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Yeah, maybe I wasn't entirely clear. I hope you understand my position now.
I'm not saying we should just sit back and hope folks become communists from their frustration with Obama. There's enough capitalist propaganda about that, yes, they would simply swing to the republicans or just think 'well, at least he's not a lunatic mormon' etc. We need to see this as an opportunity to criticise the so-called 'left' from a position of revolutionary marxism, offering up a solid program for change and encouraging people to disassociate with the bourgeois parties and participate in a proletarian party because it will become clear to some people that Obama is simply the same old shit and we need to channel that into something positive.
Modern democracy is nothing but the freedom to preach whatever is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie - Lenin
Notwithstanding the fact that I think civil marriage (both opposite- and same-sex) is a highly problematic institution we should be working to abolish rather than expand, I think it should be remembered that BO only lined up behind the issue after his VP made a gaffe which left him with no other choice.
If there was any other option but them two parties, I would put the matter on a workers autonomy politics. But its not, it was between them two. And Obama is not the worst option.
What I m most curious, is what percentage of the working class, the real working class, not the false description they give in US, voted for Obama. How popular he is in lower wages.
The good thing with Obama winning is that this will create a vacuum once austerity is implemented under them and the economy depresses as in Greece. The goal for American comrades should be now to fight for proportional representation in which a socialist opposition can be established on the national political stage. There is of course the possibility of the far right also gaining from the looming crisis. But if you look at how Americans voted in urban areas (and factor in that millions of ethnic minority Americans were victims of voter suppression, purging and voting machine fixing), you see that the vast majority of urban workers voted for a black President against the right wingers. So this is a good sign for the left and Proletarian revolution.
"It is necessary for Communists to enter into contradiction with the consciousness of the masses. . . The problem with these Transitional programs and transitional demands, which don't enter into any contradiction with the consciousness of the masses, or try to trick the masses into entering into the class struggle, create soviets - [is that] it winds up as common-or-garden reformism or economism." - Mike Macnair, on the necessity of the Minimum and Maximum communist party Program.
"You're lucky. You have a faith. Even if it's only Karl Marx" - Richard Burton
I think you may have a point here but let me repeat the commonly repeated phrase that Republicans love to use.
America is not Europe
The United States is as of present is the most apathetic first world nation in the world. It is likely that it will take several more years for large amounts of the poor to leave the two party system entirely and understand the left.
It is promising that the urban voters are not voting for any flavor of Tea Party, these are simply seeds in my view.
[FONT=Arial] -8.75, -5.08[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world. - Eugene Debs[/FONT]
Now that the corporate election is over we have to push Obama in the streets (just as we would any other politician) to win whatever we can for the needs of the people, end war, and to beat back austerity. Ultimately, we need to create a grassroots political alternative to capitalist political parties entirely.
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
- And how
Generally as political objects the third parties to the left have not been doing well, so where dose that leave us?
Popular Pressure?
Look I am all for taking to the streets it is the up most necessity and yes there has been organization so there is a base to work with in the cities.
But it is still not enough to turn into results not at the time being unfortunately, There are those millions who have no clue of politics beyond the two parties amd those who think that Socialism is a backward dogma.
[FONT=Arial] -8.75, -5.08[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world. - Eugene Debs[/FONT]
Why on Earth would we be even remotely interested in any of this?
you talk of a "real working class" and then conflate it with simply "lower wages". hmm.
Until now, the left has only managed capital in various ways; the point, however, is to destroy it.
The vast majority of people who vote are petit bourgeois, something like 40% of americans don't vote, meaning these elections don't really mean anything other than which taste of capitalism seemed more appealing to more people. Romney could of won if he wasn't such a twat towards women and non white people.
This is in no way a "victory," for socialists, materially or metaphysically. Obama is our worst enemy, and revealing the union bureaucrats and democrats as the enemies of the working class is our first goal, regardless of what "tendency," you think you are.
For student organizing in california, join this group!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1036
http://socialistorganizer.org/
"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
I get what you guys are saying I think, that this is a rejection of Romney presenting the honest face of capitalism and reaction. I don't doubt that many many Obama voters don't really want what Obama will do, but that he somehow symbolises something else. I think this was certainly very true in 2008 and is still somewhat true now despite his four years of government, but now I think it is fear rather than the hope he offered four years ago. But I don't get how you can see it as any kind of victory, symbolic or otherwise. Progressive energies being drained away, channeled into this illusion. That's depressing. But the first term of Obama had Occupy Wall Street so clearly there is potential for resistance against "our" president.
WE RIDE TOGETHER WE DIE TOGETHER
Either US presidential candidate would "mean war"
The notion of an unnamed elite pushing the US electorate this way and that, for the sake of distraction, is attractive. The factual difficulty with it is that, this time, the populace did not "clamor to move in the other direction rhetorically." On the contrary, they gave the incumbent four more years of an incredible amount of power.
The difficulty with Bakunin Knight's second assertion, that "Obama must have agreed to submit to" the plans of the elite, is that there is probably very little, if any, distance between Obama and "the elite," so the incumbent does not to move ideologically to embrace the plans of "the elite." Obama came into office as a convinced supporter of the US war in Afghanistan. After his election in 2008, the "anti-war" movement, at one of its national meetings, had to decide whether or not to oppose US intervention in Afghanistan, since Obama was fond of that war, and the "anti-war" movement was super-fond of Obama and the pro-war, imperialist Democratic Party. And there actually was sentiment in the US "anti-war" movement, not to oppose US military interference in Afghanistan, indeed, not to mention the US war in Afghanistan at all, since the Democrats wouldn't like that. All of which just proves, once again, that the "social movements" in the US are merely extensions of the pro-war Democratic Party, all the time, without exception.
