Reject Obama and McCain! Support the socialist alternative in 2008!

Reject Obama and McCain! Support the socialist alternative in 2008!
Build the Socialist Equality Party!
Statement of the Socialist Equality Party wsws.org
13 September 2008

The Socialist Equality Party announces today that it has selected
Jerome White and Bill Van Auken as president and vice president in the
2008 US elections. White, 49, and Van Auken, 58, have decades of
experience in the socialist movement and the struggles of the working
class. They are both regular writers for the World Socialist Web Site.

Between now and Election Day, the SEP will make the case for
socialism. It will explain the necessity for and encourage the
development of mass popular struggles against capitalism and
militarism. The SEP will point out that the fundamental issues facing
working people—economic crisis, social inequality, war, and attacks on
democratic rights—can be addressed only through a break with the
Democrats and Republicans, the corporate-controlled parties of big
business. The SEP will call on American workers to reject the national
chauvinism promoted by these pro-imperialist parties and embrace a
program of international working class solidarity.

White and Van Auken will explain that there is no solution to the
crisis of American society within the framework of capitalism. The SEP
calls for the reorganization of economic life along socialist lines.
The satisfaction of human and social needs, not the drive for profit
and the accumulation of the personal wealth of the richest one percent
of Americans, must be the goal of economic policy. Capitalist private
ownership of the productive forces of society and the dictatorship of
the corporate oligarchy must be replaced with a socialist system,
based on public ownership and popular democratic control over the main
productive forces and resources.

The SEP issues the following warning: Neither the Democrats nor
Republicans are presenting to the working class their real programs—
that is, what they intend to do after Election Day. Neither the
Democratic nor Republican candidate cares to acknowledge that this
election campaign is being conducted in the midst of the most serious
economic crisis of world capitalism since the Great Depression of the
1930s.

But the corporate and financial elite knows full well that the next
president—regardless whether his name is McCain or Obama—will almost
immediately escalate attacks on the American and international working
class. The next administration will drive up unemployment, slash
expenditures for desperately needed social programs, support the
attacks of the corporations on wage levels and working conditions, and
intensify government suppression of democratic rights. A President
McCain or Obama will pursue the reckless militarist agenda of the
Pentagon and seek the reintroduction of the draft to provide human
cannon fodder for the wars now being planned in secret.

Unambiguously and irreconcilably opposed to imperialism and all forms
of national chauvinism, the SEP campaign is directed to the American
and international working class. All over the world, working people
are following with intense interest the unfolding of the election
campaign. They know that their fates are tied directly to what happens
in the United States.

After eight bloody years of the Bush administration’s fraudulent,
criminal and sadistic “war on terror”—that is, the drive to establish
American control over the world’s oil and energy resources—people all
over the world are hoping that the elections bring an end to US-
sponsored violence and aggression. They have been led to believe by
the media in their own countries that the election of Obama, the first
African-American to receive the presidential nomination of one of the
two major capitalist parties, would herald a decisive shift in the
foreign policy of the United States.

It is the responsibility of the SEP campaign to refute this complacent
and dangerous illusion. If he is elected, Obama will pursue the global
imperialist interests of the American ruling class no less ruthlessly
than Bush. The “war on terror” will be escalated.

The SEP says to workers all over the world: Imperialist violence will
not be ended by placing a Democrat in the White House. Global peace
can be achieved only through the solidarity and unified struggle of
the American and international working class against capitalism,
against imperialism, and for socialism!

The central issues that confront the working class in this election
are:

1. The world economic crisis

The United States and much of the world are already entering into
recession. The living conditions of working people are deteriorating.
Families are being kicked out of their homes, the cost of goods is
rising, wages are declining, and unemployment is soaring. This crisis
is adding to what is already a staggering level of social inequality.

The present crisis exposes the failure of the capitalist system. It
has laid bare enormous levels of corruption and incompetence. But
beyond the greed and criminality of corporate executives, the crisis
is the product of a protracted decay in the global position of
American capitalism. The American ruling class has no response but to
attack the working class, while attempting to seize control of the
world’s resources.

The propagandists of big business pay endless tributes to capitalism
and the infallibility of the “free market.” This ideology, as stupid
as it is reactionary, is exposed by the eruption of the sub-prime
mortgage crisis that has brought the entire American and world
financial system to the brink of collapse. During the past several
months, hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured by the Bush
administration, with the support of the Democrats, into privately-
owned financial institutions. The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac has effectively doubled the national debt of the United States.
The cost of these bailouts will be borne by the working class. The
sole beneficiaries of these rescue operations will be, as always,
corporate executives and super-rich investors.

In opposition to the state bailout of the American financial
oligarchy, the SEP advocates the transformation of the giant banks and
corporations into democratically controlled utilities, operated to
meet social needs, not private profit. It supports a massive
redistribution of wealth to benefit working people, including vastly
expanded resources for social programs, jobs, health care, housing and
education.

2. Militarism and the threat of world war

The eruption of American imperialism is the greatest threat to the
world’s population and threatens to spark a new world war, with
incalculable consequences. The occupation of Iraq has now lasted for
over five years, and the occupation of Afghanistan for nearly seven.
These wars were not “mistakes” that were managed poorly, as stated by
sections of the Democratic Party and media, but atrocious crimes for
which the entire political establishment stands condemned.

