Midterm

Exam Politics and Political Theory in the US Fall 2011 - Dr. David Plotke Phillip Quintero phillipquintero@gmail.com

Prompt:
The Occupy Wall Street effort in many cities in the U.S. has taken shape as a protest movement, a mode of political action, and as a broad current of public opinion. Sometimes its proponents depict its actions, or elements of its actions, as forms of civil disobedience. Based on your reading of King, Jr. and Rawls, how would you describe the role of civil disobedience as a referent and a practice in the OWS effort?

The Occupy Wall Street phenomena can best be understood as a resistance movement, despite its own resistance to being so easily defined.1 I think, however, it is simply laziness (or, in some cases, strategic tactic of political communication) that guides any of the current rhetoric that focuses on the movement as something that is therefore opaque, chaotic, unpredictable, ineffective, or counterproductive. OWS is generally characterizable by a common resistance to the actions, behaviors, and structures that have, it argues, resulted in egregious political, economic, and social inequalities. As a model for such resistance, the movement seems to coalesce as a call to action, addressed to the public. Many sources, including participants, consider the movement to be engaging in acts civil disobedience. There is no doubt that the rhetoric of civil disobedience is a referent for those participating in the movement as well as those seeking to explain its actions.2 The question at hand is how we are to understand the practice of civil disobedience in this context. I suggest we need first to look at the OWS movement in terms of the political actions that have been carried out under its banner (or perhaps more appropriately, under its hashtags!). The very act of occupation, in addition to other kinds of demonstrations, is at the core of a pragmatic
1 I am aware that many perspectives would and do problematize the legitimate use of the term

movement in this case, but I am not aware of any other term that is immune to such contention, and so in what follows I will continue to use movement in the names of concision and precision. 2 To see what I mean, look at the search string available here: http://bit.ly/vH82Rt Accessed November 6, 11

understanding of OWS. Afterward, it will be easier to see what kind of conceptual work needs to be done to situate OWS more generally as a civil protest, movement, or expression of public opinion. A very simple reason for starting with emblematic OWS actions is that there is little else to go by. There is no single spokesperson, no set of policy initiatives, and no single manifesto for the movement. Instead, progressive organizing structures like peoples assemblies, councils, and caucuses characterize the movement, as does a fluid set of generally shared convictions and calls to action. This is not exactly surprising; for a phenomenon that is at the time of this writing not two months old, attempts at categorization, definition, causal explanation, and predictionmaking are bound to be premature if not fundamentally misguided. We can see this trend if we look at the theories that have been put forth thus far attempting to understand OWS as an ideology. There is wild variance among competing views that would have us understand the movement on one hand as a signal that the marriage between democracy and capitalism is over,3 and on the other as agitations of privileged young people who, out of nave anger over the economic recession, espouse the virtues of anarchism.4 We will avoid assessing such views, in part because few of them leave room for the question of civil disobedience. 5 Substantive interpretations about the political aims that the movement has are not as relevant as the fact that there are aims, as we will see in what follows. The most obvious examples of OWS actions are the occupations themselves. Occupation is, after all, the namesake of the movement, but what is it? If we describe the observable
3 Slavoj Zizeck, October 9 Speech at Liberty Plaza, Video and transcript. accessed November 5,

2011. http://occupywallst.org/article/today-liberty-plaza-had-visit-slavoj-zizek/
4 See, for instance, this prevalent kind of coverage:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/05/occupy-wall-street-protester-throws-violent-fit- in-mcdonalds-when-denied-free/ accessed November 5, 2011. 5 As we will see, both of these characterizations (radical revolution or senseless bellyaching) will run into problems with our concept of civil disobedience.

commonalities of the sites of occupation, we will conclude that they are basically enduring assemblies of people in proximity who agree at least that there is a valued purpose in maintaining the occupation. An occupation is not just a protest, for several reasons that open up such actions to the notion of civil disobedience. To answer the question of whether or not these acts are acts of civil disobedience requires more conceptual work than might first be obvious. To see why, I propose to call on the thought of John Rawls, who argues that there is a need to separate general political dissent from acts of civil disobedience, which he defines as a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.6 I would like to evaluate the actual occupations of OWS according to each of these categories.

