“They told me in grade school anyone could be president,” an old black man said with tears in his eyes. “I thought it was bull. I’m just glad I lived long enough to see (the Barack Obama victory) this happen.”
The election victory has done for black pride what Martin Luther King did for civil rights in the 1960s. We should take the time to reflect on what this election victory means to Black Americans. -史蒂夫・奥多
This is from: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/MAOIST_REVOLUTION
Obama's Victory: Revolutionaries Taking a Moment….
Posted by Mike E on November 5, 2008
by Mike ElyI went down to Grant Park in Chicago yesterday with a friend. Not to celebrate Obama's victory — my thoughts are far more ambivalent and mixed than that — but to watch his supporters gather, to take in the scene and to simply think about this moment.
Clearly this is a remarkable political event in many ways. And it will mark a range of changes in the political life of the U.S.
And for all of us, I believe this is a moment to take a breath, and then take a very close look at the political landscape our revolutionary work unfolds upon.
We revolutionaries often say that no fundamental change will come except through revolution. And that is true, of course, depending on how you define "fundamental. " But on the other hand, we live in a world of profound changes that don't come through revolution — where the old gives way to the new, where feudalism dissolves into capitalism, where capitalism itself morphs and metasicizes in unforseen ways.
Here is a major change: Bush is gone — and not jut gone but profoundly repudiated in a way I have rarely seen. His party is in tatters — after heading a virtually one party state only four years ago. Palin, the representative of the Christian right, became a joke on the way to being a trivia question. The grim warrior McCain was trounced as commander in chief by a Black Senator who promised the U.S. empire a fresh start with the rest of the world.
Also in tatters are the predictions of some — that the Democratic establishment could not rally a coherent counterprogram to the Republican right, that the Democratic Party was congenitally incapable of mobilizing its own social base, that "the pendulum" would not swing in bourgeois politics…. Once again, a deeply reductionist and superficial analysis among communists both hyped and misread the moment, and managed to miss powerful dynamics that came to the fore.
And obviously it is a major change that the U.S. has elected a Black man. I don't believe it will represent a change of this system, or a lifting of oppression, or even a significant change of policies (though we will see, of course) — but it is a change at a level of symbolism for the U.S., in exactly the ways that politics often captures the norms and expectations of society. The repudiation of Bush has combined with a repudiation of raw white racism. Of a Republican attempt to speak of "our America" — as an America defined by white christian people in conservative rural towns. Those days are gone, even if those forces are still virulent. And this defeat was palpable to those who they target.
And it marks a change in how Black people view this country, and perhaps in how they are viewed. And there is both good and ill in that: The despair and alienation of Black people, their sense that this country has its back permanently turned to them, has been a powerful force for radical change for fifty years.
Sometimes people learn lessons from a moment or a process that are misleading — or that, at least, lead the whole game in a new direction. We are at a moment of rising expectations, not despair. And we, as revolutionaries, have to understand what that means for the people and for the revolution.
In this moment a whole new generation has awakened to politics. And (typical for America) the past falls away and only the present exists. And in this present, for this moment, there is an unjustified respect for the electoral system, the Democratic party and (of course) for Obama himself. And now events unfold in that framework, and they unfold as that framework gets weathered and unraveled.
And at the same time, Black people have seen millions of whites willing to support a Black man, and reject a low and meanspirited campaign of racist fears and codewords. There is a fresh optimism about the possibilities of multi-racial politics and alliances and common goals that forms a backdrop for new radical projects. And that, for revolutionaries, is a positive thing.
This moment reveals again how exhausted earlier politics are. So much was defined by the '60s for so long. But no more. Reagan, the Republicans and the religious right tried to bury the sensibilities of the 1960s. In some ways, the Clintons fought a rearguard defense of a generational conflict.
But now those frameworks have been passed in another way. Many of the landmarks and assumptions of the past have lost their power and relevance — you can see the sea changes in how the questions of women's status are viewed, in how the new generation perceived race and multiracialism, in the generational changes around sexuality, in how people responded (with indifference) to the baiting around socialism and terrorism.
The struggle for radical change now unfolds in a new context, among a new generation — and we should be taking all that in with great energy — to understand, and then to act, on a remade political stage.
Marx wrote "after the debauchery comes the blues." After the honeymoon with Obama, will come stark conflicts over actual policy and actual outcomes. One of the deepest divides in American life is the class divide within the Democratic Party — between the imperialist nature of their establishment and the interests of their base. The dogs of the far right will now bite at Obama's every step, and at the same time, the reactionary actions of this new government will collide with the expectations and hopes of its supporters. I believe deeply that revolutionary politics requires the discrediting, and ultimately the organizational shattering of the Democratic Party… a process that has become more complex as the slavish accomodations of Pelosi gave way to Obama's vague banner of change.
The people are going to need fearless revolutionary politics — sharp, even shocking exposure, analysis, a sweeping internationalist view, a daring to uncover imperialism beneath the coming rhetoric and regroupment of empire.
For revolutionaries to cling to the exhausted, for us to proclaim it is "there for the taking," for us to see things dogmatically with the eyes of an aging generation — all of that is a prescription to intensified irrelevance.
We need to be scoping all this out — identifying for ourselves the wellsprings of a new radicalism, and creating the ways to connect radical impulses with a vision of profound revolutionary change. The crisis that decided this election (a crisis in the global aggressions of the U.S. and in the international capitalist system) are posing deep questions about capitalism itself, about the injustice of U.S. moves, about socialism, about the nature of "traditional" values and "traditional" politics.
