Saturday, August 14, 2010

The Obama Administration and the Economic Crisis: Can the Left Go Beyond Conventional Criticism to Relevance?

by Norman Markowitz

I have been trying to respond recently to criticisms on the Obama administration and Obama himself from various sources that I would call the independent left among both scholars and activists on a variety of issues.

These are not ultras, members of various sectarian groups, but people with long histories of defending peoples struggles. Their general argument, if I can simplify it, is that Obama, those in his administration, and their advisers, are not really different than previous administrations in their cold shoulder to labor and their defense of capital, and that the experience of the New Deal or of the Great Society for that matter have little relevance to what is happening today because we are in a new situation in terms of political economy(even though few say what we can do in that new situation, except engage in criticism).

I have tried to respond to these criticisms in a variety of ways.

First I think that , we can look at the positives---the recovery aid in the stimulus money to states and communities. Would any president in recent memory have initiated such policies.? Today, twenty six billion was was voted to states and communities in aid to education to prevent massive layoffs of teachers and other school personnel. Obama's active support was essential in this emergency aid. Also, today, tree billion in aid to unemployed homeowners to prevent foreclosures was voted by Congress.

Earlier, unemployment benefits were extended over strong Republican opposition. National Health Care legislation, with all its faults, and they are great faults, both better legislation than the bill that Clinton failed to get through seventeen years ago and the first major piece of social legislation passed in the U.S. in over forty years, was passed and now faces serious threats from states that are suing to bring it down in the federal court system(given the present balance of forces on the Supreme Court, they certainly have a good chance).

But these explanations don't have much meaning for working people who see high unemployment, crippling cutbacks at the state and local level, and economic news that pretends as if everyone is an investor in the stock market.

To become relevant in the present political moment, we have got to come forward with specific policies(like unemployment insurance, old age pensions, public employment for the unemployed during the 1930s) and build mass support for such programs through action.

Our target should not be the Obama administration but finance capital, the banks which are hoarding hundreds of billions in public bailout money rather than investing in development that will produce jobs and decent income for the people.
There is general revulsion today at the bonus moneys given to the upper finance capitalist managers but little understanding that the whole system is "oversaving" in the Keynesian sense of the term, "warehousing" instead of employing capital.

We should call for restructuring of the financial system beyond the limited reregulation which the Obama administration has achieved(itself a step forward, given the radical deregulation of the last thirty years) to call for direct public control over the federal reserve and a policy of tying aid to the large investment bank/brokerage house syndicates to their investment in productive job high wage economic reconstruction. We should also call for the administration to enact legislation that will have finance capital begin to spend tens of billions to revitalize the public sector instead of vice versa, to channel capital into public education, transportation, housing and health care.

We can also call for a restructuring of consumer credit and debt in the interest of the people and develop contract proposals to implement that. Today the banks are holding hundreds of billions in defaulted debt, foreclosed property and doing nothing with it. Just as capital created hedge funds, derivatives, new forms to loot and profiteer at the peoples expense, we can begin to develop new forms of public sector financing, bonds, etc, to advance a public-private sector economic configuration to reduce debt and unemployment and begin to both raise and create greater equality in living standards.

These are just a few ideas. I hope our readers write in with more ideas, including perhaps more examples of what is good about the Obama administration to counter what I see as a kind of left tailing of the right , if they wish.

Although the media is filled with accounts of the rightward drift of the Republican party, the misnamed "tea party" elements(far closer to the Tories in the real American revolution than to Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere and others who they would have turned over to the British) leading the Republicans out of the mainstream and helping the Democrats, no one, given the fragmented and corrupt nature of U.S. politics, where there is no serious check on the use of money in campaigns, should feel complacent.

Right Republicans can make use of the frustrations and alienation among segments of the electorate to win a low turnout election and then seek to unleash a new wave of Reaganism, ala the Gingrich Congress of 1995, which would be a catastrophe for the people.

The left really becomes the left, really becomes radical, when it becomes relevant in terms of the battle of ideas, connecting organization with policy, as against merely negating what is. We still have a chance to do that today, to began to relate to the center in ways that will strengthen both us and the center. If we fail to take that chance, either by attacking the Obama administration from left positions or passively accepting its policy positions and compromises, we will fail at a time and lose opportunities that we have not seen since the pre cold war era.

