Let's be clear about what this victory means, and why it means so much. It is not simply the victory of a black man as President. A Colin Powell becoming the new Republican Eisenhower of 2008 would not arouse a hundredth of this enthusiasm. Nor is it a victory of the left. A Dennis Kucinich, by some bizarre cosmic accident, becoming President would not arouse this level of passion.
What makes it powerful is that it is a victory of the global left in the incarnation of a black American, that it is a double blow to power and skin-privilege. Will President Obama be a programmatically radical leader? Of course not. But will he be a shivering neurotic Jesus-freak sycophant like Tony Blair? No, equally.
His achievement before anything has occurred is this: that every vector of power -- money, race, media -- has been defeated in the US, the declining but still regnant capitol of the world. That what won was the idea of wisdom, judgement, intelligence, prudence and audacity, conservatism and radicalism, a measuring up to the demands of the world. That, as opposed to past Democratic campaigns, this was not a party machine insider -- a Tennessee grandee or a billionairess's husband -- presenting themselves as the least-worst option.
It was someone who, by his own account, had come through the world of the radical left, of radical black action, to the realisation that any change in America had to come not against its traditions, but within them, and who therefore drew on the strengths of every residual radical and progressive notion of this one-time revolutionary society. It was an achievement, but it was also a channelling in to a deeper moment of historical shift.
In the USA this has been greeted, even by conservatives, as a historic transcendent moment. Why? I am reminded of the Jorge Luis Borges essay about Buenos Aires during 1940, when it looked like the Nazis -- who had a lot of support in Argentina out of hatred of British imperialism – would win. Borges, a resolute anti-Nazi, was visited by an Axis supporter.
"France has fallen," he said, "nothing can stop them now!" And then Borges notes:"I realised he was as terrified as I was".
In other words -- and am I not breaking Godwin's law -- there are moments in politics when, on one side, no-one really wants to win. That was the curse of the McCain campaign. Deep down they knew that McCain's moment was 2000, and that it had passes. But they kept going, against a historical moment which, deep deep down, most of them -- and that may well include John McCain himself -- wanted to happen, and, deep deep down, did not want to stand in the way of.
For those of us who committed ourselves to the left, whatever that means, these are great days not because of what Obama will do, but because of what he will not do -- because he will normalise progressive, moderate, multilateral, modernised politics in the US and in the western world, and that is the context in which we will work.
If you want to see some graciousness in that moment, read (sections of) the US conservative press. If you want to read bitterness and incomprehension about it, read Albrechtsen and Sheridan in The Oz today.
For the rest of us it is tears and laughter, laughter and tears. For all the people I've marched with, argued with, whatever, this is a moment. I have no compunction at all about feeling part of this in however distant a manner. For the right, globally, you will have to reinvent yourselves. You are the Whigs in the 1850s. You are about to cease to exist.
Tears and laughter and laughter and tears.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Rundle - a victory of the global left
Below is an extract from Guy Rundle's post to Crikey today. I think Rundle puts his finger on both a sense of shift to the Left and a wary optimism in Obama's election.
to salvage and reorganize shattered hopes
Some thoughts on Obama's election from Mike Davis via Socialist worker.org
Below is a pessimistic or, maybe more, a realist view from Davis on the elevation of the Democrats and Obama to power which holds that the Neoliberal revolution has been so complete that Obama will come nowhere near challenging its key practices and logics of governmentality. Davis' pessimism of the intellect presages a collapse of the ephemeral optimism currently invested in Obama, and thereby
Mike Davis
Writer, historian and socialist activist Mike Davis is the author of several books, including Planet of Slums, In Praise of Barbarians and City of Quartz.
FORTY YEARS ago this week, the Democratic Party (the party of Jim Crow and the Cold War, as well as the New Deal) shipwrecked itself on the shoals of an unpopular war in Vietnam and a white backlash against racial equality.
