The USA after the mid-term elections<\/p>\n
On November 7 the USA witnessed something of a political earthquake as voters went to the polls to reject the agenda of President George Bush \u2013 on Iraq, free trade, stagnating wages, and high-level political corruption \u2013 by throwing his conservative Republican Party out of power in both houses of Congress.<\/p>\n
In the run up to the elections Bush vowed he would not change course on Iraq and that victory was the only option. But his course hit a brick wall of popular rejection, with voters breaking the Republican\u2019s twelve-year monopoly of power on Capitol Hill, giving a majority to the liberal Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
The Democrats were at best half-hearted critics of Bush\u2019s Iraq policy, not principled opponents of it but for the mass of voters they seemed the only hope of getting the troops out of Iraq soon and making new invasions less likely, However misplaced these hope may prove, however little they deserve it the Democrats got the full benefit of the mounting hostility to the war.<\/p>\n
Only the presidency remains in the Republican\u2019s hands. Of course, given the division of powers between executive and legislature in the US constitution, this still is a tremendous strength but the fear of losing this too in 2008 has already made the Republican party search for ways of embroiling the Democrats in finding a solution to the mess in Iraq.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the war, stupid<\/p>\n
The election result showed that the US working class, the urban and rural poor and the ethnic minorities have broken the spell of the patriotism whipped up since September 11 and the lightening victory in Iraq in 2003. The failure of the anti-war movement to prevent the Iraq invasion saw the movement go onto the defensive. It has proved unable to turn the growing disillusion with the occupation into mass action on the streets and force Bush to change tack.<\/p>\n
But in the last few months Bush\u2019s popularity and support for the Iraq invasion have fallen to all-time lows: 60 per cent how disapprove of the job he is ding and the media debate openly if he is THE worst US president ever. With the occupation of Iraq entering its third year, with no end in sight, with 2,867 US soldiers dead and 21,572 wounded, with 655,000 Iraqis killed and many thousands more maimed for life Iraq has become a bloody nightmare.<\/p>\n
A tidal wave of anger and disgust has been building up against the lies under which the war was launched and the occupation maintained: above all the promises of a democratic and pro-American Iraq have proved a deceitful illusion. The congressional elections were the first opportunity to allow popular feeling to express itself and it did, big time.<\/p>\n
However it is not only the working people of America who are disillusioned with Bush. The ruling class too is angry that the team around Bush and Dick Cheney, the vice \u2013president, has seriously mishandled its interests. A growing consensus of the military top brass, the political establishment and the billionaires who own America realised the White House strategy was falling apart. They began demanding change at the Pentagon, the sacking of Rumsfeld, and a major change of policy in the White House.<\/p>\n
Many saw the possibility of an \u201cendless\u201d Iraq occupation seriously damaging the military for a long time to come, both in terms of the morale of its soldiers and its ability to react to other crises. The possibility of actual defeat in Iraq, a disaster for the US capitalists and their global power, began to be raised more openly in the bosses\u2019 press and in leaked quotes from Pentagon insiders and Army generals. The popular magazine Newsweek said it in its headline just before the elections. \u201cWe\u2019re losing\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the \u201cneo-conservatives\u201d – the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) – are fighting like cats in a sack, looking for someone to blame. From the beginning of the century they expressed the dominant faction in the US capitalist class. They wanted to ensure \u201canother American century,\u201d to keep global hegemony by building up high-tech military strength, picking out for attack attacking \u201crogue states\u201d that defy vital US interests and pushing neoliberal free-trade and US corporate power. They wanted to ensure that neither the European Union nor rising powers like China or Russia would be able to challenge them in the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
PNAC helped Bush come to power, developed his major policies, and even took top posts in his administration, notably his Vice-president Dick Cheney. Now, like rats leaving a sinking ship, leading neocons ideologues like Richard Perle have stated publicly that the Iraq war was a mistake and the occupation has been bungled by Bush. Kenneth Adelman. Another neocon on the Defence Policy Board \u2013 the man who said invading Iraq would an \u201ca cakewalk\u201d – is now howling, \u201cA country\u2019s at stake, a region\u2019s at stake. This is a gigantic situation. This didn\u2019t have to be managed this bad. It\u2019s just awful.\u201d (Independent Nov 20)<\/p>\n
Bush Jr, having initially hoped to rubbish the work of Iraq Study Group chaired by Bush family loyalist James Baker. He feared that the Baker Report would be critical of his whole policy in Iraq After November 7th he was obliged to go running to Daddy \u2013 i.e. to the Bush Snr. Team to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. He has turned from rejecting Baker\u2019s Report out of hand to winning him over to supporting continued occupation. He has floated the idea that the US and its allies can make \u201ca last big push\u201d and actually win the war.<\/p>\n
