c b wrote:
Setting the record straight
by: Sam Webb
January 20 2010
tags: Obama, elections, strategy and tactics, communists
It is said by some on the left that the Communist Party USA has no
differences with President Obama. Just to set the record straight: we
do and we express them. For example, we opposed the nearly
unconditional Wall Street bailouts and deployment of more troops to
Afghanistan.
As does Dennis Kucinich. If there are any significant between the two
brands of liberalism, they are not discernible to me. I guess you won't
find Kucinich waxing nostalgic over Brezhnev, but that's about it.
The main organizations of the working class and people are not always
in sync with the president on every issue either.
Does this boob have an editor? Someone should have told him that "The
main organizations of the working class and people" sounds stupid. What
is the purpose of the noun "people" in this sentence? And what are its
"organizations"? The YMCA? The Rotary Club?
The left has something to learn from the approach of these people's
organizations. We are too comfortable in our role as an exceedingly
small, but "principled and militant" grouping in U.S. politics.
I don't think anybody will ever accuse the CPUSA of being "principled
and militant".
In my view, the president has made mistakes, particularly his handling
of the financial, jobs and health care crises, but he isn't the main
obstacle to social change; he is not the "enemy," or even an "enemy."
President Obama is a reformer, not a socialist reformer, not a radical
reformer, and not even a consistent anti-corporate reformer, but a
reformer nonetheless whose agenda creates space for the broader
people's movement to deepen and extend the reform process in a
non-revolutionary period.
Not enough references to the meaningless term "reformer" in this
paragraph. Another 36 would have been better.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson were Democratic Party
regulars, but, with the help of a popular and sustained insurgency,
both of them stepped outside of their comfort zone and morphed into
change-makers, thus opening up space for substantive reform -
Roosevelt with the New Deal and Johnson with civil and voting rights,
Medicare, federal aid for education and the "War on Poverty."
Unfortunately, Johnson's mistaken decision to escalate the war in
Vietnam stained, perhaps irreparably, his presidency and historical
legacy.
I don't see what this has to do with the CPUSA. The likelihood that they
will mount an "insurgency" to put pressure on Obama to move to the left
is about as likely as Rush Limbaugh burning Sarah Palin in effigy.
Barack Obama in my opinion has the same potential to "grow on the job"
and enact reforms that measurably improve the lives of the American
people and reframe our nation's place in the world.
Glad to see "grow on the job" in scare quotes because the likelihood of
this is less than zero. With respect to reframing "our nation's place in
the world", that's just the formulation you'd expect to hear from the
milquetoast version of Marxism.
Until that movement is at such a level, it is premature to say what
the political limits of this president are, or, to put it differently,
smugly dismiss him as simply another Clintonian Democrat.
Oh sure. He might turn out to be every bit as good as James Buchanan
when all is said and done.
Don't think we will succeed if the Obama presidency fails. If it
fails, we will once again be fighting an uphill, defensive struggle as
we were in the Bush and Reagan years, or worse. Witness the election
of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate.
Ooooh! Those scary Republicans... They come in the dark of night with
fangs and claws all set to make war in Afghanistan, put people in prison
without trial, send CIA agents into Cuba, and allow homeowners to be
foreclosed by the millions.
There will inevitably be differences and tensions with this White
House as we go forward. In most instances, the differences will pivot
around the pace and depth of reform; in some instances, such as the
decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, the differences are more
fundamental.
Yes, the tensions between the CPUSA and the White House will be about
the same as they have been since the Popular Front turn. About the
consistency of a wet noodle.
The role of the left is to help navigate these differences, while at
the same time infusing energy and clarity and sustaining the strategic
unity of the people's movement against the main enemy - right-wing
extremism and powerful sections of big capital.
Right-wing extremism. The mantra of a brain-dead group that combines
typical Leninist sectarianism with the politics of Chris Matthews.
Historians of the 22nd century will study it with great interest.
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