RHETORIC VICTORY OF BLASIO IN NY MAY
END UP IN SIMILAR OBAMA DECEPTION
THE
DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN NEW YORK AND THE CRISIS OF LIBERALISM
By
Bill Van Auken 7 November 2013 [Here a friendly critique to Bill in red brackets. He make good points though, good description but not
alternatives]
Ckeck full article in http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/07/pers-n07.html . [HERE ONLY EXTRACT]
Tuesday’s off-year election saw the
Democratic Party win the mayoral election in New York City for the first time
in nearly a quarter of a century, following the two-term administration of the
Republican former prosecutor and right-wing demagogue Rudy Giuliani and the
three-term rule of billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
How pale and distorted a reflection of America’s capitalist two-party system provides of such sentiments can be seen in the record low turnout at the polls. Just 24 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the election, meaning that de Blasio’s “landslide,” breathlessly proclaimed by the media, consisted of the votes of just 16 percent of those registered and a considerably slimmer margin when compared with the city’s entire voting age population.
[…]
Millions of working people in New York City, as throughout the US, are bitterly disillusioned with, if not actively hostile toward, both major political parties. This is the result in large measure of the experience of nearly five years of the Obama administration, which came into office with promises of “hope” and “change you can believe in.”
Instead, at home the administration executed the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street together with deepening unemployment and austerity for the working class. The jobless Obama “recovery” has delivered 93 percent of income growth to the top one percent, while the vast majority has suffered a continuing decline in living standards. Meanwhile, it has vastly escalated domestic and worldwide spying, while conducting criminal operations abroad from drone assassinations to wars of aggression in Libya and Syria.
While de Blasio sought to tap into resentments over social inequality, the overriding fact of American social life, those who are suffering its effects had every reason to mistrust his “tale of two cities” rhetoric.
De Blasio is a Democratic Party hack, a functionary in the Clinton administration who went on to manage the successful campaign of Hillary Clinton for the US Senate in New York and to seek several minor city offices as rungs in the ladder of his political career. No sooner than he had won the Democratic primary in September, de Blasio executed a familiar pivot, pitching his candidacy now not to the working class and poor of New York, but to the financial predators of Wall Street. In the end he took in more than three times as much in campaign cash and enjoyed considerably more support from the big banks and finance houses than Lhota, a former investment banker who campaigned against de Blasio’s call for an insignificant rise in city taxes on New York’s richest. De Blasio hobnobbed with and got money from the executives of Goldman Sachs and the top hedge funds as well as others who deserve to be in prison for their actions that provoked the financial meltdown of 2008.
Within this socioeconomic milieu, there were calculations that putting a Democrat who postures as a populist into Gracie Mansion would have definite political uses, particularly under conditions in which the city is projecting a $2 billion budget deficit, even as it faces contract negotiations with unions representing some 300,000 municipal workers, most of whom have been without new agreements for more than four years. […]
[…]
In the case of the New York mayoral election, the International Socialist Organization celebrated [we should NOT celebrate the setup of the electoral trap : either democrats or republicans, unless it is part of our alliance strategy] de Blasio’s victory in the Democratic mayoral primary, proclaiming him “a dramatic improvement from past Democratic mayoral candidates.” Vastly exaggerating popular illusions in de Blasio, the ISO counseled its own members and other pseudo-left elements that “our role should not be to dash these hopes (as if we could) but to try to channel them into a grassroots movement for change.” Instead of campaigning for de Blasio, it urged “activists” to “demand that he campaign for us.” [non sense in saying “our role should not be to dash these hopes”, and then criticizing “Instead of campaigning for de Blasio, it urged “activists to “demand that he campaign for us”. If you give your flag to democratic party, then you better say you are NOT socialists]
Everything here is designed to funnel discontent back into the safe channel of Democratic Party politics and head off a break with the capitalist two-party system by the working class.
[ISO seems to be the left of the democratic party, still part of this party, as Ron Paul is the left of the GOPs, and both of them have the role of –though criticallyaccepted- of being part of the “cynical political machination” of deceiving young voters and pulling them into the dirty trap of voting either democratic or republican. With these socialist friends “que viva la alternancia de los dos partidos financiados por las grandes corporaciones”. This is that Bill Auken celebrates. Bill cannot claim that his party represent the working classes of America, for this to be true, this party should have been inside the NY unions representing some 300,000 municipal workers and lead them to either create a 3rd democratic option, a National Front against fascism, call for a Convection of all the left and elect one candidate at local and State level. If they cannot do that, they should not be called socialists, OR call to NO to participate in elections. Otherwise they will end up celebrating clowns like Blasio]
Similarly, in Minneapolis and Seattle, the Socialist Alternative group ran candidates for City Council based on minimal municipal reform programs and appeals to both sections of the Democratic Party establishment and the trade union bureaucracy. [Bill should learn from this experencies]
[…]
The pseudo-left, with its continuous promotion of various forms of identity politics, is dedicated to obscuring the fundamental conflict between the working class and this ruling layer. Reflecting the social interests of a privileged layer of the middle class, it is determined to divert and quash this struggle. [Bill Auken party is doing so]
As with Obama in 2008, events will soon expose the class content of de Blasio’s politics. The yawning social divide in New York City, and throughout the country, is not sustainable. It must give rise to an eruption of class struggle. When that happens the true character of the two big business parties […] will become clear to millions. [it is clear to millions now]
The decisive questions for this coming struggle are the development of an independent political movement of the working class in opposition to capitalism and the building of a revolutionary leadership to arm this movement with a conscious socialist and revolutionary program. This means building the Socialist Equality Party.
[“independent political movement of the working class”?? , we supposed to have it with your party. “in opposition to capitalism” you better talk about neo-libreral economics run by big corporations, “and the building of a revolutionary leadership to arm this movement with a conscious socialist and revolutionary program” so, you admit that you didn’t do nothing, that your party does not really exist in America!!. “This means building the Socialist Equality Party” , do you mean an elite type of SEPack?? .. Who told you that we need that pack?? How many year are you saying such bla bla?? Do you question yourself why it did not work??”]
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