By Helen Mercer, Morningstar Online

Kamala Harris and the Future of America
by Caleb Maupin, Centre for Political Innovation £7.49

In this short but thought-provoking book, centred on the person of Vice-Presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Caleb Maupin dissects the current ruptures within the US ruling class around which the current election revolves, and the cultural developments influencing and, by implication, disarming their leftist critics. It is not written to endorse either candidate and the book’s interest will endure whoever wins on November 3.

Harris was born into the Berkeley new left of the 1960s (her father was a Marxian economist), yet the book is centred on the contrast between that background and her unedifying and disturbing political record.

As attorney general of California from 2010 to 2017 she did nothing for the poor, black constituencies she claims to represent, and has been characterised as the “Queen of mass incarceration.”

She has advocated “serious and swift and severe consequences for crime” and mocked those who would reduce crime through building more schools and fewer jails. Her office is accused of covering up sex abuse and stopping the prosecution of Steve Mnuchin, the current Treasury Secretary.

On foreign policy she is close to Israeli lobbyists, bellicose towards Russia and North Korea and opposed Trump’s proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Syria.

Maupin’s purpose is to explain Kamala Harris’s surprising rise to her current position in relation to the conflicts between different sectors of US capital.

Maupin characterises Biden and Harris as representatives of “the Eastern Establishment, the Rockefeller faction who are positioned as being ‘progressive’ and ‘globalist’ minded.”

He identifies the specific corporate interests backing them as “the biggest banks, the four super-major oil companies and the silicon-valley tech giants.” In contrast Maupin sees Trump heading a coalition including fracking companies (competing with the older established oil companies), and individuals “tied to military contractors and weapons manufacturers” as well as real estate.

Trump’s faction are interested in short-term profits and they are rooted in US-based manufacturing, hence “America First.”

Biden’s backers seek stability at home (which presumably would include punitive prison regimes) and further integration of the US economy with world markets, while implementing longer-term imperialist goals.

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