7 comments:

Carl Davidson said...

I agree with NM here, with a few nuances. We want to take aim at finance capital rather than Obama personally, but we need to note that finance capital has its representatives in Team Obama--Geithner, Rubin--and have pushed out (Romer)or kept out the best Keynesian voices--Krugman, Reich, Stiglitz and so on. Unless the balance changes here, the administration will continue to come up short.

I think pushing for a full employment program, with the governments as employer of last resort, tied with ending the wars, is a good formula. Randy Shannon of CCDS has written an excellent booklet on the topic.

So long as the Afghan war gets deeper, it is going to be very difficult for antiwar organizers to work hard and with some enthusiasm for a candidate pursuing an unjust war. That's just a political fact, even if some can get in motion because of other priorities. The war can destroy Obama and anything decent he wants to do. Watch out for McChrystal-Palin or Petreaus-Palin in 2012.

peaceapplause said...

If we are indeed only supplying conventional criticism,we are not doing very well. Historical Materialism is not conventional,neither traditional.However,it is very international-there's an idea.
Like W.E.B. Du Bois's idea of Pan-Africanism,Lenin's idea of the working class and the oppressed of all countries' uniting,Marx's idea of workingmen of all countries'uniting-but what are the connections with the Obama administration?
There are three main connections:

1. International nuclear war and war

2. International trade regulation

3. International genocide of native and oppressed peoples

The role of the international working class and its many allies,in compelling the Obama administration to help the causes and goals of the recent Vancouver meeting,for instance,covered by Scott Marshall is what the left and the communists should focus on to obtain"revelance" in today's distinctive world political economy.
Many of our Party's problems with democracy,sectarianism(both internal and external)revolve around the failure to grasp the importance of the connection between local and international,but many,if not most of the tools and food we use daily,produced socially by largely international capital's socialization of labor and privatization of both profit and natural resources generated by this theft of peoples'labor.
We have been insanely,murderously, horribly and ruthlessly "expropriated" both historically and contemporarily.
We need international unity,new forms of organization,new forms (not theory but physical plant for organization,for production of electicity,clean water,safe and healthy food,communication,transportation) of energy production,for the working class,in general.
Progessive,positive,anti-racist international unions are in position to lead this fight.
The positive tasks are to do whatever we can to compell the Obama administration to these historic tasks,in unity.
We know the grass-roots forces-the massive electorate-of this Obama administration would support this unity. We don't know what "they"(imperialists,neocons,racists,warhawks,bigots,facists,sexists,anti-Semitics,homophobics)would say,but who cares what "they" say when "I" am on my way-borrowing from Robeson's Ballad for Americans,pointing to the internationalist sources of the American working-class.
Let's put our anti-war physics,political economy,sociology,psychology,literature,history,economics,and mathematics to work to liberate the international human race.We can have supreme confidence in this duty,Fidel Castro Ruz himself,not only a theorist of socialism,but an organizer of socialism and internationalism,has recently said that president Obama is "not an assassin".

E.E.W. Clay

peaceapplause said...

If we are indeed only supplying conventional criticism,we are not doing very well. Historical Materialism is not conventional,neither traditional.However,it is very international-there's an idea.
Like W.E.B. Du Bois's idea of Pan-Africanism,Lenin's idea of the working class and the oppressed of all countries' uniting,Marx's idea of workingmen of all countries'uniting-but what are the connections with the Obama administration?
There are three main connections:

