With his inaugaration as US president, Barack Obama has ushered in a new era of world politics. The main strategy of big business under the leadership of George W Bush was divide-and-rule, particularly Muslims from Christians and Jews - with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and indeed the orchestration of 9/11 beforehand as justification for those wars (there is massive evidence of US secret service complicity in 9/11 as a BBC investigation into the collapse of the third tower, not hit by a plane, has shown - see  http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=9072062020229593250 for the video or http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/conspiracy-files.htm for my review of it). In contrast, Obama pledged to unite members of those three religions, as well as Hindus, with the mention of the latter religion particularly significant after the terrorist atrocities in Mumbai (with Hinduism being the largest religion in India).

 

As well as uniting people of different religions, Obama is dedicated to uniting people of different races and classes. The old left mantras of the Democrats being solely a party of big business, and of the US president being the leader of Western imperialism, are out-of-date, and socialists will render ourselves irrelevant if we keep repeating them and using such dogmatic attitudes as a guide to action.

 

Obama has given off mixed messages as to his strategy in the Middle East - supporting Israel and suggesting more troops in Afghanistan, while pledging to withdraw from Iraq and negotiate with the Iranian regime (with the latter act capable of massively transforming the attitudes of the masses in that region in favour of unity, democracy and peace). What Obama actually does will largely be dependent on pressure from below and the balance of world forces. Writing him off as "the world's #1 terrorist" as James Turley did in last week's Weekly Worker is premature and naive to say the least!

 

Some have pointed to Obama's privileged upbringing - going to a mainly white private school and Harvard university, but he also grew up in Indonesia and went on a pilgrimage to Kenya (the country in which his father was born) and was a leader of protests for more black (and particularly female) members of staff at Harvard. He read books by Alice Walker (author of "The Color Purple" which was made into a great anti-racist film) and Karl Marx as well as the capitalist icon Adam Smith. Obama is clearly genuine in what he is trying to do, and he is providing capitalism with its best hope of keeping control of the planet in these times of dire financial crisis.

 

If we are to believe the most dire of capitalist economists, the British economy may shrink by 3% this year. Bearing in mind the extremely weak state of the left in Britain and its inability to take advantage of the credit crunch so far, if such a consensus was correct, there would be no realistic hope of ever overthrowing an Obama-led capitalist world. However, New Labour's attempt at a second bank bailout is doomed to failure, and UK plc is bound to become bankrupt, due to the reliance of our economy on the faltering City of London, because they simply won't be able to borrow the vast sums of money required on the money markets - the insurers of UK government bonds are bound to go bankrupt so no astute capitalist will be prepared to buy them!

 

Socialists, particularly Marxists, have stuck to the old mantra of wanting to represent solely the working class - and wanting a society where the 40% or so who regard themselves as middle class are denied a say. In contrast, I have been promoting the idea of a form of socialism based on proportional representation using single transferable vote (the fairest form of PR since it eliminates the need for tactical voting), but also with democratic control from below. Birmingham councillor Salma Yaqoob (who received the highest vote ever in the UK for a far left candidate standing against the mainstream parties with 49% of the vote) told me at the Convention of the Left held at the time of the Labour Party conference (which brought together left-wingers inside and outside and that party and that has a recall conference in Manchester on Saturday - see www.conventionoftheleft.org) that she has been advocating PR within Respect. Salma stands a great chance of becoming a Respect MP at the next general election (and I am backing her for prime minister on Facebook!) but, realistically, change has to come through the Labour Party as well as the far left parties if we are to ever achieve socialism.