On Obama's August 28 Speech

The Battle over the Truth About the African-American Experience and Present-Day Reality

September 2, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

A profound struggle over the truth has been raging in America. For the past few months, this struggle has focused on the real position of African-American people in U.S. society. And it has taken shape in the past few weeks around the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The question here is what is the actual TRUTH of the matter—not what is anyone's "narrative," but the actual character of reality. In other words, what has actually happened and is continuing to happen... what dynamics have driven and continue to drive forward the oppression of Black people as a people, and the struggle against that oppression... and what must be done about it.

George Zimmerman's cold-blooded murder of Trayvon Martin, and his subsequent acquittal, forced this question to the forefront of American consciousness. Millions, tens of millions, were asking WHY. Why did George Zimmerman feel empowered to murder Trayvon Martin, and why did the police not even initially charge him, test him for drugs, etc.—but instead treated Trayvon as trash, as less than nothing, not even telling his father until the next day? Why was Trayvon slandered in the media? Why did the jury acquit Zimmerman? Why did people feel this as such a punch in the gut? What did this have to do with how Black people, and other minority people, have to manage and navigate every single day of their lives? And what did it have to do with other controversial issues—like the New York Police Department's apartheid-style stop-and-frisk assaults on Black and Latino males of all ages, or the closing of ghetto schools in Chicago and Philadelphia, or the fact that prisoners in California were driven to undertake a massive hunger strike to protest their conditions? What about the foreclosures unequally visited on people of color, the predatory lending (legal loan-sharking, really), the massive evictions of Black women? Is this even going to be recognized? And if it is, how is it to be understood... and acted on? Where does it come from? What must be done about it?

This struggle has been and is three-sided.

On one side are the unapologetic and unrepentant white supremacists, puffed up and on the offensive. At the beginning of the summer, the Supreme Court issued a number of reactionary, racist decisions. These included a decision overturning the heart of the Voting Rights Act. This law, which was forced from the system in 1965 as a result of the blood and sacrifice of thousands of people, required the federal government to make sure that Black people, especially in the South, would be guaranteed the right to vote. This basic right had been denied people for decades long after the Civil War had supposedly settled this; those who attempted to exercise this right were hounded, fired from work, beaten and often lynched. But now, claimed the Court, this was no longer needed; one justice, Antonin Scalia, went so far as to say this amounted to a special "entitlement" for Black people. No sooner had the Court overturned this part of the Voting Rights Act than a number of states—North and South—passed laws which will have the effect of in fact denying the right to vote to African-Americans, Latinos, and other oppressed nationalities.

We've already spoken about the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. And it was not only the verdict, but the way in which the rulers of this country unleashed the braying pack of white supremacist wolves who howled through the course of, and after, the trial. These weren't just a few people off in the sticks somewhere; we're talking about many of the major "expert commentators" on CNN and, of course, Fox News. In the huge debate that this trial set off about the whole history of this country, Rush Limbaugh said that "If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it's Caucasians." This is the analysis, if you want to call it that, that is being proffered by the fascist wing of the ruling class. It has no connection to the truth whatsoever, and it is justification for the worst horrors and oppression.

The fact that no prominent Republicans attended the commemoration of the March on Washington—and this includes the "moderate" and "sensible" ones like George Bush I and II, who along with Jeb Bush, John McCain, and House Speaker John Boehner were all invited—also speaks volumes as to how this wing of the ruling class sees Black people.

As Bob Avakian pointed out in "Unresolved Contradictions, Driving Forces for Revolution," one of the essential elements that these (mainly Republican) politicians are building up and unleashing is "the sense of white male American entitlement." These forces see that, in the face of major global changes and challenges, and major upheavals in the ways in which people have lived in this country for many decades, the social fabric and belief of people in the "American way of life" is fraying; and this open celebration of white male entitlement is a critical part of their program for knitting American society back together. They are on a mission around this, and they are unapologetic.

The World According to Barack Obama

Then there is what is represented by those affiliated with the Democratic Party. In a number of speeches, rallies, commemorations, and cultural works, these forces have set forth a different analysis. In their view, there may remain problems; but the answer to those problems is to be found within the workings of this system.

