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Obama's victory
So, let's have a serious discussion about this.
The fact of the matter is is that the forces of reaction and plutocracy, despite their considerale efforts, have been dealt a symbolic defeat in America.
Perhaps more tellingly, the exceedingly white-oriented opposition failed to muster sufficient votes to gain their biggest symbolic victory that was a prerequisite for their "last stand" before the older white voters start to die off.
What I'm curious to hear about is how the left, or at least people here, think we need to go from this, and what the appropriate lessons to learn are and how to apply those. To expose my biases, there are some real questions about class politics raised in this American election, and I don't think the left is well-served by glossing over it as a charade; I think the forces of reaction have been dealt a serious defeat today.
百花齐放
-----------------------------
la luz
de un Rojo Amanecer
anuncia ya
la vida que vendrá.
-Quilapayun
Can you elaborate on your position? It's a controversial one on revleft.
I don't see how the forces of reaction have been dealt a defeat. Obama and the democrats represent the same bourgeois forces that the Republicans do. The only way in which they differ is in how they represent two different strategic approaches for the maintenance of bourgeois rule.
I don't even see how Obama's policies will be qualitatively different from what Romney's would be at all. We'll still see the same program of brutal austerity and imperialism. Even if Obama did represent something "progressive" such as advocacy of a nationalized health care system, which he does not, he still should be vigorously opposed as such an action would represent a tactical move on the part of the bourgeoisie for the maintenance of their dictatorship.
It is in my view that the "right-left" dichotomy doesn't have much value. Either one is for revolution and pursuing the proletariat's class interests, or they are not. The Democrats and Obama clearly and unambiguously represent the interests of the capitalist class. One cannot consider the victory of the democrats to represent anything progressive or a move towards proletarian political rule; this would be reformism.
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Last time I checked, the Democrats aren't preaching on about the "Christian nation", or how women's bodies can defend against 'legitimate' rape, or how gay marriage violates the rights of Christians (etc.....).
And most racists (except perhaps the very few Old\Southern democrats) vote Republican for a reason. Economically the 2 parties are the same, but it's pretty obvious to everyone that the Democrats are the more progressive on social issues.
Those who do not move, do not notice their chains" - Rosa Luxemburg
"They call it the 'American Dream' because you have to be asleep to believe it." -George Carlin
"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace" - John Lennon
Economic Left/Right: -8.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.79
Comrade:
My position is that Obama is a capitalist scumbeing that serves to pull wool over the working class. In fairness, I do not see this as a controversial position here.
The only issue therefore seems to me how devoted the capitalist class is to one candidate or the other. It the capitalist class is quite explicit in its preferences for tulips, then mandating that all gardens have only roses seems to serve some useful social purpose viz. defeating the capitalist's objectives. This seems like a valid question still. Or do you see it differently?
MS.
百花齐放
-----------------------------
la luz
de un Rojo Amanecer
anuncia ya
la vida que vendrá.
-Quilapayun
Last I checked, the Democrats preached capitalism, just as the Republicans do. How does a victory for the Democrats translate into a political advantage for the proletariat? If it doesn't, then there is no reason to support them.
Social-issues are red herrings that are used to goad reformists and left-liberals into giving them support. These things mean nothing to the capitalist class. Our main goal should be the achievement of the political dictatorship of the proletariat. The election of the Democrats does nothing to further this; to say otherwise is raw reformism.
The capitalists' relation to the means of production is the source of their strength. It's the only thing that matters. They must be severed from them at any cost.
How do we measure how devoted the capitalist class is to one particular candidate? It would seem that the capitalist class is a heterogeneous bunch and that they were not all behind Romney.
I'd say the presidential race in the U.S., which is impassioned almost to the point of hysteria, hardly represents any healthy democratic impulses. Americans are encouraged to vote, but not participate more meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially, the election is yet another way of marginalizing the population. A huge propaganda campaign is mounted to get people focused on the candidates personality traits and to think "that's politics," but it's not.
The population has been carefully excluded from political activity, and not by accident. An enormous amount of work has gone into that disenfranchisement. During the 1960s, the outburst in the participation in popular democracy frightened sectors of privilege and power, which mounted a fierce counter-campaign, taking many forms until today. Obama and Romney can run because they're backed by similar concentrations of private power. Both of them know the election is supposed to stay away from the issues. They're products of the PR industry. Their task is to get people to focus onthe candidates "qualities" not policies. "Is he a leader? Is he a nice guy?" Voters end up endorsing an image, not a platform.
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”
-James Baldwin
"We change ideas like neckties."
- E.M. Cioran
It amazes me that someone who believes that the pro-war, imperialist Democrats do not represent "reaction and plutocracy" gets to be a global moderator on revleft, presumably with the authority to order the rest of us around. And the guy gets to call himself "Marx"! Phreaking incredible! What a travesty!
If we really want to transform life, we must learn to look at it through the eyes of women. – Trotsky, 1923
The ballot box is the coffin of class consciousness. – Alan Dawley
Proud member of the 47% since 2010 – Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!
I think the the obvious point here that needs to be mentioned is that a politician can subjectively proclaim to be luke-warm and far less enthusiastic in his support of capitalism, but at the same time objectively play a far more crucial role in sustaining it than the True Believers. "Symbolic victories" about what people say and think need to be understood in this context.
It looks like a few Communists here have been listening a little too non-critically to mainstream news broadcasts and have started to believe both Democrat and Republican propaganda - Obama is no less a true believer in capitalism than Romney - he is not one iota less a capitalist than he is. Obama just champions a different school of capitalist economics. Nevertheless he DOES represent the bourgeoisie.
