Things not going well for US capitalism and Obama: McChrystal axed

The catastrophe in the gulf continues and destroys the coast lines, natural life and waters of the gulf. Obama will not take on the big oil corporations as he is an agent of the profit addicted corporations and their corrupt capitalist system and so we see the oil keep spilling and no strategy being put in place to move the US and world economy away from dependence on oil.

This destruction will go on for many months. It will have repercussions on US capitalism and its political machines and state which will weaken US capitalism at home and abroad. The gulf oil destruction is not good for US capitalism.

The only reason they are getting away with things to the extent they are is because there is no mass voice organizing and mobilizing for an alternative in US society. The union leaders are totally committed to and cowed by capitalism and so hold down the union movement from building a fighting alternative in the form of organizing the unorganized and building a mass working peoples party. And the left groups are so affected by left sectarianism that they cannot make any progress in building an alternative.

Crisis in the US Military: Left: Gen Stan McChrystal revealed the splits at the top and gets the ax for it.

It is against this background that US capitalism faces its new crisis in its invasion and war in Afghanistan. The divisions and arguments amongst the tops of the military and the politicians have now broke to the surface in the form of the open criticisms and insulting of the US political leadership by the formerly top general there McChrystal. This produced an immediate storm. And now Obama has fired McChrystal the very general he put in there to be in charge of his policy. This is a major crisis for US capitalism. Obama could not stand up to the oil corporations but he fired this general. What is the explanation for this?

The top central core of US capitalism and this includes a significant section of the US military tops understand that US capitalism benefits greatly from its bourgeois democratic system. It can prate about its so called democracy all over the world and claim to be fighting to help all countries develop the same way. But more importantly the US system allows capitalism more flexibility in how it uses its capital and how it runs the country. If the US military were to take over it would first of all face a huge opposition and revolt from the US working class and threaten to destabilize the entire country but it would also face opposition from US capitalism which would fear that under the military its rule would no longer be respected.

So McChrystal had to go. To teach again the lesson of the past. Capitalism prefers to rule through its political representatives while keeping its mailed fist, its military in the background and as a reserve. The military in a bourgeois democracy must know its place.

But to the immediate. Where does this leave the war in Afghanistan? With or without McChrystal this war is going very badly for US capitalism. Its surge is bogged down. The opposition of the majority of the people is increasing as the NATO troops kill more and more civilians. The NATO troops are increasingly discontented as they see no end in sight. Allies are pulling out. And the Taliban are showing no sign of weakening.

US capitalism sinks into a deeper and deeper crisis. A retired US colonel said recently in relation to Afghanistan: "The entire strategy is a fraud perpetrated on the American people. The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense." This sounds about right.