Now: The Debate Over Obama
Posted by Mike E on May 15, 2008
Kasama received the following essay from Keith Joseph. A debate is needed over how to stand, speak and act in regard to Obama’s campaign for president. Add your commentary and debate here. We hope to post substantive essays with other views on Obama as we receive them.
OBAMA 2008: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: An Appeal for Revolutionary Unity:
By Keith Joseph
I know Jeremiah Wright… Well, I never met him, but I know his ideas, he is a part of the American political left. Nothing he said outraged me, or even upset me. I agreed with a lot of it, and disagreed with some of it. If we were to meet in person I imagine we would get along just fine, and we probably could do some good work together. Obama had to distance himself from his pastor in order to remain a viable candidate — a smart move. Gary Wills, writing in the May 2008 NY Review of Books, pointed out that Abe Lincoln, who Obama invoked when announcing his own candidacy, was associated with John Brown and the “radical” abolitionists. Like Obama, Abe had to distance himself in pubic from the “extremists.” But the abolitionists remained the left wing of Lincoln ’s coalition, and although he publicly disavowed them (gently) he was secretly and indirectly connected to them.
About 100 hundred years later, in 1968, Robert Kennedy’s candidacy for president represented a similar coalition. His brother, John Kennedy’s election marked the achievement of full citizenship for Catholic (Irish and Italian) workers (that’s why Kennedy’s picture hangs in all those Irish bars). Bobby Kennedy continued to lead those “white” workers and he was bringing them into an alliance with the Civil Rights Movement (Kennedy was meeting and marching with two of its most prominent leaders, Dr. King and Caesar Chavez). In other words, Kennedy’s campaign was a next phase in the Civil Rights struggle. But the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and the FBI repression of the left made it difficult for a left wing to get into that coalition and soon King and Kennedy would also be murdered.
These assassinations sent most left wing forces in the United States into a disorientating tailspin that we have yet to recover from. If it were 1968, Hilary would be Hubert Humphrey, McCain would be Nixon, and Obama would be Bobby Kennedy. Some of our friends on the left have asked us to “Recreate ’68.” Yes, but let’s not repeat the blind rage, instead let’s do it over and send Humphrey and Nixon packing. So, we must build a John Brown, Malcolm X, Jeremiah Wright bloc— a left bloc allied to but independent from Obama’s campaign.
As Malcolm and the movement developed, he emphasized uniting with other left forces. He and King drew closer together, but after Malcolm’s assassination left wing forces pushed liberals and center-left forces away and into the hands of the right. Obama’s campaign is the potential rebirth of the Kennedy-King Coalition. And it is time for the radical left to do what Malcolm would have done—get into the coalition as an independent force, consolidate a left wing and build a liberal and left coalition to stomp the war loving right wing in this country while building our own independent left movement.
We have a couple of immediate basic tasks: Obama must be the Democratic Party candidate—By Any Means Necessary. We should plan to camp right outside of Denver during the Democratic Party’s Convention and hold anti-war demonstrations and our own left convention. If right wing Democrats try to force Hilary-Herbert Humphrey-Clinton on us we march on the convention and make sure Obama gets the nomination–By Any Means Necessary. In November, we must make sure Obama defeats the war criminal John McCain. And finally, after the election, we must be prepared to convene anywhere in the country ( Florida , Ohio etc.) to make sure that the Supreme Court does not decide the contest.
Some of our fellow leftists have been very critical of Obama. The problem with their criticism is that they want Obama to be a leftist. He is not a leftist, he is a representative of the progressive, democratic wing of the capitalist class and he is making an appeal to workers of all nationalities to support him. Obama is a liberal. He is a center-left candidate. He is a part of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. We are the left! It is time we got back in the game.
Kasama 
Eddy said
Obama is indeed representing the capitalist class, stumping on behalf of one of the main imperialist political parties. (what makes that ‘progressive’ ??)
Why would any ‘leftist’ want to be part of a ‘game’ that is hell on earth for the vast majority of the people on this planet?
What IS worth engaging are the political and ideological contradictions semi-exposed by these elections and his candidacy – such as national oppression, racism, the hypocritical ‘I feel your pain’ sops to the middle strata, the sleights regarding imperialist aggression around the world, etc., which are the programs of the bourgeoisie’s political parties.
Eddy said
What’s at stake in these elections?
today’s Washington Post:
COLUMBUS,Ohio, MAY 15–Sen. John McCain will pledge this morning that the Iraq war can be won and most American troops can come home by 2013 if he is elected president, a position that closely resembles those of his potential Democratic rivals.
According to speech exerpts released in advance, McCain will say that only a small contingent of troops in non-combat roles would remain in Iraq five years from now. He predicts the drawdown will be possible because al Qaeda in Iraq will be defeated and a democratic government will be operating in the war-torn country.
(…)
Asked to make a similar pledge during a debate last September, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama declined, saying that “it’s hard to project four years from now and I think it would be irresponsible. We don’t know what contingency will be out there.”
But more recently, Obama has said he will remove all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of becoming president and will leave “some troops” in Iraq to protect U.S. embassy personnel there and carry out targeted strikes on terrorists.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said during the same debate last year that it was her “goal” to have all of the U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013, though more recently she has said she would begin a phased withdrawal immediately.
—–
a snare and deception for the masses of people, internationally, and ‘four more years’ of imperial aggression.
Nando said
I look forward to seeing this dissected… since (let me confess at the start) I think almost every piece of this gets it wrong.
It ends with the sentence “It is time we got back in the game.” And if anything the whole Kasama effort is ABOUT getting “into the game” of real politics. But I am convinced not THIS game…not THIS way…
Many of the arguments here should be looked at closely…. and their assumptions and implications drawn out more fully.
Let me start by some commentary on history (since this is where Keith starts:
“Gary Wills, writing in the May 2008 NY Review of Books, pointed out that Abe Lincoln, who Obama invoked when announcing his own candidacy, was associated with John Brown and the “radical” abolitionists. Like Obama, Abe had to distance himself in pubic from the ‘extremists.’ But the abolitionists remained the left wing of Lincoln ’s coalition, and although he publicly disavowed them (gently) he was secretly and indirectly connected to them.”
This is a profoundly a-historical (and therefore misleading) take on history. The most important difference is that in 1860, the northern industrial owning class was (objectively and subjectively) playing a revolutionary role (vis a vis slavery) — and was about to lead a social revolution by war (in ways anticipated and advocated by the “extremists.”) I.e. there was an objective basis for an alliance between the consistent anti-slavery revolutionaries and the Republican forces around Lincoln. That alliance would continue into Reconstruction, with the Radical Republicans operating (at all levels of government) as a wing of the ruling coalition.
By contrast, there is no section of the ruling class today that is anything BUT tied to empire and the suppression of aspirations for radical change. There was an objective CHANGE that happened around the turn of the 20th century — where the anti-imperialist wing of the mainstream (represented by Mark Twain and others) was removed from the official framework — and could only oppose from without (from without the ruling coalitions, from without the government, and increasingly fundamental opposition to the very nature of society).
To compare Obama to Lincoln is to ignore these most basic and defining differences in the historical situation. And it is to (literally) invent “the progressive, democratic wing of the capitalist class” — that is supposedly comparable to a Lincoln — and then revolve the larger argument around that.
More on that “invention”:
Keith writes: “About 100 hundred years later, in 1968, Robert Kennedy’s candidacy for president represented a similar coalition…. Bobby Kennedy continued to lead those “white” workers and he was bringing them into an alliance with the Civil Rights Movement (Kennedy was meeting and marching with two of its most prominent leaders, Dr. King and Caesar Chavez). In other words, Kennedy’s campaign was a next phase in the Civil Rights struggle. But the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and the FBI repression of the left made it difficult for a left wing to get into that coalition and soon King and Kennedy would also be murdered.”
This is (I must say) an amazing rewrite of history. Let’s be clear on who Bobby Kennedy was: he started his career as assistant counsel to the notorious reactionary Senator Joe McCarthy on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — and played an important historic role in those witchhunts that defined the political air of the 1950s (as a co-worker with Roy Cohn). He spoke of having “a fondness for McCarthy.” He came into power as his brother became president (after campaigning against the Eisenhower administration for being lax against the Soviet Union and allowing a “missile gap.”) There (as JFK’s key adviser) he helped preside over the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and the Cuban Missile Crisis (which threatened Cuba and others with nuclear destruction).
The story told above about his relationship with the Civil Rights Movement completely whitewashes the fact that Robert Kennedy was the Attorney General of the U.S. (i.e. in charge of federal prosecutions and the FBI) at a time when the Cointelpro operations were unleashed against the Movement: it was a time when FBI informants worked within the Klan to attack activists, when (at Kennedy’s approval) leaders like King were wiretapped, pursued and threatened with blackmail.
Stepping back: the Kennedy’s operated well within the framework of the New Deal Democratic coalition — which was deeply rooted in the Dixicrats of the South, and in a fundamental reliance on the representatives of Jim Crow.
And if you want to know more about that…. go listen to Malcolm X on the Kennedys (i.e. Keith’s suggestion that Robert Kennedy and Malcolm were somehow on the same side is an amazing distortion — and is even carried out by adopting malcolms “by any means necessary” as the title of this piece! When Malcolm said that he was injecting revolutionary thought into the movement — when Keith appropriates that he is arguing for revolutionaries to adopt a strategic alliance with the sections of the dominant oppressors as a method… rather remarkable difference and reversal!)
So what did Kennedy represent in 1968 — it was a major maneuver to swing “the Movement” and the explosive discontent back into the framework of this system (and its politics) — to defang, defuse, coopt, divert, subsume, dominate, disperse, confuse, integrate the resistance into the system of oppression.
Was the assassination of Kennedy the same thing as the assassination of Malcolm or King? This is often asserted as if it is fact. Let’s put it like this: Malcolm was killed by forces within the conservative, anti-activist wing of the NOI, operating with (at least) the complicity of the police. King was killed by a white racists — almost certainly operating as part of a much larger conspiracy with powerful wealthy backers.
Robert Kennedy was killed by a Palestinian who was outraged by the Kennedy support for Israel in the 1967 war. And there has not been (to my knowledge) any evidence or analysis connecting that killing to a larger conspiracy.
How and why would anyone equate these things? Or equate the very different class and political nature of Kennedy (on one hand) and those representing various forces fighting for the liberation of black people?
Again, there is an invention here of this “progressive and democratic wing” of the dominant establishment.
And what stands out to me is that Keith does (and perhaps can’t) try to make an argument for Obama’s nature as “progressive and democratic.” What does the absense of this mean: what does it assume, what does it suggest?
Mainly this is an argument that Obama should be supported DESPITE what he is — despite his distancing from Wright, despite his views on so many things, despite…. And it even seems to take pride in acknowledging that he is a representative of this system and this empire (“a centrist” not a “leftist”) — and arguing for support despite that.
Why don’t we dig into what he claims he will do (like take combat troops from Iraq and move them to readiness “over the horizon” or into Afghanistan/Pakistan)…. and then analyzes (beyond the fetish of the word) what he is likely to actually do (given his political nature and the nature of the office he aspires to).
Isn’t it: Yes we uphold empire firmly, but may give you cheaper medical care.
Does this country need a “unifier”? Does it need “post-60s” verdicts that “overcome” those divisions by reversing the best verdicts of those times? Is the Red State-Blue State divide really best resolved by “transcending” (read: triangulating) the core differences?
What would embracing such a politics actually MEAN for the people (and for our attempts to build a movement that stands for something clear and important)?
Keith argues that we “get into the game” by taking sides in the dominant politics. And yes, that would get us into a particular game on a particular basis.
But I am not particularly interested in getting into that game. That option was open a long time ago, always open. It was open when RFK ran in 1968 (and when many of us correctly shook our heads at those taken in by him).
Let’s really, carefully and thoughtfully, break down what this candidacy amounts to and represents. How it will channel and affect the people, their aspirations and illusions. And then analyze whether it serves our goals to become part of that.
And to repeat: being left starts with creative opposition to THAT game, that kind of cooptation into empire based on promises of crumbs.
TellNoLies said
I’m sure that this post will set off a lively discussion. I don’t agree entirely with Keith’s formulations, in particular his reading of the RFK campaign. I do however think its important to recognize how the Obama campaign is different from that of many that have gone before it. This is not so much becuase of any particular positions Obama has taken (which have in my view been entirely consonant with the framework of saving US imperialism from its own crisis) as it does with the social forces it has set in motion and the possible openings that this MIGHT create for a more radical or even revolutionary left to gain a footing in the US.
I think the John Brown-Abraham Lincoln comparison is a useful one. Historically, the main function of the Democratic Party has been to channel popular discontent among the oppressed into largely ineffectual form of electoral and pressure politics. What the Obama campaign represents is something that at first may seem only trivially different: an effort to actively MOBILIZE (albeit within an electoral framework) heretofore demoralized and demobilized masses of the oppressed in a fight within the ruling class over the direction of the empire.
What needs to be understood is how risky a proposition this is from a ruling class perspective and what that tells us about the thinking of this fraction of the ruling class about the present moment. What it says to me is that they think the situation is considerably more dire than most people realize, that the empire is in for a very rough ride ahead and that this requires both relegitimizing it in the eyes of huge sections of the masses but also dislodging from power another fraction (the neo-cons) that they think has driven it into a ditch.
What the Obama campaign represents then, is an attempt at “repolarization” from within a pro-imperialist perspective. Much of Obama’s appeal come from his vague but high-sounding talk of broad national unity and many on the left have been made uneasy by his direct appeals to Republicans. What this rhetoric obscure, I think, is a very hard-headed attempt to wrest power from the neo-cons by stealing away a section of their mass base and reconstituting a liberal-led Democratic majority that intends to rule. Despite Obama’s talk of unity his campaign is clearly determined to ice out certain forces that most radicals and revolutionaries would also like to see iced out.
For some forty years liberalism has lived in the wilderness longing to restore its previous hegemony. What Obama represents is the first serious effort to do this that obtains its mass energy mainly from NEW forces, in particular the so called progressive “netroots” and under-30 voters who have come of political age since 9-11.
There is an ideological thrust to this campaign as well. It involves a challenge to the historical prerogatives of white supremacy. I’m not saying here that electing Obama will represent an end to white supremacy in the US, but rather that it will represent a major reconfiguartion or even demotion of its place in the ideological armory of American capitalism. The ruling class fraction that supports Obama is making a historic bet on two things:
First, that there has already occurred a significant enough shift in the consciousness of people around race that this particular Black man can actually win in spite of white supremacy’s continued grip on the thinking of much of the population.
Second, that the redemptive potential for US imperialism in an Obama presideny is more valuable to the system than the maintenance of those feature of old-style white supremacy that an Obama presidency would knock down.
It should be admitted here that this sort of reading of ruling class tea leaves is an expression of the weakness of the radical and revolutionary left. We are not in John Brown’s position and more than whatever we do vis a vis Obama our task must be to overcome that weakness.
cassiusghost said
Am I hearing the night time howls and yippings of coyotes at a wounded stag?
Keith expresses the real fear of the many young supporters who enjoy Obama’s message of “change” — a quite reasonable fear that Obama will be assassinated.
