In the face of the ruling-class media onslaught with their multi-cultural, multi-class "unity" ideas, we have Marxism and our line going for us. Marxism is still as valid as it ever was, in its analysis of capitalist exploitation, surplus value and the inexorable contradictions of the system. Interestingly enough, a small measure of our ideas came out in this campaign when Obama was attacked as a "socialist" or "communist" (that he believed in "equalizing the wealth" which was nonsense). His defense and others in the media was that he didn’t believe in "sharing" a la socialism. He "joked" that when he was in kindergarten he "shared his toys."
While they were rebuffing this "accusation," no doubt there are millions who think "sharing" is a pretty good idea. And during this financial crisis, there have been a number of citations of Marx as having the right idea. A letter to last Sunday’s New York Times Business Section said if one wants to understand the "crisis-prone" nature of capitalism, "see Marx."
Our analysis of the current contradictions of capitalism/imperialism is right on. In the long run, and many times in the short run, it is the only thing that makes sense to the working class. We should never underestimate this. Over the past 47 years, it is what has enabled us to make it through many tough times and come out stronger (more below).
The objective conditions of capitalism cannot be denied. With all the "dancing in the streets," the crisis of the system dictates that the working class will be attacked even more. When Harold Washington was elected the first black mayor of Chicago, the sound of the cheering had barely died down before he laid off 3,000 city workers as his "first order of business" — and 80% were black.
Those thousands of GM and Chrysler workers, victims of a probable merger, will still be laid off. Millions of homeowners will still suffer foreclosure. All that super-exploitation in the subcontractor factories will continue and get worse. Boeing already says they’re "behind schedule" and will have to "get up to speed" (follow "speed" with "up"). NYC multi-billionaire Bloomberg didn’t wait 24 hours after the election to announce cutting 3,000 jobs (500 immediate layoffs and 2500 by "attrition") plus closing kids’ dental clinics and even canceling the next police academy class! This butcher with a $20 billion fortune says "we" have to make up an $8 billion "deficit" over the next two years.
The ruling class will still be carrying out its "Carter Doctrine" for oil control by military force. Obama will still be in charge of two wars, and a third one if he invades Pakistan. A New York Times article yesterday revealed that Obama and McCain advisors, among other ruling-class "think-tankers," are jointly discussing the military option for Iran. And even if they are forced to withdraw forces from Iraq ("whenever"), they still plan to spread troops around the Middle East and South Asia to "guard against the terrorists" — meaning anyone who threatens their oil empire. And the hundreds of U.S. bases around the world will still be maintained, ready to start up new wars (assuming they can get the troops to fight them).
Kenya is making tomorrow a "national holiday" in honor of Obama’s election, and no doubt the rulers will orchestrate Obama trips to Africa and elsewhere before "cheering crowds." But that won’t necessarily stop the war in the Congo for valuable minerals or the rebels in Nigeria blowing up oil pipelines or China’s spread-eagling throughout Africa and the Middle East.
Nor will his election and its "multi-lateralism" suddenly halt the rivalry between all the imperialist powers. This inter-imperialist rivalry is fundamental to capitalism.
All this may seem obvious, but it is worth repeating — among ourselves and to our base (who may be shaken by this election) and in all the mass organizations to which we belong.
Obama is no accident. The Rockefeller wing, expecting to have to deal with potential opposition to its putting the screws on the working class, has been planning this for some time (the same way they did with Clinton). As we revealed in Challenge, Rockefeller money sent Obama to Harvard and then to a professorship at the U. of Chicago and then to the "electric" speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention which gave him the national spotlight. It was then that he started pushing the rulers’ "all-class unity" ("We’re not blue states or red states; we’re the United States") which is now becoming their watchword. Multi-culturalism and multi-class unity — and in Obama they have the perfect guy to do this. According to today’s New York Times Obama’s forces began planning this campaign the day after he was elected to the Senate from Illinois two years ago. They figured out how to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, outspending McCain four to one.