Public, Political Acts

An occupation, according to my basic description of what is currently taking place around the world, is certainly political and public. Indeed, publicity is the key component of the political impact of the movement thus far. In addition to the visibility of the act of occupation, the media coverage that the occupations attract is a substantial venue by which to address the public. While most political protests do seek some level of publicity, the OWS efforts are notable for their public character. One aspect of this public character has to do with addressing and reaching a broad audience. Slogans like We are the 99% have become part of the common vernacular, images
6 Rawls, A Theory of Justice (electronic version of the 1999 Harvard University Press edition)

319.

of crowds in Zuccotti Park, Oscar Grant Plaza (Oakland), Rome, and others are ubiquitous on popular news publications. The publicity of occupations raises the profile of the movement, which is to say, its potential political impact. Celebrities have made appearances at Zuccotti Park to show support. Institutions like the NYC labor unions, and corporations such as Ben & Jerrys have aligned themselves with the values of the movement. Public officials are compelled to make statements on the actions of the movement. The result is that the OWS name is now a public platform for political expression. Rawls considers this to be one facet of the related public and political qualities of civil disobedience. He seems to anticipate the project at hand when he reminds us, It should also be noted that civil disobedience is a political act not only in the sense that it is addressed to the majority that holds political power, but also because it is an act guided and justified by political principles, that is, by the principles of justice which regulate the constitution and social institutions generally.7 The projects of the OWS movements are not framed as a matter of private interest. They are not lobbying for increased influenced of a specific minority over legislative issues, as is the case with many protests, such as labor union strikes, or religious interest groups. Rather, they are public in the sense that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. considered the actions of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Birmingham to be. In 1963, King explained the difference between the injustices of, say, breaking a law, and the injustice of the law itself. While Kings distinction was based on the incongruity between legislative and divine codes of justice, the distinction itself remains valid. The inequalities that OWS seeks to highlight are defined in terms of the entire population. If we take the 99% identity, (which refers to the statistic that almost half of the wealth in the United States is controlled by one percent of the population) as an example we can see that the OWS participants do not address their actions to injustices
7 Rawls 319

that are affecting them as a minority, injustices that the legal system purports to address. Rather, the claim is that inequality on the level of this one percent, ninety-nine percent divide is a systemic problem that is a threat to justice everywhere and takes as its target the entire political, social, and juridical culture that enables such problems.8 Rawls claims that such a focus on principles of justice which regulate the constitution and social institutions generally is a hallmark of civil disobedience. Protest movements like OWS can thus, if we follow Rawls notion, claim to use civil disobedience as a tactic for achieving some political result. We can, in fact, see the beginnings of such a result; economic inequality as a systemic political problem is gaining attention in the national discourse.

Nonviolent, but Contrary to Law

Most, if not all of the OWS occupations are also in accordance with the requirement of Rawls definition that they be contrary to law. For a movement that, as we have just described, challenges not specific injustices, but rather injustice that is endemic to the political system as a whole, it is vital that the movement demonstrate a willingness to disacknowledge the legitimacy of that system. It is vital to the notion of an occupation that the assembly endures in a place where it is not legally allowed to stay. Most are occupying spaces that are not explicitly public. Zuccotti Park, for example, is a privately owned space designated for public use. Others are occupying municipal properties, commercial zones, and abandoned buildings. To my knowledge, in all instances the occupiers are not simply exercising civil rightsthey are consciously breaking the law. In this basic definition, the assemblies are necessarily examples of civil disobedience, which is not to say this is a straightforward way of understanding them. 8 King 290

I agree with Rawls that this is a crucial aspect of civil disobedience. Actions that do not break the lawsuch as legal protests and demonstrationsdo not challenge the laws themselves. If, for example, the OWS participants did not occupy Zuccotti Park, if instead the group engaged in daily protests and then disbanded at night, then the political scope of the actions would be more limited. By breaking the lawfor example, ignoring the rules of the private park against sleeping, tents, and tarpsthey claim their grievances are such that legal channels of change are not sufficient to address them. This sentiment finds expression in the words of King when he writes, we were confronted with blasted hope and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying out case before the conscience of the local and national community.9 It is through illegality that actions can challenge injustices that are themselves legal. The OWS occupations are, however, what Rawls cites as indirect civil disobedience.10 By direct forms of civil disobedience, actors break the law seen as unjust. In the example of the civil rights actions endorsed by King, participants deliberately broke laws enforcing segregation, laws which were unjust. The OWS occupations do not engage in breaking specific unjust laws. In fact, it is hard to identify which laws are the unjust ones. We can imagine the financial regulatory statutes that make it legal for banks to bundle and sell high-risk assets to be the kind legislation in question. Even this is very broad, as there is no specific law in question, and it is unclear what it would mean to break it. Rawls argues that this is not a problem. It is understandable that when protesting some aspect of a political system, there may be no direct way to challenge its legitimacy, or there may be reasons not to. His example is that a group might chose to break
9 King, Letter from Birmingham Jail in Historic Essays, 29 10 Rawls 318

