"The Times Are Out Of Joint"- I Am Already Tired, Heartily Tired, Of The Obamiad

Commentary

Well, never let it be said that this blogger doesn’t give everyone his or her “fifteen minutes of fame”, as the late Andy Warhol is said to have put it. That goes for the lowliest worker to the American imperial president. With the exception of the very pressing issue of the fight against the Obama Afghan war policy, both as to troop escalation and funding, this writer has held off from in-depth comment about the new regime. However, ever since the dust has settle on the last Inaugural ball, if not before then I have had this aching feeling that something is not right here. As the headline to this entry says- “the times are out of joint”.

Readers of this space are aware that the fundamental political axis that drives the commentary here is an oppositional anti-capitalist perspective. Thus, last fall, during the lead up to the November 2008 presidential elections I called for a NO vote for Obama, McCain, Nader (Independent) or McKinney (Green). However, Obama’s victory led me to a ‘feeling’ that a new wind was blowing in the American political universe that, sooner or later would, accrue to the benefit of leftist militants. I encapsulated that ‘feeling’ in the slogan, somewhat jokingly- "After Obama, Us". The truth of that slogan right now is neither here nor there for what concerns me is that right from the Inaugural Address this Obama ship has been listing, badly. I came of political age with John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address with its soaring rhetoric and call to the “better angels of our nature” in modern times. Although I long ago, as I have detailed elsewhere in this space over the past year or so, gave up on the Democratic Party as a vehicle for social change that speech still stands as a benchmark for bourgeois political rhetoric.

And this is not merely some nostalgia for the good old days (that did not exist, in any case). Nor is it a rebuke at the new technologies that have created the Obama aura or changed the nature of the way bourgeois electoral politics are practiced here. What bothers me is rather those continuing pictures from places like New Orleans, Detroit or other “Rust Belt” cities where formerly employed, mainly black, workers are lining up for charity, or in order to fight ‘pursue’ minimum wage careers as places like Wal-Mart. Or the continuing occupation of the black ghettos by hostile police forces prone to shoot first and ask questions later, as recent headlines have made apparent in places like Oakland, California . The outlines of that alleged “post-racial” society that was supposed to be ushered in by Obama are beginning to look very thin on the ground.

On another front we can all have a good laugh over the arrogance of the muffed Cabinet choices, grind our teeth at Obama’s emphasis of the forces that are to benefit form his stimulus package and rage at the misplaced mechanics of the financial bail-out plans that continue to reward those finance capitalists who got us into this fix in the first place. All of the above have given me a very different ‘feeling’ from that of last fall that Obama and his cohorts are in way over their heads. Only in comparison with the out-going Bush regime do they look good. That, my friends, is a very low bar to cross. All of this makes me think that we may not have the luxury of that “After Obama, Us” slogan. We had best get to that task of building a workers party that fights for a workers government. Pronto.

*From "The Rag Blog"- Harry Targ On Robert Gibbs And His "Professional Left" Comment- "The Spectre Of Communism Is Haunting...Obama?"

Click on the headline to link to a The Rag Blog entry on the flap over White House's Robert Gibbs' remarks on "professional leftists."

Markin comment:

I freely admire that, after great efforts, much medication (including more than one whiskey-soaked night), and a couple or twenty therapy sessions a few years ago I seriously tried to follow closely the arcane, and frankly boring, every day minutia of bourgeois politics, especially during the never-ending election campaign cycles. I also freely admit that I gave it up in “defeat”; I waved the white flag and returned to the warm comfort of communist propaganda writing. Apparently blogger Harry Targ has not given up on that ghost. My hat is off to Brother Targ, he has better nerves than I do. And also a tip of the hat for his commentary, although his political prospective seems rather murky and, well, totally electoral.

Now here is a view from the “professional left” that will really make old Robert Gibbs’ hair stand on edge. It’s that old “spectre of communism” tag in the headline that will really cause him a few sleepless nights. Let’s start with Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan and Iraq! And move on to fight for a workers party that fights for a workers government based on workers councils! So you see for this “professional leftist” it is not even about Obama (shocking, really shocking, as that might seem at the White House) but talking over their heads to the desperately-seeking-solutions working masses. Whatever made them (the Obamians) think it was about them. A couple of years ago we called it by the name Bush, so only the name has changed.

"I'd Rather Be The Devil Than Be That Woman's Man"-Some Random Notes On The Obama Transition

Commentary

As always when I use the headline above, courtesy of the legendary old time country blues singer Skip James (who apparently had been unhappy in love, among other personal problems), in order not to offend my feminist friends who attempted to do “great and grievous bodily harm” to me the first time I used it, in a commentary concerning former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. I have placed two versions of that thought below. Needless to say after reading some of the points listed below one will not have to guess which version is appropriate for this commentary.

“I’d Rather Be The Devil Than That Woman’s Man”- “Devil Got My Woman”, old time country blue singer Skip James’ version

“I’d Rather Be The Devil Than To Be A Woman To That Man”- “Devil Got My Woman”, modern feminist blues/folk singer-songwriter Rory Block’s version

*********

For those who regularly read the commentaries in this space, as at least one reader has informed me, there has been a glaring lack of commentary from this blogger about the bourgeois election process now that the misbegotten 2008 American presidential campaign has run its course. Well, I confess, and do so willingly, that I have suffered from Post Election Deprivation Syndrome (PEDS). Although it is a curable disease with time the symptoms are a result of too closely following political events that is then followed by “ennui” that can only be described as “don’t give a damn”. That last phrase basically sums it up, however, since I am getting back on my feet and am going to need to sharpen my claws (as we all must) after this Obamian transition period is over let me offer a few random points for your perusal.

Obama And The Question Of Political Incest

Look, I was up late on the night of Tuesday November 4, 2008 just like every other political junkie in the known universe. Why? Well, to find out about the fate of some local referendum questions on the Massachusetts ballot, for one thing. However, after two years of following this bizarre American presidential campaign, from outside the process to be sure, I always have an interest, if only a sporting one as here, in such outcomes. Long gone are the days when I would sit up until the wee hours to see whether so-and-so won the 28th Congressional District in California to insure a Democratic majority in that body. But, damn Electoral College counting, that hoary old undemocratic beast which should be abolished posthaste, is still interesting.

So what did I learn from this experience? Well, the top thing immediately is that America will have its first black imperialist commander-in chief. As a veteran of the old civil rights movement and a keen observer of the racial atmosphere in this country for half a century that fact alone is significant. I, along with a myriad of others, if asked by you whether such an event would occur in America by the political year 2008 would have dismissed you out of hand and called for your immediate medical assistance.

In the long haul, given Obama’s publicly stated positions and based on my “feel” for his personal demeanor that means that we leftists will have a little more room to maneuver and can breath a little easier after eight hard Bush years of having had these Nazi manqués try to shove every thing that they could at us and expect us to like it. Moreover, from the “feel” of the Obama campaign and what it generated among the young the expectations of positive change are palpable. I commented in some earlier blogs posted this summer that a little fresh wind, like that of my youth around the campaign of John Kennedy in 1960, seemed to be blowing. In the final analysis, that experimental atmosphere cannot do anything but help us when the hard realities of capitalist politics get hammered down on them. While history does not repeat itself exactly and we, in any case, do not need (or want) a repeat of the 1960’s (if for no other reason than we lost that battle) the capitalist system itself will force the issues.

In the short haul, though, we leftists will be isolated, especially in the foreign affairs arena as Obama will be given at least here a very long “honeymoon” period both because of the utter destructive nature of the Bush years and because, frankly, he is black. Among the black population that “honeymoon” will, as should be expected, last a very much longer time. By analogy, in the old days those of us who grew up Irish Catholics always gave the Kennedys plenty of room and plenty of support, especially when the WASPs got on their cases.

Of course, this is all by way of preface to the “real” news of the transition period- the impending announcement that one New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Democratic presidential contender, and a woman whom I believe still has plenty of “fire in her belly” to be president is to be named Secretary of State. This is only the tip of the iceberg of Obama appointments of former Clinton (Bill, that is) Administration personnel. This “team of rivals” is going to be more like a cathouse by the time this thing is over.

I will finish this section with two points on this for now. First, in several blogs in 2007, well before this election cycle was in focus I mentioned that any country that could not come up with a better political combination than alternating the Clinton/Bush quinella deserves all the trouble that it gets. I will stand on that statement here. As for the second, I refer the reader back to that comment made at the start of this commentary about my motivation for the headline of this blog. Enough said (for now)


Iraq and Afghanistan and always Iraq and Afghanistan

On noon of January 20, 2009 one Barack Obama will be swore in as the 44th President of the American imperial state. Although this may be my ham-handed way of putting the description of that event it underscores the point that I want to make in this section. On that day we will start our opposition to the start of the Obama Administration’s responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Get use to the idea now because the news out of Washington, Chicago, Baghdad and Kabul does not promise any quick ending to our now seven year opposition to this madness. Here’s why.

Obviously, the selection of the unrepentant “hawk” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the next American Secretary of State does not portent well for withdrawal from Iraq. More ominous still are the recent “shotgun” negotiations between the Bush Administration and the Al-Maliki government in Iraq. Those negotiations posit a three year extension of American (and Allied, if there really is such a thing there now) troop presence. With that safety valve in place expect that an Obama first term will move very cautiously and despite all previous avowals to the contrary keep troops there to the bitter end under one pretext or another. The joker in the deck is Sadr and his Madhi Army who have been making some noise on the “Arab street” to get the Americans out now. Some of that is grandstanding for the home crowd but, to the extent that popular opinion in Iraq is moved by that slogan, we, of course, support THEIR efforts to get the American imperial army out.

