2011 American political-economic perspectives

Occupy Wall St: a new, global social movement on the rise

Beginning in late September with only a few dozen activists in New York City (NYC), the occupation movement has caught fire worldwide. Tens of thousands have demonstrated, marched, protested, and occupied public and private spaces against the bank bailouts, joblessness, worsening poverty for millions and the accompanied expansion of general social inequality, and the super-rich 1% – the billionaires, investment-bankers, and majority-shareholders of some of the world’s largest multi-national corporations that dominate all social, economic, and political life.

The original impetus and model for the actions stemmed from the mass-square occupations associated with the “Arab Spring” – Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in particular – the mobilizations and occupation of the state-capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, of the Puerta Del Sol and the Playa de Catalunya in Spain, of Syntagma square in Athens, and of Rabin square in Tel Aviv last August.

One of the central popular slogans of the movement, “We are the 99%,” is expressive of the feelings of a vast conglomerate of society – one frustrated, irate, and unwilling to tolerate the situation any longer – that continues to suffer all the hardships associated with a crisis-ridden capitalist regime. In general, the movement’s objectives are anti-crisis and anti-capitalist – in the sense that it has rallied thousands of youth, workers, pensioners, and the unemployed against the programs of austerity and economic incentives for the rich that have been advanced by capitalist governments worldwide since the advent of the “Great Recession” of 2008 and the general stagnation brought in its wake.

In the USA, recognizing that the twin political parties of big capital, of Wall St., were unable and unwilling to take any significant measures to ameliorate the difficult financial and social circumstances affecting millions, seeing that organized labor (the AFL-CIO, particular) proved lacking or even unconcerned, understanding that there was no mass political party distinct from the Democrats and Republicans ready to hand to take up their demands and fight for their needs, the only step left for the masses to make their voices heard was to mobilize directly and immediately in the form of spontaneous mass action.

Once started, the movement permeated the landscape of the United States. City after city saw occupations spring up. From NYC, to Chicago, to Los Angeles and beyond, popular radicalism and protest came roaring back on the scene after experiencing near 8-months worth of relative social tranquility with the setback in Wisconsin. The high-point (so far) came on October 15 when a global day of actions rocked key world capitals, newspaper headlines, and lifted the fighting capacity and spirit of millions suffering untold poverty and misery at the hands of capitalist governments. The strength of a number of these actions and their widespread character – spanning across every continent on the planet – is indicative of the possibility that a new, global anti-capitalist movement is on the rise.

It has been a very positive and progressive development that this new movement has arisen. It has the great possibility of being able to radicalize and generalize a fightback against austerity. This is especially the case if the dynamic of youth involvement can link up with the struggles of trade unionists and working-class communities facing some of the worst attacks.

Even with condemnation and derision coming from Right-wing politicians and journalists, their declaration of the movement’s invalidity because of its current lack of specific demands or clear strategic objectives, the occupation camps have spread to over 900 cities and towns across the world and have managed to combine a whole cavalcade of previously “single-issue” campaigns and projects into a “totality” directed against the system from which the majority of grievances brought to light share common origins. This can be observed with a look at all the multifaceted slogans, posters, and pamphlets currently on offer and that highlight struggles against imperialist war and occupation, to unemployment and underemployment, to the attacks on public education, outrageous tuition costs for higher-education and the mountains of debt accrued by students during their time earning a degree, and to rampant police violence and racism – bringing them all together under one umbrella in struggle against the lifeblood of the system itself: Wall St. the biggest banks and corporations, and the politicians in government who do their bidding.

Practically speaking, in this sense the movement is already well ahead of the anti-capitalist movement of the early 2000s, and rather than a weakness, the current battling out over demands and whether they are necessary at all is actually somewhat of a strength in that it has brought wide layers of the population and their issues together for discussion and for potential decision around the adoption of a common strategy and tactics as the basis for action. Its emergence is a welcome change of circumstances from the unfortunately typical response we’ve seen thus far from the trade unions and their efforts to combat the crisis.

The popularity and growth of the occupation movement can be understood as a result of two interpenetrating factors: first, a crisis of capitalism of historic proportions – one the US capitalist class is not positioned well to weather in a robust fashion – and, second, the overall weakness of the Left and labor movement in general, especially the former’s now long-standing isolation from the working class and socially oppressed. As a result, the spontaneous youth-led mobilizations and actions almost everywhere find themselves led by political currents of an anarchist or libertarian persuasion. Their influence can be seen in slogans like “no one represents us,” “we demand nothing.” Reformist elements are discernible through calls to implement the Tobin tax and other limited financial compliance measures.

