The small donors are all about Barockstar's corporate media's treatment; I give him almost no credit for the small donors in all honesty. The guy got vetted by the blue-chip big money establishment (Ken Silverstein did a good article on the rise of "Obama Inc." in Harpers' last year)...he got incredibly lucky in Illinois (all serious Senate opponents imploded from ugly martial revalations), he impressed Kerry and so got the Keynote Address (a truly terrible speech; I wrote an article about how incredibly reactionary it was) and ever since then the media love has been such that he's almost a mass cultural phenomenon as much as a political one. I just did an article (should be on ZNet main page soon) about Obama's job, for which he is being paid handsomely: to divide and confuse the Democratic Party's restless, angry, progressive and majority working class base. ADM doesn't even have to give to B.O.: he shills for them (E85 all day) without even being bribed, though he did ride around in some ADM jets a while back.

Note from host: the deleted comment was vicious and ad hominem - I caught it before FF can waste more of FC's time I hope. That's the point of FF's posts: to divert and waste left thinkers' time and energy. And of course to inflict personal harm. No such attacks alllowed if and when I can prevent them. And please no childish and outraged claims of "censorship." FF is free to do his own blog and vent viciously and personally to his heart's content across the Web....just not so easily here, at  least not when I'm paying attention.

After I noted John Wilson's (I think I have the name right - the Obama student who wrote the Paradigm Publishers book [titled This Improbable Quest --- Obama's description of his own campaign --- or something like that] celebrating Obama and calling me a member of the "Far Left") critique of my supposed lack of "pragmatism" (Wilson [or whoever] celebrates Obama for epitomizing supposedly Left pragmatism), Frederic (of whom I am an actual fan) wrote the following:  

" 'Pragmatism' has always meant something special coming from liberals, Paul. It doesn't mean acknowledging that the revolution won't come instantly. It doesn't mean advocating a wide array of reforms and alternatives that will have a revolutionary trajectory. It doesn't mean being able to discern differences among the existing power structures' managers (while simultaneously being able to see the comically obvious similarities, the similarities I think most of the country can see). It means things like: Even in the primaries, where it is possible to make candidates become even a little satisfactory for left or liberal people because they have to appeal to their base and distinguish themselves from others, that we should nonetheless hitch our wagon to someone we think can win in the national election and thus lose any chance to influence their policy. Or that we should accept the ascendance and legitimacy of capitalism, which has nothing to do with being pragmatic. Or that we should make alliances with corporations and do things guaranteed to attack even semblances of progressivism. Etc, etc."

Good insights there.  That's a lot of what's going on with the Obama campaign and with Wilson's book.  Having admittedly just glanced at the book, it seemed to have this notion that Barack and I (and Glen Ford and so on) were sort of all on the same "Left team" (even though I'm crazily "Far Left") but Barack just knows  how to get Left/progressive things done (pragmatism) in the really existing world and Street and Ford et al. don't.  Please. I'm hardly "above" or even against trying on occasion to work (pragmatically) with and through mainstream politicians (Obama included, and he's very mainstream and makes that very clear to anyone who pays attention) for important short-term reforms like, well universal health insurance, increased minimum wage, enhanced union organizing rights (a big part of Edwards' rap)  etc.,  but no we're just not on the same team any more than SDS and LBJ were on the same team in 1966-68. Here's a ZNet Sutainer commentary (influenced by Jeremy Brecher, Francis Fox Piven, and Richard Cloward) I did relating to the difference between how liberals and lefties approach (or should approach) "big change" under the existing political-economic system: "How Big Change Occurs: 'Under the Threat of Revolt.'"

Obama's a corporate liberal in a corporate neoliberal era, not even a democratic socialist like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr...that's all pretty obvious and again B.O. makes his conservative/centrist/triangulationist neo-DLC-ist-Clintonian version of "pragmatism"  pretty obvious to anyone who pays enough attention to go beneath the standard populist campaign imagery (imagery that Hillary and Edwards share, the latter with significantly more sincerity and substance but not without limits in my opinion) 

I apologize for being out of control with parenthetical comments today.

Media darling Obama was on the Tonight Show last night, where he could be heard calling himself a big "underdog" while acknowledging that he had raised $80 million so far. He wanted Jay Leno and the tens of millions of viewers to know that was really all about small donors -- everyday ordinary working class Americans.  It's just gross; very hard to watch ..and of course I have a front-row seat in Iowa.

