A response to Linda Burnham
Charlie Post
There is a broad consensus on left—from those who actively campaigned on his behalf, through those who sat out the election, to those of us who supported the independent candidacies of Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader—that the election of Barack Obama represents an important opening for anti-capitalists and radicals in the US. The election of an African-American to the highest elected office in a republic founded on white supremacy was, in itself, an important symbolic blow against white supremacy. Even more importantly, Obama’s victory was a political and ideological defeat of the right. The 2008 election has raised popular expectations of the possibility of gains for working and oppressed people—national health insurance, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a renegotiation of NAFTA, the expansion of civil rights for queers, women and people of color, and an end to the imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Linda Burnham, the long-time African-American socialist and feminist, has made an important contribution to the analysis of the Obama victory and the strategic challenges it presents to the US left. [This article is reproduced below] Burnham recognizes that the Obama administration has two “bottom lines”—the stabilization of US capitalism and the rehabilitation of the reputation of US imperialism with its allies in Europe and Japan. However, “the effective-steward-of-capitalism is only one part of the Obama story.” The Obama’s campaign brought together a new electoral rainbow coalition of people of color, youth, LGBT people, unionized workers, civil libertarians, and progressive urban professionals. According to Burnham, this new coalition was forged because Obama has moved the Democratic Party to the left:
“[Obama has] wrenched the Democratic Party out of the clammy grip of Clintonian centrism. (Although he often leads from the center, Obama’s center is a couple of notches to the left of the Clinton administration’s triangulation strategies)...”
Burnham excoriates those on the left who failed to support Obama’s residential campaign. She dismisses these comrades as hopeless sectarians, who rejected Obama because he was “insufficiently anti-capitalist.” Those of us who did not campaign for Obama are caricatured as interested only in fighting for demands that directly attack capitalist rule—abstaining from real, concrete popular struggles.
Burnham concludes that the U.S. left has three tasks in the coming period:
1. The left needs to defend “the democratic opening” created by the Obama victory. This will require a bloc with “centrists against the right” through Democratic Party electoral campaigns. Those leftists who have traditionally rejected participation in the Democratic Party’s electoral activity need to abandon their sectarian purity, and work to ensure an increased Democratic Congressional majority in 2010 and Obama’s reelection in 2012. This will require the left’s participation in voter registration and mobilization and actively campaigning for any and all Democrats in the coming four years.
2. The left cannot abandon the task of “building more united, effective, combative and influential progressive popular movements.” The gap between Obama inspired rising expectation of change and a deepening economic crisis “will likely spark new levels and forms of population resistance.” The left needs to continue to organize, educate, and agitate against US imperial policies in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, for national health care and pro-working people solutions to the economic crisis, and for a real answer to the looming environmental crisis.
3. We need to build the anti-capitalist left while simultaneously engaging in alliances with centrists in the Democratic Party, and rebuilding vibrant, progressive social movements.
Burnham’s claim that Obama has moved the Democratic Party “several notches to the left” of Clinton’s administration is very questionable. Even more importantly, Burnham’s strategy for left in the age of Obama is self-contradictory. Her first strategic priority—an alliance with centrists in the Democratic Party to ensure a Democratic Congressional majority in 2010 and Obama’s reelection in 2012—is incompatible with her second and third strategic priorities—rebuilding movements of social resistance and building an anti-capitalist left.
Is Obama to the Left of Clinton?
There is no question that many of Obama’s voters and active supporters were well to the left of either Bill or Hillary Clinton. Especially during the primaries, Obama won support because he appeared to be left of Hillary Clinton on the wars, economic and health care policies, immigration, and a myriad of other questions.
However, even a cursory examination of what Obama himself wrote and said during the 2008 campaign revealed that he was well within the mainstream of the Clinton-Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) wing of the Democratic Party. African-American radicals at the Black Agenda Report [1] constantly hammered away at the huge gap between popular perceptions of Obama and his actual politics, as did the left-wing historian Paul Street in his Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm Publishers, 2008).