Nevertheless, despite these realities and the organizational fetishes that typically accompany such leaderships (mass assemblies, consensus decision-making, no party or hierarchical organizations allowed) elements within the movement are in the process of formulating demands and bringing them up for discussion at the general assemblies. At the same time there is, however, a conscious attempt from within the movement to deny the adoption of official demands, strategy, or agreed tactics as the basis for coordinating and guiding the struggle towards a definite aim. The general assembly in NYC has seen, for example, repeated, destabilizing attempts to stymie the potential adoption of such a program. And it is the lack of the adoption of an action program by and for the movement that places demands on the state or that outlines where the movement goes next that has served to put in check its great potential.

For the movement to both grow larger and achieve the potential inherent, revolutionaries need to participate actively in the discussions and debates that have arisen over tactics and demands in the fightback against austerity and to present a political alternative to capitalism in crisis. Getting the trade unions (especially at the Local level) more involved in the movement and in the lives of those at the occupations is crucial. At the same time, it is important to link up the struggles of those camping at the occupations with those of workers on the picket-lines.

The role played by organized labor since the occupation in NYC took off and their welcoming into the struggle by occupation participants has been a very positive occurrence. This process, this drawing together of rank-and-file unionists with the youth, the poor, and the unemployed at the occupation sites, can politicize rapidly all of them and, moreover, greatly radicalize their demands and widen their horizons. This is important, because it could promote the radicalization of the unions themselves. In this sense, both the occupation and the rank and file of the unions have the potential to reinforce and develop to a higher level, and in symbiotic fashion, the struggles of the other. The more this occurs, the more the movement links up with workers and the unemployed, the more potent its impact can be.

Given the vitality, durability, and radicalism of the movement thus far, an increased intervention by revolutionaries agitating around a linked strategy of goals, methods of direct action and mass strikes, and advocating more efficient and democratic forms of organization (e.g., creation of city-wide councils of delegates through voting at mass assemblies and their linkage throughout the country) to take the movement forward, both the austerity and the government bringing it on can be smashed and a democratic workers’ government formed to meet the needs of the 99% through the formation of a democratically-planned economy based on mass workers’ councils.

This strategy can be fulfilled via the promotion of greater unification of organized labor with the participants at the campsites and the wider working class more generally through the adoption of an agreed program of action against austerity and the crisis – one that seeks to fight for the immediate needs and demands of the masses and thus to take the current struggle within capitalism to a struggle against it as the basis for realizing them. The foundation of a revolutionary anti-capitalist party, one that combines together all those forces both sympathetic to and actively engaged in struggle and that can lead a mass resistance movement against Wall St., the 1%, the capitalist class, is a burning necessity.

The continued decline of US imperialism and its global hegemony

Failure by the representatives of the world’s most powerful economies to commit to plans in order to arrest decisively the economic volatility plaguing Europe at the latest meeting of the G-20 in France and the relative irrelevance of the USA’s participation underscored and provided even more evidence testamentary to the fact that it is loosing its primacy and importance in world politics as the reigning imperialist power. Obama offered up nothing substantial to stop the bleeding from hemorrhaging other than commenting on the frustrating difficulties associated with trying to pass comprehensive legislation adhered to by the Euro zone.

In the past, like during the immediate post-war period, the United States brought its enormous economic might to bear in Europe through the introduction of the Marshall Plan as a way to pull the war-ravaged continent out of a prolonged and deep crisis. Such a plan at present for the USA to rescue debt-plagued Europe is entirely out of the question. As a result of its own development and subsequent capitalist decline, the United States has its own historic problems of public debt to tackle. The government is trying desperately to cut spending anywhere it can to repay its increasingly anxious creditors – even to the point where the two bourgeois parties in power are each contemplating historic attacks on key aspects of the welfare system. This impasse, this inability of the United States to come once again to the financial rescue of Europe has already engendered profound immediate consequences: The reaching out of Europe to China for a capital infusion in the form of a bailout loan as opposed to the USA.

