Barack Obama

It now appears that the policies of engagement, cooperation and diplomacy trumpeted by Obama have, if they ever existed, given way to policies more like those of the Bush team, but further extended and refined to meet the increasingly dangerous demands of the world situation.

After Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the great powers turn their attention to Yemen and Somali, on each side of the Gulf of Aden, and to Iran. 

Today, a year after Obama's inauguration and the euphoria that accompanied it, what assessment can we make of the "change" that Obama was supposed to deliver? There's been plenty of change but not much of it for the better.

A few days before President Zardari of Pakistan was to meet President Obama, Taliban are said to have taken over Buner. Immediately a scare was set: Taliban are coming to Islamabad; they are just 60 kilometer away; they may take over Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal. As Zardari took the flight for the US on 5^th May, the Pakistani army asked people in Swat and elsewhere to quit their homes and go into refugee camps...

Capitalism today requires an arsenal of ideological mystifications to survive. As an historically bankrupt social/economic system, capitalism has nothing to offer humanity except a future of misery, decay, and war. The ruling class finds it necessary to obscure this reality to keep the working class from recognizing and acting upon its revolutionary, historic responsibilities.

On 4 June, in Cairo, the US president made a speech which all the main western capitals described as historic. In short, he presented the US as a friend of the Palestinians. He called on Hamas to recognise the State of Israel but he did not describe this organisation as terrorist. Even more remarkable is that he compared the struggle of the Palestinians with that of the slaves in America or the blacks of South Africa in the time of apartheid.

The arrival of the Democrat Barak Obama to the head of the world's leading power has given rise to all kinds of illusions about a possible change in the strategic orientations of the USA, a change opening up an ‘era of peace'.

Now the G20 London Summit is over, what is the message that the rulers of the earth is they can deal with the economic catastrophe facing the capitalist system.The present crisis of overproduction, however, has its roots not, as the economic experts claim, in any kind of temporary ‘imbalance' in the world economy, but in the basic social relations of capitalism.

The response to protests against the G20 on 1 April has drawn criticism of the police tactic of ‘kettling', forcing demonstrators, and anyone else in the area, into a confined space and keeping them there for hours without food, water or toilet facilities. This is not a new tactic and its use has to be seen in the context not just of the whole repressive arsenal wielded by the democratic state, but also of its ideological campaigns.

There is an accelerating slide into chaos in Pakistan. The US has a real fear of the consequences of a collapse of the civil administration. In particular there is the question of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. The US has belligerently asserted that it would invade to secure the bases, if it felt it served its interests.

The avalanche of unemployment across the world is unprecedented since the 1930s Depression. But the crisis and the surge in unemployment don't only bring despair and hopelessness. They also bring clarity: they undermine all the bourgeoisie's propaganda about how well capitalism functions and how, if we just work hard enough or save carefully enough, we can have everything we need.

Faced with this weakening of American leadership, where it has to negotiate with North Korea and recognise China as a player in Asia, where its policies are contested by all and sundry, including its previously loyal allies, there is a need for an adjustment in policy to better defend its interests.

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.

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.