Forum Post: "The 99%" Doesn`t Exist; or: a question of ends and means

Hi: I`m an undergraduate student from Nova Scotia, Canada and am watching the events on Wall Street unfold with both anticipation and disillusionment. I have participated in a number of mass demonstrations over the past 10 years, including the anti-Free Trade Area of The Americas protest in Quebec City in April 2001 and that against the G7 Finance Ministers in June 2002 in Halifax, NS. While I no longer consciously identify as an "anarchist," I still consider myself a radical anti-authoritarian with strong anarchistic tendencies and view social struggle not as an accumulation of issues to campaign against, but as an ongoing project of individual and collective social transformation. As a starting point for a discussion, I would like to ask a very basic question regarding the slogan "We are the 99%": what are its origins and what message do people feel that it is trying to communicate? My reason for asking this is not simply neutral curiousity but a desire to critically (albeit constructively) examine how and why new social movements come to regard themselves as singular entities pursuing a common "cause."

The main objection I have to the notion of "the 99%" is that human populations, be they a nationality or a social movement, are not quantifiable "masses," but a multiplicity of unique individuals with a wide range of goals, desires, and aspirations. Granted, their goals, desires, and aspirations may link up with those of others on a number of important points but it doesn`t follow from this that human populations can be understood as singular entities pursuing a unified agenda.

Based on the impression that I have so far, the Occupy Wall Street movement does not regard itself as a "political" movement and seeks to incorporate individuals from a wide range of ideological , socioeconomic, and ethnic backgrounds. While I can certainly appreciate any mistrust of politics as a sphere of contemporary life, I am also of the opinion that any critical attitude towards "the Political" as such must be accompanied, at least on an individual level, by a theoretical understanding of how it functions as a constraining discourse. Few words in the English language have as many vague and conflicting definitions as Politics does. However, rather than attempting to define Politics, we can at least pick out certain key features, such as the notion of "representation." At the bare minimum, representation implies a deferral of an individual`s capacity to think and act for him or herself. I am not suggesting a dogmatic refusal to engage in party politics, but a critical understanding of how social alienation functions as an aspect of social control. Such an understanding may or may not engage with the electoral system as it currently exists but, at the very least, it holds no illusions about how it functions and towards what ends.

This question of means and ends is just as important for agents of social struggle as it is for existing social systems seeking to tighten control over our everyday lives. What we want and how we go about trying to get it do not exist in isolation. If a person envisions a society free of social coercion and economic exploitation, then a person`s methods should reflect these long-term goals. In the context of individuals working alongside others who may or may not share these goals, it is important to clarify points of disagreement as well as agreement and incorporate these insights into our preferred modes of struggle.

To round things off, I will simply say that I hope this post is taken in the spirit in which it is intended. I`m not trying to be controversial for its own sake but to encourage a certain degree of critical reflection on the nature of social movements and the problems that arise when individual interests get sacrificed to those of the collective (or vice versa, for that matter).

Cheers.