Obama has a proposal for the Democratic Party and for the imperialist wing of the U.S. ruling class. He laid it out in a “lecture” to a crowd of 15,000 supporters in Johannesburg, South Africa on the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth. Obama’s plan involves stopping Trumpism (though Trump is never named) and restoring the liberal world order dominated by the U. S. rulers.
Obama starts by observing that in 1918 when Mandela was born colonialism was alive and well, with the great powers mobilizing mass racist sentiment in service of imperial expansion and rivalry.  Of course, he overlooks the world-shaking Bolshevik Revolution where the communist-led working class took power in Russia and disrupted the imperialist world order. 
It was this anti-imperialist, socialist revolution in October 1917 that inspired Mandela and many other communist and nationalist liberation movements in Africa and throughout the world. The racist Jim-Crow segregation and murderous exploitation of Black workers in the southern United States inspired no one.
Obama mentions these liberation movements as though they represent the continuing progress of capitalism and liberal democracy toward a wonderful world for all. Actually these movements represent some reforms that were rather quickly taken away by capitalist rulers. These liberation movements failed the workers. They succeeded for some local capitalists.
Racist hypocrite
So what is Obama’s plan to improve life in Africa?  His foundation is mentoring 200 young people from journalists, to small entrepreneurs to educational leaders. He does mention China as a full-grown rival, but says nothing about China’s Silk Road plan that is transforming much of the infrastructure in Africa to align with China’s imperialist needs. Obama’s foundation stands little chance to stop China’s economic dominance in Africa.
Further Obama does not mention that China, Russia and the U. S. are increasing their military presence in Africa. He failed to mention his military imperialist expansion on the continent, including drone bombings and drone bases, in Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, and Tunisia.
In reality Obama is proposing a political plan to make U. S. imperialism look good around the world as it prepares for more wars with its imperialist rivals.
Obama moves on to commit the gross and foul distortion of equating the collapse of the already capitalist Soviet Union in 1989 with the collapse of apartheid that same year. Both systems, he claims, amounted to an assault on individual human dignity.  Yet apartheid, from the start, was dedicated to racial supremacy, while the collapse of the USSR ended the first attempt to building an egalitarian society in which hundreds of millions, if not billions worldwide, still yearn to live. It is precisely that society, communism that Obama is careful to reject in his effort to map out the road ahead. 
Inclusive capitalism
Instead, he calls for “inclusive capitalism”—progressive taxation, public education, universal health care, and a role for organized labor.
Obama then focuses on the U. S. ruling class. They are still far too unpatriotic and they are running away with society’s wealth. They have no sense of duty to their nation, no appetite for sacrifice.  Yet he willfully refuses to acknowledge any role whatsoever his eight years in power played in further concentrating wealth in fewer hands coming out of the 2008 crisis. Obama’s “inclusive capitalism” is a call for discipline of the bosses. He paints the rise of nationalism worldwide as a failure on the part of ruling classes to contain the alienation that runaway inequality has engendered. Divided societies cannot confront major adversaries. This is the great ruling class fear Obama articulates. This is a playbook for major war, war that mobilizes entire societies.
Obama’s “inclusive capitalism” includes national borders, massive deportations, and immigrants assimilating.  He quotes Mandela to promote all class unity: “[t]o make peace with an enemy, one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one’s partner.”  
Yet life for Black workers in South Africa is worse than ever.
This one line sums up a major error of the old communist movement. Working with the enemy means more capitalist misery for workers and South Africa is a prime example of that. As Democrats and people on the “left” call for our votes, we must stick to our guns, the long, difficult road to workers power, communism.