[Marxism] From the bureau of electoral cretinism: Iowa Caucuses

[Joaquin Bustelo]

"Ruthless Critic of All that Exists" says

<<Something similar happened with Lula in Brazil. "Vague and ill-defined
generational aspirations for a change", and foot-dragging and turn to the
right after the actual Lula victory.

<<Did this lead to "real movement" in Brazil, after Lula got caught in a
"Kennedy spiral"?  It would be interesting to find out.>>

Here we go again with the Lula popular front analogies. 

Lula's party was the PT, a genuine workers party that arose from workers
struggles pretty much along the lines of the Communist Manifesto with the
peculiarity that Brazil is a semicolonial country that dwarves its original
"mother country" many, many times over, and as one of the largest countries
in the world (among other factors) has an unusual degree autonomy from and
bargaining power with imperialism.

There is no question in my mind but that Lula's victory was a *genuine*
victory for Brazilian workers and the Brazilian people; not merely or mostly
a registering of advances that had already been made. But it was NOT NOT NOT
the "final" victory, but simply a milepost on a very long road.

I think we Marxists, understanding what is necessary in a broad historic
sense, constantly use that yardstick instead of understanding in each
situation its built in possibilities and limitations. 

We always hope for the home run with bases loaded, and because a couple of
times in the last century history delivered, we view a single that drives in
a run as a historical tragedy, or worse, betrayal. 

We especially don't look at the subjective factor in a historical and
materialist way, but rather in a voluntaristic and idealist way. We think,
why can't Lula be a Fidel, without understanding Cuba's history and the
world conjuncture in the late 1950's that made it possible for someone with
Fidel's outlook to arise, and not just arise, but play the role that he did
thus creating the Fidel we know today. And even if magically Lula were
imbued with Fidel's consciousness and world outlook, how far would he get
without a Raúl, a Che, a Camilo, an Abel Santamaría and so many others
well-known or little-known that were also a product of that history and that
moment?

*  *  *

Compare that to the circumstances surrounding Obama.

A comrade wrote me off list, basically posing a dichotomy, saying there were
two choices -- go with Cynthia or with Obama. I don’t think those are the
choices before us. IF Obama continues to advance, and IF the motion in the
Black community that I speculated about in my previous posts materializes,
THEN I suspect McKinney will think long and hard about whether to continue
with her presidential campaign, as the doors she expected to be open and the
audience she expected to hear her are likely not going to be there.

But even if she or Nader continues with a campaign, there are many
gradations in tone and stance between counterposing a candidate to one seen
by the Black community as its historic opportunity to have one of their own
in the White House, and taking the white liberal guilt position that we have
to support Obama because he's Black (or Hillary because she's a woman).

There are, for example, a token campaign or simply choosing not to run on
the stated basis that while we can't support Obama for X,Y and Z reasons, we
will not stand in the way of the heart-felt and legitimate aspiration of the
Black community and so on. 

What's the difference between this and the A-B-B type positions of four
years ago? That those were completely and exclusively based on *illusions*
about the Democrats, and the nature of the Democratic Party, whereas it
really is a true fact that Obama is a Black man. He is not "Black"
politically in any really meaningful, programmatic sense that I can see, in
a formal sense, Edwards's campaign positions are closer to the historical
Black Political Agenda than Obama's. 

But Obama is, in fact, Black. And it can and does make a difference to have
Black faces in high places --not all the difference in the world, not even
within a country mile, but some. We saw that in New Orleans where the
intervention of Mayor Ray Nagin on the radio and the appointment of Lt.
Gral. Russell Honore, if I remember the name correctly, to lead the troops
that went into New Orleans prevented what I think was the clear and present
danger of a massacre of survivors on top of the mass killing through
flooding that had already taken place.

That's been the bedrock, fundamental experience of Black folks with Black
politicians and most especially in the South in the last four decades. The
Black politicians have been disappointing to the community by and large, but
better a Black politician than the white man. And some of them aren't all
that bad. Cynthia McKinney is exceptional, but not someone out of another
universe. 

What makes her campaign potentially so important is that she's had the
vision and courage to break with the two-party system, and no others have
yet done so. Her campaign is a real trail blazing campaign. The question is
whether this Obama-mania is going to lead to conditions where she can't have
the discussion implicit in her candidacy, which is, ok, AFTER we get Black
folks elected into government positions, and AFTER we take over city
councils, school boards and county commissions, how do we get Black faces in
high places that will really ACT Black across the board on political issues?

That's the tension if the 2008 campaign becomes centered around Obama --
raising the step BEYOND simply getting Black faces in high places would be
out of sync with mass sentiment at a moment when the community's focus is on
getting a Black face into the highest place of them all.

And I repeat, counterposing a socialist or Green Party campaign to the
essentially progressive sentiment and drive of the Black community for
political inclusion and representation, EVEN WHEN that is poorly directed or
misdirected in that it takes the form of a movement around an Obama, is NOT
a place we should go to.

*  *  *

As can be seen there really is nothing much to apply from the Brazil
experience to what we MIGHT (and again I stress this is speculative) face
here around Obama. Only at a very high level of abstraction and
generalization --politicians than fundamentally remain trapped within the
logic and limits of capitalism, even though they have in some sense (but
very different senses in these two cases) a base among working and oppressed
people, are you going to find some parallels. But the differences in the two
cases are such that the parallels are more likely to be misleading, and a
substitute for, rather than an aid to, thinking concretely about the
tactical situation.

Joaquin