By A. Shaw

The USA and Venezuela will hold their presidentials in a few months. Both races are immensely interesting.

THE RACE IN THE USA

In the US presidential, the Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll for July 16 showed Mitt Romney attracting 46% of the vote, while President Obama earned 44%. Five percent (5%) preferred some other candidate, and five percent (5%) were undecided.

Of course, both candidates are hopelessly bourgeois. So, there is absolutely no question in this race of a passing of state power from one class to another. The outcome in November will be either the retention of state power in the quasi-liberal sector of the bourgeoisie or a passing of power to the reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie. In either case, power remains with bourgeoisie.

So, the question is which sector of the bourgeoisie is better for the working class. The difficulty in answering this question arises from similarities between the reactionaries and liberals in the bourgeoisie.

Rasmussen polling firm usually slants its findings in favor of reactionaries. As a rule, Rasmussen doesn’t slant more than 8 points. This poll seems to be slanted in favor of Romney.

The US presidential is a race between Romney, a reactionary bourgeois on both domestic and foreign policy, and Obama, a lukewarm liberal bourgeois on domestic policy and a flaming reactionary on foreign policy.

Both candidates seem to be in the fundraising mode for what is shaping up as paid media contest. A new type of political action committee which is nominally independent of both campaigns and which raises and spends unlimited funds from capitalist corporations and bourgeois individuals will play a huge role in the upcoming media or propaganda war.

The CP in the USA, a tiny fringe group, plays no real role in the US presidential, except, in this instance. some of the CP’s national leaders clown around as cheerleaders on the political Left for Obama.

The clowning of the CP national leaders neither helps nor hurts Obama. The CP provides no training in electoral struggle for its members. So, its members generally are hopeless amateurs in politics. Gus Hall, a former leader of the CP, wrote about this deficiency, but the CP didn’t pay any attention to what he said.

The working class in the USA isn’t an independent political force at all. The class looks to and depends on the reactionary and liberal sectors of the US bourgeoisie for political guidance. For a brief time in 1930s, the CP contended against the bourgeoisie for leadership of certain sectors of the working class. In the 1940s, the CP under Earl Browder sold out the class and was later the target of a vicious attack by the bourgeoisie.

The CP never recovered from its sell-out or from the attack on it.

So, in sum, the working class in the USA is somewhat infantile in its political development.

THE VENEZUELAN RACE

In the Venezuelan presidential, Hinterlaces, a reactionary bourgeois polling firm in Caracas, found in early July that 60% of voters expect Pres. Hugo Chavez, the revolutionary proletarian candidate, to win in October. Hinterlaces found that 24% expect Henrique Capriles — the reactionary bourgeois pretending to be a liberal — to win. So, the poll suggests a low degree optimism in Capriles’ camp and a high degree in Chavez’.

About 16% of the voters are not expecting anything in particular.

So, under this set of expectations, if Capriles were to win all of the undecided voters, he would still lose by a whopping10 points if the election were today. The findings of Hinterlaces for early July are in line with findings of most other polling outfits.

As a rule, Hinterlaces slants its findings in favor of reactionary candidates. But the findings in this poll don’t seem slanted. Perhaps, Hinterlaces believes it is pointless to lie and slant in this instance because Capriles is so far behind.

Hinterlaces also found that 86% of the voters intend to vote in October and only 8% percent don’t intend to go to the polls. Since Capriles needs a huge abstention of revolutionary proletarian voters in order to beat Hugo Chavez, this 86% number is bad news for Capriles. If Capriles doesn’t find a way to lift the expectations of his supporters, he may be hit by an abstention of reactionary voters.

The campaign between Chavez and Capriles is shaping up as a street battle, that is, which camp can turn out the largest crowds at its events. On June 10, Capriles turned out about 300,000 supporters. The next day, June 11, Chavez turned out about a million.

The working class in Venezuela is maturing organizationally and ideologically. Roughly 65% of the class is revolutionary and remainder is mostly reactionary or liberal. Presently, the mass of the working class demands social programs such as health care, housing, education, nutrition, employment, etc. But increasingly, the class demands that state power be passed to the proletariat.

Still, the working class in Venezuela has a long way to go.

The class in Venezuela is already an independent political force, chiefly because it looks to proletarian parties for political leadership.

The CP in Venezuela, one of a number of proletarian parties, is small but very influential and closely allied with the ruling party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which is led by Hugo Chavez. The CP takes advantage of opportunies, that Chavez’ party and Cuban revolutionaries provide, to educate some CP members in electoral struggle. Presently, there is within the CP an element of modest size that is professional and well trained in all phrases of electoral and political struggle, especially the electronic side of politics. The CP should greatly grow this element within itself, because this element is now too small to make the CP powerful.