The Help is an ambitious novel set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. It encapsulates a city that was a bastion of Jim Crow racism – a phalanx of state and local laws that were designed to keep black and white people separate from cradle to grave.

 The story alternates between three narrators: one a young “society lady” and two of them maids:

 -Skeeter, bored and frustrated by the Junior League ladies that form her social set, is an aspiring writer who stumbles into the idea of clandestinely documenting the thoughts and experiences of her friend’s black maids.

 -Minnie the firebrand who is curious about the mysterious behaviour of her new employer, and harbours a dark secret of her own.

 -Abileen who showers her charges with love, often giving them more affection than they receive from their blood mothers. But as the infants grow and loose their natural colour blindness, Abileen feels the pain of seeing them taking on the attitudes of their parents.

 A number of historical events are portrayed in the story, including the racist murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. After the death of Evers, Abileen attends the “Community Concerns” meeting at her church. Tempers run high, and a section of the flock demand something more than the peaceful protests and prayer proffered by their pastor. But such contradictions are never fully explored in the novel. 

Skeeter learns a swift lesson in the dialectics of resistance shortly after a maid who has agreed to participate in the project is fired by her employer. “If the maids were afraid to help us yesterday, I’m sure they’re terrified today,” opines Skeeter. But to her astonishment, eleven fresh volunteers step forward, emboldened by a changing mood in the African American community. From then on, big changes are inevitable.

 Much of the blogosphere debate about The Help has focused on the question of whether Kathryn Stockett, as a white author, can authentically write in the voice of African American characters. This controversy is an exercise in futility that ultimately leads us down the blind alley of identity politics. A more interesting investigation is to engage with the ideas that underpin the novel.

 Reflecting on the results of her and the maid’s project, Skeeter, the daughter of a cotton plantation owner, concludes: “We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”

 This thought echoes Aibileen’s opinion that: “Lines between black and white ain’t there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.”

 Such ideas were dangerous indeed in Mississippi in 1963. Standing up for them could result in your house being firebombed, or worse. But today, in the era of President Obama, formal legal equality is the political consensus of the age. Those once radical ideas become conservative, since they blur the very real divisions of class.

 Where The Help is most successful is when it probes the relationships between individual characters. In an afterward to the novel, Stockett quotes the journalist Howell Raines:

 “There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.”

 For attempting to tackle that question, Stockett deserves a measure of praise.

Why burn the New Zealand flag?

The New Zealand flag is a symbol of imperialism. This is most obvious in its design, a tribute to the British Empire. This design was adopted after the Second Boer War, which devastated South Africa but resulted in a surge of Kiwi patriotism.

Lest we forget

A simple re-design, while reflecting our emergence from the shadow of the British Empire, would not change the imperialist nature of the flag. It’s a tool of the ruling class, inseparably linked with militarism. From the Boer War through WWI and II, right through to armed involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the flag has marked New Zealand’s presence. Flags mark military conquest, the subjugation of nations.

Flags and borders divide the working majority. ANZAC soldiers had more in common with their Turkish counterparts than with the bureaucrats who sent them to Gallipoli. The working majority has interests in common worldwide, including an end to imperial war. Ruling class nationalism is a barrier to recognising this.

What purpose does ANZAC day serve?

Kevin Rudd used ANZAC Day to facilitate a new ANZAC Task Force.

Many argue that ANZAC Day is not a glorification of war, but a commemoration of those who’ve lost their lives. However, the rhetoric of ANZAC Day does not simply honour the soldiers who lost their lives, it justifies those who sent them to die. This facilitates moves such as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision to form a new ANZAC Task Force.

Every year we are told that the young men whose lives were snuffed out at Gallipoli died gloriously for our freedom. We are told that the liberties we enjoy in New Zealand today exist only because of the sacrifice of these soldiers. The message is that the soldiers’ deaths were worth it, and that the cause they died for was just.

Gallipoli was not about defending democracy or free speech. The Ottoman Empire did not pose a threat New Zealand. The Allied High Command ordered the invasion of Gallipoli for strategic reasons, primarily opening a supply route to arm their then ally, the Tsar of Russia. This battle served ruling class British interests.

If we truly wished to avoid a repetition of these horrors, we would use Anzac Day to teach this basic truth: Do not believe what you’re told. Imperialist war is never glorious, and the soldiers who bled to death in the Belgian mud and at Galipolli died for nothing.