This is a simple election, yes, an election of bourgeois democrats against fascist theocrats – both representing the quickly crumbling American imperialist empire.
If you have the time and inclination to go among Obama’s supporters and wave a red flag and convince them that a communist government would be better, then like the old RCP slogan sez – GO FOR IT!
There is no revolutionary proletarian party of communists, political, idealogical or god knows (pun intended) military in the US. Take the 9 Letters at face value – if even 25% is correct – THERE IS NO PARTY!
I have spoken at length to young Obama supporters, they know the world shaking stakes involved – and they have convinced themselves that this is their last and for some their first attempt at political involvement and citizenship in the country.
What are you going to do – yell them long winded platitudes of dogma – while in the midst of their fight for their future.
The objective situation is becoming desperate; climate change, peak oil, energy shortages, world hunger, over population, it goes on and on – people know it’s going to get bad in imperialist America.
Got anything better to offer them? Right here? Right now?
Of course we do … energy and food autonomy – long after the polls close and Obama is surrounded, overwhelmed by the catastrophic events ahead. Permacultural cooperatives, collectives (whatever the term) autonomous from these charades and shadow plays of the oppressor class – better that while the people are yet again led down this sick path.
I have empathy for his followers, share in their view of the objective situation, but I am not going to condemn them or Obama for wanting change.
“reconsider, regroup” for REVOLUTION.
A vote, it takes a second and if it changed anything – they will make it illegal.
Hell I tell his supporters around here, Bush may bomb Iran and close the elections. What will you do then?
Keith’s desperate and who can blame him with what Hillary is throwing at Obama – now those Clintons are some sick sick puppies.
cassiusghost said
TellnoLies,
You need to pick an avatar after hitting the nail on the head a couple times with:
“What needs to be understood is how risky a proposition this is from a ruling class perspective and what that tells us about the thinking of this fraction of the ruling class about the present moment. What it says to me is that they think the situation is considerably more dire than most people realize, that the empire is in for a very rough ride ahead and that this requires both relegitimizing it in the eyes of huge sections of the masses but also dislodging from power another fraction (the neo-cons) that they think has driven it into a ditch.”
The empire is thankfully going into the ditch.
Nothing can be done, short of nuclear war (and that’s possible) will stop it. Nuclear war won’t even stop it.
It’s over … can’t generate enough electricity even if they nationalized the Big 3 autos and cranked out electric cars. Daytime grid would go down everywhere with rolling blackouts.
Can’t or won’t shut down 800 military bases in foreign lands, none of them talk about that – eh?
Can’t or won’t shut down or cut back the prisons holding more people than “communist” China. 2.2 million is a lot of folks.
Can’t or won’t arm the people with the simple solutions of grassroots electrical energy generation – to feed to the national grid.
Can’t or won’t subsidize huge infrastructural mass transit systems, like railroads.
Can’t or won’t promote victory gardens at every damn vacant lot in every burnt out shell of a city.
Like those psychopathic US soldiers playing heavy metal tunes in their tanks invading Baghdad Iraq.
“We don’t need no firefighters …
Let the M….F….r burn, burn, m….f….r, burn.”
Saoirse said
actually the “heavy metal” band your referring to are a bunch of college kids with advanced degrees that are kinda poking fun of heavy metal, ya know, those stupid working class kids. The song was picked up and used in the soundtrack of Michael Moore 911 flick.
*****************************
Like those psychopathic US soldiers playing heavy metal tunes in their tanks invading Baghdad Iraq.
“We don’t need no firefighters …
Let the M….F….r burn, burn, m….f….r, burn.”
cassiusghost said
I wonder if those soldiers knew that, thanks for the clarification. Heh, heh – hope they know what to do when they get back.
Carl Davidson said
To repeat what I’ve said elsewhere, some need to get clear on whether we’re in a revolutionary or non-revolutionary situation.
If we’re in a revolutionary situation, and the mass issue of the day is reform or revolution, ie, you do mass agitation for proletarian revolution and oppose the reformist path, then you would want not only to oppose Obama, but also discourage activists from engaging the electoral arena at all, save perhaps with the candidates of a revolutionary party.
This is what some are arguing here, in whole or in part. But I’d say they don’t know what time it is.
But if conditions are not revolutionary, and socialism is a theoretical and propaganda task among the advanced, and not a matter of mass agitation and action today, then you have to approach this election, and electoral struggle generally, in a far different way.
It’s best to start by accurately assessing what’s going on, and today’s condititons. Rather than making tortured analogies going back to Lincoln’s time, take a good critical look at the playing field.
All of the major candidates are representing imperialism, albeit different trends and factions. So calling Obama or any of them ‘pro-imperialist’ is a yawner–so what else is new?. The more important question is what the factions stand for, and is there a difference that makes a difference, to us, anyway, among them.
If there is such a difference, and we have no electoral alternative capable of winning this year, then our tactics should try to defeat the most dangerous faction, while building our own strength independently. And we should do the work around the most critical issues–stopping the war, getting health care for all, debt relief and new green industrial jobs. These are what our actually existing working class actually sees as important in this election, whether you think they ought to think something else or not.
Obama is a ‘high road’ industrial policy capitalist and multipolar globalist–just read his Cooper Union speech. Clinton is a garden-variety corporate liberal capitalist, which got her on the board of Walmart for years. And McCain is an unreconstructed neoliberal capitalist–‘state all evil, market all good’–that kind that says ‘We’re in business to make money, not steel, so we’ll gut these plants and speculate in oil futures, and the workers and milltowns be damned.’ In other words, the ones who ‘cut taxes’ by putting everything on the China Visa card and got us into this mess. Actually, truth be told, Obama’s brand of capitalism is best for productive businesses (as opposed to speculative capital), and does least harm to the working class.
That’s just a summary. I’m sure more details and nuances can be added.
Let me be clear. ‘Progressives for Obama’ doesn’t promise that an Obama White House will deliver an end to the war or solve the other problems. Obama asserts he will, but he also puts out mixed messages. Nor is he simply a progressive running on a progressive platform. Actually, I wouldn’t want him to, since that would hand it to McCain. He has to unite progressives AND the center vs the right circled around McCain. I actually press him to be good at what I describe above, ie, getting clearer on the war, better at growing green industries, etc. I don’t try to make him into something he’s not, not that I have the wherewithal to do so anyway.
What we do promise is that the struggle will continue, that grassroots popular power will be have to be organized and mobilized now and after the election, no matter who is in the White House. But we’re very clear that we’d rather wage those battles vs a White House occupied by Obama than by McCain.
If you can think in these terms, and see the possibilities for building revolutionary strength in these conditions, then you need to get engaged, if not with our project, then with one of many others, or start your own.
But if you can’t, then it’s probably best that you stay out of this arena. You won’t be very good at the tasks, and won’t help either yourselves or the broader effort.
an hero said
I emphatically agree with tellnolies analysis of the issue. It is particularly important to draw attention to the weakness of revolutionary forces, and how this is spontaneously pushing revolutionary forces into the two opposed (and equally pointless) directions of either jumping in to “the movement” or carping around its edges.
The point is a practical one, which cassiusghost draws out. Even the people arguing for supporting Obama recognize that he isn’t going to solve the underlying problems facing U.S. imperialism and global capitalism. That is, in some essential aspects the two spontaneous responses of the Left to Obama rely on the same analysis of what Obama is in fact going to do, and what he represents. And unsurprisingly their approaches to this campaign, while superficially in opposition, represent the same objective politics. In other words neither wing of the Left is capable of developing a revolutionary program for here and now.
It is not enough to argue that Obama can’t or won’t do this or that. We have to develop a set of political prescriptions that will address the issues of a faltering U.S. hegemony, and develop it in the direction of a progressive and revolutionary event. And we have to put it forward while developing an opposing power structure using the struggles of the masses with the State as our “base areas”.
Carl Davidson’s issue of revolutionary or non-revolutionary situation is, not surprisingly, exactly the wrong question to be dealing with. The opposition between the two is undialectical, and we can clearly see how the logic of this opposition plays out, not just for Carl Davidson, but for forces like the RCP as well.
Revolutionaries have to approach all situations as unique, with a critical and materialist analysis afresh of history as it happens. Formulas of revolutionary vs. non-revolutionary, and the kinds of constraints imposed by such thinking, are mainly useful for delaying revolutionary work, whether this comes wrapped in a rrrrevolutionary rhetoric (like the RCP), the uncritical and defeatist flight into the “mass movements” (ala “Progressives for Obama”), or whether it comes cloaked in a non-committal conversation (like Kasama), the end result is that the revolutionary work of contesting the legitimacy of the State, of organizing power, and of presenting practical programs to the issues of the day, is either put on the back burner or it is given up to other forces to define.
an hero said
To put it another way, the issue isn’t Obama and what he stands for. The issue is us, and what we stand for. What is a revolutionary program today?
Correction said
Nando writes:
“Robert Kennedy was killed by a Palestinian who was outraged by the Kennedy support for Israel in the 1967 war. And there has not been (to my knowledge) any evidence or analysis connecting that killing to a larger conspiracy.”
Actually there is evidence and analysis suggesting a larger conspiracy, which was aired widely in the mainstream media recently:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/22/kennedy.assassination
Mike E said
This is the first time (in forty years) I have heard such claims.
Even if this article is factual, it doesn’t get at the core issue raised on this thread:
That Kennedy was not part of a popular and progressive coalition… and that his assassination was not somehow an attack on the popular movements on the sixties.
Nil said
I hadn’t heard anything about Lincoln being secretly or even indirectly connected to John Brown. Is that so?
But if the argument is that Obama might be another Kennedy or Lincoln–I’m afraid I’m unenthused.
Nil said
And to reference Malcolm X saying “by any means necessary” to talk about holding a rally to get your man nominated by the Democratic Party… um.
Nil said
Geez, sorry to multi-post so, but this is good stuff.
I think Tellnolies hits it on the head. This stuff does mean something, no doubt, but it’s not actually a good thing that one of the things it means is that actual radical/revolutionary forces are completely out of the political calculus. But there are possibly opportunities in the midst of ‘repolarization’, we still need to figure them out. And who in particular wins elections has not too much to do with it.
Carl suggests we “need to get clear on whether we’re in a revolutionary or non-revolutionary situation.” Are there really only two choices, and we have to somehow be sure which one it is? I don’t think we can be, so I hope we don’t need to be. I think we keep track of what’s going on and always try to intervene where we can; I also like the way Mike Ely talked recently here somewhere about getting ready and being ready for opportunities.
But, certainly, yes, I would advise mostly staying out of the presidential electioneering ‘arena’, like I think Carl is (also?) suggesting someone like me do
Correction said
Mike writes:
“Even if this article is factual, it doesn’t get at the core issue raised on this thread”
While the fact that “Kennedy was not part of a popular and progressive coalition… and that his assassination was not somehow an attack on the popular movements on the sixties” may be the point of this thread as designed, is it really THE point? Is it really “the core issue”?
cassiusghost said
And now to compliment Mike Ely’s great photoshop job heading this entry – Sean Penn enters the debate at:
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20080515_sean_penn_talks_politics_at_cannes/
Keith said
A few follow up points.
1. Obama is not important so much because of what positions he takes but because of his constituency. His constituency is progressive because it has a future (unlike those white worker in that backwater called West Virginia—there old jobs ain’t ever coming back) Obama has the support of Afro-Americans, youth, and advanced “educated” workers.
3. Granted RFK was not a lifelong progressive. But one critic of my piece wrote this:
“many of us correctly shook our heads at those taken in by [Robert Kennedy].”
What made your shaking head correct? The revolution that followed your boycott? Oh yeah there was no revolution and we have been getting our asses kicked in ever since. The left has been correct like that a lot.
So post-1968 organizing in the US has been a dead end. I think Mike Ely’s 9 Letters asks the question: why? That is the right question. It isn’t because the RCP started a personality cult. Some people blame “the conditions.” I blame the bankruptcy of the left wing ideas that came out of the collapse of the old SDS. The PLP, The RCP, and the Weathermen. Which had the good idea? Oh yeah… none. (I make that judgement based on the results of their organizing) Again nine letters points out that not much has been organized after 40 years of trying. Maybe we need some new ideas?
4. There is absolutely no precedent whatsoever in Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao or any revolutionary experience for an anti-electoral stance.
In my view we should support Obama nationally. And build an independent national left movement by organizing for power locally. We should run revolutionaries for office locally in alliance with Obama democrats (like joint candidate slates) against republicans and DLC Democrats. In other words we should build a popular front not as a defensive strategy but as offense. Elections are the path to power for the foreseeable future. If you don’t dig Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Daniel Ortega then you are missing history.
TellNoLies said
I agree that the historical analogies shed little light on what is in fact a unique situation. The question of John Brown’s actual relationship with Lincoln or RFK’s with the popular movements of his day will not help us understand this moment. What I think makes them tempting points of reference, however, is how they bring out the question of the relationship between the supposedly contingent question of who gets elected president and the ways events unfold at moments of profound systemic crisis.
Is the outcome of this election likely to appreciably effect the terrain on which we seek to constitute radical or revolutionary movement in the US? And if so, how? These are the questions we have to discuss before we can intelligently discuss what we, as revolutionaries, should be doing in this situation.
These are inherently speculative questions. Marxism is not a predictive science and the singularity of situations means that historic analogies are helpful in more limited ways than some seem to think. What we can do is spell out more and less plausible accounts of why the answer is more likely to be one way or the other.
In a previous thread on Obama, Mike E asked provocatively if a McCain victory might not be prefereable insofar as the present hatred for the Bush regime could stand to get even deeper. I think this is a fruitful way of posing the questions.
There is a real danger in an Obama presidency that he will, in fact, be successful in relegitimizing the system in the eyes of huge sections of the people who are already or prospectively calling it into question. An argument might thus be made that it is better for the contradictions of the present configuration to go from ripe to rotten before an earnest atttempt to save the system as a whole from those contradictions is undertaken and that this might in the end make the system weaker and the peoples hatred of it stronger.
(At the risk of being misinterpreted as predicting fascism under McaCain, I can’t help but note the parallels between this position and the German KPD’s third period slogan: “After Hitler, Us!”)
The problem with this approach, in my view, is that it is too conservative in two different and perhaps seemingly contradicory respects. First, it is too conservative in its estimation of how dire the situation has already become for the system. Second, it is too conservative in its understanding of the system’s capacity to radically reconfigure itself.
There is a very real sense in which an Obama presidency will, at least in the short run, make it more difficult for revolutionaries to call into question the legitimacy of the system. That said I think it is a mistake to think that by compelling the system to run, so to speak (and insofar as we have any voice in the matter), on an outdated Bush/McCain operating system, that we are likely to deprive it of the possibilities of regeneration represented by Obama. This is not to say that Obama himself, or somebody more or less like him, will be waiting in the wings in 2012 or 2016, but rather that there is a whole sort of reserve ideolgical configuration that Obama is tapping into that is not going to simply evaporate because of the actions of a President McCain.
My argument then is that Obama (and what he represents) is the best card in the hand of US imperialism and that it is better for us that they play it now rather than later so that it is what we are responding to rather than the already exhausted Two of Clubs that is John McCain that will mislead us in our understanding of what we are really playing against.