The "emerging Republican majority," as Nixon's Machiavelli, Kevin Phillips, famously branded it, was always episodic and often paper-thin in national elections, but it was galvanized by impressive ideological and religious fervor, as well as lavishly subsidized by an employer class everywhere on the offensive against New Deal unions and social programs.
Republicans, although more often than not the minority party in Congress, dominated agendas (the New Cold War, the tax revolt, war on drugs and so on) and led the restructuring of government functions (abolition of direct federal aid to cities, deliberate use of debt to forestall social spending and so).
The Democratic response to the Reagan revolution from 1981 was not principled resistance but craven adaptation. The "New Democrats" under Bill Clinton (whose personal model was Richard Nixon) not only institutionalized Nixon-Reagan economic policies, but sometimes surpassed Republicans in their zeal to enforce neoliberal doctrine, as with Clinton's crusades to "reform" welfare (in fact to create more poverty), reduce the deficit and implement NAFTA without labor rights.
Although the New Deal working-class core continued to supply 60 percent of the Democratic vote, party policy was largely driven by the Clintons' infatuation with "new economy" elites, entertainment industry moguls, affluent suburbanites, yuppie gentrifiers and, of course, the world according to Goldman Sachs.
Crucial defections by Democratic voters to Bush in 2000 and 2004 had less to due with Republican manipulation of "family values" than with Gore's and Kerry's embrace of a globalization that had devastated mill towns and industrial valleys.
This week's election paradoxically augurs both fundamental realignment and fundamental continuity.
The Republicans now know what 1968 was like for the Democrats. Blue victories in formerly bedrock Red suburbs are stunning invasions of the enemy's electoral heartland, comparable to George Wallace's and Richard Nixon's victories more than a generation ago in Northern ethnic-white, CIO neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the desperate marriage-in-hell of Palin and McCain warns of the imminent divorce of mega-church faithful and the country-club sinners. The Bush coalition built by Karl Rove's thuggish genius is breaking up.
More importantly, tens of millions of voters have reversed the verdict of 1968: this time choosing economic solidarity over racial division. Indeed, this election has been a virtual plebiscite on the future of class-consciousness in the United States, and the vote--thanks especially to working women--is an extraordinary vindication of progressive hopes.
But not the Democratic candidate, about whom we should not harbor any illusions. Although the economic crisis as well as the particular dynamics of campaigning in industrial swing states finally drove Obama to emphasize jobs, his "socialism" has been far too polite to acknowledge vast public anger about the criminal bailout or even to criticize big oil (as has off-and-on populist McCain).
In policy terms, what would have been the difference if Hillary Clinton had won instead? Perhaps a marginally better health care plan, but otherwise the result is virtually the same. Indeed it might be argued that Obama is more a prisoner of the Clinton legacy than the Clintons themselves.
Waiting in the wings to define his first 100 days is a team of Wall Street statesmen, "humanitarian" imperialists, ice-blooded political operatives and recycled Republican "realists," which will thrill hearts from the Council on Foreign Relations to the International Monetary Fund. Despite the fantasies of "hope" and "change" projected onto the handsome mask of the new president, his administration will be dominated by well-known, pre-programmed zombies of the center-right. Clinton 2.0.
Confronted with the Great Depression of globalization, of course, the American ship of state, whatever the crew, would probably sail off the edge of the known world.
Only three things, in my opinion, are highly likely:
First, there is no hope whatsoever of the spontaneous generation of a new New Deal (or for that matter, of Rooseveltian liberals) without the combustion of massive social struggles.
Second, after the brief Woodstock of an Obama inauguration, millions of hearts will be broken by the administration's inability to manage mass bankruptcy and unemployment, as well as end the wars in the Middle East.
Third, the Bushites may be dead, but the hate-spewing nativist Right (particularly the Lou Dobbs wing) is well-positioned for a dramatic revival as neoliberal solutions fail.
The great challenge to small bands of the left is to anticipate this mass disillusionment, understanding that our task is not "how to move Obama leftward," but to salvage and reorganize shattered hopes. The transitional program must be socialism itself.
