By RONALDO TADEU DE SOUZA*

Obama teaches that we should not harbor hopes, naive for some and cynical for others, about the possible presidency of the first black woman in the USA

“(…) the first time as a tragedy, the second as a farce”
(Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte).

1.

In the wake of Joe Biden's withdrawal from running for president of the United States of America and the very likely choice of his vice president, Kamala Harris of the Democrats (the first woman and black woman with a real chance of winning the elections against the Republican candidate), to replace him, it is suggestive for left-wing critical thinking (and for left-wing black critical thinking), radicals and revolutionaries, to understand certain theoretical and historical parameters that characterized the government of Barack Obama, insofar as he was the first African-American and becoming supreme head of the largest empire the West has ever known, as well as the tendency to forge similar speeches and positions as when he was a candidate and president of America.

Before the White House passed from the hands of George W. Bush to those of Barack Obama in 2008, the United States witnessed a change in the capital accumulation regime. The structure of the North American economy transformed the profitability patterns that previously came with greater consistency from the industrial sectors; now the weaknesses of the banking and financial system (the bubbles in stocks, bonds, the real estate sector), credit and credit for family consumption were (dis)organizing white North American capitalism (Brenner, 2004).

Here we see the core of the subprime mortgage crisis. (This was the country that the first black president of the United States received – devastated by the economic and social crisis.) One of the most detailed expositions about real estate bubbles in the scope of economic history (and historical sociology) can be found in Robin's article Blackburn, The subprime mortgage crisis, in NLR No. 50 May/June 2008. Blackburn described with critical precision the reason for the 2007-2008 crisis at the heart of international capitalism.

With the financialization of the economy driven by Clinton and Bush, there was a phenomenon of opacity in the North American (Blackburn, 2008) (and European) banking system. This was “a consequence of deregulation that allowed many financial institutions to assume banking functions” (Ibidem, p. 58). The picture is completed on the one hand, with the consent of finance professionals (Ibidem), executives trained in the best finance and business schools; on the other hand, Alan Greespan, one of the longest-serving presidents of the FED, the American central bank, was an “animator of the financial services system” (Ibidem, p. 72) as a modality of capital accumulation.

In this way, a financialized economic system, which made its operating dynamics hidden, which encouraged the expansion of mortgage derivatives without a solid material foundation and exalted by the finance wizard, collapsed in 2007. But in no Western society does Marx's uncomfortable formulation that the “The executive in the modern State is nothing more than the committee to manage the common affairs of the entire bourgeois class” (2007, p. 42) was adequate with such reliability than the United States post-crisis of 2007/2008.

While the “most direct victims of the crisis were young women, African Americans and other minorities [who had to face] […] recession, reduced wages and contraction of the labor market” (Blackburn 2008, p. 87), the recovery of investment banks cost political-financial engineering on the part of the State (and the American government at the time) little seen in recent history – if we take the figures made available by the American Central Bank. Agreeing, the “President of the United States and Congress quickly agreed on a package of stimulus measures […] [and the] FED intervened to prevent the collapse of Ben Stearns and agree on its purchase by JP Morgan Chase for a small fraction of its price ” (Blackburn, 2008, p. 55).

With this, Barack Obama faced his Machiavellian moment (JGA Pocock). The fate of his government would be marked both by the way in which it would deal with the collapse of the financial system, and by the way in which it would give political progress to the issues of American workers, black people, women and other historically oppressed minorities. At the end of two years in office, the Obama family passed the White House to the Trump family.

The echoes of American history, from the days of the defense of property in the Constitution and armed white supremacy after the Civil War, resurfaced with a vengeance. However, for the historical sociology of NLR the “Obama era” (Anderson, 2017), indirectly, had “its legacy […] inadvertent […] contributing to bringing back American radicalism” (Ibidem, p. 68) Donald Trump’s haughtiness perceived this moment in republican primaries.

2.

Barack Obama's presidency in terms of American history was two-faced. Following the government pattern since the days of Ronald Reagan, the first black person to assume the White House followed the political immobility of his predecessors. It did not “introduce substantive internal changes” (Anderson, 2017, p. 52) in the country and continued to develop “military tasks in foreign policy” (Ibidem). Theoretically; the Obama administration was “conventional” (Ibidem) like that of other presidents from the 1980s onwards: the acceptance “of neoliberal capitalism and diplomatic military expansionism” (Ibidem).

