Occupy Wall Street protests have spread across the country behind the rallying cry that the “99 percent” have been left behind. There is a sense of outrage that the “system” is not just rigged in favor of the elite – something like the top 1% – but has spun out of control, leading to an accelerating concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the very few.

Wage stagnation, the explosion of health and education costs as the American welfare state shrinks, and above all the financial manipulation of debt has generated extraordinary profits on Wall Street and massive indebtedness and housing foreclosures on Main Street. Losses from outrageous risk-taking by too-big-to-fail financial institutions are made good by the taxpayer, who is told there is no alternative.

This new gilded age political-economic system can be thought of as the interlocking trifecta of a mostly degraded and increasingly dual educational system, a financial system that became mostly unregulated by either law or social norms, and a political system increasingly corrupted by money.

The educational system has promoted a meritocracy of cumulative advantage. The vast majority of American students experience primary and secondary schools during which they fall far behind their peers in much of the rest of the developed (and even less-developed) world, and then face costs of post-secondary education that produce a level of debt that cannot possibly be repaid out of earnings. But the elite reproduces itself with an ability to pay for college and graduate school educations whose superiority has steadily grown, while at the same time feeling entitled since the educational process has also become extraordinarily competitive.

The financial sector was systematically deregulated as free market orthodoxy took off in the 1980s. This deregulation served to extract resources from the “real” economy and concentrated it in the bank accounts of a tiny elite, who are increasingly those same victors of the Darwinian educational competition. As the concentration of income at the very top of the distribution proceeded in the 1990s-2000s, spectacular displays of conspicuous consumption became commonplace. At the same time, a political system corrupted by the absence of meaningful limits to special interest campaign spending could not rein in the financial sector with limits to risk-taking, even after both the magnitude of the crisis and its causes were plain to see.

And in the face of all this, what in the end has been the rallying cry of protest at Occupy Wall Street and beyond? A simple statistic originally generated in a technical article in a leading economics journal by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez – the after-tax income share of the top 1 percent. Their work told the story of a staggering increase in the share of after-tax income received by those with top incomes since the 1970s. And so: the “99 percent”.

The Congressional Budget Office has just released an update of these figures. The after-tax, after-benefit share of total household income taken by the top 1 percent grew from 8 percent in 1979 to 17 percent in 2007. The shares of each of the bottom four quintiles (together the bottom 80 percent) all fell by 2-3 percentage points. Households in the top quintile but not in the top 1 percent (the 81^st-99^th percentiles) showed no change, while those in the bottom 20 percent fell from 7 percent to 5 percent. In sum, only the top 1% gained, and the top .01 percent gained even more magnificently.

It is not just that wages and salaries have grown vastly more unequal. Policy decisions have greatly reduced the equalizing effect of taxes and transfers. As the CBO puts it, “In 1979, households in the bottom quintile received more than 50 percent of transfer payments. In 2007, similar households received about 35 percent of transfers.”

Our political-economy trifecta (education-finance-politics) has not just rigged the system to syphon the productivity of the economy into the hands of the top 1 percent. It has also systematically attacked the standard of living of workers in the bottom half (or more) of the workforce.

One source of this attack has been to reduce the legal minimum wage to a level so low it has become largely irrelevant as a wage floor. In another post, I will show that different approaches to the use of a statutory minimum wage can go a long way towards explaining why, for over three decades, about 30 percent of all American workers are paid very low wages (less than 2/3 of the median wage). This compares to a 2009 low wage incidence of less than 10 percent of French workers (whose unemployment rate is almost identical!). “30 percent” should become another Metric of Protest.

Like a whole lot of other people, I am trying to get a handle on Occupy Wall Street. It’s obvious that this is a very special movement, but I am trying to figure out what makes it so special. The one-month-old movement is being accused of being unclear, directionless, fragmented, vague, fuzzy. Indeed, it is not made up of disciplined cadres marching with mass-produced banners. It does not have a Central Committee, and though it is an expression of what one Zuccotti Park woman veteran calls an Economic Civil Rights Movement, it stays away from specific demands. These are there, too, but not easy to list or prioritize. It is not just about jobs, not only about mounting poverty, or student debts that now total more than all our credit-card debts; it is not only about corruptibility of the political system, and not only about accountability of the banks and bankers. It is – not unlike the Civil Rights Movement – about something much more fundamental. And I think it has something to do with the way we are locked in to rigid ways of thinking and talking about democracy.

There is nothing new in the observation that we are often imprisoned by language. Language is a conventional system of signs, and if we want to communicate we have to rely on its conventional usage. But there are dimensions and usages of language that, when tweaked a bit, have the capacity either to keep us captive, or to bring in some fresh air, helping us breathe. That we are captives of language, confined within a language that does not serve us any more, is conveyed vividly by Susan George when she says that “cost recovery” is the polite way of saying “make families pay to educate their children.” Indeed, we hear it all the time: education is a very good investment. On the other hand, a pleasantly surprising example of a more refreshing linguistic game comes from Occupy Wall Street: “Yes we camp!”

