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From SeeingBlack.com Diaspora
Even dizzier, we supposedly hear from the left-right corkscrew terrorist Al Qaeda insults that Obama is a “house slave.” But as I said in an instant rejoinder, “Anyone who thinks suicide is revolutionary ain’t all that bright to begin with. And as for that slave calling, best they refrain from drawing our attention to the fact that some of the Arab ruling class always thought of Black people as slaves.” But we are willing to be momentarily cool, remembering Mao’s dictum, “fight your enemies one by one.” But back to reality. We have just won an election. We, meaning the masses in the U.S., indeed the people of the world. (I was in Italy, France, Spain, Norway during the period leading up to and through the election. In Italy, just before the election at my readings, I urged the Italians to call the states, since I knew they had a bunch of relatives over here, and tell them to vote. In city after city, the crowds all seemed to cheer for Obama’s victory). And whoever seeks to downplay that victory is fool or enemy. We should understand the White supremacy junkies on the right. Their last pop was Old Dutch cleanser and seltzer water, so they have had almost to cold turkey off that WS they been shootin up, though still dizzy from its fumes. But the Left or would-be Left or some who style themselves as what? Progressive, moderate, wheeze wheeze. Some of these, certainly the vote wasters, sound almost as pitiful. As one pitiful pundit warns us, “Obama’s election is to save capitalism…not bring equality to the society.” What a silly person. First of all, the very election of Obama has done more to bring some aspect of equality to the society than reams of pseudo leftist posturing. Which, all returns in, is meant merely to show the writer is smarter than you are. But what, dreary pundits, would a McCain victory have done? And suppose your wasted vote had contributed to such? To always be on the outside nitpicking away with not one sign of useful political practice or construction, this is too often what the Left has become. I say it again, people who have never and cannot elect a dog catcher but who are full of immense ideas about politics. Bah, Humbug! No single election, my friends, will ever bring us socialism, if that’s what you really seek. The struggle is protracted, hasn’t that been said? We have yet even to convince the “revolutionaries” that they are in the United States. But Obama is not even in office, yet these pundits of pitifulness already have the hole card on what his governance cannot or will not do. This is especially irritating from those commentators who counseled us not to vote for him in the first place. One wonders if they think their counsel, which meant nothing, is more valuable than having an actual person of color with the widest mandate in history actually elected president? But to run off howling about it’s not this and it’s not that, when we do not yet have a viable analysis of what it really is! Not understand how that victory was achieved is to willfully miss a rare opportunity of learning how to master the capitalist electoral system. One of the reasons we do not yet understand how to harness the electoral process to a revolutionary and socialist agenda is that too many of the very people who should be leading such a process denounce and/or avoid it. To do what? Make statements and demonstrate. To withdraw from the most acceptable way of gaining power in the society defies understanding by any rational means. Except for the hold that infantile leftism and anarchism have on too many wishing to present themselves as revolutionary. Barack Obama raised hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it as a result of using the Internet culture, for fundraising and organizing. Let the foolish Right agonize over their attempt at denigrating “community organizers.” Now they have at least felt a C.O. foot planted up their B&A Hinds. Obama raised $150 million in October alone! He beat both Hillary Clinton and John McCain fund raising. At one point, he wanted to buy one hour of time on CNN to lay out a complete campaign message but CNN vetoed it. And here we thought that money was the ultimate boss. What the Right cannot forget nor the milksop Left is that Obama was/is smarter than both of them! And more in tune with the popular mind, not only of the 98% of the Afro American population but, obviously, of the great majority of Americans. This, in itself, is a fantastic new precedent that must be acted upon immediately, before the corporate right media and all our “independent” smarty pants commentators cloud over the main issues. The “bottom line” of Obama’s campaign was his initiation at the grass roots level in his appeal. The ‘04 Democratic convention is widely seen as the opening of his campaign and I can accept that, but even to be there to do that is worth note. A first term senator of color from Illinois. How did he get to be a senator in the lst place? I watched the biopic on CNN and what I got from it is a skill developed as a, what? community organizer. To organize significant groups around their own interests and, with that, connecting them in motion around some larger issue. Obama carried his Chicago, his Illinois constituency with him and as he made more powerful meaningful connections, like an extension cord, his total reach and power expanded. For the Left, they should never speak another word about “politics” unless they can understand and explain to their own constituents, how this Black man, OK, this person of color, OK, this half white dude, became President of the United States. Because it is just such grounding in basic everyday electorally-oriented politics that the Left denounces and eschews—to all our detriments. In the main, the Left holds rallies and makes statements. Community Organization is almost as foreign to them as the Right. (But then the Right does its “community organization” through their media.) Usually, when the Left talks about “the people” or “the masses” they come out of some comic book academic manual confusing the U.S., the most highly developed 21st century monopoly capitalist society, with 19th century Russia or early 20th century China. Both largely peasant societies with small but developing working classes. The U.S. is neither. The U.S. is both debtor and predator state, at the same time. With a highly developed yet debt-burdened working class who are told every day that they are the middle class. There is a middle class, a petty bourgeoisie, a very very affluent sector, who are the lieutenants and paid liars, the middle management who are also deeply in debt. There is also a petty petty bourgeois, the teachers, government workers, civil servants, office workers, etc. Racism still internally divides these classes horizontally, with the Afro American people still at the bottom, yet those same Afro American people, nearly 50 million, have a gross national product of 600 Billion dollars a year , the 16th largest in the world. There have already been Four Revolutions in the United States. The first in the 18th Century, for “independence” (quotes because in some ways it never completely happened. Check out British holdings in the U.S.). The second in the 19th Century, the Civil War, which ended chattel slavery (& w/the 13th, 14th 15th amendments) and competitive capitalism, ushered in monopoly capitalism and began to free the White worker from the land. The third revolution was the 50’s to 70’s Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements which ended petty apartheid & segregation (Civil Rights Bill, Voting Rights Bill, Brown vs. Bd of Ed). Though a case could be made that this was an extended motion that was initiated by the post Civil War move out of the South by millions of Black people transforming the Afro American people from a largely peasant rural people to a working class—an urban proletariat. The Obama election is the fourth Revolution! What is needed now is for the would-be Left, the revolutionaries, the progressive sector of the body politic, the Communists to correctly analyze and project widely just what kind of revolution this is. But more than that, lay out exactly what is to be done at this point, the entry to a new stage of U.S. social development, like we used to say, What is the key link, to make the next forward motion. (Continued in Part 2) © Copyright by SeeingBlack.com |