traffic laws through a march to protest a harsh sentence for treason rather than committing treason themselves. I believe we can say with Rawls that the illegality (and nonviolence) of the OWS occupations is in-line with the concept of civil disobedience.

Conclusion - Justification

It should be clear by now that Occupy Wall Street is a movement that addresses itself to the public of which it is a part, seeks political change, and engages in nonviolent law breaking as a meaningful tactic. As such, we must conclude that the occupation tactic is indeed a form of civil disobedience. The question that remains is, given Rawls conception and Kings examples of the role of civil disobedience, are occupations of the OWS movement justified in the same way? Another way of asking this: Are acts of civil disobedience a crucial aspect of the OWS movement? This will take the discussion to the question of justification. For Rawls, there are several conditions that an injustice must meet in order for civil disobedience to be warranted. The first is that the injustice must be comparatively serious. Specifically, the injustice being resisted should infringe on the principle of equal liberty or violate the principle of fair equality of opportunity. The other is that legal democratic methods should be exhausted before resorting to tactics of illegality. A more thorough, empirically-informed debate is required to answer this question, but it is an area of tension that may prove OWS to be a case that challenges Rawls concept. After all, not all of the OWS participants share Rawls liberal vision of justice. Rawls might also have trouble accommodating a movement which consciously resists developing a platform of policy demands.

This has led thinkers like Bernard Harcort 11 to consider a new concept, of political disobedience, as something that is a little too radical to be considered civil. I think that further useful work will take place in this veinin understanding popular resistance movements as resisting something broader than statutes or executive power. OWS challenges something more pervasive and ideological about American political culture. Examining what exactly this is will be the first step in providing a more useful understanding of movements like Occupy Wall Street.

11 Harcourt, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/occupy-wall-streets- political-disobedience/ accessed November 6, 2011.

Prompt: Following the multiple debates about power from the 1950s through the 1970s in the U.S., should democrats in this country (and elsewhere) worry more about political inequalities generated from within the political system, or about the effects of economic and social inequalities on politics? Why?

If we understand political democracy in the restricted sense of a formal and institutionalized public decision-making system, we will see one of its main functions as the regulation of power so as to keep inequalities in check. In the American case, this has indeed been an overt and well-known goal. Equality has been a stated value and objective of the American polity since its inception. The ability of a political system to adapt to new forms of inequality is one of the greatest tests of its staying power. This was of particular concern to American theorists during the twentieth century specifically those engaged in what is now commonly referred to as the power debate. I think it is safe to say that there has been some level of conceptual progress made in the process of critique and tradition building since Mills published The Power Elite. The debate around theories of power is also part of the common vernacular of contemporary theories of power, and so there is rich literature to choose from if one is looking for a study of intellectual history or genealogy of concepts. What I propose to do here may, it turns out, be just such a project. However, I am compelled to look at this debate, as we inhabit and approach a future in so many ways removed from its milieu, with a specific question in mind. Is a theory of power which aims to address (and perhaps ameliorate) situations of inequality more obliged to emphasize political inequalities that are produced, reproduced, or otherwise maintained by the political system itself, or those situations that originate from broader social and economic structures, facts, and phenomena?

