Comrades,
Chou En-Lai observed: "One of the delightful things about Americans is that
they have absolutely no historical memory" and I believe this applies equally
well to many US Marxists that would look for ways to serve the tasks of the US
bourgeoisie to mislead the US working class keeping them in the "chains and
darkness" of bourgeois political processes and a reliance on bourgeois
politicians.
This is were I would like to begin. Understanding what reality? The reality
I choose to address is the Constitution and understanding this reality as to
how the Constitution came into its existance and the purpose for it will
certainly give us "a reminder of how we arrived at this point" in a sham
democracy. Especially since the "founding fathers" never intended a democracy
to begin with but a republican form of government and there is quite a
difference between the two. Understanding the Constitution will give us an
understanding of the electoral process in the US and when that is understood
then it will be realized that there is no such thing as a "popular vote" as we
have already seen in the last 2 "elections".
The popular vote is only a sham illusion to make the working class think they
have an actual participation in government and determining wo will be the next
president. The question is not whether Obama will "defeat his detractors"
because Obama will not defeat anyone based on his "progressive" character or
positions. Obama will not defeat anyone because the working class overwhelming
cast more popular votes as compared to the other candidates. Obama will
"defeat his detractors" only if the ruling class decides he will better serve
their interests. Any candidates "defeat" of "his detractors" is decided by
superdelegates and the electoral college which is controlled by the ruling
class. Working class votes, the "popular vote" is entirely meaningless.
The Constitution was designed to ensure that the majority of citizens, those
of the unpropertied working class, would not have a real voice in political
affairs and it is no coincidence that that is the case today in 2008. The
Constitution was designed to ensure that real political power in the US would
always be held by the handful of very large property owners and it is no
coincidence that that is the case today in 2008. In other words, to state it
more simply, the Constitution was designed to protect the privilege and power
of large property owners and shatter the logic of the majority to include our
liberal Marxists who are nothing more than pro-bourgeois apologetics
masquerading as Marxists.
The merchants, bankers, and plantation slaveowners of 1787 have become a
global corporate clan of 2008. Perhaps our liberal marxists should ask the
South Africans, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Cubans, Chileans, El Salvadorans,
Palestinians and the families of Charles Horman and Benjamin Linder how the
Constitution serves and protects the power and privilege of the US bourgeois
elites and how the logic of depending on the bourgeoisie serves the interests
of the proletariat. How many more plucked eyes and wrenched throats must we
pay for in the villages of the poor before we figure out that Congress and the
US President does the dirty work of corporations and that simply respectfully
petitioning those bourgeois politicians can only be the work of imperial
backward masses and psuedo-Marxist misleaders.
Let's take the Vietnam war. Not even 33 years ago the armed imperial forces
of the US bourgeoisie ended its wholesale slaughter of over 4 million people
yet the Reagan Administration told us it was one of "our: finest hours".
(Edward S. Herman, "U.S. Sponsorship of International Terrorism: An Overview",
Crime and Social Justice, #27, 28, 21)
Let's look at "Honest Abe" Lincoln again. Many claim that Lincoln may have
been the greatest US president and this includes our liberal Marxists.
However, as previously stated, Lincoln's contribution to the interests of the
capitalist system was not freeing the slaves although he did this. His primary
concern was the preservation of the union, the stability of the capitalist
social order, and he was going to do this with or without slavery. Now, do you
believe that the preservation of any country is worth more than the freedom of
millions of slaves? The Emancipation Proclamation was signed primarily out of
military necessity. Lincoln needed the slaves to fill uniforms to bolster the
Union Army. The heart of the matter of this "freeing of the slaves" was not
Lincoln's doing but this: the concrete historical realities of the time
testified to the costly, daring, courageous activities of hundreds of thousands
of black people breaking loose from slavery and setting
themselves free, the myth that Lincoln freed the slaves gave the credit for
this freedom to a white Republican president. In these very same times when
black men and women saw visions of a new society of equals, and heard voices
pressing them against the US Union of white supremacy, Lincoln was unable to
see beyond the limits of is own race, class and time and he even thought of a
way to rid the US of the black presence.