This was laid out in Barack Obama's August 28 speech celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. While there may be shades of difference between how Obama put things forward and how others holding this view do, none of them fundamentally disagree with the viewpoint Obama put forward on that occasion. So let's dig into Obama's speech.

In Obama's analysis, the "injustice" (the strongest word he used) of Black people's condition in America flowed out of a failure to live up to the "truths" set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Further, he argued, the essential character of the movement that won civil rights for Black people was its nonviolent character—its refusal to "lash out in anger," its reliance on "[prayer] for their tormentors," and "willingly [going to] jail to protest unjust laws." In Obama's analysis, the international influence of this struggle was limited to "the other side of the Iron Curtain" and South Africa. And anyone who dismisses "the magnitude of this progress," or suggests, "as some sometimes do, that little has changed ... dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years."

Obama also has harsh words for a different trend in that struggle for freedom. He stated:

[I]f we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that during the course of 50 years there were times when some of us claiming to push for change lost our way. The anguish of assassinations set off self-defeating riots. Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse-making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could cut both ways, as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support—as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself.

All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was diverted. It's how our country remained divided.

Obama then went on to discuss remaining problems—but principally in the economic sphere. But what about the massive incarceration of Black people (nearly 10 times greater now than it was 50 years ago!) and everything that has meant to millions and millions of African-American, Latino, Native American Indian, and other oppressed-nationality people? What about the outrageous vindication of racial profiling and lynch-style racial murder concentrated in the verdict on Trayvon Martin and the police abuse and brutality concentrated in stop-and-frisk and other forms of racial profiling, and the outright police murder that goes on over and over again? What about the ways in which the whole criminal justice system is saturated with white supremacy? And what about the New Jim Crow that is concentrated in all this—that is, the way in which this is just as systematic as the 100-year reign of segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror in the South?

In the world laid out in this speech, these horrors barely even merit the most glancing mention. In fact, the only times these are even obliquely referred to is when Obama says that we must ensure "that the scales of justice work equally for all, and the criminal justice system is not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails." As if everything is basically okay, but we just have to work a little harder to ensure things are working right—the way they're supposed to. When, in fact, these institutions have worked the way they've always worked and the way they have been designed to work. The real state of Black America today was not confronted; it was in effect papered over. And the fact that Black people are still an oppressed people, after all these decades and centuries—this was not even papered over: it was outright denied (as we will show).

But let's go on. Obama mentions the need for "vigilance" but not struggle. He ends his speech in a call for people to have empathy for others, "to join together with others in a spirit of brotherhood," and to continue to work hard to scrape by. Rather than fight against the devastating cutbacks in education in cities like Chicago and Philadelphia, now wreaking further havoc on Black and Latino children, Obama cites the teacher who works overtime and pays for the school supplies; rather than fight against mass incarceration, Obama cites the "successful businessman who ... offers a shot to a man, maybe an ex-con who is down on his luck." And so on. In other words: this is a very passive, very individual, and non-collective, form of "vigilance."

The analysis expressed in this speech of Obama's has been pounded out far more broadly than Obama himself. This has run through most of the coverage of the anniversary in the mainstream press. It has found expression in the culture (and we will continue to speak to all of this in depth in the weeks to come).

It is profoundly wrong and it is deeply dangerous.

The Real Truth

In this situation, there are some who are in fact fighting against the lies. There is the statement released by Carl Dix, on the very night of the speech, telling the truth about this speech, and pointing people toward revolution. And there have been other voices as well, insisting on important truths, including Cornel West, who has called out Obama's worldwide marauding and criminality and taken this to every venue he can find.