The record of Obama’s first “hundred days” [2] only confirms Obama’s fundamentally neo-liberal politics. Obama’s cabinet not only includes re-cycled Clinton administration figures, but important representatives of major Wall Street investment houses and big Information Technology capitalists. The list of Obama’s proposals to revive US capitalism at the expense of working people, people of color, women and queer people are too numerous to catalogue completely. Among the highlights:
– Obama’s plan to restructure the auto industry on the backs of auto workers.
– The administration and Congressional Democrats waffling on EFCA.
– Outsourcing the torture of “suspected terrorists” from Guantanamo to other countries.
– The refusal to discuss revising NAFTA, and backpedaling on global environmental regulations.
– The embrace of John McCain’s proposal for immigration reform, including guest worker programs.
– The Obama “national health insurance plan” which will provide massive subsidies to private insurers.
As the world economy either continues to stagnate or grows at extremely slow rates in the coming years, we can expect even more pro-capitalist, anti-working people policies from the Obama administration. In the absence of significant movements from below—built independently, and if necessary, in opposition to Obama and the Democrats—any hopes of a new “New Deal” will be sorely disappointed.
Nor is it true that those on the left who did not support Obama’s campaign are hopeless sectarians who reject any partial struggles that do not directly strike at the heart of capitalist rule. This is clearly not true of Solidarity, the International Socialist Organization, the Greens, or the comrades around Black Agenda Report. While these groups differed about the importance or effectiveness of third party campaigns like that of Cynthia McKinney , none reject struggling for reforms—the end of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for single-payer health care, for amnesty and an easy road to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, in defense of affirmative action and social programs. We did not support Obama because neither he nor the pro-corporate, neo-liberal Democratic Party support these struggles.
Can We Build Movements and Work for Democrats?
Burnham strategy of campaigning for the Democrats, and building social movement and the left is impractical. The idea that the left should work to elect pro-corporate Democratic politicians is based on the mistaken notion that electing liberal politicians is the key to winning reforms and fighting the right. This position mistakes cause and effect. It is not the election of “lesser evil” liberals to office that opens the possibility of reforms and progressive politics. Instead it is effective social movements that can force the ruling class and its political spokespersons—both Democratic and Republican—to grant reforms. The experience of successful struggle grows the audience for left-wing, radical politics.
The left cannot lose sight of the fact that capitalism makes the class struggle a zero-sum game. Gains for working people, racial minorities, women, queers, and immigrants come at the expense of capitalist competitiveness and profitability. Reforms are won through militant mass strikes, demonstrations, sit-ins, and the like. Such struggles involve large-scale defiance of the law, and forge ties of active solidarity among working people. This experience of successful struggles for reforms is the basis for left-wing and radical politics among large layers of the population.
Historically, attempts to simultaneously build an alliance with Democratic Party centrists and build social movements have led the disorganization and decline of the movements and a shift to the right in politics. Time and time again—from the CIO upsurge of the 1930s, through the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s, to the movements against the Vietnam War [3]— the decision of the leaders of powerful and potentially radical social movements to pursue an alliance with the Democrats have derailed these struggles.
Electoral campaigns that are not expressions of social movements actually demobilize activists. Electoral campaigns are generally top-down, bureaucratic and seek to mobilize individual voters at the lowest common political denominator. Such campaigns, no matter what sense of satisfaction people gain from seeing their candidate win, reinforce the notion that change comes from above—through the ascendance of “good leaders” to office. Corporate funded Democratic Party election campaigns can not be anything but these sorts of mobilizations.
The dynamics of social movements—where people act collectively, organize democratically from the bottom-up and come to understand the connections between their particular struggle and those of other working and oppressed people—could not be more different from those of election campaigns. Successful social movements promote radicalism because they provide the lived experience of working and oppressed people exercising their collective power.
