by Charles Sullivan / December 21st, 2013
You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism
that you cannot face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or
says It.
–Malcolm X
I have been reading political commentary on Black Agenda Report (BAR)
regularly of late. The site, which purveys a black leftist perspective,
regularly excoriates President Obama, as well they should. BAR has
become a trusted source in my quest to understand history and current
events. This is the home of the real left, not the pseudo left that
pervades the corporate airwaves masquerading as champions of equality.
Here, no one is paying homage to Obama or calling him a liberal or
progressive simply because he is a black democrat. No one is calling him
a socialist, either. The political commentators at BAR hold Obama to
the same standard to which they held George W. Bush and his fascist
predecessors.
Most of the self-proclaimed liberals who castigated Bush and Cheney
for their neoconservative polices are giving Obama, whose polices are no
less regressive or extreme than those of his precursors, a free ride.
This is because the president belongs to the Democratic Party, which
continues to be associated with traditional liberalism in the minds of
contemporary faux progressives and liberals, rather than the
neoliberalism that defines its policies.
Those who continue to support Obama and his backsliding pro-corporate
regime obviously have no conception about what classical liberalism and
progressivism are. They are at least half a century behind the times.
Although I may lack the political acumen to concisely define terms
such as liberalism, progressivism, and leftist, which are somewhat
subjective anyway, it is apparent to me that neoliberalism, the form of
liberalism that is actually practiced by today’s Democratic Party, bears
much in common with the neoconservatism that is associated with
contemporary Republicans. There is nothing progressive about either
ideology, and nothing in them that is beneficial to workers. To call
Obama a liberal or a socialist, as so many people do, is beyond
farcical. It strains one’s credulity to the breaking point.
I distrust Barack Obama for the same reasons that I spurn George W.
Bush, Dick Cheney, the Clintons, and any other war mongering capitalist.
My criticism has nothing to do with race or gender. It stems from
ideological differences, class conflict, and radically dissimilar values
from the ruling clique.
Among some black folk, charges of racism are leveled against any
white folks who criticize the black president in the same way that
charges of anti-Semitism are used against anyone who is critical of
Israel’s Zionist polices of apartheid that, with the aid of the U.S.,
are being carried out against the Palestinians. This is not to deny the
racism that is directed against the president. It is to philosophically
and morally disassociate myself from any and all groups of white
supremacists engaged in bigotry.
If a policy is morally reprehensible and unjust, just people have a
moral obligation to criticize it, regardless of who is responsible for
formulating and enacting such policies. Every socially conscious human
being has an ethical responsibility to take action against criminal
government or any corporation that is harming one’s community, or for
that matter, the planet.
From my perspective, BAR and WPFW’s Jared Ball are ethically
consistent and accurate in their critiques of Barack Obama and American
capitalism. These venerable warriors are true leftists who do not
compromise their principles for political expediency, cost them what it
may.
The virtually defunct radical left was once a formidable and
organized political force in the U.S. Today’s leftists are treated like
pariahs by the pseudo left and its neocon brethren. Radical leftists
pose a viable threat to the established orthodoxy. Anyone who refuses to
carry forth the performative role assigned to them by the dominant
culture is a threat to those in power. As true combatants for justice,
today’s left wing dissidents are worthy of being associated with iconic
revolutionaries like Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Mumia Abu Jamal, all
of whom happen to be black.
By contrast, Barack Obama, who mouths an endless stream of pseudo
liberal platitudes, is an unabashed disciple of Milton Friedman and the
market fundamentalism he revered. This identifies the president as a
corporate fascist and thus a promoter of inequality. It allies him with
America’s ruling class. Obama and his supporters should not be
identified in any way, shape or form with the
real left. Whatever
minutia one uses to differentiate between contemporary neoliberals and
neoconservatives is akin to splitting hairs.
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are not mortal enemies,
as portrayed in the corporate media; they are in collusion against the
world’s working class and the poor. Together, they are raping and
pillaging the Earth Mother and repressing workers through economic
violence and imposed austerity. Like costumed wrestlers performing on
television, the acrimony is not real; it is vitriolic political theater,
an enthralling puppet show for diehard believers.
We must somehow move beyond party politics, beyond the simplicity of
liberal versus conservative dichotomy, beyond left against right, and
see things as they really are rather than as we wish them to be.
Voting doesn’t change anything in a system flush with corporate
money. The structures that put the money into politics cannot be used to
extract it. Without proportional representation or corporate money,
third parties are not a viable option in state and federal elections.
