Elections 2008
• The Working Class Must Lead the Fight for Change
• Vote Against Establishment Continues
• The Conception of “Shared Prosperity”
The Working Class Must Lead the Fight for Change
The ruling circles are working overtime talking about the need for change. The Democrats have as their main slogan “Leading the Way for Change.” Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also emphasize change. Clinton’s slogan is “Ready for Change, Ready to Lead.” Obama’s is “Change We Can Believe In.” Obama even takes things further, calling for the need for “fundamental change.” These slogans come at a time when U.S.-style democracy is losing all legitimacy here and abroad and where Americans are again questioning if their votes have any meaning whatsoever. It comes at a time when people from all walks of life are rejecting the current direction of the country — a direction exemplified by the aggressive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, by the Guantánamo concentration camp with its torture and military commissions where the president acts as police, judge, jury and executioner, by unlimited spying without warrants, by assassinations and illegal raids, by widespread destruction of industry, unemployment, foreclosures and homelessness.
The change the rulers are demanding are changes needed to go down their path of fascism and war, using whatever force is needed to do so. This direction for war and fascism is one the peoples have repeatedly rejected and taken a firm decision on: We will not submit to tyranny, fascism, militarism and wars! We want and need an anti-war president and anti-war government, that defends the peoples’ rights here and abroad. Workers are taking action to defend their rights, as are youth, women and national minorities. Immigrants are in the fore demanding that their rights and the rights of all be respected. All are demanding change that favors the people. The Democratic Party cannot lead such change.
A sharp contention on the content of change — that demanded by the ruling circles and that demanded by the people — is playing out, in the elections and more generally. For the people to emerge on top, it is the working class and its vision for another world, that must lead the fight for change.
It is the working class that has an interest in and stands for the political empowerment of the people. It is the working class that is striving for a new society, where the rights of the peoples are guaranteed. It is the working class that is positioned in society as the new and rising class, with a duty to liberate not only itself but all of humanity.
To lead, it is necessary to be pro-active. It is necessary to advance the working class vision of change, its content, its demands. This means broadly discussing the alternative of the working class for political empowerment and for an economy and society that guarantees the rights of all.
As the battle rages as to who will occupy the space for change, the workers or the rulers, analyzing and discussing the conception of change presented by the ruling class and their candidates alongside the content of the change being demanded by the people is essential. The people are demanding a new direction for the economy and for the country, a direction that favors the interests of the people here and abroad. The rulers are seeking to deny the reality in front of us, deny that all their claims and all their funding in the name of prosperity and opportunity has not brought even trickle-down prosperity — it has brought trickle-down homelessness, unemployment, and massive debts. The ruling class is striving to convince the American working class and people precisely to reject a change in direction, and instead, accept a “shared vision” of “shared prosperity.” They are organizing to whip up the chauvinism that says the U.S. system is the best there is, and that problems lie with the people themselves — with the Iraqis, with the Palestinians and Cubans, and here at home that the workers are to blame, the youth are to blame, the immigrants are to blame — for an imperialist system that has not and cannot provide for the rights of the people.
Contending with the ruling circles on the necessity for a new direction requires vigorous discussion on the content of change needed by the working class and people. It is a period where investigation and examination of the facts, of conditions of life and work, of the political set up and its institutions of democracy, are called for.
The U.S. Marxist-Leninist Organization is organizing public forums and other social gatherings in the coming period to address the need for a new direction and involve people in investigating conditions of life and work so that everyone can grasp and occupy the space for change that exists to take the country in a new direction and avert the disasters that the rich have in store. Join in![TOP]
Vote Against Establishment Continues
Barack Obama is currently coming forward as the leader in the Democratic Party campaign, while John McCain is now considered the Republican nominee, getting the backing of both President George W. Bush and Bush Senior.
In recent contests, Obama got the most votes in Maryland, 479,138, or 61 percent to 283,846 or 34 percent for Hillary Clinton. Similarly, in Virginia, the vote was 620,919 or 64 percent for Obama to 344,477 or 35 percent for Clinton. In D.C. it was 85,534 or 75 percent to 27,326 or 24 percent. It should be noted that while turn out continues to be higher than usual, these vote totals still represent a small fraction of the voting age population. Maryland, for example, has an estimated voting age population of 4.2 million, Virginia 5.7 million and D.C. 450,000.
There is nothing close to a majority voting for any candidate. Instead, about 25 percent or less are voting, and Obama is securing about 60 percent of that, or about 15 percent of eligible voters. The existing system does not require candidates to win a majority of the votes, in each state or nationally.