Once the elections are over, the continued alliance with Democratic politicians requires the leadership of movements of social resistance to trim their demands in ways that will not alienate the “centrists” – watering down their demands for pro-working class, popular reforms in favor of policies that the Democratic politicians and their corporate backers find “reasonable.” Even more importantly, the alliance with the Democrats requires abandoning militant forms of struggle—mass demonstrations, sit-ins, strikes and other forms of social disruption.
As the movement leaders water down their demands for concrete reforms and abandon “street heat” for lobbying, electoral campaigns and other forms of “pressure politics,” the movements become weaker. Democrats and Republicans only make concessions to working and oppressed people when compelled to—when the alternative is continued social disruption and conflict. Unable to win new reforms as movement leaders abandon their source of real social power, the gap between popular expectations and real change grows feeding demoralization and disappointment. In the absence of powerful social movements, Democrats and Republicans are under no compulsion to grant reforms and are free to move politics to the right in line with the wishes of their corporate capitalist sponsors.
In recent years, we have seen this dynamic at work in the movement against the US war in Iraq. In the Winter and Spring of 2003, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets demanding no US war against Iraq. Despite the relatively quick defeat of the Saddam Hussein regime, renewed Iraqi resistance to the US occupation continued to fuel anti-war sentiment and activity in the US. Organized opposition to the war emerged among military families, veterans, active duty GIs and the ranks of organized labor at a much earlier stage than during the Vietnam War.
Unfortunately, many of the leaders of the anti-war movement—especially in United for Peace and Justice (UfPJ)—believed that they could harness this burgeoning movement to the efforts of anti-war liberals and centrists to elect Democrats to the White House in 2004 and 2008. During both election cycles, the UfPJ leadership put national demonstrations on the back burner and downplayed both the demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and their opposition to the continued US occupation of Afghanistan.
Obama’s election appears to have all but destroyed the national anti-war movement. Significant funders of UfPJ, like Moveon.org, and many activists who had sustained the anti-war movement no longer see any reason to continue anti-war activism at the grassroots. For them, Obama’s election has made the war a “non-issue.” Unable and unwilling to confront the Obama administration as it retreats from its promise to gradually withdraw from Iraqi cities and its fulfills its promise to increase troop strength in Afghanistan, the UfPJ leadership is no longer in a position to act as an organizing center for national anti-war protests. As the anti-war movement declines, Obama is free to maintain US troops in Iraq and pursue new military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The same pattern is and will be repeated by the leaderships of the labor and social movements in the age of Obama. Not wanting to alienate Obama and the Congressional Democrats, the leaderships of both the AFL-CIO and CTW have done little to publicly oppose the Democrats back-pedaling on the EFCA—with Andy Stern of the SEIU, as always, leading the retreat. The labor officials and many mainstream immigrant rights groups are abandoning the struggle for universal amnesty and a direct route to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in favor of the Obama-McCain plan. Proposals for a single-payer insurance system appear dead in the water, leaving the Democrats and Obama free to implement their “universal health care” program based on massive subsidies for private insurance companies. The list can, depressingly, be multiplied across a wide variety of popular reform issues.
Robert Reich, Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, grasped this dynamic quite well in a 2000 essay [4]:
“No administration in modern history has been as good for American business as has the Clinton-Gore team; none has been as solicitous of the concerns of business leaders, generated as much profit for business, presided over as buoyant a stock market or as huge a run-up in executive pay... The Clinton-Gore administration delivered on policies that Republicans failed to achieve—fiscal austerity, free trade, and a smaller government—and Al Gore was in the lead. This confirms a pattern to American politics: Once in office, recent Democratic presidents in an era of business dominance have had an easier time moving right rather than left from where they campaigned since the Democratic base has no one else to turn to.”
The left needs to champion any and all popular demands—but refuse to water down these demands to placate centrists and liberals. We need to reach out to any and all Obama supporters who want to continue the struggle against war, racism, sexism, homophobia and for social justice—reminding them that change has come “from outside Washington”, from mass movements from below. The anti-capitalist left needs to be in the struggle, building organizations and movements that have the power to force those in power to give concessions in the form of concrete reforms that benefit working people in this country and internationally.