One of the important dynamics of the 1960s that I think explains why folks like Keith who identify with its revolutionary side can also mischaracterize the role of the Kennedys is the way that having liberalism in power forced a more radical examination of the real dynamics of the system as a whole. While there were many forces that made the 60s the 60s I think it is reasonable to question whether a Nixon victory in 1960 would have enabled the sort of radicalization in the US that the Kennedys (quite inadvertently) did. (Here I think it is worth thinking about how, in the absence of well organized revolutionary forces, the assassinations actually served to preserve illusions of the sort that we see in Keith’s piece and how an Obama assassination might have similar effects.)
Obama is a gamble, both for US imperialism and for us. It is precisely the aspects of his campaign (and presidency) that are relegitimizing of the system that run the risk of setting into motion forces that the system will not be able to contain. We have limited powers to actual;ly influence the outcome of this election, but we none the less have a responsibility to really understand it and notto settle for cookie-cutter analyses that deny its important particularities.
Carl Davidson said
I must admit I’m puzzled by the point that I’m placing revolutionary and non-revolutionary conditions in ‘undialectical’ and ‘contradictory’ opposition. Also the question of whether these ‘are the only two choices.’
Calling someone or their argument ‘undialectical’ is a fudge factor with more uses than aspirin, save that it doesn’t cure anything.
Let’s just put it this way. If you think we are in a revolutionary situation, or that it doesn’t matter whether we determine such things, and you simply want to assert it rather than make the case, then we don’t have anything to talk about. You’re living in an alternate universe, with its own universe of discourse, that has no meaning to me and many others. The kindest thing I can say is ‘Good Luck.’ A revolutionary situation will arise out of current and future conditions a some point down the pike, (there’s some ‘dialectics’ for you) and if you’ve survived, your notions may have some relevance. Even a stopped watch is right twice a day.
Meanwhile, what I am suggesting is important is the need for revolutionaries to define and deploy revolutionary methods of work, types of organization, forms of struggle, and programs of radical structural reform that can build up the strength and fighting capacity of the masses and the left in a period when reforms, rather than revolution, are the key issues of the day.
We need to distinguish ourselves both from redistributionist liberalism and its ‘left’ version, oppositionist anarchism.
And we need to do this in EVERY arena of struggle that has engaged the masses, whether you and I like it or not. Otherwise, you simply concede that field to liberalism, proving yourself incapable of contending with them which anything short of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which I’ve already pointed out, is not the question of the day.
Whether you take up the election with Obama or anyone else as your best option is simply a case in point. You’ll have to do something like it no matter what the issue or arena of struggle, if you really want to grow the left, contend with liberalism and strengthen the masses.
It’s useless trying to designate which candidate best serves imperialism today. The imperialists are deeply divided, and all factions in a losing game. They have no single voice in this election.
The question for us is the main danger on the matters at hand. To think that a McCain victory is somehow ‘better for us’ is, at best, foolish. At worse, I’ll admit it has some support among some workers out here in Beaver County, PA, the same ones who put the ‘N’ word in front of Obama and like the idea of nuking Iran. And if you raised that line among the workers here who support Obama, Black and white, you’d be seen as a nut case or a plant from the other side.
Finally, I sometimes wonder if some people here have studied much Marxism beyond a smattering of Mao and Bob’s version of it. What I’m saying here is by no means original with me. It’s actually rather orthodox Leninism, which I consciously work on updating or ‘revising’ for today’s world, making use of Gramsci, Bukharin, Gorz, Dimitrov, Truong Chinh and Mao, too. And even then, the important thing is not to copy any of them, but to understand their tools, and put them to work yourselves. Today’s wars are lost mainly by generals who try to win them simply with the methods of the last war.
an hero said
tellnolies writes:
“Is the outcome of this election likely to appreciably effect the terrain on which we seek to constitute radical or revolutionary movement in the US? And if so, how? These are the questions we have to discuss before we can intelligently discuss what we, as revolutionaries, should be doing in this situation.”
I disagree here. I think we need to discuss what revolutionaries should be doing in general, we need to have a position that amounts to more than “revolution is the solution”. We need to understand how and why this is true BEFORE we can understand where and how openings are going to develop in the current terrain. We need to understand our own goals, in practical political terms (such as the overthrow of the State). In other words, we don’t need to analyze Obama or “his movement” exhaustively before we can understand what it means to be a revolutionary, rather we must first understand what it means to be a revolutionary BEFORE we can understand Obama and “his movement”.
We have to approach things this way because if we do not, we will constantly be behind the curve, and we will be constantly reactive towards the spontaneous developments in society. We will forever be in a position of carefully studying events as they pass us by because we have not done the groundwork necessary to intervene in them. It is of course another thing altogether to rally around an inflexible and sectarian program for revolution, this is not the only option outside of the politics that Carl Davidson and Keith Joseph are hawking.
And lets get right down to it, if your program is not one of overthrowing the State, then you are not a revolutionary. So Keith and Carl’s attempts to cloak themselves in that political legacy are the equivalent of dressing a sheep in wolves clothing.
Keith writes:
“So post-1968 organizing in the US has been a dead end. I think Mike Ely’s 9 Letters asks the question: why? That is the right question. It isn’t because the RCP started a personality cult. Some people blame “the conditions.” I blame the bankruptcy of the left wing ideas that came out of the collapse of the old SDS. The PLP, The RCP, and the Weathermen. Which had the good idea? Oh yeah… none. (I make that judgement based on the results of their organizing) Again nine letters points out that not much has been organized after 40 years of trying. Maybe we need some new ideas?”
Keith, what you conveniently forget is that your way of thinking in the Left has been the leading and dominant force throughout the last several decades of failures. The RCP and most of the sectarian organizations have been relatively marginal compared to the Democratic Party, the NGO’s, non-profits and issue oriented organizations. Whatever you want to say of the RCP and groups like it, the fact remains that it has been these MAINSTREAM Left forces who deserve the lion-share blame for the failure to create a combative and winning Left politics, even as there is clearly a general lack of creativity and combativity THROUGHOUT the Left.
The bottom line is that there is no revolutionary program in existence today, which can effectively intervene in the current political situation. There is NO OPTION for the masses except for what exists already. And instead of making something NEW, 99% of the Left is trying to triangulate. There is a massive lack of leadership, a massive lack of creativity, a massive lack of seriousness and determination. No one is willing to lose in order to win, so they simply redefine what “winning” is, and then we find ourselves in the same losing position over and over.
The idea that we need to triangulate on whether McCain will usher in a total collapse, or whether Obama will “relegitimize” the system is so incredibly passive! A point I think tellnolies would agree with me on. But then to continue on and envision all the ways in which revolutionaries are bound to lose simply continues to buy into that passivity, while apparently being objective. The problem here is that very few people are envisioning reasonable and practical ways in which WE CAN WIN! At the same time, it is conservative and passive to think that Obama is going to play out a trajectory similar to that of the 60’s. That we would even WANT that is a very disturbing sentiment that permeates the radical Left. The ’60’s are dead, and this is so very, very good! Let’s do something NEW!
Eddy said
there surely are arguments throughout Marx, Engels and Lenin against supporting the political parties and programs of the bourgeoisie/capitalists/imperialists. The US Democratic Party is a party of monopoly capital; to think of it as otherwise is an unfortunate and traditional delusion of the US left.
by all means, let’s do something new and expose its political program for what it is, not try and rally people to its banner!
BobH said
It’s good to see many people rejecting historical analogies, which are only slightly more useful than Biblical prophecies as a guide to action, IMHO.
Interesting that Keith makes no mention of Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition. Jackson’s campaign clearly was more progressive than Obama’s, at a time when stopping Reaganism/neoliberalism seemed like a possibility. Many, many revolutionaries united around that. Where did that get us? I give the RCP props for being right about that, incidentally.
It seems like every election, there’s a variation of the same debate between abstentionists (both parties are the same, don’t vote) and the lesser-evilists (a vote for democrats is a vote against fascism). Hasn’t the CP-USA been pushing this for 60 years? Isn’t the result a triangulation that creeps towards fascism?
I think I actually met Keith years ago. Weren’t you forming a revolution coalition to become a city councilman? How did that work out?
I agree totally with An Hero about the need to get beyond these sterile debates and push for creative, revolutionary programs and practice. The embryonic food independence movement, for example, strikes me as one area where revolutionaries and visionaries can have a practical impact on people’s lives when the election year hype is over. Forming collectives and networks that try to tackle local issues of food, energy, transportation (radical carpooling, anyone?) — in other words, forming embryonic socialism at the margins of a crumbling capitalism — is this totally utopian, or perhaps a begining to a practical alternative to the sterile politics of the left we’ve often come to accept as inevitable?
Really I just want to say that we have enormous experience of what DOESN’T work. Can’t we start thinking outside of the (ballot) box a little?
EM said
As I said less then a hundred years ago, if voting changed anything they’d make it illegal.
redflags said
Reference to the Jesse Jackson Rainbow Coalition, RFK and the social movements, FDR and the Popular Front and even John Brown and Lincoln won’t explain the moment we’re in… but they can help us understand the relation between revolutionaries (and even communists) in reference to the ways the US electoral process votes us.
Which is to say, we don’t vote… We get voted. These elections everwhelming work to determine the range of the politically possible, not how we as a sovereign people determine our collective representatives.
Starting with that premise, which Rev. Wright’s shoddy treatment is a neat example of, maybe we can dig a bit more into this particular moment.
And this is where the words we choose (revolutionary, socialist, etc) get funny.
If someone’s social work is largely advocacy, dissent, issue-based exposures and occassional acts of disobedience and resistance – but their only political activity is working for the Dems (against the so-called ultra-right) every two to four years… then what is that?
Without picking on Progressives for Obama, they are exactly an explication of the triangulation that is, has been and will be the death of a left which sees a life beyond imperial capitalism.
It seems very much a habit of defeat, where once idealistic, possibly ultra-left but surely disconnected radicals then reposition themselve in reference to the range of supposedly possible. Instead of cultivating and facilitating, which is to say organizing a mass base towards fundamental change, we are to become the midwives of governmental hand-overs withing the same state of affairs.
Importantly, this never changes. The same people who argue it’s impossible to fight now will tell us its dangerous later. See the UML in Nepal today, the Communist Party in France 40 years ago this month or the entire history of European social democracy!
These left-fringe enablers play a role of fluctuating importance in re-couping the disaffected back into the logic and possibility of the existing system. Carl (and Fletcher, et al) is as upfront as one could get, I think, on these questions.
The gist is that, like water, radicals should find their level. It views our duty as articulating what’s already there. It means: let Gaza starve. Sad, maybe… but “let’s get real!” Right? Imperialism isn’t up for a vote, so those who insist on a systemic approach are really just noise at the periphery of where the bigs dogs play. And better a flea on the right back than out in the wilderness of a future than may never come…
So, by this method, if there’s a revolutionary situation, sure… man the barricades. But short of liberty leading the people, the result of doing “non-revolutionary work in non-revolutionary times” is to permanently put that all off the table and use progressive/left rhetoric to assemble some kind of minor mobilization machine for the “democratic wing” of empire.
There is a material reality to NGOism, bourgeois reformism, movementism, economism… whatever you want to call it. People are professionalized into the social structures of this desert of the real, as social workers, advocates, lower-rung politicians and bag men.
To argue with those who are abstentionist in the face of bourgeois elections to “get over themselves,” with the whole assumption that telling the plain truth about this system is a psychological disorder (or, as I have heard plenty, “dogmatic”) is saying “yes, Obama is enough – and our job is not to expose his program but smooth out the edges in its public presentation”.
It is perhaps true that revolutionists often make poor revolutionaries, but if so, then the challenge is to find the forms that bring the future out of the present instead of triangulating ourselves into the socio-political structures of the exsting state of affairs.
Voting isn’t dirty. People who do it out of naive hope or cynical accomodation aren’t the problem. The weight is on revolutionaries to create possibilities where none seem to exist. To make the implicit explicit. To create a situation the spectacle cannot assimilate. And yes, to expose the self-sabotaging myths that this system has a savior for us and the people of the world.
When Obama is under seige from the right, and murdering Arabs on inertia… I shudder to think about the justifications for passivity that will come from the “progressive” sector. What will they do when Obama attacks Iran?
Another rally, pending another election?
And when will these progressives do any work to build organizations that politically fight for socialist goals? Beyond issue-based kvetching and episodic lesser-evilism?
If the last twenty years are any gauge… never.
So? What is to be done?
Carl Davidson said
Goodness, ‘RedFlags,’ you’d have us suck an entire strategy for socialist revolution out of one project.
First of all, ‘Progressives for Obama’ is a mixed bag, and has no such unity or plan. It spells out its limited aims in its letter, and does so rather well, I think. and it the two months of its existence, is also doing fairly well. If you think ‘abstentionism’ is a better tactic for relating to the election, fine. After it’s over, we can sum up and see who gained what and who lost what.
As to your other points, one of my favorite quotes these days is from Alvin Toffler: ‘If you don’t have a strategy, you’re part of someone else’s strategy.’
What follows is my perspective (and a few comrades), not ‘Progressives for Obama’. Lots of people in it have very different views from mine.
I’ve been building organizations to take up socialist tasks nonstop all my life. I see those tasks in today’s conditions differently than you, but it doesn’t mean we’re not busy. We think at a time when socialism is in crisis, ie, being fundamentally redefined because old models have collapsed, the main work is theoretical and on the level of propaganda. We’ve been doing it for some time, and while we don’t claim to have all the answers, we have some decent new working hypotheses. As the man said, without revolutionary theory, there is no revolutionary movement.
Our work appears in several books: ‘CyberRadicalism, A New Left for a Global Age,’ by myself and Jerry Harris, ‘Dialectics of Globalization,’ by Jerry Harris, and ‘After Capitalism,’ by David Schweickart. There’s a web site, solidarityeconomy.net, that has a summary piece, ‘Where To Begin.’ More work is in the cyrev.net archives. We test our theoretical work both in discussion and debate, and in prototype practical projects in various arenas, which I won’t go into here.
You mention that ‘There is a material reality to NGOism, bourgeois reformism, movementism, economism… whatever you want to call it. People are professionalized into the social structures of this desert of the real, as social workers, advocates, lower-rung politicians and bag men.’ This is all true, but as I indicated in the last post, you should add liberal redistributionism and anarchist oppositionism to you list.
The question to you is, how do you contend with these forces in the day-to-day struggle? And don’t tell me agitation for proletarian revolution, because you can’t even unite a handful on the revolutionary left with that, at least in any sense where you have to spell out what it means today. Rather, what is your transitional program of radical structural reforms that you can unite a majority, or even a large militant minority, behind. We have developed some of the pieces of this puzzle, and are working on more.
