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Title: Obama & Clinton Author: Ron Tabor Date: 2007 Language: en Topics: Democratic Party, Elections Source: Retrieved on 2008-08-28 from https://web.archive.org/web/20080828014111/http://www.utopianmag.com/otherpublications/obama-clinton-by-ron.html Notes: Published in The Utopian, Volume 6.
The race for the Democratic presidential nomination has gotten more
interesting in the past two months with the emergence of Barack Obama as
the clear contender to Hillary Clinton. Obama’s articulated program is
extremely vague and hardly to the left of Clinton’s, but his campaign
rhetoric is much more radical — “Change” seems to be his main slogan.
Probably more important, the possibility of electing the first Black man
president of the country seems to have inspired more enthusiasm than the
chance of electing the first woman.
Election years have always presented a problem for many people who
consider themselves liberals or radicals, aside from hardcore anarchists
like myself, who do not believe in participating in the bourgeois
political system. Even for those who find themselves far to the left of
the viable candidates (those with a chance to win), there is always the
tendency to want to vote for the more liberal candidate (usually a
Democrat), no matter how politically distasteful that person may be, if
only to try to prevent the more conservative candidate (usually a
Republican) from winning. Hence the tactic of voting for the “lesser
evil.” This is not a ridiculous argument, especially in the absence of a
mass radical movement or a viable radical electoral alternative.
Although the differences between the Democratic and Republican parties,
taken as a whole, are slight, they do exist, and they are particularly
noteworthy in the realm of certain social issues of concern, among them,
the environment, women’s rights (e.g, the right to abortion), and the
rights of homosexuals (e.g., gay marriage). The “lesser evil” argument
is certain to be more appealing this year than usual, and for several
reasons:
administration, a change is clearly needed;
whole if the conservative movement, on the move for several decades and
politically ascendant for the past eight years, were delivered a
decisive setback; and
both for the country and the world.
For the first two reasons, I think it would definitely be better that a
Democrat win this year’s presidential election instead of a Republican;
and it would be particularly good if either a woman or a Black man were
to be elected. This is not because of what I think they might actually
accomplish.
In the first place, I am very skeptical about what Hillary or Barack,
left to their own devices, would do to bring about real social change in
this country. Nothing either of them has said or done leads me to
believe that they would take the radical steps that are needed to
address the nation’s deep problems. Despite Barack’s, and (occasionally)
Hillary’s, rhetoric, they are both mainstream politicians. They both
have made their way to the top of the system (true, through considerably
different paths). They both have made their share of morally
questionable moves, and both have been involved with their share of
shady characters. It’s the nature of the business. Even more important,
they both are committed to the economic and political system of this
country — capitalism and bourgeois democracy — and have no intention of
threatening it or its ruling class (of which they are both a part), or
even of changing the system in any truly significant way. And without
such a threat, no serious solution to the problems of the country —
rooted as they are in the drastic disparities of wealth and power, and
the racist and sexist structures that characterize the nation — is
possible.
In the second place, even if Barack and Clinton were committed to
serious social change, the political system is so arranged as to make
such change extremely difficult if not impossible to carry out. Although
many liberals and even some radicals think highly of the United States
Constitution, it is actually an extremely conservative and undemocratic
document. It is often forgotten that the “founding fathers” were, on the
whole, very conservative individuals. Most were owners of large
plantations based on slave labor or were rich merchants or businessman
who thrived off the exploitation of lower class people. True, they were
revolutionaries, but they were reluctant revolutionaries, virtually
forced into the revolution by the obtuseness of a stupid English
(actually, a German) monarch, an inept government, and an arrogant
ruling class, and they did their best to make sure the results of the
revolution were as limited and as moderate as possible. Although the
constitution is often described a document designed to prevent tyranny,
to most of the nation’s original leaders, the danger was as much the
“tyranny of the masses” as it was the tyranny of a monarch or of a
colonial power. As a result, they consciously designed the constitution
to limit the power of the lower classes. Such safeguards included the
exclusion of Blacks and women from voting and setting property
qualifications so high that they excluded almost all lower class white
men. Other measures directed against the power of the lower classes
were: the establishment of a bicameral legislature (Congress), with the
superior house (the Senate) based on the very undemocratic principal of
the election of two senators per state, regardless of the states’
relative populations; the actual election of the chief executive to
occur in an electoral college whose members were not bound to support
the choice of those who elected them; and the establishment of an
appointed (that is, un-elected) supreme tribunal, the Supreme Court.
Although, under the pressure of social movements and historical events,
the constitution has been opened up, it is still a very conservative
document that seriously thwarts the struggle for social change.
Even if the constitution were more democratic, the broader political
system ensures that the political process is dominated and ultimately
controlled by the very narrow economic and political elite that runs the
country. One can’t even participate in politics without having the
backing of rich and powerful people. And one can’t survive in politics,
let alone get to the top, without playing the political game, which
includes rewarding your backers and fighting to further their interests.