More threatening though is the situation in Afghanistan. This IS Obama’s war and he may wind up staking his presidency on the issue. Obama is publicly and unequivocally committed to “beefing” up the American troop presence in Afghanistan. He never claimed to be a pacifist or some sappy “peace at any price” monger so we best take him at his word. In this regard we best take seriously his commitment to Afghanistan escalation, as exemplified by the rumored selection of ex-Marine Commandant James Jones as his national security advisor. General Jones has commanded troops in Afghanistan. General Jones is a ‘true believer’ that the situation in Afghanistan can be pacified by increased troop levels. The best thing that we can do now is get out the old banners, get out the old posters and write this on them for January 20, 2009- OBAMA- IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF ALL AMERICAN TROOPS FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN! That is the new political reality. Be ready

*From The Spartacist Archives- The 1948 Henry Wallace Progressive Party Campaign

Click on the headline to link to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the 1948 Henry Wallace-led Progressive Party campaign as background for the article below.


Workers Vanguard No. 918
1 August 2008

From the Archives of Spartacist

On Bourgeois “Third Parties” and the 1948 Henry Wallace Campaign

The following article, originally titled “Henry Wallace and Gideon’s Army,” is reprinted from Spartacist No. 7 (September-October 1966). The article is about Wallace’s 1948 Progressive Party presidential campaign. In the current election year, the “third party” capitalist Greens have nominated former Georgia Democratic Party Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney as their presidential candidate. The parallels between Wallace and McKinney are striking: the candidates’ rousing talk of “peace,” “justice” and a better deal for the little people is meant to corral dissatisfaction with the two main bourgeois parties into yet another capitalist electoral vehicle. Our forebears in the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1948 gave no political support to Wallace. Today, in contrast to reformist groups like Workers World Party, which has endorsed McKinney, we give no political support to the Green/McKinney “Power to the People” campaign. It represents no break with bourgeois politics.

Nor, as Marxists, would we run for executive office—such as mayor, governor or president—ourselves, although Marxists have and can run for parliamentary office as a tactic to propagate our revolutionary program and as part of the struggle to imbue the working class with the understanding that the capitalist order, including its parliamentary facade, must be overthrown through socialist revolution. As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels taught long ago, the capitalist government is the executive committee that manages the common affairs of the capitalist class as a whole. In the U.S., the president is the chief executive responsible for the most massive military power in history and for the domestic machinery of repression that maintains social oppression and exploitation. To run for executive office means to aspire to be the next Commander-in-Chief who decides who gets tortured, who gets bombed, who gets invaded (see Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 60, Autumn 2007).

As we pointed out in Spartacist No. 7’s front-page article, “1966 Elections,” to which the Wallace piece was a companion, “In sum, independent campaigns must not only break with the Democratic Party, but must break with the system of bourgeois rule, and aim toward arousing the working class from its present passive allegiance to that system.” The 1966 midterm elections, two years after Democrat Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide victory against Barry (“In your guts, you know he’s nuts”) Goldwater, saw growing opposition to the Vietnam War and recognition that the Democratic Party was, as we wrote, “the favored tool of those forces which are committed to maintaining American capitalist hegemony throughout the world.” In sorting out the various forces running “independent” candidacies, we relied on the working-class Marxist analysis developed in part by James P. Cannon, the founding leader of American Trotskyism, and the SWP.

* * *

In late 1947, Henry A. Wallace announced his intention to run for the presidency of the U.S. as an anti-war, pro-labor candidate. Wallace had been secretary of agriculture, vice president and secretary of commerce, all under Franklin D. Roosevelt, capitalism’s phony champion of the working man. But for the 1948 campaign Wallace ran at the head of the new Progressive Party, a third party challenge to the two established capitalist “front groups.”

During 1946 and early 1947, old-line New Dealers and some Democratic politicians; CIO President Philip Murray, left-dominated unions in the CIO and organizations based on the CIO; and the Communist Party [CP] had all shown an interest in such a third party. However by December 1947, the first two groupings, partially under the pressures of a growing red scare, had almost all retreated to the Democratic Party. Only the CP and groupings closely allied to it gave any substantial support after the end of 1947. The nature of that support can be seen by the continuing withdrawals throughout the campaign by Stalinist-led unions confronted by CIO pressure, and by the composition of the Progressive Citizens of America, a largely petty-bourgeois CP front group, a good section of which later formed the Americans for Democratic Action. Wallace, with his announcement, initiated not a wide-based movement but a petty-bourgeois “Gideon’s Army,” captained by Stalinists.

The Messiah Movement

The nature of the third party campaign waged by Wallace is accurately indicated in that term. Wallace himself relished the designation and seemed eager to portray himself as a latter-day Gideon. His appearances were accompanied by gospel singers, trumpets and a revivalist camp atmosphere. He campaigned on the basis of peace among nations, brotherhood among men and justice for all. Rather than use the first campaign of a new nation-wide party as a means for raising the consciousness of the working class, Wallace accepted the role of a messiah, come to save the American people.

Just before the election, Wallace proclaimed that the Progressive Party could count many victories: a third party had been put on the ballot in 45 states; moreover, his campaign had slowed the “cold war,” given pause to the assault on civil rights and eliminated the possibility of a witch hunt.

The rejoinders to Wallace’s claims are today obvious, but they need to be made because the type of victories which Wallace claimed are the same type that many peace and independent candidates seek today. Where is that third party today? What use, other than electoral, was made of the more than a million voters who supported Wallace? If the “cold war” has slowed, it has slowed only to be replaced by a series of U.S. maneuvered hot wars and CIA-run counter revolutions, most aided by the treacherous role of Stalinist parties. As for the last two claims, one need point only to the continuing police assaults on Harlem, Watts, Chicago, Cleveland and East New York and to the McCarthy period, followed by the HUAC period, followed by the Epton “trial.” [Epton, a leftist activist who at that time was in the Progressive Labor Party, was the first person in New York State since the 1919 “red scare” to be convicted of “criminal anarchy” for his courageous efforts to provide leadership and organization to the besieged black masses during the 1964 Harlem police riot. See “In Memory of Bill Epton,” WV No. 781, 17 May 2002.]

Role of the Guardian

The totally capitalist nature of Wallace’s third party can be seen by reading the early issues of the National Guardian and by comparing the specific items of Wallace’s platform to those in any Democratic Party platform.

The National Guardian began publication in October 1948, primarily as the propaganda organ for the Wallace campaign. Its very first issue (18 October 1948) proclaimed:

“This editorial point of view will be a continuation and development of the progressive tradition set in our time by Franklin D. Roosevelt…

“We conceive the progressive tradition to be represented today by Henry A. Wallace…

“We believe, with FDR and Henry Wallace, in expanding freedoms and living standards for all peoples as the essential foundation of a world at peace.

“We believe, with FDR and Henry Wallace, that peace can be secured only by seeking areas of agreement among nations, rather than seeking areas of disagreement.”

The high-blown rhetoric cannot conceal three basic fallacies in those few sentences: that FDR, capitalism’s front man par excellence, was in reality the advocate for the working man; that capitalism, which can do nothing to stem famine in India or prevent an approaching famine in Latin America, is able to improve the living standards of the whole world’s population; and that there is no significant difference between the capitalist U.S. and socialist Russia.

A campaign based on such fallacies can do nothing but dull the consciousness of the working class. Why should the labor movement back a minor party candidate who pleads, “Capitalism would be just fine if slightly reformed, so vote for me”? The Democratic Party asserts the same line and its candidates can be immediately elected. Such a campaign can have no outcome other than the strengthening of the Democratic Party’s hold over the working class.

When just that did happen in the ’48 election, the CP and others backing Wallace took credit for such a strengthening of the party which the bourgeoisie have increasingly realized is their protector. The Guardian exulted in its post-election issue (8 November 1948):

“The people of a whole world can look toward America today with renewed confidence. The American people have reaffirmed their progressive tradition. They have repelled the bold maneuvering of monopoly and reaction to take over America through Thomas E. Dewey and the Republican Party. They have handed Harry S. Truman an unmistakable mandate to return to the principles of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“The mandate would not have been possible if the Progressive Party had not introduced the Roosevelt program into the 1948 campaign.”

Wallace’s Program

The laughable absurdity of such a statement is apparent as soon as one analyzes the class nature of the Roosevelt program which Wallace introduced. Its demands have already been fulfilled or have been repeated as truisms in the Great Society of another messiah.

Wallace’s program broke down into two general areas, isolated from each other: the achievement of international peace and the progressive reform of U.S. capitalism at home. According to Wallace, the U.S. could achieve worldwide peace by establishing faith in the UN, by negotiating with Soviet Russia, by recognizing new small countries such as Israel and by abolishing military conscription at home.

The domestic reforms required slightly more complex solutions. On the social side, Wallace advocated abolition of Jim Crow laws and the establishment of legal guarantees for civil rights; federal aid to housing, health and education; and governmental promotion of science and culture. On the economic front, he called for a council of economic planning to assure high production, full employment and a rising standard of living; public ownership of key areas of the economy in TVA type developments; repeal of the Taft-Hartley law and a one dollar an hour minimum wage; anti-trust action against monopolies; and rollback of prices covered out of exorbitant profits.

