BARACK OBAMA has just been elected by an explosion of popular support and anger that has united the working class and brought the majority of the diverse US population together in a historic fashion.
This support and anger is the product of the desperate worldwide economic and political crisis of the capitalist system that has plunged the US into two wars, and drastically lowered living standards in the US, and the EU, while condemning hundreds of millions in Africa, and Asia to starvation.
President-elect Obama is now selecting his bourgeois team to tackle this crisis and he will be doing so on behalf of the US ruling class, the same bankers and capitalists he has been railing against to build up his massive support.
Having a brown skin and having the support of tens of millions of workers and the poor does not automatically make a leader who will liberate the US and the world from oppression.
In fact, Obama does not pretend to be such a person. He is a US nationalist who supports US imperialism, a poor boy made good, a product of one of the US’ finest universities, who has put himself at the disposal of the US ruling class and who seeks to further develop the US as the most powerful state on earth, and if possible, in the process, get a better deal for the workers and the poor.
His rise to the highest office was fuelled by the economic crisis, but assisted by the fact that important sections of the US ruling class, understood that a radical rejigging of the US leadership was necessary, if there was to be any chance of resolving the crisis of US capitalism.
What could be newer and more startling than the son of a Kenyan goat herder, whose folks still live in a Kenyan village, and whose aunt was living illegally in the US, but who was nourished in Hawaii and prospered in the USA to challenge and win the the highest office.
There could not be a more extraordinary confirmation that the American dream, despite the millions of repossessed and unemployed is still in operation, or so the spin goes.
However, the reality does not correspond with the inspired propaganda.
Wall Street and the US and the world capitalist economy has collapsed and can only be revived at the expense of the workers.
Meanwhile the US workers are demanding jobs, wages, healthcare, pensions and education for their children, right at the point when the US bourgeoisie is getting rid of all these things and planning new wars to grab the world’s oil and gas resources.
The truth is that Obama could not have got elected if he had stood just as the son of a Kenyan goat herder who had made it. It is the crisis and the demands of millions of workers that has thrust him forward.
It is also true that he will not be able to satisfy any of their demands.
His regime will come into head on conflict with the working class and the poor.
His home policy is to maintain capitalism. His foreign policy is to wind up the war in Iraq and step up the war in Afghanistan, and to make war with Iran if it will not give up its nuclear rights.
His stand on Israel is to the right of Bush. He has already made the Zionist Rahm Emanuel, a former adviser to President Clinton, his chief of Staff. He is bringing in Gates and Colin Powell, both central to the US war machine, into his administration, along with members of the kennedy clan and Hilary Clinton.
The Obama regime will come into head on conflict with the US workers and also with the workers and the poor of the world, and as far as Iran and Palestine are concerned much sooner than later.
In fact, his policies will force the US workers and their trade unions to break with the Democrats and found a Labour Part.
The election of Obama does represent the appearance of the essence of change and of revolution in the US. However, it will be a socialist revolution and he will not be leading it, but fighting it. This is the time for the building of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in the US, to lead the socialist revolution that is developing, to its victory.