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!
Look on the bright side everybody- the two rape apologist Republican senators were defeated.
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
Proportional representation in the US would not be a bad thing
I disagree that Obama's re-election is a good deal for workers in the US; workers and the poor in the US have taken it on the chin, royally, during the last four years. Obama's poverty figures increased annually, and, the last time I checked, they were higher than US poverty figures under GW Bush, the liberals' nemesis (sp?).
But, historically, to address a minor issue raised by Workers-Control, it is true that proportional representation would be a good thing for the US left. If I remember correctly, decades ago, in the mid-20th century, there was a CP-run "third party" in New York, called, I think, the American Labor Party, at a time when there was proportional representation in elections in New York, and that third party was able to win some seats consistently, which led to the disappearance of proportional representation, since the "choices" in US politics always have to reflect an extremely narrow political spectrum – that is a ruling-class imperative in this country. Even the Green Party, which, politically, is a very tame "third party," is just too much for the rulers here.
So I'm all for proportional representation. It's not the solution, but it would be a step forward.
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'm not advocating for a "lesser of two evils" approach here, but it's bad analysis to call liberals a "force of reaction". On the contrary, liberalism of the Obama variety prefers stasis to a swing to the far right. This doesn't mean we shouldn't critique his economic policy or social positions but it should be done on the grounds of the ineffectiveness of liberal politics to end, as opposed to engage in Imperialism or Capitalism.
People like Obama because he seems like a nice guy who cares about them. The fact that he is financed by the banks doesn't mean he doesn't ... just that liberals seeks to "reform" the system. That's the problem with liberalism ... it fails to have the answers to the social and economic contradictions we face.
Socialist Party of Outer Space
Liberalism IS the problem we face. The revolution of 1848 proved there isn't a difference between the National (republicans) and the Jacobins (democrats), and these party formations have been grown in every imperialist state. Liberals and trade bureaucracies are the enemies we face as socialists. Conservatives are only around to make the liberals seem more progressive, and are funded by the rich to push the premeditated debates more to the capitalists side.
For student organizing in california, join this group!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1036
http://socialistorganizer.org/
"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
I have a question for all in this forum:
Is it pointless to work in D.C. in any capacity? I have been seriously considering it for a long time and have asked before.. I believe organizations like The Democracy Collaborative and The New Economics Institute would be ideal places to work at... they are founded by Richard Wolff and Gar Alperovitz..
I would never want to be a reformist who simply is there to waste my energy while an activist on the reactionary end basically makes me efforts obsolete.. but then I remember Lenin's "Left Communism: An Infantile Disorder".. and I wonder if working within the system is one of the ways Marxists can surreptitiously work towards a better society. I am aware that revolution is really the only way (via Luxemburg), yet I am almost positive there are Marxists or Socialists in the democratic party (The Progressives... can they really all have never read Marx, Enels, et al)?
Your thoughts? Would I be wasting my time? As a marxist I have a healthy disgust for advertising, marketing, most business.. I really don't know what else is ideal for a young college graduate..
[FONT=Arial Narrow]The revolution will move forward until its consolidation is total. The time is still far off when there can be a period of relative calm. And life is always revolution. - Antonio Gramsci
[/FONT][FONT=Arial Narrow]"One group of people was appalled at how slaves were treated; they demanded that slaves be treated better. The second group was horrified by the first, insisting that the fundamental problem was that there were slaves at all! The solution was not to make slaves better off, because so long as the slave was a slave, the master had the control to take back whatever the slave can win in the way of better conditions. The issue is slavery itself; no person can be the property of another."[/FONT]
Of course I don't think Obama getting voted is in any way good for the working class. I personally could not have honestly cared who wins the US elections, but now that a result exists i will analyze it: strategically speaking it might be better for us if a collapse happens under the "Left" capitalists, is my opinion. Obama already has said many times that he will implement austerity. This will create a vacuum for the rhetorically "progressive" political section, which is the vast majority of urban US Americans as the election have shown.
If you combine the vacuum probability and the fact that the urban workers voted disproportionately for a Black person who uses more social/collectivist rhetoric (against crypto-racists), it is not a bad strategic situation for the US Socialists and Communists going into a crisis. The potential right wing danger for the US lies in the rural conservative areas, the Midwest, where the right wing capitalists won.
These are not bad signs for Proletarian revolution. Most Revolutions only have occurred in urban areas and obviously the US urban working population is in its vast majority progressive because it voted for the guy who pretends to be more anti-racist, social, collective, progressive and is black. In the sad long history of America, this is quite a positive development of the political attitudes of the proletarian masses; a development of attitudes towards the objective class interests of the Proletariat. The longer capitalism exists, the faster its annihilation comes.
"It is necessary for Communists to enter into contradiction with the consciousness of the masses. . . The problem with these Transitional programs and transitional demands, which don't enter into any contradiction with the consciousness of the masses, or try to trick the masses into entering into the class struggle, create soviets - [is that] it winds up as common-or-garden reformism or economism." - Mike Macnair, on the necessity of the Minimum and Maximum communist party Program.
"You're lucky. You have a faith. Even if it's only Karl Marx" - Richard Burton
WTF? Liberalism (assuming you mean the left variety) is the gateway drug to socialism. I'm sure plenty of posters here started as liberals. The real problem is reaction, who continue to dominate the political narrative in America. Obama's election hurt said narrative by quite a bit it seems.
Is this some kind of conspiracy shit or something? Some liberals are more progressive than others, and conservatives are "around" because a lot of people agree with them. The rich (bourgeois ones anyway) are just trying to protect their class interest.
"I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation." - Che Guevara
