What has been accomplished?

I voted for the first time in eight years yesterday. I have no confidence that just because Obama won, the world will become a better place. I have every confidence that if McCain had managed to somehow swipe the election the world would have become a much much more dangerous place.

I am pleased beyond reason that the US managed to elect a black man as president. Hopefully we’ll stop imprisoning so many of them, but if I recall correctly, that issue never came up in the election campaign. More than half of my siblings are of African (and two with Asian) descent, and I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that a large part of my decision to vote this year came out of the following self-assessment: I do not want to look my siblings (who are not anti-capitalists, anti-statists, or anarchists), my children, or my eventual (maybe) grandchildren in the eyes, and tell them that when given the opportunity to help vote a black man into the presidency, I abstained.

Friends and colleagues on the internets have written some important things on this win which I would like to recommend to my readers. These posts make the point to which I allude in the title of this post clear. As Obama himself said last night, “This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.” Perhaps. If an Obama presidency has the opportunity to make positive change, it will happen only insofar as he is held responsible for making the bold changes we all need.

We don’t need a new American century – the last one was terrible. We don’t need new American leadership. We do need some basic decency. We do need all sorts of things that would be called ’socialism’ by McCain’s campaign: national health care, job-creation, the production and expansion of our manufacturing base, the re-regulation of the financial industries, and much, much more.

Some thoughts from these good folks after the jump…Nate, from “What in the hell…” wrote:

I decided this time around that it really does matter who wins the election. I’d always thought before that it didn’t matter. I think the world will be better off if Obama wins than if McCain wins. That’s not to say that Obama will do great things for working people, far from it. (I wrote an opinion piece recently at Ericco’s prompting, for our IWW branch newsletter, arguing that our organization’s stance as neither electoral nor anti-electoral is a strength. Our emphasis is on building a working class organization and movement, the rest is not our bag.) I was talking to my pal Jefferson about this on the phone today (he gently accused me of having drunk the Obama kool aid, though eventually agreed that I’m [right] that we’re better off if McCain loses). He said that he thinks the Bush administration may have left a huge gift to whoever is the next president. All they’ll really have to do is not be Bush. After things being so terrible a lot of us may be like “gosh, it’s not terrible lately! wow, I forgot how that feels!” Which means that little will have to happen. That’s one option. Another is that Obama is awesome (I doubt it) but the economy and all that is totally fucked and he’s a one term president. I’m sure there’s other options. I don’t feel that optimistic either way, not at the institutional level. Good things won’t come from above.

Max Forte, of Open Anthropology, wrote cautious support, and, after the parts I don’t quote below, makes some key points regarding the fetishization of leaders:

It was very tempting, on many occasions, to simply shout support for Barack Obama. Everyone he ran against seemed determined to make him look good. I started posting months ago about Hillary Clinton’s smear campaign, and the vile undertones of racism that emerged early on. I am personally very relieved not to have to hear from McCain and Palin again, and especially the latter who distinguished herself for her unforgivable ignorance, malice, and sheer dishonesty. Goodbye, get lost, you lost.

Without a doubt, I will return to criticizing the next government of the U.S. to the extent that President-elect Obama lives up to his word to expand the war in Afghanistan and to station tens of thousands of troops in Iraq even past a “withdrawal” date.

President-elect Obama has just finished offering his victory speech. He spoke of “a new dawn of American leadership” in the world. He will need to understand, hopefully sooner rather than later, that some of us, perhaps most of us, do not want your “leadership.”

Kevin of Texturbation (sporting a new look), points out the flip side of victory: 46% of Americans were prepared to vote for the ‘new’ McCain. His 20-month-old nephew knows Obama is a “good ‘un.

It seems that 46% of voting Americans couldn’t grasp that simple truth.

I’m not saying that my 20-month-old nephew, whose entire vocabulary is currently only about 100 words, almost all of them nouns, is smarter than 46% of Americans.

He is that, obviously. But I’m not saying that.

