The current impasse over the federal debt ceiling (and the resulting government shutdown) reflects a sharp disagreement on how — or whether —to pay the spiraling costs of broader wars. This argument reflects the bosses’ growing insecurity as their top-dog status is challenged by China, Russia, and other imperialist rivals. The coming mobilization for war has also triggered a controversial push for more centralized economic control, a key element of the Obamacare health reform.
But despite their serious differences, all wings of both the Democratic and Republican parties wholeheartedly agree on one thing: escalating their attacks on the working class. While $3.5 million in salaries were shelled out to members of Congress during the first 13 days of the shutdown, the impact on workers was devastating. While the media blathered on about re-opening the Statue of Liberty and the national parks, racist and sexist cuts hit the Women Infants and Children (WIC) food program. These subsidies help sustain life for millions of babies, cared for by predominantly black and Latino mothers. At the same time, cuts in food stamps made it that much harder for tens of millions of working-class families to put food on their tables.
Obama proposed a cut in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid totaling into the billions. But as the New York Times noted (10/5/13), “Both sides [Democrats and Republicans] recognize that the United States must confront the rising costs of the benefit programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid but also Social Security. Those are driving projections that the mounting debt will become unsustainable after 2016.” The Times portrayed right-wing Republicans as “embracing several of Mr. Obama’s plans that would trim Medicare and Medicaid expenses by $400 billion.”
Food inspections have been suspended, making millions vulnerable to food poisoning. Cost-of-living increases have been halted. Housing applications for mortgages are curtailed. But the U.S. military, 1.4 million strong, is exempt from the shutdown. So is the National Security Agency, whose main job is to spy on every man, woman, and child within reach of an automated camera or cell phone. Neither party is willing to discuss a substantial source of the multi-trillion-dollar federal debt: the 20-year funding of wars and one thousand U.S. military bases in 120 countries worldwide. Nor do they mention the $2.5 trillion stolen from the Social Security Trust Fund over the last 30 years to feed the federal budget and finance this military machine.
But other problems are not so easily papered over. The capitalists have no credible plan to address the country’s fraying infrastructure, reform its corrupt banking sector, or narrow the gap between the society’s haves and have-nots. Widening income inequality, an inevitable feature of capitalism, undermines the bosses’ ability to enlist working-class support for their war plans.
Bosses Need Fascism
Whenever the capitalists face a crisis that threatens profits, they must heighten their oppression of our class to try to escape their system’s contradictions. At the same time, they must discipline their own class, including the faction that controls the Tea Party, to protect their long-term interests and survival against bosses with a shorter-term outlook. These parallel trends mark a move toward fascism, a period when the rulers strip away the veneer of liberal “democracy” and expose their brutal class dictatorship.
On one side of the capitalists’ internal struggle stand the dominant finance capitalists, rooted in big banks like JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup and the huge firms they control, like ExxonMobil and GE. These bosses foresee a costly and global armed conflict threatening their far-flung interests. At stake is control over gas and oil in the Middle East, the essential commodities for any imperialist super-power.
On the other side, smaller U.S. bosses zero in on tax reduction and “smaller government” as cures for their own declining profits. This faction derives profit mostly from domestic investment, as distinct from imperialist adventures abroad. Its main backer is Koch Industries, among the largest privately held U.S. firms, not openly traded on the stock market. The Cato Foundation think thank, a mouthpiece for these smaller bosses, regularly rails at Obama’s efforts to raise the debt ceiling to pay for the U.S. war machine.
Just as the Washington crisis began, Cato published “America Is Spending Too Much on Defense” (Cato website, 10/3/13). To U.S. imperialists backing Obama, this was heresy: “A cataclysmic conflict like World War II is unlikely to recur. As such, the continued spending for an ever-receding likelihood needs to be seriously assessed....There is no need for the maintenance of a large standing military force.” The piece denied U.S. imperialists’ war justifications: “Europe seems to face no notable military threats, the Taiwan/China issue remains a fairly remote concern, and Israel’s primary problems derive from the actions of substate groups” [Hamas and Hezbollah].
Big Capital Begs to Differ
JPMorgan and Exxon and their Washington stooges, however, differ on every count. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel toiled most recently for the Atlantic Council, a “nonpartisan” think tank funded by JPMorgan and Exxon. This group ceaselessly warns of Russia’s menace to Europe: “Russia, in turn, cannot be certain of NATO and U.S. intentions in Central and Eastern Europe and thus feels compelled to modernize its defenses to protect the deterrent value of its strategic nuclear forces” (Atlantic Council website, 5/21/13).
As for China, U.S. imperialists’ big worry is that the inevitable clash may come sooner than expected. As Foreign Affairs, another Exxon-JPMorgan organ, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, noted: “There is a real danger that Beijing and Washington will find themselves in a crisis that could quickly escalate to military conflict....The danger of a crisis involving the two nuclear-armed countries is a tangible, near-term concern” (September/October 2013).
This tension was evident at the recent meeting of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, involving 40 Asian countries, which Obama had to miss because of the U.S. domestic crisis. China took advantage of his absence as it steadily expands its Asian sphere of influence.
Israel, which Cato dismisses as a minor worry, is part of the oil-rich Middle East, cornerstone of the U.S. global empire. By discounting Israel, Cato ignores Iranian and al-Qaeda threats to U.S. energy interests in Iraq, Kuwait and, above all, Saudi Arabia.
On October 4, the Atlantic Council (10/4/13) quoted Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s attack on the radical Republicans and their threat to U.S. imperialism: “I’ve never seen anything like this. From my view, I think this — on top of sequestration...seriously damages our ability to protect the security and safety of this nation and its citizens.... This is not just a beltway [inside Washington] issue. This affects our global capability.”  The same piece, “National Security and the Shutdown,” urges Obama to secure war funds. Until there is certainty in the defense budget, the Council argues, “credibility and readiness will decline.”
Finance capitalists within the Republican Party are also alarmed. The New York Times reported (10/13/13): “One top [Republican] party fundraiser said the Wall Street financiers and corporate executives he counts on for support are ‘having fits’ over the [Republicans’] brinkmanship strategy, especially related to a potential default if Congress does not agree to raise the debt ceiling later this month. ‘The donors I raise money from understand the vital importance of credit markets and are upset that the U.S. credit system is being put at risk’” (Washington Post, 10/5/13).
Only One Side — The Workers’ Side
As these two gangs of bosses vie for power and profits, the working class has no stake in either side. Both spell death for our class. Both exert state power on behalf of the capitalists and against the workers. It is our job to expose them and organize direct opposition to their attacks. We must fight back against racist police terror, mass imprisonment and unemployment. We must attack the special oppression of women in the workplace and the degenerate depiction of women in the bosses’ media.
Only a movement of millions led by a mass revolutionary communist party, the PLP, can destroy the profit system and the misery it creates. Only a communist organization can establish a workers’ state run by and for our class.
Shutdown, yes! Shut down capitalism completely, once and for all! Join PLP!