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.
Obama, who is very careful with his words and actions, has done a good
job so far of portraying himself as a “sensible progressive”. However,
far from being a “progressive” alternative, Obama is at his core a
typical representative of the bosses’ political parties. Despite
presenting himself as a candidate of “change”, Obama is a defender of
capitalism and imperialism, and hence of exploitation and oppression.
On all fundamentals, he is far closer to Bush than he is to being a
genuine alternative for working people.
Far
from seeking the end of class exploitation, Obama is a true believer in
the capitalist system. Along with the likes of Joe Lieberman, a
political and financial supporter of Obama whom Barack considers to be
his “mentor”, he makes it clear that the Democratic Party is a party of
the bosses: “The last I checked John Kerry believes in the superiority
of the U.S. military, Hillary Clinton believes in the virtues of
capitalism…”
Obama even criticizes the Democratic party from
the right: “…Democrats are confused. There are those who still champion
the old-time religion, defending every New-Deal and Great-Society
program from Republican encroachment, achieving ratings of 100 percent
from liberal interest groups. But these efforts seem exhausted, a
constant game of defense bereft of energy and new ideas needed to
address the changing circumstances of globalization or a stubbornly
isolated inner city.”
Obama, who earned just under $1million
last year, is a supporter of the Hamilton Project, a group founded by
Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury and current chair of
Citigroup (the world’s largest company, with total assets of $2.02
trillion). As a Senator, Obama opposed a bill that would place a 30
percent interest rate cap on credit cards, which would help relieve
high interest payments for many U.S. working families. Yet he voted
for a “tort reform” bill that rolls back workers’ ability to seek
redress and compensation if they are wronged by their employer.
On
the question of health care, Obama is opposed to national single-payer
health care, on the grounds that it would leave workers in the private
health care industry, such as Kaiser and BlueCross BlueShield,
unemployed! This is a smoke screen of the worst kind. He is attempting
to appear pro-worker, while he is really defending the interests of big
business against working people. Instead, he is in favor of “voluntary
solutions” as opposed to “government mandates”. Yet as every worker
knows, the bosses never “volunteer” to give us raises or benefits. The
super-profitable health care industry is not going to sacrifice its
profits. Obama is merely evading the question. He might as well state
the truth: he is not for any fundamental change.
Like
all good big business politicians, when the capitalists come with money
and gifts, Obama becomes their political guardian angel. For example,
he is a loyal defender of the leading U.S. nuclear power company
Exelon, which has given more than $74,000 to his campaign. Exelon is
the parent company of ComEd, the energy company currently price gouging
Illinois consumers. Agro-capitalists Archer Daniels Midland have
reportedly lent him the use of private jets for his campaigns. A few
months after entering the Senate, Obama bought more than $50,000 worth
of stock in AVI BioPharma, a pharmaceutical company that would have
benefited from legislation that he backed. George Soros, the prominent
billionaire and master of capital speculation, supports Obama, although
he said he would support Hillary Clinton, if she won the Democratic
nomination. In either case, he feels confident that his billions of
dollars will be safe.
It is on his “opposition” to the war that
Obama has garnered much support, and understandably so, as the war is
every day seen by more and more U.S. workers as a complete disaster.
Many are seeking a real political opposition against the war, but what
exactly does Obama mean when he “speaks out against the war”? Far from
opposing the war on the basis that it is a war on workers and the poor
at home and abroad, he would have preferred that the war had been
better presented and more carefully planned. He is in favor of U.S.
imperialism winning, but adds a pinch of semi-populist rhetoric, as
many Democratic politicians have been doing as of late. He was simply
quicker to jump on the bandwagon.
Obama is in fact a vigorous
supporter of the wider “war on terror”. As he stated in a so-called
anti-war speech in October 2002: “You want a fight, President Bush?
Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective,
coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks
that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves
more than color-coded warnings.” Obama voted to re-authorize the USA
PATRIOT Act, which has been heavily criticized by civil rights layers
as curtailing civil liberties. He opposed moves to censure Bush for
illegal wiretapping, and voted to approve Condoleezza Rice as Secretary
of State.
