Why Obamunism cannot win U.S. Culture WarThe political dichotomy between the two cultures, Beat and Hippie, really is the differences between Libertarianism and Marxism. Both ideologies claim to celebrate the innate power and freedom of the average person, but Marxism struggled with a problem that lay at its core: the conservatism of the proletariat.(from therazor.org)
Throughout his writings, Karl Marx predicted that Communism would come about by the working class realizing its own power and overthrowing the bourgeoisie. Because countries such as Great Britain and Prussia were the most technologically advanced and were the most mature capitalist societies at the time, he expected the working classes of these nations to be the future of Communism. But attempts at organizing the working classes in these countries failed miserably because the working classes wanted to keep what they earned; they didn’t want to share it with others. In addition they were especially distrustful of outsiders, especially Communist organizers who came from privileged backgrounds and classes different from their own. Instead of being the engine of communism, the proletariat in these countries put the brakes on the movement, and by the turn of the 20th century, Communism was going nowhere.To get around this innate conservatism, Vladimir Lenin proposed that the working class needed intellectuals to guide it and spark the proletariat into action, developing the idea of the Communist Party as “Vanguard of the Proletariat.” The Party, composed of enlightened, educated, and motivated individuals, would lead the proletariat to a better future – one which the proletariat didn’t understand initially but would come to appreciate under the watchful leadership of the Communist Party.
We all know how wonderfully that worked out.
The 1960’s activists were not populists. The Silent Majority enjoyed seeing their heads cracked by police batons in Chicago, confirming their belief in the conservatism of the proletariat. The only way forward in the minds of the activists was to take power themselves and force their will on the people. It’s not very democratic, but Marxists realize that the people don’t know what’s best for them: only the Marxist elite does.
The situation President Obama faces today is similar to what the Russian Communists faced a century ago. Having been educated in an academic system at best sympathetic to Marxism, and at worst outright Marxist, Obama confronts the innate conservatism of an electorate that in his view doesn’t know what glorious future awaits it. How will he react? Will he listen to the electorate, or will he do everything necessary to drag it kicking and screaming into the future that they are simply too stupid to see themselves?
Given his upbringing, the elitist circles he has traveled in since his youth, how well will the populist mantle that he is attempting to don this week fit? Has he really heard the people’s voices in the elections in Virginia, New Jersey, the NY 23rd district (where a 3rd party candidate lost by a handful of votes), and Scott Brown’s meteoric rise to the Senate? Or will he tighten his grip on the reigns of power to bend the people to his will?Regardless whether he realizes it or not, the man is a Marxist. He cannot help but do the latter in which case in less than three years the people will sweep him aside. Expect him to replace Jimmy Carter as a terrorist apologist ex-president beloved by many in the world for his anti-American stances while despised by the people in his own country.
