Comrade-Z
19th September 2011, 06:08
Knowing that I'm going to have a ton of friends jumping on the Obama bandwagon once the 2012 election season heats up, I've pre-emptively written an article trying to address left-liberal frustrations with Obama and systematically show why these frustrations cannot be addressed by reforms of the political process within capitalism, and why electing a different candidate never seems to help.
I really hope that this article will help convert some left-liberals to working-class revolution. If some of the terminology of the article sounds strange, it is because I am trying to establish common ideological ground with liberals before demonstrating why this ideological ground is fundamentally flawed. I also wanted to avoid terms that liberals are apt to interpret with misleading connotations, such as "communist" or "anarchist." Instead, I have tried to talk in terms of the "political and economic rule of the working class, democratically organized" and in other such specific and precise, but somewhat clunky ways.
I also focus on political arguments for working-class revolution, which I think are under-addressed, and which I think left-leaning liberals are likely to find more persuasive than economic arguments.
==============
An open letter to the supporters of Obama in the 2012 presidential election:
The constraints on a modern president...
Why the 2012 Election is worse than ineffective...
And what you really need to do if you want “hope” and “change”
Introduction—A retrospective on four years of “hope” and “change”...
If you are an Obama supporter, you are probably somewhat disappointed in the outcome of Obama's first term as president. If you are honest with yourself and think back to the original hopes you had for Obama's first term, the current situation should seem bewildering to you.
It is quite far from those original hopes, no?
Then you must ask yourself, how could your expectations have been so wildly inaccurate?
Perhaps you were naive about the pressure Obama would face from the right. But surely you did not just expect the right wing to go away. Surely the eight long Bush years had acquainted you well enough with just how tenacious the right wing could be. Surely you know that Obama will face just as much pressure from the right during his next term, assuming that he obtains it.
Obama had filibuster-proof majorities in both branches of Congress. He had an historically strong mandate for change.
By all reasonable expectations, he should have been able to meet the material and ideological resources of the right wing head-on and prevail, especially when it came to policy proposals that were overwhelmingly popular—policy proposals that should have even made political sense promote vociferously (the list of which is too long to count).
Considering that he did not, one must explain why this occurred, so that it should not happen again.
One theory might be that Obama was trying to commit political suicide. I don't consider this a likely theory, so we'll move on.
A popular theory among liberal critics of Obama is that he is a weak politician who too easily compromises with the right wing. Assuming that Obama is indeed a psychologically weak individual incapable of holding his ground, we must ask ourselves how we did not recognize this during the 2008 presidential primaries, such that we could have nominated a different candidate. We need to know so that we do not make this same mistake again...assuming that this "weakness" is indeed the reason for Obama's disappointing behavior.
Some liberal critics have also supposed that Obama was being disingenuous. Perhaps he never really intended to do all of the things he said he intended to do.
If one or both of these two popular liberal theories about Obama are accurate, one must be consistent and acknowledge that most Democrats appear to be afflicted by the same syndrome of political weakness and/or dishonesty. They consistently fail to stand up to Republicans as much as they promise.
The more honest liberal critics, such as TheYoungTurks host Cenk Uyghur, do proceed along these very lines and indeed find it strange that Democrats overwhelmingly seem to have been afflicted by this malady of political weakness and/or dishonesty over the last 12 years, whereas Republicans seem to have caught hardly any of this flu going around Washington.
These more honest liberal critics eventually come to recognize that this is not some contagious illness at work, but rather, a political "red-shift" that seems to weaken leftists, strengthen rightists, and inch the entire public discourse towards the right over time.
This political "red-shift" is visible throughout 20th century American history.
Modern Democrats would feel right at home among Eisenhower's Republicans. Green Party progressives like the infamous Ralph Nader would have felt right at home among New Deal Democrats.
We hear much criticism of Obama from the right that he is a "socialist." Please. If you compare Obama to a real American socialist like, for example, Eugene V. Debs, you'll find a gulf as big as the Grand Canyon.
As liberal comedian Bill Maher recently quipped, Democrats are now the party of the right, and Republicans are now the party of the insane asylum.
How did it get like this? Why do "leftist" politicians systematically weaken on their leftist positions and drift to the right?
Once again, some honest liberal critics are astute enough to observe that there is enormous "corporate" pressure in this direction.
What is the nature of this corporate pressure? Obviously there is lobbying. Men in nice suits meet with politicians and try to persuade them of the efficacy of their pro-business, anti-tax, anti-labor, anti-social program proposals.
In an of itself, this should not be enough to account for a systematic shift to the right. After all, are politicians incapable of disagreeing with these men in nice suits? Do our politicians mindlessly agree with the last thing that they heard? I'd like to give them more credit than that.
You'd think that most politicians would be capable of sitting down with a lobbyist from United Healthcare and saying at the end of the meeting, "I've heard what you've said, but I must respectfully disagree, I remain convinced that we need to push for a public option in healthcare."
Even if a politician hears from 12 United Healthcare lobbyists in a row, that politician must still understand, if he/she has any brain at all, that for every lobbyist he/she has just heard from, there are millions of people who do emphatically want a public option in healthcare but who personally didn't get the chance to travel and present their cases on that day.
If this polite exchange of ideas with lobbyists was all that was going on, then on what grounds could we point to lobbying as the corrupting influence systematically shifting our politicians and political system to the right?
Some will argue that lobbyists corrupt our politicians by bribing them.