That is, should we, as political theorists, be more concerned about inequalities that are internal or external to the political system at work. Grasping the reason that this question is an appropriate way to reflect on the three faces of power debate requires us to consider those theories of power which have come since. I admit, the project I propose will only be fully realized with a more thorough historicity than I can muster in the confines of the present work. I want to argue that we can see theoretical treatments of power transform over time: Through debate, discourse, and the myriad upheavals humanity has seen in the Twentieth Century, theories of power have progressively shifted in focus from external to internal sources of inequality. We can see the continued adoption of this trend, as the emphasis on internal inequalities has become more acute, more deliberate, and more conceptually viable since the 1970s. I argue that theories of power in twentieth century American political thought become better at providing new and useful critical frameworks of analysis as they become more focused on inequalities endemic to political systems, including and especially representative democracy. With the publication of The Power Elite in 1956, C. Wright Mills introduced his Ruling Elite Model. In his view, there has been a historical trend towards the consolidation at the top of power hierarchies, thus forming a power elite of individuals who have far more power than anyone else. Mills evaluates this power in terms of an individuals ability to realize his or her own will, even if others resist it. Aside from the consolidation of power at the top, most power is, according to Mills, exercised within one of the three main sites of powerPolitical, Military, and Economic. The third major aspect of Mills argument is that the individuals at the top of each of these three sites are closely associated, and in some way share and enhance one anothers power. Mills theory still resonates today, and it is easy to understand the connection between a structure of power elites and various forms of inequality. The picture Mills paints is a portrait of

oligarchy. Mills argues that this extreme powerconcentrated in very few hands and therefore isolated from the general populationhas led the elite toward irresponsible, immoral, and selfserving practice. Corporations extract huge profits from employees and consumers. Politicians are skilled at manipulating and leveraging various constituencies for strategic goals. It may appear as though Mills analysis is a critique of the kind I have labeled internal, but it is not. One reason for this is that Mills historical narrative is one where certain individuals leverage economic and social power inequalities in order to establish themselves as part of a power elite. Thus, it is not the American political system itself that is responsible for modern political inequalities, but the process of modernization itself. There is a sense that private interests have usurped the ruling role that is supposed to be reserved for the demos. While Mills thinks that American democracy in the twentieth century was largely an empty shadow of its conceptual model, the conceptual model itself is not the source of inequalities. As we will see, the thinkers who followed Mills read his work, and thought to an increasing degree that this might not always be the case. Dahls case study, Who Governs?, in some ways reads like a direct response to Mills and his subscribers. On one hand, Dahl challenges Mills on an empirical level. New Haven, Connecticut makes a compelling critique to the idea that power elites really govern. Rather, Dahl gives an anthropologically flavored argument that power is exercised under a pluralistic model. In Dahls view, Mills account of elites doesnt give democracy enough credit. Saying that democracy is brokenhas been overtaken by economic and other external sources of poweris not a good way of talking about power in real situations of democratic practice. Rather than being the results of a shadowy group of people who have accumulated enough power to circumvent the democratic system of addressing inequality, Dahls account allows us to see how such inequality may be effected by the power of those working from within the political system.

Dahls argument in this way is an example of the trend towards internal sources of inequality that I am arguing for. Dahl thinks power exists as relations between people,1 and that the answer to power inequalities is to address areas where democratic practices are ineffective. For instance, Dahl argues that a democratic creed of ideas like intrinsic equality and inclusive consideration will stabilize the political system (and thus strengthen its ability to address inequalities) if everyone uses their political resources effectively.2 Dahl doesnt, however, see the dangers of pluralism; how, for example, in-groups can hold power over out-groups. The majority can play the role of a tyrant. Some individuals and groups of people are marginalized to the point political inertness on a national scale by the representative system of legislation. Thus Dahls theory of power is a step along the path to recognizing that inequalities are something generated from within the political system rather than outside of it. Dahl fails to recognize, however, that inequalities can be and inherent part of this process (and not contingent). This is also a critique based on his failure to see that the political system, even when it technically works correctly, can actually create inequality. He thought the political system just needed to be well ordered. Political theory following Dahl has challenged the idea that there can be a set of conditions to be met that will enable a democratic system to completely redress political inequalities. Steven Lukes idea of the third dimension of power is a critique of the behaviorist notions of power that characterize both Mills and Dahl (as well as Bachrach and Baratz).3 Specifically, these theories, in trying to assimilate all cases of exclusion of potential issues from the political agenda to the paradigm of a decision [give] a misleading picture of the ways in which
1 Dahl , The Concept of Power 202 2 Dahl makes this point in Democracy and its Critics 3 Lukes explains the common flaw that Dahl shares with Bachrach and Baratz in Power: A

