June 05, 2009

My Reply to an American Democrat of the Obama "Movement"

An American on the left wing of The Democratic Party recently remonstrated with my characterization of Obama's Cairo Speech as an unexceptional statement of the USA's long-standing formal position on Israel-Palestine. Objecting to my lack of faith in the political breakthrough of the "Obama Movement" he advised me to get on the Obama bandwagon, and "replace easy left-wing cynicism with working-class optimism".The following constitutes my reply:

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"Easy left-wing cynicism". Interesting...

What of "triumphalist coat-tailer syndrome"? Isn't it rather easy (to say nothing of expedient) to ride the big wave of the Democrats euphoria after the cold eight Bush years?

Isn't it easy in your national circumstances to lay down the struggle and "give Obama time " as the Dems sweep the House, Senate and White House?

It strikes me that would be a very easy path to becoming co-opted by a political over-estimation.

But neither optimism nor pessimism are Marxist in their approach. Marxism's approach is seasoned by experience and yet also looks with expectation to dialectical breakthroughs in class struggle. Mere optimism or pessimism is not dialectical -- it is bourgeois to the core..

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