A Bourgeois Program

Capitalism has been able to fulfill most of these demands or hold out the promise of their fulfillment without seriously damaging its own position. Thus the program posed no questions which capitalism itself could not appear to solve. It did not serve to link up the economic pressures at home with the already mounting imperialism of the “cold war.” Thus Wallace’s general evaluations of Progressive Party successes were all proved incorrect because his platform, accepted gladly by Truman, dealt with specific ills in a capitalist society and not with the capitalist mode of production which produces those ills.

There was no ideological content to the Wallace campaign—only the slogans of a messiah-reformer—and the one million votes formed no base for the development of a third party opposed to capitalist control.

Labor Control Needed

James Cannon in a 1948 internal SWP discussion on the Wallace candidacy offered several criteria which can be used as measures today of these new third parties. He stated that Wallace’s policies showed only tactical differences in the camp of the bourgeoisie and that to support Wallace would mean an entrance into “lesser-evil” politics. He differentiated between the pseudo-radical party of a petty-bourgeois reformist like Wallace and the revolutionary labor party, which would proceed from the aim to assist the development of independent political action by workers and turn that action towards its revolutionary culmination. Finally he insisted that the class character of a party is determined not primarily by the class which supports it but by the class it supports, in its program, daily policy and practice.

The SWP Political Committee resolution on the Wallace candidacy developed on the basis of these criteria its minimum requirement for critical support to a third party: that the party be based on a significant section of labor and be subject to its control and pressure.

The incipient third parties could easily use these criteria in order to distinguish the class nature of their own demands, and therefore the possibility of those demands leading to a revolutionary culmination. More importantly, parties claiming to be Marxist need to establish such criteria as the basis for their own support to third party movements. (The SWP might well take note of its own past history.)

*Obama the "Charma" - A View From The Left

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Commiteee.

February Is Black History Month

The following is an article that may be of general interest to the radical public concerning the dramatic rise of Barack Obama this political season. I have detailed my own opinion of Obama elsewhere in this space. Moreover, the mass media in its 'feeding frenzy' will before this phenomena runs its course have driven us to madness with coverage on the man.

Workers Vanguard No. 906 18 January 2008

Break with the Democrats! For a Class-Struggle Workers Party!

The Obama Campaign and the "End of Racism" Myth

For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!

The candidates of the capitalist Democratic Party say their 2008 campaigns are all about "change." After seven years of rule by the demented Bush gang (or what's left of its inner circle), much of the American populace does indeed want change. The widely unpopular, bloody imperialist occupation of Iraq drags on, the economy teeters on recession, the wages and living conditions of those with jobs have taken a pounding, home foreclosures are soaring, civil liberties have been increasingly shredded. The racist atrocity in the face of Hurricane Katrina is the domestic signature of the Bush administration; millions watched angrily as the poor and black residents of New Orleans were left to die or suffer intolerable conditions. From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay, the lexicon of torture has become a matter of "civilized debate" in bourgeois circles.

The trade-union bureaucrats and the black bourgeois politicians, tailed by the reformist left, seize on social discontent to peddle the lie that support to the "lesser evil" Democratic Party will serve the interests of working people and the oppressed. But the policies pursued by the Bush regime are not simply the product of a particularly vicious administration. Imperialist war, racism and repression are endemic to the capitalist system. As Marxists, we fight to break workers and the oppressed from illusions in the Democrats, the other party of war and racism, and to forge a workers party that fights to overturn the capitalist system through workers revolution.

In the 2008 presidential race, the Democrats offer two front-runners who would have been unthinkable even a few years ago: a black man, U.S. Senator Barack Obama, and a woman, former first lady Hillary Clinton. Obama took the Iowa caucuses; Clinton the New Hampshire primary. The third top candidate in the Democratic Party race, former vice presidential candidate Senator John Edwards, poses as a populist out to fight the "special interests" and "corporate greed." In stump speeches, they're all for "healing," "hope" and "unity." They're "fired up and ready to go," not least to restore the battered image of U.S. imperialism in the world, including with some belated nods to the popular demand to withdraw sooner rather than later from Iraq.

The Democrats' rhetoric is meant to refurbish illusions that the shell game of bourgeois electoral politics can work in the interests of the working masses. The Republicans revel in inflicting suffering on working people and the oppressed. Just look at the Republican debates where the candidates were competing over who could be the most racist and anti-immigrant bigot. For their part, the Democrats put on a more kindly face, the better to deceive the working people and give a more popular facade to the racist capitalist status quo. As Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin captured it in his 1917 work, The State and Revolution, "To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament—this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism."

We revolutionary Marxists do not extend any support to any capitalist politician. Nor would we run for executive office—such as mayor, governor or president—ourselves, although Marxists have and can run for parliamentary office as a tactic to propagate our revolutionary program. As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels taught long ago, the capitalist government is the executive committee that manages the affairs of the capitalist class as a whole. In the U.S., the president is the chief executive responsible for the most massive military power in history and for the domestic machinery of repression that maintains social oppression and exploitation. To run for executive office means to aspire to be the next Commander-in-Chief who decides who gets tortured, who gets bombed, who gets invaded (see Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 60, Autumn 2007).

At the time of the 2006 midterm elections, we wrote in "For a Class-Struggle Workers Party!" (WV No. 881, 24 November 2006):

"Our task in analyzing social discontents, including as revealed through the distorted prism of the elections, is to lay bare the irreconcilable class antagonisms at the base of this society. It is the working class, with its strategic black component, that produces the wealth of society. This is the only social force with the objective interest and potential social power to smash the capitalist system and lay the basis for the construction of an egalitarian socialist society. We stand for the complete political independence of the proletariat from all capitalist parties—Democrat,Republican and Green."

Democratic Party vs. Black Liberation

Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother, is perceived as a charismatic, honest politician, above the mudslinging and corruption that define American politics. He is particularly popular among college youth. And in the face of the history of black oppression in this country, the possibility of the election of the first black president, whatever his actual policies, will likely propel many even previously skeptical black people to support him. If this deeply racist country, where religious obscurantism and anti-woman bigotry are pervasive, ever sees a black or female president, it would certainly be a significant development. But it would do nothing to change the oppression of women, which is rooted in the institution of the family in class society, or of black people, which forms the cornerstone of American capitalism. Simply put, the liberation of black people and women will not happen short of the destruction of the capitalist system through socialist revolution.

In the eyes of the capitalist rulers, Obama is potentially acceptable as chief executive because his entire campaign is based on the "end of racism" lie, the claim that black oppression has been overcome. Columnist Gary Younge commented in the Nation (31 December 2007) that the value of black leadership "is, it seems, directly proportional to its distance from the black community and its experiences. Its cheerleaders desire not so much to refashion black politics as to eliminate it altogether, not so much to eliminate racism as to eradicate discussion of it." The article quotes black radical-liberal writer and former Communist Party spokesman Angela Davis aptly noting that Obama "is being consumed as the embodiment of color blindness."

In his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama declared: "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there's the United States of America." This message was recently echoed by no less a capitalist mouthpiece than the Wall Street Journal (10 November 2007) which headlined: "Whites' Great Hope? Barack Obama and the Dream of a Color-Blind America."

Dream on. A year after Obama's speech to the DNC, the horror of Katrina would expose (again) this present-day liberal lie for what it is. In response to this glaring racist atrocity, Obama declared that "the incompetence was color-blind." What's "color blind" about the ongoing purge of black people from New Orleans? Then when some 50,000 overwhelmingly black people converged upon Jena, Louisiana, in September to protest Jim Crow justice against six black youth, Obama said he just wanted "fairness" and claimed it "isn't a matter of black and white." Tell that to the black people outraged over the proliferation of hangman's nooses around the country after the Jena protest. Those who came out to Jena were mobilized by black Democrats Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with the aim of tunneling anger into the Democratic Party and appeals for "justice" to the federal government. Obama did not even bother to show up.

The daily reality of racist oppression can be measured in astronomical unemployment rates for blacks and decrepit ghetto housing; rampant police terror and the consignment of nearly one million black men and women to America's hellhole prisons, mainly due to the "war on drugs"; prison-like inner-city schools and the purge of black youth from higher education. Obama looks upon all this and claims, as he did in his speech in Selma last year, that the civil rights movement brought America "90 percent of the way" toward racial equality!

Certainly such a position serves Obama's career. It means blaming the oppressed for their oppression. In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, he declares that "minorities, individually and collectively, have responsibilities as well" for their own condition. They suffer from "too much television," "lack of emphasis on educational achievement" and "the collapse of the two-parent black household." Obama lectures that black people should acknowledge that "perhaps the single biggest thing we could do to reduce such poverty is to encourage teenage girls to finish high school and avoid having children out of wedlock." And "we should also acknowledge that conservatives—and Bill Clinton—were right about welfare," a reference to Clinton's ending of welfare "as we know it," which consigned millions of poor and black people, especially women, to the scrap heap. Such is Obama's program for "change."

Contrary to the myth promoted by Obama and other liberals, black oppression continues to be the central defining feature of U.S. society. It is materially rooted in and central to American capitalism. As against both liberal integrationists and black nationalists, our struggle for black liberation is based on the program of revolutionary integrationism. While opposing every manifestation of racist oppression, fighting in particular to mobilize the social power of the multiracial labor movement, we underline that full equality for the black masses
requires that the working class rip the economy out of the hands of the capitalist rulers and reorganize it on a socialist basis. Only then will it be possible to eliminate the material roots of black oppression through the integration of black people into an egalitarian socialist society based on a collectivized economy with jobs and quality housing, health care and education for all.

