[lbo-talk] at least he's black!

[wrobert at uci.edu]

I don't think the analogy works.  For all of the rhetorical conservatism
of the 1905 protests, it still involved a series challenge to the
structure of the regime.  I don't think you find any sort of comparable
transgression within the context of the Obama campaign.  A better analogue
to 1905 probably is the series of pro-immigration rallies over the past
couple years.  You have a comparable conservatism with the use of the U.S.
flag (which is tactical, just as the 1905 example probably was) and at the
same time which brought out millions into the political sphere in ways
that hadn't occurred before.  When I see Obama bringing his supporters
into the streets I'll concede your point, but until then, he is a
politician running an efficient campaign.  robert wood
>
> Among Marxists, there's a historical anecdote that makes the point.
> The series of worker protests in St. Petersburg that led to the
> Russian revolution of 1905, the "general dress rehearsal" of the 1917
> Russian revolution (as Lenin later called it).  For the standards of
> this list, those protests were meek.  Basically, people met for group
> praying and mass processions where they publicly begged the Tsar to
> please please end the war with Japan, reduce the workday, and dictate
> laws improving working conditions in the factories.  The figure of the
> Tsar was respected.  They didn't use youtube rock videos, but the
> equivalent back then -- religious icons, tsarist emblems, etc.
> prominently displayed in the marches.  If government policies were
> fucked up, it was the ministers' fault.  The protests were led by a
> priest (George Gapon) who turned out to be, as some radicals suspected
> at the time, a paid agent of the tsarist Okhrana (the political
> police).
>
> Since the protests had not been inspired or organized directly by the
> socialdemocrats (Lenin's comrades), many seasoned radicals view them
> with suspicion.  They were in favor of, you know, more militant forms
> of protest.  They were open about the goal of immediate overthrow of
> the tsarist autocracy and its replacement with a democracy, which the
> protesters didn't adopt.  But at this stage, the workers followed
> Gapon, not the socialdemocrats.
>
> Whatever one's view of Lenin as a historical figure, the guy supported
> the protests as they were, wholeheartedly.  No explicit reservations
> whatever.  In his radical newspaper, he launched a blistering attack
> on the Tsar for refusing to even accept the workers' petition (at some
> point, the tsar met with Gapon and received the petition).  Not a
> criticism of the religious cloak enveloping the protests or of the
> personal limitations of Gapon, of which Lenin was well aware.  Lenin
> thought it entirely possible for the dynamics of the protests, driven
> ultimately by the workers' pressing needs, to end up prevailing over
> the timidity of Gapon, overflowing the initial ideological strictures
> of the movement.  The immediate criminal overreaction of the Tsar
> against the protests and the subsequent eruption of workers'
> revolutionary activity confirmed Lenin's views.  The rest is history.
>
> (Please do not interpret this analogy as my predicting a revolution in
> the U.S.  The point of the analogy is spelled out in the second
> paragraph above.)
>
> So, I don't think I'm "using extraordinarily flattering words" to
> depict Obama as an individual.  You won't be able to find one instance
> in which I call him "progressive" or anything like that.  (The
> comparison with Jackie Robinson is limited to this: Given that racism
> is ingrained in the social conditions, at one point or another, Black
> individuals in the U.S. may feel that they need to compromise and come
> across as non-aggressive in their response to racial abuse in order to
> advance their goals, individual or collective.)  In fact, I entirely
> agree that Obama is a "corporate funded black candidate" (as Glen Gord
> puts it).  Not only corporate funded, but also corporate funded.  I
> agree that the Democratic Party is a highly corrupt, political
> formation of the capitalists, by the capitalists, and for the
> capitalists.  But that's only part of the story.
>
> And, to me, the fact that "committed, life long activists like Charles
> Barron" are awed by the phenomenon is indicative -- not of betrayal,
> foolishness, or moral weakness --  but of awareness of and sensitivity
> to the kind of forces that are being set in motion.  Because, again,
> this is not mainly about Obama as an individual or about the
> Democratic Party as a political apparatus.  It's mainly about the
> political forces in motion.  Obama -- for the most part and as far as
> I'm concerned -- is like given data, like the weather.  Ultimately,
> the key factor is us.