Election Dogfight Underlies ‘State of Union’: U.S. Ruling Class Faces Internal Crisis

In Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, he said:

We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

In reality, however, Obama and the U.S. ruling class he serves cannot possibly produce economic fairness. Because capitalism is a super-exploitative, racist, sexist system, based on the drive for maximum profits, it is inherently unequal. “Fairness” would require eliminating the system itself.

Under capitalism, bosses and bankers own the means of production while they themselves produce nothing. Workers create everything of value and, for the most part, receive just enough to survive — if that. Phony “Fair Share” Obama is cynically trying to manipulate Occupy Wall Street-inspired sentiment for the section of the ruling class he represents.

No matter what popular phrases he opportunistically mouths in the run-up to this November’s election, Obama has no room in his agenda for the redistribution of wealth. His proposals to raise taxes on the very rich and to tighten regulation of investors have a different aim entirely. They are designed to enable the most most powerful imperialist bosses to wage the ever-wider wars they need in order to control energy resources and cheap labor, the vital elements in maintaining U.S. supremacy over its capitalist rivals.

War and Taxes At Heart of 2012 Election Circus

But not all U.S. capitalists have the same vested interest in U.S. imperialism. As a result, taxes and war will likely be the central focus of the 2012 election dogfight, which Obama kicked off with his blatant campaign speech in the State of the Union. The candidates’ positions differ according to their capitalist backers’ varying needs. The spectrum runs from arch-imperialist Obama to isolationist Ron Paul.

But for the working class, none of these candidates will solve its problems: mass racist, long-term unemployment; constantly shrinking wages; foreclosed homes; prison-like schools; mass detention and deportation of workers who are immigrants; and a criminal injustice system that imprisons 2.4 million people, of whom 70 percent are black and Latino (see page 5). Capitalist-created horrors confront the working class worldwide even more intensively, especially in the U.S.-spawned imperialist wars that slaughter millions in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Obama’s War Moves

On January 24, Obama asked Congress to hike rich people’s taxes and revive manufacturing, steps required for mobilization for armed conflict with China. (Saving the auto industry means saving the means to produce tanks and armored personnel carriers in wartime.) Obama’s supposedly pro-worker pronouncements came shortly after he had installed a new Marine base in Australia and officially “rebalanced” the Pentagon “toward the Asia-Pacific region.”

Obama represents the dominant, liberal Rockefeller wing of U.S. bosses who financed his election. Their financial and energy firms (JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Exxon Mobil, Chevron) operate in virtually every country on earth, and are on a collision course with China’s rising capitalists. Liberal Obama bankroller George Soros has bought big into Petrobras, a Brazilian oil company and its potential 4.9 million barrels per day, a prize for which Washington and Beijing are now jockeying.

Romney and Gingrich Clash Over Mobilizing Against China

If the sinking economy winds up wrecking Obama’s drive for re-election, the next U.S. president most likely will be Republican Mitt Romney, who stands close behind Obama in his loyalty to U.S imperialists. Romney’s primary source of election cash is U.S. global investment flagship Goldman Sachs. Like many U.S. capitalists, Goldman Sachs has ties to the Rockefeller forces but keeps a foot in both camps. 

Romney wants to keep the current tax rates but doesn’t explain how he intends to fund his proposed 50 percent increase in Navy ships. He pledges to “maintain robust military capabilities in the Pacific” and “implement a strategy that makes the path of regional hegemony for China far more costly than the alternative.” Although Obama is ideal for the bosses’ campaign to rally U.S. workers to their imperialist war agenda, the U.S. establishment could also live with Romney. That’s why its leading mouthpiece, the New York Times, editorialized, “Newt Gingrich will pass like a tantrum. That leaves us with a general election between two serious and certifiably sane candidates” (11/13/11).

Gingrich’s financial backers are soft on both taxes and China. He wants to abolish levies on capital gains and never mentions China on his national security webpage. “Radical Islamism” constitutes his chief global foe. No wonder that Gingrich’s top backer is the pro-Israel, billionaire casino owner, Sheldon Adelson, who has ongoing deals with China’s rulers to set up gambling dens there. The Gingrich-Romney divide crystallized last fall when Gingrich branded Romney as a friend of the Rockefeller imperialists: “It’s not that he’s a Mormon. It’s his Nelson Rockefeller problem” (Wall Street Journal, 10/16/11).

But the problematic and erratic Gingrich is not yielding to Romney as conveniently as the main rulers wish. He recently terrified them by trouncing Romney in South Carolina’s primary, triggering an anti-Gingrich frenzy in the capitalist media. They’ve turned up the pressure for Romney to win in Florida.

Ron Paul is backed by the smaller bosses. The darling of the conservative Cato Foundation, Paul appeals to U.S. businesses that either do not operate overseas or do not wish to antagonize their foreign hosts. He says that both the Internal Revenue Service (the federal tax collector) and the U.S.’s military role as “the world’s policeman” should be eliminated immediately. But he may be playing a double game, which would explain why the main rulers tolerate him. A potential third-party bid by Paul could split conservative Republicans’ vote and help a beleaguered Obama.

Looming Pre-Election Surprise:
Attack on Iran?

Confronting China, the Rockefeller wing’s biggest platform issue, looms years away for U.S. rulers. But a clash with Iran could well come before Election Day. The New York Times prepped its readers for an October (or earlier) surprise that would strengthen the U.S. imperialists’ hand. It devoted much of its Sunday Magazine (1/29/12) to an article by a well-connected Israeli journalist named Ronen Bergman. He concluded, “After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012.” Responses from Iran’s allies —Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah — and from U.S. bosses could lead to “full-scale war” in the Middle East, Bergman wrote.

For the working class, the only political alternative to Obama, Romney, Gingrich and Paul is our Progressive Labor Party. No matter which of the bosses’ candidates wins, the ruling class’s agenda will prevail. We reject the electoral process that rewards one or another capitalist faction. Instead, we work painstakingly on the job and in the unions, schools, neighborhoods and churches to eradicate the death-dealing profit system. We immerse ourselves in and help to lead class struggles in these areas (see reports on pages 1, 3, 4 and 5) to win workers and youth to join and build the PLP.

Bringing masses of workers to our Party will motivate millions to actions far more meaningful than flipping a lever in a voting booth. It will produce a revolutionary communist movement to create a society that dumps the bosses and establishes workers’ power. Then the international working class, which has always produced all value, will share it according to workers’ needs.