The electoral circus is once again upon us and this time it is a particularly fascinating drama. In decadent capitalism, elections have long served as an insidious mystification, an ideological swindle designed to deceive the population, particularly the working class, into believing that it is free to choose the political leadership that will determine the direction of society. In this manner, the ruling class hides its class dictatorship over society behind a democratic myth. For decades the real decisions have been made behind the scenes by the dominant fraction of the ruling class, including political leaders from the major parties, the permanent state bureaucracy, leaders from major corporations, think tanks, and the mass media, based on an assessment of what best serves the interests of the global national capital both domestically and internationally. In this context elections have long been reduced to a theatrical event, scripted, manipulated and controlled to produce their predetermined results.
In recent years, as the social decomposition of capitalist society has progressed, it has become increasingly difficult for the bourgeoisie in the U.S to control effectively its electoral process and assure the desired result. The past two presidential elections, especially the disastrous election of 2000, are notable examples of this tendency. These problems include the ability of the media to manipulate popular opinion, in part because of the rise of religious fundamentalism, and a tendency in particularly close elections for candidates not to accept the division of labor, not to accept their role as designated loyal opposition, but to want to win at any cost. As we have written before, this is essentially what happened in 2000, when the Bush camp stole the election in Florida through the efforts of Jeb Bush, George W. Bush’s brother, and his underlings. The two sides then fought it out in the courts rather than gracefully accepting defeat in the interests of national unity. That Gore finally accepted the partisan ruling of the Supreme Court, rather than resort to the resistant posture of Lopez-Obrador in the recent Mexican election, is testimony to a more mature, responsible concern for the interests of the national capital, than Bush.
In 2004, the bourgeoisie had difficulty in deciding upon a strategic orientation until quite late, well into September when consensus finally crystallized on support for Kerry. This lack of clarity on how best to proceed in the wake of Bush’s bungling of the war in Iraq meant it was too late to implement this policy successfully, despite the best efforts of the media to boost Kerry’s candidacy.
As we examine the current political campaign, it is necessary to consider what political division of labor best corresponds to the strategic needs of the dominant fraction of the bourgeoisie in the coming period. While this fraction was unanimous in support of the invasion of Iraq and in the underlying imperialist strategy that aimed to reassert American imperialist hegemony, insert the U.S. into a dominant position with a military presence in the strategically important Middle East, and to mount pressure on its increasingly rancorous former allies in Europe, there is today consensus within the dominant fraction that the situation in Iraq is an absolute mess. The U.S. military is stretched too thin because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is incapable of responding to challenges in other parts of the globe, which is absolutely necessary. Recent reports in the New York Times reveal that high ranking military officers have been leaking classified documents to sympathetic congressional leaders, think tank scholars, and retired military officers that indicate that only 7,000-8,000 combat troops are available to respond to any military challenge beyond Iraq and Afghanistan (NYT 9/22/06).
Even worse from the ruling class perspective, the Bush administration’s inept handling of Iraq has resulted in the total collapse of popular support for the war and will make it increasingly difficult to mobilize support for future imperialist military missions abroad. This is a particularly serious problem for American capitalism because in order to maintain its imperialist dominance it has to increasingly exert its military muscle. The inability of the Bush administration to modify its policy, to compensate for shortcomings, to in any way restore the squandered national unity that accrued from the 9/11 attacks, makes the current division of labor even more intolerable for the ruling class. Except for the removal of Paul Wolfowitz as undersecretary of defense and chief architect for Iraq war policy, the administration has failed to make any fundamental changes, and, in the words of Vice President Cheney despite whatever mistakes may have been made, if they had to do it all over again, the administration “would make exactly the same decisions.”
The dominant fraction’s consensus that the Iraq war is a disaster led in March to the creation of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan group headed by James A. Baker, III, close adviser to the elder President Bush and secretary of state during the 1991 war in Iraq, and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, who served as co-chair of the 9/11 commission. A long time friend and confidant to the Bush clan, Baker has a reputation as the Bush family “janitor,” who steps in to clean up the messes they have created from time to time. As the Washington Post recently reported, “The group has attracted little attention beyond foreign policy elites since its formation this year. But it is widely viewed within that small world as perhaps the last hope for a midcourse correction in a venture they generally agree has been a disaster” (WP 9/17/06).” Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff under Clinton, and a member of the study group, characterized the need to find a solution to the mess in Iraq in these words, “If this war is consumed by partisan attacks, if the choice is presented as simply one between ‘stay the course’ or ‘cut and run,’ we will never be able to do what is right.” Panetta’s remarks reflect a concern to go beyond the politicization of the war in the current congressional campaign and assessing ‘blame,’ towards a policy adjustment that will serve the needs of the national capital. Some observers have likened this study group to a similar effort in 1968 after the Tet Offensive had exposed the lies and false intelligence disseminated by the government on the Vietnam War. That group recommendations led Pres. Johnson to decide not to run for re-election and to seek negotiations with North Vietnam.