I’m hardly one to say it’s impossible to fight now, and too dangerous later. But you’re begging the question, fight for what? I’m for fighting right now to keep McCain out of the White House, because if we don’t, it will likely be more dangerous later. But I try to do it independent of the Dems, so we build our own base communities. You’re the one, at least on this point of struggle, telling us to ‘abstain’ from this front so you can give militant speeches about Nepal? Even there, you might have problems. From my reading of things, the Nepal Communists may soon have the Chinese, Vietnamese or even David Schweickart over to talk about a 21st century NEP and the socialist market economy.
an hero said
Just a practical point with regards to all this talk of “revolutionaries for Obama”, Obama’s campaign does not need or want the radical Left cozying up to it. If there is anything to learn from the Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers affairs, it is that Obama’s campaign is trying to run as far away from the radical Left as it can. So, again, on a practical level, if you want to elect Obama, why would you try to rally the radical Left to actively intervene on his behalf?
This just goes to show that “revolutionaries” of Carl Davidson and Keith Joseph’s ilk can’t even sellout correctly.
Moreover, given the above reality, what does it mean for radical leftists to involve themselves in Obama’s campaign, but for them to run away from their own politics?
What exactly IS the triangulation here? Is the idea that you jump into the campaign, throw out some weak “socialist” platitudes, and harvest a handful of activists for your project, Carl? Is that “winning”? Because surely you and people like you are not going to win this election for Obama, at best you are simply along for the ride.
What is the rubric by which you are judging “who gained and who lost”? It doesn’t sound like you are judging this so much by whether revolutionary consciousness or movement has advanced, but more by whether your personal political project has advanced. I would consider the possibility that your goal was one of advancing liberal bourgeois politics in relation to its conservative counterpart, as you explicitly claim, except that you wouldn’t be advancing it in any significant way. Seems to me that all your work “building organizations to take up socialist tasks nonstop” is a total delusion.
And that’s real.
Carl Davidson said
If you’ll think this through, ‘Hero,’ we’re not talking about ‘cozying up’ with the campaign, or even joining it. We don’t even endorse him, if you want to get technical, we just say he’s the best option this time around, a position held by millions of the most progressive sectors of the working class and the oppressed nationalities. We publish our critiques of him, mainly on Iraq, and encourage other things, like Green industrial policy, that can unite progressive AND the center vs McCain.
Mainly, we’re gearing up to focus on McCain in an even deeper manner.
Nor do we call ourselves or define ourselves in this project as ‘radical left’ or ‘revolutionaries’, because that’s not what the project is. We’re ‘Progressives for Obama’–and we have no connection to the official campaign. Some of our members join it on a local level and some don’t. We’ve united a variety of perspectives.
We encourage them to organize independently, to take their existing grassroots groups and train them in electoral struggle, to ID voters, register voters, educate voters, organize them into their groups, become pollwatchers and election judges where they can, get out the vote, and consolidate the gains afterwards–all without even meeting with the official campaign, or giving a dime or a name to the Dems. It’s spelled out in the very first post on our site. think of it as building a nonpartisan, grassroots organization capable of both electoral and mass action. Naturally, people will do things their way, but this is what we encourage. But after its over, we’ll be in better shape to take on the White house no matter who is in it.
The right will red-bait Obama even if we don’t do a thing. The Swiftboaters are preparing extensive attacks on him as an agent of Hamas, the FARC, and many more bogey men around the globe. We will expose and oppose it. We will not do like a few on the far left and carry water or pile on for these reactionaries.
Finally, I don’t throw out socialist platitudes, weak or otherwise. Socialism has nothing directly to do with this campaign. But if you pull together a theoretical group, or a study group of the advanced, I’ll offer up some ideas about socialism and how to get there that are neither weak nor platitudes. I’ve been doing it regularly for some time.
In brief, if you think we’re saying jump into the Democratic party and tail it, you’ve got the wrong idea.
Ben Seattle said
Carl Davidson says:
Actually no–this is exactly the right idea. That is precisely the aim (and effect) of supporting Obama.
It is worse than that also.
The Democratic Party will do everything it can to hijack the antiwar movement.
When Obama is in office–what will he do? Continue the war.
And where will the antiwar movement be after after wasting time, energy and focus on promoting illusions about Obama?
Nowhere.
What we need is a mass revolutionary organization which takes a clear stand against this kind of nonsense and treachery.
No such organization exists at present.
How can we create one? I have written down my ideas on this at:
How to Build the Party of the Working Class
http://struggle.net/ben/2008/222-HowTo.htm
Ben Seattle
Red Ed said
How does the anti-imperialist left relate supporting the lesser of two evil imperialists?
How can one be a “progressive” and work on the behalf of an imperialist party?
If progressives want to be in the electoral game, then where have these so-called progressives been the last 30 years while various alternative parties (Citizens, New Alliance, Green) have formed and faltered?
Saying it is important to support Obama (Kerry, Gore, Clinton, etal) because this is where millians of the most progressive workers are at is tailing after the masses.
Carl Davidson said
Red Ed: How does the anti-imperialist left relate supporting the lesser of two evil imperialists?
Will imperialism still be standing, albeit weakened, when this war ends? If so, then one imperialist faction will oppose another in ordering the troops out, not mainly at their own volition, of course, by that’s not the point. Our internationalist task vis-a-vis the people of Iraq is to get from here to there sooner rather than later.
Red Ed: How can one be a “progressive” and work on the behalf of an imperialist party?
Easy. You encourage votes for one imperialist against another, but do little or nothing to party-build for either major party. Instead build your own grassroots nonpartisan groups to work the election in the process, noting that nonpartisan doesn’t mean anti-partisan. You’re using the election, in part, to construct the building-blocks of a future electoral alliance to displace the two present parties.
RedEd: If progressives want to be in the electoral game, then where have these so-called progressives been the last 30 years while various alternative parties (Citizens, New Alliance, Green) have formed and faltered?
That’s easy, too. I’ve been in most of them, New Party, Citizens Party, Greens. The reason they falter is the US election laws, which are the most reactionary in the modern world. They can be changed, step by step, but it requires a ‘democracy movement’ between elections to do so. But getting the left to do that requires a break with the semi-anarchist deviation that’s widespread among the advanced fighters. Note that i don’t claim we make radical change BY elections, but we certainly have to pass THROUGH elections to get there, ie, the ‘long march through the institutions’ strategy, which is appropriate to non-revolutionary conditions.
RedEd: Saying it is important to support Obama (Kerry, Gore, Clinton, et al) because this is where millions of the most progressive workers are at is tailing after the masses.
Only if you don’t put out your own independent view of the situation and don’t build your own organizations, ie, you don’t practice independence and initiative in a common front. Besides, the masses are actually divided. The Black community here where I am, Beaver County, PA is 95 percent for Obama, but the older white workers only about 20 percent as of the primary. Eighty percent went for Hillary in the primary. A good number of those may go for McCain in the general. You don’t ‘tail’ or ‘bow to spontaneity’ simply by picking one of the candidates, or picking none, but by not politically contending independently with the main danger in various settings, and not building your own organizational strength, but simply going along for the ride with the existing official campaign apparatus.
Besides, ‘tailism’ is only one danger. Another was ‘Otsovism,’ which Lenin warned against, especially in relation to elections. Google it to learn more.
Keith said
“Left” Communists have a great deal to say in praise of Bolsheviks. One sometimes feels like telling them to praise less and try to understand the tactics of the Bolsheviks more, to familiarize themselves with them more! The Bolsheviks took part in the elections to the Russian bourgeois parliament, the Constituent Assembly, in September November 1917. Were these tactics correct or not? If not, then this should be clearly stated and proved, for it is essential in working out correct tactics for international Communism. If they were correct, then we must draw certain conclusions.
Five Ridges said
The Bolsheviks participated in the Duma. But they run their own socialist representatives. They didn’t support candidates of the bourgeois parties.
Lenin taught that monopoly capitalism and its monopoly bourgeois class are necessarily anti-democratic. Obama is no monopoly-capitalist “democrat”. It would have been ok to support a candidate if it were Reverend Wright. But Obama? Didn’t he repudiate the radical politics of Rev. Wright?
It’s ok for the Left to put some emphasis on isolating the Republican faction of the ruling monopoly bourgeosie class. But it is equally important not to spare the isolation of the Democratic wing. Especially so since the Democratic Party establishment poses and projects itself as the party of the working class.
The challenge of the Left is to develop a real alternative and opposition: a strong independent mass movement for socialism and against imperialism and fascism. It is true that there is a material basis for opportunism: a big petty bourgeoisie. But I also recall a survey found that 65 per cent of Americans believed corporations had too much control over the U.S. This reveals a widespread level of anti-capitalist sentiment a mong the working people. The material basis for wide mass acceptance of socialist ideas is there.
It’s true there is no revolutionary situation in the U.S. but this only means conditions are not ripe for a socialist seizure of power. It does not mean that conditions are not ripe for agitation and propaganda for socialism.
What is need is for socialist propaganda and agitation on key bread and butter issues, such as jobs and lay-offs, oil and food prices, home foreclosures, health costs, immigrations and raids. The Left has not been able to win over the masses to the socialist viewpoint on these issues.
Even when a socialist revolution is still not yet on the calendar, the Left can mobilize working people to fight for socialist-oriented policies such as a stop to lay-offs, channeling speculative and war funding to public education, health-care and jobs, public control of energy prices, nationalization and public takeover of the energy industry, bailing out the working-class homeowners instead of Wall Street, a stop to deporting, raiding and scapegoating immigrants.
The antiwar movement is good. But the invasion and occupation of Iraq is only one aspect of U.S. imperialism. Even with the withdrawal of US troops there, U.S. imperialism will continue to run a puppet government there.
So there is the need to expose imperialism thoroughly and rally the masses against all forms of U.S. imperialism. The Left should build a mass movement against the superprofit exploitation by US monopoly capital of poor countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America through unjust trade, investment and lending. It should also rouse the masses to fight neocolonial and CIA subversion overseas. The Left should develop the anti-globalization movement into a movement against imperialism.
Obama and Clinton have been able to ride on populist rhetoric to channel the frustrations of the working people toward their election campaign and support. Neither they and McCain should be allowed to claim the allegiance and authority to speak and act for the working people of America when they belong to the leadership of the two parties most responsible for the economic crisis battering the working people.
It is time that for a strong, real Marxist-led anti-imperialist and antifascist movement for socialism. To support Obama would be a betrayal of this task.
Nando said
There are several parts to the history here…
First, in fact, the Bolsh. did support the Cadets in run-off elections to the duma (if none of the working class parties won the first round and if the Cadets were facing Black Hundreds candidates (i.e. tsarist supporters). The Cadets (constitutional democrats) were essentially the liberal reform opposition party (to the Tsarists) that the left associated with the industrial capitalists.
The details of this are covered in a number of works, but one of the most extensive is “Bolshevik in the Tsarist Duma.”
What it points out is that communists have (correctly) not had rigid tactical principles (easily deduced from superficial analysis of class character of various forces) but instead have (when they are at their best) applied concrete analysis of concrete conditions.
In other works Keith insists that “4. There is absolutely no precedent whatsoever in Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao or any revolutionary experience for an anti-electoral stance.” And
Five Ridges (above) essentially insists that there are.
My point: Politics doesn’t work by “precedent.” And there is a hopelessly, cripplingly dogmatic method that says “Lenin did this, so it is ok.” Or “Lenin didn’t do it, so it isn’t ok.”
Let me point out what is TRULY unprecedented:
No one has tried to carry out a revolutionary strategy in a stable bourgeois democracy — where that electoral system is entrenched and not essentially challenged by wings of the ruling classes.
In other words, I think we can see the electoral approaches of Engels, Lenin or Prachanda emerging in countries where the struggle (in so many ways) involves making a final (decisive) break with medieval, semi-feudal forms of autocracy. And where the right of the people to determine politics is itself a relatively new, controversial and radical idea (around which bourgeois democrats and communists have a common struggle against the semi-feudal autocrats — whether the Black Hundreds in Russia, or the Junkers in Wilhelmian Germany, or the military backers of King Gyenendra in Nepal).
So when you are facing an UNPRECEDENTED challenge — i.e. mounting a radical challenge to a stable bourgeois democratic state, it doesn’t make sense to pour over the tactical “precedents” of those making revolution in states that were Tsarist or monarchist or run by warlords. Far better to learn from the methods of great revs, not copy their tactics as if they are formulaic prescriptions (or precedents).
You can’t overthrow a corrupt and oppressive system unless you attract people who distain that system, and unless you train broader forces in that kind of distain. You can’t be ambivolent about the preferred political form of rule created, maintained, and justified by your oppressors — you have to oppose it, expose it, dissect it, and rally people to de-legitimize it.
I don’t think our task is to “extend” or “perfect” American democracy. I don’t think our task is to “take the political democracy and spread it to the economic realm.” I don’t think we are trying to “take back America” (as if “we” ever had it). And I certainly don’t think our task is to make real the ideals of the “founding fathers” — or (fundamentally) uphold the Constitution against those who would tear it down.
This is a political system created and then endlessly refined/reshaped to be a framework for a particular social order. They are inseparable. And that political system is mythologized (wreathed!) in a cloud of lies and illusions (that portray it as “rule by the people.”)
I don’t think we should have distain for people who have illusions about American democracy (who think they “decide” who becomes president, or that their votes “change” things, or that their electoral mobilizations can “pressure” the direction of the system and its policites) — just as i don’t think we should distain people who think “prayer changes things.”
But I do think we need some clarity ourselves — or (to put it another way) develop unity and self-identity among those who have a common clarity on the nature of this system. And then, starting for that unity, we need to do some creative work.
There are basically two arguments for joining the Obama campaign:
a) Obama is better than McCain for the people (i.e. he is somehow a democratic, progressive candidate who, in power, will produce “better” policies for the people and the world).
b) It doesn’t much matter what Obama stands for (“he isn’t left, and we know it”) — but there is a genuine enthusiasm for him among key social bases who we want to connect with, so we need to support him as the price of admission to their lives and political discussions.
I think both of these arguments are wrong.
First, history is full of “progressive” candidates who were crucial for carrying out the system’s most sinister deeds. LBJ won by calling Goldwater a warmongerer (which he was!), and then proceeded to carry out the 1965 land invasion of Vietnam. Clinton won by arguing that Bush-daddy didn’t feel the pain of ordinary people — and then abolished welfare and other social programs (in ways Reagan could only dream about). Clinton carried out invasions and attacks on more countries than his Republican predecessors (Somalia, Serbia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and more.) There is no basis (but elaborate self-delusion) for assuming that an Obama is worse for the empire than a McCain.
And, as for the second argument: I am not particularly stampeded when large sections of the population burst into political life with great infatuations for charismatic (and untested) political candidates. I think we shoujld respect the moment, and welcome it when the system draws discontented people into motion. But I think we should be alert to deception and cooptation — and the ways that people are TRAINED in the political illusions and methods of this system. I don’t think we should mock them when their first political acts are naive or politically uninformed — people will try many things as they learn about the world.
But I think we should expose reality (through means we have available) and also work to reach them as they themselves collide with that reality, and the collisions open doors for new radical insights. But connecting with people gripped by illusions does not mean agreeing to embrace those illusions (since that would precisely preclude some of the work that are needed.)
American history is full of such things (though with American historical amnesia every event seems new.) The Henry George movement of the late 1800s, the Populists that followed, the New Deal, the Garvey movement, the Henry Wallace “Progressive” dreams of extending the New Deal during the Cold War, even the populist side of racist George Wallace’s denunciation “pointed headed government bureaucrats” swept up sections of the people, into incredibly simplistic “audacity of hope.” Imagine if we had to trail “key social bases” into every mood and current?
