US Elections 2008

So now Obama is president. But what does it mean? Obama promised to deliver change, but this promise was nothing but ideological sophistry. The real victor in this election was not the fictitious "Joe Blow" of middle America, not the African Americans who are part of the US working class, but rather the ruling class.

This statement was produced by the ICC's section in the USA just after the presidential election, when ‘Obamania' was in full flow.

The President of the USA is often described as the ‘most powerful man in the world'.The US President does have many formal powers, but ultimately he is just the most prominent figure in a whole state capitalist class. After the votes are counted the faces can change, but the same capitalist state still dominates every aspect of American society.

The election media blitz is running full blast. We hear the same media messages over and over: we are supposedly witnessing the most important election in American history; we face a stark choice between sharply different candidates; this election will determine the future direction of society for generations to come.

How ever you look at it, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the present system of social economic organisation - capitalism - is breaking down all over the planet. The longer it goes on the more it poses the real danger of engulfing society in an apocalypse of starvation, war and ecological catastrophe.

In capitalist democracy, the corporate news media reportage, commentary, and "debates" faithfully reflect the dominant class's ideas regarding which imperialist and domestic strategy best suits its interests. This means that the media is the mouthpiece of the ruling class.  When capitalism entered into its phase of decadence, the links between the state and the media were strengthened to the point where the mass media became part of the state apparatus of state capitalism.

The hype about the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary seems overwhelming. But it is still too early to tell what consensus will emerge in the dominant circles of the American ruling class about the political division of labor that will best serve its interests in the period ahead.