I found your thinking sound, Todd, your analysis well founded. We have needed a leftist unity with a thrust for a working class socialist party for a long time, at least since after the second world war. The tragic capitulation of most of the world’s communist parties, including the US’s, to the narrow interests of Soviet Union state nationalism threw revolutionary potential out the window. It was mainly in a few Latin American countries where home grown revolutionaries defied this chauvinism and fought for liberation and socialism. Unfortunately most ended in defeats, partially due to Communist parties complicity and overbearing brutal US imperialism’s warfare.

There were a few exceptions: Cuba being the main one, but also in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The Communist parties of Cuba and Nicaragua remained on the sidelines in those revolutions.

In the US, during the spirited 60s–when I was privileged to be an activist–most of the drive against wars and racism, against the inhuman system of capitalism-imperialism and for socialism occurred DESPITE the capitualtion of the Communist party, in which I was a member for four years. This happened because of righteous grass roots anger and by survival necessity.

As Todd has outlined, had it not been for the freedom struggles Obama would not be the next president of the White Man’s Empire. But we can not deny that, despite the fact that he must be an Uncle Tom for that structure, this, in and of itself, is a victory. It is a victory over the abject slavery, indentured slavery, wage slavery, eternal racism that has characterized the Untied States of Amerikkka since day one. Millions of blacks have fought and suffered for survival and for a future in which, among other things, one of them could be a president. Hundred of thousands of them have been slaugthered, lynched, murdered and tortured in all manners for this very possibility. And beside them many whites have also marched and fought in many other ways during two centuries. This is not for naught.

OK. Obama is not going to change anything fundamentally. No president has such power. He has already capitulated as any other pawn. We radicals-revolutionaries and even progressives should not be surprised. We should not allow ourselves the luxuries of illusions and delusions. Nevertheless, we should also rise above the subjective emotion of disappointment to approximate the understanding of a Marx, who could tell us that even capitalism itself was progressive in an historical context. It was a step forward from feudalism. We cannot possibly shape a socialist society, not to even speak of communism or anarchism, without having the precedents of capitalism.

So, in brief, I am saying two things: Obama as a black president is progress in a humanitarian, multi-cultural embracing sense; and yet does not solve our fundamental problem of class antagonism, of rich vs. poor, of war vs. peace. To achieve the resolution of the latter requires a dedicated class oriented movement willing to take all measures in hand, a lá 1917 Russia, a lá 1956-9 Cuba….

So, once the world’s first black person becomes the president of the world and forthwith fails to fulfill the illusionary hopes of so many hundreds of millions of oppressed-exploited, and victims of racism, then let us roll up our sleeves and get down to the real business of creating a true revolution of and by the multi-colored working classes.

In revolutionary solidarity,
Ron Ridenour

Afraid my point was a little too nuanced for your taste.

I never said all wars are fought over “oil”. I said wars are about resources – let me spell that out – water, land, air/space control, resources extracted from the earth. Study the American Civil War. Understand the imposed Tariffs on the South, understand the economies of North and South and that all economies are based on natural resources (oil being one).

I don’t think the Civil War was fought over slavery, per se. In other words, the Union Army did not declare war on the Confederates to free slaves. That should be elementary. Slavery was an economic factor which was no more central than the right of Southern’s to purchase cheap manufactured goods from England.

But, I would postulate, for cogency’s sake DB, that the Civil War was about retaining a growing and expanding empire in North America. The desire for one area of the nation to separate from the other was economically, politically, and imperialistically intolerable. (Monroe was turning in his grave!)

So, again, I did not say the Civil War was about oil. I’m saying that the need for slavery – purely from an economic perspective – was removed with the advant of the industrial revolution and ultimately through sources of energy such as coal, oil, and gas (over time – to be clear) which ultimately made manual labor of the extent used in the South less viable.

Now Mr. Shields implies that the Civil War was a “War for Oil”. Oil didn’t become a mainstay of industry until late in the 1800’s (~1880). Until then it was the steam engine that was the primary energy driver of the U.S. industry.

Right wing populists seem to popping up more in more in society these days; yelling __”ethic group x” is talking over the world. It’s troubling, yet predictable.

Right wing populism always rears its ugly head during an economic downturn; society encourages scapegoatism, anything to detract from the fact that the problems are systemic. Absent of any kind of analysis it’s instinctive to blame those “other” people, who ever they may be (the Chinese in the late 19th century, Jews in early 20th century Germany, Mexicans in the great depression). Sadly, things really don’t change. Face it, the capitalist society needs “boogeymen” to maintain credibility. Divide and conquer strategies are constructed to deny the fact that most people have common class interests and would benefits from uniting and getting rid of the “globalists” once and for all. Yet most people are stuck on something called “nationalism” which globalists ditched and pissed on in the 70’s.

