Re: [Marxism] The Derivatives Game By RALPH NADER

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark wrote:
Fred wrote of his preference for "McKinney whose campaign has deeper
> Black and working class roots than Nader's."
>
> Is there any real evidence of this? My impression is that the
> campaign drew very few new forces into the mix, while I'm sure that
> the vastly larger numbers of people involved with Nader include more
> working people and more blacks than the McKinney campaign.

Fred comments:
McKinney represents a recent split of a Black politician, with origins and
real roots in her Black community in Atlanta, who tried to represent the
interests and sentiments of the working people of the Black community, which
she identified with herself, in Congress through the Democratic Party. That
is she accepted the two-party system as an irrefragable fact, and tried to
work within this framework for the common people (especially the specially
oppressed) against the "system."

She did this with considerable more consistency than other Black politicians
in Comgress, including on such questions as Israel and Palestine and other
issues, and ultimately found herself excluded despite her strong local base
of support.

I personally can't think of a more important split from the two party system
in recent years. This is a fact which cuts both ways. It shows the continued
power of the two party system to contain politics in this country, but also
highlights real social forces tending toward opposition historically, whose
existence can be signaled by individuals particularly principled and
possessing more than average moral force.

Ruthless' contribution on Detroit is useful, and my general impression is
that McKinney gets a strong response in Black communities, EVEN THOUGH IT
HAS ALWAYS BEEN DEAD CERTAIN THAT THE BLACK COMMUNITY WILL VOTE FOR OBAMA IN
MASS AND ALMOST UNANIMOUSLY. The Black activists who support McKinney -- for
instance from New Orleans, where she has been active from the beginning of
the present crisis there (which started earlier than in the rest of the
country) -- are another example of her base. Mark may dismiss the
Reconstruction Party as old hat, but it is nonetheless a new formation. The
activists who respond to what she says are much broader than that.  And I
think it is safe to assume that most of those who identify with what
McKinney is saying will vote for Obama.

I accept that Mark sees more Black activists and workers involved in the
Nader campaign than in the McKinney campaign in the Cleveland area, but I
think the McKinney campaign is more reflective of the broader Black working
class tendency to want something better than the current two-party
semitotalitarian system which serves those who rape the oppressed to save
their wealth. Mark has trouble recognizing this because the overwhelming
majority of the Blacks who respond to McKinney WILL VOTE FOR OBAMA. And even
actively support his victory. This may be partly responsible for what Mark
sees in Cleveland.

McKinney represents a significant break in a class/national direction from
the Democratic Party. Forced by the Democrats, of course, but of course she
had the option of attempting to adjust to the situation and winning her way
back into their good graces. She did not attempt this.

As Obama's victory becomes more likely, the enthusiasm for him will rise in
the Black community even though they will continue to respond to what
McKinney has to say, just as many would have responded to what a Malcolm X
might have said in the same circumstances. 

Mark has frequently commented on the declining enthusiasm for Obama in the
Black working class, but I think this is changing and is bound to change as
the realistic prospect of his victory approaches consummation. 
PartlyAn actual historic change -- quite different than the Black
congresspeople and so on. 

I suspected that the decline in enthusiasm was less about Obama's bad
positions, than about the sense that the racist campaigning -- direct and
indirect -- against him would lead to his defeat. People began to accept
that Obama could not be elected, given the racist campaign against him and
his conservative rather than militant response. This was a variation, even
in the Black community, of what I have labeled the "Obama is toast"
mythology (apologies to the inspired but politically inaccurate originator,
Ruthless).

I believe that the support for Obama is a form of motion in the US workers
and oppressed -- including whites (and including whites who have racist
prejudices) -- that has little or nothing to do with the Nader campaign, or
McKinney campaigns directly and immediately. It is related more to the
actual changes taking place in the working class and oppressed nationalities
today even as they prepare to vote for Obama. 

I see the McKinney campaign as a vanguard expression of the class and
national motion which is reflected in the mass response to the purely
electoral imperialist-liberal Democratic Obama campaign. Despite the fact
that they are programmatically counterposed politically and do not look to
the same social forces, they are nonetheless in part expressions of a single
historical process which I view as progressive.

These are general observations. I began to see them play out in a
predominantly Latino and minority Black workforce before I was laid off.
Since then, the presentation has suffered from greater abstractness. 

But for me, this is rooted in a long history which does not begin with
learning from the US-SWP, which I joined (on the level of the Young
Socialist Alliance) in 1964 after several years of important political
experiences.  I learned a lot there, but I came into and even around the SWP
with a core of the ideas I still hold especially about the Black struggle
and  also even the revolutionary potential of the working people in general
in the United States. 

dI learned from Cannon about the American revolution, but, through the
totality of my experiences including and above all the in the civil rights
and early antiwar movements, I came in as a bit of a Cannonite-Malcolm Xite
sui-generis. 

I had already learned quite a bit  from the Black nationality and the civil
rights movement in practice. That's an old experience, but the last great
revolutionary experience of the common people of this country. I stand by
it.

I see the McKinney campaign as a vanguard expression of the class and
national motion which is reflected in the mass response to the purely
electoral bourgeois-liberal Democratic Obama campaign.

Frankly, Mark is by now quite familiar with my views on the McKinney
question, and I would honestly appreciate -- I mean this as a friendly
request -- not being nitpicked at by him every time I make this point. He
seems to be waging prolonged pinprick g-war (or ahmad estreugal, as it was
sometimes called when I was a lad) against my position.

I don't harass him constantly about being for Nader, although I do not think
he has made the best political choice. My grounds for this are quite clearly
implicit in how I explain my position on McKinney, and despite my admiration
for he plain political heroism of the 2004 campaign, and his continuing
positive role in the electoral arena today. 

I have explained again and again, that I do not approach this question as
one who believes that the gradual numerical strengthening of the Green Party
or the "Nader movement" over the years can lead to the emergence of a mass
challenge to the imperialist`parties. The mass challenge, electoral or not,
will emerge from class-national struggle, not as a consequence of current
third-party-building efforts.

I have explained again and again why I support McKinney. My position is
quite clear. Mark has every right to disagree with me, as he does, but very
little to act as though he cannot comprehend what it is.

This doesn't mean that he shouldn't contribute the facts about Cleveland as
he sees them. That is information worth having.
Fred Feldman




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