It seems like every political pundit is critiquing President Obama's first year in office - not surprising. But I will take a different tack. Let's compare our views of a year ago of the larger class and social forces surrounding and exerting pressure on Obama with our views now.
First, the broad coalition that elected the president a year ago still hasn't yet fully regrouped, notwithstanding some very promising initiatives and struggles. We believe it will, but our earlier assessment didn't take into account that the transition from an election mode to a post-election mode would be uneven and bumpy.
By Election Day 2008, people were exhausted and felt that they had done their part. They were ready to hand the ball off to the president and the new Congress. We didn't appreciate this dynamic enough. Our view was too seamless and not grounded in realism. To transform the coalition that elected Obama into a powerful political force will take a strenuous and sustained effort. And we are in the early stages. Success in doing this will have a decisive bearing on the winning of a progressive agenda.
Second, our estimate of the balance of forces and trends in Congress was too general. Democratic majorities don't necessarily translate into support for the president's agenda - let alone a people's agenda. Democrats in Congress hold diverse views, and the progressive Democrats, while undeniably more influential, are not yet dominant. A more fine-grained analysis on our part was necessary.
Third, a year ago we resisted placing the administration and its individual members into neat political categories before they began governing. At the time, that was correct, because such categorizations easily lead to narrow tactical approaches, which is especially bad in a moment of political fluidity and crisis. A year later, a closer look at the various trends is warranted, although it shouldn't turn into a daily preoccupation.
Fourth, we exaggerated the magnitude of the defeat of right wing extremism. No longer did political initiative reside in its hand nor did it set the agenda, but it didn't follow that right wing extremism became a minor player in the nation's political life. While blue dog and centrist Democrats are a drag on progressive politics, it is the extreme right in Congress and elsewhere that mobilizes a mass constituency, shapes public opinion, and employs racism and other forms of division and demagogy. Their stated aim is to obstruct and derail the Obama presidency.
Though the election was a major defeat for the far right, it retains a significant mass base, has connections to some of the most reactionary, powerful and wealthiest corporations, and possesses a dense network of think tanks and political actions committees - not to mention the Republican Party. It also has a loud and insistent voice in the mass media and in the military and other coercive institutions. A comeback - a return to power - isn't out of the question.
Fifth, our assessment didn't give enough weight to the fact that the state is anything but a neutral institution standing above society and negotiating between competing interests. Rather it is a class based, historically determined set of institutions, procedures, policies, and personnel that, taken together, are resistant to any kind of radical (anti-corporate, anti-capitalist) restructuring, no matter how necessary. In recent decades, the interpenetration of big capital - especially finance, military and energy capital - and state/government structures has reached unprecedented levels.
This reality isn't reason to stand aside from struggles within state structures, to yield this ground to capital. On the contrary, the terrain of the state, which includes, but isn't limited to the executive and legislative branches of government, is a crucial site of class and social struggles. No serious movement for social change can absent itself from this site. Indeed, a high priority must be attached to the securing of positions - elective and otherwise in the state apparatus and effecting alliances - at every stage of the class and democratic struggle, and especially at this and subsequent stages.
As we saw in last year's election, electoral struggles drew millions into action and changed the terrain (within and outside of state structures) on which contesting political coalitions fight. No struggle over the past decade mobilized so many in such a sustained way, nor reset the relations between contending sides as did the campaign to elect Barack Obama.
Thus, struggles within state structures are absolutely imperative, but with this caveat: their success in the longer term in large measure depends on the degree to which they symbiotically combine and coordinate with popular actions outside of these structures.
Sixth, our reading of changes in public opinion suffered from one-sidedness. On the one hand, we correctly noted that right-wing and neoliberal ideology resonates less and less with tens of millions of people, who are increasingly skeptical about "free markets" and unregulated capitalism.
But the problem with public opinion polls is that they don't necessarily capture what Antonio Gramsci called "contradictory consciousness." The same people can like a public health care option and even approve of socialism, but also be suspicious of big government; or support withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and at the same time want the Obama administration to eliminate al Qaeda in Afghanistan by any means necessary; or favor a second stimulus bill while opposing a larger deficit.
Most people (and social classes for that matter) don't have a consistent worldview; rather, they have a worldview that is eclectic, contradictory and sensitive to changing circumstances and experience, not simply reducible to their place in a system of social production. For those who desire progressive change it is essential to better appreciate the complexity and fluidity of popular consciousness.