The political goal of the dominant fraction of the bourgeoisie continues to require modifications in the disastrous implementation of the imperialist policy by the Bush administration. For the bourgeoisie, the problem is not, as some leftist intellectuals contend, that the irresponsible neoconservative faction has seized control of the state. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld are undeniably part of the dominant fraction of the ruling class; it’s just that they are not effective in implementing the shared imperialist strategic orientation of this fraction. In part this is because Bush has allowed the neocons to assert more influence – but not control – within this administration than ever before, and in part because Cheney’s orientation is particularly reactionary, oriented towards a clumsy reversal of the Watergate era responses to the excesses of the Nixon administration and a return to a “strong” executive branch. In addition, another aspect of this problem is Rumsfeld’s ill-founded penchant for a lean military with quick strike capacities, but insufficient manpower for sustained conflict and military occupation, as many in military circles have complained.
That the concern to revamp Iraq policy reflects the bourgeoisie as a whole and not the narrow partisan interests of this or that part of the Democratic party is demonstrated clearly not only by the creation of the Iraq Study Group, but by the festering political disputes within the Republican party itself. The feuding between the far right and the president over his failure to implement their extremist social agenda is only a small part of this problem. Of greater importance is the rebellion by Senators John McCain, former military hero and prisoner of war during Vietnam, John Warner, former Secretary of the Navy and head of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate, and Lindsey Graham, a former military judge, over the Bush administration’s attempt to openly abandon the Geneva Convention. The conservative Republican senators, with their strong military credentials, argue that Bush’s proposal to reinterpret Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions (Bush complained that the treaty’s prohibition against “outrages upon human dignity” is vague and meaningless) in order to permit the extreme mistreatment and torture used by the CIA in their secret prisons to interrogate al Qaeda prisoners would risk terrible long range consequences. They warn of an erosion of American political authority on the international level, growing international chaos as each nation would emulate US comportment and redefine and reinterpret Article 3 to their own liking, and would thereby jeopardize the safety of American soldiers taken prisoner. It’s not that the senators are reluctant to use extreme measures to interrogate prisoners, as their “compromise” agreement with the president demonstrates, it’s the open repudiation of the Geneva Convention that they oppose. The public repudiation of the Bush administration position by Colin Powell, the former four-star general and head of the Joint Chiefs, who served as Bush’s Secretary of State from 2001-2004, and the congressional testimony by high ranking legal military officers against reinterpreting Article 3 demonstrates the seriousness of this dispute within the ruling class as a whole. Powell warned that the attempt to sidestep the Geneva Conventions would put in question “the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.” The leaking in late September in the New York Times and Washington Post of a classified intelligence estimate, reporting on the consensus of 16 U.S. spy agencies that the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the indefinite imprisonment of suspects at Guantanamo has given rise to a new generation of Islamist terrorists and increased the threat of terrorism (the opposite of the Bush administration’s repeated boasts) is yet another example of the growing pressure on the administration to abandon its “stay the course” line and in fact make a midcourse correction in imperialist policy implementation. The fact that hardliners in the Bush administration over the summer began blaming the elder Bush’s administration, including particularly James Baker, for emboldening bin Laden by deciding against ousting Saddam in 1991, reflects their bitterness against the pending policy changes that will be forced upon them.
The situation is no better on the domestic front. Despite controlling both houses of congress, the Bush administration has been totally paralyzed in implementing its domestic agenda, as the failure of its attempts to privatize and gut the social security program and to “reform” immigration amply demonstrate. Bush can no longer control the far right of his own party, which provided the electoral base for his victories in 2000 and 2004. The failure to push through an immigration reform package that would stabilize the situation of 12 million illegal immigrants who have been here years and to permit a guest worker program that would guarantee a reliable supply of cheap labor to the retail, meatpacking, hospital, and agriculture industry poses potential economic disaster, as the shortage of immigrant workers to pick this summer’s fruit crops in California illustrates.
