OWS and Optimism

I feel like I should say something about the "Occupy X" phenomenon, but I don't have too much to say about it. One line of thinking seems to be that the protests have yet to mature enough to settle on some specific demands. On the other hand, there's the perspective formulated in this recent post from "I Cite":

The general assemblies are--or are becoming or can become--a power based on the direct initiative of the people from below. The Russian word for these councils is "soviets." An American version is being created by people from all over the country.
They are not based on "a law enacted by a centralized state power."
They are their own source of power--again, a direct initiative of the people from below.
In NYC, they are discussing their own security, in effect or potentially replaceing the police and the army. Yes, they still rely on the police to an extent, but this is an ambiguous, ambivalent, and partial reliance.
In the US, a strong majority (over 80% ) has little to no confidence in government. As the general assemblies grow and endure, they become a second power, a new source of collective self-governance.
At the beginning of the 1990s, we all witnessed a spectacular collapse in power--a government that seemed almost invincible (even as it was decrepit) crumbled. It can happen here.
We already know that there is no faith in government--our statistics tell us this regularly; our media report it--the right hates government and says it doesn't work; the mainstream condemns the stalemate; the left (2 or 3 people on msnbc) worries in a bizarre, schizoid fashion. The thing is---it is already common knowledge--everybody knows--that the political and the economic system is broken. The only thing that is left is thinking that change is impossible-but Occupy Wall Street has broken that barrier.
They can go to through the motions--and a new power is being constituted, all over the country in the different general assemblies. It will be tremendously exciting as the occupations spread to corporations--Occupy Tyson Foods; Occupy Verizon; Occupy News Corporation; Occupy Pepsico; Occupy GE; Occupy Microsoft. I wonder which companies will be the first to occupy themselves, becoming people's corporations before it's too late. 

This seems wildly optimistic. The slogan, "We are the 99%," encourages this sort of optimism, even as it leaves the class character of the movement as vague as possible, preferring to identify a tiny segment of the population as villains and allowing just about anybody else to identify with the movement. At the same time, the movement itself is comprised of a much smaller segment of the population than even the 1%, although if we include all those with vaguely sympathetic feelings the number would admittedly be considerably higher. And for me, there's something creepy about "We are the 99%." 

The problem is I have no idea what the 99%/1% thing actually means or whom it's meant to identify; it just seems like a vaguely catchy advertising slogan. But "Lenin's Tomb" certainly goes way over the top with this assessment:

This isn't east coast-west coast.  It isn't red state-blue state.  It isn't north-south.  It isn't Democrat-Republican, Cheech-Chong.  It's class war, the 99% against the 1%.

 If the 99% were waging class war against the 1%, it would be over already. On the other hand, if all this means is that the 1% are waging class war against the 99%, this breakdown is not even marginally perspicuous as far as class divisions go. 99% includes the vast majority of the bourgeoisie, the working class, the lumpen poor, farmers, bankers, policemen, politicians, Obama, me, you, and even a few baseball players. So what the hell are they talking about?

I can see how people can get carried away and start bloviating about "class war" and "constituent power," but what function does this optimism serve? Does it help the movement, a movement that doesn't even explicitly see itself as being about class war and constituent power? If you feel the need to comment on these things, is this sort of cheerleading really helpful? The biggest favor we can do any social movement, however we wish to define the latter, is to be as critical as possible.  If people march in the streets against the rule of finance, arrant speculation, and undue political influence on Wall Street, at least when they take to their computer keyboards it should be time to adjure all advertising, bandwagoneering, and demographic vagueness. In other words, less cheerleading, more critique.