Barack Obama, Cornel West, and the Neoliberal Plutocracy
Thomas Volscho CUNY / College of Staten Island
The presidency of Barack Obama was viewed by some as re-igniting a progressive era in which the trends of rising inequality, state assaults on civil liberties, mass incarceration, endless imperial wars, and perhaps even systemic racism itself would be seriously challenged. By 2011, the dream has become a nightmare. Cornel West, once a fierce and tireless supporter of President Obama described the President as "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it." This may not be a surprise because America's other "first 'black' president" (as named by Toni Morrison) had already learned the rules of the Wall Street-Washington power corridor. In 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore's run for the White House was framed around their "Putting People First" program. The campaign theme emphasizing jobs, education, and infrastructure investment resonated well with voters reeling from the first ten years of Reaganomics and the 1990-91 recession. Clinton's close circle of supporters, however, could be divided into two factions: liberal progressives and Wall Street Plutocrats (Larry Summers, Alice Rivlin, Lloyd Bentsen, and most importantly Robert Rubin to name a few). Not even two weeks after his inauguration, Clinton, in a meeting with his economic advisors remarked (with blood rushing into his face): "You mean to tell me that the success of my program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?" Clinton quickly abandoned his "Putting People First" campaign promises and embraced an austerity and deficit-reduction agenda. Clinton could have played chicken with Alan Greenspan, but ultimately Greenspan and the Wall Street faction of Clinton's administration prevailed. Economist E. Ray Canterbery in his (2000) book Wall Street Capitalism has written that Alan Greenspan and the bond traders compromised Clinton in ways that Monica Lewinsky could not have. Even more ironic, the Lewinsky scandal may have temporarily saved the Social Security program from further assault by Wall Street. Cornel West's comment could be inverted such that Bill Clinton was a "white" mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a "white" puppet of corporate plutocrats who had also become head of the USA's imperial killing machine (in its relatively weaker pre-George W. Bush state).
In a June 2007 meeting at a Washington, D.C. "power lunch" spot, Johnny's Half Shell, the heads of Lehman, Merrill Lynch, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, and a former Federal Reserve Chair, Paul Volcker, were all beaming with joy. They were meeting with a young charismatic freshman Senator from Illinois. While Hillary Clinton may have been supported by a handful of other Wall Street power players, the great fear of the Wall Street establishment was that Hillary might turn her back on them once it became politically possible. Two plausible criteria for elites' support of Presidential candidates are electability and controllability. From the perspective of the Wall Street Ruling Class, Hillary Clinton may have been electable, but potentially uncontrollable. Barack Obama seemed to be both electable and controllable. We can interpret his going to the Wall Street Financial Power Elite in summer 2007 to mean that Obama understood the politics of the Wall Street-Washington power corridor very well. Was he just using their support to get elected? The answers seems to be no because he has been ramming their agenda through at a lightning fast pace.
What Obama has been most successful at doing is talking like a progressive but walking like a plutocrat. He talked like a progressive during his 2008 campaign but in practice implements and supports policies in accordance with the Wall Street-Military Industrial Complex. Obama's key appointments have been drawn heavily from Goldman-Sachs. This is not difficult to understand because his second largest donor in 2008 was Goldman-Sachs. The Wall Street portion of the complex depends directly on bonds while the Military-Industrial Complex is indirectly dependent on the issuance of debt by the state to fund wars. Bonds are issued by governments (and to a lesser extent by corporations) to borrow money. Government bonds (or Treasuries) are auctioned off by only the most sophisticated Wall Street banks. Thirty years of tax cuts for the rich and defense-driven deficit spending have increased the reliance of the federal (as well as state and local/city governments) on bonds and the array of Wall Street firms that buy and sell them. Keep in mind that the U.S. government bond market is several times larger than the stock market (more than half a trillion per day exchanges hands) and disproportionately owned by the wealthiest fraction of families. Thus, the holders of government debt have a disproportionate amount of power over budget deficits as compared to previous historical eras in which government revenue derived from taxation (giving state managers more power over spending). Just as Wall Street rose to power throughout the 1980s, the primary justification for the Military Industrial Complex declined when the Cold War came to an end. New phantom enemies such as Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda "network" and Saddam Hussein were exaggerated by neoconservatives to drive Pentagon spending (punctuated by 9/11) and the African embassy bombings in 1998. This coincides with the Wall Street neoliberal agenda-more war, more deficits, more bonds. But too many bonds in circulation and their resale value goes down (and so goes the capital gains income of the bondholding class); therefore cut the deficit. Raise taxes on the rich to cut the deficit? No! Instead, what spending will be cut? The answer is the spending targeted toward the poor , people of color, and even the European American "middle class" but not the spending that benefits the Plutocrats from Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex or Big Oil. In fact, to make the system better for Plutocrats, hold constant the taxation of the poor, working, and middle class and redistribute its benefits to the upper 0.5 percent via subsidies to corporations, defense contractor welfare splurges on military hardware, and interest payments on the national debt to Wall Street. Contrary to the racist stereotypes of the welfare queen as women of African descent on welfare (pushed by Ronald Reagan and others) the true Welfare Kings rule Wall Street, Washington, and the Pentagon. They snort cocaine, wear expensive Italian suits, fly corporate jets to golf outings, vacation in the Hamptons, and cannot be bothered to pay taxes. The true test of Obama's administration: profits are up and people are down; 393,000 people deported, and 0 bankers prosecuted during the most widespread wave of white collar crime on record. When a supporter like Cornel West turns 180 degrees against someone, it is very significant. If Cornel West was not speaking the truth, then (neo)-liberals like Rahm Emmanuel would not get defensive. Obama is surrounded by men (and some women) from the financial elite and military industrial complex that are routinely telling him what a great job he is doing. Not only this, but post-Presidential Obama will sit on various corporate and banking boards and receive millions per year in speaking fees. This is to be expected and the ranks from which they (Obama's appointees) are drawn predict what type of interests his administration will be following. The income and wealth distribution in the USA is concentrated among the Top ½ of the richest 1 percent at a level not seen since 1928. Since around 1984, Democrats started holding out their hands to corporations for money. This was the nail in the coffin for the liberal-labor alliance and resulted in what Ralph Nader calls a "two-party dictatorship." Nader himself followed the "lesser of two evils" strategy and supported Democrats for twenty years until 2000 when he decided to run his own White House campaign (with modest expectations).