 

 

I live in Toronto, essentially under the same capitalist system as everyone on blogs; the system is designed for capital gain. Our "current society is designed, it is very difficult to find a niche out the system unless you have the skills to avoid working. Living in the capitalist world does not empeach me to notice unequalities or to nourish altruistic values. Generally speaking, I noted that the people over here are rather made of an altruistic wood. I have my own level of greed and my own level of generosity, like most I work for survival, work for family and life should not be made so hard and be less worrisome. When a person have problem with insecure employment and pay, this person will experience more difficulties. Many people at point of time after loss of employment may became in arrears with taxes or other bills, just to get penalized more with interests and fines.. May be falling into deficit may not have happened to you, but in this system, it happens to others falling in the cracks. the past 3 elections, i volonteered for political parties I knew would not win or would not have funds to pay me. So on the accusations that the bloggers may obtain some benefits for their work on books and organizations is whatsoever irrelevant to me as to the values expressed. The political system work with funding, here like in the US, funding should be allowed by individual basis ie: with limitation and exception to corporations and unions. Our democracies have never been under greater threat than with corporate power and generally speaking this corporate power is in no way "human". Capital and domination is a new rules on human kind; profit is made while bombs falls on Innocent people. Vietnam Ho Chi Minh who fought The Japanese and was the US biggest ally in indo-china was promised independance by the US. He who had dream of democracy was betrayed by the US and that This war was only made to generate dollars for the military complex. He quoted Nixon admitting the fact. Two Million people died and people made money from it.. the truthi is we dont need so many weapons and it is unlikely we need to be extreme with gains.. I have my part of sins too, I worked a number of years in Bread labatories I am confident the product was not beneficial to general good. The pay wasn't so bad; regardless I quitted because of the unethical differences.

FYI, another event recently held in Chicago.

Well, as long as FC continues the intellectual decimation (and it is total) of his malicious ad-hominen assaulter ("FreddieFan") so be it. System is set up so that if I take down the FF comment the FC comment is lost too. There's  no contradiction in Left thought between advancing a stateless vision of the future (Marx and even Lenin [see State and Revolution 1917] embraced the hoped for "withering away of the state") good ("utopian") society and advocating a more human (social democratic and left-handed) state in the present.  None.  People need protection from "market" (corporate and capitalist) forces under currently existing class society at the same time that business elites require the state for numerous reasons including repression of the populace.  With freely associated and participatory and egalitarian producers creating democratically shared and equitably distributed abundance in the desirable postcapitalist future, the state as we know it - both its left (human welfarist /social democratic/socially redistributive) and right (repressive/corporate-welfarist/upwardly distributionist/and miltitary-imperial) functions --- ceases to hold the same meaning and relevance.

More on "pragmatism" later.  

 

What I love about your Freddie is you decry certain things, and then appeal to those very things, e.g. personal attacks, the state, and corporations. How many times in this post did you insult someone rather than attempting to go after their argument? How many times have you called me vicious and hurtful names? You say you don't like the state but are in favor of the welfare state. Huh? If you don't like the state, who is going to administer your free hand outs? You hate corporations but are you aware that your beloved Znet/Southend Press is a corporation? It's true! I sincerely ask this question, what do you plan on doing after graduation?

My own experience is that the anxiety of many citizens to attach a label to where someone stands on the political spectrum stems from efforts by history and/or political science instructors to clarify the ideologies of political groups within multiparty foreign states--thus one professor I knew always used a "Far Right to Far Left (all-encompassing) Scale" when teaching modern Italian history.

I suppose "Far Left" in modern times would be a label affixed to anyone subscribing to either the communist or anarchist ideology. A social democrat would not be placed on the Far Left ordinarily, although such a person would be far to the Left of any mass movement we have ever seen in the U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society might have constituted a move towards social democracy had it not been nipped in the bud practically out of the gates by LBJ's naive belief that he could militarily force Ho Chi Minh to recognize a permanent, non-communist South Vietnam within very short order (according to LBJ's biographer, Professor Robert Dallek); and not get bogged down in a long war which would derail his domestic policies.

Of course the Republicans insist on describing any Democrat as a leftist. Truthfully the Clintonites and the Democratic Leadership Council would never be recognized even as liberals by the old New Deal/Great Society coalition (the Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson presidencies)--the GOP's delusion of seeing Hillary as a raging "women's libber" notwithstanding.

Much of the general public also confuses liberals with leftists. Although both groups could be said to be in favor of ongoing social change, the difference between the two is of fundamental importance. The liberal believes in reformist social change while simultaneously subscribing to the idea that the existing system and its' basic tenets are fundamentally sound. Because he at least sees the broader system as fundamentally sound, he may find leftists every bit as menacing as conservatives find them to be, even while his own disputes with conservatives are very real. The radical or revolutionary, by stark contrast, believes that the system itself needs to be overturned and fully replaced.

But in conclusion a 1960s liberal would likely not see the Clintons and the pro-corporate Democratic Leadership Council as true liberals. Hillary's constant flirtations with Rightist positions apparently reflects a desire to cobble together a 51% voting majority in the November 2008 elections in the U.S. winner-take-all electoral system. Her advisor Mark Penn, in justifying his keeping leftists and even true liberals at bay, argues that Republicans can win American elections by appealing only to conservatives but that Democrats must appeal to both liberals and centrists--because liberals standing alone are not enough to produce victory.