Similarly, the political deadlock wreaking havoc in the corridors of US federal power is a reflection of the decline of the USA’s predominance and its expression in the form of the increasingly irritable factionalization between the separate wings of the US ruling class as they struggle over the direction and re-structuring of US monopoly-capitalism in order to be better able to compete with rival imperialist powers both young and old.

The crisis of US capitalism in general and the specific, dramatic changes in the world situation since the beginning of 2011 put US imperialism on the defensive. In the Middle East and North Africa, one regime or military strong-man in the service of US banks and multi-nationals fell one after another to mass democratic revolutions and uprisings of the popular masses. This was the case with Mubarak, Ben-Ali, and last but not least Gaddafi

On the Arabian Peninsula, long-standing clients (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain) of US imperialism’s wars against the poor and oppressed of those countries, disguised in the form of the “War on Terror” witnessed militant protests and demonstrations that forced the US government into adopting an overtly contradictory and defensive policy.

Initially, both the US and the West were hesitant to support the risings in Egypt and elsewhere, fearing that they could bring down entirely the regimes paid for and maintained with the assistance of billions of US dollars. Geo-strategically speaking, the US government had a vested interest in ensuring the survival of that which existed.

But it was the size, intensity, growth, and spread of the mass revolutionary-democratic movements from one corner of North Africa to the other and throughout the Middle East that compelled the USA to shift policy fundamentally. Championing the revolutions and struggles, supporting them materially and politically became absolutely requisite in ensuring that whatever governmental entity emerged once the uprisings were over would remember the role played by the United States, seek out favorable trade deals with it, and continue on essentially with the previously constructed “relationship.” This was crucial to ensuring other imperialisms – like German, French, British, Italian and, especially, Chinese – did not start poking their heads around thinking they were going to muscle in on the US’s business.

Now US multi-nationals are clamoring with their competitors at the table for lucrative reconstruction and oil contracts. Yet in Libya it is French and Italian imperialism that looks set to profit from the overthrow of Gaddafi since they came out in support for the revolution earlier than anyone else and the National-Transitional Council recognized that. The ceding of military operations to NATO as opposed to a unilateral effort by the United States signaled not only a decline in US military capabilities but the desire of European imperialism to take advantage of it by deepening their links with the all-important North-African markets and tightening their grasp on the peoples and natural resources of the region. As a result, European imperialisms have strengthened their position relatively against their trans-Atlantic rival. Diplomatic conflict and rivalry between them is set to intensify.

Further decline in the prestige of US imperialism is observable from the vantage point of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has become increasingly isolated on the international arena as a consequence of its behavior towards the Palestinians, the continued construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank, and its slaughter in Gaza. The United States has found itself unable to utilize its fading “super-power” influence to compel governments worldwide to cease and desist their solidarity with the people of Gaza and the Palestinians generally in their struggle for national self-determination.

This recent development has found greatest expression in the willingness of the Fatah-led government in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to seek state recognition from the United Nations with or without the approval of the USA. More to the point, the Palestinian leader, Abbas, looked to Russia and China as a base for support on the Security Council as opposed to its historic “partner” in the peace process. The veto threat by the Obama administration, when a majority of nations were behind the PNA’s petition, not only served to expose the hypocritical character of the US government – it was praising other democratic revolutions throughout the Middle East at the time – it demonstrated further the decline in the US’s “authority” on the issue: i.e., governments saw no reason to yield once again to the US’s unilateral policy to require other member nations to defend its murderous client-state in the region and to deny at a time of such tremendous upheavals the Palestinians the democratic right to determine how they are to be governed. The inability of the US to hush up debate on the question and to quash any such proposal taken up at the United Nations as it sees fit will become more pronounced and isolate further the USA on the issue.

These developments are not restricted to the Middle East and North Africa. In Central Asia, the United States is gradually loosing the key support of one of its long-time strategic allies: Pakistan. The actions and roll played by the CIA – demanding diplomatic immunity for an agent who murdered a Pakistani national and the killing of Osama Bin Laden without the notification or inclusion of Pakistan’s government – have created deep ruptures in the relationship between the two. This has compelled Pakistan to move ever closer into China’s orbit. The latter has, in turn, increased its share of financial and military aid, declaring in rather ominous fashion – and a gaffe in itself – that Pakistan was becoming its Israel.