In Wisconsin, where Clinton was expected to do better, Obama secured 645,554 or 58 percent to 452,590 or 41 percent for Clinton. Wisconsin has a voting age population of about 4.2 million. Wisconsin made particularly clear that the Democratic party calculation concerning John Edwards voters was wrong. Blinded by their racism, the Democrats anticipated that by removing Edwards from the race, Clinton would secure more votes. This calculation came from their polling indicating that Edwards was securing the votes of white workers, especially males. For example, about 35 percent of Wisconsin voters were union members, again mainly white and expected to go for Clinton. Instead, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, growing numbers of workers, across racial lines, are coming out in larger numbers to vote against the Democratic Party establishment, which at present means voting for Obama. Edwards had actually been keeping Clinton in the race from the beginning. In his absence, she has consistently lost.
As Obama comes forward as the more likely winner of at least the popular vote, people are also paying attention to the fact that he is running as a Democrat. So they are watching for when and how he will submit to the dictate of the party and go against his promises for “fundamentally changing the status quo.” Many still remember the fate of Jessie Jackson, who went into the Democratic convention with millions of votes and a sizeable number of delegates. But instead of fighting, he submitted to the dictate of the Democratic Party. He never recovered from this failure to stand up to the Democrats. Obama has the same test to contend with and people now are far more determined to secure the change they are demanding, change that favors the people.[TOP]
The Conception of “Shared Prosperity”
Among the Democrats, a common part of their call for change is that for “shared prosperity.” Hillary Clinton has said, “I see an America where our economy works for everyone, not just those at the top, where prosperity is shared.” Barack Obama said, “This election is about the past versus the future. It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today or whether we reach for a politics of common sense and innovation, a politics of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.” Obama introduces his economic plan saying, “We are all in this together. From CEOs to shareholders, from financiers to factory workers, we all have a stake in each other’s success because the more Americans prosper, the more America prospers.”
It is important to examine this conception of “shared prosperity,” with its notion that we are “all in this together,” financier and factory worker alike. When the working class talks about sharing, what commonly comes to mind is the saying that a worker, no matter how poor, will give you the shirt off her back. The starting point is one of meeting the needs of another human being. There is a readiness to go without any shirt in order to assist another person in need. It is not a matter of calculating if you have two or three extra shirts — it is the shirt off your back.
This is not the conception of the ruling class. Long and repeated experience shows that what the rulers have in mind is that everyone, here and abroad, must sacrifice for the prosperity of the ruling class. American workers are specifically to sacrifice in order for U.S. monopolies to secure world empire. There is “shared sacrifice” of the many workers, here and abroad, for the “shared prosperity” of the few. It is these few that act constantly to increase their wealth while driving down that secured by the workers. The needs of the factory workers, as collectives and as individuals, of their communities, of industrial cities like Detroit or Cleveland or Buffalo, are given no place, while the prosperity of the rich commands.
The rich begin by controlling the wealth produced, through their ownership of sectors of the socialized economy, such as auto or steel or oil, and then utilizing the state to force the workers to get less and less, both directly in wages and indirectly in social services. The prosperity of the rich depends on the “shared sacrifice” of the workers. Their monopoly system produces the corresponding trend — that the rich get richer and the poor poorer, with fewer and fewer rich getting richer and richer and more and more people becoming poorer and poorer.
Any number of facts will bring this out. For example, the workers are producers in society, producing the wealth through their labor. From 1947-2005, worker productivity increased 370 percent. Wages, secured through struggle by the workers, grew by less than half that amount. Wages have essentially remained frozen at 1970’s purchasing levels. At the same time, in 2004, the richest 1 percent held more than $2.5 trillion more in net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent. Wealth grabbed by the top 0.1 percent increased by 181 percent and those of the even fewer top 0.01 percent by 500 percent. As these and other facts indicate, consistent with the experience of the working class, the ruling class conception of “shared prosperity” is that the rich must be made to prosper as much as possible and that the only problem may be that they are not sharing enough of the crumbs. Evidently, the workers are not begging sufficiently.
The working class, in leading the fight for change, rejects this conception as one that serves to further repress the workers and hold society back. The starting point of the class is that of rights. Workers have just claims on society. Indeed, as producers, the wealth produced belongs to them by right. The responsibility of government is to meet their just claims, as well as all the just claims of all members of society for their human needs. The right to a livelihood, to education, to healthcare, to rest and recreation, to culture, as well as the right to govern and decide, all are rights to be recognized and guaranteed by government. It is utilizing the wealth produced for the benefit of society as a whole — to meet the rights of all its members and collectives — that is at issue. The financiers and workers are not in this fight together. Indeed they are enemies, with the financiers standing in the way of progress and striving to put all of society and all the world’s peoples and resources under their dictate, and the workers striving for another world fit for human beings. It is by rejecting the conception of “shared prosperity” of the ruling class and their Democratic Party and instead leading the fight for the rights of all, that the working class can make advances.[TOP]