To honour the men who lost their lives, we must condemn imperialist war. Only when ANZAC Day facilitates disarmament and solidarity with those resisting imperialism, only when the War Memorial is showered with white poppies, when speeches are made about a generation of men slaughtered to serve imperialist interests, only then will the Workers Party support it.

Afghanis burning NZ flag.

New Zealand: an imperialist nation

While New Zealand has eked out a degree of independence from the US, it remains a junior imperialist nation. Contrary to popular myth, New Zealand was a member of the coalition of the willing which legitimised the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, sending troops to both countries.

Afghanistan is in the mess it is today because of Western involvement. Since the nineteenth century, Britain and the United States have deliberately stirred up communal divisions in the Middle East in a bid to prevent the formation of any united resistance to their plans for plundering the economic wealth of the region. During the Cold War, the CIA funded and recruited an army of Islamic mujahideen fighters based in northwest Pakistan to fight the Russians and their Afghan allies. Sectarian violence was exacerbated by this and by the subsequent occupation. The pro-Western government that replaced the Taliban has shown its stripes by legalizing rape within marriage. Yet the US and its NATO allies continue to peddle the line that the only solution to the worsening violence is greater Western military intervention.

Imperialism in the Pacific

More locally, we have treated Pacific neighbours as sources of cheap labour and trade, often interfering in governance.

While capital may flow freely across borders, workers only move when it suits the ruling class. When the post-war boom ended in the 1970s, the NZ ruling class turned to shutting off working class immigration, especially from the Pacific. 100,000 Samoans were stripped of citizenship rights, in a piece of legislation that has been maintained ever since. The Workers Party calls for open borders and full rights for migrant workers.

Despite the line of “democracy promotion” in the Pacific, the ruling class is primarily interested in having stable elites to trade with. In 2006, New Zealand and Australian troops were deployed to quell pro-democracy riots in Tonga. Only 9 of the 34 seats in the Tongan parliament are elected, and Tongans have voted for pro-democracy candidates in all 9 of those seats. However, New Zealand backs the monarchy, a major source of trade.

Yet paradoxically, New Zealand has isolated Fiji since the coup carried out by Bainamarama; why advocate democracy in Fiji and not Tonga? We did not isolate those who carried out the Fijian coups in 1987 and 2004. In fact, Fiji has never been a full democracy, with a voting system that entrenches a tribal elite, at the expense of Indo-Fijians. The current interim government however, is pledging to hold elections once there has been electoral reform, disestablishing the racially segregated voting system and instituting one person one vote. This may yet be shown to be empty rhetoric, indeed some of the actions of the interim government seem rather undemocratic and should be of concern, but New Zealand’s stance is clearly not based on democracy. There are powerful New Zealand interests in Fiji, which is New Zealand’s largest export market amongst the Pacific Islands. New Zealand’s attitude to Fiji is not based on humanitarian interests, but on the interests of capital.

*      *      *      *      *

Accompanying every justification of New Zealand militarism and imperialism is the national flag. It stands for unthinking obedience to orders and the false god of nationalism – the idea that working class New Zealanders share common interests with their bosses against the rest of the world.

Workers and all oppressed people of all countries , unite to resist imperialism.

During the lead-up to the 2008 US election, Barack Obama made much of his plans to end the war in Iraq. His bold declaration – that “on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war”. Across the world, many people pinned their hopes on this promise.

Obama’s policy was never really about ending America’s imperialist war policy. It was always about managing the US war effort more effectively.

Obama only wanted out of Iraq because he believed that war was a poor use of US military assets. In an Op-Ed in the New York Times (14 July 2008), he declared: 

“As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.”

 For Afghanistan, read “Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven”. Since taking office, Obama has escalated the war in Pakistan and his recently announced Iraq troop withdrawal has freed up troops for redeployment there. Obama always stated that Iraq was an unnecessary distraction, that the real focus in the “war on terror” should be Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that his Iraq pull-out would be accompanied by an increased deployment in that theatre. It was his legions of hopeful believers who convinced themselves that Obama would somehow be different. In fact, Obama’s much touted withdrawal plan provides for 50,000 US troops being left in Iraq until the end of 2011, the same time frame as the Bush administration’s.