While there are plenty of documented cases of this happening (particularly in indirect ways, such as by promising politicians lucrative positions on boards of directors after their political terms have finished), I don't think it happens enough to explain systematic catering to "corporate" interests, unless we are willing to accept that we as voters are systematically bad at noticing that all of our candidates are evil, treacherous con-men. (And why is the field of candidates only filled with such men?)
Many voters will repeat the cliché that "politicians are crooks" while insisting that "my congressperson is different" and that they will be voting to re-elect this incumbent in the next election. Both statements can't, in general, be simultaneously true.
If you are in any way thinking of engaging in the political process, you are probably convinced, as I am, that the field of candidates can't possibly be devoid of well-meaning individuals.
Unlike many critics of Obama, I'll even assume that Obama himself is well-meaning (although I'll show how this assumption is, in the end, irrelevant once one understands the constraints on a politician in the context of modern capitalism).
Well then, what exactly is pushing Obama to the right, if it is not intellectual debate with lobbyists or bribes from lobbyists?
One obvious answer would be campaign financing. Obama must please corporations so that he can get campaign financing from them in order to win re-election...so the argument goes. This argument holds out hopes for liberal critics that, if only we could reform campaign financing, our political system would no longer be dysfunctional and unresponsive to our opinions. As I will show, this is a naive assumption that does not take into account the full range of powers of corporations. They can do much more than simply withhold campaign financing.
Anyways, if campaign financing were the main reason for why Obama or any other politician catered to corporate interests, we would expect to see every once in a while a politician (or Obama himself next term) get re-elected and ignore his corporate sponsors now that they had nothing more to offer in terms of political advantage, would we not?
This is the major problem with the campaign financing explanation--it does not explain the pro-corporate behavior of politicians during lame-duck terms. Conventional political theory assumes as a commonplace that politicians orient their behavior and policies so as to maximize their chances of getting re-elected. This conventional political theory, however, doesn't explain anything in lame-duck situations where politicians have no self-interest in behaving a certain way so as to get re-elected. What factors then could continue to drive them to the right, towards catering to corporate interests?
The political application of the economic power of capital
Let's return to lobbying for a moment. Assuming that there aren't outright bribes being negotiated, what do politicians and lobbyists talk about? What is the nature of their conversation? Is it an intellectual exchange about the abstract desirability of various policies?
Part of the conversation might address such points, but if I were the owner of a corporation (that is, a "capitalist"), I'd tell my lobbyists to do the following: threaten politician X with X, Y, Z if the politician does not do what we tell him/her to do."
Now, by "X, Y, and Z," I don't necessarily mean personal threats to the politician or his/her family, although I can't discount the possibility that such threats occasionally take place. More straightforwardly, though, corporations can simply threaten to do any one of the things that they, by virtue of their economic power, are capable of doing so as to politically devastate the politician.
What exactly are these powers that corporations have? Let's see:
First and foremost, the owners of corporations (capitalists) can organize as a class in order to be prepared to collectively perform all of the following to the degree of maximum effectiveness. (Capitalists do this as a matter of course even in times when they are getting their way without having to flex their muscles. They are conscious enough of their long-term interests to know that there might come a time in the future where they might indeed have to flex these muscles).
1. Capitalists (including, but not limited to those that directly own the media) can fire journalists who cover the wrong things and can promote coverage that strengthens their ideology and/or that is critical of a particular politician or political trend. Contemporary and historical examples of this are commonplace. ("So institute a publicly-funded media like PBS or the BBC." liberal reformists will say.)
2. Capitalists can fund political movements that are favorable to their interests. (Historically, numerous right-wing groups in various countries have received funding from corporations).
3. Capitalists can lock out their workers from their businesses, thereby punishing the politician and the country for unfavorable policies. (Rare, but corporations are prepared to do this if the situation calls for it).
4. Capitalists can flee the city/region/country, taking their capital and jobs with them, and thereby punish the politician and the city/region/country for unfavorable policies. (Quite common). This is arguably their most powerful indirect weapon, as it can plunge a country into economic ruin.
5. Capitalists can convince the military (whether ideologically, or with a handsome bribe for its leading generals if need be) to stage a coup and suppress (i.e. kill or detain) the offending politician and/or political movement. There are many historical examples of this as well.
These are standing threats of which only the most naive national politician could be unaware. Therefore, getting rid of lobbyists would hardly fix the problem of the political system being unresponsive to our concerns because lobbying is merely the most discrete and gentlemanly way of reminding politicians of these standing threats from the capitalist class that politicians must first and foremost address. And I'm sure capitalists could devise other avenues of communication if needed.
Consider one example from current politics: the financial crisis in Greece.
You can bet that all of these threats I enumerated above are ultimately "on the table" in the current financial crisis in Greece. Perhaps nobody is explicitly talking about some of these threats (such as a coup) right now, but the unspoken possibility of such an event already structures the context of the negotiations.
The basic outline of the crisis is, the Greek state doesn't have enough money to pay its debts. The Greek state needs to get more money somehow, either through raising taxes on some portion of the population, or through cutting government spending...or the Greek government can default.
Greek capitalists (and by "Greek," I don't necessarily mean that they speak Greek and live in Greece. I am including, for example, American or French or German capitalists who have investments in Greece) don't want Greece to default (it means capitalists with investments in Greek bonds don't get their money), and these capitalists don't want to pay any more taxes. Instead, they want the Greek government to obtain the necessary funds by cutting the funding of social programs.
There is, of course, the standing threat of Greek capitalists withdrawing their money out of Greece if the Greek state were to attempt to raise taxes on them. That would make the Greek state's financial situation much, much worse, so the Greek state is at the mercy of these capitalists and must serve them.
