obama...

obama....

So the cheering smiling crowds go wild, the poor of America have found, they believe, a new champion and the Rich smile and rub their grubby hands because the State is in the hands of someone the masses really believe in...all the better to convince them of the nesessity of massive cuts in all social provisions in order to save the bankers and the continuance of the war in Afghanistan, for which, Obama has already requested more troops.

We live in a society where the economy of certain corporations is larger than the income of many small countries and yet within each of these giant corporate economies we have absolutely no democratic voice, every company is a hierarchy, the boss or shareholders at the top, middle management and then the foot soldiers, the pawns who do all the labour but have no say in the distribution of the products of their labour. No change in the personell of the State can shake this despotism ruling in the economy. The only choice you get is between which members of the ruling class you think should oppress you for the next four years. Of course the state has some 'autonomy' and can sometimes come into conflict with the ruling class as a whole but in essence the state, as a state of that class, as a system of armed men, judges and laws for the managing of the working class, can only ever really do one of 3 things- it can retard economic development, it can promote economic development, or it can do nothing...but the State can never challenge the prevailing economic order as it is a product of the irreconcilable class conflict engendered by that very same economic order.
Even when, in rare circumstances, the State comes into the possession of a group of reformers dedicated to change, then as we have seen time and time again, the state purifies itself of this 'abberation' i.e. the judges and the generals and the police force overthrow those who have 'infected' the capitalist's state with thier ideas of change. We saw this clearly in Chile in 73 when the socialist Salvador Allende put his faith in the state, the weapon of the ruling classes, to change things in favour of the working classes.He paid not only with his own life, but with the lives of thousands of workers massacred by Thatcher's good friend, General Pinochet.

So why cant real change ever come through Obama? Because the tyranny in the economy remains untouched. Although Obama represents a positive shift in American politics he will never deliver on the hopes and aspirations of the millions who voted him in. The New Deal of the 30's he's so fond of referencing ever did tackle the economic problems of that time, the Crash of the 1930's melted into the mobilisation for the World War.
No mainstream politician ever can. Only a movement that begins in the working class communities and on the streets, that develops it's own local and workplace based organs of democracy,which take over sphere by sphere the activites of working life,only this kind of movement can bring to life true democracy and liberate us from banking collapses and war.

james