However, Barack Obama was distinguished by his physical, psychological and cultural aspects. In a kind of sociology of culture, as a subfield of historical sociology, the NLR, will say that he “had an […] innovative mandate, because he was the first president who was at the same time a celebrity […] whose appearance […] was a sensation […], not being purely white, handsome and educated [and being ] the biggest [campaign] fundraiser” (Ibidem) since Carter. Fortune has been one of the most fascinating subjects in political philosophy. Conceived in Renaissance Italian culture and given theoretical form in the writings of Machiavelli, fortune is the occasion in politics when virtuous men accept the uncontrolled challenges of human time – or in Leo Strauss's formulation in Thoughts on Machiavelli, of the imposed nature[1] – and establish actions aimed at alleviating the imbalance between fortune itself and virtue as such.

However, when facing the (natural and human) designs of politics, glory is not always achieved. Bush was the American president who led the country's economy to “real estate bubbles” (Riley, 2017, p. 27); When the bubbles burst, the “great financial crisis of 2008” (Ibidem), the United States was being governed by Barack Hussein Obama. The “charisma of color” (Anderson, 2017, p. 52) and being frequented by Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Chance the Rapper, Frank Ocean and Naomi Campbell allowed Obama to socially construct “imaginary ties [with] strong cultural attraction ” (Riley, 2017, p. 27); but this was not enough to hide the forces of fortune (and history) and demonstrate the virtue of this former Harvard student.

His presidency organized a hundreds of billions of dollars in financial recovery for the banking sector that had plunged the American and global economy into a deep abyss. Barack Obama's message and action regarding his fortune were clear: “his government maintained the neoliberal elements [of] direct support for financial capital and wealthy property owners” (Ibidem). Even so, the White House administration of the first African-American president demonstrated important political variations – in a sociological scenario that the United States will not know for a long time, namely, fundamentally white elections (Davis, 2013).

In effect, Barack Obama made “concessions to environmental issues and the LGBTQ movement” (Riley, 2017, p. 27) and maintained the hope of the black community in seeing the legacy of race resolved. Typical American liberal, however, Obama envisioned a diverse society – even with very high degrees of inequality –, so that inclusion would not occur throughout the North American social and economic structure, substantially reaching capital and profit, or even distribution income – Democrats and Barack Obama sought to include “women and African Americans in the richest 20%” (Michaels, 2008, p. 31) of American society.

Now, Barack Obama's popularity among American liberals is no coincidence; it is a result of his “image of diversity” (Ibidem) and the political profile of the notion of equality that he supports. The Obama administration's historical sociology narrative NLR can be completed by articulating the health system reform project and the presidential attitudes towards the racial issue involving black people.

One of the fronts that the Barack Obama administration promised to act on concerned the organizational healthcare system in the United States. Despite the American Executive's personal brand with him, health sector reform “was […] a priority” (Anderson, 2013, p. 24) of Democrats since Bill Clinton. Even with the historic refusal of Republicans, especially at the end of the XNUMXth century, to any type of public financing for health, Obama managed to approve the Affordable care [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act]. With the consent of the “insurance sector and the American Medical Association and [having] a majority […] in Congress” (Ibidem) his path was made easier. Strictly speaking, the Affordable care was bolder in reconfiguring the health system than “the bush Medicare Prescription Bill” (Ibidem, p. 25), but the program's financing process focused on “expanding social assistance [to health] in exchange for a gigantic benefit for private health” (Ibidem).

In terms of a sociology of public policies: the AHCA resulted in “guaranteeing a state-subsidized market for the very expensive medicines [medicines] from pharmaceutical companies” (Ibidem). (At the end of his term, the Obama administration's political etiquette – health sector reform – was not defended by American voters: instead, and contradictorily, Donald Trump can quite easily mobilize the white supremacist historical legacy to publicize, a supposed, and even non-existent, aid to black people and further catalyze the votes of colored resentment.)

The racial issue concerning African Americans could have been Barack Obama's ticket to Machiavellian glory. However, the virtues, at least of his captivating smile, were not enough for this; on the contrary in a way. Barack Obama knew about the historical and social adversities of black people for a long time; As a Harvard man, he knew both the American significance of the right to gun ownership defended by the landowning elite with their white militias (the Ku Klux Klan) that emerged in the post-Civil War context, and the material and political disadvantages of people of color in a racially segregated society and always in fear of black uprising.