If the anti-capitalist left is going to take advantage of the real opportunities of the “Obama moment,” we will need to be rooted in real social struggles. We have already seen important struggles that have seized popular attention and enthusiasm—the Republic workers’ sit-down strike being the most important. We need to build support for every strike and organizing drive among workers, no matter how local and defensive. Struggles against government austerity and cuts to social services are another important arena for building alliances between public employees and working class and people of color communities—like the United Teachers’ of Los Angeles (UTLA) May 15th one day teacher-student-community day of action against budget cuts. Radicals and anti-capitalists need to rebuild the anti-war movement to press for immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Such movements cannot be summoned at will, but are the results of rising popular expectations confronting the realities of capitalist crisis and the intransigence of the ruling class. Today, the movements of social resistance are at a low point. The left needs to help build and support the “militant minority”—those who attempt to organize and struggle even when mass movements are dormant. Such militant minorities can set larger struggles in motion—struggles that can win gains and shift politics to the left. The key to the building of militant minorities and the sparking of larger struggles is the need for political independence from the corporate rulers and their political representatives. [5]
Charlie Post
* Charlie Post teaches sociology in New York City, is active in the American Federation of Teachers, and is a member of Solidarity. I would like to thank Warren Davis, Dianne Feeley, Dan LaBotz, John McGough, Stephanie Luce, Kim Moody, and Isaac Silver for comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
Notes on an Orientation to the Obama Presidency
By Linda Burnham
The election of Obama, while enthusiastically embraced by most of the left, has also occasioned some disorientation and confusion.
Some have become so used to confronting the dismal electoral choice between the lesser of two evils that they couldn’t figure out how to relate to a political figure who held out the possibility of substantive change in a positive direction.
Others are so used to all-out, full-throated opposition to every administration that they wonder whether and how to alter their stance.
Still others sat out the election, for a variety of political and organizational reasons, and were taken by surprise at how wide and deep ran the current for change.
Now there’s an active conversation on the left about what can be expected of an Obama administration and what the orientation of the left should be towards it.
There are two conflicting views on this:
First, that Obama represents a substantial, principally positive political shift and that, while the left should criticize and resist policies that pull away from the interests of working people, its main orientation should be to actively engage with the political motion that’s underway.
Second, that Obama is, in essence, just another steward of capitalism, more attractive than most, but not an agent of fundamental change. He should be regarded with caution and is bound to disappoint. The basic orientation is to criticize every move the administration makes and to remain disengaged from mainstream politics.
It is possible to grant that Obama is a steward of capitalism while also maintaining that his election has opened up the potential for substantive reform in the interests of working people and that his election to office is a democratic win worthy of being fiercely defended.
Obama is clear - and we should be too - about what he was elected to do. The bottom line of his job description has become increasingly evident as the economic crisis deepens. Obama’s job is to salvage and stabilize the U.S. capitalist system and to perform whatever triage is necessary to restore the core institutions of finance and industry to profitability.
Obama’s second bottom line is also clear to him - and should also be to us: to salvage the reputation of the U.S. in the world; repair the international ties shredded by eight years of cowboy unilateralism; and adjust U.S. positioning on the world stage on the basis of a rational assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the changed and changing centers of global political, economic and military power - rather than on the basis of a simple-minded ideological commitment to unchallenged world dominance.
Obama has been on the job for only a month but has not wasted a moment in going after his double bottom line with gusto, panache and high intelligence. In point of fact, the capitalists of the world - or at least the U.S. branch - ought to be building altars to the man and lighting candles. They have chosen an uncommonly steady hand to pull their sizzling fat from the fire.
