The Phony Politics

 

The Republicans aim is to win the 2020 election. That’s the Democratic Party aim also. American capitalist politics is unprincipled to the core, dominated as it is by an overriding concern for the enormous advantage that control of the administration gives to the capitalist group in power. In order to win, each side will resort to any lie, trick or device that can bring victory. We witnessed an example in the last televised debate with Trump's hectoring and Biden's name-calling. 

The Democratic and Republican parties manufacture phony debates as a smokescreen. Despite all the rhetorical name-calling and posturing, it’s hard to imagine a time when the two ruling class parties of American capitalism have been in  agreement on every major political question, foreign and domestic—especially on the need to impose an austerity regime. The ruling parties — both Democratic and Republican — have joined hands in assaults on the last bastion of U.S. organized labor, the public sector unions. Their differences are tactical — whether to completely remove the remnants of the welfare state and the public sector unions (Republicans) or to accept the willing cooperation for a more gradual dismantling of public services (Democrats). 

The Democratic-Republican double-act has provides the framework for United States politics. The “artificiality” of the two-party system has, since the war, been more and more widely recognized and admitted. No dominant issues any longer divided the Democratic and Republican parties. Their programs, leaders, and memberships did not represent important divisions in social and class forces. Their electoral campaigns were to a large extent simply bureaucratic struggles for the spoils of office. Nevertheless, while United States capitalism continued on the ascendant, while the illusions of American exceptionalism and the dreams of the new era held in their grasp all sections of the people, the system held well enough together. Names and labels are secondary.

What do the Democratic and Republican parties stand for today? Every worker has had the opportunity from his own experience and observation to learn the answer to this question. Not from the answers the Democratic and Republican politicians give to this question around election time, for then they are all honey and sweetness, full of fine promises, ready to pat babies on the head. Workers must stop making the mistake of saying, “The party bosses are no good, we know that, but Biden and Harris are good people so we will vote for them.” Politicians must be judged on the basis of the party they belong to, and the program and record of the party they belong to. Candidates of the boss parties must accept the responsibility not only for what they do themselves, but for what their party does.

Workers must also learn to resist the old argument that it is no use voting for the candidate of a socialist party, “because he or she can’t get elected anyhow, and it would only be wasting your vote.” If you really want to waste your vote, cast it for the candidates who are opposed to labor’s best interests. What good does it do workers to help elect people who are going to oppose labor’s needs? The reformist Democratic Socialists of America habitually wade around in the Democratic Party swamp for titbits from their masters; table. Its arguments on the question of Biden’s pro-capitalist position can be summed up by: ignore it. Expectations of real gains are possible under present-day capitalism, through Biden and the Democratic Party are very wrong. Socialists know that the Democratic and Republican parties are both capitalist parties, enemies of the working class, black, brown and white. The Republican Party openly represents the hard-liner businessmen. The Democrats represent the more liberal capitalists.

The Democrats yield some reforms, lest the resistance of mass struggles threaten the capitalist system itself. The Democratic Party has never been the source of popular gains. However, the Democratic Party was the channel through which gains won were grudgingly distributed. And voting power within the party did affect the apportionment of the concessions disbursed. When Biden invites working people to vote him, he promises that  support a piece of the pie, appropriate to the size of vote on offer. The DSA, on the other hand, echoes Biden’s strategy, only voicing in slightly more leftist language.

Workers can’t be led to socialism led by the lure of little pieces of bait along the way. They must reject the Democratic Party and capitalism in general.