He has surrounded himself with many veterans of the Bush administration and so far only demonstrated a more sophisticated and effective hand on the levers of US imperialist power.

 Reviewed by Jill Brasell

(The Spark February 2009)

Journalist and blogger Joe Bageant grew up among the working-class people of Winchester, Virginia, and a question has evidently itched him ever since he escaped from (and then returned to) that community. Why do the working class reject liberalism, and instead hold tight to ideas that work against their own interests?

Deer Hunting with Jesus (Three Rivers Press, New York, 2007) is a series of loosely connected essays that attempts to answer that question. Bageant is a sharp observer and the book is a thought-provoking and often entertaining read as he takes a bottom-up look at globalisation, home ownership, healthcare, guns, Abu Ghraib, Christian fundamentalism and what he calls “the American hologram”.

The book offers some possible answers to the central conundrum, though it is more anecdotal than analytical. Bageant’s style is rambling; the essays are all engaging, but there is no sense of an overarching philosophy. He has described himself as a “redneck commie”, but it’s doubtful whether he is actually either. His view of the working class is conflicted – he loves them (hell, he lives with ‘em, doesn’t he?) but he doesn’t really believe they’ll ever get off their sorry asses to change anything. They’re great folks but they’re ignorant, superstitious, short-sighted, resistant to change and easily bought off with junk. His identification as one of them is pretty much limited to a common love of guns (and even then he admits that he quit hunting years ago).

As for being a “commie”, while he expresses some anti-capitalist views, nowhere in the book does he advocate socialism or even unionism, claiming that “there is practically no labor movement” in the United States.

In the end, Bageant’s portrait of the white working poor is somewhat depressing. (It’s not clear why he excludes blacks and the unemployed from his field of vision. He may have decided, perhaps sensibly, only to write about what he knows. But the book is weaker for this.) He has no answers for the folk of Winchester apart from advocating “universal access to a decent education”. He believes “many of the worst aspects of poverty stem from the intellectual bareness and brutality of the environment”, and observes that “never experiencing the life of the mind scars entire families for generations”. These attitudes beg several questions, including how such universal access might come about, and what a “decent” education might be, as well as what counts as the life of the mind.

Even so, the book makes a worthwhile contribution, and reveals some slimy things under the rocks it overturns. (For example, how fake non-profit hospitals put small local hospitals out of business and steal healthcare dollars from the poor.) And it’s interesting to consider at what points and to what extent it corresponds with the social landscape of New Zealand.

While many of the specifics of Bageant’s observations do not apply here, there is some of the same disconnect between what working class people want and what liberals and socialists think they need. (Some New Zealanders see their “right” to smack their children in very similar terms as some Americans see their right to own guns.)

Bageant believes that “sooner or later… the left must genuinely connect face-to-face with Americans who do not necessarily share all of their priorities… if the left is ever to be relevant again to working America.” There’s at least a grain of truth in that.

The son of murdered black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. has often been asked: did you think you’d ever live to see a black US president?

“People are surprised when I say yes”, says Martin Luther King III. “But I’m sure my father would have said the same if he was alive today. Without that faith and that sense of possibility he would have had no reason to fight in the first place.”

A spirit of faith and hope has accompanied Obama’s election campaign. A Gallup poll on announcement of Obama’s victory shows that a massive 70% of Americans believe they will be better off by the time the new president finishes his term in four years time.

Seldom has the election of a capitalist politician aroused such euphoric public celebration. Obama’s inaugural speech drew a record crowd of close on two million. In the afterglow of the inauguration ceremonies floods of Obama memorabilia continue to be snapped up at three times the volume of the previous record setter Bill Clinton.

Beneath the hype there are real reasons for celebration. Not only were all the forty three previous US presidents white, twelve of them kept black slaves while in office. As Los Angeles Times journalist Faye Fiore noted:
“While in the White House, President Andrew Jackson kept 150 house and field slaves on his Tennessee farm. It was under his nose one night in 1835, at 6th and Pennsylvania, that a white mob ransacked the Epicurean Eating House and tried to lynch its black owner, a man named Beverly Snow.
“As Barrack Obama takes his triumphant ride along Pennsylvania Avennue today, he retraces the path of Ku Klux Klan marches and roles past the ghosts of hotels and movie theatres that used to turn away people like him.”

