markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to me was a report. talked about here with our t. here's a reminder of the top stories thousands of egyptians remain in congress where for the sixth day to demand an immediate transfer of power as they reject a pledge by military rulers to speed up presidential elections at least thirty six people have died so far in fierce clashes between protesters and security forces across the country. the un general assembly is human rights committee condemn syria for its violent crackdown on anti-government protests but damascus calls it a u.s. led flawed to topple its government rush of state from voting on the resolution

saying dialogue is the only solution to the prices. and five years after the death of former f.b.i. officer always our video from blowing poisoning in the u.k. the case remains unsolved and a sword in the side of russian british relations why the once the main suspect to be extradited but russia has refused as its against its constitution and its citizens over to foreign god. as we have laws here in our back at the top of the hour in the meantime parable and his guests discuss what's behind the occupy movement and who really are the so-called ninety nine percent is next on our team. plenty. live. live live. live to take you.

live to the beginning of the lead. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm carol about what's next for the occupy movement across the u.s. after police use strong arm tactics to disperse protesters should the movement seek a way to join the political process and to insert itself into legislative procedures for what would eventually fragment into protests for protesting. led to the start of the sled cross-talk the ongoing protests in the u.s. i'm joined by my guests in new york james livingston he's a professor of history at rutgers and author of against thrift why consumer culture is good for the economy the environment and your soul published yesterday patrick brennan he is a writer and the william f. buckley fellow at the national review institute and francis fox pavan she is

a distinguished professor of sociology and political science at city university of new york graduate center all right folks cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it but first is this movement actually going anywhere i think that's the main question right now is that over the two months that the occupy wall street movement has existed it's turned into a juggernaut of civil disobedience that has plowed places across the world but just as the movement is growing in scale and scope it is also grappling with more and more criticism crackdowns and facing growing questions about its tactics and strategy the movements as they can still insist that occupy is an important voice for public frustration that's the succeeded in raising awareness of staggering income and wealth inequality. there is a movement brewing in america not just the occupy wall street but the two thousand encampments occupy around america and also the sense that suddenly the ninety nine percent of americans who have not been heard from or been heard from and heard in the media which is not paid attention until now. the extent to which occupy has

gathered steam and resonated across the u.s. and the globe does say something about a collective sense of discontent and disillusionment with the economy but whether that sense can be applied to all the ninety nine percent of americans that the protests claim to represent is another story and thus is shown in a recent opinion survey conducted by public policy polling which found that not only does occupy appeal to nearly a handful of the ninety nine percent but it's a poor ratings have sagged over the last month because growing awareness of occupy probably stems from the real or perceived notion that the movement's outlook is redundantly he told pm while its members are yet to put forth clear and specific policy goals and here in the protestors chief task proving they can convert their momentum into targeted action but even if occupy were to recede into the annals of social resistance it would most likely leave behind the idea that the movement came to represent and then leave that there is a y disconnect between the government and on the ground reality and that reality

shows the western economic system experiencing a deep systemic crisis so perhaps the main purpose has already been served to see about that first round was i to go to you in new york or you wrote i think we desperately need a popular uprising in the united states is this the uprising you were hoping for and where is this if it is where is this where where is this uprising going. this this uprising is raising the issue of the extreme unequality in the united states that inequality of both wealth and income has increased actually over the past thirty five years. and somehow it did not go. real expression and in the american political process i didn't find strong expression and the american political process because the very fact that wealth has become more concentrated has meant that the wealthy can pour more money into our electoral system so even

democrats did not force the only express the fact think any quality and people were left without even a clear articulation of what the problem was what the problems are and occupy wall street began to pick and not the small in new york city it was the first clear and. expression a big problem on who center was financial capital and some ok patrick what do you think about that i mean it one of the things i find very interesting is that we are what march this report was i mean is it really about the ninety nine percent or is it about a certain for so a type of person that is being disenfranchised in america's democratic system because i mean if it's ninety nine percent fine and she does all register to vote in kick the bombs out but that's not what's happening no i think it's very clear that it really doesn't represent ninety nine percent of america and if you go down