Although China is attempting seriously to develop its power and court potentially friendly governments throughout Central Asia, the United States is likely to remain the main and crucial partner of Pakistan in the conceivable future. China’s current problem of legitimacy as a potential new regional leader and the still all too important inter-dependent connections (military, economic, and political) between US imperialism and Pakistan make a gravitational shift of such magnitude unlikely in the immediate future.

Afghanistan continues to remain a pressing concern. The military occupation to repress the Islamist-led national resistance to US imperialism’s puppet regime is not mitigating and shows no signs of ending despite plans for withdrawal by 2014. Recent surges of violence both in the provinces and in the center of Kabul, the failure of both the USA and NATO to quell it permanently, has led to pressure from within Obama’s administration to consider seriously negotiation with the Taliban as the only basis for ending the conflict. Such a course of action is, however, unlikely to bear fruit.

Hamid Karzai, the corrupt and illegitimate president of Afghanistan, has also gone through a period of disagreement and cooling with his American master. Whereas initially Karzai entertained the idea of negotiating a peace agreement with the resistance, this has receded on account of the Taliban unwilling to allow Karzai to stay in power as a basis for a ceasefire. The resistance is gaining the upper hand, it knows it, and it is determined to use its strengthened position to reinforce its bargaining power. Consequently, any designs for an end to the war appear improbable so long as the political status-quo maintains its unstable existence. Violence will continue and become more accentuated as the tentative deadline for withdrawal nears.

Saber rattling against Iran and its supposed nuclear-weapons program by the West have flared back up and come into focus. Although, this appears to be nothing more than a devised distraction from the problems associated with the global economy. It is more than difficult for the United States to do much of anything militarily about Iran at this time; it is just not in a favorable position to lead either precision air strikes or any kind of ground invasion.

Israel, on the other hand, has been ramping up the rhetoric in the international media declaring that a military solution is necessary at this point to halt Iran’s progress towards developing nuclear weapons. Despite this, Israel is a client-power of the United States and will not be given the “green light” by it to attack anything lest it set off a wider, regional war that will include undoubtedly Syria, Lebanon, and others as well as de-stabilize further the region. If that were to happen, if air strikes or any other form of attack against Iran were to occur, it would be massively unpopular across the globe: It would spark a reigniting of the anti-war movement, one that could link up with the OWS movement and other struggles taking place currently and set them all on a more pronounced militant, potentially revolutionary, course.

Domestically, Obama, the Democrats, and the Republican Party are gearing up for a presidential campaign that will have to address the realities of the American situation – economically, politically, and militarily – and how any future government will have to rectify the international pressures placed against its weakening reign internationally. Though still the most powerful force on Earth, US imperialism is gradually loosing its pre-eminence. This has been reflected in the language of Obama and his preparation for increased militarism in the future in order to offset this trend. The USA finds itself compelled to engage ever so more in military buildups and adventures: Obama’s deployment of 100 specialists to Congo, for example. Similarly, as the Obama administration oversees the replacement of US Marines in Iraq with private contractors and mercenaries, it is building up its military capabilities in Kuwait as the basis for intimidation against Iran and to stifle political unrest against the petro-monarchies in the Gulf. In the far-East, too, troops are being sent to Australia in order to “remind” China that the US intends to maintain its “top-dog” status in the region, one that can if it so chooses put in check any plans of the former to extend its political and geo-strategic influence.

In response to the rise and resurgence of comparable imperialist powers both old and new and in order to counter it, the USA will continue its militarist strategy as the only way to shore up its hegemony and global-market dominance against its increasingly more dynamic, resourceful, and jealous, and powerful rivals.

The state of the workers’ movement – what next for the labor bureaucracy and the question of a Labor Party in the USA.

The Wisconsin recall elections that took place after the mass mobilizations in Wisconsin were brought to an end expressed the realities of the deeply divided character of the state and country: split almost 50-50 between support for the workers’ organizations and for Walker’s anti-worker, anti-union agenda. The recalls proved just how important it was to take the struggle forward to a general strike while the iron was hot and to not rely on a passive election campaign to empower “labor-friendly” Democrats – and months afterward at that!