Obama and jobs

Obama is not only a symbol of hope to Afro Americans. His mantra of “change you can believe in” struck a powerful chord with workers of all colours who wanted to be rid of the Bush administration and the poverty it inflicted on them. Some 2.6 million Americans were thrown out of work in 2008 – the highest number of job losses in one year since 1945. This unemployment growth is accelerating. In December alone half a million Americans lost their jobs.

Against this background Barack Obama is launching his $775 billion “stimulus plan” for the US economy – which he claims will create up to four million jobs by the end of 2010.

Many working class Americans, who are carrying the weight of the economic crisis, have responded positively to these plans. They are hoping the intervention is about saving and creating jobs rather than just propping up rich bankers.

Obama is putting forward two ways to create jobs – government spending on “public works” and tax cuts. The claim is that tax cuts for businesses will encourage them to invest – and so create jobs.

However, capitalists business will only invest in order to make profits. Obama’s plan may well end up giving more money and tax breaks to the rich – with little benefit for workers. Job creation funds could even come at a further expense to workers. The US budget deficit is already expected to soar to a record $1.2 trillion this year. There is pressure to reduce this debt – and this could mean cuts in services or tax rises.

Obama and war

Thousands of American voters were attracted by Obama’s seemingly sincere anti war stance. His promise to withdraw troops from Iraq was undoubtedly a central reason for Obama’s election victory.
But away from the popular podium, Obama keeps strange company for a peacenik.

The New York Times reports that Obama has regularly consulted his defeated opponent, Republican Senator John McCain, letting the virulently pro-war senator vet his nominees for top national security posts. The Times notes that, according to South Carolina senator and McCain associate Lindsey Graham, McCain has told colleagues “that many of these appointments he would have made himself.” Of all people, John McCain was Obama’s guest of honor at his pre-inaugural dinner Monday night.

Obama’s anti war image is rather like the anti war image of previous New Zealand prime minister. Helen Clark was able to maintain an image of peace by declining to send troops in numbers to Iraq. That served to blind some people to the fact of her deployment of SAS troops to Afghanistan.

In a similar way, Obama’s rhetoric about Iraq is, at the moment, sufficient to counterbalance his declared intention to send more soldiers to Afghanistan, a continuation and escalation of Bush’s ‘war on terror’.

Obama’s powerful backers

As Barry Grey reminded readers of World Socialist Website, Obama’s election is:

“the coming to power of the man who will preside over the most reactionary state in the world, under conditions of an unprecedented crisis of American and world capitalism. The policies of the Obama administration will be determined not by media image-making or hollow rhetoric, but by the imperatives of the crisis and the social interests which Obama represents.”

Describing some of those social interests, business journalist Claire Obusan wrote:

“Ever since he ran for the Senate in 2004, Barack Obama has had a wealth of 10-figure tycoons advising–and funding–him. As President-elect Barack Obama has had a slew of billionaire backers with him on his journey to the White House
Warren Buffett, America’s second-richest man as of the Forbes 400 in September, supported Obama during his presidential campaign, a fact Obama often mentioned in speeches and during debates to increase his economic policy clout.
Obama has promised big business will not have a prominent place at the table. But with so many billionaires chipping in, can he not help but include them in policy decisions?”

Realising the dream

At the moment Obama’s uncountable supporters are deaf to any such quibbles. They are high on hope. While insufficient by itself to deliver victory, hope is an indispensible thing. Workers’ struggle for a better life requires a raising of their expectations. As Martin Luther King’s son rightly pointed out, without a “sense of possibility” there is no reason to fight.
Throughout Obama’s campaign he and his supporters have constantly invoked the memory of Dr King. Poet Maya Angelou summed up the mood of many by waxing: “I mean, we all know he’s going to, in front of our very eyes, metamorphose into Martin Luther King … He has, I think, pretty much the same dream”.

But hope can’t be realised on the back of a lie. Obama’s record and politics are dead opposite to King in most respects. Preacher and activist Martin Luther King was an anti imperialist whose radicalism grew stronger as he aged. In his final year of life King travelled the country organising “a multiracial army of the poor” to march on Washington and engage in civil disobedience in pursuit of a bill of rights for poor Americans. King denounced the Vietnam war, argued that “something is wrong with capitalism” and recognised that from Vietnam to South America the US is “on the wrong side of a world revolution”. King’s final visit to Memphis, where he was assassinated, was to support a garbage workers’ strike. A genuine return to that tradition is needed for US workers dreams to be truly realised.

