Tuesday, October 06, 2020

Switching the Crooks

 


Recent events have emphasized the desperate need that the people of America have for an alternative to their misery. The U.S. ruling class is now going through the process of deciding who will be the leader of the world’s leading power for the next four years. A president is chosen by the voters in the primary and general elections. But the Big Business has the dominant say – through its financing of the candidates and the parties as well as the influence of the media it controls. Every major candidate must defend U.S. capitalist interests; on that level there is no choice possible. Nevertheless, the capitalists must take into account the sentiments of the voters to the personalities of the contesting candidates. So in large part, the election of a president is a process in which the views of the electorate are expressed and then blocked, detoured and divided – so that the ruling class can maintain its rule.

The Republican and the Democratic Parties both represent “capital.” But since defining capital is very controversial among economists, let us simply say that both parties represent money, the kind of money that begets more money. This kind of money is sacrosanct. It is a deity. It is worshipped by almost everyone. Having this kind of money, or being backed by it, is essential for getting elected, especially since most voters rely on advertising before voting for a candidate. Many voters, even if poor, admire and highly respect those who have a lot of money. Once in office the office holder must make sure that conditions for self-expanding money are kept intact. This means preserving and reproducing existing social relations, particularly by maintaining “law and order.” Among many other things, the class structure must be kept intact. But class is another controversial concept. To make the story short, as far as class goes it is your social position, your place in society.

When it comes to action, nothing substantial will be done by either party if it threatens the accumulation of money. Even if a miracle occurs and a third party wins the election it would not make much of a difference. Assuming that they mean what they say—which in most cases they don’t—and will try to reform the existing system, they will run into a very powerful obstacle: money that makes more money. The domestic and the foreign policies of the two parties are very similar, since both parties are ruled not by a sense of what is right or wrong, what is moral or immoral, what is ethical or unethical, but by money-capital. And this kind of money has no conscience, no morality, and no ethics.

Democratic Party and Republican Party politics, that is, capitalist politics, is at best a pretty sordid affair. Our disgust is healthy with this utterly futile choice between “good” capitalist servants and “bad” capitalist servants. It is based on the colossal lie that a Republican or Democrat can represent the “people.” This blog has long proved over and over again that capitalist politicians have as their main function the preservation of the rule of capital, which means keeping this country under the control of Wall St. The Republican and the Democratic parties remain the most conscious and willing agents of the exploiters of the working class. We must organize to destroy both as well as the capitalist system which they represent. The assumption is that there is some fundamental difference in policy between the Republicans and Democrats. There are, it is true, differences of inner-capitalist class policy, but they effect both parties equally well. The Democratic Party is torn as it has never before been with a corporate and progressive divide and the Republicans possess their anti-Trump dissidents.

Big Business must be purring with satisfaction. They move the political pieces with the precision of a chess grand master. Other than being political pawns standing outside the political arena as Big Business pulls the puppets strings. Bipartisanship that is the prize in U.S. politics sought for by the corporations. The beauty of capitalist politics is that the ruling class can get on with the business of enriching itself without having to constantly shape details of government policy. That job is left to the political parties and think tanks, all sharing a consensual view that identifies the “national interest” and “public good” with the needs of investors, bankers and shareholders, and hence of maximum corporate profit. For working people it means the two parties working together to screw us

Trump and Biden represent money that begets money, both would keep the existing social order in the US intact, both would support butchers around the world that are friends of the US, and both will try to overthrow those governments that are not subservient to the US.  Biden will try to resurrect and remake the image of the US empire. Trump, on the other hand will continue to amuse the rest of the world with his idiocy.

In the US working people invariably say that they will vote for the “lesser of the two evils.” What type of democracy forces you to choose between two evils?

To achieve its own emancipation, the working class must strike out on the road to independent political action, independent of the two capitalist parties. The working class needs a socialist party. It must build one now.

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