>> CB: You have a different attitude toward the Obama "event" than I do. I think we should rally the working class in support of him. It's true it's because it's the best we have right now, but , there you go. It's sort of like supporting Coleman Young as Mayor.<<
Reply What is the Marxist perspective of our current economic, social and political environment of which Barack Obama is a part? What correlation of class forces and intersection allowed for Obama to be elected president? What is the practice of the working class movement forming the framework by which Obama the person as President to be weighed, measured and assessed? What are the spontaneous demands of that section of the working class in motion that President Obama and the entire institutional political sphere responding to? What phase of the process of social revolution currently exists? What is the role of communists in the social process? America is undergoing a profound political, economic and social collapse. Collapse does not mean "no one is working" or that the political system and social relations have been shattered and no longer operate. When a society undergoes collapse . . . . revolutionary collapse, this means the old ways of doing things and the old social relations of the previous period is undergoing transformation. Specifically the old "platform" or infrastructure relations that held society together is straining and collapsing as society attempts to leap to a new infrastructure relations. This was the case with the Civil rights movement, which in the first and last instance, had as its impetus the tractor or the mechanization of agriculture and pushing 11 million sharecroppers off of the land and first into Southern small towns and cities and then to the North where these folks would take their place in the industrial social order. The tractor was introduced by International Harvester in 1939. One can shift backwards through history and see - in retrospect, how every deepening quantitative boundary in the mechanization of agriculture had its corresponding and intensifying advance in the political struggle as the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights movement was a social movement for economic and social justice; for the expansion of political liberty. The old society constituted on the basis of Jim Crow segregation collapsed. First this old society was breached, then shattered and finally swept away by a cross section of American society (class intersection), but all of this was dependent upon and corresponded with changes in the means of production. The Marxist conception of "collapse" and "revolutionary collapse" is not the ideology of "any damn thing can happen" or "one damn thing after another" but transformation; the dialectic of the leap or the transition from one kind of society configuration to another. This Marxist understanding gives us the ideological conviction to wage the never ending struggle with the bourgeois power. America is undergoing the early stages of revolutionary collapse. Specifically, incremental qualitative changes in the productive forces begin polarizing and unraveling all classes and class fragments as society strains to adjust and reorient itself around a new technological regime. This reorientation appears as fight and attack by all classes and class fragments against the existing regime. Each class and class fragment is seeking to achieve reorganization and stability on a new basis, but this stability cannot be achieved because the property relations prevent the completion of the leap. Further, the private ownership of socially necessary property, prevents the fullest development of the new technological regime in servicing the socially necessary means of life for the masses. Consequently, a spontaneous series of chain reactions by various sectors of society, from various points of view, is destroying - unraveling, the society political infrastructure and social relations created during the industrial era. That is why the fascist and Republican have becomes so outspoken and adamant in their condemnation of any change. The real political fascist in government very well understand the social process. What emerges in the political sphere is the competing of different classes and class fragments with intersecting interest and this clash and struggle is called the "class struggle" that drives society forward. This class struggle revealed itself in a tiny way during the campaign phase of the Presidential election. It was a historically specific alignment of social forces that allowed Obama to best Senator Clinton as the Democratic Party nominee for President and then best Senator John McCain. Some view this alignment as "white people doing the right thing" - "one damn thing after another," or waging the "heroic struggle against racism." I do not. What is wrong (not who is wrong) with most of the discussions is the utter lack of an ounce of class unraveling of social forces and painting America in the most primitive concepts of race. That is what is wrong. Obama was able to cement his victory over Senator Clinton and Senator McCain on the basis of winning over a vast segment of proletarians in the Mid West who traditionally voted Republican or as Red States. This layer of our working class has been undergoing systematic economic ruin for the past decade and Senator Obama carefully appealed to their economic interest and specific sense of morality; its meaning as society ethics and demands for liberty and justice. This was spelled out in the ideological realm as "I - the individual, have a right to the means by which I can support myself and my family." In other words the American ideology and conception of liberty. This layer of workers that constituted Obama victory cannot be held in place and prevented from drifting to the right on the basis of praising Obama. The only strategy opened to communists is to lean how to fight and articulate their economic interest in terms