<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Below is a report by Paul Street of his recent tour promoting his new book. Some may be interested. Here is an excerpt:<div><br></div><div><!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">…The demand for
radical, deep-rooted, systemic change naturally strikes Obama’s more
intellectually inclined liberal and progressive supporters as hopelessly
“utopian” and “unrealistic” – as off the charts of serious consideration. The
real progressive thing, the properly “practical” and “pragmatic” course, is to
carefully and incrementally push for small steps on the long, slow path to a
better world. As Obama likes to say, we must not let “the perfect be the enemy
of the good.” But for many of us on
the actual historical Left, the honest and truly informed calculation of what
is </font><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">realistic </font></i></span><span lang="EN-GB"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">is very
different. Leaving aside the
important fact that many of Obama’s “reforms” are simply (far worse then being
merely “less than perfect”) “just </font><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">no damn good</font></i></span><span lang="EN-GB"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">” (from even a mildly progressive perspective) </font><a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">[i]</font></span></a><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">even
just from a mildly progressive liberal perspective (the perspective of say, a
John Conyers), we have a very dissimilar sense of practicality and
reality. As we see it, the
currently reigning profits system – every bit as entrenched and intact under
the “leftist” Obama and a (corporate-) Democratic congressional majority as it
was with Bush and Republicans in the saddle (possibly more entrenched now
thanks in part to the superficially left cover provided by “Brand Obama”) – is incompatible
with basic human needs and democratic principles. The really fantastic and deadly
“utopian” illusion, for us, is to believe that the U.S. and humanity can build
a desirably democratic and sustainable future without implementing an egalitarian alternative to the capitalist
order – to the so-called “free market” system to which Obama has repeatedly
pledged his allegiance</font><a href="#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">[ii]</font></span></a><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">
and on whose financial chieftains he has so strongly relied. To quote the left
economists Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates: “</font></span><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">Can [democratic, socially
egalitarian, and ecologically] goals be achieved inside the present economic
system? Perhaps some can in very limited ways, but most of them clearly
cannot. The system simply will not
allow it. Pragmatists say that
these things are utopian, that we have to work within the system and achieve
what we can, gradually and in a piecemeal fashion. It seems to us, however, that this ‘pragmatic’ approach is
utopian</font></i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">.”</font><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">
</font><a href="#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span lang="EN-GB"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">[iii]</font></span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino"> </font></span><span lang="EN-GB"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">Increasingly
grave ecological issues, particularly those connected with the profits-driven
problem of global warming, call into question the “pragmatic” wisdom of
pursuing nothing more than the “incremental change” that many Obama fans laud
the president for embodying. </font></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">…</font></div><div style="mso-element:endnote-list">
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino"><a href="#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""></a> <o:p></o:p></font></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">[ii]</font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino"> For details and
sources, see Paul Street, </font><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics </font></i><span style="font-style:normal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">(Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008),. 40-54l Paul Street,
“Michael Moore and Barack Obama: A Love Story,” </font></span><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">ZNet</font></i><span style="font-style:normal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino"> (October 9, 2009), read at </font><a href="http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22823"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22823</font></a><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">.
<o:p></o:p></font></span></div>
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<div style="mso-element:endnote" id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino"><a href="#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""></a> <o:p></o:p></font></div><p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent:.5in"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">[iii]</font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino"> Fred Magdoff and Michael D. Yates,
“What Needs to Be Done: A Socialist View,” </font><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino">Monthly Review</font></i><span style="font-style:normal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Palatino"> (November 2009), 90. </font></span></p>
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<div>What Street is talking about, is provided in the document below:</div><div><blockquote type="cite"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br></font> <br>Paul L. Street <br><a href="http://www.paulstreet.org/">www.paulstreet.org</a><br>
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