USA. A sign of the times.

The capitalists themselves cannot believe it. But now we have the Republican nomination race being dominated by Romney the front runner and swindler so-called venture capitalist being attacked by his Republican rivals for firing workers. But this is an essential part of capitalism, firing workers and getting more work out of the rest and intimidating workers in general. It is a powerful sign of the times that Romney's rivals think this is the way to weaken him, to attack him for being a successful capitalist. This bears out what we have been saying on this blog. That is that there is a huge section of the population in this country who are not happy with capitalism. Recent polls show that half of those under 34 are more in favor of socialism than capitalism.

Along with the Republicans attack on Romney for his laying off workers we have Obama moving incrementally towards the left with his attacks on Wall Street. He too feels the way the wind is blowing and what could best take him back to the White house. The squeezing out of Daley and Emmanuel from his staff are signs of this. He is going to try and run against Wall Street and its "excesses" in the November election.

Then back to Richard's blog of yesterday which shows the top union leaders sitting down with and boot licking the most despicable of the capitalists. The top union leaders never mention about the lay offs and firings. It is hard not to conclude now that in their fight for the nomination the non Romney pack of candidates in the Republican Party are to the left of the top union leaders. Incredible. And this is all going on when the Occupy movement refuses to go away and in fact is increasingly orientating to the workers struggles such as against foreclosures.

In the old days we used to be very nuanced about how we took up the union leaders. They were not all the same. The extreme right wing bunch we were much harder and more direct when we spoke of them. Here in the US there are very few, I cannot think of one of the top union leaders, who openly criticizes capitalism and they are equally adamantly opposed to making any criticism of the capitalist Democratic Party.

This lack of a mass alternative voice will mean that the alternative movement that arises will be confused, have many sides to it, will be fragmented, will go back every now and then before it goes forward again. But the overall process in the US in the years ahead will be US capitalism moving to put its own working class on rations and this whip of the counter revolution raising the US working class to its feet with a new and higher and increasingly anti capitalist consciousness.

Sean.