As we elaborated in "Black and Red," a key document adopted at the founding conference of the Spartacist League in 1966:

"The struggle of the black people of this country for freedom, while part of the struggle of the working class as a whole, is more than that struggle. The Negro people are an oppressed race-color caste, in the main comprising the most exploited layer of the American working class.... Because of their position as both the most oppressed and also the most conscious and experienced section, revolutionary black workers are slated to play an exceptional role in the coming American revolution."

Black Oppression and American Capitalism

The roots of black oppression lie in chattel slavery, smashed only by blood and iron in the Civil War, the Second American Revolution. In this "conflict between the system of slavery and the system of free labor," as Karl Marx described it, some 200,000 black troops entered the fight and helped turn the tide for the Northern
Union Army.

Despite the victory over the slavocracy and installation of the most democratic period for black people in American history under Radical Reconstruction, the promise of black freedom was betrayed as Northern capitalists looked at the devastated South and saw an opportunity not for building a radical democracy but for exploiting Southern resources, and the freedmen. The Compromise of 1877 sealed this betrayal and, with the withdrawal of the remaining troops of the Union Army from the South, a new system of racist exploitation was established through the systematic repression of black people's fight for land, education and civil rights. The former slaves became tenants and sharecroppers toiling on land owned by the white propertied class, consisting of elements of the old slavocracy and a new Southern bourgeoisie with strong ties to Northern capital. Jim Crow segregation became entrenched, enforced and maintained by Klan terror and police-state repression. Black people were effectively completely disenfranchised.

The Southern Jim Crow system made an imprint on the entire country. The capitalist rulers have long fomented ethnic and religious hatred. Well into the 20th century, the central dividing line was one which pitted "native" Protestants against mainly Catholic German, Irish, Italian and other immigrant workers. With the mass migration of blacks from the South to the industrial cities of the North, particularly during World Wars I and II, the bourgeoisie promoted anti-black racism, making the color bar a fundamental dividing line that has served to obscure the irreconcilable class divide. All this has served to retard the political consciousness of the American proletariat. The U.S. is the only industrial country where the workers have not historically had their own independent political party, even a reformist one, reflecting the interests of labor, which are counterposed to the interests of capital.

The courageous struggles of the black and white foot soldiers of the civil rights movement in the 1950s-'60s played an instrumental role in overturning Jim Crow. The creation of a Southern black proletariat fundamentally eroded the Jim Crow system of segregation. The bourgeoisie eventually acquiesced to legal equality in the South, in part because Jim Crow had become an embarrassment to U.S. imperialism's posture as the defender of "democracy" and "human rights" in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the industrial and military powerhouse of the non-capitalist world.

The struggle for black equality intersected growing discontent and opposition to U.S. imperialism's losing counterrevolutionary war against the Vietnamese workers and peasants. The potential for an explosive and revolutionary transformation of American society was evident. But from its onset, the civil rights movement was dominated by a black middle-class leadership allied to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. The aim of liberal-pacifist leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. was to pressure the Democratic administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to grant formal, legal equality. In the context of the current spat between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over her claim that Johnson did more than King for black rights, it is worth recalling that King supported the suppression of the 1965 Watts ghetto revolt while Johnson dispatched federal troops to crush the 1967 Detroit upheaval.

In the 1960s, the Spartacist League, despite our small forces, put forward the perspective of a class-struggle fight for black freedom. As we stated in our Programmatic Statement, "For Socialist Revolution in the Bastion of World Imperialism":

"In our intervention into the civil rights movement, the Spartacist League raised the call for a South-wide Freedom Labor Party as an expression of working-class political independence and the need to mobilize the labor movement to fight for black emancipation. This was linked to a series of other transitional demands aimed at uniting black and white workers in struggle against the capitalist class enemy, like organizing the unorganized and a sliding scale of wages and hours to combat inflation and unemployment. We called for armed self-defense against racist terror and for a workers united front against government intervention, both in the labor movement and in the use of federal troops to suppress black plebeian struggles. This program is no less urgent today."

The bankruptcy of the liberal program of the civil rights movement's leadership was quickly revealed when the movement swept out of the South and into the North, where black people already had formal legal equality. The struggle for a fundamental change in conditions of life in the ghettos—for real equality, for jobs, decent housing and adequate schools—collided head-on with the realities of American capitalism. Many black militants, frustrated with and opposed to liberal conciliationism, turned to black nationalism, which rejects the multiracial working class as the motor force for revolutionary struggle against this racist capitalist system.

The bourgeoisie responded to growing black militancy—represented by Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party and others—with vicious repression, killing 38 Panthers and imprisoning hundreds more through COINTELPRO. Police repression along with cop riots in major U.S. cities resulted in the spontaneous eruption of ghetto rebellions across the country. At the same time, the bourgeoisie sought to and did co-opt a layer of the liberal black misleaders into the Democratic Party, reflected in the election of a number of black mayors in major American cities over the next couple of decades.

By the late 1960s, a racist backlash was already beginning, and in succeeding decades many of the gains of the civil rights period were reversed or eroded. A key turning point was the defeat of busing in Boston in 1974-75 on the streets by racist mobs and in government halls by liberal politicians. Last year's Supreme Court decision overturning school desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville eviscerates the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that banned school segregation. The racist backlash was soon followed by an onslaught against the labor movement, exemplified by the 1981 smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers union by the Reagan administration using plans drawn up by the Democratic Carter administration.

Barack Obama is a beneficiary of the civil rights movement. He also embodies the utter failure of bourgeois liberalism to address the needs of the black masses. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama's rise to political prominence was meteoric, an effort helped in no small part by elements within the Chicago Democratic Party Daley machine. Twenty years earlier, during Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, in which he won 13 primaries and caucuses and got over seven million votes, we pointed out in "Jesse Jackson, Racism and the Democratic Party" (WVNo. 451, 22 April 1988): "Class divisions are sharpening within the black population, marked by the gulf between a thin layer of black professionals, who poured through the gates forced open by the civil rights movement, and the massive 'black underclass' of the permanently unemployed, swollen through the devastation of American industry in the '70s and '80s."

When Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic nomination in 1984 as part of forming his Rainbow Coalition and again in 1988, he was attempting to exert pressure on the party, including through bringing in more voters, but had no chance of nomination. Obama's campaign today, however, poses the possibility of the election of the first black president. And he may well face attack from racist vigilantes and terrorists; threats along those lines have led to the early assignment of Secret Service protection. As a black worker in North Carolina bluntly put it: "I think he will certainly need to beef up his security, because I think there's these wackos that will go to any extent to make sure he doesn't win" (Washington Post, 5 January).

When black Democrat Harold Washington was elected mayor of Chicago in 1983 and faced a vicious racist backlash, we underlined that "Washington has the right to take office with all the normal prerogatives. Blacks have a right to elect whoever they want to office" (WV No. 326, 25 March 1983). But as opposed to many on the reformist left, we refused to give one ounce of political support to this longtime machine Democrat and warned, "Harold Washington Will Betray Black Chicago" (WV No. 328, 22 April 1983). And, indeed, he did, slashing jobs, services and overseeing Chicago's murderous police department.

It is the role of black elected officials to keep a lid on social struggle and administer racist capitalist rule. As former New York City Democratic mayor David Dinkins quipped when he was running for office in 1989, "They'll take it from me." A grotesque example was the 1985 bombing of the MOVE commune in Philadelphia, which slaughtered eleven black men, women and children and destroyed an entire black neighborhood. This was carried out by black Democratic mayor Wilson Goode in collusion with the Feds.

Obama and the Fake Left

The way forward in the struggle against this deeply racist capitalist system is to break the political chains that bind workers, blacks, immigrants and the oppressed to their class enemy, particularly through support to the Democratic Party. This means waging a political struggle not only against the labor tops, many of whom are leading lights within the Democratic Party, but also against the reformist left. Today, as Obama's popularity mounts especially among blacks and youth, the reformist International Socialist Organization (ISO) paints him as a symbol for "those who want a break with the stale right-wing orthodoxy that has dominated mainstream politics for a generation" (Socialist Worker, 11 January).

Despite various criticisms of Obama, the ISO made clear its stand when at an 11 February 2007 rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago campus ISO-led protesters unfurled a banner pleading: "Obama: Stand Up! Cut the funding!" (for the Iraq war). This is part of their fight to give the Democrats "a backbone," which is supposed to be provided by "a grassroots antiwar movement that can pressure politicians from outside the established party system" (Socialist Worker, 2 March 2007). Of course, no less an establishment Democrat than John Kerry has endorsed Obama, who has also received significant support from Wall Street financiers.

The Workers World Party (WWP) is more blatant; the conclusion of its editorial "Behind the Votes for Obama & Rodham Clinton" (Workers World, 9 January) unmistakably leaves open the possibility of support to this capitalist politician:

"With an Obama candidacy, working-class and revolutionary organizations will have to stay sensitive to the impact of racism on the electoral campaign, even as the left differentiates itself from Obama as well as the Republican [sic]. The left will also have to adjust its approach should there be an active intervention of the population in the electoral process, especially if an economic or war crisis arises during the election."

Indeed, WWP supported Jackson in 1988 and other black Democrats such as Congressional candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2004 and New York City Council member Charles Barron in 2006. For his part, Barren raised the slogan: "Let's get back to Black and vote for Barack" (Amsterdam News, 15 November 2007).