In this context, the best electoral result from the bourgeoisie’s perspective would be for the Democrats to gain control of at least one house of Congress. This is most likely to be possible in the House of Representatives. Such an adjustment of the political division of labor would enable the dominant fraction of the ruling class to increase pressure on Bush to moderate his imperialist policies and block the most egregious mistakes through legislative action. It would increase pressure for extra-electoral adjustments in the administration, including perhaps the forced resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Journalist David Gergen who served in the White House as a press spokesperson for both Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Bill Clinton, recently criticized Bush’s tendency to rule in a divisive way with a partisan cabinet and pointed favorably to the examples of presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, both of whom appointed Republicans as their defense secretaries (Robert McNamara in the case of Kennedy and William Cohen in the case of Clinton).He suggested that appointing a prominent conservative Democrat to replace Rumsfeld at defense would go a long way toward moving toward a unity government. Of course he meant “unity” for the ruling class. A conservative Democrat, such as former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, for example, would make a fine replacement for Rumsfeld from the bourgeoisie’s point of view. The departure of Vice President Cheney, seen by many as the “evil” force behind the war in Iraq and the attempt to legitimize torture and the negation of traditional civil liberties, because of “health” reasons might be another alternative extra-electoral adjustment to the ruling team.
While a Democratic victory would best serve the needs of the bourgeoisie, the question remains as to whether they will be able to control the process to achieve the desired result. Certainly the Foley scandal unleashed by the media in early October opens the possibility to crack finally the monolithism of the Christian right that Bush has relied so heavily on in past elections, and thereby favors Democratic gains in the election. In addition, the divisions within the Republican party at the moment go a long way towards undercutting the Bush administration’s attempt to use national security as an issue against the Democrats in the election and certainly undermines his political authority. Bush’s denunciation of prominent Republican critics as “putting the nation at risk,” his characterization of the conclusions that the war in Iraq had created a new generation of Islamist terrorists and increased the threat against the U.S. in the National Intelligence Estimate prepared by America’s 16 spy agencies as “naïve,” and his press secretary Tony Snow’s dismissal of Colin Powell as “confused” only fuels widespread fears about the administration’s self-delusional views on the current situation, and tendency to see critics as traitors, which might further isolate it from support within the ruling class. On the other hand such extremist posturing reveals an almost messianic belief by Bush that his is the one and only vision that can save the nation and could therefore justify using any means necessary to maintain control – in much the same way that Nixon justified his use of the state against his critics within the ruling class in the 1972 election. Thus despite the clear requirements from the ruling class’s perspective for a political realignment in Washington, we should not be surprised if the Bush administration resorts to all manner of illegal, fraudulent maneuvers to steal the election, which in the case of House races could be done at a very local level.
This election is a very important moment in
the political life of the American ruling class. A situation in which the
ruling class of the only remaining superpower has extreme difficulty in putting
in place a ruling team and political division of labor that best serves its
interests cannot be tolerated indefinitely. J. Grevin, 09/06.
The fifth anniversary of 9/11 has been marked by a propaganda orgy. In the two months leading up to the anniversary, there were all manner of solemn ceremonies, pompous speeches, television and radio news specials, interviews, documentaries, and Hollywood’s release of not one, but two, theatrical movies -- the World Trade Center and United 93 – during the summer. Even cultural institutions, like the museums in NYC have organized exhibits and displays as part of the campaign.
While some of the more local ceremonies perhaps simply memorialized the 2800 people who died on 9/11, the main focus of the Bush administration was an attempt to rekindle the patriotic fervor that gripped the U.S. in 2001 in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center. This fervor, complete with flag waving, war psychoses, and willingness to accept whatever the government said was necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks, has been largely squandered in the last few years, due to a combination of clumsiness, miscalculations, and general bungling of the Bush administration and the effects of capitalist decomposition which would have kept any White House occupant from being successful.
President George W. Bush threw himself into the forefront of the administration’s newest propaganda campaign with a series of addresses before pre-screened, guaranteed-to-be-friendly audiences, such as veterans groups and military officers associations, that reaffirmed American resolve to wage the war against Islamic terrorism. With nearly two-thirds of the population now believing that the war in Iraq was a mistake and expressing a lack of confidence in the government, Bush seemed particularly desperate to revive support for the war and minimize any Democratic gains in the midterm elections in November. Bush even introduced the formulation “Islamic fascism” into the mix and compared critics of his war policies, including those who disagree on the war in Iraq and those who oppose his abandonment of the Geneva Convention and endorsement of torture, to those who appeased Hitler in the 1930s. Such posturing appears increasingly quixotic when critics, particularly on torture, include the likes of Senators Warner, McCain, and Graham, as well as Colin Powell, former member of the Joint Chiefs and Bush’s own Secretary of State from 2001-2004.
