On 2010-10-29, at 5:09 PM, Somebody Somebody wrote:
> Marvin: That may be true of the tea party milieu, but the larger part of the disgruntled population has legitimate cause to believe bolder measures on jobs, housing, healthcare, and financial regulation were necessary and within reach, and to hold Obama responsible for falling short.
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> Somebody: The bottom-line is that strike activity in the U.S. is non-existent, campus radicalism has declined since the early days of the Iraq War, and instead of marches on Washington demanding jobs we have Comedy Central fan-club gatherings. But, somehow, Obama, a technocrat who ran on a centrist platform, was supposed to single-handedly reawaken the class struggle. Frankly, it's difficult to recall any leader who in such politically quiescent times, has ever made so bold a move. I ask it seriously and without sarcasm: can you name any?
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> The majority of Americans may be disgruntled, but their level of political consciousness is infantile, and their dissatisfaction with the status quo is dwarfed by their contempt for left-wing alternatives. The bourgeoisie is highly effective at divorcing the natural operations of the market cycle from human agency operating in Washington. It's only the latter which receives either the ire or the disappointment of the American people.
I don't characterize the calls for bolder action on all these fronts originating within the bourgeoisie as calls for "class struggle." See, for example, Krugman, Reich, Stiglitz, Baker, and Galbraith and elements of the DP congressional caucus or, farther to the right, Volcker, Martin Feldstein, Simon Johnson, formerly of the IMF, Willem Buiter, now of Citi, as well as conservative publications like the Economist (criticizing Obama's "timid" refusal to allow bankruptcy judges to write down mortgages) and the majority of opinion pieces in the Financial Times, including the one by Martin Wolf below.
And, yes, I think Obama doing fireside chats on television, excoriating the latter day "malefactors of great wealth", appointing a Pecora-style commission to conduct a televised probe of the Wall Street practices which produced the crisis, continuing to stump the country, and encouraging the tens of millions who enthusiastically voted for him to bombard congress with emails, to petition, to demonstrate, to organize, and to engage in other forms of mass action in support of jobs, housing, and healthcare - all of these activities, none of them alien to the American political tradition, would have put the country and the Democrats in a much better place than they are today.
It could also be said of most disgruntled Americans in 1932 that "their level of political consciousness is infantile, and their dissatisfaction with the status quo is dwarfed by their contempt for left-wing alternatives. The bourgeoisie is highly effective at divorcing the natural operations of the market cycle from human agency operating in Washington…"
At certain critical junctures, leadership is important, and mass opinion can shift rapidly. In fact, since the election, and particularly during the past year, we've seen such a dramatic shift in opinion - alas, in the wrong direction and largely attributible in this case to (mis)leadership.