I’m saying that while the world is understandably relieved at Obama’s victory, and while I would like to offer my personal thanks to America for not fucking it up this time around, I’d hardly call this election result a sweeping endorsement of the country’s intellectual judgement.

That a small majority of the electorate chose the IQ ticket is definitely good news for the human race. But as I went to bed last night I did so thinking that anything less than an absolute, crushing, unequivocal rejection of McCain, Palin, the Republican party and the eight horrifying years of Bush, would not be enough to atone for 2004.

When I awoke to discover that a slouching biomass the size of something like the population of the UK was prepared to risk a Sarah Palin presidency, I felt a little vomit come up in the back of my throat.

Even McCain, in his concession address, seemed to be appalled and repulsed by his own petulant, braying redneck supporters.

His surprisingly overt reference to Obama’s race at first struck me as an oddly patronising headliner for his speech, before I realised that he was not addressing Obama, or even black people in general. He was addressing his audience, the blinkered, slobbering cretins who routinely humiliated him with their wilfully ignorant or racist outbursts during his campaign rallies.

It seemed to me that perhaps McCain, who genuinely seems like a nice bloke, was trying to make amends in some way, to distance himself from the Bibles-and-guns idiots that nowadays seem to comprise the entirety of the Republican “base”.

“Look, just don’t shoot the guy,” he appeared to be saying.

I wonder if they’ll listen.

And I wonder: how long before the Secret Service demand a pay raise?

The good writers over at anarchism.pageabode.com, taking a measured approach, make many of the same points: Americans failed to f**k it up this time around, and the parties are not the same. But that being said, they return properly to the impersonal forces which will constrain even the best intentions of an ideal Obama candidate.

In that sense many of the American elite make the same mistake as many on the reformist left. The state acts to defend the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, to keep the system going. That means it needs to be a power above individual companies and individuals and be willing to control them in the wider interests of the system. This task creates the illusion that the state is above classes, that it could be used to further social reform. For those elements in the elite, this fear makes them subscribe to anti-government rhetoric while, of course, seeking government power and influence. Yet just as state action was needed to create capitalism in the first place, so it is required to keep it going. Problems always arise when the ruling elite starts to believe its own rhetoric and the ideological nonsense of economics textbooks about capitalism being self-regulating and stable. At times like this, anti-government rhetoric just gets in the way of a more sensible approach.

So, given the economic context, we can expect an increase in the respectability of Keynesianism at the expense of “laissez-faire” rhetoric. What of popular reform, the social-Keynesianism and popular policies most of Obama’s supporters seek? That depends on what people do now that they have voted. A key element of the anarchist argument against radicals using elections is that it places the focus for change in the hands of the elected representative rather than the people themselves (another, that it de-radicalises the party in question and turns it reformist is not applicable here as the Democrats are a capitalist party). Change is apparently coming, but only when Obama is able to provide it. Yet the nature of that change will depend on the pressures that his government is subject to.

That big business and the Republican smear-machine will be gearing up to ensure their agenda and interests are respected goes without saying. The question is: what will the American people do? Will they return home, waiting for Obama to implement his actually quite vague mandate for change? Or will they use the optimism and hope that his historic win has generated to act for themselves? Will they be able to impose from the streets and workplaces the kind of change which will benefit them? If not, then the hope and joy experienced by many will quickly turn into disappointment, cynicism and apathy. If so, then a genuine alternative to capitalism could be created and anarchists should be at the forefront in advocating the basics of any real change and real alternative – direct action, solidarity, mutual aid and social movements rooted in our workplaces and communities. This is not impossible, it happened amazingly quickly in Argentina when its neo-liberal experiment collapsed.

By so doing, we can not only fight for improvements today but also create the possibility of a new world. Ultimately, if the last 30-odd years of stagnating working class income shows, not acting is a guarantee for rising inequality, falling social mobility and soaring insecurities and stress. Change can come, but only if we act to achieve it. Electing Obama is historic for many reasons but real, fundamental, change comes from below. Our task as libertarians is to build the social movements required to turn hope about change into its reality.