Obama
has called for a “phased withdrawal” of U.S. troops and an opening of
diplomatic dialogue with Iraq’s neighbors, Syria and Iran. In other
words, he understands that the best U.S. imperialism can do is soften
the blow of a defeat; outright victory is now an impossibility. Like
other slightly more far-sighted leaders of the ruling class, he
approaches this from the perspective of preserving the cohesion and
readiness of the military – so it can be used in other imperialist
adventures such as Afghanistan and beyond. Far from calling for an
immediate withdrawal of occupying forces in Iraq, Obama has the
perspective of further interventions in the region, with one possible
scenario involving U.S. forces remaining in an occupied Iraq for an
“extended period of time”, acting as a launching pad. This would call
for “a reduced but active U.S. military presence” that “protects
logistical supply points” and “American enclaves like the Green Zone,”
which would send “a clear message to hostile countries Iran and Syria
that we plan to remain a key player in the region.” U.S. troops
“remaining in Iraq” will “act as rapid reaction forces to respond to
emergencies and to go after terrorists.” Above all, Obama wants a
“pragmatic solution to the real war we’re facing in Iraq,” and to
“defeat the insurgency.” These, of course, are mutually exclusive aims.
The insurgency is the popular uprising of an occupied people. The only
solution is the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. and “coalition” troops
from Iraq.
In March, Obama called Iran’s government “a threat to
all of us … [The U.S.] should take no option, including military
action, off the table.” He added that the U.S.’ “primary means” of
relating to Iran should be “sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined
with tough sanctions.”
In short, Obama is trying to be
everything to everyone, both for the continuation of the war for one
sector of the ruling class, and posturing against the war for another
sector, all while demagogically trying to win votes from genuinely
anti-war working people.
Obama, who could well be the first black
U.S. president, has attempted to make benign the malignancy that is
racism in the United States. American capitalism relies heavily on the
oppression of minorities as a means of exploiting and dividing the
working class. But Obama believes that “cultural issues” are at the
core of black poverty – an argument also embraced by many right-wing
racists. Even a cursory look at the history of oppression that black
workers and communities have been faced with shows that this has little
to do with “cultural issues”, but rather, has everything to do with the
social structure of U.S. capitalism.
Are police brutality,
the de-funding of inner city schools, and the gutting of public housing
a “cultural issue”? Should the brutal repression and liquidation of an
entire generation of black leadership, including MLK Jr. and Malcolm X,
be considered a “cultural issue”? Is the fact that one in three black
men in their twenties are in prison, out on bail, on probation, court
supervision, community service, or parole a “cultural issue”? And yet
Obama sees the discrepancy between blacks and whites in the U.S. as a
question of personal drive or the lack thereof. He has claimed that
blacks can’t progress, “If we don’t start instilling in our young
children that there is nothing to be ashamed about in educational
achievement. I don’t know who told them that reading and writing and
conjugating your verbs was something ‘white.’ ”
Certainly, there
are those who are critical of Obama due to the color of his skin. We
soundly reject this racist point of view. Black workers in the U.S.,
along with their class sisters and brothers of all races and
ethnicities, run the world’s most advanced economy every day. There is
no reason why black men or women cannot not play a leading role in the
political shaping of society. However, for Marxists, it is a question
of which class interests someone defends. It must be made clear that
anyone who wants to seriously tackle racism must be prepared to tackle
capitalism. As a representative of the capitalist class, Obama is
neither willing nor able to tackle either.
When
it comes to immigration, Obama has sought to lump immigrant workers
with terrorists in the drive to militarize the border. Obama took an
active role in the Senate’s drive for further border security linked to
new immigration laws. Beginning in 2005, he co-sponsored the “Secure
America and Orderly Immigration Act” introduced by Sen. John McCain. He
also supported the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” sponsored by
Sen. Arlen Specter, which did not pass the House. In 2006, Obama
supported another related bill, the $7 billion dollar “Secure Fence
Act”, which authorized the construction of 700 miles of fences, walls
and other security measures to be built up along the U.S.-Mexico
border. President Bush signed it into law in October 2006, calling it,
“an important step toward immigration reform.” Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose appointment Obama approved, said the
bill would “make substantial progress towards preventing terrorists and
others from exploiting our borders,” directly implying immigrants and
terrorists are one and the same.
He is also a strong supporter of
“guest worker programs” and gave glowing praise to the May 18th
proposal in the Senate that includes provisions to detain up to 27,500
immigrants per day, to hire 18,000 new border guards, and to construct
an additional 370 miles of border walls.
Bush and his circle
are certainly an extremely hawkish section of the ruling class, with
plans for imperialist conquest based on their specific economic
interests: oil and other energy holdings, armaments, construction, and
other contract companies that benefit from military interventions, such
as Halliburton. But the distinction between Bush and Obama is not
principled. Obama, along with the more far-sighted strategists of the
ruling class, seek only to curtail the excesses of the Bush clique,
which are a threat to the stability of U.S. capitalism as a whole. In
this sense, Barrack Obama actually more faithfully represents the
interests of the capitalist class at this point in history than Bush.
So is Obama really an alternative for working people? The facts speak
for themselves.
Taken from the American Workers’ International League website www.socialistappeal.org
