Obama and civil society, before we ponder Obama vs. Us

“Obama would be the agent of that change. Already by engaging Iran, even in some very rudimentary way, he has planted the seed in the collective American psyche that the way America is going to act in the global landscape is bound to change in the future.”
________________

By Rajpal Abeynayake

(November 03, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I read an interesting theory recently that Obama is the new Gorbachev. Its proponents say that the Soviet Communist party merely went underground in Russia and the former USSR, because the imperial power (US) was making it impossible for the party hierarchy to govern.

I cannot buy all aspects of that theory, but that does not mean that I cannot agree that there may be something delightfully truthful about its core premise.

Again, it has all got to do with Gramscian theory of positioning civil society for usurping power. People would differ on the results that were wrought by Gorbachev in Russia. Some may say that he ushered in ugly robber-baron capitalism, complete with the Russian mafia and all.

However, none would deny that Russian capitalism as we see it today is more humane than the American variety. Visit Moscow, and you’d find that there is still extremely good public transportation, and much less reliance on polluting automobiles. In healthcare, the system is accessible and has not been corrupted by rapacious insurers. These are but two examples.

Engineered

The Gramsci theorists say that the Communist party engineered all the changes that brought Russia to this point, and is now exerting subtle control over the politics of Russia so that the system will not keel over and transmogrify into the type of dehumanizing neo-liberal market system as obtains today in the United States.

Now - - enter Obama. He was described before the 2008 election as the most extreme left member of the United States congress. Necessarily, he had to move to the centre to win election for the presidency.

But there is a burgeoning global civil society narrative at least in some intellectual circles that Obama is the Gorbachev who would dismantle America as we know it, and usher in a semi-socialist state that would rid the system of all oligarchic facets that hitherto characterized the US.

We as outsiders still do not know anything about this, and when Obama continues to send troops to Afghanistan, we would of course criticize him as he deserves, because we can make an assessment of him as commentator, only as we see him today.

But if I was an American, I would give Obama a chance to see whether he can in fact do a Gorbachev.

Gorbhachev dismantled the communist system, and cheers went up from Washington to Berlin to the sounds of Ronald Reagan chiming in to say ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.”

However, the Gramscian theorists say, what Gorbachev in fact did was allow communism to fold up in such a way that civil society was able to position itself and take over a good deal of governance aspects that today animate the workings of the Russian state.

“Obama... has suggested overtly and tacitly that religion should be a matter relegated to private worship outside the confines of public life.... [Through] his proposal to deny tax deductions for charitable gifts, government is being converted into the only public charity. Moreover, the transfer of wealth in the stimulus package and the increased tax burden on the most productive element of society will inevitably decrease incentives and expand the size and influence of government..... Our leaders may not identify themselves as Gramscians and may even mock the designation, but make no mistake: Gramsci’s DNA is in their bloodstream.”

I read that aside somewhere recently in somebody’s opinion piece. It might sound preposterous to those who believe that he is truly a Gramscian, that Obama’s health reform doesn’t do much except hand over more ‘victims’ to the insurance industry.

Economy

But there is another way to look at it. Obama’s changes are incremental. The imperatives of the gargantuan American military industrial complex dictates that Obama has to remain in Afghanistan, in order that the American economy remains ticking — at least until Obama does a complete Gorbachev, and expands the role of government, and transform America into a clone of what Russia is, today, maybe.

Gorbachev brought Russia to the level of a capitalist market economy that is watched over by, and to a great extent regulated by civil society, and he did so after dismantling communist excess. Obama seeks to bring America to that median, dismantling over 200 years of capitalist excess, or at least so the theory goes.

I am not a convert to the theory, at least not just yet, but (a) I think it would be foolish not to consider its immense plausibility and (b) it meshes in with my long held view that Obama is the agent - the correct man, at the correct time, if you will — to dismantle America as we know it.

The dismantling of America as we know it, is a dire necessity as capitalism with this measure of rapaciousness, and this measure of neo-liberal excess, cannot go on any more, and cannot be the primary characteristic of the “imperial power.’’

Either the US would have to step down from the mantle of imperial power, dismantle its utterly unregulated market capitalist economic order, or both.

Obama would be the agent of that change. Already by engaging Iran, even in some very rudimentary way, he has planted the seed in the collective American psyche that the way America is going to act in the global landscape is bound to change in the future.
The steps he has taken are almost infinitesimally small, which is why when he sends more troops to Afghanistan, we can and we will criticize him as if he is just another hegemonic imperialistic American president.

Dismantle

But the Gramscians are talking of the long term. They are aware that the racist right wing fringe is already anointing Obama a Marxist revolutionary poised to dismantle the United States.

Of course, Obama cannot do a Gorbachev with Gorbachev’s lightning speed, because in USSR, the system had become so decrepit during Gorbachev’s ascendancy that it was waiting to be dismantled.

In the US, there are still those who are enamoured with neo liberal market capitalism. Obama has to move gradually at snail’s pace to dismantle this system from within. He has to give the capitalists enough rope they would hang themselves with - such a little of it that we wouldn’t be able to discern what he is doing, but yet, when he is done, America would be transformed quite radically nevertheless, and would hardly be a recognizable form as what she is today.

(The writer, Chief Editor, the ‘Lakbima News’, weekly news paper based in Colombo, where this piece appears.)

-Sri Lanka Guardian