Tom Hayden: "Can Podesta Craft a Transition to a New Progressive Era?" (Posted by Keith) by Keith

Tom Hayden wrote an interesting article over at HuffingtonPost.com on John Podesta, the chief of the transition team for the incoming Obama administration. It's worth a read. Here's an excerpt:

"Leaders of presidential transition teams are expected to be discreet, tight-lipped, button-down,
servants of power, but not quite so in the case of John Podesta. The senior member of the team setting up the new administration, Podesta also heads a progressive think tank and has authored his own book on progressive politics, which includes a draft inaugural speech.

Podesta's 2008 book The Power of Progress will be scanned by pundits seeking clues to the new administration's thinking, but that could be a false trail. Podesta has expressed specific views distinctly different from Obama's, especially on Iraq, where he has long favored a one-year pullout of all American troops. The value of Podesta's book is as a guide to where a progressive master of politics -- Podesta was chief of staff under Bill Clinton -- wants to see American policies evolve in the future.

Podesta is more than a technician of power. It should be of interest on the Left and Right that he grounds himself in the tradition of social movements, many of them radical in their time, which produced the Progressive Era, the New Deal and the civil rights revolution. He is well-read in these histories, and is a direct Chicago descendant of the white immigrant [Italian] working class that benefited so greatly from labor and social legislation. In addition, he has an intense awareness of the racist legacies that left so many blacks and Latinos excluded from the gains of those eras, "an important lesson that should chasten progressives to this day," he writes. It was during the populist and progressive eras, for example, that African-Americans were massively disenfranchised in the South, while white women were on the path to suffrage."

Read the rest here.

Obama Won! What's Next? - Part 3: A genuine crisis of capitalism (X.) by X.

While the Obama campaign developed a brilliant electoral strategy which it executed almost flawlessly, it benefitted in the last month from a massive shift among “middle of the road” voters shaken out of complacency by the sudden collapse of the US economy (for a good primer on the causes and implications of the crisis, check out Keith’s latest article here). The ongoing economic crisis -the most severe the US has faced since the Great Depression- increases both dangers and opportunities in the years to come: Opportunities to grow the revolutionary democratic movement rapidly and make it possible for people to build and seize power (political, economic, cultural, social) as capitalist institutions fail to deliver (governmental administrations, businesses, undemocratic NGOs, etc.). Dangers such as counter-revolutionary attempts by neo-fascist forces behind the Cheney/Bush regime to reverse the verdict of the 2008 elections by taking advantage of a panic (among both the population and the capitalist class as a whole), plunging the world into more war and destruction. Which way the future tilts will largely depend on the role played by progressives and revolutionaries in the Obama Movement: Specifically, will we succeed in empowering the Obama Movement to consolidate itself and evolve from a largely spontaneous 21st century progressive class alliance tied to the Obama campaign to a permanent and independent revolutionary democratic coalition?

Obama Won! What's Next? - Part 2: A provisional government (X.) by X.

The Obama administration will be the first government led by new economy capital representatives (think Obama) in a power-sharing arrangement with some of the less backward old economy capital representatives (think the Clintons) and, to a much lesser extent, representatives of various sections of the 21st century progressive class alliance that makes up the Obama Movement. To a much lesser extent because the classes and groups that made Obama’s victory possible through their organizing prowess (students, creative class workers, the Afro-American & Latino communities, expanding unions, etc.) have yet to consolidate our movement and develop capable, independent leadership. In other words: we (students and workers) don’t have a seat at the table in the Obama government because we don’t have the independent power to lift someone into one of those seats. And even if we did have such power, we don’t have anyone ready to sit there yet! Consider: the progressive and revolutionary US Left still can’t win a single election on its own; it still can’t run one local government administration that empowers people to transform a single major city in the US. Since the power-sharing arrangement shaping up in the Obama administration is brand new and follows the overthrow of an opposite power-sharing arrangement, the Obama White House is best understood as a provisional government: untested, subject to change, conflicted over ambitious goals and tentative approaches. From what we learned during the Obama campaign however, we can expect deliberative and effective leadership at the top in terms of achieving the goals of the various players in the power-sharing arrangement. We would do well to get quite clear on exactly what financial and political factions dominate the Obama government and what we can expect and not expect from them (in terms of support for a new New Deal, withdrawing troops from Iraq, national healthcare, etc.).

