this is not the life here in moscow good to have you with us this out some talk page on the main news stories moscow warns it will pull out of the start treaty and deploy an anti missile system on its own borders if the u.s. continues to deploy its european missile defense shield and in response to u.s. national security council spokesman said washington is not going to review its defense plans in europe. thousands vent their anger at egypt's military rulers with protests to stay put in the heart of saying the army's concessions are not enough and military council says the presidential election will be held by next summer

people want them to go right now. and the euro in mortal danger brussels calls for tough economic governance it's unveiled a plan for joint boring for all seventeen year old nations something that germany opposes but it's the berlin is being dragged out to go through its worst. at. the vatican with more developing story in less than half an hour from now in the meantime reason of enemies cast discuss what lies behind you and who really are the so-called ninety nine percent that's crossed what next. plenty of. live. live live. live to take you.

live to cut the legs. below in welcome across talkback you're a little 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 protester protests are. plenty to keep. 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 and effect and you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it but first i'll share is this movement actually going anywhere i think that's the main question right now or is it over the two months that the occupy wall street movement has existed it's turned into a juggernaut of civil disobedience that has allowed postings 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 movement's advocates still insist that occupy is an important voice for public frustration that has 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 or whether that sense can be applied to all the ninety nine percent of americans that the protests claim to represent is another story and this is shown in a very simple 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 soured with one of the last month this growing awareness of occupy probably stems from the real or perceived notion that the movement's outlook is redundantly utopian while its members are yet to put forth a clear and specific policy goals and here in the protesters to 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 mostly about that first frances i'd like 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 operation 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 extreme equality in the united states that inequality of both wealth and income has increased steadily over the past thirty five years. and some did not. real expression and in the american political process and they 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 late express the fact increasing inequality

and people were left without even a clear articulation of what the problem was what the problems are. and occupy wall street the gap that began not the small in new york city it was first clear and all the expression a big problem whose center was financial capital ok patrick what do you think about that i mean it one of the things i find very interesting is that we are what marches report was i mean is it really about the ninety nine percent or is it about a certain type of person that is being disenfranchised in america's democratic system because i mean it's ninety nine percent financially it's all registered to vote and keep the bombs out but that's not what's happening now i think it's very clear that it really doesn't represent ninety nine percent of america i mean if you go down to zuccotti park it doesn't look like ninety nine percent of america to me

and the polls bear that out just yesterday there was no city to our poll that came out with support of just at least thirteen percent in support of and so we're at thirty percent against the fact is that it did three piece in new york yesterday that brought out one of the origins of the movement and it's essentially not a rebel movement believes in this but it's essential in our keep anti-capitalist movement and while many americans are not happy with our economic situation i don't think that the blame that on the nature of capitalism i think that's a pretty pretty rare sense of it in america today and so in that sense i'm sure those are didn't come out against capitalism so i'm not sure they're really i mean that's fair enough geez if i can 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 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 byproduct scuse me partisan but but 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 yeah i think the ninety nine percent are deeply deeply worried about what's happening under this system that because of capitalism like it or not i think the one percent of people that are going to see from zuccotti how you can be build more capitalism if you're so for a consumer society and how do you a consumer society without capitalism. james you would feel that well. sure. a lot about capitalism because i think consumerism is a way of transcending or superseded cavil's i think it's a way of reducing corporate profits for example if we redistribute income away from you know i don't think originalist makes raising the issue of things happen all as some go ahead francis jump in the movement. the movement to not raise the issue of

capitalism and raise the issue of concentrated wealth and income. it doesn't really go 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 templated as a result of the crest of wealth upwards in the united states it doesn't say capitalism most of this isn't chances i think this is a serious thing here and he's very interesting here my three guests here we can't even decide really what this movement's all about and james i'd like to 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 descended from it here in 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 to solidarity movement very very carefully when i was a graduate student you drawing parallels here so it's very interesting go ahead yeah when i see it it's it has something to do with the limits of our discourse i mean what is the what is the limit or what is the nature of politics it seems to me vaclav havel 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 that is not the point the point is simply to allow these words to make more sense to more people the ninety nine percent versus the one percent if those

words if that vernacular if 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 if i can go to you it seems to me this movement knows what it doesn't like it doesn't like a 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 the dreams was getting what probably unifies the movement more than anything is the idea of sort of this kind of a political utopia piece of consensus consensus based democracy 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 then started beautiful you know fortunately it isn't like tahrir square because where was it was a functional political protest political aims but they said you know the six already this is 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. a quorum consensus and you know painted all viewpoints isn't really what the marks 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 faith and consensus which ok fred francis of france we're going to go jump in there because i know actual history ok you know actually social movements that look something like occupy wall street have been very very important in american history the american revolution. came out of the social movement in the united states it wouldn't have it wouldn't have triumphed 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 representing the politics they have the distinctive dynamics of movements movements look feel and talk differently and 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 program now the goal. you're not comparing it to other movements this movement has an incredible symbolic power because it has cut through the fog of jibberish and propaganda that is the sorrow and the francis i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and out of any short break we'll continue our discussion on the occupy movement stay with our. kids can.

you confirm. that that has become and global is to meet the creation of the bill the food system the global food system is not created to feed the people of the world is created to maximize the profits. gernot trading the actual physical grain or trading promises for grain to be delivered a month or six months or twelve months or eighteen months in the future. for reasons model regulate silver or gold that can be negotiated and ordered to some degree and. to place. water.

possibly it's not traded now but it could be in the future. down to officially on t.f. we can't cure by phone the i pod touch from the q saps to. life on the. video on demand exceeds mine field costs and r.s.s. feeds now with the palm of your. ok . welcome back to prosecute or look i'll remind you we're talking about the protests sweeping across the united states and beyond. the campaign.

