6. Cultural nuances/end Barack Obama is/as a black man, keenly aware of the color factor in American and world history and sensitive to the nuances of culture. I own and have read his autobiography "Dreams From My Father," written in 1995 at the age of 33 at the same time of purchasing and reading Sidney Poitier "Measure of A Man." Mr. Poitier introduced the #16 quotes of the "100 Years . . . .100 Movie Quotes" in the movie "In The Heat of The Night," where he plays the role of a Northern Black detective sent South to unravel a murder. His famous line was: "They call me Mister Tibbs." Both of these men, proud, determined and elegant in their own right and individuality, manifest the story of the American melting pot, as America’s little discussed and little understood "black underbelly." In 1963, Poitier became the first black man to win a USA Academy Award for "Best Actor," and of course Obama is the first black man to become President. Neither are Negro, but most certainly black, in the same way that a second and third generation English man or German immigrant lives the metamorphosis in America, that is the American melting pot and emerges as Anglo American. The same can be said of say Minister Louis Farrakhan, Marcus Garvey and even WEB Du Bois. Let’s isolate Minister Louis for a moment to examine how the American story has played itself out and unravel a quantifying of American history and individuals that seem to defies logic. Farrakhan was born in New York, Bronx, and raised as Eugene Walcott within the West Indian community in the Roxbury section of Boston Massachusetts. His mother, Sarah Mae Manning, had emigrated from Saint Kitts and Nevis in the 1920’s; his father, Percival Clarke, was a Jamaican cab driver from New York. As a child, he received training as a violinist. At the age of six, he was given his first violin and by the age of thirteen, he had played with the Boston College Orchestra and the Boston Civic Symphony. A year later, he went on to win national competitions, and was one of the first black performers to appear on Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, where he also - naturally, won an award. A central focus of his youth was the Episcopal St. Cyprian's Church in Boston's Roxbury section, a part of Boston which also produced the great Leonard Bernstein. All of these men, noble and elegant in their own right and historical experience, manifest the striving and realization of the American Dream, to one degree or another, rather than the plight and circumstance of the Negro; meaning those people emerging from the melting pot of slavery and then formed under 90 years of structural Jim Crow. All these men are African American but that tell one virtually nothing, in the same way that whites as Anglo American informs one of next to nothing. Basically, Anglo American and African American means Americans with "white" and "black" skin, when in fact the individual has a real history. The experience of Jim Crow + white chauvinism, NOT Southern slavery + Jim Crow + white chauvinism, also shaped and impacted all of these men, but their experience mirrors, that of the European immigrant, to a vast degree, including Malcolm X. Malcolm’s mother Louise Little was born in Grenada, with Malcolm stating, "she looked like a white woman," because of her Scottish father. Interesting yes? Barack Obama wonderful book, "Dreams from My Father," is the immigrant story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, "My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there," what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared as part of the "baby boomers," can deploy the concept race, other than the petty bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist sauce. The very concept of race is an ideological trap designed to obscure not just classes and class intersection, but prevents disclosing that, which is specific and critical to American society. Actually, lumping all blacks together under the rubric "race" is to lump all European ethnic together as a "dominating race," rather than a historically oppressing peoples with classes amongst them; classes that began polarizing in a different manner the moment the barriers of Jim Crow began falling. It is accurate to insist that the election of Obama inaugurates the class struggle in America, with a section of the intelligentsia as black, fighting its last pitched battle to impose the concept of race on the emerging fighting section of our fighting proletariat. I have the most personal responsibility to escort the black leader from the historical stage and add weight to the fight to deliver a catastrophic defeat to the theorists of race; a defeat from which they shall never recover. No because of "me," but rather, because a juncture of history has been closed out definitively. It is a good thing to momentarily grasp ones moment of history. On the other hand, the "First Lady," is of course a "sister," meaning Negro rather than simply black. The obviousness of this is such that it requires no mention amongst the descendants of Southern slavery and indigenous Southern whites. "First Lady" Michelle's great-great grandfather Jim Robinson, was born in the 1850s, and was a slave on the Friendfield plantation in South Carolina. The family believes that after the Civil War he remained a Friendfield plantation sharecropper for the rest of his life and that he was buried there in an unmarked grave.