This trend of truth-telling in the face of the outright lies of the Antonin Scalias and Rush Limbaughs of the world, and narcotic lies being pushed by Obama and the Democrats, must continue. This is not to say that there is total unity among all these forces—there are differences over the source of the problem, and the solution, among other things. But there is a very important point at the same time of insisting on a) the historic and systemic character to the oppression of Black people, and b) the fact that Obama is covering this over, in the service of a very ugly program. In that light, and in the spirit of digging down to the most basic bedrock truths, a few further points must be made on this speech.^*

First, in continuing to locate—and confine—the struggle of Black people in the framework of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, Obama once again conveniently omits that that Declaration cited as one of its chief grievances its allegation that King George III had incited slave rebellions! Obama conveniently ignores that the fundamental bargain of the Constitution was to enable the continued flourishing and expansion of slavery, which was at that point the foundation and bulwark of the wealth and power of the American state that was coming into being. And it was only when that expansion ran into the interests of the rising capitalists of the North that the Civil War erupted—with the objective of Lincoln and the North not, at first, being the abolition of slavery, but its confinement to the slave states. Only when it became clear that the South would settle for nothing less than slavery's expansion and that the North would need to both strike at the heart of Southern strength (the enslavement of Black people) and mobilize the entire population for total war in order to win... only then did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation. This is not a "narrative"—this is the actual truth of the matter, the actual essence of the situation, and we invite any who insist otherwise to send us your argument. (And if you agree, and want to add to this point, you should also send your contributions!) But by framing the struggle against the oppression of (oh, sorry, the "injustice" against) the African-American people in the context of "realizing the American dream," Obama leads people back into the same killing confines of the past 240 years.

Second, Obama would have us believe that the gains that were won in the struggle for the rights of Black people were totally due to nonviolent action. In fact, there was a whole section of the movement, including in the South, which fully understood the need for self-defense. This included Robert Williams, in Monroe, N.C., who organized armed defense of the Black community against the KKK in the late '50s; the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Louisiana; as well as many other individual organizers who gave as good as they got against the cowardly night-riding terrorists of the Klan throughout the South. It is true that up through early 1965, the mainstream of the movement agreed to utilize nonviolent tactics in demonstrations and other actions, but by the latter part of that year increasing numbers had broken with that approach.

Moreover, contrary to Obama, the urban rebellions—which he calls "riots"—that broke out in hundreds of American cities, beginning in the early '60s and then picking up tremendous momentum in the late '60s, were tremendously liberating. Let's be clear: fighting back is not bad; fighting back is good, very good, and fighting back is a very necessary part of emancipation. The fact that many forces—including Malcolm X, the Student Nonviolent  Coordinating Committee (which essentially broke with nonviolence in the mid-'60s after paying a tremendous cost with their own lives), and in particular the Black Panther Party—not only upheld fighting back but (even more essentially) began to see the American system itself NOT as the potential savior of Black people but as the chief obstacle to liberation and, in the case of the Panthers, began to actively promote the goal of revolution—this was GOOD. The fact that these forces looked to and promoted revolutions all over the world—revolutions aimed against U.S., European, and Japanese imperialism—this was GOOD.

This leads to a telling omission on Obama's part. He notes that this movement influenced the masses of Black people in South Africa, and claims that it played a role in the struggle against oppressive phony communist regimes of Eastern Europe... but he fails to note how the rest of the world, most of which saw U.S. imperialism as their enemy, welcomed and drew inspiration from the powerful uprisings that rocked America—from Latin America and Africa to the Middle East, from Vietnam to Europe, reaching into China itself, where the leader of the Chinese revolution and the (at that time) socialist state of China embraced this struggle and issued powerful statements in support! (See "Statement by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression" [April 16, 1968].)

In fact, the whole way in which the Black liberation struggle arose was very deeply connected to what was going on all over the world. On the one hand, the glaring outrages being committed against Black people in the South petitioning for the most basic of rights gave the lie to the American attempt to posture all over the world as the promoter of freedom. This need for America not to "look bad in front of the rest of the world" created openings that people fighting against the oppression of Black people were able to seize. On the other hand, the wave of national liberation struggles all over the world—peoples rising up in Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba, and elsewhere against the system of colonialism and neo-colonialism—inspired people all over the world AND in this country. Very important in that was the example of China—where the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Tsetung, had led the Chinese people to not only win liberation but begin constructing socialism. All this was part of the emergence of a revolutionary trend in this struggle, beginning in the early '60s and reaching its peak with the Black Panther Party in the latter half of that decade.

