Searching for Marx in the Occupy movement / John Leveille.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leveille, John J., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Occupy movement--United States.

Occupy movement.

Social movements--United States.

Social movements.

United States.

Marxian school of sociology.

Physical Description:

xxviii, 305 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham : Lexington Books, [2018]

Summary:

Searching for Marx in the Occupy Movement is a critical, participant observation study of the Philadelphia branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement. John Leveille spent over nine months with Occupy Philadelphia as the members organized and carried out their protests. This book describes and analyzes the rise, the organization, and the demise of this group. The important events and activities of Occupy Philadelphia are discussed and dissected, with specific attention given to the confusions and chaos that permeated the group, and Occupy Wall Street more generally, which contributed to its rather rapid decline. A revisionist Marxism, informed loosely by the critical theory of the Frankfort school, is used here to understand and explain the happenings of this protest group. It is used here as an epistemological and methodological framework to conduct this sociological study and it is used as a theory to account for the observed behaviors. Leveille argues that an essential conflict between humanism and the forces of rational capitalism lies at the heart of this protest movement. This conflict contributed both to the rise of Occupy and to its operations. It was manifested in two intersecting ways. One of these concerns the destabilization of the self in contemporary capitalism, which provided fuel for the movement. The second revolves around the limited abilities of existing institutional arrangements to manage or channel the essential conflicts related to values that are produced by rational capitalism. Ultimately, Searching for Marx in the Occupy Movement makes a controversial claim that the movement was as much, if not more, about democracy, morality, and the organization and experience of social life as it was about economic matters. The argument is made that Occupy was as much an expressive movement as it was an instrumental one. It was expressing contradictions produced by capitalism through extra-institutional means because the existing institutional arrangements have been and continue to be unable to manage or contain them. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction

Marxism and social movements: reconstructed, post-, and new social movements

Marxism and the Occupy movement

Overview of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Philadelphia

The occupying context: history and the macro context

The proximate context

Organizational structures; hierarchies and power; autonomy and authenticities in Occupy

Ideologies and the conflicts of humanism and rationality

Schisms part one

race, liberals and anarchy

Schisms part two

more ideological divides

Relations with the outside

The many faces of framing

Emergent craziness: frustrations, hope, and trust

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Leveille, John J. Searching for Marx in the Occupy movement.

ISBN:

9781498548427

1498548423

OCLC:

1002613661