Finally, the struggle over the past year in general and the health care struggle in particular bring home the importance of the 2010 elections. The stakes are enormous.
Will the struggle for democratic reforms be deepened or reversed? Will the costs of the current crisis be placed on the shoulders of Wall Street and the wealthy, or working people and especially people of color?
Will we begin a sustained attack on global warming or remain stuck in a fossil fuel/carbon-based economy? Will racial and gender equality take new strides in the direction of freedom, or will a 21st century Jim Crow assert itself? Will the next decade be a decade of peace, or of violence and plunder? Will the stockpiles of nuclear weapons be reduced, or will the nuclear threat grow?
We could go on, but the point is obvious: the outcome of the midterm elections will have a major bearing on how each of these questions is answered. That so, the aim of the people's coalition is clear: to increase the Democratic advantage in the Congress, including the number of progressives in the House and Senate, while at the same time defeating the Republican right.
The objective of the Republicans will be the opposite. They will throw everything into the 2010 elections, including lots of money and endless demagogy.
Given the political and economic dynamics at this moment, three outcomes are possible. One is that the Republicans will make big gains; another is that neither party will pick up or lose any significant number of seats; and the last is that the Democrats will increase their majorities in the Congress. The latter is possible, but only if a health care bill passes, unemployment comes down, the unemployed find work, an exit strategy from Afghanistan is embraced by the Obama administration, and, above all, an enormous bottom up mobilization of old and new voters is organized this year.
The genius of candidate Obama was his ability to find a narrative and vision that captured the political imagination of tens of millions. In last fall's off-year elections, Democrats came up woefully short in the regard and too many voters stayed home. If this happens in the fall, the fight for progressive reform will be uphill and slow going. New faces, new voices, new voters, and new leaders are necessary to transform the political landscape in a more fundamental and enduring way.
Strategic direction
For nearly three decades, the Communist Party's strategic policy envisioned the assembling of a broad coalition to defeat the right, whose political ascendancy began with Reagan's election in 1980. Over the past decade we have further developed and refined this policy, while maintaining its essential character. The delegates to our national convention in 2005 formalized this policy in our new party program.
In the wake of the 2008 elections, however, it became apparent that some adjustments in our strategic policy were necessary. But before going into this, some general remarks about our understanding of strategy are warranted.
A strategic policy springs from an analysis of the stage of development and the overall balance of political and class forces at a given moment. Attempting to derive strategic concepts from either abstractions (capitalism is historically obsolete - true) or mass moods (the people are angry as hell) is a recipe for political mistakes. Militancy and moral outrage do and must enter into our calculations and our practical activity, in fact, both are necessary to any viable movement of struggle. But neither one can determine the strategic thrust of our party or the larger movement for that matter.
A solid strategic policy is derived from an assessment of the main social force(s) hindering progressive development at any given moment as well as the main class and social forces that have an objective interest in moving society in a democratic, progressive, and left direction.
It isn't a fine-grained roadmap, but a guide to action. It is a first approximation of what is happening on the ground among the main class and social forces, which of them has the upper hand, and what it will take to move the political process forward, given the main trends of political and economic development.
If there were a direct path to social progress and socialism, strategic considerations wouldn't matter. But there is no such path, as evidenced by the history of the 20th century.
Instead the revolutionary process passes through phases and stages, despite the messy and chaotic nature of the historical process. Assessing when one phase or stage gives way to another is both an art and a science.
In contrast to strategy, tactics involve choices about issues, demands, forms of struggle, slogans, etc., at any given moment to mobilize and unify masses of people. They are conditioned by strategic considerations while, at the same time, bringing strategy to life. The purpose is to activate and unite the main forces of social progress and draw new participants into struggle.
The aim of tactics is not to up the ante at every turn, as too many on the left think. In fact, the challenge is to combine partial demands that elicit broad support and are winnable in the short term with more advanced demands that are not yet supported by a broad enough constituency but could be won in the course of ongoing struggles.
Adjustments in strategic policy
With the foregoing in mind, what changes/adjustments if any in our strategic policy are warranted given the new landscape?
On the one hand, the strategic thrust of 2008 - to defeat the ultra right at the polls - doesn't exactly fit the new conditions, but as mentioned earlier the right danger can't be underestimated; it remains a considerable political, ideological and mass mobilizing force.
