A note on Obama’s victory

Barack Obama’s election victory last week will make him the first black President of the US when he takes office in January.

Although Obama will be as faithful a servant of the US imperialist ruling class as anybody white, there is great excitement in the US and throughout the world that for the first time a black person has been chosen for this exalted and privileged position. Obama’s election shows that the deep-seated white supremacist prejudices inherited from the era of slavery in the US are beginning significantly to loosen their hold on the US masses, and his election will undoubtedly help further the process.

He is, however, as determined a defender of US imperialist interests as is George Bush. If he is prepared to contemplate withdrawal from Iraq, it is because US imperialist interests are no longer best served by remaining there, and it is only in order to be able to focus more firepower on Afghanistan. One hopes that, bringing somewhat more intellect to his post than did his predecessor, he can be prevailed upon to realise that some of the grossest abuses of human rights taking place in the US (Guantanamo, the Miami Five and the continued incarceration of Mumia Abu Jamal, to name but a few) are effective only in destroying US imperialism’s “democratic” credentials and to take some welcome steps towards minimising these abuses.

However, nobody should expect Obama to act in any way against the interests of imperialism, and it needs to be understood that, as far as the economy is concerned, he is no more capable of ordering the retreat of the world recession than King Canute was of ordering the advancing tide to retreat before its time.

This election has brought about the widespread participation in the electoral system of the US’s oppressed black people, who have potential to be a pressure group capable of exerting their electoral power in a relatively progressive manner, so that from this point of view it can definitely be said that the US will never be the same again. At the same time the basis has been laid for the most oppressed in US society to realise that their oppression is primarily class oppression rather than race oppression; that, no matter what the colour of the skin of the President, their own status as proletarians remains unchanged.