That said, the Greek government is afraid to cut social programs because the Greek government honestly fears revolution from Greek workers. So the Greek government is paralyzed, unsure of how to safely evade revolution while also pleasing capitalists with investments in Greece.
In the case that the Greek government cannot be persuaded to cut social programs to the degree of Greek capitalists' liking, these capitalists can go to the Greek military to see if the Greek military is interested in putting in power a different regime that is willing to make those cuts to social programs. If the Greek military ends up being unwilling to do such a thing, capitalists with investments in Greece are likely to find the French, German, and American militaries more than "helpful" in this regard.
The only way that Greek workers can avoid spending cuts to social programs is if they make capitalists with investments in Greece (and capitalists in general) sufficiently afraid of the revolutionary seizure of those investments and the possible ignition of a wider revolution in Europe, such that these capitalists will be willing to say to the Greek state, "We'll compromise and pay part of the bill (or all of the bill) in higher taxes or defaults, so as to avoid precipitating a revolution."
Of course, not all capitalists or their political servants agree right now about the best course of action. Different individuals and sub-groups of the capitalist class have different perceptions of the objective layout of the situation, and particularly of the risk of revolution or radicalization posed by the Greek crisis. So you have a tremendous debate going on regarding how to approach the crisis.
Nevertheless, these are the constraints within which a Greek version of "Obama" would have to operate, lest he be vilified by the capitalist press or thrust out of office by a coup, or lest his country be abandoned by international capital or invaded by a foreign state representing the international capitalist class and intending to make sure that Greece continues paying its debts to the international capitalist class.
Although our country is not quite in the same degree of crisis right now, these are fundamentally the same considerations that Obama, or whoever else gets elected, must face. The question of, "Can I do X (such as a public option in healthcare)?" must always be accompanied by, "What will capitalists say about X?"
The only way that a theoretically well-meaning Obama can convince capitalists that something like a public option in healthcare is okay is if he can convince these capitalists that such a measure is necessary in order to diminish or forestall radicalization among the working class (and, to be clear, by "working class," I mean everyone who works for another person, corporation, or institution for a wage or salary, rather than making a living off of capital investments). If Obama cannot convince capitalists of this, then he simply cannot pass something like a public option in healthcare (and the increased taxes on capitalists to pay for the social policy) without risking capital flight, negative press, and (if the offense is deemed severe enough), a coup attempt.
It does not matter who is in the White House; these same constraints will apply. Some candidates might happily and willingly serve international capital. Some candidates might secretly chafe at these constraints. But the objective results will be largely the same. International capital keeps its servants on a tight leash.
If it looks like more leftist reforms are attained (or these days, maintained) during Democratic presidencies, it is usually because these presidencies also happen to come at a time when the working class is more mobilized politically and more threatening to the capitalist class, and capitalists are more willing to grant reforms in order to de-radicalize the working class. It has nothing to do with the qualities of the person in office, which is why when we elect an ostensibly progressive candidate like Obama, but do little to mobilize the working class, cultivate class consciousness, and threaten the capitalist class, the capitalist class grants Obama very little leash, and his presidency ends up disappointing liberal hopes.
The self-defeating nature of liberal reformism
There are two ways to go from here. One way is to acknowledge that we only get reforms when the capitalist class is genuinely afraid of working class revolution, regardless of who is in office, and therefore if reforms are still our goal (despite the fact that we've thereby also demonstrated that the entire political system is out of our control and functions in the interest of the capitalist class), we must pursue those reforms by cultivating class consciousness and advocating revolution so as to alarm the capitalist class sufficiently in order to enjoin our politicians to grant reforms so as to de-radicalize us.
The problem with this approach is that such reforms are inevitably short-lived because as soon as the capitalist class senses satisfaction and de-radicalization among the working class and judges it safe to take these reforms away, it will. The liberal reformist is thus caught in an impossible situation. The liberal reformist must somehow maintain working class consciousness and mobilization at just such a level so as to frighten the capitalist class to grant reforms, but ostensibly at not such a high level that we risk working class revolution ("The horrors!")
Furthermore, once the capitalist class figures out that the rhetorical revolutionaries are indeed just liberal reformists at heart, the capitalist class will no longer take their activities seriously as a threat because the capitalist class will know that the liberal reformists will do everything to decrease working class consciousness and mobilization of their own accord at the moment when it threatens to turn revolutionary, and therefore the capitalist class need not worry about needing to do anything on its own in order to grant reforms and de-radicalize the working class, as the liberal reformists will never allow the situation to get this far in the first place.
In other words, trying to reform capitalism will be an incoherent, unceasing, and self-defeating task that will inevitably end in a capitulation to whatever the capitalist class deems appropriate. These are the pathetic and hopeless prospects for liberal reformists, even after being armed with an accurate understanding of how our current political system works. (The prospects for the liberal reformists who still mistakenly think that voting for Obama will help attain their goals are even more pathetic and hopeless).
The rule of the working class—the only coherent goal
The far more coherent option is to simply commit yourself, as a member of the working class, to the task of obtaining political power for you and your class so that you are no longer held hostage politically (not to mention economically) by the capitalist class.
(Note that I have so far only made political arguments for working class revolution. There are, of course, numerous economic arguments that can be made as well).
"The working class doesn't run America, but we make America run." We already run things under the authority of our capitalist bosses and politicians. Why not obtain authority over what we already do?
