The Daily Excess Rides Again

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Today canon chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral Dr Giles Fraser resigned over the possibility of future violence if the Occupy London protesters are removed from their camp outside the building. The Express, meanwhile, had on its front page a picture of a reporter camped on the front lawn of a protester’s home. He is seen holding up a banner which reads: ‘DAILY EXPRESS GIVE US BACK ST PAUL’S.’ The image was put under the heading: ‘NOW SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!’

Obvious questions might be: if you think the protest at St. Paul’s is that terrible then what sort of a criticism is it to do the very same thing in retaliation? If you feel you can celebrate carrying out this act – an act apparently abhorrent by your standards - on your front page then surely you’ve just experienced the feeling of effective protest – a feeling that the people camping outside St. Paul’s must then have. Surely you’ve just validated their protest?

The Express picked a good-un, though – the home of former Conservative councillor Robin Smith, now protesting at St Paul’s on a part-time basis: ‘This, presumably, leaves the anti-capitalist campaigner plenty of time to enjoy his large detached home in affluent ­Wokingham, Berkshire, if he so wishes.’

Putting aside concerns about motivations and editorial judgment at the Express, the sense of ‘triumph’ here has be seen elsewhere: you can invalidate a protest against capitalism by exposing those protesters who have jobs, live in nice homes, use Starbucks, or who are well off. Then they become gimme gimme gimme idiots biting the hands that feed. For those detractors who view the protests through the lens of the political left and right, putting the protests firmly on the (hypocritical and nasty) left, the apparently logical consequence of attacking an unequal world - of attacking the rich - is to praise the poor and poverty. If you attack companies and individuals for being rich and greedy then obviously you want the world to be poor, with everyone living in equal poverty. You must throw out any shamefully nice possessions, smash your iPhone, dress in rags and read Pravda. Capitalism: love it or leave it - don’t ever try to refine it.

The detractors can’t stand to think that the protestors might actually like the world we live in (working, pay checks, brand name clothing, corporate coffee outlets… even well-fly trainers stitched together by Vietnamese children with welts on their backs) but also protest very visibly because not everyone has an equal chance of accessing it all – whether consumable ephemera or necessities, jobs, education… choices. Whether the protesters like, loathe or are apathetic towards commercialized consumer goods, it’s more about giving everyone an equal chance of being able to afford having these things or not. The detractors offer only an either/or situation: ‘if you enjoy the life this economy offers you then you can’t protest.’ Presumably this is because they live under the hedonist’s rule: ‘if you protest then you can’t enjoy the life this economy can offer you’ and rabbles in tents give them a guilty conscience - unless they can see them as hypocrites.

You don’t have to take a stand on the rubbish people buy to be able to criticize the poor regulation of and reprehensible practices within the world’s financial districts. Continued wealth within multinational, supra-governmental banks and business is surely conspicuous in a world economy where everything from ubiquitous price hikes and cut backs to debt deals and fatal clashes between workers and police refuse to get out of the news. Years… decades of reckless behaviour and everything up to and including illegal behaviour have pushed, fractured and fucked the world economy, affecting people from every part of society - whether they saved their earnings or maxed out their plastic buying everything their TV idols flashed before them: the buy now, bailiffs later scheme.

If big business and esoteric financial services took less for themselves, and operated in a way that didn’t keep all the money up at their height and exclude smaller competitors; if every individual had enough to get by on; if cuts in services and benefits for education, health and disability etc. were lesser – becoming last resorts and more proportionate in a world where political favour and the balance aren’t always tipped towards the biggest earners in business and finance: these are the caveats to the protestors’ liking of our experience of capitalism in the western world. ‘They would like it if…’

The points they raise help define how they see the world: a more sophisticated appreciation that delineates a line between the good and bad, rather than not giving a toss as long as they get their readies. They are not rally calls for some grim tabloid parody of Communism.