Were you guys asleep while Obama was playing softball with the banks, handing out free money and refusing to prosecute anyone for fraud?
Did you not notice that huge surge in troops he deployed to Afghanistan, all these drone strikes on civilians the DoD has been engaging in under his watch, and his signing into law a bill which allows him to suspend practically any American's civil rights in order to prosecute terrorists?
Did you miss how many immigrants Obama's administration has been deporting?
I'm not sure if I give a damn much about symbolic victories. I'm not sure if they factor into dialectical materialism very well.
Honestly, I challenge this. There's a hell of a lot of liberal racists, they just tend to be really polite and middle class about it.
Seriously, a Mexican-American comrade of mine was recently told by an Obama-supporting liberal that he should be deported because he wasn't going to vote. You see shit like that all the time.
I mean yes, left-liberals are far more likely to be conscious of racial issues but all the same you'll get a lot of stupid privileged white liberals who have some really messed up attitudes - and all with the best of intentions.
Capitalism wins either way. Yea, Obama maybe the lesser of two evils, but voting for any evil is pointless, and the last 200+ years should be evidence of this. The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.
just asking here but wont congress remain majority republican?
R.I.P Juan Almeida Bosque
"The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely
the oppressive situations which we seek to escape,
but that piece of the oppressor which is
planted deep within each of us." Audre Lorde
he doesn't even do that; they're both neoliberals, romney is just more ideological with it.
Until now, the left has only managed capital in various ways; the point, however, is to destroy it.
To say that Obama and Romney represent the EXACT same interests is a bit misleading. Why would the likes of the Koch brothers and Goldmann Sachs throw so much money at Romney's campaign if this were the case? It is a symbolic "victory" in this sense, but I don't think it means anything. The old white baby boomers will be replaced by equally reactionary libertarian youth and the radical left is as irrelevant as ever. The bottom line is that people are still scared of socialism because they think it means the government takes their money and gives it to people who don't want to work.
This is an object lesson in the utter stupidity and, indeed futility, of the "lesser of two evils" strategy to which large swathes of the Left have been prone and for which reason it now finds itself, to all intents and purposes, emasculated and utterly marginalised. Hanging on to the coat tails of capitalist politicians has done it absolutely no favours and to continue doing so will only ensure its downward descent towards political oblivion
The outcome can only be what I call the "politics of the treadmill". What the opportunistic poseurs and purveyors of so called realpolitik and pragmatism among many on the left (and indeed on this forum) - those who sneer at a principled communist position and dismiss it as "dogmatism" - seemingly overlook in their infatuation with the machinations of reformist politics is that a vote for Obama is, in effect, a vote for Romney's successor later on just as a vote for Romney, if he had won, would be a vote for Obama's successor in due course. This is inevitable. It is no coincidence that capitalist politics follows a see-saw pattern. Tweedledum must, sooner or latter, replace Tweedledee only to be replaced, in turn, by Tweedledumm again or some other alternative since neither Tweedledum , Tweedledee or any other alternative team set up to manage and administer capitalism can ever succeed in what they hope to do . The inevitable failure of one will inevitably prepare the ground for the return of the other which in turn will fail, inevitably. That is why, as long as you buy into the "lesser of two evils" argument , there can be no hope whatosever of transcending the kind of society we live in today
It is not governments that control capitalism, it is capitalism that controls government and shapes government policy to fit in with its own systemic needs. You cannot operate capitalism except in the interest of capital. To think otherwise is to fall into a trap and snare which, like quiksand, will drag you down into a pit of political disenchantment. It will lower your political sights and strip you of any vision you once had of a better world. It will transform you eventually into a modeol citiizen of capitalist society
If there is a leson in all this for socialists it is that we need now to firmly draw a line in the sand and say "enough is enough". A plague on both their houses! Either we socialists offer a genuine revolutionary alternative to capitalism in all its varieities or we renounce our socialism and fall into the long line of reformists backing Obama and his capitalist agenda, knowing full well that in the end we are only thereby ensuring the return of the Republican party in due course. Nothing will have changed
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how the fuck are you a "left communist"?
Until now, the left has only managed capital in various ways; the point, however, is to destroy it.
I would say not that the forces of reaction and plutocracy have been dealt a defeat, but that in voting for Obama/against Romney, many Americans do believe that they have dealt a defeat to the forces of reaction and plutocracy, which is an important point.
It's important in our analysis because it's important not to imprint our own understanding of contemporary Democratic/Obama politics (As a bourgeois charade removed from Romney et al. only in character, personality and the ability to show some level of personal compassion) onto the understanding of the voters. I think the voters may well believe that Obama represents something different to Romney, which is an important point whether he does or not (I for one think it's clear he does not!), because it shows that the Americans are not interested in voting for reaction/plutocracy, but merely that is what is on offer - in different skins - in the presidential elections.
So where we go from here is not to attack the US as full of backwards idiots like some would do, but highlight in the coming four years the problems with the presidential (political) system, and the wider economic (capitalist!) system in general, and how they pertain to ordinary Americans' experiences since 2008 or so.
Just my two cents.
I think my point is important because a lot of people on the left equate voting for a bourgeois asshole like Obama with supporting bourgeois asshole politics. It's important to distinguish between the objective politics of someone like Obama, and the perception of Obama. Perceptions are key, otherwise we'll just be going to the working class with ideas of them that are not necessarily true.
