The capitalist class that runs the United States appears to be tentatively settling on its two presidential candidates: Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. The 2016 U.S. presidential election is more than the media-driven circus it appears to be—for the bosses, the stakes are high. While U.S. imperialism still dominates the world, its relative power is in decline. It faces growing challenges from the capitalist bosses running China and Russia and upstart regional imperialists like ISIS.
Elections in any capitalist country, from the U.S. to Malaysia, are used to discipline the bosses’ ranks, to centralize power in times of crisis, and to deceive the international working class into backing the rulers’ agenda. Above all, the mission is to protect and expand the capitalists’ profits.
Rubio and Clinton: Birds of a Feather
For the dominant wing of U.S. financiers and industrialists, including JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil, the 2016 election is a means to guarantee the future use of military force to maintain control of the energy-rich Middle East—and gear up for a broader conflict with Russia or China or both. For the moment, at least, the bosses are leaning toward Rubio as the Republican nominee: “Marco Rubio will take the mantle of ‘establishment’ or ‘business’ candidate from Jeb Bush” (Fortune, 11/1/15).  On the Democratic side, the warmakers’ current choice is Hillary Clinton. A reliable servant of U.S. imperialism as Barack Obama’s former secretary of state, Clinton engineered the mass slaughter of workers in Libya in 2011. The liberal Democrat “insurgent,” Bernie Sanders, is in fact a pro-imperialist tool of the same establishment that now favors Rubio (see CHALLENGE, 8/12/15). His job is to lure disillusioned young people into the charade of electoral “democracy” before he steps aside for Clinton or some other capitalist shill acceptable to the bosses.
While no one can predict the outcome in 2016 with any certainty, one thing is certain: The next U.S. president will serve the needs of U.S. imperialism, just like Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and those who came before them.
Fascism: Capitalism in Crisis
The main U.S. bosses are also using these elections to reassert their dominance over more domestically oriented capitalists like billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. In contrast to the ExxonMobil wing of the ruling class, with its trillions invested in the oil wealth of the Middle East, the Koch brothers’ assets are concentrated in refineries in Minnesota and Texas. Where the ExxonMobil faction has defended the crude it pumps in Iraq at the cost of three million workers’ lives and counting, the Kochs and their Tea Party allies oppose the corporate tax hikes a major ground invasion would require. The Koch network plans to raise close to $900 million in 2016 to elect Republicans who will “push for deregulation, tax cuts and smaller government” (New York Times, 1/26/15). Koch backer Chris Rufer, a California tomato processor, said the network’s “central goal…is to stop the centralization of power” (The Hill, 10/21/15).
“Centralization of power” is code for fascism, a form of capitalism in crisis, when the bosses can no longer rule in the usual way. The finance capital wing is putting the Koch faction on notice that it needs to fall in line, contribute its share of cash to finance the coming imperialist wars, and help coerce the working class to fight them. For the international working class, fascism means more open racist and sexist terror by the state apparatus—the cops, courts, and prisons. U.S. workers will be forced into a military draft amid mass racist unemployment. Workers outside the U.S. will face a sagging imperialist power that will be only more desperate – and brutal – to stay on top.
U.S. Bosses Prepping for Fascism
Rubio’s break with the Koch faction made the dominant U.S. imperialists happy. On October 30, the big bosses’ New York Times celebrated with a front-page article: “Paul Singer, Influential Billionaire, Throws Support to Marco Rubio for President.” Singer’s pro-Rubio manifesto read in part:
There are enormous power vacuums [worldwide] in one hot spot after another...Senator Rubio grasps this reality in his bones...His instincts are excellent, and he knows the terrain and the risks. He will stand with our allies and stand up to our adversaries.
Just who is Paul Singer? He heads Elliott Management, a Wall Street “vulture” hedge fund known for buying up defaulted loans in countries like Peru and the Republic of Congo, “rejecting any attempts at restructuring, then firing up lawsuits to claim full repayments plus more” (Wall Street Journal, 6/25/14). A significant contributor to both the Koch network and the past Republican presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, Elliott is ideally placed to help unite the ruling class behind a willing servant like Rubio.
As Russia deepens its military involvement in Syria and China colonizes the South China Sea, the U.S. bosses’ problems are deepening by the day. Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, an influential pro-imperialist think tank, writes that Syria is “an example of how we might want to send or have to send 10, 20, 30,000 forces to one mission or another …there are security stakes around the world that still could necessitate more than just drones and Special Forces” (NPR, 11/1/15).
The bosses know they cannot win over workers to fight in the next profit-driven bloodbath without getting their own house in order and bringing the Koch brothers to heel.
No War But Class War!
The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party is against all imperialist war. We stand for revolutionary class war! PLP is organizing in more than two dozen countries to build a mass international Party to fight for communism. We reject the bosses’ election circus. We say: Don’t vote, organize! Organize anti-racist struggles on the job, on the campuses and in the bosses’ militaries. Only PLP represents the working class. Only a mass international PLP can smash imperialism for all time. Join us!