Walker’s tentative and insecure victory took the wind out of the sails of the regional working-class response to austerity for a time. The balance of class forces since then has altered slightly in the proletariat’s favor with the advent and growth of the occupation movement. Struggles have picked back up. On west-coast ports, the ILWU is fighting extraordinarily hard for its rights and demands, and they have joined up with Occupy Oakland in resistance to police violence, racism, and the 1%. Unions all across the United States have expressed solidarity with the occupations; rank-and-file workers have joined and helped grow them.

Now there needs to be a militant, national working-class response to the bosses’ attacks organized by the AFL-CIO in coordination with the occupy movement and the masses of working people, especially as more and more Americans come to support the OWS movement and the “bi-partisan” super-austerity committee gets set to decide on (additional!) $1.5 trillion in social cuts over the next 10 years. It is probable that this will include historic attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

As we can observe clearly by the dynamic growth of the occupation movement and the struggles of trade unionists in defense of working class social gains and standards of living, class battles can and will continue to erupt. Nothing was fundamentally resolved this past winter between the two waring class camps. The social attacks from the bosses have, in reality, just begun. And the fact that they have provoked already such mass mobilizations, demonstrations, and economic strikes of workers and youth in over a generation, is testament to the direct possibility that we’ve only just witnessed the beginnings of a new mass movement against capitalism.

Recent struggles have shown, however, the unwillingness of labor leaders to take the courageous resistance to austerity forward – that is, on a national (not to speak of international) scale. Wisconsin showed that when the door gets shut on them, as is what happened when Walker and the Republicans took power, they are left with no choice but to fight – principally to defend their own caste privileges, power, and prestige. The bureaucracy is, however, still fundamentally opposed to leading the unions and working class in a more sustained and militant defense of workers’ needs and demands. This is observable through their general unwillingness to mobilize the rank and file for strikes in solidarity with the struggles of OWS.

The shining star of the American labor movement has been and continues to be the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Yet the rank and file in even this union suffers under the rule of a top-brass that has proven itself incapable and unwilling to take frustration and anger amongst its determined and self-sacrificing membership to new heights and turn it into sustained challenge to the bosses. They have not criticized the AFL-CIO leadership enough for failing to organize a genuine, militant national defense against the attacks on the working class and poor nor has it pressured the AFL-CIO to a significant degree to do so. Nor did the leaders of the ILWU designate official strike action citing potential financial penalties as an excuse on the day Occupy Oakland planned to march to the ports and shut them down in support of the struggles of the union workers.

Sectionalism unfortunately remains, even with the growth of the occupations, the general rule – the Operating Engineers, for example, proved willing to scab themselves out to get work on west-coast ports against the ILWU. Although the AFL-CIO condemned the OEs for their behavior, their support for the ILWU did not translate into much else. This is a real problem: The individual unions, despite the comparable nation-wide attacks on them, fight in relative isolation from one another in the disjointed pursuit of their aims and, therefore, are, in a sense, acting in their own worst interests, as the ongoing battle between the ILWU and EGT/Bunge in Washington has demonstrated.

The rise in rank-and-file militancy and activism over the past year and the emergence of OWS has not resonated with the floundering leadership. Nor has it translated into a dynamic shift in their political trajectory. Plans to rally the unions behind the Democrats and Obama in the 2012 general elections are already in place. Teamsters’ president James Hoffa Jr. exemplified this at a Obama “jobs” rally in which he was a key-note speaker. The president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal employees, Gerald McEntee, echoed these sentiments during an occupy rally.

The bureaucracy is rightly concerned that the wind of the masses remains in the sails of the Republicans as a “protest vote” against the Democrats and Obama. They fear Obama might not be able to pull this one out. That is why they are working so feverishly to drum up momentum and support, to encourage the masses and the participants in the occupy movement to give Obama and the Democrats another chance, to give them the time and representative power they require to implement their programs.

As far as the bureaucracy see things, its needs can still be met by rallying the unions – and, thus, the working class more generally – behind the Democrats. The strength of this position is reinforced by the illusions the great majority of rank-and-file unionists still have in Obama and his party; the majority of trade unionists agree that the best course of action in 2012 to keep social-cutting conservatives out of office is for workers to hold their noses as they pull the level for a Democrat. The one reacts in an emboldening fashion on the other. As such, despite Obama’s betrayals, despite his capitulation to the Republicans and their demands, and despite the impact on consciousness this has had on sections of the rank and file, there remains no immediate prospect for the foundation of a workers’ party based on the trade unions.