In refuting this part of Obama's speech, Carl Dix trenchantly points out that:

People didn't lose their way in the '60s: In fact, they were beginning to find their way, coming to see that the horrors they were up against were built into the very fabric of this set-up and couldn't be reformed away. But they were met with vicious repression—leaders assassinated, activists dragged into court on trumped-up charges, and railroaded off to prison and more. In the face of all that, the movement of that period wasn't able to develop the understanding needed to do what was needed: make revolution and end the horrors Amerikkka enforced on humanity then and continues to enforce today.

Again, this is not "our narrative," nor just one opinion among many—either what is said is true or it is not. If you think it is not, we challenge you—we invite you—to tell us where we're wrong. And, again, if you agree or have more to add—let us know that too!

The Current Conditions and the Current Challenges

Then there is Obama's reading of history since the 1960s. Obama cannot outright or entirely deny the grossly unequal conditions of Black people and, in a more general sense, the tremendous inequality that has exploded in America over the past four decades, affecting people of all nationalities. And he focuses much of his speech on this.

Obama mentions the basic economic inequality that continues to dog Black people 50 years after the March for Jobs and Justice—he even brings in some important facts on this at one point—but he obscures the essence of this, and he locates the solution to this inequality exactly where it should not be: within the framework of capitalism itself. While we cannot in this article go deeply into this, and we have spoken to this elsewhere in much more depth, it is the capitalist system itself—its needs and demands—which at every stage has conditioned the different forms of exploitation of Black people.

First there was slavery—the original reason that the African-American people were kidnapped and dragged to these shores, often being murdered in the process. Then there was the century of open Jim Crow segregation, denial of fundamental rights, and lynch-mob terror—built up on the foundation of share-cropping in the South (a form of primitive agriculture in which farmers were tied to the land and constantly in debt, while landlords exploited and plundered their labor). The accumulation on the backs of these farmers was part of enabling the U.S. to spread its tentacles all over the world. Then there was the Great Migration—the massive influx of Black people into the cities to fill the capitalists' need for industrial labor, in the dirtiest, most dangerous and worst-paying jobs. And now we are in a place where capital can no longer profitably exploit the masses of Black people in the same way and, in a very real sense, "has no place and no future" for the millions and millions of African-American, Latino, and other oppressed-nationality youths trapped in the decaying inner cities. This change in the basic economic relations in the society, along with political and cultural steps taken by the rulers of America to deal with and turn back the ways in which revolution had gotten a real following in the '60s, all fed into and helped give rise to the spread of the drug trade, the criminalization of whole generations, the degradation of people, and the incarceration of literally millions of people.

THIS basic fact—the foundational, bred-in-the-bone connection between capitalism and white supremacy—is why the oppression of the African-American people is so knitted into the workings of this society and so fundamental to the system itself. That is, it is deeply embedded not only in the politics and culture and thinking of the people in this country, but also and fundamentally in the bedrock foundational economic relations as well, and this is the root of the problem. And for just this reason it will take a thorough-going revolution, a communist revolution, to get rid of it.

THIS fact of white supremacy being so deeply embedded in the economic, political, and cultural fabric of the USA is the principal cause that has given rise to what Michelle Alexander has very insightfully analyzed as the NEW JIM CROW: the cynical use of the "war on drugs" to develop a whole system of mass criminalization, mass imprisonment, massive denial of rights to those who have been imprisoned, a school-to-prison pipeline. This is now so pervasive that there are more Black men in prison in U.S. prisons today than were held in slavery in 1850. This is now so pervasive that it is right to equate this, as Alexander does, with the whole 100-year regime of segregation and naked lynch-mob terror, which stretched into and dominated every sphere of African-American life. And, again, anyone who wishes to dispute this: write to us and make your argument; or, if you agree, share your thinking.

Yes, Obama mentions in his speech the need to ensure that "the scales of justice work equally for all and the criminal justice system and is not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails"—but a) this hardly even begins to capture the massive, pervasive phenomenon we are describing, b) does not mention that it will take a titanic struggle to even begin to reverse this New Jim Crow, and c) thus serves to minimize this.

