

The Left that so prides itself on the realization of Egalitarian ideals is one of the many important forces in the political climate of the United States. This realization of Egalitarian Ideals that derives it source from the French revolution is a common ideal chased by all groups that would fall under the left; for example, Anarchism, Marxism, and Neoliberalism. Therefore, this paper will effectively analyze where the left is heading in the 21st century. The trajectory of a political force cannot be calculated in a vacuum; hence, it must be analyzed in conjunction with a good sampling of political events, movements, and ideologies. For the sake of this paper, a political force, like the left, will defined as a unifying set of principles that link together various movements, events, and ideals. Occupy Wall Street is the flashpoint event that will need to be analyzed in great detail due to its great "shaping" ability to every political force after it. Therefore, Occupy Wall Street will serve as a reference point to everything that is to be talked about in this paper, with respects to time and influence. Three distinct time periods will be looked at through this paper; that is, Before Occupy Wall Street, During Occupy Wall Street, After Occupy Wall Street, and beyond Occupy Wall Street with respects to the left as a political force. 

The Left before Occupy Wall Street was coming out of heavy losses after the destruction of the Soviet Union and the victory of Capitalism in the cold war. As Dr. Callinicos has stated, "  Plainly no one considering the condition of international socialism today, in the face of the 21st century, can look forward with the same confidence"( Callinicos 9). Any mention of Marxism or Socialism usually conjured up images of horrible state oppression by Joseph Stalin. As Dr. Callinicos has stated, "If, as I do, one believes that Stalinism represented not a distorted, degenerate, or some in other respect imperfect form of a socialism, but a variant of capitalism, bureaucratic state capitalism, as firmly founded on the exploitation and oppression of the working class as its western counterpart, then one has no reason in principle to defend it or to seek its survival"(Callinicos 12). As one can see Stalinism is not a good representation of any kind far left movement in actualization. But, even with the victories of Capitalism, people were still being oppressed and taken advantage of from forces that they could not see due to cold war propaganda. For example, Black people were still being oppressed in the ghettos even though America as a nation has "passed" racism; however, the bourgeoisie still have much to gain from the oppression of Blacks. As Dr.Willhelm has stated, " Capitalists need racial inferiority to cheapen the cost of labor. 'White employers,' Nearing asserted in 1929, 'are taking advantage of the Negroes-using them to force down wages, to break strikes' "(Wilhlem 98). But, the middle class did not start to feel the blunt of Capitalist greed until the Western nations that went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan against an imaginary threat started to harvest what they sowed; consequently, at the expense of the middle class. As Dr.Dean has stated, "The lack of voice that most Americans experience in the economic sphere--exacerbated by the decline of institutions such as trade unions--is also present in our political life"(Dean). Of course, the American public were feeling neglected by the system and of course had to turn to radical politics; thus, setting the tone for a universal undirected angst against the system. This point is further exemplified from what Dr. Dean has stated, "The Occupy movement has emerged at a moment when that gap has been particularly severe."(Dean). Therefore, this undirected angst laid down the groundwork for the re-embodiment of classical marxist traditions into a Neoliberal dominated left; however, this is a dual edge sword because the undirected angst also makes room for radical right wing politics (Fascism).

During Occupy Wall Street, the narrative was quite mixed in regards to what the protestors wanted ; however, all of the protestors could unite behind the slogan of the "99% vs the 1%".  As Dr. Vey has stated "By focusing on self-organisation, equal participation and internal deliberation, OWS was mainly engaged with forms of direct action in the tradition of (European) anarchism"(Vey 2). As one can see, the OWS movement directed the left as a political force more towards the Anarchist side, instead of the traditional Statist-Marxism; however, this is to be expected because OWS by nature was culmination of chaotic angst against the System controlled by the "1%". This great dualism between the 1% and the 99% is important because it allowed people to take off their "ideological lense" for a moment and see past the spectacle laced with distracting images. Guy Debord exemplifies this point here, "The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images" (Debord 3). Hence, during this brief moment of clarity, for the populace, called Occupy Wall Street could the left, as a political force, have any chance of returning back to its Marxist roots. Take note, that a step towards Anarchism for the "left" as a force, is a step in the right direction, even if Anarchism is not Marxism. As Dr. Graeber has stated, "As a result, Zuccotti Park, and all subsequent encampments, became spaces of experiment with creating the institutions of a new society - not only democratic General Assemblies but kitchens, libraries, clinics, media centres and a host of other institutions"(Graeber). This possibly the most important point in OWS, because the OWS movement has shown the people that there are other possible ways to "operate" a society rather than good ole fashioned Capitalism. As a result of the OWS, one can imagine that the elite were very scared. As Dr. Graber states, " As the history of the past movements all make clear, nothing terrifies those running the US more than the danger of democracy breaking out." (Graber). 

