At the time
of his election, I wrote that it was reason to celebrate the fact that a black man had won the
Presidency, when not many years ago, such an event would have seemed
impossible. But, I was not alone in warning against being too
optimistic about what his Presidency would bring – including for
black Americans.
In that
respect, Obama has not failed to disappoint. The financial meltdown
of 2008 blew up the financial bubble that has been repeatedly
inflated since 1987, and thereby exposed the underlying weakness of
the US economy, that had been created by the conservative policies of
the Reagan/Bush years.
Despite a
policy of Keynesian fiscal stimulus, that stands in stark contrast to
the conservative, austerian policy adopted in the UK, the US economy,
whilst performing better than others, has not performed
outstandingly. The same kind of welfarist policies have continually
extended the periods of entitlement for unemployment benefits, and
brought more workers into the scope of entitlement to food stamps.
But, it is hardly then a measure of success that millions continue to
need extended unemployment benefits, or that 46 million people, or a
fifth of the population, are in receipt of food stamps. And, of
course, as before Obama became President, a disproportionate number
of those unemployed, those in receipt of food stamps, and of those
homeless people, who turned up to Central Park recently, to receive
alms from a publicity seeking Chinese billionaire, are black.
Obama had
the advantage that the policy of Keynesian intervention, to save the
banks and big corporations, like Ford and GM, had been started under
Bush. But, the bifurcation of the US economy, referred to earlier,
was reflected in a growing bifurcation in US society, which was in
turn manifest in a growing divide between its political parties.
On the one
hand, the division between the Democrats and Republicans, like the
split between Labour and Tories, in Britain, is only a division
between two bourgeois parties. For most of the last century,
certainly after WWII, both camps, in both countries, stood
essentially on the same social-democratic terrain. It was only when
the economic conditions, that underpinned that, collapsed, in the
1980's, that the social-democratic wing of the conservative parties
lost their sway, and the electoral arithmetic swung the pendulum to
the Right.
In both
countries, a sizeable constituency of small capitalists, and those
who share their narrow, petit-bourgeois outlook, exists to provide a
bedrock of electoral support for conservative parties. In more
affluent times, this constituency shrinks, but, in times such as
those experienced since the 1980's, it grows and becomes more vocal.
After the shock of 2008, it became more vocal again, and the failure
of social-democracy, at an international level, to adequately address
the aftermath of the crisis, has only added to that.
It is
manifest in the growth of ultra-right, nationalist and populist
forces in Europe, in UKIP and the Tory right in Britain, and with the
Tea Party in the US. In the US, the Tea Party, that seemed to be on
the wane until recently, showed it was still alive by unseating the
Republican Senate Leader, Eric Cantor, though some of that could also
be due to his failing to give sufficient attention to looking after
his constituency.
What can be
said is that Obama has not compromised with the Republicans in the
way Clinton did. In particular, Obama pushed through with Obamacare.
In part, that could be down to the fact that US big capital needed
some form of general socialised healthcare, more than it had ever
done –
New York Times.
For more
than a decade, big US companies complained that they were being made
uncompetitive, because of the huge costs they incurred, providing
private health insurance for their employees; a cost their European
and Japanese counterparts did not face. In recent years, those costs
have soared even more. Pushing through healthcare reform is then
something important for big industrial capital, and the Democrats, as
its social-democratic political representatives.
But, in the
US, in particular, it is anathema to conservatives. For the small
capitalists, on whom the conservatives are based, socialised
healthcare is an extravagance, and an unnecessary cost imposed on
them. Of course, the reality is that its only a cost imposed on them
to the extent, that unlike big capital, they do not already provide
health insurance for their largely un-unionised workforces,
preferring instead to throw that cost on their workers, and on to
other workers taxes, via Medicare.
For the
middle class supporters of conservative parties, it is equally
anathema, because their small minded approach believes that if they
can provide for themselves, everyone else should do likewise. They
would, of course, be the first to object at the idea then that all
workers should be paid a minimum wage sufficient to make that
self-reliance possible! Its not surprising then that the bifurcation
of US society, and its political reflection has found its sharpest
expression in the virulent opposition by the Tea Party against
Obamacare.
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