They are just another distraction from reality, a mild form of symbolic
protest. Voting for justice does nothing to actually attain it. Direct
action directly applied to a problem offers the best hope for
revolutionary change.
Conversely, political dualism keeps us fighting the wrong people. It
has us believing in people and institutions that do not promote justice
and do us harm. These institutions are not what they purport to be. They
are at best a mirage; something that appears real but only exists in
the mind of the beholder.
Belief in the American Dream and perverted systems of power as a
means to justice provides a method for directing and cajoling the masses
to do the biding of the super-wealthy and all-powerful corporate state.
Faith, hope, and belief in phony people and bogus institutions function
as a form of mass hypnosis that keeps the people from organizing in
class struggle against a common oppressor—the capitalist system.
Despite reams of contradictory historical evidence, most people in
the U.S. continue to associate democracy with capitalism. It is reckless
of us to allow anyone to use these terms interchangeably without
contesting them at every opportunity. Let me be clear: Democracy is the
antithesis of capitalism! But capitalism is the product the U.S.
government, the Pentagon, and the commercial media are marketing to us
as democracy. And thus the inequality gap, the disparity between rich
and poor, is growing wider rather than shrinking.
The nemesis of all working people, regardless of where they live or
their political affiliation, is capitalism and its linear, hierarchal,
male-dominated power structures. This is why we must have an truthful
critique of capitalism and patriarchy and create alternatives that
promote the public wellbeing above corporate profits. Many promising
alternatives, such as Professor Richard Wolff’s
Worker Self-Directed Enterprise, already exist.
When the richest and most powerful people on earth, the primary
beneficiaries of capitalism, invest so many resources into demonizing
and subverting the writings of one man—Karl Marx—and the various
economic and philosophic alternatives to capitalism, inquisitive minds
want to know why. There are elements of Marxism that makes the power
elite quake in their shoes. This is what led me to read Marx years ago. I
have been reading him ever since.
Marx has helped me to comprehend why capitalists fear and loathe him.
Deep down, they know that he was right. If workers understood
capitalism from a Marxist perspective, not one in ten thousand would
voluntarily accept their performative role in this exploitative economic
system. There would be widespread conflict and social upheaval. There
would be global revolution. The power elite spends trillions of dollars
to maintain the façade of capitalism as a manifestation of democracy. In
fact, I would argue that nothing could be more opposed to democracy
than American capitalism.
The key point to understand is that capitalism, a system based upon
the ruthless exploitation and commodification of workers and the
relentless rape of our Earth Mother, stifles and represses democracy.
Capitalists abhor all forms of egalitarianism. Marx embraced them. The
mere possibility of an empowered work force troubles the capitalist’s
sleep, as did the possibility of slave rebellion, albeit it small,
distress the slaveholder.
Consider the vitriol, not to mention counter revolutionary forces
that are levied against the alternatives to capitalism. What is their
source? Who but wealthy capitalists fund America’s propaganda apparatus?
Working people in the U.S. are conditioned to reflexively recoil
against ideas they do not understand. They are psychologically
programmed to detest that which could potentially set them free.
American workers are led to believe that economic servitude and wage
slavery is freedom.
Why does a government that calls itself a democracy systemically spy
on its citizens? Why does it punish its whistle blowers but materially
reward the vilest white-collar criminals? Why is the majority of the
U.S. budget spent on funding an insatiable war machine? Why do we raise
classrooms of meat puppets rather than critical thinkers and political
dissidents? It is all done for the benefit of capitalists at the expense
of society.
It is by these means that capitalism survives and spreads like an
aggressive malignancy to every organ of the planet. Furthermore, the
majority of the wealth produced by labor is subverted to prop up the
capitalist system and to indoctrinate and oppress the worker. To the
detriment of us all, freethinking and critical analysis are discouraged
and often reprimanded in academia and elsewhere. And thus hundreds of
millions of human beings are transformed into herd animals that are led
to slaughter in the military and the world’s sweat shops. We celebrate
our freedom and patriotism on our march to the scalding pots, singing
“God Bless America.” There is no fight in us. We go too quietly and too
obediently into the good night of eternity.
Yet, despite everything and the repressive weight of history,
Americans still have a propensity to believe in myths and fairy tales.
Hope and faith in phony leaders and bogus institutions keep us servile
and docile. Irrational faith requires nothing from us. Delusion has
become the norm because too many of us are incapable of grappling with
reality. We can and must do better than capitalism or we are doomed to
an ignominious fate.
Charles Sullivan is a Master Naturalist, community
activist, and free-lance writer residing in the Ridge and Valley
Province of geopolitical West Virginia.
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Read other articles by Charles.
