In August 2011, I was ready to give up on politics. I’d gone so far as to set up a blog called “Why Fucking Bother?” and invited some writers I admire to convince me not to throw in the towel. Among those responding: Bhaskar Sunkara, whose contribution opened, “Because we’re on the right side of History.” I admired the optimism, but I was unconvinced.

I was pitched into this gloom because after three decades of neoliberalism, capital’s political advantages seemed insurmountable. It wasn’t just its control of politics and production, but it seemed like it had won the battle for our minds. Margaret Thatcher’s sharp observation, made two years after she took office, that “economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul,” seemed prescient. In my gloom of ten years ago, it felt like she and her class comrades had won, minds as well as hearts and souls had been won, and no one on our side had either the clarity of vision or the political means to reverse the trend.

And then, on September 17, 2011, a small crowd took over Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, sparking a movement that would quickly be imitated around the country and the world.