Aug 25, 2010
There
is no cavalry coming over the ridge to save the people from massed
capital. Certainly not the Democrats, whose self-caged left wing now
finds its marginalized encampments under lockdown by their own
president's hostile patrols, while the GOP and its Tea Party irregulars
howl from the circling darkness. That's what happens when progressives
maneuver themselves onto the same side of the battlefield as Goldman
Sachs, as they did with abandon in 2007-08, deliriously fighting their
way into a cul-de-sac in which they are now surrounded.
The
leftish brigades rallied to a commander who styled himself an
incarnation of Abraham Lincoln, but turned out to be a General George
McClellan, the Union's first commander of the Army of the Potomac.
McClellan was great at rousing the troops and putting his army on
parade, but constantly overestimated his Confederate adversaries and, in
Lincoln's final estimation, refused to fight. The political roots of
his reluctance to crush the Confederacy became clear after his dismissal
when, in 1864, he challenged Lincoln on the Democratic "peace" party's
ticket. McClellan never really wanted to win the war, or, at the very
least, saw victory in a very different way than Lincoln and Ulysses S.
Grant.
It
has long been clear that Barack Obama's idea of victory required
decisively defeating the Left of his own party. Everyone to his left is
to be neutralized, while those to his right rate an open hand and
endless concessions, the scenario from the very start of his health care
"negotiations" with the drug and insurance industries. Victory in the
racial arena means an end to race agitation, a Black stand-down, which
remains largely in place. Success in war, not pursuit of peace, is his
goal, one that will surely elude him, but not for lack of trying.
Obama
and finance capital began an early, thoroughly vetted, and white hot
love affair that was anchored in mutual contempt for those who would
challenge the rule of money. He has delivered the highest return on
corporate campaign investment in the history of bourgeois democracy,
allowing Wall Street to pocket at least $12 trillion in return for contributions of less than $1 million per investment house. (Goldman Sachs was top giver, at $994,795.) Obama was BP's biggest political campaign recipient: $71,000,
an investment that boosted the corporation's value by billions -- albeit
temporarily -- when the president opened up offshore drilling in the
Gulf of Mexico.
Obviously,
Goldman Sachs and BP considered Obama a "greater good," in terms of
their interests, than John McCain. And they made out like bandits,
confirming their assessment of Obama's immense value to their side in
the class war. The question is, how in the hell did lefties conclude
that Big Capital's and Big Oil's "greater good" candidate was also the
progressive side's fountain of Hope -- or even a "lesser evil" -- in 2008?
Both camps placed their bets on Obama, but only one side could possibly
win.
It
is the Left that wound up trapped in the cul-de-sac, with every major
item on its 2008 political wish list betrayed, sidetracked, mangled or
spat upon by Obama and his friends -- although, to be fair to the Devil,
the Left had often simply imagined they had Obama's ear or support when
such was not even remotely true. On war, for example.
Most devastatingly, Obama and his Democratic
legislative allies have successfully shielded their Wall Street masters
from anything worthy of the name financial reform. This means finance
capital and its "shadow," derivatives-based economy (nominally, ten
times bigger than the "real" global economy) remain beyond the reach of
meaningful public intervention by conventional methods. With the air
knocked out of mainstream reformers' bony chests, Wall Street is poised
for a Great Offensive against the political and social infrastructure of
the United States.
Producing
nothing of real value, fatally hooked on ever-mounting rates of return,
simultaneously divorced from and a parasite on the "real" economy, and
with the executive and legislative branches in their pockets, the Lords
of Capital are set to devour the entirety of the public sector -- while
forcing the public to finance the feast. The rallying cry is
"austerity," but the motivation is not, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman maintains, ideological. Rather, it is hunger.
Finance
capital is, at this stage of the system's decline, incapable of
reproducing itself through productive investment, and so must feed on
existing producers or on the State. Since Wall Street over the decades
has already broken up, consumed and exported much of the U.S. productive
economy, that leaves the State and all of its parts. Far from acting as
a brake on his vampire friends, Obama leads the charge on corporate
hijacking of public education, and signaled in January 2009 that all
elements of the safety net, including Social Security, should be "on the
table" -- which can only mean some form of privatization.
The
pace of finance capital deterioration quickens, accelerating the
timetable of the Right's offensive. As the hunger grows, Wall Street's
servants become more aggressive and demanding, and there is nothing in
the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, to stop them.
One
truth remains: only a massed people can defeat massed capital. If the
American Left is capable of bearing that in mind in the critical times
ahead, it might just escape the cul-de-sac and make some modest
contribution to the world.
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Glen Ford
Glen Ford (1949-2021) was the co-Founder and Executive Editor of the Black Agenda Report. He was a socialist, a Vietnam War-era military veteran and a member of the Black Panther Party. He served in the news media over many years in his professional life. He was the Capitol Hill, State Department and White House correspondent for the Mutual Black Network, an American radio network. He co-launched, produced, and hosted the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television, America's Black Forum, in 1977.
