These are a few  brief introductory comments concerning President Obama's State of the Union Address.

The first and obvious point is that it is strong on generalizations which are positive, but which must be fleshed out as policy. 

 Compared to the various states of the union addresses of Jim Carter and especially Bill Clinton, his last two democratic party predecessors, it is  a step forwward.  First, President Obama has rejected austerity as a policy, even though that is clearly the policy that is driving the rest of the NAT0 bloc.  He has called  for a restoration of manufacturing, something that both national parties have not touched with a ten foot pole for decades as the apologists for our "free market" capitalism have painted lofty pictures of "post industrial society," a "global information  age," a kind of Adam Smith meets EBAY world of tomorrow.  He has reiterated also his support for a return to some kind of progressive taxation. And he has called for an increase in the minimum wage

It is interesting that the general press has made his defense of government as a necessary part of the solution to present economic crisis and to a postive future as a sort of defining moment  That a clear break with the  the cartoonish and often sinister attacks of  "big government" over the last three decades, when the positive role of government in regulating business and providing for the social welfare of the people was so massively undermined, should be the subject of such commentary is an example of what has happened in both U.S. political life and political discourse.  The emperor, or in this case the B movie actor and his successors, have had no clothes for a very very long time and large numbers  have known that, made jokes about it, but hidden from its consequences, at least until the stock market crash of 2008 forced tens of millions, not only the poor who became much poorer, the "middle class" who went deeper and deepr into debt, to experience those consequences.

But as the Young Karl Marx, growing up an a European world where the forces of the Holy Alliance and the Prussian Monarchy sought to censor and ostracize the whole enlightenment of the 18th century, deny reason and a scientific approach to life, came to understand, that which is rational and scientific will and must triumph over the conventional wisdoms supported by existing power structures if society is to advance rather than stagnate and eventually collapse. The irrational and destructive effects of both the policies and the ideology, "trickle down economic," supplyside economics," etc, are now the basis of fierce struggle through the society, as reactionaries seek to restore those policies with a third wave of Reaganism, and large sections of the middle strata, from economists to accountants, try to avoid as much as they can critical thought  about where the economy and society is and where it is going.

Understanding that events are always to be analyzed in both their historical and dialectical context,

Marx were he around would I believe have seen the speech as a step forward.  Of course he would have made the point that Obama, his administration, his party, and for that matter even his supporters in a weakened labor movement, speak for the capitalist class, not the working class, because that is all that they by themselves can do. 

It is really the role of the Communists for Marx in his time, for Communsts, the broad left, and what I would call progressives ready and willing to oppose capitalist solutions for society, to come forward with tangible programs  to  advance the interests of the working class and present Obama, his administration and his party with the alternative of either advancing them in some form or making them at the very least part of the political discourse.

What should such  a program  be.  The first  part ofof course  must be  reconversion to a peacetime economy. 

 That is the only way that  social policies, including minimum wage increases, infrastructure  upgrading, the democratization of education, and  the development of a high wage quality production economy can be achieved. 

Progressive taxation  as ab essential part of conversion to a peacetime economy, along with increased revenues from the increased incomes of workers  could make the reverse of Ronald Reagan's Voodoo Economics ---tax cuts for the rich, huge and continuing social service cutbacks as a first priority of government at all levels, and of course huge increases in military spending as the policy that would achieve both prosperty and a balance budget---really work to establish a society of much greater income inequality, marginal unemployment, job and general social security, and  a substantial reduction over time of the national debt.

That is my initial response to the President's state of the union address. 

 I hope our other editors and our  readers come forward with their responses.  These are the questions which should enable us to connect theory with policy and practice , since practice without theory ends up usually failing to distinguish forests from trees, and theory without  connections to policy often ends up, as Karl Marx noted in the early 1840s when he talk his leave from his left Hegelian fellow students and friends, ends up  in isolation, creating a world where the theoretical debates become both divorced from and more important than real unfolding events