Obama & the Death of Bourgeois Democracy
Source: The impossibility of changing the policies of the US government by means of elections - demonstrated once again in the evolution of the incoming Obama administration - has profoundly revolutionary implications. Bourgeois democracy is rotten to the core.Tens of millions of people voted for Obama in the hope that it would lead to a rapid end to the war in Iraq and to domestic policies that promote jobs and decent living standards, as opposed to the unrestrained profiteering by big business and the wealthy fostered by the Bush administration.
The policy of the incoming administration will not be guided by these popular illusions, however, but by the reality of a worldwide financial crisis, a deepening slump in the United States, and the ongoing resistance to imperialist military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan...
Despite large increases in voter turnout and widespread involvement by new layers of the population, particularly youth and students, the American people will end up serving as little more than extras in a conflict within the ruling elite.
Once Inaugeration Day is past, Obama will put ‘hope' and ‘change' back in his briefcase and go about his real business: defending the interests of corporate America.
The Democrats responded with alacrity to the danger of a meltdown in the financial markets, turning over trillions in public funds to bail out the banks and speculators.
The same political figures will turn to working people after the election and tell them that there is no money to provide health care, jobs, education and other social benefits, especially given the need to spend even more for wars in the Middle East and Central Asia."
What does this political experience—coming on top of the maneuvers and deceptions aimed at disenfranchising the millions of voters opposed to war in the previous national elections—say about the entire electoral process in America?
The bourgeois democratic setup in the United States is rotten down to its foundations.
The two-party system, owned and controlled by the ruling financial and corporate interests, provides no means for the vast majority of the population to express its will or assert its interests.
Under conditions of unprecedented social polarization between the financial elite and masses of working people, and a systemic economic crisis that is destroying the jobs and living standards of millions, the political reality of a dictatorship of the banks and big business becomes ever more difficult to hide.
The impossibility of changing the policies of the American government by means of elections—demonstrated once again in the evolution of the incoming Obama administration—has profoundly revolutionary implications. More...