However, the contradictions currently at work – the complete right-ward shift of the Obama administration to a politics reminiscent of his Democratic predecessor (Bill Clinton) and its cozing up with the US Chamber of Commerce and the monopoly/finance-capital sections of the ruling class for the purposes of gaining their financial and moral support needed to win next year’s election – create conditions whereby the current relatively “stable” connection that exists between the unions and the Democrats could become short-circuited. Quite simply, the trade-union bureaucracy – if conditions persist – is going to find it harder to justify before the rank and file why their unions should financially and organizationally support a party and a president that consistently betrays their hard-fought support and confidence. The “lesser-evil” argument will acquire less and less potency. For even if said candidate wins, what does that even mean for them – especially when he or she acts and conducts policy in a manner that is simply a mirror image of the individual they fought so hard to defeat in the first place?

Operating on their accord, these conditions, left to their own development, open as part of a brief period or, possibly, mere episode, the ability to explode the contradictions that lay at their heart. So long as Obama remains in office and continues to conduct business as he has, and so long as the Democrats in general continue their leading slant towards attempting to achieve the overt needs of the capitalist class in the face of an acute onslaught against its base of support – the trade unionists, black people, the youth, students, the above-mentioned circumstances have potential to be actualized. However, put back in a position of general opposition – i.e., Democrats losing the White House and the majorities in both chambers of the House in the looming election – then it is in all likelihood that whatever breaks have occurred in the ranks of labor with the Democrats as a party will be born aloft as the only realistic alternative to the Republicans in the immediate future. It would be comparable to the 2000-2006 period when Bush and his party enjoyed near total control of government and when Democrats built up renewed oppositional support for themselves, culminating in the recapture of the House and Senate and the election of the first black president in 2008.

Nevertheless, these conditions present – especially with the growth of the occupation movement and the levels of rank-and-file participation within it – opportunities revolutionaries can and must exploit. Output of focused propaganda is needed to expose further and exacerbate the political and economic antagonisms at work for the purposes of developing those forces that see the need for independent working class political representation.

Economic stagnation, political ineptitude, and the 2012 Elections

Aside from the fleeting success of certain sectors – e.g., durable-goods manufacturing – the US economy, on the whole, has been unable to pull itself out of a pitiful and prolonged GDP slump. The housing-market remains weak and unstable. Uncountable millions remain out of work, are semi-employed but live below the poverty line, or have dropped entirely off the government’s radar.

Official government figures put the unemployment rate at about 9%. But only about 5% percent of the actual unemployed are accounted for in such statistics. The real figure is probably somewhere in the ballpark of 20%-25%, and this is grossly uneven across race and ethnicity.

Poverty levels have hit an all-time high. The US Census Bureau reported that there are roughly 46-million people in the United States living in poverty. In the 52-year history of the index, rates have never reached 15.1%. The rate had gone up 4 years in a row, and 2011 seems destined to follow suit. At the same time, these figures must be understood in context. In many cases, “poverty,” according to the government, is laughably behind the times. It is quite probable that, like unemployment, such statistics only capture a limited glance of the reality that confronts us.

Since the United States is in possession of the world’s reserve currency, it enjoys the privileges attached to it: notably, that ability to print more dollars and earn interest off the Treasury bills its holding. High-profile investment funds and houses flocking to bonds suggests that despite the weakness and developing crisis of US government finances, it is still safer to invest in the USA (as a result of “seigniorage”) than some other countries experiencing similar circumstances.

All in all, it puts to route the concept that the country is in economic dire straights because of its deficit and historic debt. Fears over money-markets deserting the USA and cutting off loans, the mass sell-off of Treasuries sparking inflation, were allayed when finance-capitalists bought up T-bonds by the barrel-full.

Aside from speculation associated with a downgraded USA on the world market, the “real” economy on the ground, as already mentioned above, was floundering. And it is, thus, not surprising at all that stock-markets remain volatile worldwide.

Corporate profits are through the roof – now accounting for 35% of GDP (the highest in approximately 60 years) – and are higher now than they were during the speculative frenzy before the Great Credit Crunch and recession that followed it. Only problem is, there is hardly anywhere (domestically) to invest profitably in production. That is why US monopoly-capital corporations are sitting on trillions with nothing to do with it but speculate on currency and derivatives markets or invest it in overseas markets where higher returns can be found due to the super-exploitation of the peoples living there.

