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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Obama wins

So the next President of the USA will be Barack Obama. Of course as socialists we know that he is a capitalist politician, the representative of a capitalist party, who will form a capitalist administration to govern the most powerful capitalist country in the world.

And that, as a left-of-centre politician getting support with hints of redistributing wealth to the poorer sections of society, he is going to fail, for the simple reason that capitalism simply cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority of the members of society. It is a profit-making system that can only work as such, in the interest of the tiny minority who own and control the means of production and live off the profits produced by the unpaid labour of the majority.

This said, there are two points that can be made.

First, the rapidity with which ideas can change. A few decades ago it was unthinkable that a man regarded as “black” could be elected President of the USA by an a predominantly “white” electorate. It is only about fifty years since most “blacks” in the South were allowed to vote and that segregation was ended. In some States the union of Obama’s mother and father would have been illegal. But now, under the pressure of experience, such prejudices have been abandoned by a majority of people in America. We can look forward to the time when same thing happen to the pro-capitalist prejudices still held by the majority.

Second, the much higher turn-out shows that when people judge, rightly or wrongly, that what is at stake is important they are prepared to turn out and vote. We’ve seen this before in other circumstances, even if there too the issue wasn’t really as important as the majority judged. But they thought it was, and acted on this. In other words, that voting is a way in which a change in consciousness from pro-capitalist to socialist will express itself, despite what the “anti-parliamentarists” say.

ALB

9 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:19 pm

    Hi ALB,
    I thought your contribution really nailed Ian Bone in the debate with him on this (ie, relatively peaceful democratic action). And nice post here too.
    Cheers

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  2. in our elections, we look at the two candidates and ask ourselves "which is the less of the two evils" i know thats what i first thought when i saw that it was going to come down to mccain and obama. but i have realized like how you mentioned that times are changing, if you look now you see that we've elected the first black president, although its a loss for us socialists, we must keep optimistic outlooks on this. this election we saw that people could look past color and vote for the best candidate, which moves us closer to being more progressive and perhaps one day electing a socialist president. we've seen it happen in many countries like nicaragua, peru, and venezuela. and i find that its only a matter of time before people open up and are educated about socialism.

    good post

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  3. gurkgurkgurk
    Not sure that Nicaragua, Peru or Venezeula have anything to do with socialism. Surely "socialism" is the end of capitalism?

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  4. Once he has bombed a couple of countries in the interests of his paymasters we will see how ,'Left of Centre', he is.
    We already have his indication, before the attack on Pakistan,of his willingness to 'hotly pursue' even to the extent of loss of life for innocents.Three children were killed in the latest raid into Pakistan.
    That Old Black Magic is little more than American Nationalist Moonshine.it has its purpose to rekindle the spell of the 'American Dream'.As my ole granpappy used to say,"Don't amount to a hill of beans".
    Time to waken up to our class interests America.

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  5. jock
    i meant that those countries i listed have socialist presidents, i didnt mean they were socialist countries, i was just trying to get the point across that more countries are electing presidents that want to make their countries go down the path to socialism.

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  6. jock
    i meant that they have socialist presidents, not that they are socialist countries, obviously in order to go down the path to socialism the president or leader must want to take that path. thats what i was getting at

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  7. You're an idiot if you think Obama is a capitalist.
    The political principles of Obama are as close to a moderate European Socialist as there ever has been in history.
    This breed of Socialist thought will destroy personal liberties, undermine what the U.S. founding fathers wished for America to become, and abolish small enterprise and permit large corporations to further exploit the system. Not saying McCain's better though.
    I wish Ron Paul wasn't blacklisted from the media.

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  8. "You're an idiot if you think Obama is a capitalist"

    Ah, so that's what life is like in a parallel universe! The Democracts allow a man who isn't pro-capitalist to not only join them but become a presidential candidate! And millions vote for him despite not having the faintest clue as to what 'socialism' means. And this Obama character is some sort of socialist despite, er, believing that it's ok for a minority to own and control the earth's resources, it's ok that perhaps 90% + of the world's population should have to work for this minority in order to live, and despite believing wholeheartedly in, er, what's it called? Oh yeah, capitalism. Crazy.
    Wowee, let me into this bizarre world! Maybe I'll be fit, handsome and slim there ...
    Alternatively, let me prescribe these -
    http://www.wspus.org/featured/is-obama-a-socialist/
    http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/what_is_capitalism.php
    http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/what_is_socialism.php

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  9. Robert,
    youre right. It was a bit much to be called an idiot for stating the obvious - Obama is a capitalist politician, albeit a currently massively-hyped one. Like Tony Blair euphoria in 1997, the shine will steadily come off. In fact, it is already being written that obama is in favour of sending more troops to the Afghanistan war zone.

    ReplyDelete