The budget deal that is being processed today has to be seen for what it is—a defeat for the working class of the U.S. and a victory for both monopoly capitalism and the forces of reaction.

When even capitalist economists criticize the likely effects of significant reductions in federal public spending(and not the kind based on present news reports which will both lead to a major reduction in military spending and significant tax reform that will begin to restore progressive tax rates on corporations and the wealthy) as producing less “economic growth” and greater unemployment, we can understand what the negative short-run effects of this “deal.”

The only capitalist economist who has been quoted so far expressing sympathy for the deal made the argument that the spending cuts may increase confidence among consumers about their taxes will not be raised and thus encourage them to spend more to benefit the economy, a statement that would be hilarious if  working people were not faced by the likelihood of a deeper recession with less social benefits and protections.

First, let me say as Lenin said that in response to ultraleftists  “facts are stubborn things” and as Churchill said to the British people and to those appeasers who wanted to through in the towel to Hitler after the fall of France, “in defeat defiance.”

We must expose the destructive effects of this budget deal and fight for its repeal and replacement with a budget whose priorities will be  full employment and social welfare, not capitalist profit in the form of cheaper labor costs, higher stock prices, bigger dividends and interest payments to finance capital.  If we didn’t know already, the last thirty years are evidence that all of that, in “good times” and bad does not mean progress for the people.

I recently came across some old Soviet anti-capitalist cartoons made for Soviet people, including this brilliant one, “The Shooting Range” which portrays life under U.S. capitalism.  Done in the late 1960s, the cartoon really was a great exaggeration of  the U.S. then.  After thirty years of Reaganism, and after the coming “budget deal” it may be more have even greater meaning today, 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OkqSvw7Mw&feature=player_detailpage