After Occupy Wall Street, was an interesting time due to the failure of OWS to accomplish anything material, but it's ability to raise class consciousness within the American populace made it all worth it. Into Obama's presidency the economy got better and things were starting to look better for the middle class; however, minorities, like blacks, were still perplexed as to how their material conditions were still trash compared to other more well off races (whites). With the ever increasing police violence against blacks with incidents ranging from shooting of unarmed black men from Mike Brown to Walter Scott. These events against an traditionally oppressed group sparked the dormant flame in the leftist political force, and like clockwork various academics went out of their way to analyze the situation. The fatal flaw of these analysts were mostly due to them looking at these incidents with the eyes of a Neoliebral, that is focus on the problem at hand, whilst ignoring the system that caused it in the first place. As Mr.Saval has explained here, "For example, many students were strongly indoctrinated into the work of Walter Benjamin, a literary critic associated with the Marxist Frankfurt School for Social Research. But much of what we were taught to admire about him were his departures from Marxism -- into Jewish mysticism, or analyses of allegory in German theater. In these discussions, labor, work, and the economy went unmentioned"(Saval 57). This is important because it's very dangerous the English department, a bastion of theory, has departed from the traditional marxist outlook and has been influenced  by many postmodern thinkers like Foucault. Not to say there is anything wrong with 20th century post modern philosophy, but most postmodern philosophers like Deleuze completely broke away from Hegel and instead took more from the likes of Spinoza. Hence, this meant the abandonment of Hegelian dialectics which serve the core foundation of Marxist thought. For, Marxism without Dialectical materialism is not Marxism at all. To synthesize all of these points, there is too much of a focus on social privilege that is so hard to calculate in an objective way within the left as a political force. There should be more of a move back to a economical analysis of classes and oppressed groups. Now, this does not mean that blacks do not suffer societal stereotyping from the media. According to Bristor et al. , Blacks are often stereotyped in a sublime manner in media; that is to say, that Blacks are often unproportionally made to play roles that reinforce a certain negative narrative about them (Bristol et al.). This reinforcement of a certain negative narrative serves to allow the social oppression of blacks to continue in the realm of ideology. As Slavoj Zizek states, It's not ideas the media/society is putting in you, it's the molding of your thinking which shapes the ideas you make (Zizek). Nevertheless, this neo-liberal way of thinking within the left will not solve anything relating to the problems of minorities. Therefore, the left will move towards a direction that advocates cutting the root of the cancer, which is economical nature, and what better system of thought to analyze something from an economical point of view than Marxism?

Beyond OWS or Looking towards the future of the 21st century, one can see that the western world is heading towards somewhat of a conundrum with the influxation of new technologies; such as, the internet, surveillance, and automation. Therefore, the left as a political force must come to terms and find a way to answer these problems relating to surveillance by the NSA and huge personal data holding by companies like Facebook and Google. As Bamford explains, "NSA program known as TREASUREMAP is being developed to continuously map every Internet connection  --  cellphones, laptops, tablets  --  of everyone on the planet, including Americans."(Bamford xx). As one can see the Government has absolute control of your smartphones and electronic devices, quite scary. Of course the Neoliberal narrative cannot provide the answers to such questions within the constraining framework of Capitalism; hence, radical progress of technology, calls for the left to look back and learn from the teachings of Bakunin and Marx. To elaborate, how is one to trust Neo-liberalism when it tends to "shoo away" any mention of radical change within a system that supports such atrocities against its populace. As Dr. Fuchs explains here, " For Karl Marx, surveillance was a fundamental aspect of the capitalist economy and the modern nation state"(Fuchs 5). As one can see, Marx had already predicted the necessity of surveillance on the proles by the bourgeoisie; however, not even Marx could predict the malignant form it took on with the birth the internet. Automation is the other conundrum facing Western Society as we move ever so closer to the realization of fully Automated labour. This is important because if the workers do not work, then who will consume the products made by said automatons; thus, Capitalism would implode. As Dr. Elliott explains here, "These radical changes have three major consequences. One is that output and wealth come to depend less on the amount of labor employed and more on the powerful forces affecting labor productivity: science and technology. Labor productivity grows "out of all proportion" to the direct labor employed in production" (Elliot 163) The rapid progress of Technology is something that will lead to the demise of Capitalism; even though, Capitalism as an economic system goes hand and hand with fast advancement of technology. Therefore, the left as a political force will move towards a direction that would allow it to synthesize some sort of theory to better analyze  surveillance and automation. This new direction will of course be more "far left" then before. 

The left as a movement has always had the interests of the common man/woman as their core motivator; however, different spectrums of the left may go about it in different ways. One will be hard pressed to find an Anarchist that agrees with a Marxist on seizing the tentacles of the state and establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat. Nevertheless, The Marxist and Anarchist both agree on establishing a free socialism with no government as their respective end goals. Even the NeoLiberal will say he is fighting for the benefit of the common man. With the full picture in mind, one can see that the left as a whole will be headed "more left" on the political spectrum; hence, erring more towards Marxism and Anarchism  rather than Neoliberalism. This is the only logical choice for the left if it were to survive the post OWS West. The reason being is that people have lost faith in the current system in light of current incidents; for example, 9/11, the failure of the Iraq war, the persecution of minorities like blacks, and of course the Snowden revelations. All  these various problems and contradictions within a Capitalist society that parades as a Democracy has culminated to the Presidential run of Donald Trump (Fascism) vs Bernie Sanders (Socialism). This is as of 2016 where people have begun to put their trust more into far left and far right politics, far away from the center.