Even initially honest individuals who participate in the process and
play the game are eventually corrupted. It’s Darwinian: to have survived
and prospered in the political system means that one is corrupt: either
a liar or a thief or both, and surrounded and backed by people who are
liars or thieves or both.
But even if we assume that an honest individual could rise to the top of
our intrinsically corrupt political system, and even if we assume that
such an individual could get serious radical legislation passed by
Congress, as long as that individual is committed to the current system,
he or she will not take any steps that would seriously weaken or
jeopardize that system or its ruling class. In other words, that
individual would continue to govern according to the needs of the
system: enriching the ruling class, protecting the capitalist system,
and defending its “international interests,” in other words, its
imperialist empire.
To me, then, the election of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or
virtually any Democrat would have a positive impact on the country not
because of what she or he might achieve, but because of the effect it
would have on the political climate of the country in general, and on
the liberal/radical movement in particular. At the very least, it would
improve the morale of liberals and radicals. It would also most likely
lead to an increase in the activity of the radical movement in the
country. The last eight years have been very frustrating times for
leftwing political activists, and the election of a Democrat, and even
more, the election of a woman or a Black Democrat, would raise their
hopes about the possibility of bringing about social change, induce them
to step up their work, and encourage others to join them. Not least from
my point of view, putting such a person in power would most likely lead
to their exposure in the eyes of their followers, in the sense that
he/she would not live up to his/her campaign promises. If this were to
happen, many people might begin to recognize the Democratic Party and
the political system as a whole for the reactionary institutions they
are.
Of the two, the election of Obama is likely to have the greater impact.
For one thing, the world has already seen woman in positions of national
leadership: Golda Meir in Israel, Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain,
Indira Gandhi in India, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Corazon Aquino in
the Philippines, Una Merkel in Germany, etc. And this has given people
the opportunity to see that they weren’t much different from men, and in
some cases, such as Margaret Thatcher, they were worse. (Of course, we
have seen Black leaders in Africa, but they have not, unlike Thatcher,
Merkel, and Meir, been leaders of industrially advanced nations, and
their failures can much more easily be ascribed to other factors, e.g.,
the legacy of imperialism, the lack of economic resources, etc.) For
another, given the particular history of the United States, especially
the vile nature of the oppression Black people have been subjected to
(including slavery, segregation, and lynching) in this the “most
democratic country in the world,” the election of an African American
would have a greater symbolic meaning than the election of a woman. It
would also, and to me this is most significant, give the greatest boost
to the morale of leftists and the biggest spur to the revival of the
radical movement. This is not just because Obama is Black. It is also
because he has chosen to cast his campaign as a movement for social
change, whereas Hillary has gone out of her way to demonstrate her
Establishment credentials. As a result, in the past few weeks Obama has
aroused considerable excitement, particularly among certain layers of
younger people in the country.
For these reasons, although I personally do not participate in the US
political system, I have no desire to try to convince those who do vote
not to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. In short, while I do
not advocate such a vote, I won’t try to dissuade people from voting.
However, I do intend to make clear, as best I can, that voting in
elections, and particularly supporting the Democratic Party, is not the
way to bring about radical change in the country. The only way to bring
about such a transformation is by building a radical movement that is as
politically astute and as politically independent as possible. Above
all, this includes being independent of the Democratic Party (and, of
course, the Republican Party), and recognizing what type of party the
Democratic Party is and the role that it has played, for over one
hundred years, in the history of the country.
Although the Democratic Party has portrayed itself, and continues to
portray itself, as a party of the people, it is anything but that. First
and foremost, it is a capitalist party, dominated and controlled by rich
capitalists, including George Soros and Bill Gates, two of the richest
men in the world, and their political stooges. Although it is supported
by most labor bureaucrats and the leaders of other reform organizations,
many of these individuals are rich themselves, and probably more
important, they must ultimately dance to the tune of those elements of
the US ruling class who support, finance, and control the party. For a
variety of reasons, the Democratic Party is usually more rhetorically
responsive to the needs and demands of middle and working class people
than the Republicans, but it is not a party controlled by middle and
working class people, and it has no interest in leading a real fight for
their needs. When, historically, it has appeared to lead such a fight,
as in the case of the labor movement in the 1930s and the civil rights
movement in the 1960s, it has only done so as a response to mass
movements that threatened to go beyond its control, movements that
threatened the fundamental interests of the ruling class and the system
as a whole.
And this is its historic role, which it has played over and over again
in the history of the country. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Populist
Movement emerged among small farmers (white and Black) and other poor
people in the South and the Mid-West who were threatened by the rapid
growth of industrial capitalism and the increasing domination of the
economy by huge monopolies (the “trusts”), which were squeezing them dry
and forcing millions of them off the land (a process that was to
continue throughout the first half of the 20^(th) century). In the
1890s, the Populists united and formed an independent party that
presented a real challenge to the two established capitalist parties,
the Republicans and Democrats. But in the 1896 elections, after the
Democrats had adopted several Populist planks in their program and had
nominated William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, a populist-sounding
demagogue, as their candidate, the Populists endorsed him (while putting
up their own candidate for vice president). Bryan got smothered in the
election, and the Populist Party and the Populist movement as a whole
soon withered and died.