Since the office was first introduced in 1789, the President of the United States has been the leading figurehead in American capitalism, imperialism and exploitation. It is impressive that for the first time in 219 years, in a country that only roughly 40 years ago institutionalised segregation and only roughly 140 years ago still practised slavery, a black face is now at the top. But that does not change what the US presidency represents.

Barack Obama is a very skilled politician. He recognised that the American people hated George W. Bush and were eager to throw him and the Republican Party out at the first opportunity available. As a fresh face to the US political stage, he did not have the baggage of a tired old politician that the public had been aware of for over a decade or more, as in the case of McCain and Clinton. Obama could present himself as a “blank canvas” for voters to paint their own hopes and dreams onto, like many successful populist politicians. He tapped into a public discontent and exploited it for his own advantage. His actual policies are almost inconsequential to his monumental success. That is where the “change” everyone is so hyped up about comes from – from cynical political posturing. It does not actually mean anything.
Due to his populism and “blank canvas” image, a lot of the left are likely to be very soft on Obama in the coming years. Which is odd, as Obama is no actual leftist. For example, he wants to withdraw from Iraq – so he can escalate the war in Afghanistan. While Obama was portrayed as an “anti-war” candidate, the reality is different. Obama opposed the Iraq war only because it went against American imperialist interests; as he said at a rally against the Iraq war in 2002, while he was still an unknown state senator, “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

In many ways Obama will be better for US imperialism than Bush was, as now American imperialism will have a charismatic, likeable face which will make it much easier for America to get away with a lot of their despicable actions. Obama has also stated his commitment to capitalism time and time again, saying in a 60 Minutes interview, “I think our basic principle, that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk-taking – I think that’s a principle that we’ve got to hold to as well.” Obama has always been a capitalist and an imperialist politician at heart.

All of Obama’s cabinet and staff choices so far comprise Washington insiders, former Clinton administration officials and war hawks. There is no sign that there will be much of a change in direction for any future appointments. For example, his first choice as his running-mate was Joe Biden, the war hawk senior Senator from Delaware who is also the current chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Biden voted for the Iraq war and as recently as 15 November 2007 he expressed his support for the Patriot Act. This Act expanded the powers of the federal government to spy on its own citizens and allows the President to detain anyone he wants as an “enemy combatant”. Biden is also an avowed supporter of Israel.

Obama’s first cabinet appointment was Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff. Rahm Emmanuel is an Israeli-American congressman, a notorious Democratic partisan, and, like Biden, a pro-Israel warhawk, so this appointment goes against Obama’s to make politics less divisive. During a pro-Israel rally he claimed Israel was ready for peace and that Palestinians should “turn away from the path of terror”, which is a tad laughable considering all the atrocities Israel has committed against the Palestinians.

Rahm is also a prominent member of the New Democrat Coalition, an organisation within the United States Congress that advocates pro-business policies and economic liberalisation. This is the same group Hillary Clinton is a part of, and she is being appointed Secretary of State. But during the primary election campaign Obama claimed that the most striking difference between himself and Clinton was their foreign policy, as, like Joe Biden, Clinton also voted for the war in Iraq.

And if all this disappointment wasn’t enough for all the peaceniks who pinned their hopes on this candidate as a catalyst for “change” from the Bush administration, it was then announced after much speculation that Robert Gates from the Bush administration will stay as Secretary of Defense under the Obama administration.

As we can see, Obama isn’t going to be very left-wing. Not only has he appointed right-wing war hawk Democrats to important cabinet positions, but his economic advisory board consists of billionaires such as Warren Buffett and free-market advocates such Austan Goolsbee. His choice as head of the government’s National Economic Council is a man by the name of Lawrence Summers, an ardent proponent of globalisation and free trade. This man once advocated (in 1991) that the First World dump all its pollution into the territory of Third World nations. His logic was that “countries ought to export more pollution to developing countries because these countries would incur the lowest cost from the pollution in terms of lost wages of people made ill or killed by the pollution, due to the fact that wages are so low in developing countries”.