Even as the election campaign season progresses, the US is carrying
out further military actions. The US has begun bombing areas of
Pakistan in opposition to the demands of Pakistan’s government. In its
attempt to assert control of a key geo-strategic area in the Caucasus
and undermine Russian influence in the region, the US supported a
Georgian attack on South Ossetia. Both these operations have the full
support of the Democrats and Republicans.

On the basis of the doctrine of “preemptive war,” the American ruling
class has arrogated to itself the right to invade any country. It is
responding to its declining economic position by seeking to leverage
its main advantage against its rivals: the most powerful military in
the world.

The SEP advocates the complete dismantling of the American war
machine. US troops should be immediately withdrawn from wherever they
are stationed, and a program of reparations, paid for by the American
ruling elite, must be implemented to help rebuild societies shattered
by American bombs. Those responsible for launching these wars must be
prosecuted for the war crimes they have committed.

3. The crisis of American democracy

The last eight years have seen a bipartisan assault on democratic
rights, in the United States and internationally. Words such as “Abu
Ghraib,” “Guantánamo,” “rendition,” “enemy combatant,” “water
boarding,” and “enhanced interrogation” have come to symbolize the
American government’s descent into criminality and fascistic
barbarism.

The “war on terror” has been used to justify not only military
actions, but the creation of a police state apparatus in the United
States, including vastly augmented police powers and spying programs
without precedent.

The real purpose of the attack on democratic rights is not to deal
with “terrorism,” as claimed by both political parties, but to repress
any sign of opposition to the policies of the American ruling class.
The fight for democracy, therefore, cannot be separated from the fight
for social equality.

The SEP advocates the repeal of all anti-democratic legislation, the
immediate closing of Guantánamo Bay and all other US military
concentration camps and secret CIA prisons around the world, and the
dismantling of the American government’s repressive monitoring system.

Break with the two party system!

The corporate-controlled 2008 presidential campaign offers no
alternative for the American people and allows no discussion of the
real issues. The Democratic and Republican candidates hurl inane and
childish insults at each other, while cynically posturing as the
agents of “change” who will shake up a political elite of which they
are integral parts.

In the case of McCain, his campaign repackaging as an agent of
“change” is breathtaking in its cynicism. The son and grandson of
American admirals, he is an out-and-out militarist who has
aggressively supported and promoted every military operation of the
United States over the past 45 years, including his personal
involvement in the Vietnam War as an air force pilot, dropping bombs
on a country that had never threatened or attacked the United States.

As for his social outlook, McCain is a fervent defender of corporate
interests. Personally implicated in the savings-and-loans scandals of
the 1980s, McCain’s “anti-corruption” credentials are nothing more
than the product of a politically expedient public relations makeover.
He achieved the presidential nomination of the Republican Party by
reconciling himself with the most reactionary elements within that
extreme right-wing party. His nomination of Sarah Palin as his running
mate confirms his capitulation to the religious right.

For all the hype surrounding Obama’s status as the first African-
American nominee of a major political party, it is becoming
increasingly clear that his rhetoric is so much empty sloganeering. He
is an entirely conventional politician, a veteran of the Illinois
Democratic Party machine, who will continue the same policies as his
predecessors.

In a series of calculated moves over the past several weeks, Obama has
sought to reassure the American ruling elite that he is a capable
defender of its interests, from voting for warrantless domestic spying
to backtracking on his pledge to eliminate Bush’s tax cuts for the
rich.

In the course of the election campaign, Obama has rapidly shed his
antiwar posturing, affirming his support for the continued occupation
of Iraq, calling for stepped-up US attacks on Pakistani territory and
denouncing Bush for not sending enough additional troops to
Afghanistan. He has also echoed the Bush administration’s bellicose
and provocative stance against Russia.

The demands of American militarism will require an infusion of tens of
thousands more youth to server as cannon fodder in the US military.
This is the significance of Obama’s repeated calls for “service” and
“sacrifice.” The American ruling class is laying the foundations for a
military draft.

The SEP categorically rejects the view that the Democratic Party can
be pushed to the left. Those who say the construction of an
independent party is “unrealistic” are in fact advancing the politics
of delusion and self-deception—that the Democratic Party represents a
real alternative.

The capitalist system has failed the American people; it has failed
the world as well. As the world is plunged into an economic abyss,
amidst the backdrop of global conflict and imperialist barbarism,
millions of people will come to realize that capitalism cannot be
reformed—it must be overthrown. It must be replaced by a new social
system based on democratic control and rational planning of the global
economy, to satisfy social needs and not private profit.

The main task in this election is to present ideas and fight for a
program. The very nature of the American electoral system—with an
electoral college, a winner-take-all process, prohibitive ballot
access laws, and a well-established practice of fraud and manipulated
elections—testifies to its completely undemocratic character.
Political struggle cannot remain within the framework of polls
ritualistically carried out every few years.

The SEP will be holding meetings across the country in the coming
weeks. We call on workers and young people in the US and around the
world to commit yourselves to the active struggle for international
socialism by participating in our election campaign, becoming readers
of the World Socialist Web Site, and joining the Socialist Equality
Party.