[Marxism] MH: Presidential candidates split on post-Castro Cuba

[Walter Lippmann]

Some people, who do not live in Cuba and don't visit there, whether because
of reactionary US legislation or some other reason, worry and fret over the
end of the blockade. In their minds, Cuba has to remain poor, but pure. 

They put these arguments forward in various guises, but it all comes down 
to the same thing. This kind of perfectionisms, which is by no means just
a Trotskyist phenomenon, is what's being expressed by so many people who
are attacking Obama fiercely around here, but who, oddly, have nothing to
say about Clinton. These people think they are fighting against illusions.

The illusions which they think that other people have. They, of course, 
have no illusions, it's just the rest of us who suffer those illusions.
They are "illusion-free".

The most nuanced comments I've seen on the Obama phenomenon are coming
from Workers World. I've put an excerpt of their comments on the Obama
phenomenon below.

So, even while I like Cynthia McKinney, and hope that her campaign gets
some wind in its sails, I also hope that Obama gets the nomination, and
survives the election campaign and wins the presidency. I can see a lot
of good which could come out of that. Yesterday I had a chat with one of
my Spartacist League friends, a prominent one. She said that an Obama
campaign would be the greatest possible gift to the ruling class for its
imperialist aims around the world. I thought that was a bit much, but 
I could see her point as well.

The people of the United States, if this election campaign proves any
one thing conclusively, have a long way to go before they exhaust their
belief in (their illusions, if you will), that voting for a different
individual to head the government is the way to bring about a change,
however ambiguously defined in their thinking. An Obama nomination and
election (and we can hardly imagine the filth which will be thrown at
him) will bring out the best in some people, but the very worst in a
lot of others. There will be a lot for all to learn from, but it's not
possible to learn anything if you already think you know everything.

I definitely don't know everything, that's something I know for sure.


Walter Lippmann
Berkeley, California

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
WORKERS VANGUARD: 
The Obama Campaign and the “End of Racism” Myth
Break with the Democrats! For a Class-Struggle Workers Party!
For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!
http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/906/obama.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

============================================================
WORKERS WORLD
Larry Holmes on:
Globalization, economic crisis & Obama (excerpt)
Published Feb 21, 2008 12:01 AM 

http://www.workers.org/2008/us/holmes_0228/ 

Obama is complicated. There are some interesting things to say about
the Obama phenomenon.

Let’s face it, in this country where racism is so strong, so systemic
and so knee-jerk, to see a handsome Black man with a name like Barack
Hussein Obama winning primaries, before you even analyze it
politically, part of you is saying, damn, that’s pretty good.

Moreover we can understand why a lot of progressive people and
certainly a lot of Black people would feel good about it. They feel
proud and rightfully so, because of national oppression and racism.

But Obama is not Jesse Jackson. It is not that Jesse Jackson was ever
a revolutionary. It is just that there is a world of difference in
where Jesse Jackson’s election campaigns came from in ’84 and ’88 and
where Obama’s campaign comes from.

Jesse Jackson’s campaign was a protest campaign, it was to protest
racism and the lack of representation inside the Democratic Party.
The revolutionary wing of the Jackson movement, as some of you
recall, was hoping that after Jackson was spurned he would lead Black
people out of the Democratic Party. That didn’t happen. Jackson
stayed in because he stayed bourgeois.

But his campaign was a movement and it was fascinating to watch.
Jackson was never concerned about women’s rights—that’s not where he
came from. But he realized as he was building his movement that if he
was going to get the whole working class behind him he had to become
very interested in women’s rights and get the women’s movement out.

I don’t think he was particularly concerned with workers’ rights. But
he realized that if he was going to pull people together, he would
have to get together with the most progressive activists in unions.
That made his movement a class movement in both ’84 and ’88.

Barack’s movement is a bourgeois movement. It was conceived of as a
bourgeois movement and financed by Wall Street—Goldman Sachs in
particular. You could interchange the advisers, whether on foreign
policy or the economy, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has with
Barack Obama. It’s all about the same.

He raised more money last month. Some of that money may be coming
from the poor, but most of it is coming from the bourgeoisie. So it
is a bourgeois phenomenon. He’s running to the right of Jackson. He’s
not running for a protest, he’s not running for inclusion, he’s not
running for representation.

He’s running saying, “Race doesn’t matter, class doesn’t matter.
Let’s all be together.” This wonderful nice dream.

They are not covering Cynthia McKinney that much. This is very
interesting. It is a problem; it’s tragic, but we’ll do the best we
can by it.

Cynthia McKinney, a former congresswoman, served several terms in the
House before she was kicked out the first time, and at least one
after she got back in and was kicked out again. She’s running for
president with a fairly progressive program tied to the
Reconstruction Party, which comes out of the Gulf.

She’s way ahead of anything that Obama is saying, way ahead of
anything that Kucinich or any of the other bourgeois party candidates
have been saying. Not one press conference. Not one article. Not one
mention of her.

She wrote a critique of Obama. It is a little dated now but it still
holds. It hit what a lot of Black activists were really concerned
about in terms of the Obama campaign.

It said, Wait a second. Don’t say stuff that gives the impression
that racism is no longer a problem. Don’t say stuff that makes people
forget about the Jena 6 and forget about Katrina, and the fact that
more of our youth are incarcerated than in college.

Don’t say stuff that lets people forget the fact that on every scale
Black people are doing worse. Double unemployment, more of us are
dying, more of us living shorter lives; we live in worse housing; we
get worse health care.

How does doing that help the struggle against racism? It might make
people feel good—even right wingers. “We’re so glad he doesn’t see
race.”

His campaign is a problem for serious leftists or revolutionaries.
But I think inevitably it will be more helpful than harmful.

Right now, things have been so difficult, almost anything that shakes
things up is beneficial, because at least Obama has a lot of people
thinking and talking and debating, particularly all these white
people.

Bush has so alienated the world. He’s created a country at war with
everybody—Latin America, Arabs, Muslims. Some people are voting for
Obama as a way of trying to tell the world that we don’t hate them.

Bush has so horrified everybody that this is a reaction to it.

The Obama campaign shakes things up. Campaigns like Obama’s create
expectations, but ultimately those expectations cannot be met, and
then it is time for struggle. Actually that contradiction may come
sooner than later because, as bourgeois as Obama is and as much as
even a lot of right wingers say they like him, it is still a
question: Do you think the imperialist ruling class will let a Black
man be president of the United States?

If I was a part of that class and we were having a meeting at one of
the mansions, I’d say, “Let him become president. Why? Because we’re
going to have hell, we’re going to have an economic crisis, we’re in
trouble. Once we have to take away Social Security and what’s left of
Medicare and Medicaid, which you know we’re going to have to do if no
one stops us, let it be him doing it!”

We are absolutely obligated to set up as strongly and widely as
possible political and movement counterpoints to this bourgeois
electoral stuff.

http://www.workers.org/2008/us/holmes_0228/

===========================================================================
>From: Live session user <johnedmundson at paradise.net.nz>
>Sent: Feb 21, 2008 4:22 PM
>To: walterlx at earthlink.net
>Subject: Re: [Marxism] MH: Presidential candidates split on post-Castro Cuba

>I would be delighted if the US lifted the blockade, but I cannot see it
>happening under Obama while socialism remains, unless Obama renounces
>his proviso of "meaningful democratic change", because that linkage can
>mean nothing else but the restoration of capitalism.
>Cheers,
>John


=========================================
     WALTER LIPPMANN
     Los Angeles, California
     Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
     "Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================