Obama describes how the "twin forces of technology and global competition"—that is to say, breakneck, profit-above-all capitalist expansion—have eroded and in many cases destroyed the livelihoods of millions of people in this country, of all nationalities. But this fact, and the measures he describes that accompanied it, did not "violate sound economic principles" (as he claims)—these measures were implementations of capitalist economic requirements, and that is why every president, Republican or Democrat, including Obama himself, has done everything they could to speed all this along! Obama calls on people to "stand together" for good jobs and wages, health care, better education, and so on—but these are feel-good phrases devoid of content. In actual fact, it will take tremendous struggle—tremendous upheaval, with great sacrifice—AGAINST the powers-that-be in order to even begin to reverse this disaster and prevent an even worse calamity: the transformation of this slow genocide into a fast one.

And it will take communist revolution—against this whole economic and political system—to actually rid the world of American white supremacy, and bring in a new day of genuine emancipation for all of humanity.

Obama's Outright Disgusting Pandering to Racism

There is particular importance to one part of Obama's speech that we quoted above, so we'll quote it again here:

The anguish of assassinations set off self-defeating riots. Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse-making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could cut both ways, as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support—as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child, and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself.

All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was diverted. It's how our country remained divided.

We've already spoken about the so-called "self-defeating riots," which were actually righteous rebellions against centuries of injustice and abuse. But let's look at the rest of this, which in some ways is the most mendacious, lying, and disgusting part of the whole speech, and let's break it down—because it's full of signifying and slipperiness.

First, what is "language of recrimination" being referred to here? Is he talking about Black people and other oppressed nationalities speaking bitterness about the real lived experience of America, and radical and revolutionary intellectuals analyzing the systematic character of white supremacy in America? Or is he talking about people like Bill Cosby—and like Obama himself—who claim that the main problem facing Black people in this country is that they make too many excuses? Or is it the racism of not just the Tea Party mob, but revered figures like Ronald Reagan—whom Obama himself consistently upholds and praises and who began his 1980 campaign for president by visiting the Mississippi town where the civil rights organizers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were murdered, saying not a word about that crime and upholding "States' rights"—the code word, then and now, for outright racist terror?

From the context of the speech and the whole thrust of this very key paragraph within it, the answer is clear. Obama is once again equating truth-telling about America with "recriminations"—and blaming those who have been subjugated by America for their own oppression.

Then let's look at this: "what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support—as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child, and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself." We'll speak shortly to Obama's equation of liberation with the chance to "work hard and get ahead." But again, who is Obama talking about here? And what planet is he on? He presumably knows from his much-ballyhooed experience as a "community organizer" the constant exhausting battles that people in poverty must wage to stay above water. He must know how they must choose between paying for heat or paying for food, how they are hassled and insulted and hung up for hours in waiting rooms and station-houses, how they are abused at every turn, and how they all too often face the choice between leaving your kids at home with no supervision or losing your job—and then losing your kids when the agencies claim you're not a fit parent, and all the rest. If Obama is talking about Black and other oppressed peoples here—and it is clear from the context that he is, even if he doesn't come right out and make it clear—this is not only the worst kind of bullshit lie; it is a vicious racist myth being given voice and legitimacy by the highest-ranking Black politician in the country.

And what about the other racist myth here that Obama lends credence to: that Black people somehow get or at least demand special treatment ("mere desire for government support")? On even a basic level, the reverse is true. In fact, not only does the state dedicate its whole being to serving the economic and political interests of major blocs of capital in this country, the major industries, big agribusiness, and all the other major monopolies, many of these forces also get all kinds of direct subsidies to boot. More fundamentally, though, let's ask this question: who owes whom? If America ever were to "pay back" for the centuries of plunder, exploitation and horror that Black and other oppressed-nationality peoples were subjected to—there would not be a bill large enough to comprehend the level of restitution that would be anything close to "fair."

And then the conclusion: "All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was diverted. It's how our country remained divided." To be fair here, directly before these paragraphs Obama also cites a few other reasons (growing income inequality, divisions among the politicians, etc.) for "the stalling of progress," etc. But this comes as the punch line to the whole preceding paragraph, which is nothing but "red meat" tossed out to the racists.

