A Look at Occupy Wall Street without Ideology

The Occupy Wall Street movement is mixing up America’s underlying contradictions, and it’s hard to predict to what extent it will mix up American society. However, because of the expanse between America’s economic strength and voters’ expectations, Americans’ discontent is piling up faster than it can be resolved.

　　

No society can truly be fair, so anger towards society’s injustice is often that society’s easiest breaking point, where all kind of discontent is vented. The American demonstrators’ political demands are vague and unclear, many of their criticisms are of a moral nature, their demands are in slogan form, and they still haven’t come up with clear, let alone workable, positions.

This means the movement might just be a burst of noise and energy, ultimately leaving nothing settled. It’s also possible that because the people’s dissatisfaction is something that America can’t resolve, and because American society can’t reach a consensus that the crowd’s demands are “extreme” and “unreasonable,” its society might sink into a relatively long period of political turmoil. Since both American political parties will probably exploit the movement to attack each other, the possibility that it will fade into another tea party also exists.

America has been at the tip of the global pyramid for a long time, like an aristocratic nation. It can use the entire world’s resources and wealth to help relieve its own problems. The “one talent conceals a hundred shames” quality that comes from this has made America’s internal contradictions fall within the set of those that are controllable for a long time. The Occupy Wall Street movement is evolving into Occupy the Entire Country, but this is still just a phase. In the mid-long term, whether or not America can maintain general stability depends on whether or not its “decline” will receive clear-cut confirmation, and if the societal consequences it will necessarily bring about can be acknowledged by the public.

The recent disturbance in American society tells us that American democracy also has overlooked areas where it is ineffective. Societal problems have been entrenched there for a long time and gotten larger, to the point where they have now exploded. To view the Western system as a master key to solve the problems of the world’s other regions is naive.

However, because the American demonstrators’ slogan of “social justice” is familiar to the ears of the Chinese public, it causes many people to contrast America’s movement with China’s reality. There are two points particularly worthy of attention. First, although some scholars believe that China and the U.S.’s problems are “completely incomparable,” in fact this kind of comparison has already become a quite ubiquitous line of thinking in Chinese society. Second, although America having problems to some degree proves the reasonableness of the problems that exist in China, this definitely shouldn’t become a reason or consolation for not taking our own problems seriously.

During the last few years, China’s development has been rapid; the speed of resolving old problems and producing new ones has also been the fastest in the world. At present there is no evidence that can demonstrate that any of China’s problems are especially tied to China’s political system. One of the problems China is facing is public demand for a social justice that is mostly idealistic. This intensifies China’s feeling of a deficit of social justice. This kind of deficit has been politicized and ideologically charged, causing this issue to become urgent.

In reality, no matter whether it’s China’s problems or America’s problems, an overly ideological way of looking at the issue may be a bias trap. For example, America’s system contributed to its prosperity, and it also created today’s problems. China’s system produced the achievements of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and a policy of opening up, and also led to some of today’s difficulties. Whether it’s China or America, reform and adjustment are both necessary: mankind simply doesn’t have a perfect system. A good system is precisely one that can continuously self-adjust and obtain the most adaptability toward the realities of society and popular demand.

The continuously spreading Occupy movement perhaps can be viewed as a free class that America is giving us; we should derive from it those lessons that apply to all mankind.