Below is a pessimistic or, maybe more, a realist view from Davis on the elevation of the Democrats and Obama to power which holds that the Neoliberal revolution has been so complete that Obama will come nowhere near challenging its key practices and logics of governmentality. Davis' pessimism of the intellect presages a collapse of the ephemeral optimism currently invested in Obama, and thereby
"[t]he great challenge to small bands of the left is to anticipate this mass disillusionment, understanding that our task is not "how to move Obama leftward," but to salvage and reorganize shattered hopes. The transitional program must be socialism itself."
Mike Davis
Writer, historian and socialist activist Mike Davis is the author of several books, including Planet of Slums, In Praise of Barbarians and City of Quartz.
FORTY YEARS ago this week, the Democratic Party (the party of Jim Crow and the Cold War, as well as the New Deal) shipwrecked itself on the shoals of an unpopular war in Vietnam and a white backlash against racial equality.
The "emerging Republican majority," as Nixon's Machiavelli, Kevin Phillips, famously branded it, was always episodic and often paper-thin in national elections, but it was galvanized by impressive ideological and religious fervor, as well as lavishly subsidized by an employer class everywhere on the offensive against New Deal unions and social programs.
Republicans, although more often than not the minority party in Congress, dominated agendas (the New Cold War, the tax revolt, war on drugs and so on) and led the restructuring of government functions (abolition of direct federal aid to cities, deliberate use of debt to forestall social spending and so).
The Democratic response to the Reagan revolution from 1981 was not principled resistance but craven adaptation. The "New Democrats" under Bill Clinton (whose personal model was Richard Nixon) not only institutionalized Nixon-Reagan economic policies, but sometimes surpassed Republicans in their zeal to enforce neoliberal doctrine, as with Clinton's crusades to "reform" welfare (in fact to create more poverty), reduce the deficit and implement NAFTA without labor rights.
Although the New Deal working-class core continued to supply 60 percent of the Democratic vote, party policy was largely driven by the Clintons' infatuation with "new economy" elites, entertainment industry moguls, affluent suburbanites, yuppie gentrifiers and, of course, the world according to Goldman Sachs.
Crucial defections by Democratic voters to Bush in 2000 and 2004 had less to due with Republican manipulation of "family values" than with Gore's and Kerry's embrace of a globalization that had devastated mill towns and industrial valleys.
This week's election paradoxically augurs both fundamental realignment and fundamental continuity.
The Republicans now know what 1968 was like for the Democrats. Blue victories in formerly bedrock Red suburbs are stunning invasions of the enemy's electoral heartland, comparable to George Wallace's and Richard Nixon's victories more than a generation ago in Northern ethnic-white, CIO neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the desperate marriage-in-hell of Palin and McCain warns of the imminent divorce of mega-church faithful and the country-club sinners. The Bush coalition built by Karl Rove's thuggish genius is breaking up.
More importantly, tens of millions of voters have reversed the verdict of 1968: this time choosing economic solidarity over racial division. Indeed, this election has been a virtual plebiscite on the future of class-consciousness in the United States, and the vote--thanks especially to working women--is an extraordinary vindication of progressive hopes.
But not the Democratic candidate, about whom we should not harbor any illusions. Although the economic crisis as well as the particular dynamics of campaigning in industrial swing states finally drove Obama to emphasize jobs, his "socialism" has been far too polite to acknowledge vast public anger about the criminal bailout or even to criticize big oil (as has off-and-on populist McCain).
In policy terms, what would have been the difference if Hillary Clinton had won instead? Perhaps a marginally better health care plan, but otherwise the result is virtually the same. Indeed it might be argued that Obama is more a prisoner of the Clinton legacy than the Clintons themselves.
Waiting in the wings to define his first 100 days is a team of Wall Street statesmen, "humanitarian" imperialists, ice-blooded political operatives and recycled Republican "realists," which will thrill hearts from the Council on Foreign Relations to the International Monetary Fund. Despite the fantasies of "hope" and "change" projected onto the handsome mask of the new president, his administration will be dominated by well-known, pre-programmed zombies of the center-right. Clinton 2.0.
Confronted with the Great Depression of globalization, of course, the American ship of state, whatever the crew, would probably sail off the edge of the known world.
Only three things, in my opinion, are highly likely:
First, there is no hope whatsoever of the spontaneous generation of a new New Deal (or for that matter, of Rooseveltian liberals) without the combustion of massive social struggles.
Second, after the brief Woodstock of an Obama inauguration, millions of hearts will be broken by the administration's inability to manage mass bankruptcy and unemployment, as well as end the wars in the Middle East.
Third, the Bushites may be dead, but the hate-spewing nativist Right (particularly the Lou Dobbs wing) is well-positioned for a dramatic revival as neoliberal solutions fail.
The great challenge to small bands of the left is to anticipate this mass disillusionment, understanding that our task is not "how to move Obama leftward," but to salvage and reorganize shattered hopes. The transitional program must be socialism itself.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Eat yr prefab sprouts
A couple of longer posts are brewing: I'm reading and enjoying Mark Davis' The Land of Plenty (although finding some dispute with sections of its arguments) and will post on it soon. And the Sun-King has been handed the ABC's Boyer Lectures, perhaps by the Board of the ABC which includes 2 right-wing culture warriors, and is chaired by the head of the privately owned Australian Securities Exchange: clearly all specialists in PUBLIC broadcasting.
Emperor Rupert's introductory lecture in his series of six - The Golden Age of Freedom - was issued last night and 'twas a dog's breakfast of generalisations including Blairite platitudes on neoliberal-globalisation and appeals for the Australian pioneering Bush myth to be updated via an "education revolution" in Australian human capital. Why Rupert needs a forum like the Boyer Lectures I just don't know: News ltd copied his first lecture online and his flagship broadsheet summarised it in its editorial. Considering that among Murdoch's key warnings to Australia were that it should discourage "bludgers" and "big government", surely he could have got off his regal arse and just published his own thoughts through, I don't know, one of his own companies rather than via one of dem corporations that are GOVERNMENT funded. Fucking hypocrit.
Davis' book and Murdoch's lectures are both concerned with "Australia in the 2000s". Expect a post entwining them in the near future.
Anyhow, in the meantime and in the interests of spreading the love here's some tunes from Prefab Sprout from their Thomas Dolby-produced 1990 LP - Jordan the Comeback
Carnival 2000
Carnival 2000 lives come and go but life no denial is always in style
Welcome to Carnival 2000 loves come and go but love above all is belle of the ball
Looking for Atlantis
You should be loving someone and you know who it must be
Cause you'll never find Atlantis 'till you make that someone me
Emperor Rupert's introductory lecture in his series of six - The Golden Age of Freedom - was issued last night and 'twas a dog's breakfast of generalisations including Blairite platitudes on neoliberal-globalisation and appeals for the Australian pioneering Bush myth to be updated via an "education revolution" in Australian human capital. Why Rupert needs a forum like the Boyer Lectures I just don't know: News ltd copied his first lecture online and his flagship broadsheet summarised it in its editorial. Considering that among Murdoch's key warnings to Australia were that it should discourage "bludgers" and "big government", surely he could have got off his regal arse and just published his own thoughts through, I don't know, one of his own companies rather than via one of dem corporations that are GOVERNMENT funded. Fucking hypocrit.
Davis' book and Murdoch's lectures are both concerned with "Australia in the 2000s". Expect a post entwining them in the near future.
Anyhow, in the meantime and in the interests of spreading the love here's some tunes from Prefab Sprout from their Thomas Dolby-produced 1990 LP - Jordan the Comeback
Carnival 2000
Carnival 2000 lives come and go but life no denial is always in style
Welcome to Carnival 2000 loves come and go but love above all is belle of the ball
Looking for Atlantis
You should be loving someone and you know who it must be
Cause you'll never find Atlantis 'till you make that someone me
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)