International

By Richard Mellor in California

Not every political analyst in the United States is a Trump apologist or another corporate media personality, building a career by echoing the conventional wisdom. Professor John Mearsheimer, seen in the video below, has earned a reputation as one of the country’s foremost realist scholars of international relations.

Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, he has consistently presented his views as he sees them, even when doing so has invited intense criticism. That was certainly the case when he co-authored a controversial book examining the influence of the Israel lobby on US foreign policy.

My own view is that his assessment of the events of the past week – including the US bombing of Iranian infrastructure and Trump’s renewed threats of annihilation against Iran – is probably a fair one. Mearsheimer analyses international affairs through the lens of great-power competition and national interests. What he does not offer, however, is a way out of the recurring crises that define relations between the United States and Iran, or the broader conflicts engulfing West Asia.

In my opinion, that limitation reflects the political framework within which he operates. Mearsheimer is ultimately a theorist of the capitalist state. While he can explain how capitalist powers pursue their interests, he cannot offer a solution because no lasting solution exists within capitalism itself. A system driven by competition for markets, resources, strategic advantage and profit cannot resolve crises that are rooted in its own economic and political foundations.

I am no academic or foreign policy specialist. I am simply a worker with opinions formed through experience and observation, like most workers. But ordinary working people are just as capable of understanding political realities as many of the experts who dominate television panels or university departments. These institution operate within assumptions that accept capitalism as both natural and permanent. The debate usually concerns how best to manage the system, not whether the system itself is responsible for the crises it continually produces.

That brings us to American politics.

The Democratic Party is presented as the only realistic alternative to Trump and the Republican Party. Much of the liberal political establishment is focused on regaining control of Congress in the coming elections, and movements such as “No Kings” reflect that objective.

Yet it has become increasingly clear that the Democratic Party is not an opposition party in any fundamental sense. It is one of the two major parties of American capitalism. It represents the interests of capital before labour, bosses before workers. Every political party has a class character, and the Democratic Party is no exception.

This helps explain why tens of millions of Americans simply do not vote in national elections. They see little meaningful difference between two parties that compete fiercely for office while agreeing on many of the basic assumptions of American economic and foreign policy. Trump was elected with the support of only a minority of eligible voters, a reflection not simply of his appeal, but of widespread political alienation.

Imagine, however, if the Democratic Party genuinely claimed to represent working people, instead of speaking vaguely in the name of “all Americans”, placing workers, billionaires, and corporate executives in the same political category. Imagine if it had deep roots in working-class communities, trade unions, and grass root organisations like renters’ rights groups, instead of relying primarily on election campaigns every two or four years.

Such a party could enter office with a clear program of action. On its first day it could pledge to:

• End the US war against Iran, withdraw military involvement, and acknowledge that the American people were never consulted about another war.
• Establish a universal, publicly funded, Medicare for All health care system.
• Launch a national affordable housing program.
• Build a modern, affordable public transportation network.
• Abolish ICE and dismantle other institutions that terrorise immigrant communities.
• Invest massively in infrastructure while guaranteeing union wages, benefits, and labour rights.
• Redirect public investment from fossil fuels toward renewable sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.
• Bring the 500 largest corporations under democratic public ownership, compensating only those individuals whose retirement security genuinely depends on such investments rather than rewarding billionaire owners.
• Reduce military spending by at least 50 percent and redirect those resources toward meeting human needs.

None of these proposals should be regarded as ‘extreme’. They reflect the priorities of a society organised around human need, instead of private profit.

Nor should we hesitate to challenge the enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of the capitalist class, whether through taxation, legislation, or public ownership. Billionaires and big capitalists in general, have never hesitated to close factories, destroy communities, or throw working people into poverty when doing so increased their profits. They also benefit from public resources being devoted to wars and military expansion without the meaningful consent of the people who pay for them. Within seventy miles of where I write, there are roughly eighty billionaires, and California alone is home to more than two hundred.

I recognise, of course, that today’s Democratic Party has no intention of pursuing such a program. That is precisely the point. Working people need a political party of our own. More importantly, we need a movement grounded in the understanding that capitalism cannot be made genuinely humane or environmentally sustainable. It is not simply a matter of electing ‘better’ politicians; it is a matter of replacing a system whose priorities inevitably produce inequality, war, and environmental destruction.

I do not claim to have all the answers. No individual does. But I have become convinced that only a democratic socialist federation of nations, cooperating instead of competing, offers humanity a realistic path forward. If we avoid nuclear war, the defining challenge of this century will be the climate crisis.

Capitalism has shown itself incapable of addressing that crisis, because doing so would require subordinating profit to human need. Unless we move beyond that system, the future will be shaped not by the possibilities of human progress but by the catastrophes capitalism continues to produce.

From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People, and the original is here.