There
is no cavalry coming over the ridge to save the people from massed
capital. Certainly not the Democrats, whose self-caged left wing now
finds its marginalized encampments under lockdown by their own
president's hostile patrols, while the GOP and its Tea Party irregulars
howl from the circling darkness. That's what happens when progressives
maneuver themselves onto the same side of the battlefield as Goldman
Sachs, as they did with abandon in 2007-08, deliriously fighting their
way into a cul-de-sac in which they are now surrounded.
The
leftish brigades rallied to a commander who styled himself an
incarnation of Abraham Lincoln, but turned out to be a General George
McClellan, the Union's first commander of the Army of the Potomac.
McClellan was great at rousing the troops and putting his army on
parade, but constantly overestimated his Confederate adversaries and, in
Lincoln's final estimation, refused to fight. The political roots of
his reluctance to crush the Confederacy became clear after his dismissal
when, in 1864, he challenged Lincoln on the Democratic "peace" party's
ticket. McClellan never really wanted to win the war, or, at the very
least, saw victory in a very different way than Lincoln and Ulysses S.
Grant.
It
has long been clear that Barack Obama's idea of victory required
decisively defeating the Left of his own party. Everyone to his left is
to be neutralized, while those to his right rate an open hand and
endless concessions, the scenario from the very start of his health care
"negotiations" with the drug and insurance industries. Victory in the
racial arena means an end to race agitation, a Black stand-down, which
remains largely in place. Success in war, not pursuit of peace, is his
goal, one that will surely elude him, but not for lack of trying.
Obama
and finance capital began an early, thoroughly vetted, and white hot
love affair that was anchored in mutual contempt for those who would
challenge the rule of money. He has delivered the highest return on
corporate campaign investment in the history of bourgeois democracy,
allowing Wall Street to pocket at least $12 trillion in return for contributions of less than $1 million per investment house. (Goldman Sachs was top giver, at $994,795.) Obama was BP's biggest political campaign recipient: $71,000,
an investment that boosted the corporation's value by billions -- albeit
temporarily -- when the president opened up offshore drilling in the
Gulf of Mexico.
Obviously,
Goldman Sachs and BP considered Obama a "greater good," in terms of
their interests, than John McCain. And they made out like bandits,
confirming their assessment of Obama's immense value to their side in
the class war. The question is, how in the hell did lefties conclude
that Big Capital's and Big Oil's "greater good" candidate was also the
progressive side's fountain of Hope -- or even a "lesser evil" -- in 2008?
Both camps placed their bets on Obama, but only one side could possibly
win.
It
is the Left that wound up trapped in the cul-de-sac, with every major
item on its 2008 political wish list betrayed, sidetracked, mangled or
spat upon by Obama and his friends -- although, to be fair to the Devil,
the Left had often simply imagined they had Obama's ear or support when
such was not even remotely true. On war, for example.
Most devastatingly, Obama and his Democratic
legislative allies have successfully shielded their Wall Street masters
from anything worthy of the name financial reform. This means finance
capital and its "shadow," derivatives-based economy (nominally, ten
times bigger than the "real" global economy) remain beyond the reach of
meaningful public intervention by conventional methods. With the air
knocked out of mainstream reformers' bony chests, Wall Street is poised
for a Great Offensive against the political and social infrastructure of
the United States.
Producing
nothing of real value, fatally hooked on ever-mounting rates of return,
simultaneously divorced from and a parasite on the "real" economy, and
with the executive and legislative branches in their pockets, the Lords
of Capital are set to devour the entirety of the public sector -- while
forcing the public to finance the feast. The rallying cry is
"austerity," but the motivation is not, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman maintains, ideological. Rather, it is hunger.
Finance
capital is, at this stage of the system's decline, incapable of
reproducing itself through productive investment, and so must feed on
existing producers or on the State. Since Wall Street over the decades
has already broken up, consumed and exported much of the U.S. productive
economy, that leaves the State and all of its parts. Far from acting as
a brake on his vampire friends, Obama leads the charge on corporate
hijacking of public education, and signaled in January 2009 that all
elements of the safety net, including Social Security, should be "on the
table" -- which can only mean some form of privatization.
The
pace of finance capital deterioration quickens, accelerating the
timetable of the Right's offensive. As the hunger grows, Wall Street's
servants become more aggressive and demanding, and there is nothing in
the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, to stop them.
One
truth remains: only a massed people can defeat massed capital. If the
American Left is capable of bearing that in mind in the critical times
ahead, it might just escape the cul-de-sac and make some modest
contribution to the world.
