“Defend me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies myself.” – Marshal General of France, Claude Villars.
Instead of voting for the lesser evil of two capitalist candidates, we need to participate in activism and above all, unity and organization. Rather than work towards the end of the capitalist economy, the left liberals and progressives within the Democratic Party are striving to be the saviors of capitalism. They no longer pretend to struggle against capital and are now advocating for a corporate politician. The gap between them and the interest of the workers grows wider. They have become the cheer-leaders for the Democratic party-machine.
Congress is a body dominated by sectional economic interests, of special group interests and by no means the representative of the people. It is not a truly democratic institution. What people do these “representative of the people” represent? Congress is today a hierarchical political body composed of the two capitalist political parties. The candidates are picked by the party bosses. The parties are dominated by big business. The people have no power except to vote for machine candidates selected in the board-rooms of the corporations. There is no choice for workers in this election. Capitalism is a system that offers no future for workers of any color. Workers of all color have a stake in the struggle.
Political theorists, news commentators and political columnists have expounded their views on what is good or bad about Trump and Biden. The real task of the day is the breaking away of the American workers from dependency upon the political parties of the economic ruling class to weaken their political dominance. Ending deeply held political illusions is the first steps forward to socialism. Working people must make use of democratic rights under capitalism to build their own organizations of struggle.
The Constitution established the rule of property; that it was imposed upon the people by the minority ruling class of a century and a quarter ago for the express purpose of keeping the propertyless majority in subjugation and slavery. A democracy in name and form — a despotism in substance and fact. The government, its constitutions and its statutes, its courts, its legislatures, and its armies are institutions under class rule, expressly designed to establish the supremacy of one class and to dominate another class. The Constitution is a class instrument, inspired by class interests, With the end of class rule political government will cease to exist. Its functions, which are essentially coercive, will no longer be required. Politicians and legislators are today the representatives, not of the people, but of the capitalist class. The administration in Washington, whether the Democratic and Republican Parties is opposed to both political and industrial democracy. They are owned by the capitalist class and stand for the interests of the capitalist class. Abraham Lincoln once said, “The man before the dollar” but today, it is the mankind on bended knee before the dollar. The dollar counts for everything, men and women for nothing. The capitalist system is founded upon the principle that money is of more value than people. Human life is not taken into account by capitalism.
American wage-slaves have not won the “inalienable right of life, liberty, and happiness,” because their opportunity to earn the necessities of “life, liberty, and happiness” can be taken from them by the owners of industry, and is taken from them whenever the owners of industry are unable to make profits for themselves from the labor of the workers. The Republican Party stands for the unrestrained exploitation of the workers. The Democratic Party has taken a similar position.
The general impression that the US economy does better under Republicans than Democrats is long-standing. But the facts do not support it. In the 16 complete presidential terms since the second world war, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, annual GDP growth averaged 4.3% under Democratic presidents, versus 2.5% under Republicans. The president is only one of many influences on the economy. Luck also plays a big role. One might choose to exclude 2020 from Trump’s record, for example, on the grounds that the coronavirus was just bad luck. Trump has been trying to convince voters that Biden would introduce radical leftist policies if elected. Biden has explicitly rejected these policies, and won the Democratic nomination as a moderate.
There is, in fact, only one solution for the workers of the entire world. It is socialism! For the root of its evil is the ever-present hunt for profits, the capitalist social order. Only socialism can destroy this evil. Only a society in which the means of life belong to the people, in which class rule and class exploitation are forever barred, can bring genuine and lasting political, social and economic freedom to all of mankind, no matter their color, no matter where they may be.
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