Carl keeps saying “this is not a rev situation.” Which no one disputes. And which isn’t the issue. But he seems to believe that it is madness to do rev political work unless the time has ripened. But in fact if you don’t do rev political work all long, the time will never ripen — because the work we do is part of what ripens things (and part of what makes the difference between a constitutional crisis and a revolutionary situation.)
Is rev political work (preparatory work) is out of order? No. How else does one prepare for a rev situation (in a set of future still-unforseeable conditions) if we do not do rev work now.
TellNoLies said
Nando,
Thank you for this thoughtful response. Your analyses have forced me on more than one occasion to rethink and refine my own views even if they differ with yours.
I’d like to unite with a few main point you make before raising my objections:
1. Previous historical experiences in semi-feudal or colonial societies offer us little guidance in dealing with the question of participation by revolutionaries in the electoral arena in an advanced capitalist democracy.
2. The fact that he would be preferable to John McCain is not itself a compelling argument for supporting Obama.
3. Neither is the fact that there is a big upsurge of support for Obama among the oppressed.
I also agree that what we need to do is to develop clarity among ourselves about the nature of electoral politics within this political system.
Where I disagree is with the notion that the fundamental task of revolutionaries vis a vis elections is in exposing people “illusions” about their nature. Before we can really tackle the problem of the illusions of the masses, I think we have to deal with the crude understanding of the role of elections that reduces them to nothing more than a rigged game to legitimize the rule of the capitalist class. This is only a partial understanding of a sophisticated system that ignores two important considerations:
1. The role of elections in very real battles between different and shifting fractions of the ruling class.
2. The importance of some degree of transparency and honesty in the electoral system in order for it to fulfill its legitimizing functions for the larger social system.
Taken together these things mean that the electoral arena must be viewed as a real arena of (admittedly profoundly unequal) struggle and not simply as a form of theater that should be excluded from consideration of possible revolutionary scenarios.
The electoral process is one of the most powerful defense mechanisms that capitalism has precisely because it is NOT simply theater. I don’t think for a moment that we can simply vote out capitalism and imperialism. I do think, however, that the limitations of the electoral process can only be exposed on the scale that we need by a process of actually exhausting what that process can deliver. We are in a situation in which the left (never mind the revolutionary left) lacks the capacity to even conduct a serious national electoral effort of the sort that would sharply reveal the limits of the system’s claims to represent the “will of the people.” It is a mistake however, I believe, to think that under such conditions it is acceptable to retreat to agitating and propagandizing against the electoral system. The problem we face in this moment is not an electoral system that is blocking the conscious and organized revolutionary aspirations of the masses, but of a left that has singularly failed to draw out and organize those aspirations effectively.
In the mean time the electoral process continues and despite our weaknesses will none the less bring to the fore some real contradictions. We’ve already seen this in the theft of the past two elections by electoral fraud. With Obama, however, the likely extent of the mischief and the potential for popular outrage, particularly on the part of the Black community, is considerably greater than was the case for Gore or Kerry.
If, for example, the election is stolen from Obama (or he gets shot or somehow Clinton manages to derail his nomination or sabotage his campaign or…) there will be a powerful impulse on the part of broad sections of the masses to get out into the streets. Obama himself however, determined to demonstrate his commitment to social peace at all costs, will almost certainly not call people into the streets. We should not confuse a scenario such as this with a revolutionary situation, but we should be able to recognize the importance of being able to push it further than Obama or the rest of the Democratic leadership will want to and to see the possibility of creating real fractures between the rank and file of the Democratic Party and their leadership. This will be a moment where it will really matter to know who is who in the Obama campaign, to know who will repeat Obama’s calls for calm and who will have finally reached their limit. These are not things we should be discovering the day after the elections either, but things we should be figuring out NOW, things that can only really be discovered by being a part of the campaign.
A revolutionary left that is unable to participate in the electoral process and push it to its limits is simply not going to be able to make revolution in a country with a robust system of competitive elections.
The anarchist slogan that “if voting could change anything, it would be illegal” contains an important grain of truth. But the conclusion that the response to this is to abstain from participation is, I think, a fatal error. Our job, on the contrary, is to force the system to in one way or another “make voting illegal.” While we are presently a long way from being able to run our own campaigns, we should recognize the mass disenfranchisement of Black people that has occurred in many places as an instance of the system “making voting illegal” and we should recognize that the Obama campaign is likely to draw this out on a much larger scale than ever before. We should not be on the sidelines when this occurs.
Carl Davidson said
I’m finding myself largely in agreement with ‘TellNoLies,’ especially when he (or she?) says:
—-
“The electoral process is one of the most powerful defense mechanisms that capitalism has precisely because it is NOT simply theater. I don’t think for a moment that we can simply vote out capitalism and imperialism. I do think, however, that the limitations of the electoral process can only be exposed on the scale that we need by a process of actually exhausting what that process can deliver. We are in a situation in which the left (never mind the revolutionary left) lacks the capacity to even conduct a serious national electoral effort of the sort that would sharply reveal the limits of the system’s claims to represent the “will of the people.” It is a mistake however, I believe, to think that under such conditions it is acceptable to retreat to agitating and propagandizing against the electoral system. The problem we face in this moment is not an electoral system that is blocking the conscious and organized revolutionary aspirations of the masses, but of a left that has singularly failed to draw out and organize those aspirations effectively.”
—-
I also think ‘Nando’ is right to say we have to deal with the present conditions and task, finding a revolutionary strategy in a period of relatively stable bourgeois democracy. But after that, we have a number of disagreements.
First it’s true that no one here has yet tried to argue with my position that we’re in a non-revolutionary situation. Instead, we’re arguing over what I think follows from that, ie, recognizing that there are different sets of strategy and tactics that apply to the two conditions (and I agree in advance, there is no iron wall between then). What I think is that much of our radical left, including many here, take their pick from the tools more appropriate to the latter rather than the former.
For instance, take the claim that we can do, or should do ‘agitation and propaganda for socialism’ today. Stating it this way confuses things. What is agitation? What is propaganda? they are rather different, and not the same.
Propaganda is taking a relative complex set of ideas to relatively small numbers of people, namely the advanced fighters, and conducting revolutionary education. It is essential to do this today, especially the theoretical side of it, when socialism is an essentially contested concept, like ‘Good Christian,’ you have to define it to use it. All the old definitions of socialism are in disarray, with many proven to be dead ends. Many new ones are on the rise, and its important for the advanced fighters to know about this and be involved in the task. as noted earlier, some of us have been doing just this for nearly two decades, and are finally making decent progress.
Agitation is different. It takes a single or small number of ideas, and casts them out widely to the masses in their millions, or at least tens of thousands, exposing the crime or outrage as an instance of the oppressive order. It drives that point home with examples and straight-forward argument, with the aim of the mass taking action against the outrage, and organizing themselves to try to reverse it.
This is important, too. It’s what we do when we speak against the war, against police brutality, or for the just resolution of a strike. But it’s foolish to claim, in this agitation, that the people must take ‘all power to the workers councils’ in order to stop the war, discipline the police, or win the strike. It’s not only foolish, it actually trivializes our actual socialist tasks today.
As for the electoral arena, the left and progressives haven’t had truly mass parties or options since the 1920s, when the ruling class, panicked by the gains of both the Non-Partisan Leagues and the Socialist Party of Debs, reversed a number of election law–fusion, proportional representation, ballot access, etc–that had made it feasible for these parties to grow.
Another reason, more recent, is the 501C3 status, which is often the first thing a new progressive group tries to get so they can get foundation grants from tax-exempt monies. We know it well. You can get the grant, but you sign on the dotted line that 1) you will not tell people to vote for or against any candidate for office and 2) you will not tell people to vote for or against any given piece of legislation. How’s that for a federal subsidy to the anarcho-syndicalist trend? Or as Lenin called it, the police snare in the reform.
All of these can be turned around and worked around. The problem is that is a protracted effort. one that can’t be done in the six month or year prior to an election. And most of you know as well as I do what arguments are raised against doing this work.
So if you want to know why we don’t have a credible alternative apart from occasional candidates and battles thrown up by the two parties, this is where you start. Naturally, there are more reasons, but they are further down the pike.
I call the strategy I advocate ‘the long march through the institutions’ precisely because illusions have to be dissolved, but I’m wise enough to know that they don’t get dissolved simply by people like me or you giving speeches and writing articles, or by gimmicks and spectacle. On a mass scale, people learn from their experiences, step by step, and what they read about them from dozens of sources. The important thing for the revolutionaries is to be taking those steps with them, so as to be in the best position when it comes to summing up experiences.
an hero said
This is not a debate over whether people engage the mainstream political arena or not, as tellnolies and Carl seem to see it. The debate is over how to engage, and for what. Is the spectrum of possibilities really exhausted by Carl’s ‘long march through the institutions’, or the RCP’s increasingly irrelevant sectarianism? If so, then I frankly think the best thing to do, taking a page from Zizek, is literally nothing. As to the question “for what?”, if it is not for revolution, for an overthrow of existing institutions (the very ones Carl wants to march through), including “progressive institutions” (recognizing their role in the larger machine of capital-imperialism), then it’s not worth it.
To those who want to bring up historical precedents of revolutionaries engaging the electoral realm, let’s dig into that a bit. I think we all agree that the revolutionary Left is profoundly weak at this juncture. Now looking at every single significant engagement by revolutionaries in the electoral realm, they engaged it from a position of strength, particularly relative to our own position. To argue for “engagement” the way that Carl and even tellnolies seem to be putting forward is to argue for capitulation. It’s like showing up to the negotiating table KNOWING that your enemy has all the cards in his hands! You are bound to end up singing his tune.
This is why, at the very least, revolutionaries need to be clear on what it means to be a revolutionary. And this knowledge is not well served by a logic that splits history into “revolutionary” and “non-revolutionary” situations, simply to superimpose the corresponding apriori program. If you go to the negotiating table knowing who you are, knowing what you want, and having a politically mobilized base (of virtually any size) then you are in a much better position to engage in the mainstream political realm. And if you have a living analysis of the situation (and by living I also mean a political practice, not just a theoretical conception), not based upon tactical precedents in some crude way, then you have all the tools that communist revolutionaries have ever needed to make a revolution.
In fact, if you do not have this BEFORE you engage the mainstream political realm, then you are not putting forward revolutionary politics, and you are not going to be effective at engaging in the mainstream political realm. There is a minimum threshold of political coherence and relevance that needs to be attained before you can even play the game. This is why I say that Carl and Keith can’t even sellout right. They want to set aside the goals and means of revolution for a long off “revolutionary situation”, while at the same time they go through this farce of gaining a seat at the table of capital-imperialism. The better to change it, apparently, but not destroy it. At any rate, they clearly have and will continue to fail at both endeavors.
The point is to make revolutionary politics a part of the mainstream political situation. Does anyone believe that the programs on offer, throughout the left and in this thread, are capable of doing that?
Carl Davidson said
‘An Hero,’ you almost make my case. On one hand, we’re too weak even to work an election; on the other, we’re compromising our revolutionary advances elsewhere. Sorry, that doesn’t work too well. I’m arguing that we use the election to build up our own grass roots groups capable of electoral struggle as well as mass and direct action. You’ve got to start somewhere, and I’m saying do it at the very base. How that is hoping for ‘a seat at the table’ is beyond me. Finally, there’s more than one way to capitulate. Our base among the activist-minded youth is working in this arena, whether you and I do anything or not. Your’s concedes the arena and them to the liberals without lifting a finger. You’re left in a position like the Sparts, with a newspaper demanding communism, and telling them not to do what may be their first entry into politics.
an hero said
Carl, what is your aim? Is it to overthrow the current social system and those who rule it, or is it something else?
Further, you’ve been running your politics for the last thirty years. Forget waiting till the end of this latest election to take stock of what has been gained, shouldn’t you be able to point to some grass roots groups capable of electoral struggle and mass action that have or can move things in a revolutionary direction now?
The point is that you are NOT interested in revolutionary politics. You are doing something else. And all your pragmatics, talk about “playing with the big boys”, and lectures in “reality” disguise the fact that your program has no practical relation to advancing revolutionary goals.
What seems superficially practical and pragmatic in your politics actually shows itself to be eminently unpractical when it comes to achieving goals that are beyond what already exists. And you should be willing to acknowledge the poverty of your own program in relation to its achievements (or lack of) in the last 30yrs, as much as you are eager to school everyone in your bland “wisdom”.
I want to turn the table over and set it on fire. You explicitly do not want to do that. Over and over you stress the need to work within the system, to work for their candidates, etc.
an hero said
As for your attempts to characterize me as a paper-hawking spart, on what basis are you aiming this particular slander at me? Why is it that someone who opposes your brand of social-democracy must be put into a box with dogmatics, sectarians, and abstentionists?
I have not put forward an abstentionist position. I have argued against deviations of ultraleftism. I don’t intend to concede the arena, but to engage in it with a REVOLUTIONARY program. This is very different than your approach, or the approach of groups like the RCP.
Carl Davidson said
Lighten up, ‘An Hero.’ My point about the Sparts was mostly in jest, although it has a grain of truth, since my reading of your position was that people should stay away from the campaign and the election, at least this year.
I want us to be rid of capitalism, moving toward a classless, fully automated, post-scarcity social order. I’ve taken part in one ML formation after another ever since SDS, until the last one collapsed in the mid-1980s. At that point, I decided, along with a few others, to break decisively with dogma and work to understand the world as it is, and how it actually works, in order to better change it, and get where I think we need to get.
I have little tolerance for phrases like ‘turning over the table, and setting it on fire’, which doesn’t tell you a damn thing about what to do, what to fight for and how, and what to take to the masses, door to door.
‘Playing with the big kids’, to me, has nothing to do with dealing with the upper crust. It has everything to do with setting aside infantile leftism and anarchism, and talking seriously, whether it’s ‘bland’ or otherwise.
And if you think pragmatism is shallow, it’s because you don’t understand it. I can make a good case that it’s a key part of the modern scientific method, and the dia-mat of the 20th and 21st Centuries, and certainly better than Stalin’s pamphlet and warmed-over, upside-down Hegelianism.
Keith said
An Hero made this remark:
“I frankly think the best thing to do, taking a page from Zizek, is literally nothing.”
no one commented on this. I commend Hero for saying it. I think it is the secret msg of the anti-electoral trend. Do-nothingism.
But I am a wage slave who feels the horror of wage slavery even when and especially when I get paid. I want to overthrow capitalism. Doing nothing isn’t an option to me. I don’t get to live in master’s house. I don’t have time for do-nothingism. I see my kid and her friends getting trained for wage-slavery at their school. Do-nothingism might work for some not for me. This site should be a place for wage slaves to prepare, organize, conspire and plot. That was Lenin’s idea for a newspaper. Although every “Leninist” sect has a newspaper none of them use it to organize, but organizing is the opposite of do-nothingism.
An Hero said
LOL, such sharp and insightful reading Keith, that you could devine my “secret message”, but then it seems you missed something by jacketing me as an “anti-electoral” deviationists.