Obama Won! What's Next? - Part 1: A dictatorship overthrown (X.) by X.

In the November elections, the more progressive section of new economy capital (think Google and its financial backers) united with the Obama campaign and the Obama Movement to overthrow the dictatorship of the most backwards section of old economy capital (think Halliburton and its financial backers), represented by the Cheney/Bush regime. No, this does not mean capitalism was overthrown. But Republican neo-fascism (built on white supremacy) was overthrown. On election night, the Obama Movement celebrated this tremendous victory in US cities large and small in scenes mildly reminiscent of Portugal during the Carnation Revolution that overthrew the fascist Estado Novo in 1974.

Obama Won! What's Next? - Intro (X.) by X.

Even as we marched with hundreds through the streets of New Brunswick on election night chanting “Yes, we can!”, “O-ba-ma!” and “No more Bush!”, even as city residents cheered from their porches and windows -some irresistibly pulled into the spontaneous celebration rally- even as the police helplessly watched the marchers disregard their every attempt to direct the demonstration back to the campus and away from the center of the city, even as we marveled at the immediate goodwill and organic teamwork in our newfound coalition of natural 21st century allies (students, creative class and union workers, grassroots community and antiwar organizers – white, Black, Latino & Asian, women & men, gay & straight), even as we walked yet another mile through the student ghetto at 1AM, giddy with excitement, relief and exhaustion (we’d been up since 5AM the morning before to turn up the vote throughout the city), even then… we couldn’t help but think about what’s next, about the changed world we would wake up in, about the need to adapt to the new circumstances quickly...

Where to start? There is so much to write about and as always so little time… (a problem that I’ll address in an upcoming post). The first and most important step is to get the key concepts out and then address them one at a time over the coming weeks. I started to work on another opus of an article and then realized I really ought to start using this blog as a blog(!) with regular (daily?) updates and not as a repository for infrequent dissertations. So here goes, expect shorter but much more frequent updates in the week to come.

Discussion on the meaning of Revolution in our movement (Erik, X., Steve) by Steve the Pirate

This is a conversation started by Erik one late night in which he discusses the framing of using the word REVOLUTION and what it means to our Revolutionary Democratic Movement. The latter messages are responses.

-So I had this long conversation with my mom about how I view the world. What we are trying to accomplish, what Rev Dem is.. etc. etc. It was fun but she kept being focused on how to her the word revolution had a negative connotation, and blah blah, I tried to talk it out with her, but it only went so far, but at the end she said hey, "why don't you call it...... instead.(if you want to know what she suggested, you must read along!)

Revolutionary Democracy- So it's a little late in the game to mess with a brand that's been working. But I been thinking about it, I say we really have something going with this whole "Not Left, Not Right, but Forward" and the whole EON "millennium" vibe. It's slick my mom will give to an org like that. Also they played around with a bunch of names for my generation including the "zips" "zeroes" "nothings" but in all the election coverage of the "youth vote" we were referred to as the "millennials".

SO I also think a theme we push with great success is the differentiating ourselves from the traditional left. I say we keep on with that motif. I think that the more we demarcate ourselves as something new, original, and based on a wide variety of influences, some from the left, some from corporate, some from our experience at New Brunswick, the more we have a chance of getting people really excited about what we're doing. The fact is the world Revolution is not a good one, I mean don't get me wrong to those of us who are in a place to understand this word in an unfettered context I will always consider myself a "Revolutionary", but to be honest I've always had a problem with the word "Revolution."

When I was at the first TSU retreat and we were in some abstract discussion about Revolution and Mark Pruce said something and he said, "remember what the word revolution means" it means to go in a circle. And he seemed to think this was a good thing, but I distinctly remember thinking, "Wow it does mean go in a circle, that's kind of lame". Now I know if you throw in the concept of a dialectic Revolution actually means progression of some kind, but the fact is that the average person is never going to want to deal with dialectics at 8am in the morning if you know what I mean.

SOOOO, My point is this. X we've talked more often about how with the law of accelerated returns that things are going to happen quickly society is going to shift quickly and what really matters isn't forcing that future to have the identity we choose, but to ensure that it is determined democratically.

