Glen T. Martin

First published November 2011

The 1% own or control all the systems of the Earth.  First and foremost, they control the macro- economics of the world, which ultimately means they control, directly or indirectly, the communications of the world, the health care services of the world, the food and agricultural services, the transportation, the mining, energy, and industrial processes of the world.  To facilitate and consolidate their control over everything, they colonize the governments and political processes around the world, so that most politicians and legislators serve their interests. To enforce the laws and regulations tailored to suit their interests, they colonize the militaries and police forces of the world.  They are insatiable in their greed for money, power, and control.  They have most of the world’s resources and assets in their control and they want more: they want it all.

               They use the imperial hegemon, the immense military and economic power of the United States, to enforce their global system of domination and exploitation upon the hapless peoples of the planet. They cannot stand, as Noam Chomsky has repeatedly pointed out, any nation or people attempting to take independent economic initiatives.  The threat of a good example, the threat that some group might create a decent life for itself outside their system, is utterly intolerable to them. The world is so fragmented and divided that it is easy for them to target independent initiatives in Chile, Haiti, Nicaragua, Angola, Venezuela or elsewhere and crush any moves toward freedom.

               During the Great Depression, the New Deal was implemented within the US in order to prevent a possible socialist revolution. The 1% agreed to pension plans, social security, graduated income tax, employer health care systems, and relatively weak economic regulations in return for the silence and complicity of the 99% in the US with this global system of domination and exploitation. In the interests of its ruling class, U.S. forces proceeded to destroy emerging democracies in Guatemala and Iran in 1954, and instituted military repression in those countries. For the next six decades, the US continued to overthrow, subvert, invade, or destroy progressive governments and social movements worldwide, largely with the tacit complicity of the American people who were doing OK because of their New Deal.

               By 1980, when Ronald Reagan came to power as their favored candidate, the 1% had realized that they had so much power, and that the American people were so passive and propagandized, that they no longer had to abide by the New Deal to prevent a socialist revolution.  Their craving to have it all, to dominate everything on the Earth, came to the fore again and they began a systematic assault on the people of the U.S. – fabricating ever new terrorist threats to control our minds, destroying the manufacturing base of the country in favor of an economic “financialization” that produces nothing but windfalls for the super-rich, increasing militarization to solidify their global control over the planet, and attacking jobs, wages, benefits, social security, and health care at home.

               Occupy Wall Street represents the awakening of a portion of the 99% within the US to a spirit of rebellion and resistance against this nightmare of totalitarian domination by the 1%.  It has spread beyond the U.S., largely to other first world countries, but the stirrings of a global movement can be heard as far away as Egypt, Tunisia, and Bangladesh. The system of domination is a world system.  The 1% who dominate the U.S. use that domination as a mechanism for imperial exploitation of the planet. The struggle is worldwide and not limited to individual nations.

               People all over the world are making demands that are not unique to their own countries. The phenomenon is worldwide.  The majority the world over are living in poverty while the rich live in unimaginable luxury, and this is a worldwide crisis that no single governments can address. The global environment is disintegrating, collapsing, affecting everyone on Earth, and it is clear that governments cannot deal with this without uniting together in a common global effort.  Militarism is rampant and the nuclear powers are acting in ways that may lead the world to nuclear holocaust if something is not done decisively and quickly to disarm these monstrosities, yet governments are only making this situation ever-more dangerous.  The 99% are bound together by these common interests that transcend all borders and nations.  Their demands need to be global and represent the interests of the 99% globally.

The meeting of the G-20 in Cannes will not and cannot solve the problem. Most of these G-20 nations are the imperialist nations using their military power to invade and dominate all countries seen as opposing their system of global economic exploitation.  Instituting a financial speculation tax, which they are now considering, will not do it.  It will not save the global environment, feed the billions of hungry in the world, nor eliminate nuclear weapons. The G-20 represent the 1%, not the 99%.