Emerging from within as revolutionaries will take a nimbleness on our part, an open unjaded eye, and a bit of humility in the face of the still-unwritten and the unexpected.
More to think through… and more to say.
i invite you to use this space, to sketch your thoughts and obervations about this moment…. and your ideas for how to recarve the revolutionary road.
Clearly this is a remarkable political event in many ways. And it will mark a range of changes in the political life of the U.S.
And for all of us, I believe this is a moment to take a breath, and then take a very close look at the political landscape our revolutionary work unfolds upon.
We revolutionaries often say that no fundamental change will come except through revolution. And that is true, of course, depending on how you define "fundamental. " But on the other hand, we live in a world of profound changes that don't come through revolution — where the old gives way to the new, where feudalism dissolves into capitalism, where capitalism itself morphs and metasicizes in unforseen ways.
Here is a major change: Bush is gone — and not jut gone but profoundly repudiated in a way I have rarely seen. His party is in tatters — after heading a virtually one party state only four years ago. Palin, the representative of the Christian right, became a joke on the way to being a trivia question. The grim warrior McCain was trounced as commander in chief by a Black Senator who promised the U.S. empire a fresh start with the rest of the world.
Also in tatters are the predictions of some — that the Democratic establishment could not rally a coherent counterprogram to the Republican right, that the Democratic Party was congenitally incapable of mobilizing its own social base, that "the pendulum" would not swing in bourgeois politics…. Once again, a deeply reductionist and superficial analysis among communists both hyped and misread the moment, and managed to miss powerful dynamics that came to the fore.
And obviously it is a major change that the U.S. has elected a Black man. I don't believe it will represent a change of this system, or a lifting of oppression, or even a significant change of policies (though we will see, of course) — but it is a change at a level of symbolism for the U.S., in exactly the ways that politics often captures the norms and expectations of society. The repudiation of Bush has combined with a repudiation of raw white racism. Of a Republican attempt to speak of "our America" — as an America defined by white christian people in conservative rural towns. Those days are gone, even if those forces are still virulent. And this defeat was palpable to those who they target.
And it marks a change in how Black people view this country, and perhaps in how they are viewed. And there is both good and ill in that: The despair and alienation of Black people, their sense that this country has its back permanently turned to them, has been a powerful force for radical change for fifty years.
Sometimes people learn lessons from a moment or a process that are misleading — or that, at least, lead the whole game in a new direction. We are at a moment of rising expectations, not despair. And we, as revolutionaries, have to understand what that means for the people and for the revolution.
In this moment a whole new generation has awakened to politics. And (typical for America) the past falls away and only the present exists. And in this present, for this moment, there is an unjustified respect for the electoral system, the Democratic party and (of course) for Obama himself. And now events unfold in that framework, and they unfold as that framework gets weathered and unraveled.
And at the same time, Black people have seen millions of whites willing to support a Black man, and reject a low and meanspirited campaign of racist fears and codewords. There is a fresh optimism about the possibilities of multi-racial politics and alliances and common goals that forms a backdrop for new radical projects. And that, for revolutionaries, is a positive thing.
This moment reveals again how exhausted earlier politics are. So much was defined by the '60s for so long. But no more. Reagan, the Republicans and the religious right tried to bury the sensibilities of the 1960s. In some ways, the Clintons fought a rearguard defense of a generational conflict.
But now those frameworks have been passed in another way. Many of the landmarks and assumptions of the past have lost their power and relevance — you can see the sea changes in how the questions of women's status are viewed, in how the new generation perceived race and multiracialism, in the generational changes around sexuality, in how people responded (with indifference) to the baiting around socialism and terrorism.
The struggle for radical change now unfolds in a new context, among a new generation — and we should be taking all that in with great energy — to understand, and then to act, on a remade political stage.
Marx wrote "after the debauchery comes the blues." After the honeymoon with Obama, will come stark conflicts over actual policy and actual outcomes. One of the deepest divides in American life is the class divide within the Democratic Party — between the imperialist nature of their establishment and the interests of their base. The dogs of the far right will now bite at Obama's every step, and at the same time, the reactionary actions of this new government will collide with the expectations and hopes of its supporters. I believe deeply that revolutionary politics requires the discrediting, and ultimately the organizational shattering of the Democratic Party… a process that has become more complex as the slavish accomodations of Pelosi gave way to Obama's vague banner of change.
The people are going to need fearless revolutionary politics — sharp, even shocking exposure, analysis, a sweeping internationalist view, a daring to uncover imperialism beneath the coming rhetoric and regroupment of empire.
For revolutionaries to cling to the exhausted, for us to proclaim it is "there for the taking," for us to see things dogmatically with the eyes of an aging generation — all of that is a prescription to intensified irrelevance.
We need to be scoping all this out — identifying for ourselves the wellsprings of a new radicalism, and creating the ways to connect radical impulses with a vision of profound revolutionary change. The crisis that decided this election (a crisis in the global aggressions of the U.S. and in the international capitalist system) are posing deep questions about capitalism itself, about the injustice of U.S. moves, about socialism, about the nature of "traditional" values and "traditional" politics.
Emerging from within as revolutionaries will take a nimbleness on our part, an open unjaded eye, and a bit of humility in the face of the still-unwritten and the unexpected.
More to think through… and more to say.
i invite you to use this space, to sketch your thoughts and obervations about this moment…. and your ideas for how to recarve the revolutionary road.
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