Revolution is not an overnight event. In revolutionary moments, political institutions and the law are all caught in the tumult. This tumult comes from the fact that there are earthquakes and seismic shifts in economic relations, gender relations, military relations, and class or power shifts. Institutions such as the legislature or the banking institutions may be thrown into topsy-turvy. In my book, Barack Obama and Twenty-first Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA, I drew the attention of readers to the revolutionary moment during which Barack Obama emerged as president of the USA. This revolutionary moment came to a head on September 15, 2008, when the big banks of Wall Street collapsed. It is here important to underline some of the elements of the revolutionary moment. 1) The failure of the US global war on terror and the delegitimization of the US military might. 2) The technological energy which unleashed new capabilities for politics and economics, especially as manifest in social networking tools. 3) The cultural revolution and engagement of new forces in politics. 4) The heightened consciousness of the environmental justice movement. 5) The potential power of a grassroots anti-racist and anti-sexist movement that believes in Ubuntu. 6) The financial implosion which exposed the dead end of neoliberal ideas. These elements of the revolution came to a head at the same time the people were called upon to make a statement in the elections of 2008.

REVOLUTION AND COUNTERREVOLUTION

When the financial crisis exploded on the world in September 2008, the US financial oligarchs were wounded but not defeated. For 30 years previously, these oligarchs and their allies in the media and academia had been building up counterrevolutionary power in the USA. This counterrevolution was manifest in many ways, and we want to itemize them in order to get to the essential conjuncture of the revolution and counterrevolution as witnessed in the midterm elections. 1) The armaments culture and  imperial overreach with the heightening of fear in the name of Homeland Security, as well as the explosion of private military contractors to protect the interests of the financial oligarchs and the ruling class. 2) Media disinformation, mind control, psychological warfare, and the brain washing of US citizens. 3) 21^st century Eugenics and new forms of bioterrorism and biological warfare. 4) Economic polarization and concentration of wealth to prop up the Wall Steet- Treasury- IMF cabal that is defended by US military. 5) Environmental decay, pollution, and environmental racism. 6) Support for big pharmaceutical companies with differential access to health care. 7) Support and subsidies for agribusiness and corporations at the forefront of producing genetically modified seeds and the championing of the rights to patent life forms (with the TRIPS regime of the WTO). 8) Prison-industrial complex. 9) Racism, sexism, and homophobia. 10) Anti-immigrant and Islamophobic hysteria. 11) The Wall Street-IMF infrastructure manifest in the bail out of bankers and the growth of speculative capital at the expense of productive investment for human beings. 12) Privatization of education, the propping up of the Ritalin/cocaine pipeline and war against the poor.

These elements of counter revolution are all interrelated and have been refined over the past 30 years. It was the coming together of the youths in 2008 that provided an opening for the challenge to counterrevolution forces. Barack Obama rode on the back of the wave against counterrevolution and was swept into power along with the Democratic Party in 2008. Once in power, Obama, as a liberal, dithered and was caught up in the business of saving capitalism, in effect, supporting those social forces that were at the forefront of counterrevolution. This is evident in his appointment of advisers from the old order, including Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Rahm Emmanuel, Tom Donilon, Gen. James Jones, Robert Gates, and Ken Salazar. One of the manifestations of the power of counterrevolution’s stronghold on the Obama administration was the handling of the massive environmental destruction in the Gulf when some people from the administration tried to cover up the depth of the crimes of the oil companies and their contractors. Throughout this massive oil spill, the administration worked to protect the British Petroleum Company with the same enthusiasm that it protected the barons of Wall Street.

MIDTERM ELECTIONS

The foregoing is to put some context to the midterm elections that were held in the USA on November 2, 2010. Midterm elections are called such because they are usually in the middle of the 4 year term of the president. It is a moment when there are elections for 435 members of the  House of Representatives (which is every two years). It is also a time for the election of some governors, senators, and legislative officers in the 50 states of the USA. In the 2010 midterm elections, the wounded financial oligarchs and counterrevolutionary forces went all out to beat back the popular alliance that brought Obama to power. This all out campaign was itself a reflection of the nervousness of these oligarchs. For the first time in the history of the USA over $4 billion was spent in the mid term election campaign. Over $3 billion was spent on advertising. In this way, the media was suborned into supporting the ‘forces of organized money.’ The US Chamber of Commerce dropped all pretenses of neutrality and poured money into the coffers of Republican candidates.  In fact, individual capitalists came forward to fight, targeting law makers who were against militarism and those who stood for the well being and rights of workers and ordinary citizens. This was the case in Wisconsin, where Ron Johnson was the front for the defeat of Sen. Russ Feingold. Senator Feingold was specifically targeted because of his principled stand against militarism. He was the only Senator from this upper house to vote against the Homeland Security legislation and he was the only Senator to vote against the unleashing of the US military machine against the people of Afghanistan. Johnson had inherited his money and other capitalists from across the US poured millions into this campaign to ensure that Feingold was defeated. Similar tales abound in the Congress where progressive representatives were targeted.

