https://themilitant.com/2018/08/04/us-capitalist-rulers-face-deepening-political-crisis/
US capitalist rulers face deepening political crisis
By Terry Evans
Vol. 82/No. 30
August 13, 2018
As the Democrats and Republicans — the twin parties of capitalist rule —
gear up for the 2018 elections, both continue to be wracked by political
crises that have accelerated following the election of Donald Trump as
president. What lies beneath these conflicts is their inability to
prevent working people from looking for ways to stand up to the assaults
that flow from the capitalist rulers’ economic, social and moral crisis.
The liberal media pundits, Democrats of all stripes and some
Republicans, are lathered up in a furious “resistance” to the Trump
presidency, and try to counter his every move with renewed efforts to
bring him down. The real aim of their wrath is the working class, who
they increasingly fear.
In the introduction to The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record; Why
Washington Fears Working People, Socialist Workers Party leader Steve
Clark explains that these meritocratic liberals “recognize that more and
more working people are beginning to see that the bosses and their
political parties have no ‘solutions’ that don’t further load the costs
— monetary and human — of the crisis of their system on us.”
This “anti-Trumper” bloc has been taking aim at his administration’s
foreign policy. Following Trump’s July meeting with Russian President
Vladimir Putin, former CIA Director John Brennan claimed the president’s
conduct was “nothing short of treasonous.”
Washington seeks to lessen tensions
The foreign policy of the White House takes place amid the coming apart
of almost all the institutions the U.S. rulers put in place in the late
1940s, out of their victory in the second imperialist World War, to
defend their “world order.” From sharpening disputes within NATO to
growing conflicts among the capitalist rulers in the EU, this world
order is shattering.
U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2010. Washington is moving to negotiate
ways to pull back from bloody wars it has failed to win there and in
Mideast.
173rd U.S. Airborne Combat Brigade Team
U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2010. Washington is moving to negotiate
ways to pull back from bloody wars it has failed to win there and in
Mideast.
This process has been accelerated by Washington’s course since the
implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991. The U.S. rulers thought —
incorrectly — that this meant they had “won” the Cold War, and could
move on Russia’s borders and make war wherever they thought it would
advance their interests with impunity. The result has been growing
tensions with Moscow and decades of wars Washington can’t ever seem to
win in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Faced with this world, and the start of Washington’s decline in relation
to Beijing, Trump is trying to strengthen the U.S. government’s military
machine to maintain its dominance. At the same time, he is moving to
pull back from relying on bloody wars to impose Washington’s will around
the world, as previous administrations did with devastating consequences
for workers.
The Trump White House seeks to advance the U.S. rulers’ interests
through pressure, then moves for talks with Moscow, the North Korean
government and the Taliban in Afghanistan, in an effort to reduce
conflicts and win some stability for U.S. interests. He is pressing for
negotiations between the Israeli rulers and Palestinian leaders. For
working people in the Mideast and elsewhere — and for workers in the
U.S. who are used as cannon fodder in Washington’s wars — these
political developments are followed with great interest.
In fact, much of what Trump is doing along these lines — with the
motivation of stabilizing the interests of the U.S. capitalist rulers,
of which he is one — unintentionally opens more room for workers to
talk, discuss and act in their own class interests.
For liberals determined to put a minus wherever Trump puts a plus,
they’re driven to see more wars in the cards. Former U.S. Ambassador to
the Democratic Republic of the Congo Dan Simpson, a long-standing critic
of Trump, elaborates on this.
Writing in the July 25 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Simpson says, “The
rising tide of the Mueller investigation, personal scandals and the
general wreckage of U.S. foreign policy” wrought by Trump are leading
him to start a war with Iran, which will break out pretty soon. “Trump
could use a war right now, in hopes of rallying Americans around the
flag — and him.”
But on July 30 Trump announced he was ready to meet with Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani without any preconditions. The administration’s
course towards Tehran — bring pressure to get talks and a “better deal”
for Washington — isn’t aimed at starting a war.
The fact is, many workers sense that wars are less likely under this
administration than its predecessors. This, along with the upturn in the
capitalist business cycle and its impact on jobs, means Trump is likely
to be re-elected, bar some sharp shift in the objective situation.
Rulers’ political crisis deepens
The Republican Party is deeply divided. Trump has his own politics and
team. His administration has little to do with traditional party
shibboleths — like small government. From former Tea Party stalwarts to
the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Trump isn’t their guy. They
aren’t sure what to do to retain their party’s future.
The so-called “progressive” Clinton wing of the Democrats are depressed
about 2018 because the seats in play are “not dominated by
well-educated, suburban districts that voted for Hillary Clinton,” Nate
Cohn wrote in the New York Times July 30. They are instead, he bemoans,
“working-class and rural districts that voted for Donald J. Trump.”
For liberals like Cohn the outcome of Clinton’s 2016 defeat at the hands
of “uneducated” workers was a disaster they can’t accept. The Bernie
Sanders wing of the splintered Democrats has used the primary win by
Democratic Socialists of America member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New
York’s 14th Congressional District to advance their reform program and
seek to take over the party. Of course, she didn’t actually win by
turning out the masses. Over 80 percent of eligible voters stayed home.
Ocasio-Cortez — like Sanders, who she used to work for — focuses on
attempts to make capitalism “nicer” and “fairer,” obscuring the reality
that what workers face is the product of the irreconcilable interests of
the class that holds power — the propertied owners. More than anything
else, her aim is to staunch the desertion of workers increasingly
disillusioned with the capitalist parties and get them back into the
Democratic Party.
When members of the Socialist Workers Party campaign door to door in
working-class neighborhoods, they find widespread discussion and debate
about the roots of the rulers’ crises and wars, and interest in a party
that advances a working-class road forward.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •SWP: Workers need to take political power
•SWP takes party, program to workers on doorsteps
•US capitalist rulers face deepening political crisis
•‘Militant’ sets fight against ban in Illinois federal prison
•Dairy farmers: ‘Instead of making a living, we’re just making debt’
•‘Nation-state’ law sets back fight for recognition of Israel,
Palestinian state
Feature Articles •Dallas film spotlights 1973 cop murder of Santos Rodriguez
Also In This Issue •EU leaders, Greek gov’t keep squeeze on workers
•US gov’t meets with Taliban to seek end to Afghan war
•Cops who killed Eric Garner ‘should be put in jail’
•NY meeting celebrates, points to example of Cuban Revolution
On the Picket Line •Georgia school bus drivers fight for reinstatement
after sickout
Books of the Month •The fight to stop deportation of the ‘man who has no
papers’
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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