[3] _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Barack_Obama#Fraser_Robinson_III_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Barack_Obama#Fraser_Robinson_III) First Lady Michelle walks with the nuance of the former slave. Her body reeks with tension from head to toe. The expressions carved into her face is unmistakable. Here is the real American culture and subtly of the cultural war, both bourgeoisie and revolutionaries seek to appropriate. Michelle, rather than President Barack completes the spiraling loop of logic that is American history. It is Michelle that serves as something of a flesh and blood block, anchor and brunt instrument against a historical Southern reaction, whose political institutions serves as the institutional platform for the resurgent fascist movement, momentarily stunned, and compelled to seek its realignment. Michelle’s story is that of the Southern black immigrant migrating North. President Obama has adopted the "Negro" culture in a manner no different than any other American. The content of his vocalizing the aspirations of the American peoples are better understood in this context. Obama speaks of the American Dream, hard work and lifting oneself up with their bootstraps, not from the standpoint of the verifiable history of the Negro People, but as the dynamic of the American melting pot. This is not a bad thing, simply one side of our history. Obama stated in his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, "There is not a Black America and a White America and a Latino America and Asian America–there’s a United States of America." Two years later in his book, "The Audacity of Hope," he wrote, "when I hear commentators interpreting my speech to mean that we have arrived at a ‘ postracial politics’ or that we already live in a color-blind society, I have to offer a word of caution. To say that we are one people is not to suggest that race no longer matters–that the fight for equality has been won, or that the problems minorities face in this country today are largely self-inflicted." Yet, he concludes that "the overwhelming majority [of white Americans] these days are able - if given the time, to look beyond race in making their judgments of people." Here, President Obama is not speaking on a symbolic level. "Categories such as "social justice" and "change" were never before wielded with such force by any U.S. politician of Obama's level," because there has never been anyone quite like Obama as President. In the individual meaning as well as the implications for American society and its history of grappling with the color factor, Obama is a new thing. Obama expresses one side of the African American "people" - (even this language is outdated) more than less one to two generations America. Negroes in America are not immigrants, but a home grown product incubated in the chambers of slavery. Everyone in America faces the same issue of quantifying social progress. From the communist standpoint what is meant is that class unity is achievable today, in those areas where our working class as a class exists and commingles as "one people." The complexity of our fight is that only one sector of the proletariat exists in antagonism with all capital. The overwhelming majority maintains its bond with capital, even against its own subjective will. There is without question much that can be learned from revolutionary Cuba, in quantifying it progression from the age old evils of slavery and the color factor in history by providing examples of method for such quantifying and examples of "how" this is carved in the face of a new generation of leaders. Fidel’s greatness shall live forever, and his "History Will Absolve Me," lives within generations and revolutionaries to come. Many of us have always understood and wedded the idealism of Marti with the generalship of Maceo. Cuba, as I understand it, perhaps incorrectly, is more than 70% black, with all its implications for the on going revolutionary process and the restless counter revolution. A story about Cuba was passed from one older communist to us younger guys, who happen to be more black and brown than not, due to the color factor in our history. A pre-Revolutionary incident in Havana involved a black Cuban, who was refused a haircut by a white Cuban and this incident turned into real struggle against inequality and the color line. The reason a story such as this is etched into the memory of many a Communist as a starling event, is not the existence of the color line, because Cuba was also historically a brutal society of slavery. Here in America no black man could even imagine walking into a white barber shop in the first place, and then demanding a haircut, even after the fall of Jim Crow. Such an act was once inconceivable, and not very long ago. In fact, such an act is still the exception to the rule in much of America. OK? The black bourgeoisie, (the real black bourgeoisie) and most certainly the black entrepreneur and small business persons can at a moment notice, quantify the crossing of the color line on the basis of barbershop traffic and who cuts whom hair. President Obama’s greatness is getting elected and being sworn into office. The honeymoon ended after the last dance on inaugural night and it was quite a night to remember. The vision becomes the cause; the cause creates the new vision. This is to say revolutionary Cuba is way ahead of America in many respects, but the dialectic of vision and cause, was applied to the world, although the communists from whom I hail, are extremely sensitive about what we write and say in respects to the world. Already I have said to much. All revolutions contain the same dialectical parts.
