The clear election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the USA is a great victory over racism and discrimination. A new page has opened in the decades-long struggle, with its cortege of assassinated leaders, imprisoned activists, violently repressed demonstrations and where racial discrimination goes together with social discrimination.
We share the immense joy of the blacks, Latinos and many minorities that make up this country, of the progressive men and women, the factory workers, the office workers, of all sectors of the working class who mobilized to beat the candidate of the party for the pursuit of the war in Iraq, the lowering of taxes for the rich, and his running mate, the muse of the most reactionary sectors of the anti-abortion right, the partisan of the “shock of civilizations.”
The rejection of the Bush team’s policy, which has made the USA the most denounced imperialist power, the most scorned in the world, was one of the springs of Obama’s victory.
In the eyes of the peoples of the world, US imperialism is war, the policy of destabilizing entire regions from the moment that they present a geo-strategic and economic interest for the US monopolies and the Pentagon. It is the torture centers. It is an economic system that pushes unbridled consumption financed by the rest of the planet, generating enormous waste and a pollution whose consequences are borne by all of the peoples. It is also this image that the people who voted for Obama want to change. The financial crisis which has been transformed into a world economic crisis has already deprived thousands of workers of their jobs in a country where unemployment benefits do no
last for more than 26 weeks. The neo-liberal policy conducted continuously since the Reagan years and which McCain proposed to pursue in its general lines, has caused the running-down
of the health system and of public education. The consequences of the privatizations and the withdrawal of the state from all social sectors is measured by the degree of abandonment in
which the tens of thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina live to this day. On the other hand, the rich have never been so rich, never has the gap of social inequalities been so great.
A large part of the oligarchy also “voted for Obama.” His financial and media support grew as the crisis grew and as billions were injected into the financial system. The oligarchy judges
that Obama is best placed to get the whole system out of this crisis, while taking measures of a nature to guarantee social peace. The oligarchy also expects him to get the US out of its
international isolation by practicing a policy of cooperation with the other imperialist powers and groups of powers.
Sarkozy and practically all the right wing leaders also want to surf on the “Obama wave” while pursuing the realization of the reactionary policy of “selected immigration” and its European pendant, the “shameful directive.” Sarkozy hopes that with this change at the head of the US government, he will manage to get people to accept the sending of French troops to Afghanistan and the French rejoining the NATO military command.
The North-American people have big expectations. But without a mobilization, without the pressure of the popular and labor movement, with a relationship of force, the man who has just been elected and the team that he will choose will realize a policy in the service of the oligarchy alone. The workers, the activists against the imperialist war, all those men and women who fight to refuse to pay for the crisis can be assured of one thing: the workers and the peoples of the world will be in solidarity with their struggles.
Paris, 6 November 2008
Parti Communiste des Ouvriers de France
pcof@pcof.net
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