Doyle wrote: > A genuine mass movement depends upon > how well the reformist efforts of > Obama and others around the > democratic party come into being.
I'd think it's the exact opposite. The reformist efforts of Obama and others in the DP depend for their realization on genuine mass movements or, at the very least, the credible threat of disruptive mass movements emerging at short notice. And by "genuine" I do not mean mass movements organized along lines fantasized by leftist ideologists, but as they may arise in this particular historical ground, in response to concrete social needs, wielding whichever political instruments are at hand. Obama claims (and each one decides how much credence to give him) that, to carry out his agenda, he expects and needs people to remain mobilized. He's been insisting that this is all about the needs of "middle class" people like those struggling, working class people he showed in his infomercial; that nothing will happen if people don't make it happen, etc. Similarly, he's talked much about government accountability and transparency. The guy got lots of cash from rich donors, but if you take a step back and look at his campaign as a whole, against the backdrop of traditional U.S. politics, his campaign is basically a testimonial to the power of organized, mobilized, smart people. And it's clear that Obama personal idyosincracy shaped up the approach to the campaign. Everybody says that the campaign was well organized. The basic layout is a testimonial to the power of leadership. It owes much to a few very smart minds. Various essential aspects of the organization remained highly centralized around the figure of Obama and his immediate staff. However, that was only part of it. The execution was the genius of the campaign. And, if you ask me, the execution relied largely on the initiative of lots of smart people, capable of self-organization. The Internet was used in a very smart way. The first thing one would notice is that, in spite of the centralism of the strategic decisions, the online organizational setup wasn't confined or closed ended. It was very open ended. And the top management of the campaign was receptive of the needs of the troops. The campaign provided a good array of online support tools through an interface that was extremely user-friendly (and good looking), that people were mostly free to use at will. To view the content, people had to register and log in, but the As far as I know, there was no censorship of views, and criticism of some of the steps taken by the campaign were overt. There were blogs, materials, videos with demos of this and that, and of course vast databases with detailed information about voters. The voters' database was understandably centralized, but participants were not excluded from communicating horizontally or taking the initiative. In fact, the system encouraged them (and gave them information that help them) to do so. I personally didn't make much use of these tools, because of my preferences and time restrictions, but I did notice how people, especially young people, used them extensively. To give another example, until yesterday evening I was receiving tons of nagging e-mails from the campaign (some triggered automatically, using the information one provided and the history of one's involvement in the campaign) asking me to phone Spanish-speaking registered voters in Colorado and Nevada to make sure they knew where their voting booth was, etc. I only had to click a link and invoke a list of people with their phone numbers, voting places, a script with a questionnaire to guide my call, and fields for me to give the system feedback about the person's response. My wife and I were just two of tens of thousands of people who donated millions of dollars of cell phone time and personal time to the campaign, donations not included in the official dollar figures. The ability of the Obama campaign to unleash this amount of social energy, with this level of organization, to get him elected has no precedent in U.S. history. In and by itself should be a political school for any serious leftist. Again, the genius of the campaign system was its reliance on the generous participation of thinking, smart, interconnected people. Nothing to do with the myth of a cult. But, so what now? The campaign ended. Well, it matters. It seems to me that for Obama to accomplish his goals as a president, he will need an even better form of political organization with active grassroots. The campaign organization was the pilot test. It is possible, but Obama would be a total idiot to give up what he already helped to build, to abandon the approach for a traditional top-bottom one. Frankly, I doubt that Obama is unaware that, for this approach to continue to bear fruit, we, the people at the grassroots, need to remain strongly motivated, i.e. we have to believe that we're doing what is right for us, our community, the nation, the world. An instrument of this type, this bottom-up model of political organization is inimical, in some (not all) ways the opposite of a traditional bureaucratic organization. An organization of this type is less likely to lead to mass political suicide than the old bureaucratic type of organization. In a limited dose, but it relies on giving power to the regular working people. No need to have illusions. But any serious assessment of the campaign suggests that the movement around Obama is a contradictory phenomenon involving the political motion of people for a fairly progressive set of goals, political motion that helps build the premises for genuine self-organization and political autonomy. IMHO, the left can only benefit from engaging with it, rather than remaining aloof, ready to snipe from a safe distance. [Too tired to proofread and shorten this.] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