Obama is, in fact, to the right of both Clinton and Edwards on many domestic issues. He is at one with the Clintonian "center" in support of the racist, barbaric death penalty. In the context of vicious attacks on immigrants, he wrote in The Audacity of Hope: "I'm not entirely immune to such nativist sentiments. When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment." Along with Clinton, Obama's "patriotism" led him to support the "Secure Fence Act," mandating the construction of a 700-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

As for his international policy, in addition to a cautious and uneven opposition to the Iraq war and occupation, Obama's article on "Renewing American Leadership" in Foreign Affairs (July/August 2007) is instructive. He makes clear that he wants to bring the occupation of Iraq to a "responsible end" in order to redeploy and significantly escalate American military forces and operations around the world. Like the other Democrats, Obama is foursquare behind the murderous occupation of Afghanistan. He is bellicose against Pakistan, as well as Iran and the North Korean deformed workers state, writing: "We must develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program.... In confronting these threats, I will not take the military option off the table."

He goes on to proclaim: "To defeat al Qaeda, I will build a twenty-first-century military and twenty-first-century partnerships as strong as the anticommunist alliance that won the Cold War to stay on the offense everywhere from Djibouti to Kandahar." It is no accident that Obama's foreign policy consigliere is one Zbigniew Brzezinski, the veteran of Cold War II who, as part of Jimmy Carter's Democratic administration, worked to militarily and ideologically rearm U.S. imperialism after its humiliating defeat at the hands of the heroic Vietnamese workers and peasants. The Carter administration launched an anti-Communist "human rights" campaign against the Soviet Union, including massive support to Islamic reactionaries in Afghanistan against the Soviet Red Army's intervention on the side of elementary human progress.

For the most part, the reformists marched in lockstep with the imperialists during Cold War II. Today, in the wake of the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union, they have given up even lip service to the struggle for proletarian revolution. As revolutionary Trotskyists, we stood for the unconditional military defense of the Soviet degenerated workers state and the deformed workers states of East and Central Europe while fighting for political revolution to oust the ruling Stalinist bureaucracies and install regimes based on workers democracy and revolutionary internationalism. Today, we apply this same program to the remaining deformed workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

The restoration of capitalism in the USSR was a world-historic defeat for the international proletariat. Today, rapacious U.S. imperialism declares itself the superpower of a "one superpower" world, and the capitalists internationally are intensifying their class war against working people, immigrants and the oppressed. Retrograde "death of communism" consciousness has led to a number of backward offspring, from the mythology of the "end of racism" to widespread despair among working people over their ability to fundamentally ameliorate their conditions. It is a telling statement of the decomposition of the left that radical-liberal writer Alexander Cockburn is now promoting right-wing libertarian Republican Ron Paul—a fanatical proponent of "free market" capitalism—as a "principled fellow" and "a candidate leftists can and should support" (Nation, 21 January).

There will be no effective resistance to the immiseration of American working people without the unity in struggle between the trade unions and the black and Latino poor. It is necessary to fight for a new, class-struggle leadership in the labor movement that fights to mobilize and extend union power not only in defense of workers' livelihoods but also to combat racist discrimination and anti-immigrant attacks. Such a class-struggle leadership would fight against deportations and to organize immigrant workers, demanding full citizenship rights for all immigrants. As we wrote in our Programmatic Statement:

"Despite the destruction of industrial jobs and erosion of union strength, black workers, who have a significantly higher rate of trade-union membership than do white workers, continue to be integrated into strategic sectors of the industrial proletariat, which alone has the power to shatter this racist, capitalist system. Won to a revolutionary program, black workers will be the living link fusing the anger of the dispossessed ghetto masses with the social power of the multiracial proletariat under the leadership of a Leninist vanguard party."

On Deflating the Youth Balloon and Obama's Campaign

Commentary

Frankly, I tremble at the thought of having to make any more comments on the 2008 presidential nominating process. I am about as far removed politically from the whirlwind of this process as it is possible to be and yet still retain a rational political posture. I, moreover, am having a hard time even getting up a sporting interest in the results and those who have been reading my commentary over the last couple of years know I live for an occasional bet on the outcome of these things. Mercifully, I do not have to actually vote for any of the subjects of the bets. Propaganda politics does indeed have it compensating virtues.

Notwithstanding those virtues, my friends, today Friday January 11 2008 I confess that I have dug something of a hole for myself. Despite my disdain for parliamentary politics, or rather my distain for those politics as the sole vehicle for attempting social change, I do like to project trends based on what is happening in the main arena of politics these days. An invaluable aid in that quest is the media’s mind-boggling fetish for polling everything that is not tied down. With proper caution some of this information is very useful. As a case in point, last week, in the aftermath of the Iowa caucuses they provided much information on the youth vote. Apparently what drove Obama over the top was his ability to grab the youth and actually have them turn up at the caucus sites. I perked up immediately on that bit of information. I suggested that this was the first national manifestation of a fresh breeze coming on. (See the entry The Winds Of Change Do Shift, January 7 2008).

Obama and his strategists are not the only ones who see (if not this year then in the near future) the importance of the youth in driving any positive social change that might occur in this country. And it has been ever so. Not just in my generation, the generation of ’68, but in the 1930’s during the Great Depression and earlier in the first part of the 20th century with the progressive labor movement. Those Wobblies who followed Big Bill Haywood and the gang were mainly footloose kids, remember. Thus, I too am interested in which way the youth is headed. The only virtue of aging, seemingly, is that I have seen more than a few political generations past by. For the most part since the 1960’s, with some notable exception around Central America and South Africa, the various youthful generations have been characterized by political quietude, or worst.

That brings us to today. After digesting the New Hampshire results it is clear that Obama grabbed his fair share of the youth vote. However, that was not enough, not nearly enough. What happened? Apparently Obama can draw the crowds in rock star fashion but, in the parlance of traditional politics, he could not seal the deal. They didn’t show at the voting booths. Fair enough. Nobody said getting the iPod generation to either the booth or the streets was going to be easy. My reflections last week on the ‘surge’ of youth should thus be tempered a little by those results, or the problems reflected in them.

Nevertheless I believe that there is something on the wind going on among the youth that has been initially reflected in the energy of the Obama campaign. And if not now, soon. I do not believe that my comparison of the energy around Obama’s campaign with that of the fresh breezeof the Kennedys in my youth in the 1960’s as a catalyst for a break from the past is that far off. I stated at the end of The Winds of Change Do Shift commentary that it was not time to dust off the old Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) buttons yet. But keep a rag ready. I stand by that statement. Enough said for now.

A SHORT NOTE ON PARLIMENTARY CRETINISM

Commentary

Admittedly, I have never been one to be patience with the parliamentary maneuvering that is the daily bread of virtually all politicians today. It took a while for me to understand that leftists could use parliamentary venues as ‘bully pulpits” to fulfill our duties as fighters for our issues, although knowing that the questions of war and peace sometimes can only be solved in the workplace, in the barracks and the streets. But today enough is enough. The Democrats allegedly rode the wave of Iraq war frustration (which, as I have argued elsewhere, may be quite different from being anti-war) in last year’s mid-term elections. Over the past several months the House of Representatives, in particular, has attempted to get various votes passed on the war budget and other measures to restrain the Bush Administration’s prerogatives. Those efforts have proven fruitless either because they have not generated enough support in the House or have been sabotaged by the narrower Democratic margin in the Senate. That so-called 60-vote rule.

Well, apparently, those ‘gallant’ attempts by the House leadership are in the past as a recent (October 3, 2007) vote discloses. Having failed with a frontal attack of a straight up and down vote on the various war measures the Democratic leadership is now trying to ‘make nice’ with the Republicans. So now instead of a hard and fast Iraq withdrawal plan they have sponsored legislation that, in essence, asks for another round of progress reports from the Pentagon. Correct me if I am wrong but didn’t we just go through that scenario?

The Republicans are smart enough to know a good lifesaver when they see it, especially when it doesn’t cost anything, so they jumped on this bandwagon and the measure passed 377 to 46. Even House Republican Minority leader Boehner was wise to the game. He knows that this legislation commits nobody to nuthin’, especially the Pentagon. Think about it though, a promise to report on reports on reports. This is very heaven to these guys and gals. The real impact, however, is that now the surprisingly few (about 30) hard anti-war parliamentary Democrats are on the defensive. And while I stand well outside the Democratic Party this isolation is not a good thing for the only politicians, for the most part, from the establishment who have stuck to their principles on the Iraq War issue. NOW, does my call for anti-war soldiers and sailors anti-war committees to link up with the rank and file soldiers seem all that utopian. Utopia (or, rather dystopia) lies with those who continually and solely rely on parliamentary politics to end this damn war. IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF ALL U.S. AND ALLED TROOPS-AND MERCENARIES FROM IRAQ

ADIEU, KARL ROVE

COMMENTARY

A SAVAGE CLASS WARRIOR LEAVES BUSH TO HIS OWN DEVICES

Well by now everyone among the ‘chattering classes’ knows that Republican President George Bush’s ‘evil counselor’, one Karl Rove, has like so many in the recent past abandoned the sinking ship U.S.S. Bush and gone off to seek greener pastures in the hills of Texas. However, unlike most of the Bush ilk, the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to a name a couple, I will miss Karl Rove as a target. Why? I will make a confession based on a very long experience in politics- I get along better with and better understand right wing ideologues than the usual mushy ‘consultant’ types who populate today’s political scene. The ‘band aid guys’ and the ‘scotch tape gals’ whose political program is a small grab bag of ‘nice’ things to tweak the capitalist system while leaving it intact and that solve nothing leave me cold. One only needs to mention the name of the apparently recently retired Democratic Party consultant and perennially ‘loser’ Robert Schrum to bring this point home.

