President Obama and Real Change

Don Currie, Chair CPS

The litmus test for the international working class and all oppressed people as to whether or not the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the USA represents real change will be revealed in the months and years ahead in his government’s attitude to the struggles of the people of other countries that choose a path of economic and political development different from that prevailing in the USA.

Will the Obama Government greet with grace and equanimity, the declaration of other peoples that they also love their country and believe they also live “in the best country in the world” and insist on doing so without the permission or interference of US imperialism?

The people of the USA as is their inalienable right are determining their own destiny. It is not yet clear if in voting for real change, if that change includes recognition and support for the right of other peoples to do likewise.

In the appeals for unity and reconciliation expressed in both the concession speech of Senator McCain and the victory and inaugural speeches of President Obama it is not clear if those appeals are for a graceful and long overdue retreat from empire and acceptance by the people of the USA of the necessity to live as others do, within their own borders and within their own means, or whether the appeal for unity is around a new, revised and perhaps less belligerent version of US imperialist destiny.

While the former is the business of the people of the USA the latter is the business of the people of the world.

That is not a small consideration for Canadians who will inevitably be compelled out of economic necessity to call for a recasting of any and all agreements with US finance capital that limit Canadian sovereignty, restrict Canadian independent economic development and interfere with Canadian sovereign ownership and control of its own resources. Most revealing will be the attitude of the Obama Government to the majority opinion of Canadians as expressed in the last federal election to end to Canadian participation in the US-NATO war of aggression in Afghanistan.

Nothing that is said here should be understood to mean that Canadians do not also confront the urgent need to denounce and break with the imperialist ambitions of our own state monopoly rulers and its interference in the internal affairs of the peoples of other countries.

The challenge confronting the Canadian people is the same as people of the USA, whether we will permit our state monopoly ruling class to continue to pursue its imperialist ambitions at the expense of our dignity and at the expense of other peoples or whether we will use our own resources and ingenuity to overcome the process of deindustrialization that threatens our economy with ruin.

That issue becomes the only principled basis for the unity the working classes of North America, an anti-imperialist unity that will be understood and greeted by all the oppressed people of the world suffering from the curse of underdevelopment, poverty and oppression imposed on them by all of the leading imperialist states.

Left Turn Canada!