Far from beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he wants to increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers. In any case Baker is highly unlikely to come up with an exit strategy. Rather the report it is expected to outline a four-point \u201cvictory strategy\u201d drawn up by Pentagon officials advising the group. This is all under discussion in secret sessions between Baker and vice-president Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n
Are the Democrats an alternative?<\/p>\n
Exit polls indicated that while Iraq was the top issue for the majority of voters, other issues were key too such as the economy and corruption. In 1994 the Republican\u2019s seized control of both houses of Congress, partly on a \u201cclean politics\u201d ticket, but by 2006 have themselves become deeply mired in a series of corruption scandals. Despite some growth in the last decade real wages have begun to stagnate one again and the federal minimum wage is now worth less in real terms than it was 50 years ago, according to an Oregon State University study! Student fees and debt and the cost of healthcare, with a record number of citizens with no healthcare plan at all, are also major issues, as well as job losses going overseas to countries like China where workers can be super-exploited by corporate America to make cheaper goods.<\/p>\n
In response, the Democrat\u2019s have put forward \u201cSix for \u201906 \u201c – a six-point plan of populist measures to cash in on these issues. However most of these measures are likely to have little affect if they are even implemented. The minimum wage is so low now that the $2 raise the democrats are promising will only affect around 3 per cent of workers! Instead of abolishing college fees these will simply be made tax-deductible. Any new spending promises have to meet the budget-balancing rules, where all spending increases need to be met by equivalent tax hikes or spending cuts – and the Democrats have not pledged themselves to repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich so there will be very little real rises in social spending. In fact they have pledged to cut the deficit, as Clinton did in the 1990\u2019s with swingeing cuts to social services and \u201cworkfare\u201d reforms to benefits, so they are likely to continue in the same vein as Clinton and Bush.<\/p>\n
But the Democrats are cheerfully committed to billions of dollars to build up the military and national security. After all, on the central political question of the day, the Iraq war, the Democrats are split, with most having voted in favour of it and for the Patriot Act that brought the war on terror home with a raft of repressive security measures attacking civil liberties. And when it comes to a solution to the Iraq debacle, the Democrats are long on rhetoric and Bush bashing about how the war is being fought, studiously short of detail on alternatives and absolutely not opposed to the war or occupation on principle.<\/p>\n
After the new Democrat representatives and senators take their seats in January, they will in all probability already have stitched together a new \u201cbi-partisan\u201d policy for a final push for victory with Bush and the Republicans- covered no doubt by the James Baker and the Iraq Review Group, which has five Democrats and five Republicans on it anyhow. The result will inevitably be a repackaging of the occupation, not its end. Thus the will of the electorate will be thwarted once again by the dead end strategy of voting for the Democrats as \u201cthe peace party.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Gaps between rhetoric and reality, promises and real policies…none of this should come as a surprise. The Democrats are an out-and-out bosses\u2019 party like the Republicans, representing those capitalists and the upper middle classes who seek collaborators amongst the trade union leaders, the Black and Latino community leaders, rather than head-on confrontation. They want to sugar the pill of neoliberalism with a few inadequate social programmes at home and \u201cmultilateral\u201d agreements to wage war abroad. Corporate donations and lobbyists predominate in the Democrat\u2019s finances and in the development of its policy-the one it will actually carry out when in office.<\/p>\n
As the groundswell of support for the Democrats grew in the run up to the election, companies and corporate groups switched the majority of their contributions over from the Republicans to the Democrats in order to \ufffd\ufffdhedge their bets\u201d and make sure they were in the good graces of the victor. And the new wave of victorious Democrat candidates entering Congress is stuffed full of well-off careerist politicians and millionaires.<\/p>\n
For a New Workers Party<\/p>\n
Organised Labor – the US trade unions – once again backed the Democrats in a big way. Despite its long-term decline (50 years ago unions organized 35 percent of the work force: today the figure is 12.5 percent. The unions boasted they were spending more than $100 million on the election and mobilizing more than 100,000 volunteers to get out the Democrat vote.<\/p>\n
According to the AFL-CIO, union volunteers, Knocked on the doors of 8.25 million union voters, made 30 million phones calls to union voters, mailed 20 million mail-shots to union homes and distributed 14 million worksite fliers. The rival Change to Win union federation also strongly backed the Democrats<\/p>\n
