Obama the socialist?
In spite of the ridiculous claims of some of the more extreme rightwing talking heads that Obama is some sort of “socialist” who wants to take from the rich and give to the poor, he is fully dedicated to the capitalist system. As Left Business Observer put it in March, 2008, “big capital would have no problem with an Obama presidency… [Top hedge fund managers] think he’s the man to do their work,” and “They’re confident he wouldn’t undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth.”
The Democrats are not “pro-worker”
In the limited “labor movement” that currently exists in the U.S., the Democrats are often viewed as more friendly to workers than the Republicans.. In our country, which unlike most other countries in the world doesn’t even have a party pretending to represent the working class, many thus view the Democrats as “pro-worker.”
That the Democrats sometimes mouth pro-worker rhetoric during election season doesn’t change their class character one bit. When push comes to shove that fact becomes obvious.
When transit workers in New York City went out on strike in 2005, Democrat Eliot Spitzer, then-New York State Attorney General, hit their union with legal injunctions and millions of dollars in fines. New York Senator Hillary Clinton, herself a leading Democrat, supported Spitzer’s earlier use of the anti-worker Taylor Law against those same workers in 1999.
In 1985, Rudy Perpich, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, called out the National Guard to break the picket line of striking workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin and usher scab “replacement workers” into the workplace.
These are just two examples of many.
Over the last several decades, union membership has declined as decent jobs have been increasingly replaced by part-time “McJobs.” This has brought along with it a colossal drop in pay and benefits. In 2006, The New York Times reported that “wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s.”
The Democrats joined the Republicans in working on behalf of the capitalists they represent by overseeing and helping along the processes that have lead to these conditions.
Still, the bureaucrats who lead what’s left of the unions in the U.S. today continue to tie the working people they supposedly represent to the capitalist Democratic Party!
The utter treachery of such misleaders is aptly demonstrated by the current situation of the International Association of Machinists (IAM). While the 27,000 members of that union who have been out on strike against the Boeing Corporation for over a month are forced to eek out a living on the meager $150 strike pay they receive from the union each week, their union’s leaders are funneling millions of dollars into the record-setting campaign fund of multimillionaire Barrack Obama.
The Democrats are not and cannot be an “anti-war” party
Many people in the U.S. falsely see the Democrats as an “anti-war” party. History tells a different story. Democratic presidents were in office during the invasion of Haiti in 1915, the invasions of the Dominican Republic in both 1916 and 1965, the invasion of Russia in 1918, the invasion of Korea in 1950, the invasion of Viet Nam in 1963, the “humanitarian” bombings of Yugoslavia throughout the 1990’s, the bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, and the mercenary invasion of Cuba in 1961, among others. Former president Bill Clinton, a favorite of the party, sent more troops to more parts of the world than any U.S. president since World War II.
The fact is that the United States is an imperialist country. The capitalist ruling class has to constantly look for ways to increase its profits, both in the U.S. and internationally. This leads it to carry out political and military actions of all sorts, from discreet palace coups to outright invasions, in order to secure new resources, markets and cheap labor and generally create conditions more favorable to its domination of the world. A change in presidents cannot change this fundamental fact. Nothing short of the elimination of imperialism can bring an end to war once and for all.
An historical election?
Much is being made of the “ground breaking” prospects of having either the first Black president or the first female vice-president. This kind of identity politics is the norm in the circus that is electoral politics in the United States.
Innocent Iraqis are no more pleased to be shot by an Arab-American member of the U.S. Army than a white one.
The fact that two of the three cops that shot 44 bullets into Sean Bell (an innocent, unarmed Black man murdered by members of the NYPD) in 2006 were minorities is certainly of no comfort to his family.
STOP ERA, one of the most prominent antifeminist organizations in the U.S., was founded by Phyllis Schlafy, a woman.
While a person’s ideas are shaped by their surroundings, their politics and/or actions are not dictated by their nationality or sex. To claim otherwise is itself a form of discrimination that arbitrarily and incorrectly attaches certain views to certain people.
A lesser evil?
The condition of “democracy” in the U.S. is so poor that many who vote do so solely in an attempt to keep the candidate they think is worse out of office. In other words, they don’t vote for a candidate because they support his or her politics, but simply because they view him or her as “less bad” than the other candidate.
Even if one candidate really was much worse than the other, this kind of strategy would be the equivalent of requesting to be shot by a rifle instead of a canon.
In politics, one is defined much more by what they are actually for than what they are against.
Get out the vote
Many people in the U.S. are already keenly aware of the fallacious nature of elections in this country which is why a large percentage of the eligible portion of the population doesn’t even bother to vote.
This year, the capitalists hope to change that trend..
With plans to greatly expand and enforce their domination, the capitalist rulers are seeking to win regular people over to their rehashed program of imperialism through a combination of jingoistic rhetoric and propaganda from the corporate media.
They are counting on a high voter turnout to give an air of legitimacy to their “democratic” system as they continue their global plunder, drawing mass opposition from millions of people both at home and abroad.
By putting forth Obama as an agent of “change” and McCain as an agent of “reform,” they seek to pull millions of discontent and outright angry people back into the “acceptable realm” of electoral politics. By doing so, they hope to lessen the possibility of future protests, strikes and other expressions of dissatisfaction which could in anyway challenge their rule.
In the end, whether or not you cast a vote in November will have no real bearing on the future. Our intentions are to shatter illusions in the twin parties of the capitalist elite and present a viable alternative.
For a worker alliance!
As long as control of society remains in the hands of a tiny financial elite, things will only continue to get worse.
What’s needed is the formation of a working people’s alliance (which would include among its ranks not only those current employed, but also disabled and retired workers, workers unable to find employment, youths from working class backgrounds and “housewives”) to utilize the social power of the working class to fight for the ouster of the financial parasites and the creation of a society free from extreme wealth disparities, starvation, unemployment, homelessness, oppression and war—that is, a society actually worth living in.
Some of us are currently in the early stages of coming together to create just such an alliance. We urge you to join us and help make a real difference.
For more information, email: workersbecounted@yahoo.com
