Occupy World Street: Summer Reads for an Arab Spring and Wall Street Fall

The Indignados International rules. The torch has been passed from Cairo's Tahrir Square (the Arab Spring) to Madrid's Puerta del Sol (the Spanish Spring), on to New York's Liberty Square (Occupy Wall Street) and from this past Saturday on, World Street - 951 cities in 82 countries.

All ages, all social classes - but mostly brave young men and women denouncing the hubristic fall of large swathes of the world into a geopolitical abyss trespassed by an unprecedented social, financial, monetary, political and strategic crisis.

Nothing is more natural than "we are the 99%" going global - because the movement specifically denounces the ravages worldwide caused by the myth of neo-liberal globalization, as applied by that wrathful God, The Market. Yet the 1% - and their corporate media shills - still don't get it (or mock it), and will try to smash any actions to remedy neo-liberalism's utter failure.

The 1% cannot possibly understand the anger of a "no future" generation, or the anger of those who have played the game by the rules and ended up with nothing - the collective anger of all who cannot possibly trust failed political and financial institutions anymore.

And it will get worse. Banks are not lending and reactivating the economy mostly because in the US, only four giants - Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America - now hold 95% of US derivatives, a whopping $600 trillion nightmare just waiting to happen. Derivatives were crucial in bringing down the global economy, with all its dire social consequences - and it may happen all over again.

Meanwhile, the 1% is in the process of violently assaulting the historical rights of working and middle classes - even at the risk of losing what's left of their political and social legitimacy (they don't care anyway). As Minqi Li, former Chinese political prisoner and economics professor at the University of Utah stresses, "As during the 1968-1989 period, the resolution of the crisis will depend on the evolution of class struggle on a global level." Li insists that capitalism is not part of the feasible options left; but the problem is the solid 1% elites are still in control, and will relinquish power over their dead collective body.

Creating a new political language

So what next? Where to go from here? Where to find the intellectual firepower to keep fighting?

At Zuccotti Park - Occupy Wall Street's headquarters in lower Manhattan - there's a free public library, with books donated by everyone who feels like it. A good first step would be for people to supply a good many copies of The Beach Beneath the Street, by McKenzie Wark [1], a gripping history of the Situationists - the key conceptual group led by Guy Debord at the heart of May 1968.

Wark has also written a clinical essay detailing how instead of occupying an abstraction - Wall Street - the movement occupied another abstraction, "A more or less public park nestled in the downtown landscape of tower blocks, not too far from the old World Trade Center site," and from there proceeded to occupy "the virtual space of social media".