They hope to get the Democrats to enact legislation which includes improving workplace safety, controlling \u201coutsourcing\u201d, making it easier to unionize and extending health coverage to the many millions of Americans with no health insurance. They want a raise in the minimum wage, and help for students with high college tuition fees. All very necessary reforms, to demand from US capitalism if rather modest in the middle of an expansionary economic cycle.<\/p>\n
The AFL and Change to Win look to figures like George Miller, a California Democrat and Edward Kennedy, from Massachusetts, to steer these measures through the House of Representatives and the Senate. But the Democrats are far from all being \u201cfriends of Labor\u201d even for such modest reforms. Some will undoubtedly decamp and vote with the Republicans on pro-Labor issues. In addition the Republicans will talk them out or water them down in the Senate.<\/p>\n
The union leaders present the systematic support for the Democrats as the way workers can exercise political power. Thus AFL-CIO president John Sweeney claimed after November 7th: \u201cWe knew that our challenge at the AFL-CIO was to provide the organizing to transform the frustration and anger into political power.\u201d He went on: \u201cWe responded with the biggest, most energetic grassroots program in our history, and it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Change to Win federation which broke with the AFL-CIO last year, in part because they claimed that Sweeney and Co spent too much money on the Democrats and not enough on organizing drives, also through enormous resources behind the Democrats. Anna Burger, their national chair had an identical view to Sweeney.<\/p>\n
"Today, working people voted with a simple, common belief – if we take action and make our voices heard, we can help bring about change. \u201c<\/p>\n
But the curious thing is how modest the unions were in their demands, given the money they contribute. Larry J. Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia observed that unions were \u201cnot pushing the Democrats far to the left on many subjects,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were perfectly willing to back a lot of those moderate to conservative Democrats, who are Blue Dogs.\u201d Blue Dog Democrats are a faction of social and economic conservatives in Congress.<\/p>\n
In fact American workers as long as their trade unions are under the leadership of a pro-Democratic Party bureaucracy will be condemned to political impotence, not the power Sweeney talks about. They will be unable to establish basic reforms like a national free health care system, or a living pension. They will be unable to get rid of the anti-Union laws (Taft-Hartley, the individual states \u201cright-to work\u201d laws, which cripple union organizing and protect union busting). They will be unable to tackle racism and discrimination against Black and Latino Americans, unable to challenge the Patriot Act and the whole raft of attacks on civil liberties, all of which most Democrats voted far.<\/p>\n
With weak and declining trade unions in most industries and most states US workers real wages will continue their secular decline \u2013. At the height of the economic cycle at a time of strongly rising profits for the employers, real wages remain essentially frozen: in the down turn periods of the economic cycle they actually decline. Last but not least without a political party, working class Black, Latino, Muslim young Americans will be \u201cconscripted\u201d by poverty and lack of a future into the wars of their masters.<\/p>\n
In short without a working class political party – a labor party rooted in the existing mass workers organizations, the trade unions, many of the basic rights won by European workers will never see the light of day. Even more so the US workers will- in the present period of heightened globalization never be able to put an end to the pressure of the system that causes all these attacks- imperialism and capitalism. Revolutionaries in the USA need to fight alongside the multitude of those resisting these attacks. But these fightbacks only occasionally coincide; only locally and episodically combine their forces. To turn these struggles into a class-wide resistance politics is critical and not only any old politics but politics which really represent the long term, historic and international interests of the working class.<\/p>\n
The many glorious pages in the history of the American workers, when they united, threw off racism, built mighty trade unions, were ones where they simultaneously turned to independent class politics – to radical, revolutionary, socialist politics. They did this before 1914 (the Wobblies and Eugene Debbs Socialist Party), yet again in the 1930s (the CIO and the attempts to found a Labor Party). If the unions are to escape from their long decline it can and it must happen again.<\/p>\n
For this reason revolutionaries fight not only to break the unions from the Democrats and launch a massive expansionary organising drive based on militant struggle for workers rights – to form a workers or labor party \u2013 but they also fight to ensure that such a party does not go down the road of the European Labour and Socialist parties to a weak reformism that delivers no reforms and follows the bosses whims at every turn. They fight to win such a party to a revolutionary socialist programme.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The USA after the mid-term elections On November 7 the USA witnessed something of a political earthquake as voters went to the polls to reject the agenda of President George Bush \u2013 on Iraq, free trade, stagnating wages, and high-level political corruption \u2013 by throwing his conservative Republican Party out of power in both houses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-5087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}