[Marxism] Sunday Driving - Black Agenda Report on Obama

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Marvin Gandall:

"Fred's position points in the direction of abstention from the presidential
campaign - that is, no mounting of a third party candidacy against Obama if
he is nominated, including by McKinney and the Greens.

"Joaquin appears to have advanced somewhat further down this road - to the
water's edge of proposing the US left's participation in an Obama campaign
if he gets the nod.

"Fred proposes to oppose the Democrats while not appearing to oppose Obama.
Joaquin proposes to support Obama while not appearing to support the
Democrats.

"Is this an accurate reading of the tea leaves?"

I don't think so. When I read Fred's post earlier today (well, yesterday as
the calendar reckons things), I thought he'd summed up a lot of the
discussion with admirable clarity and most especially balance. He expressed
what I think better than I did myself.

I frankly don’t see much use or justification in *supporting* Obama NOW,
much less if he gets the nod, and not even hyper-critically. That I can
conceive of an independent or quasi-independent pro-Obama movement arising
(independent in the sense of not merely an instrumentality of the Democrats
or the Obama campaign committee) probably says more about my imagination
than anything that can be immediately observed, but it would be only under
circumstances where that took organized shape that critical support might be
a useful tactic, and that assumes that the Marxist left would be in shape to
deploy and make profitable use of the tactic, which it isn't.

I raise such possibilities in part because the SWP rulebook/pigeon-hole
approach to electoral tactics has done such damage to clear thinking about
these issues when elections come around, and that sectarian mode of thinking
infects all sorts of other political analysis.

I do believe that, should the Obama boom continue to gain traction, left
groups should exercise a great deal of care, restraint, thoughtfulness and
tactical flexibility so that what THEY view as opposition to "bourgeois
politics" does not come across as indifference towards or opposition to or
subordination of the democratic right of Black people to political
representation, equality and inclusion.

Joaquín