11 Nov

Professor Alan Ryan in THE on Occupy Wall St Posted: 11 Nov 2011

Photograph by Tom Giebel (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Alan Ryan has written an article for Times Higher Education (3 November) on the Occupy Wall St movement, entitled 'Kropotkin's heirs apparent'.  The article can be read here.

In it he says, "The commentariat now complains that OWS hasn't established a policy; but some make the obvious comparison with the Tea Party, which has captured the Republican Party and frightened its leadership out of its wits with a set of contradictory demands.  OWS responds that it is committed to a democratic process and that it takes time to produce a policy consensus.  It's an old-fashioned, utterly non-violent anarchist movement: Kropotkin would have thought well of it."

This prompted a response from Martin Wynne, Head of the Oxford Text Archive at University of Oxford, who wrote: "Ryan suggests that they are engaged in a democratic process to formulate policies, but there is no evidence of anything other than knee-jerk disgust with the bankers and the political elite.  Rather than offering even the germ of any kind of solution, the unhappy campers in Wall Street and outside St Paul's Cathedral are simply an expression of the lack of a political response to the ongoing economic crisis."  His response can be read here.

Alan Ryan is emeritus professor of political theory, University of Oxford.