End Game American under Obama is a somewhat different America, precisely because a somewhat different America called forth Obama and revealed itself for all to see. These more or less superficial comments began with the sentence: "John Foster Dulles, leading Cold War warrior and America’s secretary of state from 1953 to 1959, summed up America’s foreign policy as, "no permanent friends, just permanent interest." The strange thing about history as living movement and moments is that no class or individual or group of leaders can will history into doing what is exactly desired. The colliding of millions of "heads" always produce something no individual head desired. Last week or so, I was watching "Larry King Live," interviewing President Jimmy Carter, who did all but call for ending the $10 million dollars a day sent to the state of Israel. Carter’s passionate denunciation of the fascist like Israeli aggression against the Palestinian is being highlighted in a way uncommon to American politics. Regional economic and political blocks seem to be in emergence, against a post WW II backdrop that all but "more than less" did away with inter-imperialist rivalry. American policy is in need of shift as international capital seeks realignment. Even Israel as a state, is not sacred to American imperial interest. Relations with tiny Cuba most certainly needs repairing with my government taking all the first steps. Cuba poses zero danger to America and most Americans understand this. Most certainly the Obama administration understands this even better. In America, Cuba is an ideological football to be kicked up and down the field and to be conveniently pulled out to satisfy old counter-revolutionaries - worms, dreams and fantasying over fortunes lost by the revolution. Cuba has long ago stop being the image of Lucy Ball’s - (an honorable person), "Ricky Ricardo." Since the Cuban Revolution another generation of Cuban immigrants have matured, with grown children with children of their own. The possibility for change exists. Imperialism has not changed its colors; or rather it has in fact undergone a change from its raw white chauvinism as international policy - to a large degree, but there is no change in the metabolism of capital. Short of the overthrow of the power of capital in the hands of individuals and universal economic activity on this basis, real people have to push and push harder when periods of policy shift open. Just as Lincoln was never pushed to the left, Obama and the Obama administration cannot be pushed to the left. Lincoln had to act or be run over by events spiraling out of control. No one intended on emancipating the slaves except the various wings of the anti-slavery movement amongst the American people. Our Civil War did not just have to happen as it did because Lincoln, a bourgeois politician no doubt, had put forth a compromise to satisfy the blood lust of capital North and South. A compromise was put forth to compensate the Slave Oligarchy and end slavery all together in 1940. That's 1940! Southern pride, chauvinism and Southern honor collided with Yankee arrogance and industrial warfare. Pride and arrogance keeps America from repairing relations with Cuba. President Obama stated in front of the world that America would take anyone’s hand that opened their fist. Cuba’s tiny, but firm hand has been opened for many decades. Today all of us face an era of robotic wars and the impact of the new technological regime is increasingly felt by all. Real men and women make wars declared and undeclared. The impulse for war grows out of the logic of capital and war production as the means to overcome the falling rate of profit and find outlets for capital in this moment of permanent intractable over accumulation. Today this falling rate of profit is not a tendency but a dominating trend compelling capital to seek the impossible; reconstitution on the basis of a new of mode of production. The last great area of possible investment seems poor downtrodden Mother Africa. Capitalism - contrary to many opinions, begins its bloody rise with the rise of modern slavery and discovery of the New World - Eldorado. Perhaps, this is where it will find its historical resting place. The logic of history seems to indicate we are in for a bumpy road. In the spirit of the old Negro National Anthem: Let us march on Til victory is won/lone. Proletarians Unite. Unite or Perish! African American History Month 2009 WL. Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By Elíades Acosta Matos _http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=800&Ite_ (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=800&Ite) mid=\1 The election of Barack Obama as the United States' 44th president and his inauguration on Jan. 20 have placed on the table of public opinion the topic of symbols and their possible readings. If anyone is fully aware of the enormous cultural and political weight of symbols, it's Obama. The figure and discourse of the new president, his charisma, brilliance, composure, boldness, charm, cold blood and intelligence return, on a symbolic level, a leadership its country lost due to the clumsiness and mediocrity of George W. Bush. The alliances have renewed themselves automatically, and an almost unanimous applause greets him at all his public appearances. With notable exceptions, among them one of Fidel Castro's reflections, titled "Against the current," and an article by Ignacio Ramonet that analyzed, with fair concern, the composition of Obama's Cabinet, few have stopped to scrutinize with a critical eye the first measures taken by his administration. In the specific case of the Israeli aggression against the Palestine people of Gaza, Obama defended his silence alleging political reasons and explained that the country should have only one authoritative voice. But he forgot two essential principles: one, that it is legitimate and excusable to raise one's voice against crime, because it is a matter of ethical principles, rather than political principles. Two, that if the voice of the nation had to be the voice of the departing president, the world would prefer that he would keep his mouth shut. This lack of rigorous and objective analyses of the projections and decisions of the new U.S. president remind us that few things are as dangerous in the contemporary world and in world politics than to write a blank check to the president of the world's most powerful nation. This was dramatically demonstrated after the events of Sept.11, 2001. On a symbolic level, Obama's rhetoric operates with arguments and concepts taken from some "left lite" close to social-democracy. Categories such as "social justice" and "change" were never before wielded with such force by any U.S. politician of Obama's level. Independently from the fact that in his public speeches he has never fully explained where social injustice emerges from and how it reproduces itself (and consequently against what economic and political forces we must struggle to fully uproot it), it remains to be seen how the president of the most overwhelming capitalist and imperialist nation wants to carry out such concepts -- or can do so. The constant repetition of such concepts in his speeches clarifies nothing but leave a cloud of ambiguities and confusions, especially among the less-informed and less-militant sectors of the left itself. We are reminded of the actions of the cultural war, so appreciated by today's neoconservatives, who were toppled and are now in flight. Obama's statements that in his presidency and under his leadership the differences between Democrats and Republicans, between left and right, will be erased are subtle and very adequate to introduce elements of confusion from capitalism, because they constitute a deceitful call to halt the political and ideological struggle for the sake of a false and impossible reconciliation of things that are opposed by their nature. This involves, in the first place, social classes that were counter to each other ever since the genesis of capital. To accept this affirmation without a challenge is the equivalent of jettisoning all the revolutionary theory and practice of the past 150 years, especially the theory that began with Marx and Engels' "Communist Manifesto." That document made its debut in the field of ideas by speaking out loudly and clearly and not being ashamed to point out the true causes of poverty, exploitation and social injustice. Another symbolic element to bear in mind with regard to Obama is his biography, cleverly exploited by the hagiographers and political pundits. It matters little that he lived with his Kenyan father only until the age of 2 and that he met with him again only once, just before the father's death. This element has been trotted out to gain the support of the most humiliated and offended citizens of his country and the Third World. On the other hand, the image of the American white mother with a history of counter-cultural rebellion and affinity with the left has also been widely used. It is unimportant if a man with this background is today part of power elite or if he was yesterday a student at Columbia University, an institution in the aristocratic and selective Ivy League. We have been oversold the idea that, through elections, the discriminated and progressive groups have finally achieved power in the United States through this new president. He has carried out, we are told, something similar to a peaceful and democratic revolution that (oh, what a coincidence) leaves a feeling in the air that it is a superior and mature system, because it respects the people's will and is capable of rectifying a long history of errors. This young man (barely 47) has proclaimed himself the representative of a different and innovative way of doing politics, even though the novelty is not only that he sends personalized messages to the cell phones of millions of Americans. For generational reasons, he is not related to the major confrontations of the 20th Century, among them the Cold War and the Vietnam war, so therefore he is seen as much more capable of understanding post-modern sensitivities and the challenges and opportunities of our times. His ambiguous anecdotes about his moderate consumption of alcohol and drugs during his student years humanized him in the eyes of the public, converted