For some on the left this is the beginning and the end of the story. Having established conclusively that Obama’s fundamental task is to govern in the interests of capital, there’s no point in adjusting one’s stance, regardless of how skillful and popular he may be. For the anti-capitalist left that is grounded in Trotskyism, anarcho-horizontalism, or various forms of third-party-as-a-point-of-principleism, the only change worthy of the name is change that hits directly at the kneecaps of capitalism and cripples it decisively. All else is trifling with minor reforms or, even worse, capitulating to the power elite. From this point of view the stance towards Obama is self-evident: criticize relentlessly, disabuse others of their presidential infatuation, and denounce anything that remotely smacks of mainstream politics. Though this may seem an extreme and marginal point of view, it has a surprising degree of currency in many quarters.
The effective-steward-of-capitalism is only one part of the Obama story. Obama did what the center would not do and what a fragmented and debilitated left could not do. He broke the death grip of the reactionary right by inspiring and mobilizing millions as agents of change.
If Obama doesn’t manage to do even one more progressive thing over the course of the next four years, he has already opened up far more promising political terrain.
His campaign:
– Revealed the contours, composition and potential of a broad democratic coalition, demographically grounded in the (overlapping) constituencies of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, youth across the racial groups, LGBT voters, unionized workers, urban professionals, and women of color and single white women, and in the sectors of organized labor, peace, civil rights, civil liberties, feminism, and environmentalism. Obama did not create this broadly democratic electoral coalition single-handedly or out of whole cloth, but he did move it from latency to potency and from dispirited, amorphous and unorganized to goal oriented, enthusiastic and organized;
– Busted up the Republican’s southern strategy, the foundation of their rule for most of the last forty years, and the Democrat’s ignominious concession to this legacy of slavery;
– Wrenched the Democratic Party out of the clammy grip of Clintonian centrism. (Although he himself often leads from the center, Obama’s center is a couple of notches to the left of the Clinton administration’s triangulation strategies); and
– Rescued political dialogue from its monopolization by hate-filled, xenophobic, ultra- nationalistic ideologues.
This is not change of the anti-capitalist variety, but certainly it is change of major consequence.
If the criterion is that the only change to be supported is that which strikes a decisive blow at capital, then the gap between where we are now and the realignment it would take to strike such a blow is completely and perpetually unbridgeable.
A better set of criteria, in light of the weakness of the left and the decades of hyper-conservatism we are only now exiting, is change that: creates substantially better conditions for working people; broadens the scope of democratic rights for sectors of the population whose rights have been abrogated; limits the prerogatives of capital; constrains runaway militarism and perpetual war; takes seriously the prospect of environmental collapse; and creates better conditions for struggle. This is the potential for change that Obama’s presidency has generated. This is the democratic opening. It is potential that will only be realized and maximized if the left and progressives step up and stay engaged.
These are also the criteria to keep in mind as the Obama presidency unfolds, rather than flipping out over every appointment and policy move he makes. Far better to de-link from the 24-hour news cycle that feeds on micro-maneuvers, stop making definitive judgments based on parsing the language of every pronouncement, and keep our eyes on the broader contours of change.
Besides the sectors of the anti-capitalist left that are stranded on Dogma Beach, there are those who see the tide running high but are still watching from the safety of the shore, hesitant to get in the water.
There are those who have been so long alienated from mainstream political processes and so disgusted with both political parties and all branches of government that their default response is instinctive distrust.
They view Obama’s presidency through the lens of anticipatory disillusionment. Their basic orientation is to analyze the administration’s every move with the goal of concluding, ’See, we told you so. Obama’s gonna burn you. You’re gonna be disappointed.’ This is a mindset for jilted lovers, not political activists. Let us grant without argument that, from the vantage point of the left, there are many disappointments in store.
This is easy enough to predict based not only on Obama’s own politics but also on the alignment of forces and institutions in which he is embedded. And so what? We can survive disappointment over this or that policy or concession as long as we are making headway on the broader criteria above.