In his radio address on Saturday, Sept 9th Bush fell back on his now boringly familiar platitudes about the “brutality of the enemy” and the need to “act decisively to stop them from achieving their evil aims.” His primetime address to the nation on the evening of Sept. 11 was more a pep talk for the war in Iraq than it was an homage to the 9/11 victims, especially since now the administration has been forced to admit that Saddam Hussein had no links to al Qaeda, had nothing to do with 9/11, and even regarded al Qaeda as hostile to his regime. Bush devoted a mere three paragraphs of his speech to remembering the dead, and went on and on glorifying his administration’s role in “this struggle between tyranny and freedom” and invoked the image of the glory days of World War II and the Cold War, when fascism and Russian Communism respectively were the “evil” enemies of the U.S.
Putting aside the bombast of the bourgeois propaganda barrage, it is appropriate to offer a revolutionary perspective on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. There are a number of observations that should be advanced:
1) The tragic death of so many innocent people, the overwhelming majority of them workers, on 9/11 is testimony not to a “war of civilizations,” a pretext for imperialist war, as the bourgeoisie claims, but irrefutable evidence of the depravity of world capitalism. It is proof that capitalism today offers humanity a stark choice between barbarism or socialism, that unless it is destroyed by proletarian revolution this bankrupt and outmoded social order will condemn humanity to more and more death and destruction. Nearly three thousand people died in a single day because capitalism no longer has a reason to exist.
2) Five years after 9/11, it is clear that the bourgeoisie has failed miserably to use that tragedy to achieve an ideological and political defeat of the working class in the United States in order to mobilize it behind the state for imperialist war. The dominant fraction of the bourgeoisie, including both Republicans and Democrats, were unanimous in their support for war in Afghanistan and Iraq, as part of American imperialism’s strategy to reassert its global hegemony in the post Cold War era, to firmly establish its military presence in the strategically important Middle East, and put pressure on its erstwhile allies in Europe who were increasingly inclined to play their own cards on the imperialist terrain following the collapse of the bloc discipline that had characterized the Cold War period. With the 9/11 attacks, which as we have detailed previously in articles in Internationalism and in the International Review, were anticipated, expected, and permitted by the Bush administration, in much the same way that the Roosevelt administration permitted the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, in order to manipulate popular opinion in favor of war, the U.S. bourgeoisie counted on those traumatic events to help it definitively overcome what the bourgeoisie terms the “Vietnam Syndrome” – the unwillingness of the working class to be mobilized for war and to accept sacrifice in the service of America’s imperialist appetites.
However, despite the momentary gains the bourgeoisie made on this level in the aftermath of the attacks in 2001 and the high hopes the bourgeoisie harbored, the working class has turned its back on the war and increasingly moves to return to class struggle. So discredited is the official explanation of 9/11 and so advanced is the mistrust of the government, that all manner of conspiracy theories have proliferated in recent years. The growth of this “9/11 truth movement” shows a deterioration in the political authority of the state. This movement includes elements that believe the government knew in advance that a terrorist attack was coming but permitted it to happen and others who believe that it was the government itself that blew up the trade center. In fact polls show that as much as 36 percent of the population disbelieves the government’s official explanation of 9/11 – a level of distrust that was unimaginable in the days immediately following the attacks in 2001.
3) If the bourgeoisie has not achieved an historic defeat of the American proletariat, they have been successful in using national security as the pretext for a dramatic strengthening of the state’s repressive apparatus. Under the guise of protecting Americans from the “enemies of freedom,” the ruling class has eroded legal rights and protections that were supposedly characteristic of this highly vaunted “American freedom.” The USA Patriot Act, introduced in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and voted upon even before legislators had an opportunity to read it and without any public hearings whatsoever, permitted all manner of intrusions into individual privacy, promoted domestic spying, warrantless wiretaps and searches, and interception of email, regular mail, library borrowing and bookstore purchasing records (so Homeland Security could protect America by knowing what people were reading!). In New York City, the police now set up random checkpoints to search backpacks and briefcases of workers traveling to or from work. The Patriot Act was modified slightly this year when it was renewed by Congress, but its most repressive measures remain intact. While these repressive measures today are supposedly directed at Islamic terrorists, their institutionalization and general acceptance will make them a valuable tool in the future for the bourgeoisie to use against the working class as its struggles intensify. On this level, the ruling class can claim a real success from 9/11.
4) The war in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, the war in Afghanistan have achieved the opposite of their desired effect. Rather than strengthening American imperialism and reasserting its hegemony, have bogged U.S. imperialism down in an endless quagmire, weakened its strategic and tactical position, spread chaos throughout the Middle East, increased challenges to U.S. domination and created a crisis for American imperialist leadership. The American military, the most powerful in the world, has been stretched thin, unable to respond effectively to further military missions, and thus renders American imperialism more vulnerable to challenges in other parts of the globe. Indeed it is this crisis of American imperialism that underlies the current divergences within the ruling class, as it becomes increasingly clear that Bush team is incapable of adequately defending the interests of the national capital (see the article on the crisis of American imperialism elsewhere in this issue).
