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We are the 99%

Andrew Fisher
10th October 2011 at 19:14
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The slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement is probably the most poignant statement made by any campaign in my lifetime. It’s also a profoundly Marxist slogan. It has a clear understanding of class – scything through the muddle-headed thinking that divides working class from middle class by dubious divisions of cultural practice or by dividing ‘manual’ from ‘skilled’ labour.

When Marx referred to the proletariat he referred to those who have to sell their labour in order to survive. The bourgeoisie for Marx was that elite class that could live without having to sell their labour, they could live off the labour of others.

The terminology used by Marx is dated, reflecting the 150 years that have passed since he wrote, but the concepts are unchanged. The capitalism that Marx described is still recognisably with us even if its products have evolved. The system has, as Richard Murphy put it in a recent tweet, “the sole purpose of shifting wealth from the poor to the rich”.

Lenin described how capitalism tended towards monopoly, just as the board game of the same name was originally designed to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies, and originally marketed as ‘The Landlord’s Game’.

As times evolve we need to find new slogans, new formulations and new examples to illustrate how capitalism works and explain our opposition.

To me the slogan, ‘we are the 99%’ captures that: all of us are the working class from road-sweeper to lawyer because we have to sell our labour in order to survive. Terms like working class and ‘sell our labour’ no longer resonate widely enough, but what ‘we are the 99%’ captures is that the economy is not run in our interests.

In the decade to 2003 executive pay rose by 288% - over five times as fast as for the rest of the population. Last year directors of the UK’s largest companies saw their pay increase by an astonishing 55%. For the rest of us, wage rises over the past year have averaged around 2%.

Pensioners, students and those on benefits are all in this 99% too. It is inclusive, while ‘working class’ has too often left these groups (and others) feeling excluded. It is inclusive and positive - an affirmation of who we are and why our opinion counts. It is confident, we are the majority.

‘We are the 99%’ perhaps is most reminiscent of Shelley’s ‘ye are many, they are few’. It’s about time the 99% rose like lions after slumber and in unvanquishable number.

Join the Occupy the London Stock Exchange group on Facebook
Read Naomi Klein’s address to Occupy Wall Street