               What are the demands of Occupy Wall Street in the US?  At the surface level, insofar as the multiplicity of voices can be pieced together coherently, they go something like this. Reinstating some financial regulation, creating jobs, benefits, pension plans, healthcare, protecting social security, progressive taxation, and ending foreign wars that drain the wealth from this country into the Pentagon and the industrial-military complex. In other words, Occupy Wall Street is demanding another New Deal. They are not demanding that the insane global capitalist system of greed and domination be dismantled.  They are not demanding that the exploited billions worldwide be given jobs, pensions, healthcare, and social security.  They are not demanding a nonviolent revolution in which the economics and society serve the interests of the 99% of the people of Earth. They are only demanding “concessions” from the super-wealthy within the US: a kinder, gentler treatment by the 1%. If they are successful in achieving this new New Deal, does this mean the American people will go back to complicity and passivity in the face of a global system of domination and exploitation run by the US ruling class?  Does it mean benefits for US citizens while the rest of the world continues to live in hell? There is a contradiction between the demands within this particular country and what is required for justice worldwide.

However, the deeper meaning and real spirit of Occupy Wall Street is precisely this: the demand to create a decent world system of freedom, peace, justice, sustainability, and prosperity.  The deeper meaning of the Occupy Wall Street connotes a transformed world system. It is expressing moral outrage because a system of domination, exploitation, military mass murder, premised on lies and propaganda is wrong, deeply wrong and evil.  What we really want is a world system founded on the freedom and well-being of the people of Earth: the 99% of human beings; the rights and dignity of all people everywhere, the rights of people everywhere on Earth to peace and a protected planetary environment. The majority of human beings right now are living in the hell of poverty, misery, military domination, and environmental decline, and concessions within the US will not alter their condition.

               How are we to go beyond a parochial demand for a new New Deal to actualize the deeper meaning of Occupy Wall Street?  We must join in solidarity with others around the globe.  Indeed, this is true. But the current system of domination uses the fragmented system of nations to divide and conquer. They invade Afghanistan and no other states and few people around the world come to the aid of Afghanistan. They destroy Libya because the ruler of Libya was a vocal critic of the US and attempting to keep Africa’s resources for the benefit of Africans.  And almost no one comes to the aid of the Libyan people.  The fragmented system of nations is the perfect mechanism for keeping the citizens of Earth enslaved to the 1%.

               Ultimately we can only triumph by really joining together with people everywhere.  Really joining with them means legally uniting with them within a planetary democracy in which they are actually equal with us, in which there really is the rule of democratic law on the Earth and no longer military domination of the few over the many.  Only by joining together in genuine democratic solidarity with the 99% everywhere and transforming this system of fragmentation into a cohesive planetary democracy can we ever realize the deeper spirit of Occupy Wall Street. Genuine solidarity means that we bind ourselves together under a social contract that legally protects the rights, freedoms, and dignity of each, a social contract that establishes world peace and a protected planetary environment.

               The Constitution for the Federation of Earth is the key to this solidarity and nonviolent transformation of our corrupt world disorder.  Winning a new New Deal within the U.S. will not benefit most of the 99% of the world’s population who will continue under the U.S. led system of domination and exploitation.  We must unite together with the people of Earth by ratifying a constitution giving the people of Earth democratic control over the global economy. Establishing the Earth Federation gives the people of Earth the power and authority to demilitarize the world and end war forever, to protect human rights everywhere on our planet, and to give every citizen and every nation democratically protected freedom with good wages, social security, health care, education, peace, and environmental protection. 

               None of this is utopian in the least because the present world is destroying not only billions of human lives annually but destroying the very biosystem that supports life on Earth.  Without real transformation through ratifying the Earth Constitution, we will destroy ourselves through vicious wars of extermination, global pollution, and ultimate climate collapse.  The most practical and common sense thing we can do is join together in a global social contract. The deeper spirit of Occupy Wall Street envisions a democratic world system, a freedom system, and a peace system for the Earth. It is time we overcome our parochial nationalistic demands and join in solidarity with people everywhere to ratify the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.