Something has happened to our thinking and talking about democracy, and we academics are not without guilt here. We have put too much trust in the kind of formal democracy, procedural democracy, that our political science has tended to prefer, as it brackets sentiments and makes it easier to operationalize and easier to build a “legitimate” academic discipline around. And, indeed, one ought to be wary of what overly emotional politics may lead to. But one has to see that there are vital dimensions of democracy that in the process have been overlooked by social scientists and thus also by policy makers, a situation that can lead to inaccurate policy guidelines and often to disastrous policy decisions.

With their focus on various aspects of formal democracy, academics have facilitated the easy prescriptions for democracy that are handy for the policy experts. And American policy experts are known for peddling an easy, “one size fits all” prescription for young or aspiring democracies: you just have to fulfill 3 conditions: have free elections, a free-market economy, and civil society.

Well, these requirements may very well bring about parodies of democracy, as when democratic elections result in anti-democratic regimes like those of Putin or Chavez; or when globalized free markets bring about staggering impoverishment, unashamed, blatant economic exploitation, or bloody civil wars over resources; or when civil society is a masquerade of so-called non-governmental organizations that in practice serve as a facade for the government or are  maintained by capricious foreign donors and carry out projects that fit their ever-changing guidelines.

And what if in old democracies like ours, our political rights, the right to elect our representatives to Congress, are hostage to forces we actually have little control over, such as campaign funding? I hate to think it’s true, but I recently read that the cost of electing our next president will be over one billion dollars for each candidate! So is democracy failing us?

OWS, with its emphasis on consensual decision-making, has raised many hopes and expectations. I realize there are many ways of understanding it. I see it as a movement to recover the meaning of democracy by searching beyond the models that delineate the procedural mechanics of it, which often collapse into a minimalist view of democracy as an institutional arrangement for competing interest groups with their eye on the people’s votes. Their return to consensus is the return — at least in part — to the original meaning of the word consensus, “feeling with.” Even “participatory democracy” does not seem to grasp it for me anymore. The civic exercise of direct democracy through the “General Assembly” taking place in Zuccotti Park, and spreading to other places, arises from a strong sense of indeed being born free and equal in dignity and rights and of acting towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood — that sense which is so well captured in the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Again, this movement is not about serving different interests groups. It is about something else, and it is unprecedented. It is not about a change of government or even of the system. It is about 99% of the people losing trust in the workings of democracy, and therefore losing hope in the sense of their lives, and in the sense of the lives of their children. A not easily measurable goal, and yes, we do not have a language for it. We do not know how to name it. But I do think that it is asking for a fundamental change on a grand scale that would make possible the recovery of our lost capacity for the enacting of democracy.

Certain lost dimensions of democracy– described variously as deliberative, agonistic, or performative — represent a kind of political engagement — critical for any democracy — in which the key identity of its actors is that of citizens, and in which the good of society at large, and not that of a narrow interest group, is at stake. And the OWS movement gets it! Democracy, after all, is also about equality of opportunity and the promise of a better life.

The goals of Occupy Wall Street inevitably appear fuzzy because the protesters are trying to expose the many ways in which something as intangible and subtle as human dignity is being damaged, and the way humiliation is going unnoticed. The assemblies are a cry against the kind of language and the kind of politics — with its political formulas, processes, and mechanisms — that in effect disregard the citizens and their personhood, along with the related notions of agency, equality and liberty. This remarkable movement can help us to recover democracy’s lost treasures.

The other day someone working for the mainstream media (MSM) seemed to be undecided about how exactly they should disparage a burgeoning movement. First the hypertext link on MSNBC’s website read, “Protesters want to tame Wall Street’s wild ways, but they’re a little wild themselves.” Later in the day it read, “Wall Street protesters spread murky message.” In both cases, clicking on the link would reveal the title of the article, “Familiar refrain: Wall Street protest lacks leaders, clear message,” with the opening lines, “It’s messy. It’s disorganized. At times, the message is all but incoherent.” With the accompanying photos focusing on the disheveled belongings of the protesters scattered about their home base, Liberty Park, the theme was that the seeming lack of organization and consensus of the “Wall Street Protesters” was analogous to the dysfunctional state of American political discourse. Being unsympathetic, skeptical, or even cynical, reporters do find what they’re looking for. Yet such a jaundiced look at the protests, as is typical of much of the media’s coverage, misses something strikingly obvious: what has largely faded in the rest of the country is still alive in Liberty Park– hope and change.