1) Regarding Keiths truncated quotation, my point was if the ONLY two choices for revolutionary politics are the failed programs of you and Carl, or the failed programs of the RCP and other sectarians, THEN the best thing to do is nothing. It’s a rhetorical point because I clearly do not believe those are the ONLY two options. In fact it is yourself and Carl who continuously pose things as if it’s 19-fucking-79.
2) Show me where I have made a principle out of not working in the electoral realm. My point has been to question on what basis one would engage electoral and mainstream politics. I have argued that revolutionaries should engage it from the perspective of revolutionary goals, which are decidedly not conformable with a method of a “long march” through the VERY INSTITUTIONS THAT WE AIM TO OVERTHROW!
Keith, I don’t care about your working class bonafides, and I don’t understand why people who are so comfortable with the oppression of working people that they’re are willing to see it continue indefinately are so quick to wrap themselve in an oppressed identity/experience (or rather I know all too well). My point is that you and Carl’s pragmatism IS IN FACT “do-nothingism”, just as the policies of the RCP are ULTIMATELY do-nothingism because they will never approach the revolutionary goals of the overthrow of the State or the radical negation of capitalism.
So cry me a river, but you’re not doing a bloody thing but spinning your wheels IF you’re jumping into this election without a REVOLUTIONARY program.
Carl,
“Turning over the table and setting fire” isn’t an empty phrase anymore than your “long march through the institutions”. In fact it is exactly posed against your own encapsulation of your own deadend politics. I know it’s a crazy idea, but it seems to me that a revolution is going to require the overthrow of the ruling system, and that this is a fairly destructive process entailing more than a few fires being set, in the hearts and minds of the masses as much as anything else.
And it also seems to me that if you wait until “The Time” before you work on the practical and theoretical necessities of actually accomplishing a revolutionary overturning of the power structure, it will never happen. We need to think strategically today about how to build the kind of organization that can take on the power structure and WIN. And what is at issue between me and you, as much as anything, is what “winning” means at all. Because that will define HOW you go about achieveing your goals.
It seems that people need to go back and read State and Revolution, cause communists today only seem to be concerned with acquiring State power, and not with destroying the State. If all you want is to gain State power, then a “long march through the institutions” makes sense, but if you want to see a radical negation of the prior State, if you don’t want to just be the new face on the same machine, you have to approach things like a jacobin or a bolshevik. And maybe when we’re done understanding this aspect we can begin to write our own “What is to be Done”.
As for your “reading”, you seem to only hear the arguments and positions that frame your own belief system as much as you actually read and understand what is right in front of you. There is only one person in this thread who has put forward a principle of not working in electoral politics, and that has been Eddy/Red Ed.
Regarding pragmatism, there is nothing wrong with having practical aims and achieving them, it is when the “achievable” becomes the limits of your horizon, and more so when the “achievable” is FALSELY posited as patiently working within the very system that we aim to move humanity beyond, without explicitly and militantly putting forward a revolutionary alternative, in other words it is YOUR pragmatism which is a problem.
And finally…
No, Carl, I won’t lighten up, exactly because I do take all of this very seriously.
Carl Davidson said
OK, ‘An Hero,’ now I get it. You want to destroy the state and ‘radically negate’ capitalism, where something else, yet to be defined but revolutionary and libratory, will emerge and blossom from the ashes, without a state.
You’re right. This is an anarchist position, and the ‘long march through the institutions’ strategy makes no sense for it. We really don’t have much to discuss regarding electoral strategy and tactics, since we’re not in the ball park.
The purpose of this ‘long march’ is to wage the ‘war of position,’ acculumlating points of popular power and exposing the limits of the institutions of the current order in practice, so as to displace and supplant them when the ‘war of manuever’, or armed insurrection, is timely. Far from ‘waiting’ for a revolutionary crisis, the ‘long march’ is a constant school of preparation for it, have workers and their allies taking control and running these institutions, or exhausting and replacing them, as best as they can, even today.
But you’re right. It’s goal is to ‘win the battle for democracy’ and establish a new government with a different class, and its popular allies, in power. It’s for a state, and you’re not.
In turn, in uses this political power, ie, a state , to launch a long period of reconstruction in what is still a class society with a mixed economy, ie, socialism, a long transitional form between class society and classless society. The degrees of violence in this transition is not up to us, but our adversaries, and the better we prepare ourselves, in advance, to defend ourselves against violence and fascism, the less likely, and less intense, it will be.
It doesn’t matter to me so much what your stand on elections in general is. It’s your stand on the current one that’s more important, and I don’t hear you arguing for participation in any way in it for any existing candidate. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if this is so, at least for this arena this year, Keith’s ‘Do-Nothingism’ point is well taken.
And as far as my supposedly ‘failed’ battles over the years are concerned, you really don’t know what you’re talking about, or even what they are or were. Plenty of my projects have been defeated or failed, but a good number have also done, or are doing, rather well.
Even so, how’s the slogan go? ‘Fight, Fail, fight Again, fail agian…until our victory. that is the logic of the people.’
Ben Seattle said
Carl Davidson says:
Actually no–this is exactly the right idea. That is precisely the aim (and effect) of supporting Obama.
It is worse than that also.
The Democratic Party will do everything it can to hijack the antiwar movement.
When Obama is in office–what will he do? Continue the war.
And where will the antiwar movement be after after wasting time, energy and focus on promoting illusions about Obama?
Nowhere.
What we need is a mass revolutionary organization which takes a clear stand against this kind of nonsense and treachery.
No such organization exists at present.
How can we create one? I have written down my ideas on this at:
How to Build the Party of the Working Class
(http, etc) struggle.net/ben/2008/222-HowTo.htm
Ben Seattle
An Hero said
Carl,
This is exactly why I suggested people read State and Revolution, because if my position is anarchist, then so is Lenin’s. Did you miss the part where Lenin talks explicitly about the destruction of the old State as a part of the development of a qualitatively different kind of State? The State is not a piece of machinery which can simply be wielded by any who apparently gather the reins in their hands. And in fact this is one of the big illusions of the current political debate, that is, whoever wins the election in November will not “run” the State, rather it is the State that will run them. This will be as much the case for Obama as McCain or Bush, particularly in relation to foreign policy affairs, but also in domestic affairs. This is the case due to several important aspects of the American system of governance relating to federalism, plurality, custom law, and the fact that capitalism is not up for a vote.
Now does this equate with an abstentionist program? No, there is no principle against involvement in elections, but neither is there a principle in favor of involvement in elections. The questions, yet again, are for whom and for what, and then how.
With regards to this election cycle, exactly because of the weakness of the revolutionary Left, it is my position that we should put our efforts into organizing and developing an explicitly revolutionary politics, which will develop into a movement with corresponding tendencies and organizations. That we should do this, if we want to advance the day that we can resolve the litany of intractable problems facing humanity today, rather than push for unity around Obama’s campaign. And I argue for doing this even as we recognize the unique possibilities that may develop out of Obama’s campaign due to many of the dynamics that tellnolies has pointed out. But I think if we are to truly understand and take advantage of these possibilities, so as to push them closer to a radical resolution, then we are going to need to have a contending set of politics, not some filigree around the left edge of bourgeois politics.
Again, I don’t think this is an all purpose proposal for all time. Unlike you, I don’t believe there are only two programs (one for revolutionary situations and one for non-revolutionary situations). I think this approach takes into account what exists and what can be done, in relation to where we are at and where we would like to end up, assuming we want to overthrow the State and develop beyond the capitalist mode of existence.
BobH said
A question for those advocating electoral strategies: I notice there’s been no critical summing up of the long history of communists taking electoral strategies, from the CP’s of France and Italy after WW2 down to the CPI(M) in India today making deals with big business and evicting peasants in Nandigram. There’s been a pretty consistent pattern of either compromising out of any meaningful radical change or of setting up the masses for a coups, etc. Surely this historical track record has a relation to the perennial question of how we relate to elections?
Keith insists nothing in Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. negates working in the electoral arena. What about the rich historical experience which shows how dangerous and corrosive it is working for a tiny piece of the pie?
Keith said
It seems to me that part the problem here is that we have a more fundamental disagreement about electoral work.
This is an essay I wrote in another context. It doesn’t address all the issues that BobH raises, and none of the particulars. I have some essays summing up our attempts to win local elections that I will post if there is interest. It also adresees some of the issues raised by Hero. I agree with Hero on the importance of Lenin’s “State and Revolution.” It is a theoretical compromise with anarchism. The only thing to add though is that Lenin’s book Left Wing Communism is equally important. What Carl has calls the “Long March through institutions” is Lenin’s view and he argues it thoroughly in that book.
Speak Truth to Power? No Thanks! Let’s Take Power! Electoral Politics: Build Dual Power, Dismantle the State
Participation in electoral politics is one of the more controversial issues among significant portions of the Left. Many revolutionaries don’t vote and don’t participate in local elections. Two misconceptions blind revolutionaries to the possibilities of electoral politics. First they see revolution as an insurrectionary event in the distant future to prepare for, and the primary means of preparing is protesting and perhaps publishing a newspaper. Revolutionaries opposed to electoral politics have many other objections but let’s not rehearse them all here; they are as familiar as they are tired. Electoral politics is one of the best tactics available to revolutionaries who want people to seize power immediately to dismantle the state piece by piece and replace it with the revolutionary democratic power of organized self-determining people. Elections and the system’s (false) claim to democracy are the Achilles’ heel of the system which is only protected by our own inactivity.
“Protest Mode” is the way that Amiri Baraka described a form of organizing that made demands on the “powers that be” but failed to actually take on the task of organizing to take power. As Baraka put it, “we need to organize to take power where we can literally put our hands on it.” What does he mean? In the 1994 speech, he joked that would-be revolutionaries announce “death to the bourgeoisie, we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do that to the bourgeoisie” but these revolutionaries can’t get a school board member elected in a local election, “they can’t even elect a dog catcher.”
Participating in electoral politics is full of risks, but the risks are our opportunities as well. The system tries to constrain electoral campaigns to promote the individual candidate and limit mass democratic participation. This undemocratic structure is even more developed and dangerous once a candidate wins. Once the newly-elected official enters the halls of government, the people are kept out! This way the system can work over politicians like Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We cannot surrender to this imposed anti-democratic structure. But the best way to destroy it is to organize electoral struggles along revolutionary democratic lines and to build a revolutionary democratic movement that retains precedence over individual candidates. We not only need to beat the system in the elections, we must continue to beat the system after the elections. A real “people’s campaign” must maintain its independent momentum and organization (dual power) to support its candidates after they have won but also, if needed, to remove them by recall if they decide to sell out. This is one of the best ways to build dual power because it strengthens the movement while at the same time it weakens the power of the system by undermining it. One of the main tasks of an elected revolutionary democratic candidate is to start dismantling the antidemocratic structure of the system from within.
Nando said
I second BobH’s interest in summing up the history of c. election participation in western countries.
It stands out to me (methodologically) that the RCP developed its approach without any attempt to scratch at that. In 1980 their central committee announced that the strategies and tactics for advanced countries had not every been correctly developed — but it was mainly on a basis of some investigation into the approach to (a ) trade unionism and economic struggles and (b ) an adaptation to patriotism that had become the norm after 1935. There was not any summation of the electoral approaches or experiences (though there had been some of Allende, especially by Jorge Palacious, whose work was highly influential among Maoists in the U.S.)
It is a methodological problem that appears over and over — of reaching verdicts based on a rather superficial investigation of the past, and then (sometimes) fleshing the theory out more with data (after a verdict has been reached, and often in a way that serve to reinforce an already established theory). The RCP did considerable investigation into the Soviet Union’s restoration of capitalism — but on the basis of and in defense of a pre-established verdict (which had been laid down by Mao).
On the other hand, it is worth pointing out that there are two rather different arguments emerging from the RCP over election participation. One view often encountered views abstention from elections (and support for mainstream candidates) simply as a matter of principle: the parties are monopoly capitalist, the system is oppressive, exposure is needed, participation would imply collaboration. Interestingly, this common view is not the view of Avakian, who has explicitly and repeatedly argued that the decision on how to approach key elections and political moments needs to be made concretely and conjuncturally. In his memoir he describes agonizing (in 1972) over whether the then-RU should support McGovern. At the time, the Vietnamese Workers Party, allied organizations like the Black Workers Congress, and significant forces within the RU (including Label Bergman and Bill Hinton) were arguing for backing McGovern (who ran an antiwar Democratic presidential race against Richard Nixon). Avakian describes how the final decision had to be reach by examining the moment, and the implications of both support or non support. This (for some shocking) description of the 1972 decision process presumably appeared in his memoir because the elections of 2000 and 2004 had similar elements: It was hard to argue that there were not significant differences between the major presidential candidates (and their parties), there was a whiff of fascism coming from the Republican side, and in many ways the elections were posed as a rather important “fork in the road” for the system and its establishment.
Avakian was polemicizing against those who thought it was a no-brainer to abstain, and argued that there could be situations where the divisions in the ruling class were acute enough, the rev forces had influence enough, where a danger of fascist leap were immanent enough, that one might (tactically) align with the non-fascist forces (in order to exploit it all in a preparation for rev.)
The thinking that thought abstention is a no-brainer (because it is rooted in rigid, simple principles, rather than concrete conjunctural analysis) was a point of view that was also rather hostile to the RCP’s orientation toward World Can’t Wait (which involved a “main blow on the right” approach — even if it did not actually go over to electoral support for Democrats in key elections).
As for the historical point BobH made:
The experience with electoral work is a bit more complicated than BobH sketches.
It is true that there are a series of experience where people claimed to be taking “the electoral road” — and ended up in various disasters. The French and Italian CP down graded themselves to permanent cranky oppositions (that were not even particularly radical in their social critiques)… and then petered away as contenders. the Allende run for office (in chile during the 1970s) was successful — and then a disaster as a military coup negated the popular vote.
But there are also electoral experiences where parties were not proclaiming an electoral road — but were conceiving of work in both electoral arenas (and then within reactionary parliaments) as part of rev preparation — as opening for agitation, as ways of exposing the programs of other political forces, as a way to gain a national platform etc.
This was (essentially) the approach of V.I. Lenin’s forces in Russia (when a couple of years after the 1905 revolution, they overthrow their own previous abstentionist approach to the Duma elections, which had made more sense in the high tide of 1905-6), and ran in the various elections (winning a number of seats in the Duma, and using those seats as a way to legally reach and illegally organize whole sections of the urban workers.
Another example was the KPD, which held growing numbers of seats in the German Reichstag — and sharply contested with the other growing party there — the Nazis. Both of those parties (from sharply opposing poles and goals) created both private political armies (the Communist RotFront and the Nazi SA) in preparation for the forceful seizure of power — while contesting in elections as a political means of reaching and organizing their political base and potential allies.
Running in elections (a a public political offensive) is not identical with adopting an “electoral road” — and that distinction is often not clear to people in the U.S. because of history here.
It is worth noting that in many of these countries, electoral politics was a novelty that was sharply under attack by the fascist right. In Germany, the electoral system of Weimar was only a few years old (in the 1920s),And similarly, Lenin was participating in a duma electoral system that had been newly created (under Tsarism) as a series of mild reform concessions (intended to coopt and dampen calls for more radical change).