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 get i don't want to i want to see if i going to 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 need it or you can't work within the system because the system is so dysfunctional how do you create a new system without being systematic and creating something because again this consensus i mean i like the rhetoric i'm very interested in the bridge does remind me of eastern europe fighting communism in the 1980'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 do they become political in the

sense that we now would recognize 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 seventy eight seventy eight with the boston massacre and it didn't get reconstituted real seventeen seventy three in the abolitionists actually made 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 were. stage yet we're still at a stage of it seems to me anyway intellectual inquiry into a logical education that's where we should be we don't know what the future yet and we're going to have to work it out eventually yes we're going to have to do something political now it's he seems to be completely pointless well in france there's a kind of begs the question what do you do 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. and let along get from a to z. well first you're treating movements as 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. and had been subsided even by the early one nine hundred seventy s. movement then creates. a kind of europe of communication it introduces new messages that 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 end will fred francis dream and there is to be fair to be fair to there are going 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 this is from this movement now that we see occupy wall street is extremely economic ok it's the how the system functions and for whom the how the economy functions and for whom these are bits very different from the social movements that we've had in the past. well i think even if you called it a good story of the american revolution by giving the summer setting an economic movement because you are just looking for a large part with independent surveillance but i think that the difference to your really looking at is that there was a revolution of the revolution 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 should be it's generally the idea that the government in the street in some way will be able to transform our society reduce inequality and

there's no you can really be actively done in the political process to reduce inequality i don't think that's most americans believe misery forty percent of total rise you do as a result of this francisco. well that this movement is distinct is actually from the movements of the twentieth century because it's very skeptical of government that's what emphasis on the general assembly on reaching consensus. total democracy reflects free flights. disappointment that skepticism of the way government has functioned in the twentieth and twenty first century believes that government is really an instrument of capitalism james go ahead jump in can i can 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 evolutionist 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 wanted just to be clear for you is the occupy wall street movement un-american in your opinion. is i don't think it's i don't think it represents the way that american democracy works the idea of consensus police american democracy is american democracy working is it working for the average person today. well the average person or in our economic system i want i want to know that it's it's. business and treat the average american very well right now with this and say the christmas finally for our political process democracy these

are democracy takes time and so even though our political process is stalled right now and it isn't seems well it may be that higher if i 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 sense are invested interests are at stake here but the very principle of a representative democracy seems to be pretty low on the priority list right now because this is 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 its fundamental question is how do we achieve equality patrick made the 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 clear how to create equality but i think what a lot of people are saying they want to fair playing field i think that's fair to

ask isn't it i mean when you look at all of these graduates coming out of university care a billion dead and they have to go back and move in with their parents and get you know i really get paid an hourly wage and i just creates a vicious cycle of debt that 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 best vested interest in keeping the system the same way is it is today i worry i think that most of the participants in occupy wall street would agree the issue is extreme in quality and the political economy that isn't functional for fourteen million unemployed for. millions of young people who. graduate from college only to find themselves deeply in debt and unable to get a job for the people who even get help from the tattered safety

net in the united states and meantime and everybody knows this now as a result of this scandal is that the scandals that emerged during the financial crisis mean time lots of big companies hardly paid taxes we bail out wall street we bail out general motors and the banks free to use to write down the principle of inflated mortgages so that the system isn't working right and when i wanted one from a mistake going to quote something that you wrote i think is 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 floor actually i guess that's why they called it a go ahead. they're going to cite high quality if you can. then a couple of their cokes are actually employed at blue hill street expensive

restaurant wester county and he just some of us well it's 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 go over educated a well educated. who 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 that this did represent the those who oppress america and just let me finish i mean the college if we're going with 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 right now they're actually doing very well the unemployment rate among four or five percent and their you know ensuite is 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 and not of the you know the middle and middle americans who are really really hurting james you want to jump in there the chattering classes go ahead yes yes i i i have to say that you got find that

ridiculous permanent residents of the county park night wealthy at 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 that 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 rutgers on this question came from people who said to me i can't get here 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 francis i want to give you the last word on this program a year from now where is this movement going to be. i think a year from now the snow meant will have panned out from the parks and plazas where there are relatively small encampments of people by the way all movements begin

with relatively small groups the civil rights movement then started out as a majority area in movement nor did the american revolution this movement is in that sense to put on a par and says i'm going to have the campaign here are very very interesting discussion folks many thanks my guest today in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time remember cross-talk broke. into. the. company in the. u.k. . to.

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