Racism is a product of class oppression; the two are fundamentally connected. The Workers Party acknowledges the history of African American struggle which has resulted in the election of Barack Obama.

The vast majority of African Americans remain wage earners. Obama is considering Lawrence Summers as  head of Treasury. Former head of the World Bank, Summers supported dumping toxic waste on Africa.

The struggle continues.

Condoleezza Rice just called in to say thank you.

Thanks for the “long history of partnership”. Thanks for New Zealand’s military participation in wars in Korea, the Pacific and more recently in Afghanistan.

Hang on a minute, isn’t Helen Clark supposed to be a  peacenik camouflaged in a power suit?

Well no, not quite. She did, after all, send defence personnel to Iraq in the first days of the war when the US was desperate to cobble together an international alliance.

In Afghanistan the commitment has been much greater, with SAS troops and other personnel  spending years there. Currently there are just 136 NZ defence personnel  in Afghanistan doing “reconstruction work”, like building stations and purchasing equipment for the Afghan police force.

Rice appreciates that while New Zealand is a small player in US military adventures, this is a long term partnership. What’s more, this multilateralism gives a stamp of legitimacy to the imperialist occupations of countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Imperialists these days mostly prefer a humanitarian guise and New Zealand is a master at this. We shouldn’t be fooled by the pretext for the New Zealand personnel in Afghanistan. They are part of a force of nearly 250,000 foreign and local army and police seen as enemy forces by the people.

As Rice made clear –  America sees  New Zealand as a friend and ally.

What can a pint-sized imperialist like New Zealand do to help out the top imperialist these days? More troops to Afghanistan could be in order.

Both Obama and McCain want to send more troops to Afghanistan in a war that is predicted to last decades. There is talk of Condoleezza Rice being McCain’s running mate. Clearly, the next US government – whether it’s headed by a Democratic or Republican president – has its sights on stepping up the occupation of Afghanistan.

Before Condoleezza Rice arrived in New Zealand,  Auckland University students offered a reward of $5,000 for a citizen’s arrest of her, and the stakes were raised by Victoria University students to $10,000.

The worst storm in 10 years didn’t stop protesters who rallied outside Government House and followed her to a reception in Auckland’s Langham hotel. She was originally to stay at the Grand Hotel at the SkyCity casino, but strikes planned to coincide with her stay saw her move to the Langham hotel.

The war criminal left New Zealand to head to a summit in Samoa with Winston Peters at her side.

- Eli Boulton

Much has been made about Barack Obama’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the last remaining Democratic primaries of the United States election year. Numerous capitalist media outlets hailed the outcome as a “tremendous step” for civil rights, while right-wing smear attacks centred on his supposed links with communism or radical Islam (due to his Arabic middle name). Many newspapers have said how Obama’s candidacy has given hope not only to Americans, but to many people all over the world, since Obama is “for the people”.

However, if you go scrape away his populist rhetoric, you will find a very different image of the man.

He obviously isn’t for the Palestinian people, as was shown in his speech for AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) where he wore a lapel pin with the American and Israeli flags and spoke of his “clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel”.

He is not the anti-war candidate some more optimistic liberals are painting him as, and he often remarks at speeches, “I’m not against all wars, I’m just against dumb wars”. He stated in a speech back in August 2007 that he would use military force “against Al Qaeda” if necessary in Pakistan without the government’s consent – exactly as the Bush administration has been doing in many north-western Pakistani border towns, usually killing more Pakistani civilians than Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighters, if any at all. Obama’s foreign policy would be just as imperialistic as not only George W Bush’s but that of every US President since the early 1800s. He’d just be a much more efficient and smart imperialist, as well as putting a charismatic face to it, like JFK or Reagan.

But what of the “tremendous leap” for black civil rights that both Obama and his supporters claim he represents?

Just because the leader of the American capitalist state will have a different skin colour, this does not mean anything for the average African-American family, which is still struggling to survive after all these years. The net worth of the average white family is ten times the net worth of the average black family – $67,000 to $6,166. This is the same as the ratio in 1990.

Yet Obama claims that measures that directly challenge and target racial oppression of blacks are counter-productive. He has chastised black legislators who, Obama claims, “focus too much on the oppression of black people”, and he also runs what commentators have called a “post-racial” campaign, which means he avoids talking about race as much as possible on the campaign trail. Obama’s candidacy is very much a token gesture of the American ruling class to pretend that blacks in America are no longer a racially oppressed minority.