Give me the hardball players, the real bourgeois class warriors, any day. They know there is a class struggle going on as well as I do and know and that, in the final analysis, it is a fight to the finish. And who will dare say that Karl Rove was not the hell-bent king of that crowd. Anyone who could get a genuine dolt like George Bush elected twice Governor of Texas and twice President of the United States without flinching knows his business. Imagine if Rove had had a real political street fighter like Richard Nixon for a client. Yes, I know in the end Mr. Rove and I will be shooting from different sides of the barricades but Karl was a real evil genius and I will miss that big target.

Karl Rove honed two basic propositions that Marxists can appreciate, even if only from an adversarial position. One was the above-mentioned sense of the vagaries of the class struggle for the bourgeois class that he has so faithfully represented. How he was able to grab the dirt poor and against the wall farmers of places like Kansas and the desperately poor of the small towns of the ‘Rust Belt’ as cannon fodder voters for a party that has not represented plebian interests since at least the 1870’s is worthy of study. The second was his notion, parliamentary-centered to be sure, of a ‘vanguard’ party. What? Karl Rove as some kind of closet Leninist? No. However, his proposition that the Republican party should cater to its social conservative base and drag whoever it could in their wake is a piece of political wisdom that leftists should think through more. That is a much better political approach than to rely on the current dominant ‘popular front’ strategy of organizing on the basis of the lowest common denominator issues whittled down to a meaningless point just to avoid antagonizing the Democrats instead of fighting for what is necessary. Yes, one can sometimes learn something from one’s political adversaries- Adieu, Karl.

The Age Of Andrew Jackson-A Plebeian VIew

BOOK REVIEW

LIBERTY AND POWER, HARRY L. WATSON, THE NOON DIAL PRESS, NEW YORK, 1990

The central story line of the Jacksonian period economically, socially and politically was the fight over the establishment, continuation and rechartering of the Bank of the United States which despite its name was a privately owned corporation headed by the notorious Nicholas Biddle. In short the story was, as almost always under capitalism, about the money. Hard money, paper money, metallic money, federal money, state money, no money. It is all there. As confusing and, frankly, somewhat trivial as the issues may seem to the 21st century mind the various fights determined the path of capitalist formation for the rest of the 19th century. One does not have to be a partisan of any particular monetary policy to know that if the Biddle-led forces had won then capital formation in the United States would have taken a very different turn. Thus, the essential Jacksonian victory on the bank question is one that militants today can give a retroactive endorsement. This is the story the author tries to bring to life. I believe that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Age of Jackson is still the definitive general work on the period but if you need a shorter overview this book will suffice.

Although control of the money was the underlying premise for the political fights of the day they also represented some very different appreciations of what American society should look like. Watson goes to great pains to highlight the various factions within each of the coalescing parties that would come to form the Democratic and Republican two-party system that we are familiar with today. Watson does a better job on the formation of the party system than Schlesinger. The fights outlined had different implications for differing sections of the country. In that regard the names Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay and their various congressional devotees can generally stand to represent the various sectional interests. One might also note that names that became familiar in the immediate pre-Civil War period, like Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, John Bell, Gideon Welles, William Seward, etc. started to receive political notice as secondary figures during this period.

One should also note that this was a period of political realignment and that the political situation was fluid enough that with changing political winds the various leading personalities were as likely to change sides as not. Readers should pick up the trail that is only alluded to here on the importance on the third party Liberty and Free Soil Parties. Despite that lapse dealing with the various political manifestations of the period is the strongest part of Mr. Watson's book.

THE GOOD OL' BOYS OF THE GOP-OUCH!

COMMENTARY

WHERE ARE THE WHIGS WHEN YOU NEED THEM?

FORGET REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS AND GREENS! BUILD A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR SOCIALISM!


Forgive me, dear reader, for not stopping everything to immediately comment on the recent Republican presidential ‘debate’ in South Carolina. Frankly this cattle call production of Republican hopefuls was even more dismal than that of their Democratic counterparts earlier, if that is possible. Fortunately I have been spending my time not commenting on the debate reading a book on the Age of Jackson. Interestingly, all the essentials of the party (two party, that is) system were established during this period. Although the historic interest of this period for militants today centers on the Liberty and Free Soil parties the Whigs, the forerunners of today’s Republican Party, look positively revolutionary in comparison with their pale progeny down south last week. When the deal went down in the 1850’s over the question of the expansion of slavery into the territories and other questions the Whigs went ‘belly up’ but for a while they expressed a rational political program in a period of progressive capitalist expansion in America. Today’s Republicans apparently live in a bubble. And here is why.

On the central question of the day-Iraq, Iraq and again Iraq- with the exception of libertarian Congressman Paul from Texas all the Republicans are going down the line, one way or the other, with the Bush Administration strategy for ‘victory’ and the indefinite American occupation in Iraq. If the 2008 presidential campaign and election hinges on this question, as I believe it will, these guys are doomed. And no tears will be shed in these quarters over it. Even a cursory glance at the daily newspaper confronts one with the reality that things continue to deteriorate in that benighted country. And, Republican hopefuls please note, they ain’t getting better.

Particularly interesting is Senator McCain’s slow death rattle attempt to ‘revive’ his campaign by being more Bush than Bush on this question. Know this- whichever bourgeois candidate ‘wins’ the presidency he or she will have the albatross on Iraq hanging around their necks. McCain’s plight may be explained by his “Manchurian Candidate” term as a POW in Vietnam. But what excuse do the draft-dodgers like Guiliani and Romney have for their toadyism.

More generally on the question of the ‘war on terrorism’ former Massachusetts Governor Mitt “Flip-Flop” Romney has really outdone himself with his support for ‘doubling’ the torture chambers at Guantanamo. They say that every real presidential candidate has to have ‘fire in the belly’ in order to debase him or herself enough to win this ‘prize’. Apparently Mr. Romney is in such ‘heat’ to get the nomination that he is willing to say anything, anywhere, anytime in order to appease the hard-core conservative base of the Republican Party that takes such pronouncements as red meat.

Old Mitt makes his weak-kneed father George seem like the height of rationality in contrast. While even moderate conservatives are cringing over the treatment at “Gitmo”, if for no other reason than to protect America’s image in the world, he is blithely calling for more torture. I would not want to be a member of his political staff if this sadistic fool ever gets within a few hundred delegates of the nomination. Presumably then the Mittster will come out in defense of drawing and quartering.

As if to add insult to injury, with the somewhat honorable exception of Rudy Guiliani, the Republican field fell all over itself on the ‘family values’ issues that in reality comes down to the question of abortion. The deal is already in the process of being done in the Supreme Court against a women’s right to choose (to speak nothing of our historic demand for free abortion on demand) but the candidates just wanted to let the base know that a return to the days of back alley abortions (for those who are unconnected or poor, that is) is just fine with them.

Overall the tenor of the ‘debate’ was what one expected from men who genuinely do not have a clue about what is going on for the average American worker or the average international one either. That is par for the course. As most commentators have mentioned the 2008 Presidential election is the Democrats’ to lose. This Republican field does nothing to negate that prediction. One would almost (a very long almost) wish the Democrats fair weather except that when the deal really goes down there is no essential difference between the parties. They almost all vote early and often, if they are a position to, for the Iraq war budgets. What else is new? Damn, those long forgotten Whigs look pretty good today.

THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES OF COMMENTARY ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

LAST ROUNDUP FOR MIDTERM ELECTIONS- 2006

COMMENTARY

NOTES ON THE FINAL ELECTORAL ODDS, REPUBLICAN ZANIES, DEMOCRATIC HYPOCRISY AND ONE LAST DESPERATE MESSAGE FOR DOCTOR HUNTER THOMPSON-CALL ME
Forget elephants, donkeys and greens-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
With about one week to go in the 2006 electoral cycle I am prepared to make my breathlessly awaited final line on the Congressional contests. Fortunately, as noted in an early October blog (see October 2006 archives, dated October 1), as an anti-capitalist militant I am able to keep a long, a very long, distance between myself and the fate of these parties and therefore am able to make a considered, in fact a most considered judgment, on the results. Unfortunately, the real loser in this years elections is the working class who along with its allies have for the umpteenth time taken a beating by being confronted with choices of elephants, donkeys and Greens whose programs do not come close articulating its historic needs. Hell, those parties do not even come close to meeting its immediate needs- which is a party of its own- a workers party based on a working class program. Forget the Left Liberals, Forget the Greens- accept no substitutes.

Despite all the hoopla over the expected Democratic resurgence, especially in the House of Representatives, the number of races that count have been dramatically overblown in the media. Given Republican gerrymandering, base-building and a flat out cash flow advantage the real number of seats “in play”, as the conventional political pundits put it, is still in the 25 to 30 range that I indicated were up for grabs in early October. That and a certain narrowing of the numbers toward the Republicans down the final stretch leads me to one conclusion- even, take your pick. I will take all the action I can get on that proposition and feel it is a wise investment. Of course, in early October I was considering my bets as money found on the ground. Well, even disinterested leftists are capable of getting caught up in the moment. As for the Senate races I think the Democratic pundits have been smoking “something”. I will be damned if I can see their numbers. 3/2 Republicans retain the Senate.