There are also those who stayed on the shoreline during the campaign because they are wedded to localism as a matter of preference, principle or habit. Others were lodged in organizational forms that, for structural, political or legal reasons, could not articulate with the motion and structures of the presidential campaign. These are complicated issues, bound up as they are with questions of resources and patterns of philanthropy.
But for those who missed interacting with the motion of millions against the right, against the white racial monopoly on the executive branch, and for substantive change, their absence should, at the very least, prompt a serious examination of political orientation and organizational form.
Finally, there are those who are struggling to negotiate the existential shoals of a commitment to anti-capitalist politics in a period when the system is manifestly dying but not nearly at death’s door (and there have been all too many chronicles of that death foretold); major alternative systems have only recently collapsed or capitulated; and the vision, values and program that might bind together an anti-capitalist left and win broad support are still frustratingly obscure. There’s no remedy for this dilemma except to live in the times we’re in meeting the challenges we’ve been given and making the most of every opportunity, rather than anticipating capital’s demise or pining for a past beyond recovery.
In this period, then, the left has three tasks.
Our first job is to defend the democratic opening. This is a job we share with broader progressive forces and with centrists. Obama won big and retains the favorable regard of a sizeable majority. And meanwhile the Republican Party is in glorious disarray. But in no way should we take this situation for granted. The new administration faces daunting challenges and outright crises on every front. And while the right is disoriented and weakened, it has not and will not leave the playing field. The principal players and institutions of the right are, at this very moment, plotting how to undermine the administration, challenge every initiative that moves in the direction of democracy, progress and peace, and regroup to seize control, once again, of the state apparatus.
Defense of the democratic opening means many things and ought to be the subject for discussion and strategizing on the left. But in practical terms, first and foremost, it means consolidating and extending the electoral alliance that made the opening possible. Any work that strengthens and broadens the voter engagement of the constituencies and sectors that secured Obama’s election is work that defends the democratic opening.
This kind of voter education, registration and mobilization work can be done in conjunction with an extremely broad range of local campaigns and initiatives. And anything that hastens the demise of the southern strategy, builds on the wins in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia (along with the significant southwestern shifts in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada), and challenges structural barriers to voter participation (e.g., felony disfranchisement, voter ID laws) is critical. All this is another way of saying that the electoral arena is an essential site of struggle for left and progressive forces in a way it has not been in at least 20 years. And this work, in which we have unity of purpose with the centrists, is vital to widening the Democratic majority in the 2010 congressional races, winning a filibuster-proof Senate majority, ensuring the successful re-election of Obama in 2012, and shaping both the parameters of viable Democratic candidates in 2016 and the outcome of that election.
Our second job is to contribute to building more united, effective, combative and influential progressive popular movements. This places the highest premium on strengthening and extending our ties with broader progressive forces, both inside and outside the Democratic Party, with an eye towards building long- term relationships and alliances among individuals, organizations and sectors. Anything that thickens and enriches the relationships among left and progressive actors in labor, religious institutions, policy think tanks, grassroots organizations, academia etc. is to be supported in the interests of strengthening the capacity of the left-progressive alliance to influence policy, to encourage and shore up whatever progressive inclinations might emerge from within the administration, and to resist administration tendencies to accommodation and capitulation to center-right forces.
At this early stage of Obama’s tenure it is already evident what some of the most vital left- progressive alliance building ought to focus on. In foreign policy, on war and militarism in general and on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Iran and non-proliferation in particular. In domestic policy, on health care and on solutions to the economic crisis that hold the financial sector accountable for reckless and predatory practices while addressing the particular vulnerabilities of working people, the poor, women, immigrants and communities of color. And, at the intersection of global and domestic policy, on oil dependency and global warming. All that enhances our capacity to constructively engage in debating and influencing policy on these issues is to the good. All that obstructs or distracts is highly problematic.