A similar process occurred during the 1930s. Most people do not know
that when Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president in the 1932
elections, he ran on a conservative platform — among other things, he
claimed to be committed to balancing the federal budget — and he was
supported by the Southern wing of the Democratic Party, whose power was
based on segregation and lynching, the total exclusion of Black people
from the political process. It was not just the intensification of the
economic crisis that began with the stock market crash of 1929 that
spurred Roosevelt in a liberal direction. It was also the development of
mass movements of workers and other lower class people, often led by
radicals, that gave the impetus to the New Deal. In 1934, for example,
three important cities in the United States — Minneapolis, San
Francisco, and Toledo — were paralyzed for weeks at a time by general
strikes carried out by the workers of those cities. These strikes were
not led by mainstream labor leaders, but by radical socialists:
Stalinists in San Francisco, Trotskyists in Minneapolis, and leftwing
socialists in Toledo. In 1936–37, in the face of the intransigence of
General Motors, GM autoworkers occupied the factories until they won
their demands. Similar organizing drives occurred in the steel,
electrical, rubber, food processing, and other industries. It was these
mass struggles, and the threat of even more radical movements, that led
to the New Deal and the reforms that accompanied it, including the
establishment of the National Labor Relations Board and the effective
institutionalization of the right to organize and strike. The goal of
these reforms was not to make truly radical changes in the country.
Roosevelt and his supporters were genuinely interested in carrying out
some reforms, but they were also concerned to limit the extent of such
reforms, and, even more, to prevent the mass struggles from going beyond
the system.
The Democrats played a similar role during the Civil rights movement.
While certain elements in the Democratic Party had been sympathetic to
the demands of Black people to end segregation, discrimination, and the
other legal chains on Black people, the party as a whole, dominated as
it was by the Southern segregationists (who also controlled the US
Senate), was not. It was only after the civil rights movement had been
in motion for eight years (from the Montgomery bus boycott to the March
on Washington), that the more liberal elements in the Democratic Party,
now ascendant with the victory of John F. Kennedy in 1960, decided to
support the movement. Although they were interested in eliminating
segregation, discrimination, and the disfranchisement of Blacks (among
other reasons, it was very embarrassing for the US to claim to be the
leader of the “free world” during the Cold War with the Russians, while
subjecting Blacks to legal oppression), they were primarily concerned
that the movement might move beyond the limits of what was considered to
be legitimate dissent. Remember, while the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., was preaching non-violence, Malcolm X, then a leader of the Nation
of Islam, was preaching armed self-defense, and was attracting a mass
following in the northern cities. And not too long after Malcolm was
assassinated, the Black members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee kicked out its white members and declared SNCC the champion of
“Black Power,” while other much more radical Black organizations, among
them the Black Panther Party, were being organized. The Civil Rights
Movement very quickly turned into the Black Liberation Movement. And as
it did so, Black people rioted in city after city across the country —
Watts (in Los Angeles), Detroit, Newark, Memphis, among others. Rather
than leading the struggle for Black equality and freedom, the Democrats
at first resisted Black people’s demands, then tried to limit the
struggle to legal, non-violent channels, and then instituted as meager
reforms as it was possible at the time. In other words, the Democrats
did not lead the struggle for Black rights. They only supported it in
attempt to corral it, to use it for their own purposes, and to prevent
it from going beyond the system. The riots resulted largely because the
needs of Black workers, including the unemployed, in the northern and
western cities were not being met, precisely when their hopes for an
amelioration of their condition had been raised. Unfortunately, the
riots, along with tactical errors committed by the militant black
organizations, gave the ruling class the excuse to smash the left wing
of the movement, and eventually de-fang the movement as a whole,
limiting it to struggles to elect Black candidates and pass
“progressive” legislation.
This has been the historic role of the Democratic Party. Rather than
being the party of the people, it has for decades been the graveyard of
popular movements. It is crucial to understand this if we are to build a
movement for real social change in this country, to truly address the
needs of Blacks, Latinos, undocumented workers, women, gays, and the
millions of other working class and middle class people. If it is to
survive, such movement must be truly independent and controlled
democratically by ordinary people. It must recognize who its friends are
and who its enemies are. And this means recognizing the true nature and
historic role of the Democratic Party and not becoming a mere adjunct to
it. The Democratic Party cannot be taken over and reformed, it must be
smashed and replaced by organizations that truly involve and represent
the millions of lower class people.
So, for those who cannot resist the desire to go out an pull the lever
for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, at least know what you are doing.
Don’t be fooled by the Democrats’ rhetoric and their promises, no matter
how good they may sound. If we let them, they (all of them, including
Barack Obama) will stab us in the back.