to zuccotti park it doesn't look like ninety nine percent of america to me and i think the polls bear that out just yesterday there was a new city gallup poll that came out with support of historically thirteen percent support of an america thirty percent against the fact is that it was a good piece in new york yesterday that brought out what are the origins of the movement and it's essentially not involving a movement believes in this but it's essentially an archaic anti-capitalist movement and while many americans are unhappy with their economic situation i don't think that the blame that on the nature of capitalism i think that's a pretty pretty rare so it's a great america today and so in that sense now i'm sure it was hard to count against capitalism and so i'm not sure that really i mean that's fair enough james if i go to you i mean a lot of people would say capitalism isn't working for them. that's right i think that's exactly right i think there are two questions here one is the nature of politics. register in vote and vote for what what happens in congress if you vote

for whomever nothing to say that this movement has to get political is to me just laughable because the political process is so broken it is so not just a by product skinny partisan but put ridiculously dysfunctional. so that's one thing the other thing is the nature of capitalism americans have always been ambivalent about capitalism the nature of it sure yet i think the ninety nine percent are deeply deeply worried about what's happening under this system that because capitalism like it or not i think the one percent of people that are see from zuccotti how you can be below capitalism if you're so for a consumer society i mean how do you a consumer society about capitalism. james want to feel that. sure. about capitalism because i think consumerism is a way of transcending or superceded capitalism i think it's a way of reducing corporate profits for example if we redistribute income away from you know i don't think we first made raising the issue of the happy to let them go

ahead francis jump in the movement. the movement did not raise the issue of capitalism everest the issue of concentrated wealth and income. it doesn't really help against capitalism and. it speaks about corporate financial wealth that has greatly concentrated and not only the top one percent the top tenth of one percent in our society and it is certs actually pretty close to correctly that most of the rest of the society is the played as a result of the crest of wealth upwards in the united states it doesn't say capitalism most this isn't chances i think this is feeding interesting here i mean it's very interesting here my three guests here we can't even decide really what this movement's all about and james and i quote something that you wrote in something called occupy wall street isn't the same old political crap it's much

much more and we read a sentence from here the response to occupy wall street tells us more about the limits of our political discourse then about the content of the protest or movement can you elaborate on that because it's very very interesting and you mentioned something else in the article about eastern europe and i studied the solidarity movement very very carefully when i was a graduate student you're drawing parallels here so it's very interesting go ahead here what i see and it's it has something to do with the limits of our discourse i mean what is the what is the limits or what is the nature of politics it seems to be evocative hoddle got it right he said dissidents opposition is not all there is to politics in fact what he said was living within the true. ruth is a creep political space that's what i think is happening in zuccotti park so so yes we might be able sunday to translate this into political programs but for the time being bad is not the point the point is simply to allow these words to make

more sense to more people than ninety nine percent versus the one percent if those words if that vernacular of these if these these verbs and nouns get into the language we have a way of thinking about the future that right now we don't ok patrick rango to you it seems to me this movement knows what it doesn't like it doesn't like an oligarchy it doesn't like concentration of wealth i go on and on what does it want what is it like because it's all telling us what they don't like and that's why it's such such a dual use group. i think that i think it seems getting out what probably unifies the movement more than anything is the idea of sort of this kind of a political utopia based on consensus consensus based mocker city and so that's that's the whole movement revolves around these general assemblies and they're sort of wonderful ideas and basically you know liberal commentators were there so that is beautiful you know fortunately it isn't like tahrir square because first where it was it was a functional political protest political aims but they said you know the six

already it's just beautiful and unfortunately it doesn't represent anything that's particularly politically practical and it's not it's not an example of american democracy that isn't what democracy looks like you know having. acquiring consensus and you know paint it all viewpoints isn't really want to marx it looks like it isn't what's made functional democratic societies work. but that is i think what it was all together is this this is this facing consensus which ok fred francis of france just go jump in there because an actual history ok you know actually social movements that look something like occupy wall street has been very very important in american history the american revolution itself came out of a social movement in the united states it wouldn't have been a triumph without that social movement abolitionists set in motion the political currents which led to civil war and the emancipation of the slaves the labor

movement. flared up in the one nine hundred thirty s. these did not look like. electoral representative politics they have the distinctive dynamics of movements movements look feel and talk to different like. campaign politics or elected politicians and when you when you're so dismissive of the movement because it hasn't put out a series of legislative or programmatic goals. you're not comparing it to other movements this movement i mean credible symbolic power because it has helped through the fog of propaganda that is i'm sorry or i mean the fact is i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to one short break and out on your brain we'll continue our discussion on the occupy movement stay with art. and. you can.