5) This disunity in the bourgeoisie over the ineptitude of the Bush administration has exposed the political incapacity of the ruling class to manipulate its electoral process effectively. For the bourgeoisie, George Bush’s re-election represented a setback in its ability to readjust its political division of labor and imperialist policy. It was not the result that best served the interests of the dominant faction of the ruling class. This inability to manipulate successfully the electoral circus as it has done for decades during the period of decadent capitalism reflects a serious weakness for the ruling class of the only remaining superpower. Following the election a series of political campaigns were used to put pressure on the Bush administration to moderate its policy. After a period of resistance, the administration seemed to respond to the pressure, removing, for example, Paul Wolfowitz, the chief neoconservative architect of the Iraq war strategy, from the Pentagon and kicking him upstairs to the World Bank.
However, since then the administration has dug in its heels and recently attacks on the Bush administration have reached incredible heights. The regime is essentially gripped by political paralysis, incapable of implementing any of its domestic agenda since the 2004 election, such as social security cuts or immigration “reform,” and facing a rising chorus of criticism on its conduct of the war. In June, the same Supreme Court, dominated by Republican appointees who put a partisan seal of approval on Bush stealing of the 2000 presidential election, ruled that his policies on international prisoners held at Guantanamo violate international law and the Geneva Conventions proscription of torture and inhuman treatment. (The Court did not rule on the CIA’s secret prisons and torture program, which were not acknowledged to exist by the government until September.) Even high ranking uniformed legal officials in the military testified before Congress in opposition to Bush’s new proposals for military tribunals for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo, and leading Republicans like McCain, Warner, and Graham have rebelled against the same proposals. This whole blame game is of course ironic since it doesn’t really matter who occupies the White House or how they nuance American policy. The conditions characteristic of the period of decomposition are in the final analysis the underlying cause for the failure of American policy. While the Bush administration is indeed particularly clumsy in its implementation of imperialist policy, there is in fact no reason to believe that any other occupant of the White House would have been any more successful.
In sharp contrast to
the warlike rhetoric of the last few weeks, on the occasion of the fifth
anniversary of 9/11, American capitalism is mired in crisis on both the
imperialist and domestic political terrain. Its long sought dream of mobilizing
the working class for war is once again just a dream, and it faces a working
class that is undefeated and more inclined to return to class struggle and
resist austerity. Not much for the bourgeoisie to celebrate. The only
alternative to the future of death and destruction that capitalism holds in
store for us is the class struggle and working class revolution. –
J.Grevin, 09/06.
The deepening of the crisis makes the workers’ conditions of life worse by the day and engenders expressions of real discontent. In the ICC press, we have written about the important mobilizations of the French workers and students against the CPE. The strikes of the metal workers in Spain have expressed a similar decisiveness, combativeness, and clarity, even though they have not had the same magnitude. Even in a country in the periphery, like Bangladesh, there are opportunities for the class to have important experiences of struggle, although with greater difficulties. And in Mexico, too, discontent has led to the outbreak of struggles in recent months, most notably by the Michoacan mine workers, and the public schoolteachers in Oaxaca. While these struggles demonstrated potential strength and resolution, the ruling class took the lead and directed the struggles toward real traps, sterilizing combativeness by mystifying and delaying reflection and the development of class consciousness.
The death of 65 workers in the Pasta de Conchos mine, caused by the dangerous conditions of work under which the miners are obliged to labor, sparked discontent among the miners. Low wages fueled the miners’ anger even more. But their struggle was sterilized by the union, which put itself at the head of the movement, supported by bosses and government, with the aim of derailing the workers’ discontent in the dead-end of the defense of corrupt industrialist Gomez Urrutia, who is currently in conflict with the government (1). This manipulation eventually led the miners into confrontations with the police, during which 2 miners were killed.
Similarly, the combativeness expressed by 70,000 Oaxacan teachers as they struck for wage increases, ended up suffocated in an interclassist movement led by the City of Oaxaca Popular Assembly (APPO), which, regardless of its radical and autonomous pretenses, has no class orientation whatsoever. The strike began in May, as yet another in a long list of springtime teachers strikes over the past 26 years in impoverished Oaxaca state, where teachers are among the most poorly paid in Mexico. Most striking teachers earn from $400 to $600 per month. As they often do, the striking teachers set up an encampment in the central plaza of Oaxaca. On June 14, governor Ulises Ruiz ordered police, armed with tear gas and clubs, to disperse the encampment. Dozens were injured, but the strikers held fast and quickly became a rallying point for farmer groups, university students, and leftists of all stripes, who rushed to the town and created the APPO which claims to govern the town, or at least the part of town that they have occupied and barricaded off.
