[Marxism] "going through the experience" of Obama disillusionment

[S. Artesian]

False choices -- "being with the people" vs. "purist isolation."

That's not what is being confronted, discussed, analyzed here.  First, I 
don't recall anywhere where Lenin or Trotsky used the phrase "being with the 
people" to argue for implicit or tactical support of a bourgeois party, 
candidate, or program.  The Russian revolutionists were certainly for being 
with the people, even when the "people" were wrong, in revolutionary 
struggles, i.e. the July Days in 1917, but they were certainly not "with the 
people" or with the Mensheviks etc. in compromising with the government of 
Kerensky.

Being "with the people" meant for the Russian revolutionists, being in the 
soviets, in the organs of specific class power. This is more than a 
technical difference.

Secondly, being "with the people" is not identical to "being with Obama." 
The "people" can be for the war in Vietnam, the war in Iraq, the war in 
Afghanistan-- for or against the bailout of the banks-- are Marxists with 
the "people" then?  Of course not. And voting for Obama does not make the 
people with Obama, no more than it made them with Gore or Kerry.

Thirdly, opposing this romance with Obama hardly amounts to purist 
isolation. What's purist about opposing Obama on class lines?

Nobody on this list thinks Obama is a saviour.  Again, false choice, false 
characterization.  We're not arguing over the second coming of the Messiah, 
even though Obama did ride into office on the back of a white ass, the white 
ass being George Bush.  Some on this list think Obama is "qualitatively 
better."  Some think Obama's election represents the reanimation, and a 
victory, of the struggle for the emancipation of black labor.  Those are 
real positions that need to be really vetted and defeated.

Nobody opposed to romancing Obama wants to shout at African-Americans "sell 
out," because Obama isn't selling out anything, he's buying-- buying time 
and space for the bourgeoisie to conduct the next phase in their 
deconstruction of the species.  Thorstad, with whom I am happy to disagree 
with 95% of the time and this being one of the 5%, is not shouting at those 
56 million who voted for Obama-- he is directing his criticism at those who 
claim to be Marxists on a Marxist list-serv.

Other than that, I agree with everything you say.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Dbachmozart at aol.com>
To: <sartesian at earthlink.net>
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 11:38 AM
Subject: [Marxism] "going through the experience" of Obama disillusionment


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