SHOULD THE OWS MOVEMENT ALIGN ITSELF WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

I started to write a lengthy, rather complex analysis of this question, at the suggestion of an email correspondent, but gave it up when I found that it was taking me so far afield that I had lost all connection with the original question. I have decided instead to offer a somewhat simpler answer: No.

Let politicians align themselves with the movement, if they have a mind to. At this point, what matters is that an inchoate rage has bubbled to the surface and is finally finding its voice. The imagery of the principal slogan -- "We are the 99%" -- is perfect.

I cannot resist, however, citing Herbert Marcuse once more. In one of the many seminal passages in One-Dimensional Man, Herbert analyzed the so-called Western Electric Researches. It would take too long to summarize the entire discussion. The central lesson Marcuse draws from his analysis is that frequently, empirical social science defuses potentially disruptive and transformative protest by quantifying it, measuring it, and translating its powerful but unclear slogans into precise, empirically verifiable, but politically emasculating laundry lists of particular "demands".

In the example Marcuse cites, "Wages are too low," uttered by a wide range of workers whose personal circumstances are quite varied, becomes in the hands of the social scientists "This worker needs some money to take her child to the doctor, that worker is having trouble paying the rent, the other worker cannot put food on the table," and so forth. When stated this way, the unity of the workers dissolves, because the woman who needs medical help for her child can in fact pay the rent, and the man who cannot put food on the table does not need money for the doctor. Rather brilliantly, I think, Marcuse argues that the surface unclarity of the slogan "Wages are too low" conceals a deeper and quite clear truth, namely that all the various personal problems of this or that worker can be traced to a single underlying structural fact -- the capitalist organization of the economy. This is what Herbert was driving at during the boisterous argument we had at our first meeting, when he said, to my utter mystification, in his thick German accent, "In Philosophy, unclarity is a virtue."

Commentators who call on the OWS movement to "state their demands" -- as a political program, presumably -- are actually, whether they understand it or not, attempting the trivialization of the movement. Each of the participants will have his or her particular concerns -- this one is a student who cannot pay off staggering student loans, that one is a woman who has been out of work for fifteen months, the next is a man threatened with homelessness by an underwater mortgage. A concrete, specific, "sensible" list of particular demands would be endless, and would only fragment the growing coalition. It would also be enormously reassuring to mainstream commentators, politicians, and corporate leaders. They would take a look at the list and say, with a sign of relief, "Oh yes, we know how to deal with that. A nip here, a tuck there, and before you know it, the crowds will dissipate and we can go back to business as usual, writing off the cost of the adjustments as a deductible expense."