that express how people think things out and in a way not in antagonism with their morality. Without the fight for sides as a class concept, we are going to face a populist movements that leads to political fascism. The only way to talk about class interest is to speak of class as an interest. We have to say the words and not rely upon some kind of mental telepathy. The historic comparison between Obama and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young seems to be a comparison limited to the color factor in American history. Coleman Young - "a real man," was elected as the shattering and destruction of the system of Jim Crow, as part of the rising curve of the Black Power Movement. The Black Power Movement grew out of the Civil Rights Movement as social process of getting blacks elected into public office or integrating the national electoral sphere. The Civil Rights Movement was the broad social movement to change the social sphere as Jim Crow and enact legislation to safeguard the new social relations. The Black Power movement was more limited and focused on electoral politics and various off shoots of economic nationalism. For those of us in Detroit this period of the Black Power Movement began closing the moment Coleman Young was elected and we immediately passed over to our Vote Communist Campaigns. However, the close of this period in Detroit did not make it so throughout all of America. In respects to the election of Coleman Young, our pre-election negotiations with him was straight forth and to the point. In addition to demanding the dismantling of the extra legal organization of the police violence/department as the STRESS unit, our support and campaigning was contingent upon agreement to dismantle the other extra legal terrorist police organization: "The Red Squad" and the surrender of all the police and surveillance files of all groups throughout the city. We support and praised Coleman Young who carried out his agreements to the letter and beyond. Plus, Coleman Young was always a fighter alongside the communists, with an impeccable track record as State representative, and before that as "the man who opposed The House UnAmerican Activity Committee." Such is the praxis of dealing with political officials by some communists in our country. We negotiate on behalf of our political pole and the needs of the forward moving sector of the working class. While it is true that there is no national political structure to establish a communist political pole, as the political basis for negotiations with the President; a communist pole - polarity in America, must be fought for. This means grouping anyone and everyone around the simple idea and demand that says: "the only way for people with little or no money to receive socially necessary means of life, is for government to provide them." Victory to the workers in that struggle. I personally believe Obama to be an unusually astute, profoundly theoretical and political genius in his battles with his sectarian opponents, many who are outright fascists. However, I will die, go to hell and run through fire with gasoline panties on, before I praise some mutherf***ker over extending unemployment insurance and a $25 f**king dollars a week raise. Concessions are to be treated in the Marxists way. We fight for concession because we want them or we would not fight for them. To begin with even Obama does not treat the Obama stimulus package as his package. The stimulus package is a complex compromise of competing economic interest in which various classes and class fragments go what they wanted in varying degrees. That is why no distinct political current likes the bill, but the bill expresses this moment of class intersection. There is no need to praise Obama, when he himself is not praising this compromise. Look, Obama is good - very good, and is just in the process of unraveling a strategy for the next few years and beyond. Without question there is going to areas of the Obama administration legislative mandates and perhaps political policies that intersect with the interest of the working class and its various layers. For instance the Obama administration is facing a need for political shift in international relations, not just international diplomacy. In respects to the Palestinian issue, raised a couple of thread ago, our government supports the state of Israel to the tune of roughly $10 million a day. I do not take a position that this economic support should be totally eliminated, but a real reduction to say the same $25 a fu**ing week raise the Obama administration is extending to the unemployed seems fair to me. If one must give the state of Israel money about $900 a month seems reasonable to me. Obviously if it was left up to me, which it is not, I would not give them a dime. Not even a food stamp. The question of Afghanistan was raised in the same thread. I am aware that there are dangers in the world and to suggest dismantling the entire American military is silly thinking. However, in Afghanistan we can close all our military bases, withdraw all our troops and drones and then spy on the country from outer space. Those who feel a moral duty to help the country economically can send hard goods in the form of infrastructure things and food. Those who feel strongly about the treatment of Afghan women should be able to submit their programs of help to our government to ascertain how to help without military force. One can of course emigrate to Afghanistan. Rather, it seems to me that communist should figure out how to fight to rally the working class around and in support of its own self interest; and then extend support to those in the political sphere who support achieving our interest in the legislative arena. WL. **************Need a job? Find employment help in your area. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000005) _______________________________________________ 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