But the APPO is far from being an embryonic form of a workers commune. It is an interclassist organization, dominated by leftist and union structures in which one can find such diversity as Stalinists and supporters of the Zapatistas’ 6th declarations side by side. The APPO drains the workers’ strength by leading them into mobilizations that have no coherent objectives, dominated as they are by the desperation of those classes in society that have no future. Desperation and voluntarism help to create a fertile soil for provocation by generating demoralization and isolation.
This is best illustrated by the manipulation of the Oaxaca teachers. First, the SNTE (teachers’ union) kept the teachers in isolation through a long, drawn out strike. The Mexican government then attacked the strikers with its repressive apparatus, the police. The workers successfully resisted the aggression, but the demands around the wages and conditions of work, which showed that teachers are part of the working class, and that, as such, they directly confront exploitation, are gone, and the discontent has been derailed toward the ‘improvement’ of Oaxaca democratic order, a thoroughly bourgeois, not a proletarian, preoccupation. For example, with proletarian demands like wages now no longer in the forefront, the APPO has demanded the removal Oaxaca governor, Ulises Ruiz, in order to facilitate the search for “…a new leadership and a new democratic and popular constitution for the city of Oaxaca,” (La Jornada, 8/24/06), as if a new bourgeois constitution corresponded to the interests of the working class.
In the face of these events, the workers need to reflect on whether changing one governor for another will in any way change their condition of exploitation, and whether it is at all possible that a system based on exploitation and oppression can generate laws that benefit the workers.
This derailment of the struggle by a fake radicalization has benefited the bourgeoisie, which has also used the struggle as its own arena. The bourgeoisie has in fact used the massive demonstrations and the desperate responses to put pressure on certain sectors of the dominant class to the detriment of others. Already at the time of the intervention of the SNTE we could see the differences between sectors of the bourgeoisie. With the aggravation of the conflict the various bourgeois gangs try to influence or put pressure on the workers, either through provocations or by allowing the conflict to drag on.
It is important to keep in mind the attitude the different fractions of the bourgeoisie kept for the duration of the conflict. Even though they express political differences, some personalities and groups of the ruling class have united behind Oaxaca’s governor. This is the case, for example, with Felipe Calderon, presidential candidate of the PAN who won the July elections contested by Manuel Lopez Obrador. The federal government’s attitude towards alliances and ruptures is also significant. For instance, the government allowed the conflict to escalate, but its aim was to isolate Ulises Ruiz. Let’s remember, for example, that Fox’s spokesman made a veiled accusation against Ulises Ruiz’s use of paramilitary groups, used to take back the Oaxaca radio station which the APPO had occupied, while Ulises Ruiz was careful about denying any such intervention.
Throughout the movement, the bourgeoisie did not care to show its bloody face as it killed, tortured, and jailed, but all along it was very careful not to lose control of the movement. Even though some sectors of the bourgeoisie may be weakened, the system as a whole has strengthened while the working class’ confusion has deepened.
We also need to point out that, even though the APPO does not represent class interests, the working class looks at it sympathetically because, in appearance, this organization seems to be critical of the ruling class. However, it is precisely the sympathy of the workers that the left apparatus of the ruling class uses in order to strengthen its own trap. What is now called ‘peaceful popular insurrection’ is hailed as an example to follow. If this was an example in the negative, now the campaign is about extending such ‘peaceful insurrections’. This is how confusion deepens among the workers, and the pro-democracy campaign strengthens. For instance, Lopez Obrador’s proposal to carry out a ‘democratic national convention’ on September 16 gained credibility thanks to the ‘example’ set by the Oaxaca ‘peaceful insurrection’. In this way, the bourgeoisie moves to demolish all discontent and feed illusions in democracy and the possibility of a betterment of capitalism through ‘…new representatives who will make of the country that which all of us aspire to.’ (Excerpted from the Popular Assembly of the People of Michoacan, 8/20/06.)
The conditions of misery under which the working class lives cannot be changed with a change of representatives in office, by the laws, or by an extension of democracy. On the contrary, these are instruments used by the ruling class to tie the workers’ hands and have them believe that capitalism can offer a better life.
Based on an article by Cloe [3], translated from
Revolucion Mundial , organ of the ICC in Mexico. October 2006.
1. The confrontation between Gomez Urrutia and the Secretary of Labor is nothing but the tip of the iceberg of a more serious confrontation going on within the bourgeoisie. Behind it, we find the confrontations between mining interests, where political alliances and business disputes are mixed. This is why it’s not surprising that some businessmen openly support the union behind which Gomez Urrutia stands, while others promote the union in support of the federal government.
