obamarama

Many progressive commentators have observed that Barak Obama’s rhetoric and supporters seem quite progressive, but his policies and record are much less so.

Responding to Obama’s speech last week on race in America, Steven Pitts in The Black Commentator observes that

the power of a speech lies not its words nor its deliverer. The power of a speech lies in the strength of the movement that inspires the speech and is inspired by the speech. Without such a movement, the spoken words are like the sound of a tree falling in a forest when no one is around. The challenge for Black progressives (and all progressives) [is] to use this moment and the incredible energy unleashed by the Obama candidacy to build a movement for social change that will make a lasting mark on U.S. society.

Similarly, addressing Obama’s record on the war, Joshua Frank in Dissident Voice notes that the Republican establishment deems Obama a serious threat because of his grassroots support, not his [purported] “antiwar views.” "Simply put: Obama is not antiwar but his following seems to be."

The World Socialist Web Site notes that Obama has vowed not to reduce the US military budget but rather to increase it; he has called for recruiting more soldiers for the Army as well as more Marines; and he has pledged to keep American forces in Iraq to defend ‘US interests’ and conduct ‘counterterrorism operations,’ a formula that would see tens of thousands of US soldiers and Marines continuing to occupy Iraq and repress its population for many years to come.”

On other economic issues, Ethel Long-Scott observes that although Obama’s March 18th speech was moving,

it did nothing to unravel the central contradiction of Mr. Obama’s candidacy. That contradiction is rooted in the fact that America has always needed a class of workers who are kept downtrodden and in poverty to make its economy work. That is a fact that has not changed, and none of the remaining presidential candidates are dealing with it.

Dan LaBotz in Monthly Review similarly notes that Senator Obama’s position is not unique to him, and the current economic crises are not the result simply of the current administration.

President John F. Kennedy's New Frontier, and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society with its War on Poverty, both failed to fundamentally change the situation of blacks and did not end poverty among whites, largely because they did not end corporate domination of American society. Under President Bill Clinton, the Democrats turned away from even those liberal programs and adopted the conservative (or neoliberal) policies long identified with the Republicans. Democrats have not proposed [. . . ] any fundamental changes in the social programs of the country. Today, there is a real question of whether or not the American capitalist system -- faced with problems of competitiveness, productivity, and profitability -- has the capacity to construct a liberal or social democratic system which would ameliorate [. . . ] the race and class systems of the country.

Certainly nothing in Senator Obama’s voting record suggests he will be a source of major economic improvement for most people. Matt Gonzalez in Counterpunch online and Pam Martens in the print edition have examined his record and his funding base—which, despite his campaign claims that he doesn’t take lobbying money nonetheless includes registered lobbyists as well as Wall Street financial firms, midwest mining companies, and other corporate donors.
Barak Obama has voted for legislation that will make it harder to bring class action suits against corporate abusers; voted against legislation to create the first federal cap on predatory credit card interest rates; voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts; and voted against collecting royalties from corporations that mine hard rock minerals on public lands, royalties that would have provided funding for the cleanup of these areas currently paid for by taxpayers rather than the mining corporations

As Ethel Long-Scott argues,

while major party politicians can talk about change, they are not likely to fight for the kinds of changes that would really end poverty. To do that, we the people must organize with new ideas and a new vision of justice. In the face of the growing encroachment on rights and democracy we, the people must gain the political power to direct society's resources so we can end the problems of poverty, national & women’s oppression, and this outrageous war. A new society is not only possible, but necessary.

old mole v snake

Hardt and Negri, from "Marx's Mole is Dead":

Marx tried to understand the continuity of the cycle of proletarian struggles that were emerging in nineteenth-century Europe in terms of a mole and its subterranean tunnels. Marx's mole would surface in times of open class conflict and then retreat underground again - not to hibernate passively, but to burrow its tunnels, moving along with the times, pushing forward with history so that when the time was right (1830, 1848, 1870) it would spring to the surface again. "Well grubbed old mole!"^[2] Well, we suspect that Marx's old mole has finally died. It seems to us, in fact, that in the contemporary passage to Empire the structured tunnels of the mole have been replaced by the infinite undulations of the snake. This is the image that Deleuze gives in his analysis of the passage from disciplinary societies to societies of control. (Deleuze claims that contemporary society had gone beyond the disciplinary forms that Foucault analysed. Today the disciplinary institutions, the school the family, the prison, the factory, are all in crisis. This doesn't mean that disciplinary logics are breaking down; what is breaking down rather are the institutional boundaries that once defined and limited their application to one social space. The disciplinary logics spread out across society, they are generalised and in some respects intensified. The generalised disciplinarity is what defines the society of control.) "The old mole", Deleuze writes, "is the animal of closed environments, but the snake is the animal of the societies of control. We have passed from one animal to another, from the mole to the snake, in the regime we live under, but also in our way of living and our relations with others." The depths of the modern world and its subterranean passageways have in postmodernity all become superficial. Today's struggles slither silently across the superficial, imperial landscapes. Perhaps the incommunicability of struggles, the lack of well-structured, communicating tunnels, is in fact a strength rather than a weakness - a strength because all of the movements are immediately subversive in themselves and do not wait on any sort of external aid or extension to guarantee their effectiveness. Perhaps the more capital extends its global network of production and control, the more powerful any singular point of revolt can be simply by focusing their own powers, concentrating their energies in a tense and compact coil, these serpentine struggles striking directly at the highest articulations of imperial order. Empire presents a superficial world, the virtual centre of which can be accessed immediately from any point across the surface. If these points were to constitute something like a new cycle of struggles it would be a cycle defined not by the communicative extension of the struggles but rather by their singular emergence, by the intensity that characterises them one by one. In short, this new phase is defined by the fact that these struggles do not link horizontally but each leap vertically, directly to the virtual centre of Empire.^[3] From the point of view of the revolutionary tradition, one might object that the tactical successes of revolutionary actions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were all characterised precisely by the capacity to blast open the weakest link of the imperialist chain, that this is the ABC of revolutionary dialectics, and thus it would seem today that the situation is not very promising. It is certainly true that the serpentine struggles we are witnessing today do not provide any clear revolutionary tactics, or maybe they are completely incomprehensible from the point of view of tactics. Faced as we are with a series of intense subversive social movements that attack the highest levels of imperial organisation, however, it may be no longer useful to insist on the old distinction between strategy and tactics. In the constitution of Empire there is no longer an "outside" to power and thus no longer weak links - if by weak link we mean an external point where the articulations of global power are vulnerable. To achieve significance, every struggle must attack at the heart of the Empire, at its strength. That fact, however, does not give priority to any geographical regions, as if only social movements in Washington, Geneva or Tokyo could attack the heart of Empire. On the contrary, the construction of Empire and the globalisation of economic and cultural relationships means that the critical centre of Empire can be attacked from any angle. The tactical preoccupations of the old revolutionary school are thus completely irretrievable; the only strategy available to the struggles is that of a constituent counter-power that emerges from within Empire.