the New School’s space, but that of public high and elementary schools, hospitals, fire and police stations, as well as offices dedicated to the administration of essential public goods and services, could be rightly seized if the purpose was to elevate and open up public discussion. The very spaces of public discussion could be seized to facilitate another discussion.

Let us be clear: there is no such a right, whether customary, legal, moral or human. As a strategy, the idea leads to deep conflicts between the occupiers and those whose activities, rights and forms of publicness are being forcibly displaced. When in sit ins or in civil disobedience rights are violated, these are rights that are exclusionary and oppressive that in themselves involve the denial of rights more universal and more justified. This cannot be said about all social space, and their relevant rights holders. Rights can be claimed only to the extent that they do not violate other rights without serious reason, above all identical rights. For example, the rights that are constitutive of the public sphere and without which it cannot ultimately exist, ought not be violated in the name of the very same rights. That is why occupying hospitals, or schools or spaces of public learning or discussion is unjustified, unless it is by their own participants who are being denied important rights. But then the occupation would be a sit-in. When parts of OWS march over to the New School and occupy part of it, they are not occupying a space whose owners or holders or participants have denied them any rights. On the contrary, the right to freely assemble, and speak has been granted to them over and over again by that very institution. To occupy that institution is to imagine it as an enemy, and unfortunately to turn it into an enemy. To occupy in the name of its very participants in the face of their opposition, or without their democratic decision, can never be made acceptable.

Equally important, occupation that aggressively sets the interests and needs and opinions of people on the same level, here students and students, against one another cannot be a strategy in the name of the 99%. (Even faculty belong to the 99%, I would add, though here some rhetorics have put us on the other side.)  Speaking in the name of the 99% is based on a fiction, but it is a productive fiction as long as the interests of the 99% are rigorously kept in mind. Opening up friend and enemy relations among us means that the movement suddenly is acting in the name of a much smaller percentage than 99. If all public and quasi-public spaces become targets of occupation, the 99% turns into .00001 and the 1% turns into 99. A popular strategy turns into a narrowly elitist one. The results, if “occupy everything” became a general strategy would be disastrous, mostly for the activists themselves. But we would all lose the potential I am speaking about.

It was perhaps right to use the military metaphor in the case of Wall Street (that could of course not be occupied, among other things because it is ultimately a virtual space). This is so because that famous 1% itself arguably acts like an exploitative, occupying force with respect to the rest of society. Zuccotti Park was a symbol of nearby Wall Street, and a park where few other rights were at stake. A better slogan would have been better, but we are now stuck with “occupy.” But extending the idea to everything, or all public and “quasi-public” space (whatever the last phrase means) follows only from a slogan, but not the earlier practice. This strategy emerged as a result of a temporary defeat, the police attack on the park. It targeted the New School simply because it was the easiest place conceivable to conquer, and perhaps hold.  Yet, this strategy threatens to bury those who have adopted it, and discredit even the fledgling movement itself, however unfairly. If continued, the real 99% (or those who more successfully speak in its name) will crush the imaginary and symbolic one, even if this will be against some of its own vital interests.

“Occupy everything” is by no means the only strategy available. OWS is not ultimately an occupation. That was at best a temporary strategy. Better understood, OWS is a proto movement, a potential part of a new American movement for economic justice.  A movement can use demonstrations, marches, open public and intellectual discussion, exemplary acts, forms of art and performance (politization of art, rather than the aesthetization of politics pushed by some!) and even generating new and better forms of organization and leadership to do what only movements can do: help transform the political culture and influence the direction of more formal political development.

A childhood ailment can kill, as well as immunize. People speak of the Occupation of the New School as an important learning experience. I hope this is indeed the result.