A dialogue between anarchists and progressives

This is a fundamental conflict at the heart of the Occupy movement. On the one hand, they are as sceptical of government as anyone else in the US. They see it as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the 1 per cent.
And much of what I've written above completely supports them in this view. Their treatment by local Democratic mayors and other local officials only further discourages them from seeing conventional politics as a credible way forward. And yet, the side of the US they appeal to and want to see restored - the US as a land of freedom and opportunity for all - is precisely that which the New Deal best captured. Without government - no, without big government, that ideal has never even come close to being realised.
The way around this conflict is two-fold, I would argue. The first is, potentially at least, internal to the Occupy movement. It is to recognise and nurture a new sort of dialogue between two different ideologies, much more fruitful than the one that has dominated the US for the past 30 years.
This is a dialogue between social democracy and anarchism, the do-it-yourself, bottom-up, non-hierarchical philosophy of participatory democracy that has been put into daily practice in the hundreds of Occupy camps all across the US. The form that this dialogue might take is impossible to foresee. One can only say that both represent intelligent, if largely submerged traditions that deeply challenge the ideological dyad that has ill-served the US for so long.
The second way around this conflict is probably best envisioned as external to the Occupy movement, although it is closely connected to it. In a recent blog post, Occupy the Progressive Movement, historian and policy analyst Robert Cruickshank wrote:

Occupy alone won't produce the changes we need in this country... The public wants action on inequality and wants to go after the 1 per cent. Progressives should walk through the door that Occupy opened - and they should be willing to work with anyone, Occupiers or not, who are interested in providing the leadership that is needed to make lasting change happen.

Cruickshank went on to remind us that "it is those who are best organised who will prevail even if street action leads to major political change".
This often plays out as the hijacking of broad-based idealist movements by more cynical and established operators - the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Islamists in the Iranian revolution of 1979, and - at least it seems for now, also in the Egyptian Revolution begun in Tahrir Square. But it doesn't always have to be this way - particularly if those drawn into the struggle are more genuinely aligned with those who sparked it.
This is where the second way around Occupy's conflicted view of government connects with the first. If activists of all stripes can resist the tendency to grab onto one vision, one ideology, one pathway to truth, and instead cultivate an appreciation of ideological dialogue, then we may really be onto something.
We do not all have to take the same path to be on the same journey together. And if this doesn't always seem to make sense strategically, as a matter of logos, it surely appeals to our common longings. We must weave together a many-sided mythos with room enough within it to be a home to all of us, not just in the US, but around the ever-shrinking globe we all share.
Paul Rosenberg is the Senior Editor of Random Lengths News,