Sunday, 6 November 2011

I'm sitting under one one of St. Paul's pillars three weeks after the occupation started. After a few days of absence, I returned to find the camp different yet the same. As I write these lines I'm waiting for the general assembly. Tonight the discussion, I hope, will revolve around Ed Miliband's article about the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp. While he extends his hand in friendship and seemingly invites the occupation to legitimacy, Miliband poses crucial questions: how much do we want to engage with the political class? Do we still think of them as relevant? If the Occupy London Stock Exchange accepts this act of friendship, it will show faith not to Miliband or his party, but to the political system as a whole. It is important, therefore, to think and debate whether they are relevant in our understanding of democratic politics.

It has been three weeks and I haven't written anything on St. Paul's. I would have liked to respond to the questions and discussions that have been taking place outside the old cathedral. I would have liked to have written something about the very important work that is undertaken on this patch of surprise in the austere structures of the City of London; about the fact that until last week this project was under threat of eviction; that after St. Paul's dropped legal action, so did the City of London Corporation; and, finally, that 'red Ed' has had a fit of love on the pages of the Observer.

The campers and those around them have claimed that the current system of governance 'is undemocratic' and demand (with a banner that replaced the older 'Capitalism IS Crisis' banner) 'Real Democracy Now'.

The general assemblies and the practices of self-organisation have, in practice, demonstrated 'What Democracy Looks Like'.

We (and I wish to include myself in this) try to educate ourselves and share the knowledge each one of us holds in the working groups, the small group discussions, the cinema and the Tent City University, where 'anyone can teach, everyone can learn'.

This protest has gone a long way down the path of democratic politics (that is, in trying to understand anew what democracy is, how it works and what it means to be a citizen). The initial anti-capitalist attitude has been replaced by a clear call for democracy. The non-capitalist community that squats a concrete square at the heart of capitalism defines itself as democratic. And a series of questions present themselves: what kind of 'different' is it? What is the source of the crisis after all? And who are its agents? Is the current crisis a systemic shortfall of capitalism or is it an abnormality that should be corrected? In other words, can we understand this crisis detached from the internal contradictions of capitalism? Is it capitalism of corporate greed that's created all this mess? And, finally, can (or should) we distinguish between capitalism and greed?

'I'm not here because I know what the alternative to capitalism is, but I know that hare we can ponder on what lies beyond capitalism' said a speaker, bringing me back to the present, where the assembly was run by the Youth Movement that has grown within the camp. There was no discussion on Miliband's article, probably they did that earlier, when I wasn't there. If we want a different kind of politics, a different kind of democracy and citizenship, can we have it within the neoliberal economy and its state? Can we negotiate with its agents and still 'Grow our own Future'?