What contribution will Obama make to black progressive politics? There is no reason to believe Obama will do anything consistent with black progressive politics. Simply because one is of African descent does not necessarily mean that one will carry out policies and initiatives consistent with the interests of black progressives. For instance, Herman Cain, an up and comer in the potential Republican field for 2012 described himself as "...an American first, black second, and I'm a conservative. So, I'm an ABC." One might go so far as to analyze the relevance of other people of African descent among the elite (e.g., Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas). J. Edgar Hoover descended from the slave-owning Hoover family of Mississippi and had FBI agents ruthlessly "investigate" anyone discussing his lineage when he was the director of the FBI. One pathway for an American of African descent to make it into America's ruling class is by walking in the opposite direction of black progressive politics while paying some strategic lip service to past Jim Crow discrimination because it serves as a useful careerist political asset in a society rampant with colorblind and "racism was only in the past" ideology. The election of Obama likely strengthens those sentiments.
So what of Obama? Obama presides over an empire in decline dominated by a Plutocratic class that uses a two-party dictatorship to rule the government. This is the predictable result of a highly organized far-right shift in the USA that has been emerging slowly but steadily since the presidency of Nixon. It includes the militarization of domestic police and a massive incarceration system to prevent everything from the urban rebellions of the early 1960s all the way through the prison riots of the early 1970s. Even civil disobedience has become virtually criminalized. This neo-fascist systemic shift is so extreme that policies championed by the Obama administration appear downright conservative to some of the policies put forth by the Reagan administration. Writing for the Black Agenda Report, Paul Street characterized Obama's administration as "...deeply conservative and...a standard business-and white-friendly military-imperial centrist on the model of Richard Nixon, George (H.W.) Bush 41, or Bill Clinton." Ignoring all personal rifts between Obama and Cornel West, Professor West has made a valid and legitimate critique of Barack Obama's administration. Such a concern had already been raised in the months before and after the 2008 election on the ABS Discourse Listserv. The concern was with how Obama would approach racial oppression. One sociologist (a seasoned Civil Rights leader) responded, on November 5, 2008: "Barack seems to know how to maintain his equanimity under duress, and you should pull back and do the same." A critic countered "I am confident that if King were alive Obama would have a major headache to deal with as a militant and radical King pressed him to go beyond his political re-election comfort zone under an attitude that is now articulated simply as: "No Justice, No Peace." Obama, since his inauguration has spent every legislative opportunity proving the early critics correct. The real lesson of the Obama administration thus far is that it is not wise to be lulled into a false sense of security simply because the president's father was African. But this is no surprise because progressive change does not typically come from elected leaders unless they are forced by popular pressure to pursue such change. With popular pressure, Obama could move the country in the progressive and redistributive direction and even make a contribution to dismantling systemic racial oppression. This shift needs to happen very quickly.
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of c b Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 10:00 AM To: lbo-talk Subject: [lbo-talk] The guy who 'blocked' John Lewis
Blacks _at present_ have, on the whole, defined their "self-=interest" as (in the words of Glen Ford) "building a wall around the Black Brother" to fend off criticism. Ford calls this a major problem for the Black Left -- which makes it a major problem for all leftists. Unfortunately there is little white leftists can do about it; we can only try not to make it more difficult for Black Agenda and similar groups to do their work. The Black attendance at anti-war rallies has always been small (the one exception in my experience being a march in 1969 for which the Panthers also organized), but it reached a low at the recent March & Rally in Chicago. We had a Black speaker: from the Black Agenda. He pointed to the "Obama Problem" as central to that fact.
Carrol
^^^^ CB: Obama is a major advance for "the Black Left" or Black Leftists. Ford's line puts him in the rear guard, not the vanguard of Black people en masse. It is a completely sectarian ultra-left line under the faulty claim that Ford's thinking about Obama is in advance of most Black people's thinking about Obama. Events will prove this in that Ford will have no mass "following" whatsoever. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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