These numbers point to the underlying problem that the Democrats have faced all year. Despite a willfully ignorant President (who capacity for screwing up everything he touches, by the way, should make the Trustees of the Yale Corporation blush that they gave up a seat to a meritorious student in favor of the ‘tribe’s’ George W.), a barrelful of scandals that would make Boss Tweed blush and other assorted antics the Democrats have maintained a political position which they have carried over from the 2004 election campaign-Republican-lite. So be it. That is their problem, our problems lie elsewhere. Below are a few final observations that make this writer very glad that he stands outside the bourgeois political parties.

* Last spring Anne Coulter made a splash on the political scene by trashing widows in her latest book of political trivia. Now hot off the “de-tox” trail one Rush Limbaugh has aimed his blunted barbs at actor Michael J. Fox, a sufferer from Parkinson’s disease, who has been supporting the fight to increase stem-cell research. Apparently ever since last year’s obscene flap in the Terry Schrivo case every half-baked zany with access to a microphone is now capable of a tele-diagnosis of the ailments of the world. Seemingly this is the Republican prescription in lieu of a universal health care program.

Last spring I also mentioned that the Republicans should nominate, unopposed, Ms. Coulter as their nominee for President in 2008, as she represents the “soul” of that party. Now I have found her Vice Presidential running mate. At one time bourgeois politicians nurtured widows and orphans, the afflicted, the waifs of the world – even if they were not going to do anything about their plight. Now the “survival of the fittest” code of political warfare has rendered that point moot. In the year 2006 is it really necessary in the “interest of full and frank democratic discourse” to have these zanies running the mainstream political circus (or perhaps, asylum is a better choice of words).

* Make no mistake racism is a fact of life in American life, particularly of political life, in 2006 as always. Make all the paeans to racial integration that you want but the hard reality is down in the mud the “race card” is the coin of the realm. Cases in point. In Tennessee, black Democratic Senatorial candidate Harold Ford was the subject of a vicious television ad depicting a willowy white blonde woman coming on to him. Despite all the disclaimers his Republican opponent’s numbers jumped up after the hoopla over that ad died down. Some commentators have noted that the blatant aims of the ad- to fuel the fires over the taboo subjects of interracial sex and its adjunct the “preservation of the purity of the white race” evokes the memory of Emmett Till (see October 2006 archives for an article on Till’s case). True enough, but the really interesting thing about the ad is not so much a certain assumption about a black man’s sexuality as much as that a white woman is coming on to a black man- now that is the nut of the whole racial cultural battle which drives the ‘gentile’ whites crazy with anxiety.

In Massachusetts black Democratic candidate for Governor Deval Patrick has also been attacked with a racially charged television ad that he is “soft” on rapists. Jesus, how low can these bourgeois politicians go just to get elected to a two-bit office? Even those hardened politicians, the late Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, who were capable of the most gross political shenanigans to get into office would be blushing here.

* Recently Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, who is slated to take over the House Finanical Services Committee chairmanship if the Democrats sweep into the majority there, gave a revealing interview that epitomizes the limits of the Democratic Party as a vehicle that working people can rely on. Now Congressman Frank is an intelligent, witting and knowledgeable politician, far from the worst of the lot- in fact probably one of the most liberal in bourgeois politics. Here is what he had to say. After paying the obligatory homage to the “free market” system Frank noted that this system contains an inherent inequality but that was essentially the overhead price one must pay for the system to function. The role of government is to regulate that inequality so that it does not become too oppressive. That, dear readers, in a nutshell is exactly what is wrong with capitalism and its defenders. The role of government should be to end government over the citizenry- to let every cook be a commissar, to end exploitation of humankind by humankind and let the devil take the hinder post. Even the best liberal politician has a tin ear on this question.


* As we wind down on this bummer of a campaign season and begin the gear up to the real action-the presidential campaign of 2008 I refer back to an article written last summer when I first started to pay attention to the national political campaign (see July 2006 archives). This was an open letter to the late Doctor Hunter J. Thompson, political writer of blessed memory, to come back and give me some goddamn help. He liked this stuff. He liked to get down in the mud with this crowd. Thompson was a pro and took this weirdness in stride. Hunter-call me, please. Enough said.

VOTE REPUBLICAN-SUPPORT THE LINCOLN-JOHNSON TICKET IN 1864!! VOTE DEMOCRATIC-SUPPORT THE JACKSON-VAN BUREN TICKET IN 1832!

COMMENTARY

QUESTION: WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A LEFTIST COULD HAVE CRITICALLY SUPPORTED A CAPITALIST PARTY? ANSWER: SEE ABOVE. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT TODAY.

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

NOTE: The original intention of this writer was to produce two commentaries on the above-mentioned question, one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats. After some thought I realized that except for a change of names I would have been basically writing the same dreary commentary twice. In any case, how much can any writer endure of the same nonsense put out by these two parties over the last one hundred plus years? How much space should be taken up by separate commentaries even on the expansive Internet? Moreover, the little tidbits of wisdom I was going to write about the current crop of Democratic contenders can wait for another day. After all we have two long years to lambaste the likes of Hillary “Hawk” and the Johnnies.

I know some readers will be offended by my choice of Andrew Jackson as the last supportable Democrat. They will ask- What about William Jennings Bryan in 1896? Yes indeed, what about William Jennings Bryan. I am not at all sure that his “cheap money” Cross of Gold campaign was in the interest of working people (or ultimately farmers, for that matter) but that is beside the point. I do not particularly want to argue over the virtues of this or that candidate but to make the point that it has been a very long time since leftists could have supported a capitalist party candidate. As the commentary below will make clear as an almost universally acceptable choice of a ‘progressive’ capitalist politician Lincoln is better in every way.

For Andrew Jackson buffs. Yes, I know Mr. Jackson got waylaid in 1824 by the maneuverings of one John Quincy Adams but cut me a little slack. I was born in Mr. Adams’s hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts so call me a ‘homer’ on that one. Not only that but J.Q.'s position against slavery, the burning issue of the times, was light years ahead of the slaveholder Jackson's. Enough said. For Green Party buffs. Sorry, but leftists have no basis for voting for a modern capitalist third party operation. I did add an appropriate couple of sentences at the end of the commentary about the Greenies. That seems about right. Finally, remember when reading the commentary below where it says Republican put Democrat, where it says Hoover put Roosevelt, etc., etc. Here goes.

Today, after suffering through the likes of Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and various Bushes it is hard to believe these denizens claim the heritage of the party created by Lincoln and the other early stalwarts. Something went terribly wrong somewhere in the 1870’s (even before the Compromise of 1877 which only codified the defeat of the aims of Reconstruction, limited as they were) and it has been downhill ever since. Nevertheless, Lincoln, Chase, Seward, Staunton, the Radical Republicans and others can claim the respect of today’s militants, and the Republican Party presidential candidate Lincoln a retroactive vote in 1864, for two major reasons.

First, when the issue was hot on the fire and there was no way around it Lincoln and his compatriots organized an army and fought a Civil War to abolish black slavery. Now, not all of their motives were pure as the driven snow and to some extend Lincoln, in particular, had to be led kicking and screaming to fight for that aim-but in the end he did it. That is also why, in this writer’s opinion, it is a dicey thing to think that militants should have supported Lincoln-Hamlin in 1860. At that point Lincoln had not been tested and was essentially a sectional candidate, if that. But 1864 is a different question-then all the issues were on the table. Civil wars tend to such clarity. Lincoln passed the test.

Every militant abolitionist or unionist still alive after three years of war, could have, albeit critically, supported the ticket. Even with the War Democrat Johnson on it. That tactical concession could be justified by the need to rally plebian support in the Northern cities. There can be no second guessing that choice just because Johnson’s later career proved him a bust after Lincoln’s assassination. After the furor of the war was over and the Radical Republican elements during Reconstruction lost heart or faith in their program of emancipation for black people all hell broke loose and it broke over the head of those same black people. At that point the Republicans became just another in a long line of garden variety capitalist parties. And what of the program of those selfsame Republicans today toward the question of the oppression of blacks and other minorities? That can be stated in one phrase- their response to Hurricane Katrina. Enough said.

The second reason that militants tip their hat to the Republican Party and to Lincoln is less obvious but also related to the Civil War struggle-that is the preservation of the union or more appropriately the conditions for the formation of a unitary continent-wide national capitalist state. Support for such an outcome by militants today would seem strange but back then when capitalism represented a progressive trend in human history it was not. That system allowed the productive forces of society to be developed more fully than the previous localized, agrarian-dominated society.

Think of this- if the Southern armies, dominated by the planter classes, has won the war or more likely fought to a stalemate and had been allowed to keep their separate state it would have hampered the development of free labor to the detriment of working people. The United States would have probably become, as envisioned by some Southern thinkers, a large ‘banana republic’, an exporter of raw materials for the world market. Today we know that capitalism has outlived its effective useful life. We also know how to deal with that even if we today do not have enough forces to do something about it. But, back then the gods were on our side, the struggle against slavery was righteous and we were sustained by the spirit of the better angels of our nature.

As for the Green Party no commentary can be provided except maybe a comment on the similarities of the program and personalities of that party and the ill-fated Henry Wallace-led Progressive Party campaign of 1948. Sorry Greenies.

THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

THESE ARE NOT SALAD DAYS FOR LIBERAL HAWKS

BOOK REVIEW

THE GOOD FIGHT: WHY LIBERALS-AND ONLY LIBERALS-CAN WIN THE WAR ON TERROR AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, PETER BEINART, HARPERCOLLINS, NEWYORK, 2006

In the normal course of events these days the tasks of working class socialists, particularly during the electoral cycle, are to create and distribute propaganda in favor of socialist solutions to the crisis of humankind and to organize around a socialist program. Since we are not in an immediate struggle for political power that is more than enough work. Thus, usually the goings-on among capitalist propagandists and ideologues have no direct relation to working on those tasks. However every once in a while, as now during a electoral cycle, it is interesting to take note of what is going on in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Why? Make no mistake, while the relation of forces today is totally on their side, in the final analysis we will have to directly fight the liberal wing of that party for the political allegiance of the better elements of that party. Does any militant leftist believe that today in 2006 that our recruiting grounds are located anywhere in the vicinity of the Republican Party?

With that thought in mind Mr. Beinart’s book, the Good Fight, is an outline of a plan to undercut the so-called liberal-pacifist wing of the Democratic Party in order to draw back the allegiance of what at one time were the elements that made the Democratic Party a governing party during much of the 20th century. In short, Mr. Beinart is fighting for what appears to him to be the ‘soul’ of the Democratic Party. Mr. Beinart’s central argument is that while he and other liberal hawks were wrong, dead wrong, on support to the Bush Administrations war in Iraq those who did at least get that question right are nevertheless wrong on a strategy to either defeat or contain Islamic terrorism. Of course, in the process Mr. Beinart thus retroactively absolves himself of his ‘little error’ on Iraq in the interests of the greater war on terrorism. Nobody ever said democratic ideologues were incapable of the occasional sleight-of-hand.

The predicate for this thesis is that there is vast ‘conspiracy’ underfoot by those, apparently led by the filmmaker Michael Moore and kindred spirits, who want to take over the Democratic Party and emulate Neville Chamberlain's capitualtion to Hitler at Munich as a reaction to the current "war on terror". The result, according to Mr. Beinart, is that the centrist/ Lieberman wing will have no home and the Democratic Party will not rule again like in the good old days of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In answer, this writer makes this observation-what planet does Mr. Beinart live on? If memory serves Mr. Moore supported one General Wesley Clark, the mad commander of NATO forces in Serbia who attempted to bomb that country back to Stone Age conditions, in the presidential primaries of 2004. Moreover, do any rational liberal politicians or activists take political counsel from Mr. Moore? Certainly he is a political gadfly and provocative filmmaker but, please, go after the big game. And spend less time on the Internet.

Moreover, and I do not need to rely on memory for this one, who in the Democratic Party opposed the now crumbling war in Afghanistan? There were very few of us in those days, even those who were allegedly opposed to all wars on pacifist grounds, out on the streets protesting that invasion in the aftermath of the hysteria over 9/11. I saw no Democratic Party opposition, hawk or dove, to that little adventure. No, overall, as we are painfully aware every day, the Democratic Party is nothing more than a somewhat loyal parliamentary opposition. They take no more risks than the Republicans. The real problem is that on foreign policy, either in its containment or confrontational stages, the Democratic Party is Republican-lite. That in a nutshell is their political malaise-the Republicans do better at and are perceived to be better at protecting the long term interests of the ruling classes-end of story.

Mr. Beinart’s book does bring up a serious political question about how to fight the war on terror for those who favor a workers government and we duck the issue at our peril. Be forewarned, Islamic fundamentalism is a present threat to not only democratic forms of government but ultimately also to socialist forms as well. Thus, without being forced to outline an abstract blueprint to a theoretical question- How would a workers government in power respond to the actions of the Islamic terrorists? Fair enough.

The obvious first answer is that a workers government would try to break the stranglehold of Islamic fundamentalism at the base by, yes, throwing lots of money and organizers at the problems which keep the Islamic masses in poverty. Beyond that the breaking up of the Islamic terrorist organizations appears to be much more of police problem than a military one. A workers government, like any responsible government, would mercilessly track down every one of these cells in the appropriate manner. Finally, a workers government under foreseeable conditions would not be a pacifist government, even though its long-term aim is a peaceful world. There is a long way to go before humankind gets to that stage.

Let me suggest the following as one possible scenario that a future workers government might follow. The Soviet Union’s intervention into Afghanistan in 1979 drove the West, including the American Democratic Party headed by one President Jimmy Carter, to support the Islamic fundamentalists of that time as a proxy against the Soviets. The Soviet Union, even if eventually only half-heartedly committed to the intervention, in retrospect, was then the vanguard of the fight against Islamic fundamentalism. Does anyone today want to rethink that Western opposition to Soviet intervention into Afghanistan? One should. A workers government today would follow the Soviet lead demonstrated in Afghanistan and in earlier fights in the 1920’s against counterrevolutionary Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia as it attempted to consolidate the Soviet state. That is a sketch of some aspects of a workers government policy to think about. As these thoughts suggest in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism the real options are fairly narrow.

INHERIT THE WIND?

INHERIT THE WIND?

COMMENTARY

OF INHERITANCES AND MINIMUM WAGES

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

In the press of other commentaries this writer has had to delay commenting on proposed legislation this summer by Congress concerning the obviously connected issues of the abolition (or severe reduction) of the federal inheritance tax and the marginal increment of the federal minimum wage standard (see blog, dated July 5, 2006 concerning the minimum wage proposal). Obvious, you ask? Yes, those few thousand heirs who are trying to stampede Congress to protect their billions (and have spent many millions to get their way) and those millions fighting to make minimum wages (even at a lousy $7/hr) and thus avoid leaving their heirs to inherit the wind is compelling. Agreed?

At least that connection is compelling interest group politics in the demented minds of the Republican congressional leadership which parleyed these two items together in an effort to embarrass (if that is possible) the Democrats. How? By forcing an up or down vote on the counterposed issues and thus forcing the Democrats to vote against the federal minimum wage proposal. The Democrats initially, with a view to the fall congressional elections, supported an increase in the minimum wage in order to grandstand to a part of their constituency. As if any self-respecting person could, with a straight face, support much less propose a $7 minimum wage in this day in age (see below). Democratic politicians not having to personally live on the minimum wage apparently have weird senses of humor. The Republicans, responding to their very different base, faced no such embarrassment. Their proposal to severely cap, if not eliminate, the inheritance tax for millionaires and billionaires set just the right tone. And avoided an increase in the minimum wage, which they did not want, to boot. My hat is off to the Republican leadership for joining the two issues together. Just when this writer thought that parliamentary cretinism had reached a bottom line beyond which no rational politics could go he finds out that there is an abyss instead. Well you live and learn.

In an earlier blog, cited in the first paragraph, I counterposed to the minimum wage the fight for a living wage. I stand by that idea here. What one may ask is a living wage? Well, for openers the current median household income. That is somewhere near $50,000/yr. Do the math on the proposed federal minimum wage of $7/hr. Anyway one cuts it the total is about $15,000/yr. That, these days, just barely covers a family’s energy, housing and food costs. Get real. It is embarrassing to this writer to have to discuss the concerns of a small part of society which is worried (and seriously worried) about inheritance taxes when several million people have to get by on that $15,000/yr. Hell, I couldn’t. Can anyone else? Something is desperately wrong with this society’s priorities.

Do not get me wrong about the inheritance tax issue. In the final analysis a workers government will not simply confine itself to taxing the rich but will confiscate their inheritances as part of the social redistribution process. And not shed a single tear about it. The rich can work just like the rest of us, at first for their daily needs and by those deeds promote the good of society. However, that is music for the future. The point now is that the current inheritance tax does not hurt the people we care about-working people. The point at which the tax sets in is far, far above anything a worker’s estate would trigger. In short, the fight over this tax, one way or the other, is not central to our fight for a more just society.

Beyond that, various schemes to tax the rich which periodically spring up on the part of leftists as a means of the redistribution of the social surplus are generally put forth in order to deflect the need for class struggle. Needless to say to really put a crimp in the lifestyles of the “rich and famous” working people need to take state power. We need that solution in order to do more than inherit the wind. Forward.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

FOR MORE POLITICAL COMMENTARY AND BOOKS REVIEWS CHECK MY BLOG AT- Http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/

SENATOR CANTWELL'S CANT

COMMENTARY

HILLARY “HAWK” WEST RUNS FOR COVER

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!


Apparently even ostrich-like Democratic Party politicians are starting to realize that as the 2006 elections are approaching the war in Iraq is the central axis of politics this season. Washington State Democratic U.S. Senator Cantwell, long a fervent supporter of the Bush Administration's war, has even got that message-a little. Recently the august Senator stated, for the record, that if she knew then what she knows now she would have voted against the Congressional authorization for the war. Christ, they are all running for cover on this one. No one, apparently, wants to be the next Senator Lieberman. But those of us who opposed this war from before its start should have very long memories. Make these fools run the gauntlet.

This writer makes no bones about the fact that he long ago gave up on the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressive change. The fight against the Iraqi War has only emphasized how right that decision has been. However some readers may not see it that way. At a time when only the immediate Bush family appears to still support the war something more than verbal opposition to the war is necessary. On the parliamentary level the only real way to end this war is to cut off the war budget. I have been beating the drums on this theme throughout this series on the election cycle. I pose the question again here for anti-war militants. Ask Senator Cantwell or any candidate for that matter -Will you vote against the war budget? Yes or No. To pose the question is to know the answer. It is high time to move on to other forms of political expression than the Republicrats.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!