Last week, a young couple from Virginia Beach paid a visit to the park with their two children, one about five or six years old, the other not older than three. They met a young man who was writing a message on a cardboard to protest corporate malfeasance. The couple asked him to explain to their eldest daughter what it was he was protesting about. The young man smiled, and looked at the girl, who shyly averted his glance.  “So basically, a few people have a lot of power, and they’re using that power to take advantage of everybody else.” At that point, the girl began to give the young man her undivided attention.  “You know, it’s like a bully, we’ve all had plenty of bullies in our lives, and they think of different ways to better their position. And what we have is just that, on a larger scale, going on with the ruling class.” He paused and smiled as the girl’s attention seemed to be waning and then sped up his voice as he finished his explanation, at that point perhaps addressing her parents more than her: “And they’re using the socio-economic infra-structure of this company [sic.]to do that.” The girl’s eyes wandered about the park. Still smiling, and probably in jest, the young man adds, “She looks like she totally got it.”

I cannot say that a description such as this necessarily typifies the movement. If I wanted to emulate the MSM, I would say that the vignette was the protest in a tea cup: the girl being the uncomprehending MSM, not ready or willing to receive a message, which is actually being delivered loud and clear. However, the protest is certainly more than the sum of its parts. A closer look reveals that the lack of hierarchy and permanent leadership does not denote disorganization. (In this way, it resembles the protests in North Africa and the Middle East, including Israel.) A lack of a single unified message does not indicate no message at all. The movement is a work in progress; leadership, structure, and consensus are emerging from the bottom up.

The movement has already formed a number of committees which address the needs of the protesters; one of the most recent is a “Let’s Talk it Out Committee” which has the goal of providing counsel for those protesters that are mentally or emotionally stressed. There are also working groups that address concerns such as medical care, sanitation, and community outreach. Then there is the “General Assembly,” a kind of “free-market” of ideas if you will, which has definite procedural rules, and consists of anyone who wishes to have their voice heard. In fact, even one of its most disorganized aspects, its online Chat Room, has rather strict rules: no ideology or political candidates are to become the topic of discussion. The participants want the movement to grow, and realize that in order for that to happen, the movement must be inclusive and without ideological rigidity. Even the police are considered part of “the 99%,” which perhaps more than anything else, is representative of their message: if you make under $250,000 a year and feel your representatives have been bought by elite interests, we are you.

On the sidewalk near Broadway is the “Welcoming Committee.” A few nights ago, I talked to a young women, wearing a shirt that said “I’m here because I love this country,” that had been camping out in the park 24/7. She complained that a local news outlet claimed that the numbers of protesters was “dwindling,” but she was happy to report that they were actually increasing, and that that morning she had woken up surrounded by several hundred others. When I asked her what she thought about the criticism that they are “leaderless,” she told me that when numbers are large there will naturally need to be leaders, but the structure of the movement was “organic” and different leaders took the reins in different situations.

Recently, Cornel West briefly took the reins of leadership, and addressed the General Assembly before they began their discussion.  “There is a sweet spirit in this place,” he began, but stopped as the rest of the assembly repeated his words, as is the procedure when someone addresses them.  “I hope you can feel the love and inspiration…” Again the refrain.  “… as those strong and everyday people…” This time the crowd isn’t so sure about what was said,  and a little laughter can be heard before the crowd tries to repeat what West said, but all that is clear is “everyday people.” West continued, “…take a stand with great courage and passion.

The rest of his speech, minus the refrains, went like this:

“Because we oppose the greed of Wall Street oligarchs, and corporate plutocrats, we free the democratic juices of this country and all the places around the world. I am so blessed to be a part of this. You had me spiritually break dancing all the way here.  Cause when you bring folks together, people of all colors, and all cultures, all genders, all sexual orientations, the elite will tremble in their boots.  And we will send the message, that this is the US fold, responding to the Arab Spring.  And it’s going to hit Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Arizona, and then on to Detroit. To Appalachia, and to people on reservations for our red brothers and sisters. Martin Luther King Junior will smile from the grave as we move step by step to what he called a revolution- don’t be afraid to say revolution- a transfer of power from the oligarchs to ordinary citizens, for the poor children of all colors, the orphans and the widows, the elderly, and the working folk. We can end the prisoner-industrial complex, the military industrial complex, the Wall Street Oligarchy complex, the corporate media multiplex. I want to thank you.  It’s a blessing to be a small part of this magnificent gathering. This is the General Assembly consecrated by your witness and your body and your mind.”

The refrain this time is drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.

He left and then someone else briefly took the reign of leadership, but with the disclaimer, “Just because there are facilitators, doesn’t mean that they are leaders. We’re in this together, we want to work it out.”

The idea is that the people should lead. In Liberty Park that idea has actually become reality.