No Lesser Evil, Please

The longer the capitalist society stays, the worse things will get. No matter how much we are inclined to ignore it, we will not be able to escape this reality. The present economy only works for the very few. Many people imagine that a country run on the lines of the American republic is a democratic state, that the institutions of America are democratic institutions, that the spirit of such a state is the democratic spirit, and that the philosophy of such a state – the “Rights of Man” is the democratic philosophy. All of which ideas are wrong. As the American midterm elections arrive we should remember a few facts and figures. The American electorate is facing elections in which there is almost no prospect of a constructive debate. The question will be which representatives of the elite do Americans hate more? An election frenzy seizes the country because they have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining their destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls and choose one of the mediocrities who have already been chosen for them. A democracy cannot function without a public that is properly informed. Communication should be emancipatory. You can’t have a mandate if the electorate has no idea what it’s voting for.

In the US there are only enough full-time jobs for 50% of the working-age population, and half of the full-time jobs pay under $35k per year. Since 2007, the economy has lost over 14 million full-time jobs while the overall population has grown by 17 million people. In current conditions, it is impossible for 70% of the working-age population to earn enough income to afford basic necessities without taking on ever-increasing levels of debt, which they will never be able to pay back because there are not enough jobs that generate the necessary income to keep up with the cost of living. From 2007 – 2013, overall wealth increased 26%, while the median household lost a shocking 43% of their wealth. If median wealth continues to decline at this rate, over 50% of US households will be bankrupt within the next decade. People should not have to struggle and be buried in debt to get basic necessities and live a healthy life. The government’s misrepresentation of the statistics on poverty, cost of living and unemployment cannot cover up the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population is on a fast track to impoverishment. The US  government is cutting billions of dollars from assistance programs and pouring billions of dollars into the military and prison industry. The police force is being militarized and the private prison industry is growing at a 1600% rate. The American prison population is already the largest in the world.

When the United States began, only property-owning white men could vote, but over time and with agitation and conflict, the franchise spread regardless of income, color or gender. In the seventies, the voting age was lowered to 18. Today, many such as the Koch brothers’s and their financed campaigns don’t want people to vote even when turnout is already at a low (voters are simply opting out, with 51 million people who are eligible to vote not registering). They are trying to make laws to make it hard for minorities, poor folks, and students to vote. In the last four years, close to half the states in the country have passed laws to make it harder for people to vote. The new ID requirements are the revival of a longstanding ruling-class tradition to restrict the franchise and manipulate the outcomes of elections.  Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals have observed, voter ID laws are the contemporary equivalent of the poll taxes of the Jim Crow era, which were outlawed by the 24th Amendment in 1964. Current voter ID laws and other suppression techniques aimed at limiting early voting and same-day registration may be less obvious than the poll taxes, whites-only primaries and literacy tests of yesteryear, but they are driven by the same purpose of undermining genuine majority rule and deflecting potential threats to the established order. If anything, today’s techniques are all the more insidious precisely because they are less obvious.Those new ID laws target minority voters who are often the least able to pay for IDs or meet the costs involved in traveling to the DMV or other government offices to obtain them. And like the old poll taxes, the new ID laws do nothing to ensure the integrity of elections. As numerous studies have shown, in-person voter fraud is virtually nonexistent. This does not mean that socialists equate dictatorship and bourgeois democracy. We condemn those capitalist dictatorships where political freedom is denied as much as we condemn the  financial impediments that exist that make a mockery of real democracy. The idea of a fair and free election would give the ruling class political apoplexy.

Politicians and the media insist that we have democracy, that we have free elections which allow us to choose whatever form of government we wish, unlike countries where a single-party dictatorship exists. Such dictatorships usually allow elections where the people may approve or disapprove of given candidates within the dictatorship but have not the freedom to vote for any other parties or for independent candidates. In other words the people have imposed on them by force, corruption or the control of information a specific political regime and have not got the necessary democratic machinery to challenge that regime.  With the 2014 campaign spending set to break the $3.6 billion record of 2010 looking at the vast sums of money involved in our allegedly democratic elections we can hardly claim that they are “free”! In fact in most of the so-called democratic countries it could be said that the astronomical costs of challenging for political power have been deliberately manipulated in order to ensure that those who cannot attract rich backers will be denied meaningful access to the democratic process. Effectively this means that in the same way as people in dictatorships are denied the right to make real political changes, in America prohibitive financial restrictions are placed in the way of the working class organising politically to effect real economic change.

Ritualized elections now offer a choice between heavily marketed political brands rather than competing aspirational visions. Many “anti-capitalist” personalities urge people to support the Democrats, on the grounds that they are a “lesser evil” compared with the Republicans. A mistake that voters often make, especially during election campaigns, is to compare what the Republicans say and do with what the Democrats say. The relevant comparison is with what the Democrats do. In the United States ideas and principles seem to have disappeared from the mainstream of public debate. Democrats are interchangeable with Republicans. Differences between them are minor, and none whatever on what matters most. The two parties address the issues of the election not so much as people with differing ideas about the kind of world we should be living in but merely as accountants arguing over ways to manage the economy .

For the sake of argument, let us suppose that the Democrats are a significantly lesser evil. In that case, helping them into office does ward off a greater evil. But only in the short term. For once in office, Democrats come under irresistible pressure from their capitalist masters to break their “populist” promises, to disappoint, disillusion and betray the working people who placed their trust and hope in them. Some sink back into apathy and despair, while others fall prey to a racist or fascist backlash. These reactions give the Republicans their chance to return. This is a recognizable political cycle. We have been through it before. Over and over again. Not only in the United States but (with variations of detail) in many other countries. Those who support the lesser evil play an essential role in constantly reproducing the cycle. They share the responsibility for its persistence. Support for the lesser evil also entails support – indirect and delayed, but support nonetheless – for the greater evil. Will we continue on our present course to the irreversible destruction of our home world? Or will we make the fundamental change needed to give us a decent chance of survival? From this perspective, the differences between “greater” and “lesser” evils do not matter. Some capitalist politicians are totally subservient to the oil, gas, and coal corporations and recklessly oblivious to the looming danger. In their hands we are doomed. Other capitalist politicians are a little less subservient, show a limited awareness of the situation, and try to do something to mitigate it. Something, but much less than is absolutely essential. In their hands we are still doomed.

 For power to be lodged in the hands of the people does not mean merely that they are to have the widest possible franchise and equal voting power. It implies that the people are to have control of all social institutions, a say in all social activities, the self-management social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the common ownership by the people of all the means of life.  Across the world there are countless examples of sweeping changing to political landscapes from one election to the next. Political freedom offers the best means to make that change, and the tools are to hand were the workers to take them up. Nothing short of fundamental system change will bring about an end to the economic exploitation, corporate control and perpetual wars. Our time and our energy should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our co-workers in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. For socialists, it eventually comes down to the need to take sides. Whose side are you on? The upside of an almost total disenchantment on the part of the electorate with politics-and business -as-usual or an authentic message for real change that will make a difference. There are only two paths to the future. One is in the service of capitalism. The other is a democratic revolt for socialism.