And the ghost of Thomas Malthus helps too. If people think the world is “overpopulated” i’d like to drop them off in Kansas, or Iowa, or Oklahoma, or Missouri so they can re-evaluate their theory.

The lesson that this historical review teaches us is that the working class must not be co-opted by the chimera of a populist-sounding, black faced Democratic politician who “will deliver us from evil.”

Instead of paying attention to these election circuses, we must organize a grass roots movement to take back what we have created–the wealth of this country and the world, and face the challenges of living sustainably on a planet devastated by capitalist, mindless, greed-filled exploitation.

Brittanicus, do you actually think Obama will do all this? Who do you think funds Obama? The very International globalists that are outsourcing all your jobs to China etc. You may resent China’s success but I am also sure that you love the cheap products they produce.
Also re your xenophobic anti immigration rant – isn’t America a country of immigrants? Gawsh I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if the Native Americans had had stricter immigration policies. (tasteless attempt at humor aside if the US didn’t actively contribute to such dreadful conditions in developing countries perhaps so many people would not be economically forced to try to make it in Amerika).

However I will compromise for Health care for my sick family, members, building up our U.S.infrastructure which is falling apart, stopping job outsourcing and selling America to foreign governments. Taking our economy back from China, India and other cheap labor lands. Fighting for Americans, instead of the International globalists who have no loyalty to this nation. I am a small business owner, but I believe that Obama can change the direction of our nation. I just hope over a period of time he doesn’t become corrupted like Speaker pelosi or Harry Reid. Most party members never delve into the deeper recesses of the Internet, to extract information other than the national newspapers.

I guess my main annoyance with both parties is the bickering amongst themselves? Every time it’s about the issue of taxation, which we all know we must pay. It’s to keep our fire departments fully manned and other mandatory services. What I don’t like is my tax money being waylaid and going to anti-sovereignty entities like the ACLU, Maldef, Mecha and La Raza. These groups are against our society and the freedoms our constitution offers and promotes hate in many way.

I am and always will be any form of AMNESTY for illegal aliens. The truth of actual costs to the American taxpayer is astronomical and our corrupt Governors, Mayors or elected official lie to us. The future disaster of unceasing illegal immigration and it’s menace of OVERPOPULATION and it’s consequences.

1. The number of illegal aliens already here – an estimated 37 million according to the Tucson sector Border Patrol union local 2544 (with an additional half-million coming every year) a massive financial impact on our economy by importing the worlds poor.

2. The Americans who are losing jobs to cheap immigrant labor. In a 1996 study, a Rice University economist estimated that illegal aliens were then displacing 730,000 American workers a year.

3. The costs to taxpayer for welfare, emergency medical services, education, law enforcement and incarceration for “illegal immigrants” and their dependents -and thousands of State, county welfare is pegged at more than a Trillion dollars.

4. The opportunities for terrorists to spend some time in Mexico, learn Spanish and infiltrate our borders.

The border fence has never built to original planned because the Democrats in a secret session, gutted funding.

US taxpayers are supporting parasite businesses that hire illegal aliens. The middle class already overburdened with war appropriation funds, is still force to pay for the education, free health-care and Federal, state welfare handouts for illegal criminals.

SIGN UP FOR THE SAVE ACT(H.R.4088) at http://www.numbersusa.com.

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This dependency is on oil and coal fossil. It is not simply a question of transitioning to other forms of energy (which of course we must), but the fact that the dependency is so broad and deep that we cannot fathom the demand. As I said it is expotential over time it has gone from relative flat to a perpendicular line upwards.

Plus unlike 1929, the US was not at its apex of power nor was it tied to a global market of financial speculation, nor were we involved in two wars.

History can teach, but it can distort our reality as well. The latter is very dangerous. If you truly believe that history is simply the repeating over and again, then we are lost in a predetermined universe that makes all discussions trite. But if you think that we live in a self-organized emergence through co-creation than there is much which totally unchartered.

As far as the history of slavery, I agree slavery was an economic engine replaced by the industrial revolution which was forged by…you guessed it oil. Oil replaced slavery not the empancipation proclaimation (which arguably did little to nothing to free black slaves).

That said, the logic of an African American president as making a meaningful statement is dubious at best. Human instinct is sometimes more correct than our “intellect”. Americans realize we are in a long emergency. So, far the churches have yet to fill to capacity, but instead the voting booths may. It is not Obama, it is “the economy stupid”.