Glen Ford
Glen Ford (1949-2021) was the co-Founder and Executive Editor of the Black Agenda Report. He was a socialist, a Vietnam War-era military veteran and a member of the Black Panther Party. He served in the news media over many years in his professional life. He was the Capitol Hill, State Department and White House correspondent for the Mutual Black Network, an American radio network. He co-launched, produced, and hosted the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television, America's Black Forum, in 1977.
There
is no cavalry coming over the ridge to save the people from massed
capital. Certainly not the Democrats, whose self-caged left wing now
finds its marginalized encampments under lockdown by their own
president's hostile patrols, while the GOP and its Tea Party irregulars
howl from the circling darkness. That's what happens when progressives
maneuver themselves onto the same side of the battlefield as Goldman
Sachs, as they did with abandon in 2007-08, deliriously fighting their
way into a cul-de-sac in which they are now surrounded.
The
leftish brigades rallied to a commander who styled himself an
incarnation of Abraham Lincoln, but turned out to be a General George
McClellan, the Union's first commander of the Army of the Potomac.
McClellan was great at rousing the troops and putting his army on
parade, but constantly overestimated his Confederate adversaries and, in
Lincoln's final estimation, refused to fight. The political roots of
his reluctance to crush the Confederacy became clear after his dismissal
when, in 1864, he challenged Lincoln on the Democratic "peace" party's
ticket. McClellan never really wanted to win the war, or, at the very
least, saw victory in a very different way than Lincoln and Ulysses S.
Grant.
It
has long been clear that Barack Obama's idea of victory required
decisively defeating the Left of his own party. Everyone to his left is
to be neutralized, while those to his right rate an open hand and
endless concessions, the scenario from the very start of his health care
"negotiations" with the drug and insurance industries. Victory in the
racial arena means an end to race agitation, a Black stand-down, which
remains largely in place. Success in war, not pursuit of peace, is his
goal, one that will surely elude him, but not for lack of trying.
Obama
and finance capital began an early, thoroughly vetted, and white hot
love affair that was anchored in mutual contempt for those who would
challenge the rule of money. He has delivered the highest return on
corporate campaign investment in the history of bourgeois democracy,
allowing Wall Street to pocket at least $12 trillion in return for contributions of less than $1 million per investment house. (Goldman Sachs was top giver, at $994,795.) Obama was BP's biggest political campaign recipient: $71,000,
an investment that boosted the corporation's value by billions -- albeit
temporarily -- when the president opened up offshore drilling in the
Gulf of Mexico.
Obviously,
Goldman Sachs and BP considered Obama a "greater good," in terms of
their interests, than John McCain. And they made out like bandits,
confirming their assessment of Obama's immense value to their side in
the class war. The question is, how in the hell did lefties conclude
that Big Capital's and Big Oil's "greater good" candidate was also the
progressive side's fountain of Hope -- or even a "lesser evil" -- in 2008?
Both camps placed their bets on Obama, but only one side could possibly
win.
It
is the Left that wound up trapped in the cul-de-sac, with every major
item on its 2008 political wish list betrayed, sidetracked, mangled or
spat upon by Obama and his friends -- although, to be fair to the Devil,
the Left had often simply imagined they had Obama's ear or support when
such was not even remotely true. On war, for example.
Most devastatingly, Obama and his Democratic
legislative allies have successfully shielded their Wall Street masters
from anything worthy of the name financial reform. This means finance
capital and its "shadow," derivatives-based economy (nominally, ten
times bigger than the "real" global economy) remain beyond the reach of
meaningful public intervention by conventional methods. With the air
knocked out of mainstream reformers' bony chests, Wall Street is poised
for a Great Offensive against the political and social infrastructure of
the United States.
Producing
nothing of real value, fatally hooked on ever-mounting rates of return,
simultaneously divorced from and a parasite on the "real" economy, and
with the executive and legislative branches in their pockets, the Lords
of Capital are set to devour the entirety of the public sector -- while
forcing the public to finance the feast. The rallying cry is
"austerity," but the motivation is not, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman maintains, ideological. Rather, it is hunger.
Finance
capital is, at this stage of the system's decline, incapable of
reproducing itself through productive investment, and so must feed on
existing producers or on the State. Since Wall Street over the decades
has already broken up, consumed and exported much of the U.S. productive
economy, that leaves the State and all of its parts. Far from acting as
a brake on his vampire friends, Obama leads the charge on corporate
hijacking of public education, and signaled in January 2009 that all
elements of the safety net, including Social Security, should be "on the
table" -- which can only mean some form of privatization.
The
pace of finance capital deterioration quickens, accelerating the
timetable of the Right's offensive. As the hunger grows, Wall Street's
servants become more aggressive and demanding, and there is nothing in
the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, to stop them.
One
truth remains: only a massed people can defeat massed capital. If the
American Left is capable of bearing that in mind in the critical times
ahead, it might just escape the cul-de-sac and make some modest
contribution to the world.
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