Interesting. I was just in the Seminary Book Coop in Chicago where I picked up (did not buy)  this book - a loving portrait of Obama by one of Obama's former University of Chicago Law School students - where I found myself and others described (in a chapter titled "Why the Left Hates a Liberal") as members of the "Far Left," which apparently means people who think the Senator is quite/too  conservative/ accommodationist/ &conciliatory in relation to dominant domestic and global hiearchies and doctrines.  We terrible  "Far Leftists" supposedly don't understand "pragmatic" realities. 

Well, it's a false charge.  Since 2004 and through the present, I've been eminently pragmatic/practical about (yes all too limited) electoral choices and I've even been willing to provoke some "Far Left" ire by saying halfway  nice things about John Edwards (of whom I am critical) and for that matter about the non revolutionary/reformist  U.S. labor movement and Civil Rights and social justice movements and so on; I could go on. 

You just get labeled and then people think they know all about you.

"Far Left" to me conjures up Ronal Reagan's line about anyone to the portside of Walter Mondale or Tip O'Neil: "so far left they left America."  

 Here's the book I bought - its "Far Left" author seems promising. 

I find more and more that all exchanges of ideas, debates, and good old arguments are more about that dreaded "line of political viewpoints" rather than any of the issues. It seems that the thread of actual information being exchanged is ALWAYS dashed on the rocks of words like "leftist" "neo-con" "red" "marxist" and the other hundred words to this effect. There is so much bitching about our political affiliations and groupings that it just doesn't seem like the ideas really matter at all. Politics resemble organized sports more than anything else, every team fighting for the trophy and the prestige, money and dominance that comes with being the champion.

It's not a line, it's more the Ouroboros. If it would just finish eating maybe we could move on to some real progress.

*Sigh*

Jeffrey Rohde

We seem to have the same person sometimes being "anonymous" and sometimes being the humiliated "Walt K" and sometimes being "SGTR" and so on. Just like racists like to lump-think by generalizing about all "blacks" or about all "Arabs" (or for that matter about all "whites"), some right-wing Amerikanners like to lump every radical as a presumably Stalinist and authoritarian "Red" and to ignore key distinctions within and across the left, which actually has an eclectic and interesting spectrum. There can be no libertarians and democrats on the Left, they insist...no it's all one big Stalinst Masonic Lodge of totalitarian evil. At the comic and delusional pinnacles, they merge in Hillary-Obama, JFK, and FDR - the Democratic Party, the New York Times, Oprah, New Age spirituality, vegetarian diets, rap music, alternative sexual orientations, the Jerry Springer show (which serves fascist/racist forces by holding up the poor for extreme ridicule)...as part of the same big International Left threat. This is the paranoid mindset of neo-McCarthyism or perhaps more accurately of neo-J.Edgar Hooverism.

That's right, you don't approve of Stalin or Pol Pot because you are a kinder, gentler type of Red. All those years of tyranny in the name of the great egalitarian society? Well, let's let bygones be bygones. They weren't true leftists anyway.

The personal viciousness level from right wing troll "FreddieFan" is too high. This commenter should prepare to make the standard childish complaints about "censorship" as he will soon be placed on the deletion list. You have to be minimally human to stay here.

On New York, no plans yet. Was going to speak at an elite school out east to mark King day but some thought police went online and found out that I reject U.S.-imposed holocaust in Iraq.... and so my qualifications --- pretty abundant in all honesty (despite what vicious red-baiting professorial detractors like Kaupilla [who may well be 'Freddie Fan' but who knows] say) --- rapidly became irrelevant.

 

please let me know. Flying from Costa Rica is too much. The cost is bad enough, but the treatment from the airlines is so bad, I told American, the last time I flew to Miami, I fully intended to hitch hike the next trip.

Do you have any plans to talk in New York City anytime soon?

Chicago is far for attending Paul's lectures.. One day I hope such event is organized in Toronto- I would attend such lectures. I would even buy lunch. Paul i think your assignment at the Open University of the Left look cool; have fun. ( its amazing how job complex confuses Freddiefan; it must be hard to be limited to mumbling ).

Hey Freddie, maybe if you didn't subscribe to such an idiotic economic theory you wouldn't be poor. Besides, the balanced job complex requires you to toil at your labours instead of engaging in leisure activities like attending reeducation lectures.

I will have OUL forward you an e-ticket (money is no object for the meat puppets of the corporate elite) but cannot promise first class. Yes, as raging Randy/crazy cryofan knows, I will be dining with --- and entertaning multi-million dollar grant offers from --- the heads of the white overclass. They are eager to have their leading metropolitan areas exposed as centers of concentrated class and race oppression.