These were not long established, entrenched system (like we have in the U.S.) — and participating did not represent an endorsement of the institutions (elections, duma, reichstag) the various parties were participating in.
In Germany, the two most rapidly growing parties (KPD and the NSDAP-Nazis) — were each in their own, working to delegitimize the institutions of election and parliament. In Russia, the Duma was filled with tsarist Black Hundred forces that disdained the new reforms — and regularly demanded that their “colleagues” on the left benches be arrested and even shot.
Its entrenched stable character is not the only distinctive element in the U.S. electoral system (something it shares with Britain, Canada, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries.)
What is truly different is the way the U.S. system mashes minority parties (like a blender) and feeds them back into to major parties. This is because of its “winner take all” system — without proportionate representation — which makes it almost impossible for minority political forces to be represented in national institutions (either in congress or in national coalitions). Result: The Democrats are like a vast black hole that patiently attracts, sucks in, dismembers and disappears various “independent” political groupsing that try to form on its left edge. And the candidates are almost uniformly draw from the “center” and “right” of the Democratic party — turning the ingested left wing forces into a toothless caucus constantly throwing their own beliefs and principles into the bonfire of expediency. These dynamics are a very important part of the stability of the U.S. system, and a powerful obstacles toward using the electoral structure as means of radical political action.
The Nader experience of 2000 (close race nationally and in Florida with republicans squeaking through) had an unappreciated effect of convincing millions of disaffected people that daring to exit the Democratic orbit could be self-defeating. (People feel like they “made a self-indulgent political statement against Democratic corporate politics, but thereby helped elect the worst president in U.S. history.”)
In short: I’m agreeing that it is worth a look at the history of different rev. approaches to electoral politics. But also think that a clear, dry-eyed look at the particularities of U.S. electoral politics is important.
TellNoLies said
While I think folks on both sides of this debate are making valuable points, I think there is also a fair amount of talking past each other. While I have been arguing for some sort of support or engagement of the Obama campaign, its also clear to me how given the different gravities of the campaign and the revolutionary left, how limited our impact is likely to be and how great the risk of getting sucked into the logics of the Democratic Party are.
Rather than endlessly arguing over whether and how to support Obama’s bid for office, on which we are at something of an impasse here, I’d like to pose the question of what our response should be if that bid is blocked by more or less nakedly anti-democratic means, whether that is a coup by super-delegates in the Democratic Party, a stolen election (by any number of means), or a pre- or post-election assassination AND popular frustration begins to move into the streets.
Such an event would, I believe, transform a battle within the electoral arena over who will be president into a much broader fight over the basic democratic rights of broad sections of the people (in particular black folks). Such a situation would, I believe, create real openings to break away sections of the Democratic Party’s base from its (capitalist imperialist) leadership. In much the way that the fight over seating the delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic Convention helped set in motion a process of mass disillusionment with the Democratic Party, I believe such a fight could transform energy around the Obama campaign into something far more challenging for the system.
So, a few questions:
1. Do people think considering such scenarios is an at all fruitful way to think through the implications of different courses of action?
2. How might the involvement of conscious organized revolutionaries alter the outcome of such a scenario for the better or the worse?
3. What tactics would be necessary to get a hearing for our views in the hot mix of such a situation?
4. What would it mean to apply the mass line in such a situation? What do we think the most advanced ideas of the masses in movement would likely be? Around what line might we hope to unite all who could be united? What backwards lines would we be fighting?
5. What sort of preparations should be made in advance of such a situation?
TellNoLies said
Thank you again, Nando, for such a clear exposition of the international history of revolutionary left approaches to elections and the particular dilemmas confronting left interventions in the U.S. system.
There is a tendency to dismiss the importance of the structural particularities of the U.S. electoral system (especially the “winner take all” feature) as if all bourgeois democracies are the same. But I think it is something that we have to face squarely. The system in the U.S. has effectively blocked not only effective revolutionary left electoral action (which again should not be confused with belief in “the electoral road”) but also the development of an organizationally distinct social democratic or similar sort of party.
The winner take all system is, however, just one of the distinctive problems we have faced in the U.S.. The other is white supremacy and the de facto disenfranchisement of large numbers of black and brown people by a whole host of methods (felony disenfranchisement, obstacles to voter registration, workday voting, and all manner of dirty tricks). It is important here to also understand how the winner take all system creates profound incentives for voter suppression that go a long way towards explaining the low level of electoral participation in the U.S..
There is a tendency among revolutionaries to treat low voter turnout as a simple expression of disaffection with a rigged system that might somehow be translated into more radical extra-electoral action without having to go through the hassle of participating in elections. I now see this as wishful thinking that disregards the extent to which low voter turnout is rather an expression of demoralization in the face of a form of political repression.
What I think makes the Obama campaign importantly different from previous campaigns of progressive Dems is precisely its challenge to the political disenfranchisement and demoralization of historically excluded populations. One of the things that has inclined me towards trying to find some way to critically support this campaign is the incongruence of supporting the fight for the electoral enfranchisement of black people and the abstention from the efforts to actually put that enfranchisement into effect when attempts are made to actually build black political power.
(I’d also like to see some further discussion of the verdict on the Chilean case as I’ve not read Palacios.)
Keith said
I like the idea of summing up experiences. Has anyone here ever participated in an electoral struggle? Or led one?
Nando said
Keith writes:
First, i think the first part is a rather crude distortion of what revolutionary politics has been (and can be). And the second part romanticizes electoral politics in a way that can’t be realized.
If you look at the history of SDS, the Black Panthers, rev participation in the miners upsurge of 1970s, the activities during and after the LA Rebellion, the work to save the life of Mumia, decades of opposition to war, work of revolutionary artists (theater, music, literature, etc)…. it doesn’t fall into this pallid image of pathetic forms (protest plus a newspaper).
It is also a view that reduces “struggle” to merely “protest” — i.e. as if mass actions are merely complaints (and never disruptive, challenging, contageous etc.) And as if newspapers are “merely paper” — whereas throughout history they have inflamed, enformed, inspired, and organized. (Can we not aspire to stir hearts and minds the way a Tom Paine, or an Emory Douglas, or the Realist, or Iskra, or Lu Hsun — can’t our pens draw blood?)
yes there are forces and times that fit the image. Protest-as-usual gathering the same suspects (in a way that makes you want to friggin scream). yes there are boring, self-righteous, talking-to-self newspapers that are easy to dismiss and ignore.
But this is really not all that has happened, or all that is possible. Look at mario Savio calling on an enraged generation to throw itself into the machine. Look at the righteous warriors of SNCC risking all in the face of a deadly apparatus. Look at the panthers “stalking the stalkers.” Look at Damian Garcia mounting the Alamo. Look at the Rev May 1 in Kreuzberg. Look at the strikes in Detroit during the 1960s, or the coal mines 1970s, or the actions brewing among immigrant workers (which could be more of an arena for rev left activity). Are these just limited to “protest plus newspapers”?
Let me say that there is a real challenge here — facing Kasama specifically, but also folks more broadly: We need to articulate what it means to do rev work in a non-rev situation (precisely in a way that breaks with the most tired aspects of “protest plus newspaper.”) We need a “What is to be done” for this century and this place — that breaks with the past, and grasps how one can reach broad audiences with viral exposures and create media that are “collective organizers.”
The Reformation had the Gutenberg press, the World War 1 generation had newspapers, the World War 2 world ran on radio. We need to think over how things now run, how ideas form and spread, where people learn to think and question, and how powerful alternative channels are emerging (often outside formal official control).
Sometimes I hear people say “you can’t build a movement on the internet” — which is about as nuanced an argument as saying (to Luther) “you can’t overthrow the pope with just a printing press.” It is an argument that starts with dismissal, before we have even creatively LOOKED at (and assimilated) the profound changes that are going on (in media and politics globally). To me it is like saying “you can’t build a movement based on telephones.” (Uh, well yeah, i guess. but does that even grasp what we are trying to do and understand?) I think we should start by banning the distinction between “online and the real world” — since “online” is now a main current of the real world. (Would anyone talk about “telephone conversations vs. real world”?) Let’s grasp how our real world now works (and lets be clear that some aspects of our world are changing so rapidly that no one really fully grasps how things are already working — witness the Chinese government’s frantic attempts to adjust to how Tibetan protests and earthquake disasters can no longer be “disappeared” even within china.)
What Is To Be Done was written in a world where former peasants were raging against their new lives as urban workers — in growing strike waves and unanchored social thinking. The author wants to drive that (divert it!) into specific organized political channels (not tail or coopt it in lame ways).
Ok… what is the equivalent today? How do we break with the treadmill of protest-as-usual or preaching-to-tiny-audiences?
Sure, lets mock a sterile routine of “protests plus newspapers” — but lets fight our way to a strategy of “creative mass struggle plus viral revolutionary media” — and then lets make our slogan of “prepare minds and organize forces” real.
* * * * *
Part of that is how we engage with mass political events (like this election) in ways that don’t abandon a very very needed critique of the whole political system (which is a corrupt, corrupting, oppressive, brutal sewer of lies and deceit).
I won’t go more deeply into the second part of Keith’s vision (not now, not yet): where he contrasts the sterility of “protest plus newspapers” with an vibrant electoral approach that promises “dismantling” of power (!), “dual power” (!), and “real peoples campaigns.”
Keith says “We not only need to beat the system in the elections, we must continue to beat the system after the elections.”
Um-kay.
Let me just say: I don’t believe any of that has the slightest chance of being real. Some of it, i can’t even conceive — in some of this I don’t know what the words mean to Keith.
Do anyone somehow think running a school board gives us “dual power” with the Marine Corps?
What would it even look like to “beat the system in the elections”?
Flesh it out, and lets get into it.
Nando said
As for summing up experiences, I suggest several important ones:
a) The seminal “part of the way with LBJ” where many people (including me) supported Johnson wanting to defeat “that warmongerer” goldwater — only to have the victor launch an invasion of Vietnam.
b) the McGovern campaign where we were told “if you don’t support McGovern, you are letting the Vietnamese die” — only to have the victory (Richard Nixon) withdraw U.S. troops.
c) The 2000 Nader campaign (the most successful “left” and “anti-corporate” election drive in modern history) — which left its supporters demoralized, self-hating, completely unorganized, and stampeding to prove their loyalty to the Dems.
d) the electoral Peace and Freedom Party (which has proved over time that tired irrelevance is not limited to the SLP).
e) the German Greens. I participated in their national convention in the early 1980s when the decisive battle between the Fundis and Realos was brewing. The victory of the Realos created a Green movement that was “koalitionsfaehig” (i.e. “responsible enough” to enter a government coalition). After twenty years of an “antiwar alternative party,” the Greens-in-power were part of the first government to send German troops into combat since World War 2. some victory, some “antiwar” party, some “realo-ism”!
We could dig into those (especially since some people have their own experiences with these campaigns, and some people may not agree with my thumnbnail comments).
Got others you want to dig into?
TellNoLies said
Chile.
Thats an experience that I think had a big impact in cementing an abstentionist approach on the part of one section of the revolutionary left in the US and elsewhere. (It certainly loomed large in my armory of examples of why the “electoral road” was a dead end.) But I think the lessons are actually much more contradictory.
Clearly there was a failure on the part of the Popular Unity forces to adequately prepare for the military side of the struggle. (And here a look at the Venezuelan and Nepali experiences offers us a corrective.) On the other hand it seems undeniable to me that the electoral victories of Popular Unity were what unleashed the revolutionary wave of factory occupations and other revolutionary actions, in many cases in spite of the opposition of the CP and the right wing of the SP.
The problem, as I see it, is that the ways that elections legitimize bourgeois rule can only be defeated by accompanying the masses through the process of exhausting their potential.
Does running a school board give us “dual power” with the Marine Corps? I suppose not. But if we take seriously the possibility of revolution in the U.S. I think its worth imagining what it might mean in a revolutionary situation for revolutionaries to have executive power over the police in some key cities or even a governorship that can contest for command over National Guard troops. Combined with popular militias, such a fracturing of the armed power of the capitalist state might be how we get to a revolutionary army. I understand why such talk seems quite removed from the present question of the Obama campaign, but if we admit the possibility of an electoral component in the revolutionary process in the US we should also ask how and where we are going to start learning the chops.
Keith said
I think Nando’s comments move the thing fwd. And he raises what I think are the crucial questions.
The essay I posted wasn’t meant to be exhaustive. Maybe I am caricaturing work. But one example Nando mentions is the struggle around Mumia. If that wasn’t/isn’t protests and newspapers then I must have missed something.
I am not contrasting protests to elections. I am contrasting protests to struggles for political power. That is protest vs. revolution. The insurrectionary mindset is summed up in the RCP slogan “Build public opinion, seize power.” This would be great if it were dialectical but it isn’t. It is linear– first you create public opinion (convince everyone that Bob is the leader) then you seize power.
Now to the point. Winning a school board doesn’t give you control over the Marines, but it can keep recruiters out of public schools (unless the students have been prepared as a part of the struggle to take over the schools to organize in the military). We ran campaigns to get elected school boards instead of appointed school boards—we were only unsuccessful because of our own lingering sectarianism. During the campaign I had a cop come up to me to tell me how he read biographies of Che. If I was a little slicker and a little less sectarian I am sure that I could have recruited him and he had friends —that would have been some dual power on the real side. And the reason he came up to me was because he knew me… I was a real live revolutionary right in the middle of the mass struggle with other parents complaining about how the kids were being put into trailers while the school was being torn down. They were protesting and I was in the protest raising the question of revolution. Not in the abstract distant future but right now. They put our kids in trailers because they have power and we don’t. Let’s organize to take over the school board.
Then we control the curriculum. We control the buildings and the budget. We hire teachers. We run after school programs. We dispense contracts for capital improvements. We give preferential treatment to construction companies that are worker owned and operated. Etc. Etc. It is about taking power and using that power to build the movement and undermine capitalism.
How do you dismantle the system after you win an election? A number of people raised the un-democratic structure of the electoral system—winner take all, appointed judges, the Senate etc. That is the first thing you dismantle.
We are currently working to change local electoral law from an at large to a ward based system (we are doing this in a growing alliance with Obama dems against the entrenched Clinton Dems), the ward based system will make it possible to elect reps from each neighborhood. We plan to build neighborhood committees as a part of the ward campaign and our support for Obama. With revolutionaries on the city council we can do things like disempower the executive and empower the council, we can pass recall laws, we can pass laws that recognize the citizenship rights of every city residence regardless of their immigration status (that is a direct assault of the state and the barriers to international working class unity). We can decriminalize drugs. We can also initiate development programs that develop the productive forces in ways that transform the social relations (resolving the contradiction on development between Stalinism and Maoism). We can give tax abatements to worker co-operatives while taxing exploitative businesses (we can define exploitation according to Marx in the law), we can build alliances with our international allies in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Chavez already delivers subsidized oil to cities in NJ.