download the official t.m.p. keisha q on the phone called touch from the q. stops to. life on the. video. on cheese minefield comes. an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. machine on the call she told com.

he. says. k.k.k. . welcome back to cross talk about remind you we're talking about the protests sweeping across the united states and beyond. the case.

ok james i want to go to you because you were very few were very very complimentary to francis's last comment before we went to the break and i don't want to i want to i'm again i don't want to i want to see if i can put you guys on the spot here james and francis first i'll go to james here i mean if the system isn't the solution needed in the you can't work within the system because the system is so dysfunctional how do you create a new system without being systematic creating something because again this consensus i mean i like the rhetoric i'm very interested in rico's remind me of eastern europe fighting communism in the one nine hundred eighty s. and it's all really nice to hear but you know even solidarity had a very had to build a strong organization to finally defeat the communist regime eventually you have to do that you have to have leaders you have chapters and you have runners and all these types of things here i mean how do you how do you square the circle i think i think it's a great question and i think patrick was right as well the question is when do

those social movements that francis cites when they become political in the sense that we now would recognize you if you look at the american revolution for example in seven hundred seventy two would anybody say there was a revolution going on no i mean the thing died in seven hundred seventy eight with the boston massacre and it didn't get reconstituted will seventy and seventy three with the abolitionists actually make the revolution the second american revolution we call the civil war reconstruction no there had to be a translation from abolitionism to political anti-slavery we're not at that stage yet we're still to stay in. it seems to me anyway in collection inquiry in a logical education that's where we should be we don't know the future yet and we're going to have to work it out but eventually yes we're going to have to do something political now it's seems to be completely pointless live in france as a kind of begs the question then what do you do i where do you go i mean i said i'm very sympathetic to you but i mean i don't see how you get from point a to point b. it let alone get from a to z.

well first you're treating movements as if they occur at a single point in time and all the movements all the great movements in american history have occurred have unfolded over a fairly long period of time the labor movement unfolded over probably twelve years the civil rights movement began in the one nine hundred fifty s. subsided even by the early one nine hundred seventy s. the movement then creates. a kind of you're a communication it introduces new messages into the political system that regular politics suppresses and the movement also introduces new forces into the political system that interact with existing forces the movement doesn't create its own outcome the outcome is the result of the immortal fred francis dream the marriage

has to be fair to be fair to all go to patrick here on this one i mean again i mean if the movement isn't focused on what it wants to accomplish and how to accomplish it how does it get there because all the other social movements have been mentioned on this program here abolition the rev american revolution i mean these were very political ok these from this movement now that we see occupy wall street is extremely economic ok it's how the system functions and for whom the how do you connelly functions and for home users it's very different than the social movements that we've had in the past. well i think even if you called it going through the american revolution but in the summer send an economic movement because you're looking for more support economic independence or big ones but i think that the difference to your really looking at is that there is room for the syrian revolution or the abolition or even the labor movement those represented fundamentally american ideals and if there's something that sort of person if i was the. author well sure maybe it's generally the idea that the government and the

state in some way will be able to transform our society reduce inequality and there's no you can really be actively join in a political process to reduce inequality i don't think that's most americans believe misery forty percent of total rises as a result of this francis go ahead well this movement is distinct it's actually from the movements of the twentieth century because it's very skeptical of government that's what it's emphasis on the general assembly on reaching consensus. total democracy reflects free flights it's disappointment that skepticism of the way government has functioned in the twentieth and twenty first century believes that covering and or israel is an instrument of capitalism the jane is going to jump in. when i step in here i mean to cite the evolutionist movement or to cite the american revolution that's fine but the abolitionists were explicitly and very self consciously anti political they

