Article by Rui Paz, collaborator of the International Department
Change" and "Yes, we can" were the words of order with which Obama won the electorate that carried him to the United States presidency. But, the longest, most costly and mediatic electoral campaign ever seen, in the country’s history, once ended, nobody knows , at present, if the president-elect and his team, expect and can "change" something.
A certainty, and that deserves being highlighted, is the fact that, for the first time, an Afro-American president was elected, in a country, that along its history, oppressed and brutally enslaved its Afro-American population and even denied the most elementary civic rights during Luther King’s martyrdom. One must recall, that last June, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, the ex- South African president, Nelson Mandela, was still listed as a " terrorist", in Washington, for having fought against the fascist and racist regime of the Apartheid, during his whole life.
Obama’s victory, is the visible result of the momentary confluence of opposite and irreconcilable interests, and where one can emphasise certain sectors of the financier oligarchy to have the perception of the need to put an end to the disrepute and isolation to which the George Bush administration and the Republican Party conducted the United States, together with the indignation of popular discriminated and exploited stratums, critically hit by the economic and social crisis, and expropriated by banks and credit institutions of that same oligarchy. Can a new president answer to the feelings of the American people towards a change , knowing that the North-American two-party system, besides, in practice, functioning as a one-party system with two wings, one "republican", more conservative, and the other " democrat", more liberal, has as a supreme purpose, to secure, that, in America and in the world, the monopolist bourgeoisie privileges and the "right" to exploitation?
Marx, in a letter to Engels, on the 8th December 1857, referring to the great capitalism crisis, which had broken out in August of that same year, writes : " the capitalists that cried out so much against the "right to work", now demand, from the governments, public help, (…), that is, the "right to profit".
Without ignoring the differences between the republican and democrat candidates, and as the PCP Press Department press release highlights, " the truth is that both nominations do not hide their bond towards a project of world domination, in the economic, ideological and military levels.
One must recall, that it was during the " democrat" Clinton’s administration, that NATO approved the new aggressive strategic concept, in Washington, and the US performed military aggressions , contrary to the United Nations and the international law, in the Balkans, Iraq and Sudan. By intensifying the resort to war, concentration camps and torture, George Bush’s administration, demonstrated, as never before, the existent incompatibility among capitalism, the respect for rights, human dignity and democracy. Obama’s election does not invalidate, but proves the need to intensify, more and more, the struggle against the present imperialism offensive towards a genuine change of the international forces correlation, favourable to social justice, peace and democracy.
