[R-G] Notes on Obama, Liberalism, and US Imperialism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 12:37 AM, Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za> wrote:
> (From e-debater Doug Henwood's lbo newsletter)
>
>  Would you like change with that?
<snip>
> Big capital would have no problem with an Obama presidency. Top hedge fund
> honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house
> last spring, "The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama," one source said of
> the posh headquarters of the hedge fund industry. They like him because
> they're socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little
> less war, and think he's the man to do their work. They're also confident he
> wouldn't undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth.

Social and cultural liberalization tends to go with economic
liberalization in the age of neoliberal capitalism.  Depending on the
dominant ideologies of nations, this liberal package manifests itself
in different ways.

Some Examples from the South:

In Iran, where the dominant ideology was Khomeinism (dogmatic religion
+ statist economy + Third-Worldism), the liberal package was
represented by Khatami; in Turkey, where the dominant ideology is
Kemalism (dogmatic secularism + statist economy + Western
Civilization), the package is represented by the AKP.  Khatami, at one
point, enjoyed a great deal of working support -- surprisingly, even
among the rank and file of the Revolutionary Guards, as Barbara
Slalvin observes; so does the AKP.  Reformism in Iran eventually lost
working-class support, and the AKP, too, will suffer the same fate in
time, provided that it is not prematurely closed down by what some are
already calling a "judicial coup."  The post-Apartheid ANC in South
Africa and Tsvangirai of the MDC in Zimbabwe structurally fit into the
same role.

Some Examples from the North

In Japan, this role is played by the DP; in Spain, the SP; in Germany,
the Greens; the list goes on.

Is it right for working people to support this liberal package?  That
depends on (1) what practical alternatives to it actually exist -- or
at least are already in the making -- in their own nation and (2)
whether or not their own nation is at the heart of the empire.

(1) Question of Practical Alternatives

It made perfect sense for working people to support Khatami in Iran,
and he delivered what he could, given what he is and what he was up
against.  Having gotten what they socially and culturally could from
reformism, it made perfect sense for working people to eventually drop
it and begin to search for an alternative on the economic front, even
though the first step in this search, given the available
alternatives, had to be represented by the package of populism in
economics, Third-Worldism in foreign policy, and Khomeinism Lite in
culture, to the horror of all Iranian liberals and many Iranian
leftists at home and abroad.  It makes perfect sense for working
people to support the AKP against the Kemalist establishment: it's
about time for Turks to say No to the military always having the
political last word through hard and soft coups, even though they will
no doubt suffer from economic liberalization and in time begin to
search for an alternative to the AKP's liberal package.

In Japan and Germany, though, it doesn't make sense for working people
to back the DP and the Greens, for they can vote for the CP and the
Left instead, both of which have better economic and foreign policies
than liberals without being more socially and culturally illiberal
than them.

(2) American Exceptionalism

While working people in the United States have the same considerations
as those in the rest of the world in terms of (1), they have to reckon
with one big problem that working people of other nations, even in the
North, do not have to consider: their government defines the foreign
policy of the multinational empire (the power elites of Japan and
Europe essentially handed over foreign policy making to their American
counterparts in exchange for market access, which was the condition
for joining the empire).  Obama may be a perfectly acceptable
candidate in some nations where working people want to buy social and
cultural liberalization by paying an economic price, but he is a
candidate for POTUS, which makes class calculations altogether
different.  A lesser evil in Zimbabwe won't get the empire committed
to the path to a new major war in the Middle East, a regime change in
Latin America, and other terrible things; a lesser evil in the USA
can.

In the rest of the world, it is not a good idea for leftists to take a
position sharply different from one taken by a majority of working
people.  The right thing to do is usually to at least honor the choice
of working people, even when they disagree with them, while standing a
few steps to their left and try to push them to demand more and
better.  The fortunate among the world's leftists can even get the
kind of leader they can actually support without compromising their
principles or long-term goals or, better yet, get to be the leaders
themselves sometimes (though a chance for that rarely presents
itself).

Not so in the USA.  There is no practical electoral alternative that
is not at odds with leftists' principles and long-term goals; but
leftists have not been able to organize themselves to even begin to
think about creating such a practical alternative.  At this point, the
extent of demobilization is such that even just the politics of
protest in the streets, which refuses to support lesser-evil liberal
imperialism without participating in electoral politics, is unlikely
to materialize any time soon.  These problems are historical and
structural.  Since they are not caused by Obama and his supporters,
they can't be cured by a criticism of them.

Left-liberals have fed themselves, and have been fed by many a
leftist, illusions about the Democratic Party over all -- at least
ever since FDR, and the disillusionment due to the Vietnam War has
been more than made up for since the fall of the Berlin Wall,
especially during the Bush Administration.

Since Obama is better than the Clintons on racism and Islamophobia
(compare Bill Clinton's treatment of flacks about Lani Guinier and
Sister Soujah with Obama's way of dealing with those about Jeremiah
Wright, Jr. and think about Hillary Clinton's disgusting
muslim-baiting of Obama) and his position on war today is better than
Kerry's circa 2004 (though the difference is just a matter of time and
location -- Obama wasn't a Senator when Kerry voted for war, and Kerry
himself has changed his position on Iraq since then), it's no wonder
that a lot of Americans support him.  In particular, if some realist
Iranian-Americans think that "Obama will stick with Iraq and bomb
Pakistan instead of Iran, which makes him better for at least my
people if no one else," that may very well turn out to be an accurate
prediction in the short term.  This line of thinking will be no doubt
reinforced in coming days, for Lee Hamilton just endorsed Obama.

What to say to them here and now, in the concrete?  I don't trust
Obama, and I wish I could say, "Instead of supporting Obama, vote for
this candidate from a party of working people, and let's go protest
both the Democratic and Republican Party Conventions -- the protests
will be HUGE."  But this is an option in whose creation we have failed
to interest working people in the USA.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>