him in an example of self-improvement and publicized the facilities his country provides for people to succeed and reinsert themselves into society. And his archetypical image -- which reflects and represents almost every social class, race and profession -- is enhanced when he publicly describes himself as an educated, well-informed man who is not ashamed of being an intellectual and being familiar with the new technologies, as happens with the younger generations, because much of his success is due to the fact that he understands that today's politics and ideas cannot succeed without the Internet. What I've said so far is intended to activate the rational and analytical thinking of people who face new times, times that are coming with this new administration and will force a rethinking of many previous certainties and discourses. The days of the Cold War, when a handful of creative youngsters working for U.S. government agencies could transform the perception of reality through cartoons, radio broadcasts, the spreading of rumors and the distribution of magazines, today seem like the days of a prehistoric past. Today, everything is more complex and at the same time simpler. However, the certainty remains that the cultural tools are most useful to advance, promote, impose and defend the interests of a superpower such as the United States. Tools of ideological and cultural struggle are the concepts of the "soft and intelligent power" that back the international projections of Barack Obama's administration. The ideological challenges this implies for countries like Cuba and Venezuela, for example, are enormous. For the Cuban Revolution, for its people, its artists and intellectuals, moments of testing are at hand. The battle of ideas will enter a brand-new phase. The self-preservation instincts of a system like capitalism, which is being flogged by a crisis of an unprecedented magnitude, will impose itself over its imperial dreams, which have foundered on the streets of Baghdad or the Afghan mountains. Imperialism knows that if it doesn't evolve it will disappear. That is why we are witnessing and well-thought-out rescue operation, not only in the field of finance but also in the fields of ideas and symbols. Barack Obama's presidency, aside from its positive or negative results, shows that the system is willing to transform anything that does not alter its essence, willing to articulate its habitual hegemonic methods, so long as they remain untouchable. But in the field of ideas and culture, which is where the real extent of the promised changes will be measured, there is no infallible or invincible formula. The proposals of soft and smart power are neither infallible nor invincible, either. An interesting article by Josef Joffe, published in The New York Times on May 14, 2006, under the headline "The perils of soft power," is illustrative. "Soft power does not necessarily increase the world's love for America. It is still power, and it can still make enemies. [...] Hundreds of millions of people around the world wear, listen, eat, drink, watch and dance American, but they do not identify these accouterments of their daily lives with America [...] These American products shape images, not sympathies, and there is little, if any, relationship between artifact and affection." (1) Certainly, what will prompt humanity to believe in the United States under the government of Barack Obama, and to believe in Obama himself, will not be the rhetoric of a soft and intelligent power, well-packaged though it may be or pacifying though it may be, compared with the apocalyptic statements of the previous administration. What will be essential will be the practical policies that the current administration will enact; they need to be sufficiently honest, effective, fair and timely, so they may help remedy the huge ills that corrode the planet. If the United States under the new presidency insists on continuing to be what it has been until now -- an imperialist and hegemonic power -- then the vote of confidence given by the American voters and the rest of the world to that young, black, brilliant and charismatic man who entered history by wielding the word "change" was worthless, simply because it changed nothing. In the days of Rome, especially for the Gauls, Jews and Germans, Rome was Rome, no matter who sat on the imperial throne -- Caesar, Nero or Constantine. The time has come to find out if the man who holds in his hands the reins of the world's most powerful nation symbolizes continuity or change. Let's hope it's change. April 30 will mark the first 100 days of the new mandate of the United State's 44th president. As our grandmothers used to say: "Works are love." Let's hope that the black lady who lived on the shores of Lake Victoria, or the white lady in Kansas, taught the same to their grandson, Barack Hussein Obama. 1. Josef Joffe: "The perils of soft power", The New York Times, May 14, 2006. Elíades Acosta Matos is a Cuban writer and essayist. He has written numerous essays and books, among them "Apocalypse according to St. George," "From Valencia to Baghdad." His latest book, "21st Century imperialism; The cultural wars," will be launched at the 2009 Havana Book Fair. Acosta was chief of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Who's never won? Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