Practical thoughts on working-class revolution and working-class democracy
The rule of the capitalist class is democratic internally, but despotic with regards to the rest of us. It should be blatantly clear from what I have outlined above concerning the political power of organized capital that capitalists have no intention of ever allowing our cause of working-class political and economic self-government to triumph. We must be ready for when the capitalist class inevitably calls up the military to protect its class rule, but if we are indeed ready and determined, the military will abandon its orders or even join our righteous cause as it has on many relatively bloodless revolutionary days of the past.
Just as the capitalist class is democratic internally but despotic towards the rest of us, our rule as the working class will be democratic internally, but our offer to those capitalists who are not willing to become a fellow member of the working class will be, at best, exile to Afghanistan or some hopeless place still undergoing the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
Specifically, the rule of the working class will be a direct democracy, both politically and economically. Politically, we will elect delegates to local, regional, national, and international drafting committees. These delegates will be immediately recallable upon petition of a certain reasonable percentage of the population. The delegates at each level will be charged with drafting legislation at each level, which we will then directly vote on with weekly ballots. Being a "citizen" will not be a passive afterthought, but an active, exciting, and meaningful engagement with direct political power over our lives.
Even so, if we only had political direct democracy without also economic power, that would only mean that we as citizens would be granting ourselves the luxurious privilege of directly negotiating with the capitalist class regarding the terms of our surrender in exchange for their patronage.
That's why workers' control, both legal and practical, over all productive assets is a concomitant requirement of political direct democracy. By “workers' control,” I very simply mean governing our working lives and our economy through directly democratic workplace councils and drafting committees of similar structure to what I described politically.
The system of working class direct democracy has functioned perfectly well in the past...to the extent that such a system was allowed to work (up until such instances of working class direct democracy were forcibly crushed by capitalist armies that had overwhelming help from armies of workers who were misguidedly loyal to the capitalist system--most notably, during the Paris Commune and the Spanish Revolution of 1936, to name the most well-known examples which remain, nevertheless, conspicuously absent from most working class historical memory).
The system of working class direct democracy will function even more effectively now, given modern technological advances and the overall elevation of the population's level of education over the last 130 years.
Conclusion—if not voting for Obama, then what?
The only thing preventing us from working class direct democracy is that currently a majority of the working class does not share this intention. We need only spread thoughtful class consciousness about the way capitalism and its political system works, and about the possibilities for assuming political and economic power democratically amongst ourselves, the working class.
We will not accomplish these tasks by voting for Obama. As a matter of fact, publicly defending the idea of voting for Obama is worse than ineffective. By validating this political process that misleadingly promises voters political power and seeks to obscure the political power of organized capital, you mislead the less class-conscious members of the working-class and set back the point at which they will become class-conscious allies in the class struggle.
One way we can spread class consciousness is through class-conscious intellectual debate—the very sort in which I am engaging you, the reader, right now.
Another way is to participate in instances of class struggle in a way that illuminates the workings of the capitalist system, the necessity of revolution, and the possibilities for working-class self-organization and government.
For example, if I were a Greek worker, right now I would be trying to explain to fellow members of the Greek working class exactly what I explained above in terms of my analysis of the interests of the capitalist class regarding the Greek crisis, my analysis of what capitalists are prepared to do to defend those interests, and my analysis of what we could do to not only defend our immediate living standards, but also awaken class consciousness among other Greek workers and workers internationally and organize for the attainment of power internationally as a class that will put an end to the exhausting and never-ending class struggle.
In the midst of any instance of class struggle, we class-conscious workers must raise this issue of working class political power explicitly and repeatedly. If doing so allows the capitalist class to rally liberal forces and non-class-conscious workers against us and thereby make our immediate task of defending our living standards more difficult, that is only because our cause is still weak and most workers are still not class-conscious.
The way to address this problem is not to back away from any attempt to explicitly raise class consciousness (which is what the capitalist class wants to intimidate us into doing), but rather, to raise the issue of class consciousness and working class political power even more vociferously, so as to put ourselves in a stronger position in the future with more class-conscious working-class allies to help us defend our immediate interests as well as further spread class-consciousness and the aim of working-class democracy.
If that entails a temporary rallying against us and a setback in our defense of our immediate living standards, then we must say, so be it. Running from the fight (not explicitly raising the issue of class consciousness and working class political power) will only put us in the future in a weaker position, less able to even defend our immediate interests, much less spread class-consciousness and organize for revolution.
Indeed, this is what has happened to our cause during the last 30 years. We class-conscious workers have not explicitly made the case for class-consciousness and working-class political power (so as to not frighten away less radical allies from immediate class struggles over living standards), and now workers who should have been our allies at this point are under the sway of capitalist ideology more than ever before. We must end this failed strategy of “stealth politics” at once and explicitly raise the issue of what we ultimately mean to do—put the working class into political and economic power.
This quest for working-class democracy is a tall task, but it is the only cause that reliably promises “hope” and “change.” Other efforts amount to no more than counting on the capricious sense of fear of the capitalist class in the hopes that we may wring some reforms out of them before they realize that, insofar as we do not explicitly advocate class consciousness and working-class political power, we are paper tigers.
Reformist efforts are self-contradictory. Reformist victories gained in the process of striving explicitly for working-class political power will be a nice (but inherently unstable and ephemeral) side-effect of the march towards working-class rule. We must constantly point out the opportunistic and ephemeral nature of pro-working-class reforms relinquished by capitalists in their moments of fear, and we must continually strive for working-class political rule, regardless of reformist victories given and threatened to be taken away, for working-class self-government is the only path towards reliable control over our lives and improvement of our well-being.