US rating agency, Moody’s reported that 1,600-plus US-based companies had a combined total of $1.2 trillion in cash on hand. Companies are able to borrow cheap without at the moment having to worry about paying off their debts. Plus, what would be the point of investing in production when domestic demand for it is weak and shows no signs of coming back to life? The key contradiction at work here is that one feeds on and then off the other.

Since the recession began wages have gone the opposite way of profits: straight down. In “real” terms wages per hour in the United States have gone down over the past 40 years. The rationalization of large-scale industry and technology engenders chronic unemployment – of the magnitude that has become such a ubiquitous problem in the advanced-capitalist economies. It also has a tendency to boost profits for a period, but it also aggravates the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. During the “recovery” period, for instance, businesses invested heavily in labor-saving technologies and by relying on their ability to make employees produce more in less time. Profits amassed, but nobody was hiring. And nobody was in a position to: productivity was high and demand low. Expansion of industry and the costs associated with it were entirely out of the question from the capitalists’ point of view. Deflation, or falling prices was, until quite recently, the norm. It was a classic example of, as Marx and Engels put it, “a revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production.”

Lower wages, mass unemployment, unstable house prices (which is so key to the US economy today – that is, people borrowing on the value of their homes to purchase consumer products) coalesce along with the above-mentioned tendency to produce the complex and systemically destabilizing and degenerative situation that exists now.

Both parties have been unable to resolve the economic impasse in any significant or fundamental way. For the Republicans and their insurgent Tea-Party wing, plans come down to little more than sweeping spending cuts, tax breaks for the rich, and fewer environmental and labor regulations – in a word, profit-boosters. Yet this staunch neo-liberal agenda as the basis for re-building the US economy from their point of view is woefully shortsighted. By resorting to such measures to restore conditions for profitable accumulation, the most right-wing sections of the American political elite sow the seeds for harsher, long-lasting slowdowns in the future.

Government austerity and attacks on welfare and other social services will continue to dampen economic activity. Holding down taxes on the wealthy and corporations at a time of a massive (growing) debt-crisis will only help to serve as justification for further, deeper cuts down the road. But all that is “by the by” for the American capitalists; they need profits in the here and now to compete with their more dynamic and robust rivals in Asia and other parts of the world.

The Democrats have nothing more substantial to offer. Due to their financial and political connections – to say nothing of their reliance on winning the support of US finance-capital in the forthcoming elections – they have been unable to come up with a viable programmatic alternative to the jobs and economic crisis other than what is commonly referred to as “austerity-lite” or “Republican-junior.” Hopes on the part of many for the Obama administration’s implementation of a new “New Deal” went completely out the window after his party’s routing during the last mid-terms. Recognizing that his job was in jeopardy, Obama swung (and keeps on swinging) Right to appease and win over that “middle-ground” and big businesses which are both so crucial to winning tight elections in the United States today.

Obama’s administration and its program has failed to alleviate the mass unemployment, worsening poverty, and economic stagnation that afflicts the US. His government appears ever more ineffectual with each passing day. His approval rating is at an all-time low. He has the image and character of a calculating yet irresolute “centrist” weakling that is just waiting to be unseated by a candidate unafraid to proclaim him or herself Left or Right and conduct policies accordingly.

Neither party generally has or can see a way out, and a great portion of Americans realize this. Congressional approval is at an all-time historic low. The political deadlock in Congress reflects that of the wider United States. The country is split, seemingly, on how to “right the course.” The historic crisis of capitalism has brought the class contradictions and their political expressions to an almost intolerable level. Virtually nothing of significance can get done within the corridors of federal power due to the fragmentation of the parliamentary system and the two parties in power that can simply cancel out or alter each others’ actions and plans in their favor. The squabbles and rhetorical wars between the two parties reflect the divisions that exist not just between the workers and the bosses but between different sections of the ruling class as well.

The economic and political trajectory of the USA will largely depend on the outcome of next year’s general election as well as how the occupy movement evolves in both shape and political content. Nevertheless, it is quite obvious that “middle-ground” politics will continue to give way to certain “extremes” as the crisis continues to bite and as economic activity continues to limp along in a debilitating state. “Common ground” and compromise is becoming more and more difficult if not impossible. Regardless of whomever wins and whichever capitalist party they come from, the workers and poor will continue to pay for capitalism’s breakdown and failures.

