The Mid-Terms

For many years Americans have been told to vote for a “lesser evil.”  Voters are often presented with the twin choice of either Tweedledum-Tweedledee or voting for the lesser evil, the former suggests that there is no difference in the candidates and the latter that there is a degree of difference. One peculiar event around the 2016 elections received almost no analysis or discussion: The overwhelming majority of the supporters of Hillary Clinton disagreed with their candidate on most major issues. This simple fact tells how deep the corruption of the American political system has become and why Trump was viewed as the lesser evil to Clinton - the Wall St candidate. The enormous success of the two-party pro-money duopoly political system developed in the United States is in getting about half the people simply not to vote and forcing those who do — even when they disagree with corporate domination — to vote in favor of what they oppose. Keeping this system in place is essential for the rule of a tiny minority for open totalitarianism would have a very deep negative impact on the economy. Far better is the illusion of democracy. The lessons of history are clear: Working people have never gotten anywhere by guaranteeing their support to capitalist politicians.

Surely it is true that there is the lesser evil? Isn’t such an openly racist buffoon as many of the Republican candidates are the special enemy of the working class and must be stopped “at all costs”? Yes, the Republican's reign has been an ugly one for the workers. They've almost bled-to-death the working class, taken an ax to public spending, closing down social services; and openly bragged about the vicious reign of police terror against Black and Latino people. The Republicans have used repression against the people’s resistance movements.  With slight variations the unabashed opportunists of the American Left have resurrected the discredited theory of the “lesser evil,” to proclaim: Trump and the Republicans must be defeated at all costs! To lend credence to their “lesser evil” line, they loudly blazon that Trump's Republicans and Fascism are twins. The term “fascism” is used as a scare word to frighten the doubters into line.

 The bourgeoisie uses the line of going for the lesser of two evils as a way to detour the masses down a dead-end, a way to politically disarm people and demoraliSe them, a way to keep the working class chained to the treadmill of capitalist politics. In contradiction to the “lesser of two evils” confusion spread by the anybody but the Republicans campaign is the task of the WSPUS to expose concretely how it is the capitalist system itself that stands behind all the attacks on the people and how these mid-term elections are yet another  diversion and a trap to disarm people for still more to come. The WSPUS cannot afford to let fellow-workers wander down that mistaken and dangerous path without challenge

In these mid-term elections, all the Democrats need to do is bring out the bogey of the Republican right and cry “The fascists are coming!”  This electoral blackmail Is integral to the functioning of capitalism.  We are blackmailed into voting for a union "friendly" politician because the nasty politician menaces the labor movement. With the liberal vote assured the Democratic can steadily move to the right and the center position now becomes right. The case against voting for the Lesser Evil is that ultimately there is no Lesser Evil. This doesn't mean the Republicans and the Democrats are identical but that they merely increasingly tend to act in the same way in essential respects when the fundamental needs of the system are concerned. How many great evils of today were spawned by the “lesser evils” of yesterday?  Voting for one party to stop another invariably backfires on the working class. Working class progress, as now taught by the intellectuals, no longer lies along the road of class independence, but in the practice of tying labor to the kite of one capitalist politician as against another.  Choosing the “lesser-evil” Democrat is always a dead-end strategy.

The Democrats are not opposed to capitalism and have repeatedly declared that they are out to save capitalism from itself. The vast majority within the Democrat Party are indifferent to the fate of the international working class. The reason genuine socialists never support candidates of capitalist parties is that there is nothing more dangerous for the workers than endorsing a class enemy. We want the working class to become conscious of itself and its power in society and class consciousness begins with the recognition of the fundamental class division: the working class versus the capitalist class. The path towards socialism demands working-class independence from all capitalist parties and their reform programs. The WSPUS can use electoral campaigns to encourage socialist understanding among workers.

 If you give up the class struggle and support pro-capitalist parties when, later, when YOU are ready to resume the class-struggle for socialism, you will find that meanwhile, you will have strengthened the capitalist class enemy, and weakened, disoriented and demoralized the working class. If labor does not fight as a class, capitalist interests will surely triumph. Do you really want to be guilty of helping the class enemy win? It is the time to dedicate yourselves to socialist principles and struggle for socialist freedom. Elections are not, as “merely elections.” There is no such thing as voting for bourgeois politicians “without illusions,” because this act entails the illusion that we are better off getting a “lesser evil” elected than in building and supporting independent working-class institutions, including our own socialist parties. Those who vote for capitalist politicians either develop, underestimate or overlook the power of independent working-class organization and action.
The WSPUS  policy has always been when there is no socialist on the ballot, it is to abstain from voting for either evil. Your vote does count for capitalism. It becomes one mandate for the crimes of the government. The path to socialism lies in resolute opposition to all pro-capitalist parties. What the  "lesser evil" campaign shows most clearly is the burning need for the working class to make a total radical rupture with capitalism and its ideology. The WSPUS shouldn'rt and doesn't provide a radical cover to capitalist reformism and divert activists from the necessary task of resisting capitalism and striving for socialism. The WSPUS, part of the World  Socialist Movement appeals to you to join us, and thereby to resume the fight for working-class emancipation and socialist freedom. We have the right to call upon you to enter our Party, for we have never flinched from the struggle against capitalism and never forsaken the principles of socialism. We declare that support of either the Republicans or the Democrats amounts to a betrayal of the interests not only of socialism and the working class but humanity.

When  Marx urged workers of the world to unite, he meant with each other. Capitalist politicians were not included.