Of course we can’t build socialism in one city but if we can’t take power and run a city then we are just talking. These are just notes. There are endless things you can do with power. To me if it isn’t linked with a struggle for power it is a protest. The ultimate slogan or protest is this: “From Protest to Resistance” Except “resistance” is just more militant protest. Was the LA rebellion revolutionary? It was a spontaneous semi-armed protest. Rebellion if you like but it never contended for power.
Nando raises the question of the internet. I think he raises it correctly. I criticized the protest side of protest plus newspaper. The newspaper has a major problem. It was an advanced communication technology when Lenin wrote what is to be done. The internet is replacing the newspaper and it is self-evidently a better organizing tool. The main problem with the newspapers of various sects is that they are not tools for organizing. If you go back and look at Lenin’s essay “Where to Begin” it is right on the money except you have to update the technology to internet from newspaper. Plus he is speaking at a time when there are a lot of local circles who are actually organizing, what he says we should be writing about is our own organizing!!!!! That doesn’t mean Comrade X sold ten copies of the Challenge at the rally. It means contending for power and summing up the experiences so that others can benefit.
So we need a site and maybe Kasama is it… that is radically open… like the Daily Kos that the left Democrats run. Anyone can post and the posts that are at the top arrive there because the group collectively decides that it is the best commentary. The RCP is completely out to lunch trying to foist a new dear leader. We don’t need a leader what we need are forms where collective leadership can be expressed.
biff said
If it were 1968, Hilary would be Hubert Humphrey, McCain would be Nixon, and Obama would be Bobby Kennedy.
And who would be Eugene McCarthy? Remember him? Stood up to Johnson. Stood up to the entrenched party. Had Johnny come lately Kennedy thief his momentum?
BobH said
Nando: I think to the list of electoral experiences to sum up, the Jackson campaign is important, because like the Nader campaign the net result to me seemed to be to move a lot of radical and even revolutionary towards the democrats, with little being accomplished.
I was also going to mention the experience of Detroit in the late 60s, as recounted in the book “Detroit: I Do Mind Dying”. What I got from that, which relates to Keith’s point, is that when you have a solid organization with deep ties to workplace and community, you can run local candidates who can serve to amplify/complement the movement.
Keith brings in some concrete experience, which seems to be taking a somewhat inverted view of that — by running in the local elections you can jumpstart the local organizing. I’m not trying to be dogmatic about this, I can see how you might win some local victories, but it still begs the question I was trying to raise before: the rich historical experience of Communist parties with all kinds of local impact (mayors, etc.) that get absorbed by bourgeois politics. Aside from outright corruption, there’s the more subtle corruption that comes from being a player and having a lot to lose; you end up having to defend the very system that in principle you are meant to overthrow. This is very acute when it comes to the national level; when an insurrectionary moment appears (e.g. Naxalbari), given a choice between revolution and keeping a seat a the table, the table tends to win.
Marx talked about capitalism making workers into appendages of machinery; I’m suggesting that historically, bourgeois democracy turns workers’ parties into appendages of the state machinery. This is what makes me so suspicious of electoral strategies. Good intentions have not proven to be enough.
An Hero said
tellnolies writes:
“1. Do people think considering such scenarios is an at all fruitful way to think through the implications of different courses of action?”
Nando writes:
“c) The 2000 Nader campaign (the most successful “left” and “anti-corporate” election drive in modern history) — which left its supporters demoralized, self-hating, completely unorganized, and stampeding to prove their loyalty to the Dems.”
I think these issues are related. The question of whether an outright stealing of the election from Obama is possible is easily answered with reference to the 2000 election. The answer is yes. And what we should do in that case is exactly what we should have done in the prior case, we should have vociferously fought against the stealing of the election, even in support of the democratic candidate, and at the very least (through this fight) developed a very different verdict than the common understanding that Nader lost the election for Gore.
I worked in Democratic Party politics for two years moving into the 2000 election, with local and national candidates, and it was my own realization that the election had been outright stolen that set me on my way to radicalization. And the election WAS stolen. Bush v. Gore is a notoriously fucked up decision that ignores precedent, the plain language of the constitution, and the very judicial philosophies that the majority espoused (state’s rights). The New York Times and other news organizations, doing their own recount investigation, found that Gore won Florida, etc.
The fact that Nader got tarred with Gore “losing” the election has had a very insidious effect of discouraging people from politics outside the Democratic Party, which was the exact wrong lesson to learn from that election. A lot of this has to do with the way that Gore sat down (and Kerry after him) in the face of all this corruption. With that capitulation no one else stood up to fight against outright thievery, and very few even fought for the verdict that the election had been stolen, so we got the Nader verdict and “Sore/Loserman”. It is important to see the ways in which the 2000 election implicated the entire system, from the media, to the courts, to the candidates. And that the Left wasn’t there to really push some reality through all that for the purpose of delegitimizing the system, was a major mistake.
Without a doubt, in the event that Obama is ripped off, WE as revolutionaries need to be in the streets fighting against that, while popularizing an understanding of the elections as rigged, BECAUSE THEY ARE, and presenting a lively, revolutionary alternative.
And to prepare for such an event we need a revolutionary alternative to offer to people, we need a thorough analysis of the history of elections and of the politics of this current election in order to explain to people what is going on, and we have to be organized to present this alternative and this analysis at each key bottle neck, particularly at the Conventions (where in all likelihood nothing of importance will occur).
I would add that Nader’s campaign was NOT successful when viewed historically (many third party candidates have polled FAR better, including Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party, who got around 6-8 percent in the middle of a war, while campaigning from prison). I think Nader pulled between 1 and 3 percent nationally. The Green Party is as strong today as it was then (not very) so I think its an exaggeration to talk of self-hating and stampeding. What happened was that the Democratic Party put out a third tier of candidates which filled the space that Nader had attempted to colonize. Particularly the 2004 election with Dennis Kucinich. This in conjunction with a settling verdict that the election was not stolen, but that Gore lost because of Nader, has helped keep the Green Party where it started (as far as national politics are concerned).
TellNoLies said
The question of the Nader campaign is important.
One of the things that has occurred in this discussion is a conflation of REVOLUTIONARY participation in elections with the involvement of the broader left. The Nader campaign was not built in any significant way by explicitly revolutionary forces (the ISO being a semi-exception here). It was rather the product of the frustration of progressive activists with the Democrats that had accumulated after eight years of Clinton.
I think one of the important things to ask is how the bad verdict that came out of the 2000 elections was a consequence, at least in part, of revolutionaries sitting on the sidelines.
In the days after the 2000 elections as the events in Florida unfolded there WAS a popular movement in the streets. In hundreds of towns and cities there were demonstrations that were coordinated through ad-hoc websites by people with little previous experience organizing street protests. The leaders of the Democratic Party had nothing to do with it. But the same was true of the organized left for the most part. I went to the demos in NYC and it was bizarre. They were a motley assortment of Greens and rank and file Dems with a smattering of random Trots. What was striking was the near total absence of the rest of the left — no RCP, no CP, no ISO or WWP. The crowds were unruly and effectively leaderless. At the largest one there was a solitary Spart with a megaphone who didn’t know what to do after denouncing the Dems and just handed the thing to whoever asked for it. Ten revolutionaries acting in concert could have put burning barricades in Times Square on the evening news and set the tone for actions across the country. If the Nader campaign ended with a crummy verdict we should be clear that we bear some responsibility for that (at least I do).
It was a moment that compelled me to rethink my view of elections. I had half-heartedly broken twenty years of electoral abstention to support Nader. The verdict I took home was not that Nader was to blame, but rather that the left’s attitude towards elections had caused it to miss an enormous opportunity.
Keith said
2 points
First BobH and then Nader.
BobH writes:
“the rich historical experience of Communist parties with all kinds of local impact (mayors, etc.) that get absorbed by bourgeois politics. Aside from outright corruption, there’s the more subtle corruption that comes from being a player and having a lot to lose..”
I hear that but The Soviet Union and China got sold out too however you reckon the time frame of the restoration. Coming to power through the bullet rather than the ballot doesn’t inoculate us from the temptations of power. The problem then is real but it has nothing to do with elections. Sorting it is cool with me, I have ideas about it like everyone else. Most people who are so certain they would never sell out have never had the opportunity…
On Nader. My problem with Nader is that he is a protest candidate. I would support Nader energetically if he ran to win–like mayor of Seattle or governor of Oregon–where ever. His protest campaign has infected alot of the Green party. While some of them run to win and do, alot of them run to protest. One cat in NJ always runs for NJ senate and loses. I asked “why don’t you run for city council in Bloomfield” (his hometown). I pledged my support too. He sd “I can’t win in Bloomfield.” Oh…
there was a movement in the streets following 2000 but for those of you who have never participated in an electoral campaign there is always a movement in the street around an election. When I ran for city council we fought democratic party operatives in the street every night. Tearing down each others posters, trying to run each other off the road. They tried to wreck our head-quarters. We infiltrated one anothers campaigns with spies and saboteurs. As the saying goes war is politics by other means but politics is war by other means too.
I really don’t think that people who have never participated in an election know anything about politics (unless you are from somewhere where armed struggle makes sense). To give an example. A few years back a guy from a Trot group approached me and runs down some thing about one of their members who got fired or something. And he wants us to work with them to get his job back (maybe he was in jail). He then tells me “we are doing united front work.” Ok, but you don’t know what a united front is. A united front is NOT the RCP and PLP and some Trots working together. A united front is not a “mass” front organization like Refuse and Resist (nothing is a greater symbol of the bankruptcy of the sectarian left then the “mass” organization. Why do you need two groups? What’s the big secret? When will you tell the “masses” that the messiah is hiding in France?)
A united front is group of different social classes. When I ran for city council we had petty landlords, small businesses, professionals, students, and workers. That is a united front. Keeping them united and getting your program through is what politics is about (BTW, the first two episodes of HBO’s series John Adams are excellent lessons in building a revolutionary coalition). If you are not uniting with classes other than your base (assuming you have one)then what can you be accomplishing? (I haven’t studied it carefully but Allende’s problem seems to me to be not how he came to power but that his coalition was too narrow and that made him weak. You have to isolate the main enemy by uniting everyone else against them).
The Obama campaign is bringing together the core of the revolutionary class– Afro-American workers and Advanced technology workers– that is our base in my view. Obama also represents different sectors of capital. If we are in the united front we can unite with our base (fuse socialism and the working class movement)and struggle for leadership of the front (we would need a revolutionary programme formed in the struggle).
A number of comrades raised the peculiarities of the US system. an additional oddity is that the ruling coalition is formed within the party before the election. In a parliamentary system the majority party forms a coalition government afterwards in ways that are far more transparent and democratic then the U.S. system.
McCain and the militray industrial complex–Haliburton, Kellog Brown and Root, Exxon Mobil these are the main danger. Isolating them and de-fanging would be a real advance.
“Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.”
Carl Davidson said
“An Hero” says:
‘With regards to this election cycle, exactly because of the weakness of the revolutionary Left, it is my position that we should put our efforts into organizing and developing an explicitly revolutionary politics, which will develop into a movement with corresponding tendencies and organizations. That we should do this, if we want to advance the day that we can resolve the litany of intractable problems facing humanity today, rather than push for unity around Obama’s campaign. And I argue for doing this even as we recognize the unique possibilities that may develop out of Obama’s campaign due to many of the dynamics that tellnolies has pointed out. But I think if we are to truly understand and take advantage of these possibilities, so as to push them closer to a radical resolution, then we are going to need to have a contending set of politics, not some filigree around the left edge of bourgeois politics.’
So are you saying we should set up theoretical working groups? Fine, I’ve had one going on for almost 20 years, including published results. Do you want to set aside mass work while you’re doing it? We don’t. If not, why set aside one form of mass work, ie, elections, and not another? We’re still strategically weak in all of them.
“TellNoLies” raises all the underlying questions that ‘Progressives for Obama’ wrestles with, preparing for our presence in Denver, inside and outside the Hall, should the nomination be stolen from a legitimate win.
No one has a complete answer, but the mass alternative is not joining the RCP, even though it might get a handful. My point is you have to have independent mass forms on the ground, however primitive, even to offer an alternative. Such a move by the DLC Dems, I believe, would hand the election to McCain. Our task would be to unite all who can be united in an anti-DLC nonpartisan alliance, outside the remaining rump of the Dems, with an immediate aim of electing as many of it local candidates as possible, widening the anti-war bloc in the Congress, and pressing for mass action to end the war.
‘TellNoLies’ is also on target as to the structural matters of US elections, which is why a ‘democracy movement’ is needed between elections to alter it–no easy task, but then neither is proletarian revolution, and I’d argue this is a precursor to it.
‘Nando’ wants us to sum up all past electoral options. Fine, but that could keep the political science departments of 10 universities busy for 10 years. We’d have to be a little selective. I’d narrow it down to Perot and Nader, Jackson, the New Party, Peace and Freedom, the Progressive Party of 1948, and the CP of 1936. Those are the most interesting and tactically diverse for our conditions. But I’d walk and chew gum at the same time, not waiting until the study is over to get busy.
‘Keith’ address the question of school boards. Actually, you can do quite a bit for worker democracy when you’re running a school in a low-income neighborhood. Austin Polytechnical in Chicago, based in part on the history on Mondragon in Spain, is a case in point. Google to learn more.
And in addition to Lenin’s ‘Where to Begin,’ take a look at an essay with the same title on our solidarityeconomy.net site.
‘Biff’ raises Gene McCarthy. Not exactly parallel, but the SDS outreach letter to the ‘Clean for Gene’ youth at the Dem convention in 1968 was one of the wiser tactical things we did.
‘Keith,’ finally, raises very interesting questions about the class forces coming to activism around Obama and the rest of the campaign. Studing ‘What Is,’ rather than ‘What Ought to Be,’ is the best starting point.
Nando said
Carl writes: “‘Nando’ wants us to sum up all past electoral options. Fine, but that could keep the political science departments of 10 universities busy for 10 years.”
Uh, no i don’t. If we are going to look at historical experience, I listed a few worth looking at. I lived through those — I have summations.
Also I don’t think we should postpone political practice while we do theory — however I think An Hero has a point that in the absence of a clear rev current, building it is crucial. (Again: “reconceiving as we regroup.”) For that our theoretical work is crucial (and hard to jumpstart) — and key political analysis will be major forms of seeking to connect with broader forces.
As for priorities: If we rush into conflict without having forged key theoretical and organizational tools we will find we can’t wield what we don’t have.
As for Carl’s remarks: I don’t doubt that “Progressives for Obama” have all kinds of contingencies for the coming campaign — I just don’t think they have an orientation or politics that will come up with contingencies that serve a rev project. All kinds of forces have contingencies for these crises (including the Republicans, obviously). The point is that we need to think through how revs should respond to this — and engage in an ongoing debate with left-liberal progressives over means and ends.
Carl Davidson said
You’re exactly right. ‘Progressives for Obama’ is a mixed bag, as noted earlier. Everyone working on it makes a positive contribution. But some of us will do our best to put forward a politics based on a longer-range perspective. It’s not hard to take part. Just take up the effort to defeat McCain at the polls, relate positively to the Obama youth and others, call for a vote for Obama, however critical, and help us expand the electorate in a progressive direction in 2008. Apart from that, put out your line and develop other features of your work as best as you see fit, and take part in our forums to talk things out.