Already, in his acceptance speech, Obama is pushing "sacrifice" and "service" — which will soon become "national service." Under the idea that the "millennium" has arrived, we will be saturated with ruling-class ideas about "the first black president" as the "culmination of the civil rights movement" of the 1960s (even Bush referred to that this morning!), conveniently omitting the black rebellions and then the racism that followed over the last 40 years, in unemployment, health, housing, education, police brutality, etc.
They’re already flooding us with the "democracy" garbage about the U.S. as "the beacon to the world"; how "any black child can now become president" and the rest of that horseshit.
So it’s our job to answer this, as we have all along, in exposing the real U.S. role in the world, all the wars the rulers have launched, all the mass murder under Carter and Clinton as well as Reagan and the Bushes. We cannot allow people to forget this. We have a lot of ammunition in this ideological war.
No doubt all this will not be easy, as workers and others get sucked into the rulers’ billion-dollar propaganda machine. Facing off against "the-first-black-president" business may very well put us into some unpopular positions initially. But in our 47-year history, PLP has never shrunk from such positions and we not only have been proven correct eventually but emerged stronger for it.
Before we were even a Party, two years into the Progressive Labor Movement in 1964 when the Harlem Rebellion erupted, we were a minority of one in supporting and encouraging that uprising. While now many might assume what we did then was "automatic," we were opposed by all the reformist organizations, the preachers, the "Communist" Party, the press and TV and the full power of the State. All those forces were calling for the rebels to "cool it," except us. The rulers put injunctions on us, banned demonstrations (which we broke), sent us to jail, invoked a Grand Jury witch-hunt, tailed us, bugged our phones and so on. But our "unpopular" position mushroomed into rebellions throughout the country over the next four years. We earned our spurs then.
Along came the Vietnam War and not only did we take the lead against the "Negotiate, stop-the-bombing" crowd. We dared criticize the Ho Chi Minh leadership for not fighting for communist workers’ power but rather for "national liberation" and alliance with the sellout Soviet Union. We were lambasted — "who are you, sitting in your offices in New York to criticize the leadership of workers and peasants fighting in the jungles of Vietnam" is what we were told. But we stuck to our guns while organizing in the military for class war against the brass. Our "unpopular" position has now seen Ford and Nike exploiting workers on $2 a day in Vietnam.
Then we took on the "unpopular" position of accusing the Soviet and Chinese Party leaderships of selling out the revolutions, the only ones in the world to really do this. Again, we were proven correct as these two revisionist parties sank into the swamp of full-blown capitalism, which we exposed in 1966 in the Soviet case (23 years before its so-called "demise") and in 1971 in the case of China, long before anyone else welcomed them into the capitalist camp.
And again we emerged stronger, advancing communist ideology against the socialist return to capitalism, against the maintenance of the wage system, against two-stage revolution and nationalism, against the cult of the individual, and produced the ideas of one Party/one class, of fighting directly for communism, and so on. None of this came easy nor was it "automatic," although it may seem so now.
Yes, opposing Obama as "the first black president" may present us with new problems in the mass movement, and we will have to gird our members and our base for a principled struggle. But we have our Marxist analysis and our developed line on our side. And if we understand that objective conditions will present us with untold opportunities to convert any "unpopular" position into a mass understanding among the working class that capitalism — white, black or whatever — is our enemy, then we will make steady progress as we have in the past and will emerge stronger.
Patience and urgency must be our guide. Patience with our friends and within mass organizations as the objective conditions unfold, and the urgency to advance our line at every turn. We should prepare ourselves to take action against the ruling class onslaught. Can we figure out ways to answer their attacks? Can we do what communists did in the 1930s and answer evictions and foreclosures by surrounding houses and putting furniture back into apartments? Can we try to organize rank-and-file unity of the employed and unemployed? There will be increasing millions thrown on the street. We must raise the issue in our unions and fight the misleadership tooth and nail. This can become a mass issue and unite workers all across our class, union and non-union, employed and unemployed, black, white and Latino. Class war is our answer to the rulers’ "all-class unity."
It will not be easy. But as the ol’ guy said, "Revolution is no tea party."