The U.S. elections are undoubtedly the most closely watched in the world and the two candidates are neck and neck.
Trump is one of the billionaires he perfectly represents: arrogant, unscrupulous and above all determined to make the capitalist class richer. Trump targets the poorest, the migrants who cross the border hoping to find a better life and who he calls “criminals” and “vermin”. At the other end of the scale, he promises further tax breaks to the richest.
Kamala Harris is no better. In business circles, she explains “I’m a capitalist”. Under the Biden administration, of which she is vice-president, the stock-market index has doubled and billionaires have become richer than ever. As a Trump supporter, Elon Musk, the megalomaniac owner of Tesla, X and SpaceX, is very ungrateful: his fortune was already 25 billion dollars in 2020 and has increased tenfold under Biden! For the vast majority of the population however, the standard of living has deteriorated, prices have increased by 25% but wages have not kept pace. Some people are disoriented and are falling back on Trump, a patent enemy of workers.
Despite the uncertainty of the election outcome, we already know the winners and the losers. In a country that is presented as an El Dorado, a whole section of workers has to hold down two, even three insecure and badly-paid jobs in order to make ends meet. The country boasts of having low unemployment but that’s because millions of workers who have dropped out of the job market are no longer included in the statistics. At the heart of the world’s leading power, the number of homeless people has skyrocketed, with an estimated 75,000 in Los Angeles alone, where they barely live beyond the age of 50. Life expectancy for the country is declining, putting it in 35th place in the world, below Cuba and China. Every year, more than 100,000 Americans, mostly from the working class, die from a drug overdose. Another 45,000 die because they cannot afford medical care. And that won’t change after November 5.
At the other end of the social scale, people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will of course continue to hit the jackpot, whoever the new president is. As for the country’s foreign policy, it will continue. For example, both Harris and Trump have announced that they will continue to supply the arms and money that allow Israel to wage war on the Palestinians, the Lebanese and maybe soon the Iranians.
Observed from France, Trump’s coarseness and unabashed cynicism are quite astonishing. And yet the American system is not that different from ours. The U.S. alternates between two pro-capitalist parties every four or eight years? Same in this country. Trump is a megalomaniac? True, but isn’t Macron? Racism is Trump’s stock-in-trade and, in a country built by immigrants, he and Harris are, absurdly, promising to curb immigration. French politicians, led by Le Pen, aren’t saying anything different. Trump and Harris say that a wall must be built and undocumented immigrants deported; Barnier, Macron and Le Pen explain that borders must be reinforced and undocumented immigrants deported.
We can’t expect anything from this election but we should take an interest in the future of the U.S. Not just because it’s at the cutting edge of scientific and technological innovation. But also because its working class is huge and has an impressive history of fighting. From great workers’ strikes to the Black revolt and the uprising of youth against the Vietnam War, the women and men who create the country’s wealth have fought hard. Today, their conditions are deteriorating under blows from a voracious capitalist class. But a few recent strikes, despite reformist trade union leaders who are no better than ours, have shown that U.S. workers can fight for their demands.
Hope can come from this. The revolts of the 60s had a worldwide impact. In much the same way, renewed struggles in the U.S. could have a worldwide impact today. Let’s hope then that, once past the deadline of November 5, U.S. workers won’t allow themselves to be impoverished or divided and that they find once again the path of class struggle.
Nathalie Arthaud