Radical View 23

individuals and, above all, groups and institutions succeed in excluding potential issues from the political process.4 The critique is much more in-line with the trend I have described towards more awareness of the internal. Within the very political system that seeks to address inequalities, Lukes argues, there are mechanisms working to limit the interests that are possibly understood as political issues. Another way of phrasing the shift in thought that Lukes represents is in the idea of power over versus power to. Behaviorist ideas like those of Mills and Dahl understand power as something that one person exercises over another through actions like decision-making. Lukes claims that power is one of those concepts which is ineradicably value-dependent.5 That power cannot be exercised in a simple power over way. The values of those who hold power lead to what Lukes calls latent conflicts. The difference between the values of those who wield the power of even a democratic system and those who dont can lead to a disparity between political preferences and real interests. Individuals political preferences are limited within a scope of identities presented to them by the political system. They can vote only on the issues that are deemed worth discussing. This is how power is, in Lukes theory, value-laden, and the ways political agendas are set is not always transparent, but nonetheless can create, perpetuate, or hide political inequalities. This is, more so than Dahl, a recognition that a theory of power must address the internal sources of power inequalities. I would like now to explain why I agree that this is the case. External sources of inequality are perhaps more common, and more concrete than these internal ones. Economic inequality is, for instance, a global force. It can have effects that are more visibly drastic, such as the current unrest in Greece, or the still-worsening famine in Sudan. Nor are the effects limited to material concerns social and economic inequalities can lead to
4 Lukes, Power 25 5 Lukes, Power 30

political instability as well. Ethnic conflict in Iraq and Palestine have challenged the cohesion of the generally peaceful global order. There is good reason to think that these internal sources of inequality are more troubling than the external, and that they therefore deserve f the increasing attention form political theorists that I have described. What I have called those sources of inequality that are internal to political systems, however, threaten the very political act of addressing inequality as such. If we survey something like cases of economic or social inequality with an eye to right wrongs and introduce prosperity and stability, we are at present limited to doing so through political mechanisms. Often social problems require legislation that seeks to address them. National governments are often the primary place where action is to be taken. When political systems themselves breed disparities in power, all efforts at supporting equality are compromised. Concepts like the value-laden power of agenda setting are examples of how politically internal mechanisms can be insidious sources of inequality that are difficult to redress. Theories of power that have been put forth since Lukes confirm this increasing trend toward looking at internal sources of inequality. Isaac, Foucault, Marion-Young, Fraser, and others have made different aspects of internal inequality the subject of their studies. In fact, it seems, each generation of political theorists discovers new, more radical forms of inequality. The democracy of the United States has been able to benefit from these discoveries as well; I wonder if gay couples would be allowed to marry in New York right now if it werent for the theories of identity politics of the 1980s and 90s. I would not, however, suggest that we stop investigating and correcting external forms of inequalities wherever we find them.

Short Answer Prompt:

1. Quentin Skinner presents an account of how to study the history of political thought. In his terms, outline a project for studying the political thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. What advantages would this approach provide compared with one other plausible? What might be the limits of Skinners approach?

Quentin Skinner advocates a contextual/historical approach to the study of political thought. His project is largely one of disabusing historians of notions that posit ideas to be universal, or texts to be sacred and self-sufficient sources of knowledge. He criticizes such approaches as the reification of doctrines.1An idea is, itself, not an appropriate unit of historical investigation.2 The idea, rather, is that ideas must be understood as part of a conversation. It is only through such considerations that a historian can understand the intentions of authors from the past. Taking such an approach to studying the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. would certainly be appropriate to the rich context that is available. Kings writings do not lend themselves to being removed from their historical-cultural habitat. Studying American history in its empirical detail is just as important for understanding the intention of Kings words as reading the words themselves. Thus, a research plan that Skinner would endorse would start with a broad history of the currents of events and ideas that led up to the civil rights movements. In taking this approach, one needs to be careful not to withhold attention from the conceptual richness of Kings writing. To read his work merely as a formalization of a historical process would deny the role his ideas themselves played in the movement. The other danger of approaching Kings ideas with Skinners paradigm is one of scope. It seems that Skinners requirements of context may be impossible to fully satisfywhere does one end when looking at the details of history? It would be very difficult to set out on this project or research and analysis with an attainable end in sight.

1 Skinner, Meaning and Understanding in the History Of Ideas 11 2 ibid., 36