USA

With our own NHS once again under attack, not least from the Tories who see huge profits for their big business
chums in the private healthcare sector once they are back in office, many health workers have been
looking at the debate taking place in the USA over the future of their
healthcare system. Paul Poposky from In Defence Of Marxism takes a stateside look at how things are actually shaping up and whether Obama is delivering on his election promises.

The U.S. has elected a new president,
Barack Hussein Obama. Along with the dramatic turn in the economic situation,
this marks a definite turning point in the history of the country and of the
world. Big illusions have been created that Obama will provide “change”. What
American workers have voted for is an end to policies that benefit the rich,
but Obama does not represent real change. In the coming years workers will
learn from real life experience that what is required is a genuine voice of the
US working class, and that can only be a mass party of labor.

Elections can reveal a lot about a country, and the fast-approaching
U.S. presidential election is proving to be no exception. Above all,
the current election shows just how much working Americans need their
own political representation. This fact is expressed and cynically
taken advantage of by Barack Obama’s campaign slogan: “Change We Can
Believe In.” Even the “old guard” represented by John McCain has had to
raise the idea of change in his campaign rhetoric.

Millions have hoped against hope that Barack Obama represents real
change. But these sincere hopes were dealt another blow with the
selection of Senator Joseph Biden from Delaware as Obama’s vice
presidential running mate. Biden has had a long career in politics, and
is often portrayed as a “liberal.” However, a brief look at his
policies only goes to show the sorry state that bourgeois liberalism
finds itself in!

After years of Bush’s open-ended war on working people at home and
abroad, many on the “left” are desperate for an alternative. For many,
that alternative is Barack Obama, a Democratic Senator from Illinois. However,
far from being a “progressive” alternative, Obama is at his core a
typical representative of the bosses’ political parties.

Last Saturday, October
20th, hundreds of thousands workers and youth marched through the
streets of Rome, called out by the main left papers to put pressure on
the Prodi government to change its policies in favour of working people.