Since Obama’s election and the Great Recession of 2008 began in earnest, politics in the United States have undoubtedly become more polarized. The Tea-Party’s foundation and the birth and growth of the occupation movement are best examples of this. At the same time, more “center-oriented” forces tried to prevent this from occurring in the only way they knew how: to mock the entire process and elevate themselves above “radicalization” with the language of “sanity” and “rationality.” Meaning in this case not moving hard in either direction – Left or Right. The Stewart/Colbert rally was a mass mobilization expressive of such a desire.

Obama and “Blue Dog” Democrats now find themselves crowded on their Left by “progressive” and more overt “Keynesian” elements that believed the president should put up more of a fight against the Republicans and institute more “Roosevelt-style” policies and by OWS too. These forces encompass a wide variety of social groups, from trade-unions leaders and workers, to liberal students and radical-democratic youth, to the unemployed, etc.

The frictions that currently predominate in Congress are expressive of the fact that economic circumstances and the social contradictions resulting from them necessitate the introduction and implementation of more polarized political measures in order to rectify them for the benefit of one class or another. That is precisely why the Tea Party emerged in the first place: because the “traditional” GOP establishment was not catering the party’s policies in line with the needs of one of its key constituencies in the face of an acute crisis of the profit system. So instead the latter formed a sort of “pressure” group to “shake up” the party leadership and force it along a more openly Right-ward course – a course not all its members wanted to go.

These same tendencies are now at work in the Democratic camp. Whereas the OWS movement has not in any way allied itself with Obama and the Democratic Party, both are trying desperately to find a way to win it to their corner come November 2012. They seek a way to utilize and manipulate it as the Republicans did a year ago with the Tea Party in order to win back the House, gain in the Senate, and keep Obama as president.

The move of different segments of the population to flit with more polar deviations has found expression particularly within the GOP’s current lineup for said party’s presidential nominations and in support for OWS. Rick Perry, Ron Paul, and, as of recent, Herman Cain were the most popular at recent caucuses. The “center” candidate, Romney, has so far tread a weak path, relying on the fact that mainstream America would never vote en masse for any of the above-mentioned candidates and put himself out there to the GOP establishment as the only candidate with enough mass appeal to win. Regardless of this “Obama-esque” calculation, Newt Gingrich – the out of nowhere, now darling of the Right wing that seemingly cannot stop circulating bland flavors of the month – is, for the moment, neck and neck with Romney. The fact that such candidates round off the bulk of options for the Republicans while support continues to grow in OWS (now more popular than even the Tea Party) speaks volumes on how far the political polarization has come and could potentially go.

But as the polarization continues, Obama and the Democrats will find it harder and harder to play such a card if the economic status-quoprevails. However, as the constituency of the Republicans turns more Right, it is probable that the Democrats main constituency (perhaps under pressure from OWS) will move ever-so more Left. This will continue to generate similar situations and contradictions in the legislative and executive branches that we can observe so clearly at present – i.e., where there is general deadlock and, as a result, the enacting of watered-down policies that satisfy neither class. Simply put, “moderate,” “compromising”politics will not suffice currently to redress the economic contradictions nor allow either of the two main classes to put their stamp on the balance of forces in a definitive way. So long as the political status-quo continues, which helps feed directly into the economic complications and vice versa, the radicalization and polarization of the masses will develop and this will leave a deep impact on the American political system as a whole.

It is apparent that the current situation cannot go on indefinitely. From the rise of the Tea Party, to the previous mass working class and youth mobilizations in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, to the growth of the OWS movement, the proverbial ground is beginning to quake in the relatively peaceful and quiet United States. For socialists in America, it is a pivotal time to be at work doing what we do. If we are not to see an historic attack carried out and be victorious in the next few years against the working class in the interests of preserving the decaying capitalist system and enriching the top 1% who parasitically profit of it, then we must reach out and win over those radicalized sections of the working class and youth who realize that there is no way out in the present circumstances other than class war and revolution against those who are committing crimes against them and provide them with tactics for battle and a coherent strategy that can overcome the crisis of leadership and propel the working-class movement forward by building, deepening, and connecting militant struggles and by founding a revolutionary party that will lead the masses in social revolution to put an end to the crisis of human culture that afflicts us and begin construction of the new, socialist world.