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This just showed up as a comment on my blog:
Whether or not we agree with Cornel West on specific issues, we must
acknowledge that his voice is highly respected in the Black community
and in other sections of the population as well. This makes his "break"
with Obama and his willingness to criticize the President he campaigned
for in relatively radical terms significant. I presume that is why
Louis decided to share Chris Hedges' interview of him.
On the other hand, there are clearly elements of West's new critique
that reveal not only a bruised ego, but more importantly the limits of
-- what else to call it -- his social democratic thinking. Those on the
self-described left who supported Obama fell, I believe into two camps:
-- those who believed that Obama's background in academia and community
organizing and his contact, however opportunistic, with various
left-wing activists (e.g., the African American CPer Frank Marshall
Davis in Hawaii, former SDSer/Weather Undergrounder cum education
radical Bill Ayers, Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, Black
liberation pastor Jeremiah Wright, etc.) might make him more receptive
to the demands of the progressive mass movements that they hoped would
emerge in the wake of the '08 elections than any of the other leading
candidates would be.
-- those who'd convinced themselves that Obama campaign constituted a
progressive movement that would, via his Presidency, make a serious, if
not quite radical, effort to curb or at least regulate corporate power,
adopt a more Keynesian approach to the economic crisis, reverse the more
egregious aspects of the Bush foreign policy agenda while struggling to
maintain American global hegemony, and re-establish the credibility of
government intervention in addressing problems such as unemployment,
poverty, housing, health care, etc.
This is a distinction that leftists who opposed Obama probably
regard as insignificant, but West's embrace of the second view
underscores a flaw in his self-described socialism. His expectations of
Obama clearly reveal a conventional social democratic belief in the
ability of the capitalist state to act on behalf of, rather than in
response to, popular interests. West acknowledges that he was "reading
more into it more than there was, but the "it" so far as he is concerned
seems to be Obama's political character and "instincts" rather than the
progressive capacity of the U.S. federal government in the absence of
strong challenges from labor, minorities, immigrants, the left and other
forces.
The other disturbing part of the Hedges' interview is West's focus on
Obama's reluctance to acknowledge West's support and the President's
public chastisement of West for daring to criticize him. West's
response to these slights barely suggests that they represent a broader
attack on the left. One therefore wonders whether he'd still be on
board had Obama invited him to meetings at the White House as he has
some white (and mainly Jewish) critics of his policies such as Stiglitz
and Krugman. I'd like to give West the benefit of the doubt on this
one, but note that decades of marginalization have inclined more than a
few radicals to settle for the proverbial seat at the table.
Despite these misgivings, I would not underestimate the potential
significance of West's dissent. Opposition to racism and,
correspondingly, African American activism have been central to the
left's agenda in the United States. To the extent that Obama's
Presidency has neutralized these, thoughtful challenges to him from
within the Black community are important.
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