Keep this thought in mind as you watch the meaningless spectacle of the 2012 presidential election unfold.
I really hope that this article will help convert some left-liberals to working-class revolution. If some of the terminology of the article sounds strange, it is because I am trying to establish common ideological ground with liberals before demonstrating why this ideological ground is fundamentally flawed. I also wanted to avoid terms that liberals are apt to interpret with misleading connotations, such as "communist" or "anarchist." Instead, I have tried to talk in terms of the "political and economic rule of the working class, democratically organized" and in other such specific and precise, but somewhat clunky ways.
I also focus on political arguments for working-class revolution, which I think are under-addressed, and which I think left-leaning liberals are likely to find more persuasive than economic arguments.
==============
An open letter to the supporters of Obama in the 2012 presidential election:
The constraints on a modern president...
Why the 2012 Election is worse than ineffective...
And what you really need to do if you want “hope” and “change”
Introduction—A retrospective on four years of “hope” and “change”...
If you are an Obama supporter, you are probably somewhat disappointed in the outcome of Obama's first term as president. If you are honest with yourself and think back to the original hopes you had for Obama's first term, the current situation should seem bewildering to you.
It is quite far from those original hopes, no?
Then you must ask yourself, how could your expectations have been so wildly inaccurate?
Perhaps you were naive about the pressure Obama would face from the right. But surely you did not just expect the right wing to go away. Surely the eight long Bush years had acquainted you well enough with just how tenacious the right wing could be. Surely you know that Obama will face just as much pressure from the right during his next term, assuming that he obtains it.
Obama had filibuster-proof majorities in both branches of Congress. He had an historically strong mandate for change.
By all reasonable expectations, he should have been able to meet the material and ideological resources of the right wing head-on and prevail, especially when it came to policy proposals that were overwhelmingly popular—policy proposals that should have even made political sense promote vociferously (the list of which is too long to count).
Considering that he did not, one must explain why this occurred, so that it should not happen again.
One theory might be that Obama was trying to commit political suicide. I don't consider this a likely theory, so we'll move on.
A popular theory among liberal critics of Obama is that he is a weak politician who too easily compromises with the right wing. Assuming that Obama is indeed a psychologically weak individual incapable of holding his ground, we must ask ourselves how we did not recognize this during the 2008 presidential primaries, such that we could have nominated a different candidate. We need to know so that we do not make this same mistake again...assuming that this "weakness" is indeed the reason for Obama's disappointing behavior.
Some liberal critics have also supposed that Obama was being disingenuous. Perhaps he never really intended to do all of the things he said he intended to do.
If one or both of these two popular liberal theories about Obama are accurate, one must be consistent and acknowledge that most Democrats appear to be afflicted by the same syndrome of political weakness and/or dishonesty. They consistently fail to stand up to Republicans as much as they promise.
The more honest liberal critics, such as TheYoungTurks host Cenk Uyghur, do proceed along these very lines and indeed find it strange that Democrats overwhelmingly seem to have been afflicted by this malady of political weakness and/or dishonesty over the last 12 years, whereas Republicans seem to have caught hardly any of this flu going around Washington.
These more honest liberal critics eventually come to recognize that this is not some contagious illness at work, but rather, a political "red-shift" that seems to weaken leftists, strengthen rightists, and inch the entire public discourse towards the right over time.
This political "red-shift" is visible throughout 20th century American history.
Modern Democrats would feel right at home among Eisenhower's Republicans. Green Party progressives like the infamous Ralph Nader would have felt right at home among New Deal Democrats.
We hear much criticism of Obama from the right that he is a "socialist." Please. If you compare Obama to a real American socialist like, for example, Eugene V. Debs, you'll find a gulf as big as the Grand Canyon.
As liberal comedian Bill Maher recently quipped, Democrats are now the party of the right, and Republicans are now the party of the insane asylum.
How did it get like this? Why do "leftist" politicians systematically weaken on their leftist positions and drift to the right?
Once again, some honest liberal critics are astute enough to observe that there is enormous "corporate" pressure in this direction.
What is the nature of this corporate pressure? Obviously there is lobbying. Men in nice suits meet with politicians and try to persuade them of the efficacy of their pro-business, anti-tax, anti-labor, anti-social program proposals.
In an of itself, this should not be enough to account for a systematic shift to the right. After all, are politicians incapable of disagreeing with these men in nice suits? Do our politicians mindlessly agree with the last thing that they heard? I'd like to give them more credit than that.
You'd think that most politicians would be capable of sitting down with a lobbyist from United Healthcare and saying at the end of the meeting, "I've heard what you've said, but I must respectfully disagree, I remain convinced that we need to push for a public option in healthcare."
Even if a politician hears from 12 United Healthcare lobbyists in a row, that politician must still understand, if he/she has any brain at all, that for every lobbyist he/she has just heard from, there are millions of people who do emphatically want a public option in healthcare but who personally didn't get the chance to travel and present their cases on that day.
If this polite exchange of ideas with lobbyists was all that was going on, then on what grounds could we point to lobbying as the corrupting influence systematically shifting our politicians and political system to the right?
Some will argue that lobbyists corrupt our politicians by bribing them.
While there are plenty of documented cases of this happening (particularly in indirect ways, such as by promising politicians lucrative positions on boards of directors after their political terms have finished), I don't think it happens enough to explain systematic catering to "corporate" interests, unless we are willing to accept that we as voters are systematically bad at noticing that all of our candidates are evil, treacherous con-men. (And why is the field of candidates only filled with such men?)