How about his supposed links with communists? These arguments are very weak. His “links” with “communists” are nothing more than statements by left groups in the USA who were caught up in his romanticised populist rhetoric and humble upbringing, with no clear analysis of his actual policies. Obama often speaks approvingly of “free markets”, and one of his leading economic policy advisors is Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor who advocates “free-market” policies.

Eighty per cent of Obama’s campaign funds last year came from donors associated with big business. Rich campaign donors don’t pay up unless they’re sure of getting looked after when their man is elected.

Socialist Worker argued that ” voters’ desire to see political change has become the undisputed theme of the 2008 US presidential elections”.

As this article is being written, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination and possibly the US presidency is black Illinois senator Barack Obama.

When it comes to political change, Obama can certainly talk the talk.

Speaking at the University of Wisconsin on the night of his victories in the Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC primaries, Obama claimed to champion “the woman who told me she works the night shift after a full day at college and still can’t afford health care for a sister who’s ill”, and “the teacher who works at Dunkin’ Donuts after school just to make ends meet”.

Obama slated trade agreements that “ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers for minimum wage at Wal-Mart”.

And he pledged to be “a president who will listen to Main Street – not just Wall Street; a president who will stand with workers, not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard”.

On Iraq, he declared: “Our troops are sent to fight tour after tour of duty in a war that should’ve never been authorized and should’ve never been waged.”

He poured scorn on those who “use 9/11 to scare up votes”.

Obama promised tax cuts for working people, health care reform, better pay, and a government that would “protect pensions, not CEO bonuses”.

But offstage and away from the spotlights, it’s business support fuelling the Obama machine.

BusinessWeek noted Obama’s exchange of emails with Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS America and conduit of millions in donations for Obama’s campaign from fellow multi-millionaires.

Obama also keeps close contact with Warren Buffett, the second-wealthiest individual in America (worth around US$52 billion). His leading economic advisors include Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor who advocates free-market policies.

According to estimates made by the Center for Responsive Politics, 80% of the money raised by the Obama campaign last year came from donors affiliated with business. More than half of the money came in the form of donations of $2,300 or more.

In spite of Obama’s claim that he refuses contributions from lobbyists or political action committees, his top campaign staff includes three registered lobbyists formerly representing dozens of corporations, including Wal-Mart, BP and Lockheed Martin.

Like his Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton, Obama has received more than US$100 million in campaign donations. Corporate America has shifted from its traditional first choice of the Republicans to shovel money into Democratic campaigns.

Why?

Former Federal Reserve board chairman and finance capital bagman Paul Volcker put it this way: “The breadth and depth of challenges that face our nation at home and abroad… demand a new leadership and a fresh approach.”

Obama’s leadership, he thought, could “restore needed confidence in our vision, our strength and our purposes right around the world.”

In other words, US imperialism urgently needs a new face to succeed the universally hated features of George W. Bush. The black Illinois senator could be trusted to provide a fresh new image while dealing the same corporate product.

When offstage and talking turkey to his backers, Obama has advanced conservative fiscal policies, stressing the need to reduce debt and deficits. Because he would take office with a near-record $400 billion deficit inherited from the Bush administration, that can only foreshadow anti-worker austerity measures.

On war, Obama has promised not to reduce the estimated $700 billion US military budget and to increase it if necessary. He has called for the recruitment of another 65,000 soldiers for the army as well as 27,000 more Marines.

Obama’s promises to end the war in Iraq clash with his pledge to keep American forces there to defend “US interests” and conduct “counterterrorism operations”. That can only mean a programme of continuing the present occupation.

Among the leading candidates still in the Democratic party race, the real differences are not so much about policy as “tone, style and generational image”, wrote the Washington Post’s Dan Balz.

Image does matter. Barack Obama has excited the hopes of many oppressed Americans because he’s black, just as his more conservative-talking rival Hillary Clinton has won votes by being female.

But Bush’s US State Department Secretary Condoleezza Rice is black, female and relatively young. None of those attributes has brought the slightest softening of US capitalist belligerence at home or abroad.

Image matters, but substance matters more. Political change for the benefit of US workers can’t be effected by self-interested corporate funding. Real change can only come from an independent movement of the working people themselves .