The collapse of the Russian superpower in 1989 and with it the disappearance of the system of imperialist blocs that dominated world affairs since the end of World War II, left the US as the dominant imperialist power. After more than a decade and half, in spite of a relentless questioning of this hegemony, the US has been able to maintain its economic, political and particularly its military global supremacy. And for the moment there isn’t another country, or group of countries, that can challenge this position of power on the global level. This lack of a viable imperialist competitor, capable of strategically challenging American world dominance, is in great part the product of the present historic state of capitalism, in particular decomposition’s chaotic dynamic preventing the formation of permanent imperialist alliances. But it is also the consequence of the US bourgeoisie’s political imperialist strategy centered around the battle to block the rise of any power, whether a single country or a group of countries, that could effectively challenge its world supremacy. This policy has been in place and has served as the cornerstone of American imperialist strategy since the collapse of the system of imperialist blocs, regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican has occupied the White House.
However, even though the US bourgeoisie has for the last 16 years successfully defended its world hegemony, this success has to be very much qualified. In fact behind the preservation of American world supremacy is the hard reality of the historic crisis of US leadership against which all the policies of the American state have proven ineffective.
This decline of the American empire, has been particularly obvious in the failure of the last world-wide offensive of the US bourgeoisie launched under the cover of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
At the end of May 2006, the Bush administration announced that, with the formation of a new democratically elected government in Iraq, there has been a turning point in the struggle against terrorism and the fight for “democracy” in the world. Empty words of an embattled president who seems to continue to hold power only thanks to the weaknesses of the American bourgeois political apparatus. Unlike its European counterparts with their parliamentary systems, which permit them to change horses in the middle of the race, the American bourgeoisie has almost no way to dump its ineffective head of state before a full term has been served. With two and a half years more left in the White house, there is one sure legacy that this president will pass to his successor: a declining imperialist power, seemingly unable to extricate itself from the quagmire that its actions have created in Iraq, and heavily restricted in its ability to respond to the constant questioning around the world of its hegemonic imperialist position.
In past declarations Bush has said candidly that the problem of withdrawing US troops from Iraq will be left for the next president to decide. This declared impotence to bring the war in Iraq to a successful resolution is just the crowning jewel in the administration’s growing disarray in the implementation of US imperialist policy.
In the beginning of his first term Mr. Bush put forward the belligerent imperialist “Bush doctrine,” which had as its centerpiece the notion that the US would take the initiative in knocking down any would-be enemy before it had the chance to attack America –a so called “preemptive action.” This declaration of war against the world served well the immediate post-September 11 situation during which the American bourgeoisie launched, under the cover of the so called “war on terrorism”, a major political and military offensive in South Asia and the Middle East aimed to advance US military and political position in those regions in order to better contain the expansionist imperialist appetites of Russia and various European powers.
Today this grandiose Bush “doctrine” is nowhere to be heard of in America. And this is not an accident. The fact is that the political military offensive engineered by the Bush administration is a total shambles. The “war on terrorism” ideological banner has lost the appeal that it had within the American population following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Besides, five years after these terrible events and the ensuing American response, the US is far from “winning the war on terrorism” as the government would like us to believe. In fact Osama Bin Laden and his loose network of followers of Islamic extremists seem only to have gotten stronger, while the American bourgeoisie has lost domestically and internationally the high moral ground that it had at the time of the barbaric Al Qaida terrorist attacks—attacks facilitated, to say the least, by the higher echelons of the US state itself. Even though the war in Afghanistan has allowed the US to improve its strategic military position in South Asia –curbing Pakistan’s imperialist ambitions, establishing American military bases in former Russian satellites in Central Asia-- the situation in post-Taliban’s Afghanistan itself is hurting American political credibility enormously. Five years after being taken over by America, this country is far from stable with permanent on-again-off-again flare ups of war in many regions and no visible improvement in the fortune of a population that for decades has been ravaged by war and abuse by one or another foreign power and/or local political clique.
However it is in the Middle East where the implementation of American imperialist policy by the Bush administration has been a total fiasco. In Iraq, where Bush’s preemptive action doctrine got its real first test, after three years since easily toppling Sadam Hussein regime, the US is bogged down in a costly and increasingly unpopular war with no victory in sight. Over 2600 American soldiers have been killed, and 8 billion dollars are spent a month in this conflict. The US invaded this country, for reasons that have long since been proven to be phony, and overthrew its brutal regime, promising the moon and the stars to its brutalized population. Instead, the misery, suffering, insecurity, and dehumanization that it has brought about are beyond anything imagined at the time of the invasion. Also in the Middle East the American strategy vis-à-vis the Palestinian question has been a total failure. Completely busy with Iraq the US role in the Israel/Palestine conflict has been reduced to one of spectator. It makes one laugh to remember Mr Bush’s “road map” for peace in this conflict that was announced with great fanfare after the “victorious” Iraqi invasion. Powerless to play any substantial role in this conflict the US has witnessed the recent election to power of the terrorist group Hamas in Palestine, and the continued re-drawing of the Palestine/ Israel borders by the Israeli government to its own liking, neither of which fit at all with the needs of American imperialism in the region.