What's the truth about "how progress stalled"? First of all, the whole way this is framed is wrong and it gets you thinking in the wrong terms. It's as if there was this steady, peaceful progress and then suddenly... uh oh, it stalled. NO! "Progress" didn't "stall"—the struggle of the people, which had grown increasingly powerful and more revolutionary, overcoming tremendous vicious repression, ran up against a vicious, all-sided program of counter-revolutionary suppression that it was not able to overcome. The truth is that this government had a special program (COINTELPRO), carried out by the FBI, designed to suppress the Black liberation movement, planting informers and agents, spying on them, carrying out slander campaigns, fomenting violence between groups, and much more—including the outright assassinations of a number of important leaders. And while the movement of the time was confronting and grappling with real limitations in understanding and strategy, as well as other problems, this government program of assassinations, intrigue and deception played no small part in its ebbing. The truth is that simultaneously a narrow slice of African-American people were given some opportunities formerly denied them, but that this was then used to spread illusions and to build up a "buffer." The truth is that beginning with Richard Nixon, and picking up tremendous momentum with Reagan and Bill Clinton, the program of massive incarceration earlier described was designed and carried out to contain those in the ghettos and barrios for whom there would be no "ladder" out—so that today one out of nine Black men between 20 and 34 is in prison. In short, the truth is that the revolutionary movement of the late '60s and early '70s, despite heroic struggle and tremendous achievements, was not able to go all the way, and because it didn't, the system adjusted and came back even more vengeful than before.

Why Did Obama Even Say Anything?

Barack Obama famously hates to say anything about the oppression of Black people. Yet this summer he has begun to say a few things—this has included his second set of remarks on Trayvon Martin (nearly a week after the verdict), some proposals by his attorney general that may mitigate some of the worst excesses of the war on drugs, and now this speech. It is very likely that he would have made some sort of remarks in any case, but it is not at all clear that it would have been given anything like the emphasis he gave it before the events of this summer.

Why is this so? NOT because his second term is now letting him show his "true colors," NOT because of "his legacy," or any other such stuff. The fact is that the two events we began with—the acquittal of George Zimmerman and the Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act—rocked millions of people, Black and white. Many who expected the Zimmerman verdict were nevertheless deeply hurt and in some ways stunned by it. These millions who were rocked by the verdict began to raise very basic and huge, huge questions as to what America is really all about. How could this happen? What did this say about our society, and about our system of government? People went into the streets around justice for Trayvon, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. People in their millions awoke—they began to raise questions; they began to talk; they began to become open to different ideas. And all the while, the silence from the first Black president—the man whose election we are told was the "crowning achievement" of the struggles of the 1960s—was deafening. Obama had to speak out, lest he risk losing the allegiance of a whole section of people who otherwise look to him and whom he is in charge of keeping penned into the killing confines of this Democrat-Republican game.

Here it's important to return to the analysis of Bob Avakian, concentrated in "Elections, Resistance, and Revolution: The Pyramid of Power and the Struggle to Turn This Whole Thing Upside Down," from a question/answer session in 2003, and returned to over the years, including in the piece we cited at the beginning of this article [Unresolved Contradictions, Driving Forces for Revolution]. This analysis draws an analogy to a pyramid; as Avakian says,

At the top of this pyramid are the people that rule this society and in particular you've got those that are represented by the Democratic Party on the one hand and the Republican Party on the other. And there is struggle between them...

And BA follows this with a very careful analysis of all the ways in which the basically fascist side of this pyramid, as concentrated in the Republican Party, has gone about cultivating power in all the key institutions of U.S. society and developing, to go with this, a fascist social base—people organized, in their millions, around white supremacy, male supremacy, a hatred of science, etc.

BA goes on to discuss the Democrats:

On the other hand, here are the Democrats at the top of this pyramid (on the so-called "left"). Who are the people that they try to appeal to—not that the Democrats represent their interests, but who are the people that the Democrats try to appeal to at the base, on the other side of this pyramid, so to speak? All the people who stand for progressive kinds of things, all the people who are oppressed in this society. For the Democrats, a big part of their role is to keep all those people confined within the bourgeois, the mainstream, electoral process...and to get them back into it when they have drifted away from—or broken out of—that framework. Because those people at the base are always alienated and angry at what happens with the elections, for the reason I was talking about earlier: they are always betrayed by the Democratic Party, which talks about "the little man" and poor people and the people who are discriminated against, and so on. And at times they'll even use the word oppression. But then they just sell out these people every time—because they don't represent their interests. They represent the interests of the system and of its ruling class. But they have a certain role of always trying to get people who are oppressed, alienated and angry back into the elections. You know: "Come on in, come on in- -it's not as bad as you think, you can vote, it's OK." This is one of the main roles they play. But the thing about them is that they are very afraid of calling into the streets this base of people that they appeal to, to vote for them. The last thing in the world they want to do is to call these masses of people into the streets to protest or to battle against this right-wing force that's being built up.

