> It speaks to the question of class. I think that class trumps race.<
Class alignment and Obama
When asked what he thought about the French Revolution, the Chinese
communist leader, ZHOU ENLAI (Chou En-Lai jo en-li, 1898–1976), remarked "it is
too
soon to tell."
Everyone is going to understand the marker as Obama different.
All class participates in electoral politics in American.
Obama election to President was made possible by the voting section of the
American working class. Within this category - working class, are differences
of income, with an economic section (strata) merging with or being identified
as "the middle class." There is a layer of America that is middle class but
not the meaning of proletarian as an economic category. An example of a member
of this upper middle class is my neighbor, a PriAmerica agent whose income
in 2006 was over $300,000. Her income plummeted by 2/3 for 2008, along with
most folks she knows in this income bracket. She has been a Republican all her
life and was won over to Obama to do something about the plight of everyone.
She is horrified at the prospect of being reduced to proletarian as she
understands it, and believes protection of the bottom of the social ladder is
necessary for her own security. One cannot sell mortgages to people with no
more
or sell financial vehicles to scared money.
New social movements begin as a certain class alignment and class
intersection. Classes do not just magically polarize with "we the happy
workers" on one
side and the "bad capitalist on the other side."
The specific class alignment that carried Obama to victory is the stuff of
American history and harkens back to the time when the white petty bourgeois
intellectuals and so-called "white do-gooders" (driven by unbearable moral
outrage) manned up on the front lines of the battle to overthrow slavery. That
moment of time was when layers of the working class were rioting against the
notion of being drafted into the hot fight against Southern reaction. The
working class facing economic crisis oscillates, as a class, with the majority
moving to the extreme political right as their first political and emotional
impulse and response. Obama's political energy captured some of this social
motion.
This osculation - gyrating to the right, happens because the tendency is
always to restore stability or return to how things were before the outbreak of
depression. You know move, "the way we were" and memories of what never really
existed.
Specially, the pre-Civil War Northern working class did not want to see a
mass of freed labor put on the labor market driving down wages. These workers
hated the slave rather than slavery. Eventually, the Northern working class as
a whole was won over, drawn into and volunteering to man the barricades
against the slave oligarchy. Passionate appeals from diverse peoples, the
extreme
left of the abolitionists to the conservative wing of abolitionism, all
united against slavery causing changes in the ideological sphere. This
specific
class alignment, the "Obama alignment" has one major difference; the blacks
are
not slaves or jailed in the prison of Jim Crow.
It does not stop here.
When the post Civil War revolution was in danger the so-called white petty
bourgeois radicals manned up again and occupied the front barricades to
implement and carry out Reconstruction. This is stated not to belittle the role
of
the black abolitionists or the revolutionary mass desertions of the slaves
from slavery. After all it was the blacks abolitionists more than less on the
extreme left ("Walkers Appeal" by David Walker rather than Frederick Douglas)
and desertions of hundreds of thousand of slaves "bum rushing" the Northern
front lines that compelled their inclusion into the fight, and turned it into a
truly revolutionary liberating struggle.
There is a historically specific alignment of class forces - class
intersection, which consolidates as the opening shot signaling profound changes
are
underway in reforming American society. Left or right can win the political
aspect of the reformation. Today, the battles are going to be easier than
during
the Civil Rights Movement because the entire working class is being engaged.
"The Obama alignment" of class forces carrying him to the White House is
similar to the class alignment of the populist movement of the 1890’s and in
the
final hours of the overthrow of Jim Crow. During the final hour of Jim Crows
defeat, even reactionary unions marched for Civil Rights.
This same alignment was the social forces birthing the "Young" or "New
Communist Movement" of the late 1960s and 1970s. In the cause of the 1970s,
white
sections of the working class could not be drawn into the struggle because
their economic path laid along continued expansion of the economy rather than
inclusion, as was the case with the blacks. Hot battles was waged to overthrow
the seniority system. The Nixon administration coined the term "affirmative
action" as the means to do the impossible. One section of workers cannot be
asked to give up their livelihood for another section of the working class. At
any rate one group of workers is not going to give up their job for another
group, no matter how noble ones intention.
Class alignment or rather class intersection.
Who does not recall the intense difficulty the "talking heads" of televised
politics faced in explaining Obama continuous primary victories? The concept
of "white working class," was tossed about and "working class whites" as
everyone struggle to describe a process in motion. Then the white voting
section
of the population was broken down into economic categories as America
struggled with its first taste of real class. Senator Clinton put on the garb
of her
conception of a section of the Anglo members of the working class (wage
earners of roughly $50,000 and below). Remember Senator Clinton tossing back
shots
of whiskey and displaying her "hunters credentials?"
Then Governor Palin put forth the concept of "Joe Six pack," as a category t
o describe a class sector. The Republican Party strategists appealed to real
white workers on the basis of "real patriotic America" or "small town America"
as code words.
In the beginning of the Obama campaign, the front line or infrastructure
work necessary for any campaign, was manned by the intelligentsia. The majority
of these folks did not happen to be white, but were in fact Anglo because the
majority of America and the intelligentsia is Anglo. What was at first
politely whispered to be a campaign of "eggs heads," "geeks," "star struck
white
middle class youth," and ideological hatred of anyone that reads a book, was
quickly confronted by the reality of gatherings of 80,000 strong rallies, now
dominated by working class folks. The black members of the intelligentsia
split with the majority quickly siding with the Obama candidacy, and the
minority
gathering under the umbrella of the "Black Agenda Report." The mass of petty
bourgeois black wage earners acted first, with the proletarians waiting, as
during the period of the overthrow of slavery, to see if it was safe to "bum
rush" Obama front lines. J
President Obama repeatedly stated "there is only one America," meaning there
is no black America and white America as during the period of Jim Crow and
its legacy. He also stated there was no Mexican America, straight and gay
America. There still remains an Indian America, a story for another time.
Today, there is no black community only communities of blacks. "Black
community" is a term and concept born of the period of Jim Crow. Black
community
meant a segregated community housing all the classes of blacks. This community
was not segregated on the basis of economic income but color. There were
persons like Snoop Dogg, artist and entertainers, doctors and lawyers, but
they
did not live in "upper class Atlanta, segregated by income. They lived down
the street.
There no longer exists a black community in America and this is no play on
words. There are communities of blacks, with the majority being proletarian
slums.
The juncture that is Obama can be understood as the definitive close to the
battle to discard the legacy of Jim Crow or the consolidation of speculative
capital (capital as a notional value) and its attempt to reform the system in
its favor. From Obama on the game has changed. Or we can call things as they
appear: a huge segment of the voting white section of the working class
voted for a black man speaking to their immediate economic conditions to be
president.
WL
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