Commentary
Today, Very Definitely, You Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows.
Now that the elections are mercifully over everyone and their brother or sister with any political pull is scrambling for jobs in Washington under the new Obama administration. As is now well-known (or at least known) this year I have changed my position on the old previously unresolved question of whether revolutionaries could, on principle, run for executive offices in the bourgeois state (of course, even under the old standard with the proviso that they not take office if successful). (See blog entry If Drafted I Will Not Run, If Elected I Will Not Serve, dated June 15, 2008).
That position does not preclude supporting other organizations or individuals for such offices, assuming that they have some program or fragment of a program that represents a real class struggle alternative. Nor does it preclude “daydreaming” about possible choices of candidates for various offices in the executive branch of this government. In all fairness, after all the abuse (none of it justified from the sources that it was coming from) this writer thinks that some poetic justice (if not political justice) would be done by nominating one Professor William Ayers as the next Secretary of State (and Professor Bernadine Dohrn can be some kind of Deputy Secretary). After all without Brother Ayers being used as a punching bag by McCain and his ilk at time when the economy was going in the tank then Obama would be just another kid on the block today.
Moreover, as Brother Ayers has stated (in his memoirs and at other times) he has no regrets over his actions (as a “terrorist”, washed up or otherwise) against the American military machine during the Vietnam War (nor should he have) he might be the voice of wisdom against this troop escalation (10,000) in Afghanistan that Obama has cooked up. Sorry, "Joe the Plumber" (if that is what you are) that position as Secretary of Labor is out of the question. In the time -honored banalities of politics-you lost, you stay home. Stay tuned for more as this “drama” unravels. Meanwhile a little forgotten slogan is appropriate here. Immediate Withdrawal Of American/Allied Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan Now!
AFTER OBAMA, US
ReplyDeleteThe above headline is a slogan that I have periodically used over the past year to help put in perspective the attitude that militant leftists should take toward the recent election of a black Democrat, Barack Obama, as the 44th President of the United States. Needless to say I have proposed this slogan with a certain tongue in cheek but its essence is to the point. No question that the election of a black man to the highest imperial office is a dramatic and significant event, given the long history of black racial oppression in this country. No question that the floodgate of political enthusiasm, particularly among the young, unleashed by that campaign is real if unfocused.
That said, once the initial euphoria of this event is over and the hard economic times grind on and the hard wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (to speak nothing of the possibilities of a flare-up in Pakistan) don’t seem to let up then we will have a chance is get the hearing that we did not get in the election cycle of 2008 as the Osama campaign sucked all of the air out of the political process. I would further note that previous liberal “transformational” elections in the last century, those of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy opened up great opportunities for leftists in the 1930’s and 1960’s, respectively.
Finally, for those who may seek to find a stagest theory of political development in the above-mentioned slogan that is not the case. Nor my intention. I am sure that more than one reader will posit that I am underhandedly arguing that reformist Obama stage was necessary before we could fight for our socialist program. No, no, no. However, we have to be realistic about the cards that we have been dealt in the political process. Socialist propagandists were effectively shut out in this recent process. Hell, even “independent” Ralph Nader’s and Green Party Cynthia McKinney’s campaigns evaporated under the Obama onslaught. Now our time is coming, at least we best act on that perspective.