refused to enter the electoral arena because they thought it would corrupt them they were right it did corrupt them but the anti-slavery movement that did get electoral between eight hundred forty eight and eight hundred sixty one made a huge difference the point is the abolitionists were anti political just like it seems to me occupy wall street only some of them some of them were in the center of the united states. ok i think in a charles sumner i might agree yeah ok patrick i mean i want to pick up on something you said earlier and i want to just to clarify is the occupy wall street movement un-american in your opinion. yeah i believe it is i don't think it's i don't think it represents the way that american democracy works the idea of consensus which is american democracy is american democracy work isn't working for the average person today. well the average person already system i won't i won't deny it it's it's the system isn't treating average american very well right now with the doesn't say that this is most fundamentally flawed and our political

process and democracy democracy takes time and so even though our political process is stalled right now that isn't a solution well it really isn't hard if i can go to james if i can go to james on the banks were in trouble the congress got together pretty fast and bailed them out then they mean really matter of weeks ok it does move very quickly as they censor invested interest are at stake here but the very principle of representative democracy seems to be pretty low on the priority list right now because this is a whole reason why people are opting out of it because it didn't work for him i think out by wall street is quintessentially american because it's the fundamental question is how do we achieve equality. may be right democracy is ugly and it works slowly and it doesn't work on consensus even so it seems to me that the fundamental question they're asking is how do we achieve equality that there's nothing more american than. francis i mean i don't know if it's to create equality but i think what a lot of people are saying they want to fair playing field i think that's that's

fair to ask isn't it i mean when you look at all of these graduates coming out of university terribly and dad and they have to go back and move in with their parents and yet you know i really get paid an hourly wage and i just creates a vicious cycle of debt you'll never get out of and i think that's a good enough reason for a lot of people to protest i mean the system doesn't help them the system helps the people that are have vested vested interest in keeping the system the same weight is it is today i worry and i think that most participants in occupy wall street would agree the issue is extreme and quality not political economy that isn't functional for fourteen million unemployed for. millions of young people. i'll graduate from college i'm going to find themselves deeply in debt and unable to get a job for the people who don't even get help from their tattered

safety net in the united states and meantime and everybody knows this now as a result the scandal is that the scandals that emerged during the financial crisis mean time lots of big companies hardly pay taxes we bail out wall street we bail out general motors and the banks refuse to write down the principal of an inflated market is still this is that it isn't working all right i want to i want to quote from a mistake sasha going to cross on in that you wrote i think it's interesting you're talking about the occupy wall street movement their food system does seem to encapsulate quite neatly their vision for how the world should work free high quality stuff should appear for their consumption what do you mean by that. well i mean i think that it was a particularly funny thing because the for actually i guess that's why i called it a go ahead. to getting the site high quality. then

a couple of their coats are actually employed at blue hill street expensive restaurant westchester county and it is somewhat it's not really the ninety nine percent of america out there it's these it's for to a large extent unemployed college graduates just basically who are over educator a well educated on a college. who like to you know sort of get out there and do their their democratic things but those really are the people that are hurting in america and i think this did represent the those who are present and just let me finish i mean ecology if we're going to if we're really if it's really about say writing down student loan debt for college graduates who are unemployed now because graduates are the only segment america or another are actually doing very well the unemployment rate among four or five percent and their incomes have grown over the last twenty or thirty years i mean that starts a perfect example of why occupy wall street is really representing sort of the the limitations of the of the chattering classes in not the you know the middle americans who are really really hurting james you want to jump in there the

chattering classes i had yes yes i i i have to say that look i find it ridiculous that permanent residents of zuccotti park might well think the demographic that you're citing unemployed college graduates but if you watch what happens. after hours after people have gone to work it's very very different if you watch the demonstrations if you watch the marches if you participate in them you'll see the labor movement is there you'll see that all kinds of people are there in fact the mail that i got after i did an interview for reuters on this question came from people who said to me i can't get there i work for a living what do i do i want to support this movement i cannot because i'm working nine to five what do i do so i think that's a mischaracterization at least ok happening francis i want to give you the last word on this program a year from now where is this movie going to be. i think a year from now this movement will have panned out from the parks and plazas where

there are relatively small in town and of people by the way all movements begin with relatively small groups the civil rights movement didn't start out as a majority or in movement nor did the american revolution this movement is in that sense. but all right pat answers are going to have to jump in here a very very interesting discussion folks many thanks my guest today in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time remember crossed off rules. keep. the need to complete the. mission to be civil rights and if you need some from things to freshen these.

stunts on t.v. don't come. all

.