Sympathy for the Devil

The capitalist system is a time-bomb. Mankind is in a race with catastrophe. The threat is growing ever closer. Let us choose freedom, socialism, and survival while we can. Where politics are concerned a lot of you have stopped listening. They don't believe anymore in what politicians say or do. That's quite understandable after all the times they've been fooled and duped by phony campaign promises and let down by reforms guaranteed to cures for steadily worsening social problems. Some though haven’t totally turned their backs on politics yet. They're watching the present Presidential campaign. They still believe that hearing and weighing up what the various candidates propose can enable them to elect who will get this country's problems solved. The "believers" still hope to find the "right” person to put America's house in order. The "non-believers" have come to doubt that such people exist.

Socialists offer a third view on the subject -- a view which, besides agreeing that no "right” politician is available, goes further by denying that our country's desperate problems have been caused by "wrong” leader chosen to run government in the past. Instead of blaming political officeholders, this view claims that the real cause of our social problems lies partly in the form of government we have and mainly in the capitalist system on which the government rests. It therefore also claims that the ballot should be used to fundamentally change both.

“Lesser evilism,” of course, suits the capitalist class just fine. It means that the exploited basically accept their miserable existence to perhaps a lesser degree. The rulers are happy that the working class doesn’t yet see the possibility of a new socialist society, where every single human being would be guaranteed a decent life. Electoral activity is an essential spur to class struggle, a valuable part of the arsenal of resistance in a war where every means necessary must be employed. The Democratic Party is dominant not because it is controlled by the capitalists. Its strength comes from the support received from a combination of working class forces – the unions, the unemployed, the great majority of black people. Without the black vote, the Democrats have great difficulties in winning national elections and control of the White House.

Candidates for political office are but manifestations of class interests. Politicians are managerial strata who defend the status quo and are acting as its enforcers. Few doubt that Hillary Clinton is the ruling class/Wall Street candidate who has in the past dutifully served the capitalist class and who in the future will continue her service to the oligarchs and the plutocrats. Hillary Clinton has supported every key ruling-class policy during her lifetime of “service” to capitalist America. She is and has always been compliant to the ruling-class. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the darlings of the liberal apologists for capitalism ceased their criticism of Clinton as Wall Street’s nominee.

Trump is a “greater evil” only by overlooking American history for a few centuries. Trump says what Clinton does. The question becomes to whom is he a ‘greater evil’?  Let’s be absolutely clear, should Trump be elected, he can be expected to be the same servile tool of the American capitalists who decide how best to advance their interests and not their elected mouthpieces. Despite the rhetoric of Sanders’ “Our Revolution”, the 1% face little resistance to their system. Our masters have finely tuned their “lesser evil” defense. But until the vast majority reach the point when they can no longer tolerate capitalist injustice, exploitation, and repression, the 99 percent can and will prevail. Their conscious organization and education will bring forth a socialist society.