Soooooo my mom said "why don't you call it" Evolutionary instead. And I thought about it, and I said, "Mom ya know if we do change the brand I promise you'll get quite flattered." I really think that these are a real viable way to go, and I think it is a really important decision. I know we say not to argue over words, but I'm making the case that I think as much as we ground what we do in a firm understanding of the past. We need to be bold, Keith, you always have that poem at the bottom of your emails, about how we can't take our poetry from the past but have to come up with our own images. I really think we need to complete the break with whole conception of 19th century storm the barricades. Especially in these economic times. It's the complete wrong sort of idea. Unless there are food riots in America, people are not going to seize the state by force, and I cannot imagine any scenario where we do seize the state by force in the foreseeable, ending positively for us, or the rest of the world. So let's break with the idea.

The truth is think about it, and i want to offer Two options.

Evolutionary Democracy
rEvolutionary Democracy

They suggest what we are doing which is allowing more efficient systems to take over in society, and to give people control over how their society changes evolves and where it's going.



We'll talk more about this some other time,

Red Erik

X's response

Time is just too short these days...Anyways...

I use the word revolution because it is accurate. From dictionary.com:

-An overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.

I would add, most importantly, economic. And social, cultural, etc.

Democracy, when allowed its full revolutionary swing, will mean a complete repudiation of capitalism as people build a completely different world. The capitalist system will be as alien to the future denizens of Revolutionary Democracy as the Middle-Ages are alien to us two hundred years after the bourgeois revolutions (we can barely imagine what it was like to live under the despotic rule of king and church). Whether it ever involves barricades to resist martial law or mass street mobilization to prevent the overthrow of the emerging revolutionary democratic rule (as with the attempted coup in Venezuela) is irrelevant. The scope of the transformation (and thus the essence and sharpness of the struggle for and against it) will be revolutionary. I would feel dishonest calling it anything else.

But we don't need to "convert" everyone to the idea that democracy requires revolution! We just need to organize people to practice democracy. Hence, EON should not require that its members adhere to "revolutionary democracy" (anymore than Tent State should, even as it is freely discussed). We don't need to come up with a single brand and a single formula to satisfy everyone's comfort level (that always fails, including in corporate advertising). We should work with all our allies to develop ideas, projects and organizations that accurately represent the many different sections of the 21st century progressive class alliance. In the case of your Mom, who has been a great supporter of the movement for years, I would recommend asking her what she would like to see in terms of ideas, projects and organizations rather than trying to ask her to join the Pirate Caucus...

One love,

-X.

A Pirate Response

I agree with both of you. We have to show "outsiders" or people not in the movement,what we are really about. Now it is not easy to get what we are about in one paper or one meeting, for most of us, it took months becoming organizers to conceptualize the work we are doing and the big picture. I know my own parents have had some misconceptions from " Now all of a sudden, you're a communist!?" to "Why do you spend so much time with this, they will not care about what happens to you after you graduate!"

It is so hard to slap together something catchy and slick, to a movement that has become an extended family and a new culture to counter the "American" culture and "counter-culture." There is nothing wrong with playing with ideas like pirates and the Matrix, if it works. YAR!!

Maybe the economic crisis is just the atmosphere to get ideas out there to people, offering them new and "revolutionary" ideas. I think we have already broken away with the idea of "waiting for the revolution," we are making sure that Revolution happens without capitalism knowing it, that its "legs being cut from underneath," to use a figurative metaphor. The "revolution is happening" is more our thinking, slowly, but surely.

We can't get caught up in words because they are easily turn against us. A lot of use the WORD "revolution" a lot because it means different things to different people, even jokingly. The MOVEMENT knows what we mean because it is almost like an inside joke. So is it so hard to open ourselves to "outsiders," or are "outsiders" open enough to accept new possibilities?

This idea of "THE MOVEMENT" could be emphasized, its' really up to us. Erik, your parents have been nothing but supportive and so have mine. It's up to us to keep them connected to the movement (plugged in). Look at that used "movement" in a sentence without realizing it. It was because of people like Mrs. Straub and others who challenge us to not get "comfortable" with being the "new left," but going beyond that, despite what simple minded reactionaries say, right or left.

Let's take some time in the retreat to seriously consider where we are going and how we are getting there. The movement's at the 7 inning stretch of a decade of organizing. It's time we show the rest of the world was going down in the Bruns.

TAKE EVERYTHING YOU CAN, GIVE NOTHING BACK,
Steve the Pirate

Please tell us what you think!