We’ve exited a period of collective psychic depression only to enter one of global economic depression. Each day, as the institutions of finance capital collapse, the corruption, greed and mismanagement of the nation’s economic system are further revealed. Broad sectors of the population have been shocked into a more skeptical and critical stance towards capitalism, and the need for some measure of structural change wins near- universal acceptance. The clash of rising expectations (encouraged by the hope and change themes of the Obama campaign) and a sinking economy will likely spark new levels and forms of popular resistance. In this political environment, alliance building will be complicated, messy and filled with political tensions and tactical differences. It is imperative nonetheless.
Our third job, and perhaps the trickiest, is to build the left. First let it be said that unless we are able to demonstrate a genuine commitment and growing capacity to take on the first two jobs, the third is a non-starter, and a prescription for political isolation. In other words, defending the democratic opening in conjunction with the center and building long-term relationships between the anti-capitalist left and broad progressive sectors in the context of the struggle over administration policy must be understood as critical tasks in their own right, not simply as arenas in which to advance an independent left line or to recruit new adherents to an anti- capitalist perspective. Realizing the progressive potential of the Obama win requires the most committed involvement with the twists and turns of politics on the most pressing issues on the administration’s agenda. This same engagement is critical to rebuilding the left, a long-term process that can be advanced significantly in the context of Obama’s presidency if, and only if, the left can skillfully manage the relationship and distinction between its own interests, dynamics and challenges and those of broader political forces.
Why is this the case? On the tell no lies front, the left is more isolated and fragmented than it has been in forty years. Truly fine work is being done by leftists in every region of the country and on every social issue. But the left qua left is barely breathing. This is not the place to go into the historical (world historical and U.S. historical), ideological, theoretical and organizational reasons why this is so. But let us, at the very least, frankly acknowledge that it is so. The current political alignment provides an opportunity to break out of isolation, marginalization and the habits of self- marginalization accumulated during the neo-conservative ascendancy. It provides the opportunity to initiate and/or strengthen substantive relationships with political actors in government, in the Democratic Party, and in independent sectors, as well as within the left itself - relationships to be built upon long after the Obama presidency has come to an end. It provides the opportunity to accumulate lessons about political actors, alignments and centers of power likewise relevant well beyond this administration. And it provides the opportunity for the immersion of the leaders, members and constituencies of left formations in a highly accelerated, real world poli-sci class.
In these circumstances, among our biggest challenges is how to attend to building the capacity of the left without succumbing to the siren songs of dogma, the old addictions of premature platform erection, or the self- limiting pleasures of building parties in miniature.
For the anti-capitalist left, this is a period of experimentation. There is no roadmap; there are no recipes. Those organizational forms and initiatives that enable us to synthesize experience, share lessons and develop broad orientations and approaches to seriously undertaking our first two tasks should be encouraged. Those that would entrap us in the hermetic enclosures of doctrinal belief should be avoided at all cost.
The Obama presidency is a rare confluence of individuals and events. There is no way to predict how things will unfold over the next 4-8 years. But this much we can foresee: if the opportunity at hand is mangled or missed, the takeaway for the left will be deepened isolation and fragmentation. If, on the other hand, the left engages with this political opening skillfully and creatively, it will emerge as a broader, more vibrant force on the U.S. political spectrum, better able to confront whatever the post-Obama world will bring.
* From CCDS: http://www.ccds-discussion.org/?p=72.
* Linda Burnham is co-founder of the Women of Color Resource Center (WCRC) and was its Executive Director for 18 years. Burnham has been working on racial justice and peace issues since the 1960s and on women- of-color issues since the early 1970s, and has published numerous articles on African-American women, African-American politics, and feminist theory in a wide range of periodicals and anthologies. In 2005 Burnham was nominated as one of 1000 Peace Women for the Nobel Peace Prize. Burnham is a frequent featured speaker on college campuses and to community groups, addressing issues of women’s rights, racial justice, human rights and peace. Burnham’s writing and organizing are part of a lifelong inquiry into the dynamic, often perilous intersections of race, class and gender.