Frederick Douglass, well aware of Lincoln's vacillations on emancipating the
slaves stated:
"All recruiting of colored men would instantly cease, and all colored men now
in our service, would instantly desert us. And rightfully too. Why should
they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them."
So who is the "great emancipator"?
But I am digressing a bit here. The question before us of bourgeois
democracy and its sham electoral system is one of moving beyond a political
economy that rests solely upon the assumption that massive inequality is
natural, acceptable and functional.
It is important that the working class let go of the "heroe worship" and
myths so that we can be free from the lies of history, from the need to distort
reality, and the need to identify with a set of assumptions and values simply
because we inherited them. As Marxist-Leninists we do not identify with the
bourgeoisie but the slaves - not the slave masters. Today we identify with the
Palestinians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Cubans - not the imperial US elites.
The backward masses in the US and their liberal psuedo-Maxist misleaders may
conclude that US sponsored terrorism may not be a deviation from Constitutional
principles but rather the logical consequence of a system which protects the
freedom of a handful of US bourgeoisie to control a good deal of the earth's
resources and, concomitantly, the lives of millions of people scattered around
the world. Similar connections between the founding ideas and the virulent
racism that now exists, the subordination of women, the massive inequality that
marks US society, and what many are pointing to as irreversible environmental
degradation can also be made. To move beyond the history that has been
constructed for us, then, would be to admit the possibility that as
Marxist-Leninists and class conscious proletarians we can expose and call into
question the "legitimacy" of the so-called "founding fathers" and the system of
elite rule they established through the Constitution. This is
where the liberal psuedo-Marxists fail. They rail against the racism of the
"founding fathers" which is correct, but, they then want us to embrace the
racist elitist bourgeois system of constitutional processes known as
presidential elections and uphold an upstart bourgeoisie because he says a few
slick words.
It is the very intensity itself of the ideological stranglehold over US
history which clearly suggests that it is ruling elites, not the working class,
who are afraid that if a candid assessment of the "founding fathers" and their
Constitution were to become common knowledge, it would help the working class
to explain their sense of political powerlessness and invite the kind of
self-discovery that underlies real effective radical politics in the form of
the socialist struggle. The monopoly of truth, including historical truth is
implied in the monopoly of power.
In the US, we live in an undemocratic system that is a major source of terror
and repression, both here in the US and around the world. In large measure
this is due to the tremendous concentration of unchecked corporate power. The
tasks of Marxist-Leninists and the working class is to challenge the very
structure of power within the US bourgeois society, particularly the private
power of the corporate community that is the bedrock of US capitalism.
However, the very Constitution that legitimizes the sham electoral process also
prohibits this. In fact, the Constitution was intended to ensure that only a
few people would run the government and that they would be the few who would
run the economy.
The crisis confronting the US working class and and US Marxist-Leninists is
not propping up the fraudulent electoral system and the demagogic candidates
that the US bourgeoisie parade out every 4 years. It is the demand for
effective radical Marxist-Leninist politics and a complete departure from sham
Constitutional values, assumptions and principles. Effective radical politics
of a truly revolutionary Marxist-Leninist is inhibited by the glorification of
the Constitution, the belief in the electoral system and the bourgeois
demagogic politicians paraded before us.
Ideologically, then, there are basically 3 obstacles to effective radical
Marxist-Leninist politics, all of which are reinforced by liberal
psuedo-Marxist misleaders:
1. respect for the Constitution as a fair and equitable and democratic
document
2. the underlying belief that the US government is fair, acts justly, or
would if the right person were elected as president
3. a reluctance on the part of the working class and psuedo-Marxist
misleaders whose values are at odds with those expressed by corporate and state
policy to engage in real confrontation
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