With Obama, this has reached an important point. Obama did in fact do what is described above—his election served to pacify people who should have been, and still should be, out in the streets. Obama implemented very much the same program as George W. Bush had—and in some cases, worse—and essentially escaped any protest whatsoever. But with the mounting outrages of the spring and summer—as concentrated in the Zimmerman verdict, but not in that alone—there was a tremendous restiveness and questioning among people. Obama's role is to both recognize this—and to redefine and derail it, to take people out of the streets and back into the confines of the elections and everything that represents.

The Real Liberating Thing? This Shit Is Not All There Is

The question before us is why we should allow ourselves to be confined within the mental prison bars of this political and economic system. We showed above how it is capitalism and its requirements that has driven the different stages of white supremacy and oppression in this country. But this is not necessary. There is a different way that is possible.

The RCP, USA has published the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) for a revolutionary state that would set about uprooting the sources of this oppression and put in place institutions through which the centuries of that oppression could be overcome. More than that, this is part of a whole liberating vision—and concrete structure—that could enable masses of people to set about uprooting oppression and inequality in every sphere of life, and bringing into being a vibrant, sustainable society in which people could at last, in their millions and billions, begin to flourish. We have written about this elsewhere, but even beyond those articles, if you really care about getting out of this madness you need to get into this. We challenge anyone to compare and contrast this with the U.S. Constitution, and tell us which one can serve as a framework for liberation; and, again, we challenge those who have been moved by this Constitution to also write us, and to get this out to others.

The RCP, USA has published a statement, "On the Strategy for Revolution," which shows how we can get from the situation today—where revolution does not have many followers and a revolution is not possible—into one where it would be... and what we need to be doing today to get there. It shows exactly how major events like the outrage around the murder of Trayvon Martin can serve a whole process of bringing about a situation in which there IS a revolutionary people numbering in their millions, and in which a revolution COULD be made... and it lays out how to prepare for, and bring closer, that situation.

The RCP, USA has a leader, Bob Avakian, who has led in developing this strategy and this vision of a whole new society, as part of summing up the whole first stage of communist revolution, as well as developments in other spheres, and who as part of all this has developed a body of work and method and approach on all this for people to get into. It has a leader who grew up in and came out of the massive struggles of the 1960s and has not only refused to give up but has drawn deeply on the lessons of that period—where the movement had made great accomplishments, and where it had run into problems it couldn't solve and limitations that it didn't overcome—and he's taken things further. This not about hope as an empty slogan, but hope on a solid scientific foundation.

There is a movement for revolution, which this Party is building. And there is the possibility of real upheaval coming—neither wing of this ruling class has real answers that will mean anything but misery and madness on a scale not yet seen the longer this drags on. We do not have to choose—we MUST not choose—between them. In fact, as BA says toward the conclusion of the 2003 "Pyramid of Power" article, "There is going to be a tremendous tug and pull on this huge body of people [those whom the Democrats, and today Obama, attempt to appeal to and mislead]—literally, already, tens of millions of people—who feel this deep gut hatred for what's going on." We need to wage that struggle. We need, right now, to all fearlessly fight for the truth about this system and its history; and we need, right now, to dig into the truth about what it will take to get to the whole new world that people urgently need. And we need to do it on the most liberating basis there is: communist revolution, as re-envisioned in Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism.

* There may be nuances of difference between Obama and someone like Al Sharpton. Sharpton may sound a little more militant in some of what he says. But Sharpton, and others like him, did not criticize Obama's speech and everything they do is designed to build support for Obama. The militance is designed to suck people in. [back]

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