No subject

significant that they are for the bourgeoisie. If on a scale of 100 this is,
say, a 20-point difference for the bourgeoisie, for working people and our
ultimate goals this is at most a 1 point difference, or two in the case of
the Black community, adding in a very generous score for the
symbolic/ideological value of Obama becoming president. 

Our point to the Black community and working people generally is NOT that
Obama isn't, from our angle, one or two or three or even ten points better,
or that with advances of one point every four years it's going to take 400
years --and THAT assuming no setbacks-- to get what we want.  

Our point, actually, is EXACTLY one of the things that Obama says, but has
no way to implement because he is bound hand and foot by the Democrats. It's
that the only one who can REALLY put in "change you can believe in" in
Washington is (are?) "we the people." Because the change is qualitative.

We say the difference is not that Obama won't mean even a single step
forward in any field, it's that unless WE are organized and WE impose the
change, four or eight years from now it's going to be two, three or four
steps back. That's been the history of U.S. politics in a nutshell since the
Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed in the mid-1960s. By relying
on the Democrats, we weaken OUR OWN self-organization and fighting capacity,
whereupon the ENTIRE two party system gangs up on us with the Democrats
pleading --supposedly on OUR behalf-- that ONLY half our pie should be taken
away and the Republicans insisting not one crumb less than the whole pie,
and we wind up like suckers saying, yeah, take half the pie because we've
got no real independent voice of our own to say we want ALL the pies, not
just that one. 

And here's the real rub: OUR version of Obama's rap about how it has to be
the people that bring about change is no more real than HIS, not on the
ground, not for millions or tens of millions of people. 

HIS version we dismiss as just empty rhetoric, no substance, no
organization, not even a quasi/pseudo independent grouping like Jesse
Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.

Our version isn't "empty rhetoric" but "propaganda for independent political
action by working people." But from where most regular people sit, it is AT
BEST Obama's six of one, and OUR half dozen of the other. We say "build the
Green Party" but how different is that really from Obama saying volunteer on
my campaign? 

In a way Obama's version --despite being entirely limited within the
confines of one bourgeois electoral campaign-- seems MORE real. His
volunteers and community-organizing "fellows" have set their sights on
registering and drawing into political life hundreds of thousands or
millions of people, and focusing on Black folks and young people. 

If the Green Party were to a much greater degree just the political
expression of a much broader social movement, or a collection of them, then
YES we'd have something more to offer. But right now, at least as I read
things, working people are not massively organizing and mobilizing around
ANY issue -- and I don't mean the big majority, I mean not even a sliver of
the masses, enough so that the social/protest movement would be a
recognized/continuing presence on the national political stage. 

And a non-two party system, separate apparatus for nominating candidates and
running them for office is not REALLY the alternative to the two-party
system. In and of itself, it is as close to being the two party system as
possible without being the thing itself. The ALTERNATIVE to the two-party
system is the participatory democracy of the street, the community, the
organized workplace. Democracy where you live, where you work, where you
eat, where you breathe, whether you call it People's Power or Soviets, not
at some ballot box once every four years. The Greens and other independent
efforts represent a STEP in that direction, but that's all. 

And MOSTLY because simply it is a step outside/beyond the confines of the
two party system, even though, in and of itself, it is not yet a BIG step
beyond electoralism or bourgeois politics. It is a protest vote within
bourgeois electoralism against the confining limitations of bourgeois
politics. 

Conclusions? I wish I had some, but I don't. 

Our REAL alternative is for the working class to start ACTING as a class, at
least a significant minority but we haven't got that right now and don't
even have it within the memory of anyone working for a living today, save a
bunch of immigrants who saw it in their own countries of origin, not here.
And my read is we're a long ways away from that --perhaps not in TIME, but
politically (not in time because there are moments in politics where every
days counts for a month and a few weeks an entire stage of historical
development).

Yet, in the meantime, we have a Democrat presidential contest in which one
of the main issues, especially as the issues present to the most dynamic,
combative, politicized, cohered and conscious layer of the working people
--the African-Americans nationality-- is whether a Black man can be
president, and a fall campaign where that is likely to be the same.

The African-American communities for centuries has been denied the right to
vote, to political representation, to political inclusion. Now Obama
appears, and let's say as one more completely undifferentiated regular
politician. And the Black community says, fair is fair, EVERY president
until now has been a white guy, it's our turn. 

Again -- no conclusions. Just trying to think these things through out loud.

Joaquin