With his approval ratings already at
record lows in 2008, imagine if George W. Bush had received a
four-year extension to his term of office. Imagine if he alone had
presided over the bailout—the largest transfer of wealth in human
history—delivering trillions of tax dollars to his friends on Wall
Street.
By 2010 Wall Street’s profits begin
to recover and the Stock Market is moving steadily upward. With his
characteristic smirk, Bush holds a press conference and announces
that the recession is over, with millions losing their homes and the
unemployment rate soaring. By May 2011, the national employment rate
of African American men sinks to 56.1 percent—lower than it has
ever been since the government started keeping such statistics 40
years ago.
All this has in fact happened since Bush left office, and more.
Imagine if it were Bush, in the depths of the economic crisis, extending his tax cuts to the very wealthy. Almost all the largest banks and corporations, almost all of whom have been bailed out with public funds, pay no taxes whatsoever.
A few months later, Bush declares that
the government is short on money and must make nearly a trillion
dollars in cuts to education, housing, health care, transportation,
environmental protection, and an assortment of social programs and
services that are already stretched thin. He says “everything is on
the table” to receive additional cuts, including Social Security
and Medicare, within a few months.
Bush declares a pay freeze for federal
workers, and then sits back and watches state governments
aggressively try to destroy and outlaw public-sector
unions—representing teachers, office workers, firefighters, and
others.
Imagine Bush in the first few years of
his extended term deporting 1 million undocumented immigrants—more
than he had in the previous eight years combined.
Imagine if Bush declared immediately
upon receiving his extension that instead of bringing troops home
from Iraq, he would send them to Afghanistan, where within two years
he triples the number of soldiers deployed.
With the population already distrustful of Bush’s “regime change” missions in the Middle East, imagine him declaring which governments in the region have “lost their legitimacy to lead.” Imagine him leading the country into another war against another oil-rich Arab nation. Imagine him initiating 7,500 bombing missions on an African country with the clear aim of assassinating its leaders and destroying its infrastructure.
Imagine how the people of the country
would respond if Bush remained in office during all this. Further,
imagine if Bush named himself president for life.
How would the labor unions respond? How would oppressed African American communities, experiencing an uptick in both unemployment and police violence, respond? How would the millions-strong immigrant rights movement respond? How would the anti-war movement respond?
There would not only be mass
mobilizations, and increasingly militant ones, as all the affected
sectors of society came to the realization that they must fight to
defend their interests. There would also be the immediate formation
of revolutionary groupings among such sectors, and a growing
attraction to revolutionary ideology, as the government was
recognized as an entity that must be overthrown.
We draw this scenario, in other words,
not to say that Bush and Obama are identical politicians, but to
explain why the capitalist class holds dear their electoral cycle. It
allows them to periodically change their image, give the appearance
of choice, while carrying out the same program of class warfare. As
billionaire capitalist Warren Buffet admitted in a moment of candor,
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich
class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
In fact, democracy in capitalist
society is the preferred form of class rule precisely because its
conceals the nature of this rule. It obstructs the exploited sectors
of society from drawing the revolutionary conclusions needed to
overthrow it.
Democrats and Republicans on the campaign trail will fill our ears with colorful stories about the country where hard work is amply rewarded, and the great American “middle class” reigns supreme.
After years of bipartisan attack against workers, Democrats will go back to their historic constituencies—those which would be marching in the streets right now if Bush were still president—to warn them that the evil Republicans must be defeated at any cost. Republicans will explain to their base that “middle class” living standards have eroded on account of social programs, immigrants, and other scapegoats.
This myth-making cannot hold up
forever. As the economic basis for the “middle class” erodes,
this will shed light on the stark inequalities, and ruling-class
domination, that characterize our society.
Even Forbes magazine—the
self-described “capitalist tool”—ran a headline forecasting the
“The Coming Global Class War.” Youth unemployment is no better
here than in the countries that have recently experienced rebellion
and revolution. At present, seeing such a movement here appears very
far off, or even impossible; but when it happens, it will appear
inevitable.
