I was thrilled to see a genuine young angry black man run for office as opposed to the polished Establishment African-Americans like Obama, who are afraid to utilize their historically-oppressed race as a PR tool for resonating with mass anger. (Nutter is even worse, invoking a Bill Cosby-esque chastisement of his own race.) This isn’t to say that blacks should be obligated to be militant, but I’m not gonna lie, it’s really awesome when they are.
It also gave me a chance to call out mechanical radicals. Some were too “principled” to indulge in elections or too fixated on Diop’s political flaws (short version, a bit of Stalinism and black nationalism), failing to realize that the crux of the matter was that a militant black and revolutionary marxist was running for mayor. I was happy to see the people capable of thinking on their feet recognize this man as an inspiring voice for our side.
That being said, I was a little crestfallen to see that his poll results were only 3.57% of the vote. With the nation seized by a movement saying “We Are the 99%,” you would think a candidate who speaks to rebellion against the system would be a little more popular.
Do not misinterpret me as viewing the Diop campaign as a mistake or a waste. However, the low turnout result confirms my critique of most election campaigns. (I definitely was not hoping to have my critique confirmed in this case.) Election campaigns do not happen in an abstract space where all candidates are compared equally by the voting public. They have a bias toward the group with the most powerful social base or organizing core. In a capitalist society, the mainstream parties can use corporate-donated money to hire their own artificial campaigning machine. We populists must construct our own power bloc out of organized political groups, communities friendly to us, and unions open to our ideas. Even this is somewhat futile so long as the rich can easily counter our painstakingly-constructed coalitions with a campaign instantly manufactured out of paid employees, and a profusion of advertising spending we will never be able to match.
I also must point out that Diop could have gained a wider resonance if his campaign focused more on class, rather than exclusively on race. Race is crucial, of course, especially in a city which is 40% black and 40% white (2010 Census data) – in other words, Philadelphia has a working class which is split down the middle, with half brutally oppressed by the justice system and disproportionately crammed into prisons, and with each side of the race line too often distrusting the other. If you’re not talking about race in Philly, you’re not addressing reality. But if you’re not also talking about class, then you’re still not addressing it.
It’s true that Diop made occasional overtures to how his policies would benefit lower-income whites, but they were only occasional. To sum it up, even though he is both a militant black and revolutionary socialist, the public was probably only aware that he is a militant black. He campaigned as a champion of the oppressed, but his definition of the oppressed did not seem to include working whites except as an afterthought. At a time when people are chanting “We Are the 99%” (obviously a multi-racial category!), this approach is badly out of touch. Unfortunately, this approach is only a reflection of his group UHURU and its backer the African People’s Socialist Party, who believe in an anti-capitalist movement led exclusively by blacks.
This wasn’t significant enough to keep me from advocating people vote for Diop, but it is simply not a valid method for developing the brewing class revolt in a country which is 70% white. And appealing to that brewing class revolt, rather than appealing only to race issues, could have made Diop’s campaign more popular.
All that being said, election campaigns are worth undertaking, in order to make a ruckus and put our ideas out there in wider society. The point is, however, that even these election campaigns will be stronger if we focus on what our general mode of organizing should be: building up a network of groups around various issues and purposes but with a similar political outlook, held together by a radical octopus in the center with a tentacle in each.
This is not inconceivable – Diop belongs to an organization with various extensions and alliances. If these groups were bigger, his election results would have been stronger too.
Build the octopus, build its network. Then we can truly make a big splash in elections, and ultimately circumvent the whole process by replacing the existing state with a network of democratic, employee-seized workplaces.
