In the prior post I talked about why the peaceful protestors of the Occupy movement, like Coxey’s Army and the Bonus Marchers before them, faced smears and violence from political opponents and the press.
Those attacks contributed to the movement’s decline and thwarted its agenda. Indeed, there have not been any substantial reforms to the economic or social order.
So if Occupy did not achieve its immediate political goals, how then are we to evaluate the movement? Its failures are obvious, but what of its successes?
One notion that has received quite a bit of attention is the contention that Occupy movements have “changed the discourse.” It’s a popular idea, in part because it’s so fuzzy and hard to pin down. And since it is difficult to measure the success of something like changing the discourse, it becomes something you can easily feel good about if you are so inclined. But one has to seriously consider whether the discourse has actually changed. Or was it is simply the case that a lot of people were talking about Occupy issues while Occupy movements were grabbing headlines?
I think it’s probably a little of both. And now that Occupy is not grabbing nearly as many headlines as it did this autumn, we need a way to really ascertain whether or not the discourse has changed. How to do this? One popular approach is to measure the topics that are being talked and written about. However, people will probably continue to talk about Occupy-related topics so long as the economy drags, and most of them will probably stop once it picks up again.
I think a better way of measuring the discourse is to focus on ideas instead of topics. Identify the major ideas that the Occupy movement has advanced, and try to see if they are truly becoming ensconced in popular and policy discourses.
When we look back at Coxey’s Army and the Bonus Marchers, one of the things we find is that, despite initial political failures, the ideas they promoted did in fact find a home in American society. Jacob Coxey and his followers proposed a concept that was quite radical for the 1890s: essentially a Keynesian model of attacking a severely broken economy. During an era when laissez-faire dogma reigned supreme and policy makers’ co
mmitment to minimal government spending and balanced budgets was resolute, Coxey’s Army had the moxie to say the government should stimulate the economy by spending lots of money to put unemployed people to work on public works projects that would benefit society as a whole. And this was during the very early days of the Progressive era, when the idea of actively using government to improve society generally was just beginning to gain some traction.
Coxey’s Army failed in its ostensible purpose; Congress did not pass a jobs program. But the protesters did help change the discourse by championing an idea that would become increasingly popular over time, and would bloom into fruition during the next economic catastrophe, the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal eagerly incorporated ideas Coxey could be proud of. The Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps (FDR’s personal favorite of all the New Deal programs) were among several in which the federal government directly hired unemployed Americans in the service of the nation.
Likewise, the Bonus Marchers also helped change the discourse in the long run despite the immediate failure to accomplish their stated goal. In a larger sense, the Bonus Marchers advocated a social welfare safety net, some kind of government program that would help deeply impoverished Americans during an economic crisis. Again, this would materialize to some degree in the New Deal with programs like the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Social Security. And it would truly flower during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty, with programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
How then might Occupy have changed the discourse? What fundamental ideas and approaches has it promoted? It seems to me that the major ideas (and one could add or subtract a few no doubt) would include:
-Direct Democracy: A commitment to increased transparency in government, as well as a stronger voice for citizens. Our republic was founded on the principle of indirect democracy, wherein the citizenry makes no political decisions other than to elect some of their rulers, and in fact most rulers are appointed by other rulers (many judges, the president by the electoral college, originally U.S. Senators by state legislatures, etc.). Over the last two centuries, Americans have been able to choose more of their leaders directly (eg. U.S. Senators, some judges), and even make the occasional local or state-wide policy decision through popular referendum. Occupy, with its anarcho-collective roots and organization, is clearly dedicated to more direct democracy in American politics.
-Diminishing Corporate Influence: In particular, Occupy has harnessed widespread anger at the financial corporations that drove this economy into the ground and then received public money by the trillions. But more generally, the movement has criticized the political power may corporations wield, both through the legal fiction of corporate personhood and through the almost incomprehensibly strong influence corporations exercise on our governments. Diminishing corporate influence in American politics has been a basic tenet of this movement.
–Distribution of Wealth: A top heavy distribution of wealth during the Roaring `20s was one of many contributing factors to the Great Depression. As the economy heated up and American businesses eventually overproduced, consumers were incapable of absorbing those excess goods and services because there were simply too many poor and working class people without expendable income. What about the rich? Well, no matter how much money you have, you only need so many refrigerators. For Occupy, however, a top-heavy distribution of wealth, framed in its hallmark 99% slogan, isn’t simply a matter of sound economic policy. It’s a matter of economic and social justice.
We Historians typically wait about twenty years before diving into a topic, leaving the present to our fellow disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science. Therefor, it will be a while yet before my ilk seriously begins to argue about how History will judge Occupy, or if it will even be in the textbooks a hundred years from now . . . pardon me, the e-text holograms?
Either way, as a Historian I am simply out on a limb for now. But time will indeed tell, as it always, what Occupy’s influence on society has been, and how deep it will run. Above are some of the parameters we will use to measure whether or not Occupy will stand side by side with Coxey’s Army and the Bonus Marchers as historically significant social protest movements that, in the long run, helped change America, hopefully for the better.