The American electoral system to which we have already referred was built with the aim of protecting the elitist American political system – it was “designed to protect the interests of the slave oligarchy through the distortion of suffrage: […] pre-modern [it was structured based on of] limited vote, majority system, […] obstacles to access to voting and the Electoral College” (Riley, 2017, p. 28). Obviously, historically and socially black people have always been the most harmed. Barack Obama did little to at least mitigate this institutional asymmetry. The question then arises – for African Americans, what resulted from the eight years of government of the first black president of the United States? The historical sociology of New Left Review here it is: severe.

3.

With the relative crumbling of American political parties as social legitimacy – Dylan Riley will say that “a new manifestation of the emptying of the party form and the crisis of representation, which hit democracies after 2008” (2017, p. 28), and in this case, Even the oligarchized democracy of the United States suffered the effects of the fall of the financial system – the candidacy of Barack Obama could reorganize the system's loyalties at least concerning symbolism in a multiracial society. Candidate, therefore, of the establishment (liberal) he was able to harmonize a potentially convulsive country. (It wasn't what black people expected.)

But still, even with these attributes of form, politician Barack Obama was “great news for liberalism that is as elitist” (Michaels, 2008, p. 32) as its twin, North American conservatism. Thus, whether it was McCain or Obama – or “whoever wins,” inequality in the United States will remain essentially intact” (Ibidem). Therefore, one of the priorities of the Democratic administration from 2008 to 2016 had been the “reduction of the [public] deficit” (Davis, 2013, p. 34) with fundamentally disadvantageous repercussions for those who need greater investment in social spending.

Regis Debray, another theorist and intellectual who left his signature in the British (and American) magazine, is right when he states that the “State […] is the only and ultimate good of those who have nothing” in societies like ours (Debray, 2017 , p. 28). It was young people who felt the impact of the cut in state resources for education and it was unemployed workers (many resulting from the 2008 subprime crisis) who became hopeless with the little attention given by Barack Obama to social security. The African-American population, evidently, suffered most intensely from the “center neoliberalism” (Michaels, 2008, p. 32) of their president.

It was not occasional, as Mike Davis observed, that in the 2016 elections black participation in regions such as Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia declined – this “would explain most of Clinton's defeat in the Midwest” (2017, p. 9 ). Now, racially, the Barack Obama presidency did little to change the historical situation of black people; Poverty remained endemic, worsened by years of aggressive liberalism since the days of Reagan and by the 2007-2008 financial crisis for which Democrats themselves bear their share of responsibility.

And in terms of social and cultural recognition? Here the crudeness of the social order is, unfortunately, incompatible with the research agendas of the mainstream of contemporary political philosophy: Obama did not “deal with the police, the riots provoked by the shootings of black people marked [his term]” (Anderson , 2017, p. 48), the incarceration of young African Americans continued with him in the Executive (as black sociologist Michelle Alexander demonstrates[2]) and upon receiving the Black Lives Matter at the White House told the delegates with his characteristic sympathy that they “should be grateful to have the privilege of an audience with him and reminded them that [despite everything] they were in Oval Office, speaking with the president of the United States” (Ibidem).

With this socio-historical and socio-conjunctural framework, the temporality of men was implacable - in 2016, Barack Obama, the Democrats, social liberals and multiculturalists had to face a defeat to the Republican Donald Trump who would launch the United States into the era of governments uncompromising right wing.

What to expect from Kamala Harris, given the current political landscape and class struggle? If the historical sociology of New Left Review can teach us something: it is that we should not harbor hopes, naive for some and cynical (and opportunistic) for others, about the possible presidency of the first black woman in the United States of America.

*Ronaldo Tadeu de Souza is a professor of Political Science at UFSCar.

References

Anderson, Perry. Homeland: The Internal Politics. New Left Review, no. 81, 2013.

Anderson, Perry. Passing Mando's Baston. New Left Review, no. 103, 2017.

Davis, Mike. The Last White Elections? New Left Review, no. 79, 2013.

Debray, Regis. On a Blue Cloth with Twelve Yellow Stars (European Union). Le Monde Diplomatique Brazil, no. 121, 2017.

Marx, Carl. Communist Manifesto. São Paulo. Boitempo, 2007.

Michaels, Walter Benn. Against Diversity. New Left Review, no. 52, 2008.

Riley, Dylan. The American Brumário. New Left Review, no. 103, 2017.

Notes

[1] See Leo Strauss. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Ed. University of Chicago Press, 1978.

[2] See Michelle Alexander. The New Segregation: Racism and Mass Incarceration. Ed. Boitempo, 2018.

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