In fact, in one race in California, one politician spent $170 million of her own money. In another race, one candidate spent US $150 million of her own money and then spent $3 million for a party. Both of these capitalists lost. Indeed, big capitalists did not disguise their anxiety over the direction of the country. After studying the networks of grassroots forces of the 2008 popular upsurge, the same capitalists pumped millions of dollars into varying formations that had right wing populist messages. In the US, there is a new movement called the Tea Party movement. This movement consists of various factions such as the Tea Party Nation, the Tea Party Express, Freedom Works Tea Party, Tea Party Patriots, among others. Some of the faces of this movement were Caucasian women such as, Christine O’Donell, Nikki Haley, Carly Fiorina and Sharron Angel. Sarah Palin emerged in this period of counterrevolution, leading the opposition to reproductive rights for women. Many of the male purveyors of this movement uttered such homophobic and racist verbiage that they even embarrassed the racist ruling class. With the emergence of the Tea Party, Karl Rove and George W. Bush sounded like moderates. Militarism of the Carlyle group vintage was too tame for these counterrevolutionary forces so in this election cycle the forces of the Republican Party were far to the right of George Bush. It must be underlined that these so-called grassroots forces were financed by billionaires and given maximum exposures through the corporate conservative media. Members of this counterrevolutionary force unequivocally said that it was their job to roll back the civil rights gain of the 1960s. In fact, Rand Paul and Tom Tancredo were two spokespersons who were very explicit on this call to roll back civil rights.  Sharron Angle of Nevada displayed some of the most racist and anti-immigrant ads in US politics.

RESULT OF THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS

On Wednesday morning (November 3), it became clear that many white workers in the heartland of America fell prey to the deception and mind control of the corporate conservative media. From Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to Wisconsin and Michigan, what was once the industrial heartland of the US, the conservative Republicans swept the board. The conservatives captured the US House of Representatives, with Democrats barely holding onto the Senate. The Republicans won the governorship races in key states such as Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania.  The Republicans also captured over 600 legislative bodies at the state and county levels across the country. The Republican ruling class celebrated while the liberals wrung their hands about the future. There was no shortage of advice to Barack Obama on what he should do. For those who perceived of Obama as a Messiah, there were different suggestions on the ways forward. The New York Times stated that: “Mr. Obama has a lot of difficult work ahead of him. The politics in Washington will likely get even nastier. Before he can hope to build the minimal bipartisan consensus needed to move ahead, Mr. Obama will have to rally more Americans to the logic of his policies”. But the liberal ruling class cannot have their cake and eat it. It is not just up to Obama to decide the future. It is up to an organized progressive force that will determine the direction of the politics of the US.

LESSONS FROM THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

In the book, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, the author spelt out the recursive processes that emanated from the rapacious activities of the bankers in the 1920s. The author quoted John Maynard Keynes who said at that time: “we have been involved in a colossal model, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.” What the author did not properly connect was how this blundering was also manipulated by fascist forces that brought fascist leaders to power in Germany and Italy with the strengthening of fascist parties all across the world of white supremacy. It should be remembered at this present  time that the financial entanglement of the Wall Street speculators are far more profound than that of the 1930s. It was only last week that we spelt out the interconnection between finance capital, fraud, and foreclosure. We highlighted the fact that what is called the foreclosure crisis might be throwing a section of the legal structure in the US in disarray. The insolvency of the banking system means that the capitalists will need another bailout. One day after the elections,(on November 3) the Federal Reserve poured another $600 billion into the banking system through what was called quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is another fancy word for the devaluation of the dollar. Many citizens of the USA forgot that it was the same competitive devaluations of the 1930s that plunged the world into the quagmire of misery and unemployment. Some sections of the Republicans are saying that the only way to get out of this depression is through war. Hence there will be more drumbeats for war against Iran. During the elections, the same conservative forces were calling for steps against China.

It is this reality of the massive bail out of the banks with this new injection from the Federal Reserve that ensured that although Obama did everything to save the capitalists. But they are still insecure in relationship to the potential mobilization of the working people. We must restate the fact that in this revolutionary moment, the future direction of peace and social reconstruction is not up to Obama. The peace movement should be self critical to ask itself why is it that the war that has gone on for years was not one of the issues in the midterm elections. It is here important to remember that at the height of the crisis in Germany before Adolph Hitler came to power, the Communists, Socialists and Social Democrats were bickering among themselves as to the direction to take. The left in the US cannot afford the luxury of bickering at this time. The left must be clear and focused on how to secure a progressive front to stand up, reorganize, and to develop a strategy to beat back the wave of counterrevolution. We must remember the words of Karl Max that, “men and women make their own history, but they do not make it as they please, they do not make it under self selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”

Marx wrote these words in the context of the farce of the second Napoleon. The midterm and the results was a reenactment of the nightmare of the past history when representatives such as Benjamin Tillman and Jesse Helms could proudly display overt racism in order to win elections. Jim Crow, sexism, homophobia, and militarism dominated this election cycle. It is like history threatening to repeat itself in the second major depression in the USA. We agree with Marx that “history of great importance in the world occurs as it were, twice. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” In this counterrevolution, we are witnessing the farce of a ruling class and financial oligarchs who have not yet been reconciled to their newly diminished standing in the world. Hence, they continue to promise a recovery of the US economy based on the 20th century model of accumulation. The working peoples of the mid west who have seen their jobs disappear are angry and anxious. It is the task of the progressive forces to work harder to organize these workers to educate them to the reality that fighting wars overseas cannot be the basis for economic reconstruction.

The revolutionary moment requires that the progressive forces sharpen their understanding of revolutionary ideas, revolutionary organization, and revolutionary leadership. And I would like to restate what I stated in my book, Barack Obama and Twenty-first Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA, that the future does not depend on Obama being perceived as a messiah. It is up to us.

There will be many more turns, twists and Zigzags in the Revolutionary Moment in the USA.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Dr. Horace Campbell, PhD, is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University in Syracuse New York. He is the author of Barack Obama and Twenty-first Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA. Click here to contact Dr. Campbell.