Capitalism “should be replaced by something nicer”, one group of demonstrators demanded. The slogan encapsulates the incoherence of the protests at Wall Street and the City of London.
Over a century ago the sociologist Werner Sombart explained the lack of appeal of socialism in the US with the observation that “all socialist utopias have foundered on roast beef and apple pie”. The socialist utopias of Russia and China would later founder on precisely those issues. For roast beef and apple pie, today read iPads and Twitter. Protesters know capitalism delivers their mobile phones. Only a minority would renounce this material world altogether: which is how the Daily Telegraph could report that most went off at night to enjoy the sprung mattresses and showers that have replaced hay bales and water from the pump during two centuries of capitalist industrialisation.
The problem is not simply that we do not know what the protesters are for. It is that we do not really know what they are against, except those things that almost everyone is against – war, poverty, man-made climate change, and overpaid bankers and executives. The Dean and Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s, forced to resign as the cathedral finds itself unable to take action, are victims of a situation in which many people disagree with the protest but few with what the protesters say.