1. International nuclear war and war

2. International trade regulation

3. International genocide of native and oppressed peoples

The role of the international working class and its many allies,in compelling the Obama administration to help the causes and goals of the recent Vancouver meeting,for instance,covered by Scott Marshall is what the left and the communists should focus on to obtain"revelance" in today's distinctive world political economy.
Many of our Party's problems with democracy,sectarianism(both internal and external)revolve around the failure to grasp the importance of the connection between local and international,but many,if not most of the tools and food we use daily,produced socially by largely international capital's socialization of labor and privatization of both profit and natural resources generated by this theft of peoples'labor.
We have been insanely,murderously, horribly and ruthlessly "expropriated" both historically and contemporarily.
We need international unity,new forms of organization,new forms (not theory but physical plant for organization,for production of electicity,clean water,safe and healthy food,communication,transportation) of energy production,for the working class,in general.
Progessive,positive,anti-racist international unions are in position to lead this fight.
The positive tasks are to do whatever we can to compell the Obama administration to these historic tasks,in unity.
We know the grass-roots forces-the massive electorate-of this Obama administration would support this unity. We don't know what "they"(imperialists,neocons,racists,warhawks,bigots,facists,sexists,anti-Semitics,homophobics)would say,but who cares what "they" say when "I" am on my way-borrowing from Robeson's Ballad for Americans,pointing to the internationalist sources of the American working-class.
Let's put our anti-war physics,political economy,sociology,psychology,literature,history,economics,and mathematics to work to liberate the international human race.We can have supreme confidence in this duty,Fidel Castro Ruz himself,not only a theorist of socialism,but an organizer of socialism and internationalism,has recently said that president Obama is "not an assassin".

E.E.W. Clay

peaceapplause said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

I have no real disagreements with CD(Carl Davidson) or Peace Applause at all. I was no fan of Romer, but I certainly agree that people like Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman aren't in this administration and without people like them inside, as there were with FDR, it will be much harder for Obama to really advance an updated version of a New Deal style program, with serious full employment legislation like the kind put forward at the end of WWII and defeated by the conservative coalition, serious restructuring of the fiance capital aka the banks and the stock market.
Peace applause is also very right. Historical materialism is never conventional knee jerk criticism and those who make it so have no sense of history or dialectics. Obama himself and some in his administration have taken positions on a wide variety of issues a that are much more in line with peoples struggles than any President in the post WWII era and for that matter, any U.S. president in his own time with the exception of Roosevelt and Lincoln. If that sounds pretty extreme, we should remember the long list of Presidents, including "distinguished ones" the slaveholders Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson, the racist who threw "holy water" on the policy of Gunboat diplomacy, Wilson, and the President who mortgaged his great contributions to the advance of Civil Rights by escalating a war in Vietnam with a large racist subtext.
I also agree that it is our job to advance programs which Obama can respond to which reflect why he appealed to the people who elected him
Norman Markowitz
P.S. I apologize for using anonymous but this system rejects my comments when I use something else

Ben Sears said...

Norman's and Carl's comments are both on target, in my opinion. I believe that putting people to work at decent wages is the urgent issue of the time, and it can't be done as long as we are putting so much into the military budget. But I need some help here. I need some one to tell me in layman's terms what a federal jobs program might look like. Would a revamped and updated CCC be part of it? Would it deal with the decaying physical infrastructure of our roads, bridges, etc that we hear so much about and see evidence of everywhere? Would it involve environmental clean up of our disasters, such as BP in the Gulf and others? And would it involve longer term projects such as investment in high speed rail? or training the doctors and other medical personel we will need to staff the community healthcare centers provided for in the healthcare bill? Or training enough teachers to bring our student-teacher ratios to where they should be across the nation? I could go on, but where do we start?

Carl Davidson said...

You have a good list going, Ben, keep it up.

Here where I am in Western PA, we point to the 24 locks and dams on the upper Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela. All of them are in such a bad state that they are environmental disasters waiting to happen. We urge their repair and modernization so they can handle more modern barges that can handle wind turbine blades, which are best shipped out to the Midwest on water rather than roads, as much as possible.

It could put thousands to work at living wages locally.

This infrastructure is run by the Army Corp of Engineers, and funds could be directed this way by executive order. There would be a provision to hire the long time unemployed or never employed first, then hook them into union apprenticeship programs.

There were some funds aimed at it, but the Banksters in Team Obama blocked it. Therein lies the heart of our dilemma.

Our way out of it is pulling together a local jobs coalition that demands it--a 'squeaky wheel' coalition, if you will. Plus getting a huge turnout in DC Oct 2.