The Bush administration’s failure to be up to the needs of the imperialist requirements of American capitalism is creating tremendous difficulties both for the present and future policy needs of American imperialism.
Its political credibility in shambles, there exists a growing international isolation of the US In Iraq even the “coalition of the willing” –the little gang that the US managed to put together to give its invasion of Iraq an international flavor-- has, little by little disintegrated. Spain has long retreated. Italy, now that Berlusconi is gone, will probably pull its troops out soon. There is even tremendous pressure on the lame-duck government of Blair to withdraw Great Britain’s troops.
Its mounting loss of political authority and credibility and the very material fact that it is bogged down in Iraq are exacerbating imperialist tensions around the world and encouraging other countries to play their own imperialist cards. In this context, there is a growing recognition among the high level military officials that, under present conditions, America cannot fight another war simultaneously to the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the Far East, North Korea, one of the so called “axis of evil” countries, has been able to continue its defiant attitude towards the US vis-à-vis- its nuclear ambitions. China, despite being identified recently by the Pentagon as the greatest potential threat to the US, has gone unchallenged by the US and has continued to increase its regional and international power status. The European powers, the real targets of the US invasion of Iraq, have not given up on their ambitions in the Middle East, as demonstrated by their diplomatic meddling in the Israel/Palestine conflict and Iran’s nuclear activities. Iran has been able to improve its status as a regional imperialist power increasing its influence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, leading many bourgeois commentators to suggest that the big winner from American imperialism’s offensive and democratization campaign in the Middle East are pro-Iranian groups like Hamas and Hezbollah triumphing in Palestine and Lebanon, and the dominant Shiite groups in Iraq maintaining close links to Iran. At the same time, Iran has been able so far to get away with its efforts to develop a future nuclear armaments program and European powers have resisted the US call for sanctions against Iran. In Somalia the “war on terrorism” resulted in a debacle with the triumph of extremist Islamic militias against the war lords supported by the US secret services. In Latin America, the tendency to question US control in its own backyard by other powers has just gotten another boost with the ascension to power of one more “anti-imperialist” left government, now in Bolivia. Even Canada, with its new conservative government, has been giving the US a hard time over the control of the Artic Ocean waterways.
In the face of this questioning of its hegemony, the US bourgeoisie, given its present difficulties, is having a hard time to respond with a coherent policy, thus giving the impression that it is jumping erratically from situation to situation with no clear orientation. For instance, when Israel decided to redraw its borders with Palestine without Washington’s consent, the US was incapable of opposing this policy –after all Israel is America’s only trusted ally in the Middle East— and the American government decided to endorse its actions. Vis-a-vis China, even though this country has been identified by the Pentagon as a main challenger to the US, unable to do much about it in the present situation, the US had no choice but to placate China in a recent controversy over the itinerary of Taiwan’s head of state. When Taiwan’s democratically elected president wanted to stop in the US on his way to Latin America, the Bush administration, in order not to upset China –which considers Taiwan a renegade province-- did not allow a stopover. India, which against the US wishes went nuclear and has faced US sanctions ever since, has now been rehabilitated. The US and India have signed a treaty allowing India to buy nuclear technology from the US. This could seem rational in the sense of the need that the US has to contain China, yet what is remarkable is that according to bourgeois commentators, India has not made any commitments to the US in response to this new policy. What is most incredible is that India seems to be helping Iran with nuclear technology. Vis-à-vis this last country the official position of the American bourgeoisie has been not to negotiate. The US considers Iran a “country sponsor of terrorism”, one of the “axis of evil” nations in Bush’s terminology, but recent diplomatic developments around Iran’s nuclear program seems to imply that the US is changing this hardline position.
The continued eroding of American world leadership will without doubt lead to another crisis. As we have said before the US is obliged more and more, given its historic decline, to use its military muscle as the central element in its imperialist policy. The pressure is building more and more for a new American show of military force. In particular the Iran question seems far from exhausted. 09/06 Eduardo Smith
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/17/253/us-elections
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/terrorism
[3] https://es.internationalism.org/rm/2006/94_oaxaca
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1848/mexico
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism