Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama By Waistline2
Obama: Change or continuity? (Part III) By Elíades Acosta Matos raises a question whose answer is "both!" _http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=800&Ite_ (http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=800&Ite) Section 3B The African American Question (AAQ) has undergone great changes since WW II. Few people today even attempt to describe the question in its long tortured historical features. The "quantify thing" and viewing progress through mirror images, 300 million mirrors, is enough to give one tired hands. Historically, the description of the AAQ, was one of caste; a special question of class because of the color question; a national or national-colonial question, because the blacks suffered a pretty obvious oppression. The most visible change the African American people and all of America have lived is the destruction of Jim Crow; the mechanization of agriculture; the impact of the technological revolution and the reformation of relations between and within classes - without changing the property relations. American society has been reformed in my lifetime. Descriptions of the African American Question were based on observation over a long period of time. The first observation was that since the color line was the dominant factor of their oppression and isolation, all African Americans regardless of their education and economic status, were subject to the same or similar exploitation, segregation and oppression. Second, that this material oppression, supported and held in place with passive and aggressive support of the Anglo American peoples and layers of the working class itself, produced all the essential features of a distinct culture of the Negro, existing as a distinct people in American society. The general conclusion of this observation by Marxists was that racial discrimination - the color line, was a form of class exploitation and therefore could not be fundamentally overcome short of the overthrow and destruction of the capital and the reorganization of society on the basis of economic communism. Life has proven this political projection wrong. The relations between and within classes has been reformed. The idea of America electing a black President did not exist as a sober thought as little as 24 months ago. Yet, there it is. Someone asks "Our we free yet?" How far have we advanced? How is freedom, emancipation or political liberty to be quantified short of the overthrow of the power of capital? Four distinct elements have intervened to change the situation of the African American since WWII. First and foremost is the determined struggle of the African American people themselves. Very seldom in history has such a small group, roughly 12 -15% of the population, waged and carried out such an unbroken, determined and militant , brutal and bloody struggle against such a pervasive and brutal ideology justifying second class citizenship and a violent state apparatus. Without this element none of the other elements could have brought about change. The individual as masses makes a difference in shaping history and creates the various shades and shapes of social relations that arise in correspondence to production relations. The second element was the mechanization of Southern agriculture and the tractoring off the land of eleven million sharecroppers - six million white and five million black. This distinct process - changes in the productive forces, was the economic and social basis of the Civil Rights Movement, inasmuch as this mass had to go somewhere in their quest for a livelihood. Sharecropping might not sound like a real job and class category but it is. The share of the sharecropper is legal ownership of a portion of the commodity, rather than the very straight forward sale of ones labor ability to institutional capital. Third, the Cold War was the context for the totality of all the previous stages - phase, of struggle. The intense struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union opened doors that would have remained shut to blacks, as both competed for the hearts and minds of the colonial peoples. The existence of newly liberated Peoples China was the greatest world wide blow against the deadly ideology of white superiority, ever delivered in world history. China’s existence was a beacon of hope to the hundreds of millions of slaves of modern imperialism. Tiny Cuba, who population is that of New York City, overthrew the slave master and Batista. After the 1965 Watts Rebellion and then Detroit 1967, emancipation had to be "just around the corner." Talk about the longest city block. A complex combination of Soviet power + Peoples China and the emergence of the "Third World" movements force the hand of the state department. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, were forced by the state department to "clean up" America’s domestic act and take steps in dismantling legal segregation; Jim Crow had to go. Dismantling Jim Crow would be much easier than burying the force of habit and white superiority in the ideological realm. The Southern political establishment rebelled, because their seats of political power and control of Senate committee seats was based on the exclusion of the blacks and the seniority rule. Nevertheless, Jim Crow had to go for America to have an ounce of credibility amongst the majority of humanity whose subjugation was justified by white superiority ideology. Further, America could not consolidate it international political hegemony and complete it’s post war economic expansion without drawing tens of millions of Negroes into the industrial infrastructure as proletarians. American had to change: be reformed. Within American society an incremental merging with the distinct culture of the blacks was taking place. The invention of the radio allowed this to happen. It is a significant cultural journey from 1932 when the "Wings Over Jordan," came on the radio and to 1968 when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir recorded a whole album of "Negro Spirituals." These songs can no longer be said to belong solely to the Negro people - African Americans, because these songs belong to America. You can be certain that more whites than blacks have been watching Soul Train and MTV forever. I believe it was Michael Jackson’s video’s that desecrated or rather desegregated MTV a couple of decades ago. The fourth element in the drama was the introduction, incremental injection of a new quality - electronic computerized production processes, within the productive forces as the means to overcome the absolute and unyielding law of the falling rate of profits, with its surplus of capital seeking profitability and the subsequent globalization of the financial, commodity and labor markets. The salient feature of this process, up to 2009, is the emergence of a new non-banking financial architecture, increasingly dominating the life or rather death, of the world’s people, while writing the political and economic agenda of capital. The next rung of the historical ladder. The history of the African American is intertwined into the fabric of everything that makes America, well America. Intertwined is such a way that the heart of American history is black history in the body of America: fusion. The apparent fact is that Jim Crow America has been shattered and superseded by non-Jim Crow America. This indisputable and undeniable new America does not mean that white supremacy and fascist currents has vanished from the landscape. No one can deny that a series of laws, brought into play as the result of the struggle of the black masses, have forever changed America. The groping and quantifying progress reappears. Laws in America often collide with "rights" with both colliding with fact of class because without money, it is virtually impossible to exercise ones rights in accordance with the law. The laws and rights run into a rigid Constitution. What the Constitution grants with one hand, state laws and historical rights can "take it" away with the other; ergo the 13, 14t and 15th amendments of the Constitution. Let‘s look at the African-American community. One of the ideological hangovers from the period of Jim Crow segregation is the tendency to see the African Americans as a category rather than a scattered grouping of some 40 million individuals who have different histories, ideals, and goals and who belong to various economic classes. Today there is no such thing as the "Negro people," as they existed under Jim Crow segregation, in say 1939 America. This characterization was correct years ago when the pressure of Jim Crow segregation isolated the African Americans from the rest of society. This isolation allowed for the creation of a common culture, internal class stratification, and a common political agenda. America’s official view of this culture throughout much of the 1930 and 1950’ s was a caricature of the black as the darky; singing and dancing down cities streets, happy, broke as hell without a dim, but happy. Movie director/ producer Spike Lee’s "Bamboozled" gives a generous view of this history collapsed as an intertwining fusion of American history in the black. As the economic basis of Jim Crow segregation weakened, so did the social and political cohesiveness of the Negro community. To the degree that segregation weakened, the Negro community, as such, disintegrated. As possibilities developed, the better situated Black uppermost class moved away from the ghetto and became a part of the bourgeoisie. Actually, the two classes have little in common, and both sides are accelerating the drift toward class orientation. A broad strata of civil, military, and police officers and corporate, educational, and government officials are Black, giving the impression that there is an end to segregation, and the struggle around class has taken the place of the struggle around "race." Some revolutionaries hold to the idea that race is still the predominant factor. Unable to grasp the color factor and color line in our history, others are dropping the question of race and declaring that the today there is only the question of class. Race and racism are political weapons to facilitate class exploitation and should never be placed in opposition to class. It is not a question of either/or. Both factors are at play, and the question is which factor predominates under what circumstance and in which direction the general motion is going. There is no question that the old-style segregation and lynch-mob extra-legal struggles have declined. Race is a political/ideological factor and must change its form - color, to function in changing circumstance. Today, the salient aspect of the social struggle is the intensifying war against the new proletarian class created by electronics. For historical reasons, the most vulnerable sector is Black. The draconian slashing of the so-called safety net has been accomplished by presenting it as a "Black thing." The attacks against education and health care are always carefully couched in terms of color. This political maneuvering is taking place within the reality of a growing social consciousness within this new proletarian class, as more than three million people have been laid of in the space of a couple of years, and estimated of official unemployment running as high as 13.9%. The ruling class cannot totally abandon the weapon of "biological race," since it is historically evolved and an integral part of American politics, sustaining the North/South divide in the political and ideological realm. . While remaining fully conscious of the viability of the color factor, we revolutionaries concentrate on the question of class, which is the arising and progressive aspect in need of nurturing. The decline of the color designation of work and the commonality of unemployment is creating opportunities for class solidarity on an entirely new level. Previously, what unity there was, was built around common problems in the shop. Today we can speak of building class unity – something far beyond workplace problems and in the arena of political struggle. Political struggle is an art. All art contains its own symbols of expression. Art requires more than an adherence to theory or doctrine. It requires the ability to sum up, to make decisions on the basis of the temporary relationship of subjective and objective forces. Obama is - expresses, this changed reality, and was called forth to do the improbable; to reform America on the basis of a proletarian class, more than less shut outside of productive laboring. Obama supersedes and leaps over the long night that was the era of the rise and fall of "the black political leader." A peculiar political phenomenon brought to life by 90 years of Jim Crow segregation. Part 4 Obama: Change and Continuity? Death of a Salesman. **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. 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