Many voters will repeat the cliché that "politicians are crooks" while insisting that "my congressperson is different" and that they will be voting to re-elect this incumbent in the next election. Both statements can't, in general, be simultaneously true.
If you are in any way thinking of engaging in the political process, you are probably convinced, as I am, that the field of candidates can't possibly be devoid of well-meaning individuals.
Unlike many critics of Obama, I'll even assume that Obama himself is well-meaning (although I'll show how this assumption is, in the end, irrelevant once one understands the constraints on a politician in the context of modern capitalism).
Well then, what exactly is pushing Obama to the right, if it is not intellectual debate with lobbyists or bribes from lobbyists?
One obvious answer would be campaign financing. Obama must please corporations so that he can get campaign financing from them in order to win re-election...so the argument goes. This argument holds out hopes for liberal critics that, if only we could reform campaign financing, our political system would no longer be dysfunctional and unresponsive to our opinions. As I will show, this is a naive assumption that does not take into account the full range of powers of corporations. They can do much more than simply withhold campaign financing.
Anyways, if campaign financing were the main reason for why Obama or any other politician catered to corporate interests, we would expect to see every once in a while a politician (or Obama himself next term) get re-elected and ignore his corporate sponsors now that they had nothing more to offer in terms of political advantage, would we not?
This is the major problem with the campaign financing explanation--it does not explain the pro-corporate behavior of politicians during lame-duck terms. Conventional political theory assumes as a commonplace that politicians orient their behavior and policies so as to maximize their chances of getting re-elected. This conventional political theory, however, doesn't explain anything in lame-duck situations where politicians have no self-interest in behaving a certain way so as to get re-elected. What factors then could continue to drive them to the right, towards catering to corporate interests?
The political application of the economic power of capital
Let's return to lobbying for a moment. Assuming that there aren't outright bribes being negotiated, what do politicians and lobbyists talk about? What is the nature of their conversation? Is it an intellectual exchange about the abstract desirability of various policies?
Part of the conversation might address such points, but if I were the owner of a corporation (that is, a "capitalist"), I'd tell my lobbyists to do the following: threaten politician X with X, Y, Z if the politician does not do what we tell him/her to do."
Now, by "X, Y, and Z," I don't necessarily mean personal threats to the politician or his/her family, although I can't discount the possibility that such threats occasionally take place. More straightforwardly, though, corporations can simply threaten to do any one of the things that they, by virtue of their economic power, are capable of doing so as to politically devastate the politician.
What exactly are these powers that corporations have? Let's see:
First and foremost, the owners of corporations (capitalists) can organize as a class in order to be prepared to collectively perform all of the following to the degree of maximum effectiveness. (Capitalists do this as a matter of course even in times when they are getting their way without having to flex their muscles. They are conscious enough of their long-term interests to know that there might come a time in the future where they might indeed have to flex these muscles).
1. Capitalists (including, but not limited to those that directly own the media) can fire journalists who cover the wrong things and can promote coverage that strengthens their ideology and/or that is critical of a particular politician or political trend. Contemporary and historical examples of this are commonplace. ("So institute a publicly-funded media like PBS or the BBC." liberal reformists will say.)
2. Capitalists can fund political movements that are favorable to their interests. (Historically, numerous right-wing groups in various countries have received funding from corporations).
3. Capitalists can lock out their workers from their businesses, thereby punishing the politician and the country for unfavorable policies. (Rare, but corporations are prepared to do this if the situation calls for it).
4. Capitalists can flee the city/region/country, taking their capital and jobs with them, and thereby punish the politician and the city/region/country for unfavorable policies. (Quite common). This is arguably their most powerful indirect weapon, as it can plunge a country into economic ruin.
5. Capitalists can convince the military (whether ideologically, or with a handsome bribe for its leading generals if need be) to stage a coup and suppress (i.e. kill or detain) the offending politician and/or political movement. There are many historical examples of this as well.
These are standing threats of which only the most naive national politician could be unaware. Therefore, getting rid of lobbyists would hardly fix the problem of the political system being unresponsive to our concerns because lobbying is merely the most discrete and gentlemanly way of reminding politicians of these standing threats from the capitalist class that politicians must first and foremost address. And I'm sure capitalists could devise other avenues of communication if needed.
Consider one example from current politics: the financial crisis in Greece.
You can bet that all of these threats I enumerated above are ultimately "on the table" in the current financial crisis in Greece. Perhaps nobody is explicitly talking about some of these threats (such as a coup) right now, but the unspoken possibility of such an event already structures the context of the negotiations.
The basic outline of the crisis is, the Greek state doesn't have enough money to pay its debts. The Greek state needs to get more money somehow, either through raising taxes on some portion of the population, or through cutting government spending...or the Greek government can default.
Greek capitalists (and by "Greek," I don't necessarily mean that they speak Greek and live in Greece. I am including, for example, American or French or German capitalists who have investments in Greece) don't want Greece to default (it means capitalists with investments in Greek bonds don't get their money), and these capitalists don't want to pay any more taxes. Instead, they want the Greek government to obtain the necessary funds by cutting the funding of social programs.
There is, of course, the standing threat of Greek capitalists withdrawing their money out of Greece if the Greek state were to attempt to raise taxes on them. That would make the Greek state's financial situation much, much worse, so the Greek state is at the mercy of these capitalists and must serve them.