On the other hand, we are not yet at a consistently anti-monopoly-corporate, anti-transnational strategic stage of struggle either, given the challenges facing the country and the world, the continued presence of the extreme right and its reactionary corporate backers, the level of consciousness of the American people, and the maturity of the people's movement.
Thus, our strategic policy is neither one nor the other. It's a mixture of both. This isn't surprising given the fluid and transitional nature of this period.
And yet as the process of democratic reform (democratic ownership of the financial sector or a worker/community base industrial policy, racial and gender equality, expansion of union rights, de-militarization of foreign policy, for example) deepens, the class, anti-corporate, anti-transnational-corporate nature of the struggle will come to the fore more and more at the economic, political and ideological level.
All of which goes to show that the struggle for democracy doesn't dilute, postpone or bypass the class struggle, but brings it into bolder relief, extends the ground on which it is fought out, and brings in fresh voices and leaders to every field of struggle and overall movement. Just as the struggle to elect President Obama was at once the leading edge of the class struggle as well as the struggle for democracy in 2008, the struggle to deepen democracy, understood broadly and particularly in the economic realm, is both the main form of class and democratic struggle in today's conditions.
With this in mind, our strategic policy seeks to extend and deepen a coalition of political actors that stretches from President Obama to the core forces of the people's movement, and also includes small and medium sized business, working-class people who are influenced by the right, sections of the Democratic Party and even sections of corporate capital.
The notion of only the capitalist class on the one side and only the working class on the other may sound radical, but it isn't Marxist and doesn't exist in the real world.
Lenin once remarked:
"To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc. - to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, "We are for socialism", and another, somewhere else and says, "We are for imperialism," and that will be a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view could vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a "putsch."
Whoever expects a "pure" social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.
It would be a profound mistake to distance the working class not only from the other core forces, but also from temporary and even unreliable allies. In fact, this diverse alliance is the strategic cornerstone for progressive and radical reforms. Separately, neither the president nor the people's organizations nor the working class can win against the political and class forces arrayed against them. But united, they pack a wallop! Many get this, especially labor and the other core forces of the people's movement. And the African American people have always practiced it, as have other racially and nationally oppressed peoples.
Needless to say, the right wing - along with the corporate class - also gets it and is doing everything possible to bust it up.
So again, the challenge is to fully activate and maximize the unity of this very diverse, multi-class and fluid coalition in the course of concrete struggles. There will be tensions, contradictions and competing views, and the opposition will be ferocious and clever.
All of us who want to live in a more just, peaceful and equal society must master the art of fighting for unity while, at the same time, stretching the boundaries of the possible and deepening the role of the core forces.
At this moment, advantage lies with the people's movement as mentioned earlier, but it is a fragile advantage. Neither side is yet able to gain hegemony in a political and ideological sense - that is to say, neither side's views can claim to be the accepted common sense of millions. The political balance of forces doesn't yet overwhelmingly favor the forces of progress.
The main elements of the New Deal, for instance, were not passed in Roosevelt's first year in office, but in 1935-1937. Nor did the popular insurgency arise in full bloom at the Depression's outset. The New Deal victories were the fruit of a many-layered struggle of a motley group of social actors, taking place over time. The next decade(s) will be much the same.
A new emphasis
For some time we have accented the importance of breadth of the movement, but for this discussion a renewed emphasis on an old emphasis is warranted. Because the people's coalition is broad in scope and varied in political outlook, it is all the more imperative to step up the activity and enhance the leadership role of the main core forces, and especially the working class and its organized sector.
Without an enlargement of the role of the working class and the other core forces the reform process will lose its focus and its political weight. Allies are critical in any struggle, but the core forces are indispensable.
Any movement that hopes to make major changes in the political and economic landscape requires at its center the working class and its strategic allies (racially oppressed, women and youth). Absent the tight unity of these social groups, we will be tilting at windmills.
Luckily, the core forces - all of whom interpenetrate with one another thereby giving them a deep community of interests and enormous power - are in motion, but not yet to the degree that is necessary to enact a progressive agenda. How to increase the role of precisely these forces is the key task for every activist.
Photo: President Obama at the AFL-CIO convention. (People's World photo by Teresa Albano/peoplesworld.org)
