Election Dogfight Underlies ‘State of Union’: U.S. Ruling Class Faces Internal Crisis
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 11:02PM In Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, he said:
We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.
In reality, however, Obama and the U.S. ruling class he serves cannot possibly produce economic fairness. Because capitalism is a super-exploitative, racist, sexist system, based on the drive for maximum profits, it is inherently unequal. “Fairness” would require eliminating the system itself.
Under capitalism, bosses and bankers own the means of production while they themselves produce nothing. Workers create everything of value and, for the most part, receive just enough to survive — if that. Phony “Fair Share” Obama is cynically trying to manipulate Occupy Wall Street-inspired sentiment for the section of the ruling class he represents.
No matter what popular phrases he opportunistically mouths in the run-up to this November’s election, Obama has no room in his agenda for the redistribution of wealth. His proposals to raise taxes on the very rich and to tighten regulation of investors have a different aim entirely. They are designed to enable the most most powerful imperialist bosses to wage the ever-wider wars they need in order to control energy resources and cheap labor, the vital elements in maintaining U.S. supremacy over its capitalist rivals.
War and Taxes At Heart of 2012 Election Circus
But not all U.S. capitalists have the same vested interest in U.S. imperialism. As a result, taxes and war will likely be the central focus of the 2012 election dogfight, which Obama kicked off with his blatant campaign speech in the State of the Union. The candidates’ positions differ according to their capitalist backers’ varying needs. The spectrum runs from arch-imperialist Obama to isolationist Ron Paul.
But for the working class, none of these candidates will solve its problems: mass racist, long-term unemployment; constantly shrinking wages; foreclosed homes; prison-like schools; mass detention and deportation of workers who are immigrants; and a criminal injustice system that imprisons 2.4 million people, of whom 70 percent are black and Latino (see page 5). Capitalist-created horrors confront the working class worldwide even more intensively, especially

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to destroy capitalism and the dictatorship of the capitalist class. We organize workers, soldiers and youth into a revolutionary movement for communism.