That said, the Greek government is afraid to cut social programs because the Greek government honestly fears revolution from Greek workers. So the Greek government is paralyzed, unsure of how to safely evade revolution while also pleasing capitalists with investments in Greece.
In the case that the Greek government cannot be persuaded to cut social programs to the degree of Greek capitalists' liking, these capitalists can go to the Greek military to see if the Greek military is interested in putting in power a different regime that is willing to make those cuts to social programs. If the Greek military ends up being unwilling to do such a thing, capitalists with investments in Greece are likely to find the French, German, and American militaries more than "helpful" in this regard.
The only way that Greek workers can avoid spending cuts to social programs is if they make capitalists with investments in Greece (and capitalists in general) sufficiently afraid of the revolutionary seizure of those investments and the possible ignition of a wider revolution in Europe, such that these capitalists will be willing to say to the Greek state, "We'll compromise and pay part of the bill (or all of the bill) in higher taxes or defaults, so as to avoid precipitating a revolution."
Of course, not all capitalists or their political servants agree right now about the best course of action. Different individuals and sub-groups of the capitalist class have different perceptions of the objective layout of the situation, and particularly of the risk of revolution or radicalization posed by the Greek crisis. So you have a tremendous debate going on regarding how to approach the crisis.
Nevertheless, these are the constraints within which a Greek version of "Obama" would have to operate, lest he be vilified by the capitalist press or thrust out of office by a coup, or lest his country be abandoned by international capital or invaded by a foreign state representing the international capitalist class and intending to make sure that Greece continues paying its debts to the international capitalist class.
Although our country is not quite in the same degree of crisis right now, these are fundamentally the same considerations that Obama, or whoever else gets elected, must face. The question of, "Can I do X (such as a public option in healthcare)?" must always be accompanied by, "What will capitalists say about X?"
The only way that a theoretically well-meaning Obama can convince capitalists that something like a public option in healthcare is okay is if he can convince these capitalists that such a measure is necessary in order to diminish or forestall radicalization among the working class (and, to be clear, by "working class," I mean everyone who works for another person, corporation, or institution for a wage or salary, rather than making a living off of capital investments). If Obama cannot convince capitalists of this, then he simply cannot pass something like a public option in healthcare (and the increased taxes on capitalists to pay for the social policy) without risking capital flight, negative press, and (if the offense is deemed severe enough), a coup attempt.
It does not matter who is in the White House; these same constraints will apply. Some candidates might happily and willingly serve international capital. Some candidates might secretly chafe at these constraints. But the objective results will be largely the same. International capital keeps its servants on a tight leash.
If it looks like more leftist reforms are attained (or these days, maintained) during Democratic presidencies, it is usually because these presidencies also happen to come at a time when the working class is more mobilized politically and more threatening to the capitalist class, and capitalists are more willing to grant reforms in order to de-radicalize the working class. It has nothing to do with the qualities of the person in office, which is why when we elect an ostensibly progressive candidate like Obama, but do little to mobilize the working class, cultivate class consciousness, and threaten the capitalist class, the capitalist class grants Obama very little leash, and his presidency ends up disappointing liberal hopes.
The self-defeating nature of liberal reformism
There are two ways to go from here. One way is to acknowledge that we only get reforms when the capitalist class is genuinely afraid of working class revolution, regardless of who is in office, and therefore if reforms are still our goal (despite the fact that we've thereby also demonstrated that the entire political system is out of our control and functions in the interest of the capitalist class), we must pursue those reforms by cultivating class consciousness and advocating revolution so as to alarm the capitalist class sufficiently in order to enjoin our politicians to grant reforms so as to de-radicalize us.
The problem with this approach is that such reforms are inevitably short-lived because as soon as the capitalist class senses satisfaction and de-radicalization among the working class and judges it safe to take these reforms away, it will. The liberal reformist is thus caught in an impossible situation. The liberal reformist must somehow maintain working class consciousness and mobilization at just such a level so as to frighten the capitalist class to grant reforms, but ostensibly at not such a high level that we risk working class revolution ("The horrors!")
Furthermore, once the capitalist class figures out that the rhetorical revolutionaries are indeed just liberal reformists at heart, the capitalist class will no longer take their activities seriously as a threat because the capitalist class will know that the liberal reformists will do everything to decrease working class consciousness and mobilization of their own accord at the moment when it threatens to turn revolutionary, and therefore the capitalist class need not worry about needing to do anything on its own in order to grant reforms and de-radicalize the working class, as the liberal reformists will never allow the situation to get this far in the first place.
In other words, trying to reform capitalism will be an incoherent, unceasing, and self-defeating task that will inevitably end in a capitulation to whatever the capitalist class deems appropriate. These are the pathetic and hopeless prospects for liberal reformists, even after being armed with an accurate understanding of how our current political system works. (The prospects for the liberal reformists who still mistakenly think that voting for Obama will help attain their goals are even more pathetic and hopeless).
The rule of the working class—the only coherent goal
The far more coherent option is to simply commit yourself, as a member of the working class, to the task of obtaining political power for you and your class so that you are no longer held hostage politically (not to mention economically) by the capitalist class.
(Note that I have so far only made political arguments for working class revolution. There are, of course, numerous economic arguments that can be made as well).
"The working class doesn't run America, but we make America run." We already run things under the authority of our capitalist bosses and politicians. Why not obtain authority over what we already do?
Practical thoughts on working-class revolution and working-class democracy
The rule of the capitalist class is democratic internally, but despotic with regards to the rest of us. It should be blatantly clear from what I have outlined above concerning the political power of organized capital that capitalists have no intention of ever allowing our cause of working-class political and economic self-government to triumph. We must be ready for when the capitalist class inevitably calls up the military to protect its class rule, but if we are indeed ready and determined, the military will abandon its orders or even join our righteous cause as it has on many relatively bloodless revolutionary days of the past.
Just as the capitalist class is democratic internally but despotic towards the rest of us, our rule as the working class will be democratic internally, but our offer to those capitalists who are not willing to become a fellow member of the working class will be, at best, exile to Afghanistan or some hopeless place still undergoing the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
Specifically, the rule of the working class will be a direct democracy, both politically and economically. Politically, we will elect delegates to local, regional, national, and international drafting committees. These delegates will be immediately recallable upon petition of a certain reasonable percentage of the population. The delegates at each level will be charged with drafting legislation at each level, which we will then directly vote on with weekly ballots. Being a "citizen" will not be a passive afterthought, but an active, exciting, and meaningful engagement with direct political power over our lives.
Even so, if we only had political direct democracy without also economic power, that would only mean that we as citizens would be granting ourselves the luxurious privilege of directly negotiating with the capitalist class regarding the terms of our surrender in exchange for their patronage.
That's why workers' control, both legal and practical, over all productive assets is a concomitant requirement of political direct democracy. By “workers' control,” I very simply mean governing our working lives and our economy through directly democratic workplace councils and drafting committees of similar structure to what I described politically.
The system of working class direct democracy has functioned perfectly well in the past...to the extent that such a system was allowed to work (up until such instances of working class direct democracy were forcibly crushed by capitalist armies that had overwhelming help from armies of workers who were misguidedly loyal to the capitalist system--most notably, during the Paris Commune and the Spanish Revolution of 1936, to name the most well-known examples which remain, nevertheless, conspicuously absent from most working class historical memory).
The system of working class direct democracy will function even more effectively now, given modern technological advances and the overall elevation of the population's level of education over the last 130 years.
Conclusion—if not voting for Obama, then what?
The only thing preventing us from working class direct democracy is that currently a majority of the working class does not share this intention. We need only spread thoughtful class consciousness about the way capitalism and its political system works, and about the possibilities for assuming political and economic power democratically amongst ourselves, the working class.
We will not accomplish these tasks by voting for Obama. As a matter of fact, publicly defending the idea of voting for Obama is worse than ineffective. By validating this political process that misleadingly promises voters political power and seeks to obscure the political power of organized capital, you mislead the less class-conscious members of the working-class and set back the point at which they will become class-conscious allies in the class struggle.
One way we can spread class consciousness is through class-conscious intellectual debate—the very sort in which I am engaging you, the reader, right now.
Another way is to participate in instances of class struggle in a way that illuminates the workings of the capitalist system, the necessity of revolution, and the possibilities for working-class self-organization and government.
For example, if I were a Greek worker, right now I would be trying to explain to fellow members of the Greek working class exactly what I explained above in terms of my analysis of the interests of the capitalist class regarding the Greek crisis, my analysis of what capitalists are prepared to do to defend those interests, and my analysis of what we could do to not only defend our immediate living standards, but also awaken class consciousness among other Greek workers and workers internationally and organize for the attainment of power internationally as a class that will put an end to the exhausting and never-ending class struggle.
In the midst of any instance of class struggle, we class-conscious workers must raise this issue of working class political power explicitly and repeatedly. If doing so allows the capitalist class to rally liberal forces and non-class-conscious workers against us and thereby make our immediate task of defending our living standards more difficult, that is only because our cause is still weak and most workers are still not class-conscious.
The way to address this problem is not to back away from any attempt to explicitly raise class consciousness (which is what the capitalist class wants to intimidate us into doing), but rather, to raise the issue of class consciousness and working class political power even more vociferously, so as to put ourselves in a stronger position in the future with more class-conscious working-class allies to help us defend our immediate interests as well as further spread class-consciousness and the aim of working-class democracy.
If that entails a temporary rallying against us and a setback in our defense of our immediate living standards, then we must say, so be it. Running from the fight (not explicitly raising the issue of class consciousness and working class political power) will only put us in the future in a weaker position, less able to even defend our immediate interests, much less spread class-consciousness and organize for revolution.
Indeed, this is what has happened to our cause during the last 30 years. We class-conscious workers have not explicitly made the case for class-consciousness and working-class political power (so as to not frighten away less radical allies from immediate class struggles over living standards), and now workers who should have been our allies at this point are under the sway of capitalist ideology more than ever before. We must end this failed strategy of “stealth politics” at once and explicitly raise the issue of what we ultimately mean to do—put the working class into political and economic power.
This quest for working-class democracy is a tall task, but it is the only cause that reliably promises “hope” and “change.” Other efforts amount to no more than counting on the capricious sense of fear of the capitalist class in the hopes that we may wring some reforms out of them before they realize that, insofar as we do not explicitly advocate class consciousness and working-class political power, we are paper tigers.
Reformist efforts are self-contradictory. Reformist victories gained in the process of striving explicitly for working-class political power will be a nice (but inherently unstable and ephemeral) side-effect of the march towards working-class rule. We must constantly point out the opportunistic and ephemeral nature of pro-working-class reforms relinquished by capitalists in their moments of fear, and we must continually strive for working-class political rule, regardless of reformist victories given and threatened to be taken away, for working-class self-government is the only path towards reliable control over our lives and improvement of our well-being.
Keep this thought in mind as you watch the meaningless spectacle of the 2012 presidential election unfold.