Press Action ::: The Obama Nation

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The Obama Nation

Bill Van Auken at the World Socialist Web Site writes:

The increasingly right-wing character of the transition being organized in preparation for President-Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration in January has elicited expressions of concern from the middle-class “left.” This milieu, whose views are reflected in publications like The Nation magazine, played a significant role during the election campaign in promoting Obama’s candidacy and the Democratic Party as vehicles for fundamental political and social change. ...

With the political assistance of the trade union bureaucracy and the Stalinist Communist Party ... the Roosevelt administration did succeed in staving off the threat of socialist revolution.

That period holds stark lessons for the coming struggles of the American and international working class. Unless working people are able to advance their own, socialist alternative to capitalism, the “solution” to the present crisis will be found along simil ar lines of a re-division of the world market through mass slaughter.

This is what makes the politics of The Nation and similar political tendencies so pernicious. The struggle against war and deepening attacks on social conditions can be advanced only through a decisive break with the Democratic Party and the political illusions promoted by tendencies such as The Nation.