By Richard Mellor in California
Here in the US, workers, those of us who sell our labour power for wages as opposed to those who buy it, the capitalists, have no political voice. We have no mass party of our own that is based on workers’ organizations, our communities and class allies. There have been local parties of this nature, but no national mass party.
Instead, working people and other sections of society and marginalized communities without organized political expression, have been forced to gain some influence electorally though the former party of the US slaveocracy, the Democrats. I have heard it said that it is an accident of history that the Democratic Party found itself in power during the two greatest upsurges of the US working class in modern times, the rise and founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement or Black Revolt that followed.
Good cop, bad cop
Needless to say, the Democratic Party is the now the other capitalist party and along with the Republican Party has played the role of good cop bad cop in US society. The Republicans playing the bad cop, more openly anti-worker, outwardly pro-business, with the Democrats claiming to be the friend of workers, (of the labour hierarchy especially) and whenever the working class goes on the offensive, sucking these movements into its orbit where they can be rendered harmless and prevented from developing in to an independent political party for workers and the poor.
Like the good-cop-bad-cop scenario, one beats you, the other restrains them somewhat and gives you a smoke, but they are both after the same results.
Support for these two parties of big business has waned dramatically over the years to the point that in 2016, close to 100 million US voters opted out of the process altogether. The moribund leadership atop organized labour still clings desperately to the Democrats, hoping to get some crumbs from the rich man’s table. They need something to pacify the troops and keep themselves in their lucrative positions, ignoring the fact that a considerable percentage of their members long ago abandoned the party they foist upon them. The alternative, is too frightening.
Voting is not an exercise in civics; it’s like paying union dues: if it doesn’t produce better material conditions, why bother? Millions of US workers are disgusted with the two political parties and it is clear that the era in which these two parties have dominated US political life is coming to an end.
This process has played a big part in the rise of the degenerate Trump. Trump is such a distasteful character, a racist, a misogynist, a right-wing ideologue, that politicians in the “other” capitalist party are now being painted as saviours of the working class, despite being as complicit in the driving down of wages and working conditions, not to mention cutting public services and jobs and supporting a murderous US foreign policy. US workers have suffered under both parties.
This does not mean there aren’t differences, just not on the fundamentals. “…People who work on Wall Street are good citizens who want their country to change…I want to generate a lot of millionaires…”, Bill Clinton told Business Week in March 1992. And in an interview with same magazine three years later, Vice-President Al Gore was asked,“Republicans want to kill five Cabinet agencies. You still seem to be tinkering at the edges. Can’t you find one department to eliminate?” Gore responded “Cabinet departments don’t get created by accident. Below that level, there are many agencies that we have eliminated. In one year, we downsized by 100,000 employees. We have locked in place plans to eliminate another 200,000 workers. That’s a bold start.”(January, 1995, my emphasis)
The imbecile Bush
Gore didn’t even have to courage to fight for presidency against the imbecile Bush. He was no doubt pressured not to discredit the system, not to expose its flaws and take one for the class.
In the Trump era, even the war criminal and mass murderer George W Bush has become cuddly and is now a close friend of the Obamas. Michelle Obama, one of the most popular figures in the US, calls him her “friend” and “partner in crime”. Class solidarity is strong with these folks.
Could you imagine putting yourself in the position of hugging the guy who willingly participated in the slaughter of a million Iraqis?
President Obama was no friend of the working class, particularly in the former colonial world. He recently used his influence to get the striking NBA players back on the court.
Let’s have no illusions
I understand the desire to rid ourselves of the deviant Trump but please, let’s have no illusions here.
I live in California, which is called at times, a “One-Party State” as the Democrats have such political power here. The Democratic Party has what we call a supermajority in the legislature and the governor is a Democrat. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Gavin Newsom is the dashing young millionaire at the helm. He is much more than that of course: like all of the politicians in the two capitalist parties he’s very wealthy by any worker’s standards, worth about $20 million. He’s an investor and businessman. This is to be expected; we live in a capitalist democracy not a wage workers’ democracy. Don’t forget, Athenian Democracy, so revered by western historians was a slave-owner’s democracy: slaves didn’t get to vote.
BLM movement erupts
Despite this, with the Black Lives Matter Movement erupting in response to the disproportionate murder of black people by the police and the call for the defunding of the police force and shifting monies toward social needs, Democratic California, with this so-called supermajority in the legislature, has so far failed to pass and in some cases even bring up, some of the popular proposals aimed at reforming the police. The excuse is that the police unions are too powerful and are major funders of Democratic and Republican Party candidates.
The media points out that this is the case with all unions. But this is not true. Police unions are not the same and anyway, despite all the talk of “big Labour” and propaganda that organized labour has more political clout than it does, union wages and benefits have continued to decline and even with the $15-hour victories this is a very small gain and still a poverty wage in California. Housing and rents are exorbitant and transportation as well as health care are still costly or out of reach for many.
This comes as no surprise; under Jimmy Carter’s four years, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency, yet not one piece of legislation important to organized labour was passed. Carter used the Taft-Hartley Act against the miners in 1978.
In the first two years of the Clinton Administration, the Democrats were in the same position. Clinton pushed through NAFTA, threw people off welfare, often into public sector jobs without representation, union wages and benefits. Remember, Clinton bombed a factory in Egypt producing vital medicines, the only one of its kind. I flew from Vienna to Skopje in the late 1990s and I witnessed all the destruction along the beautiful Blue Danube in Clinton’s war.
Greater federal deficit
We all saw the recently-released figures on the federal deficit and how by next year it will be greater than the value the country produces, not to mention the trade deficit that Trump’s tariffs were supposed to eliminate. Tariffs, or any nation “first” even for the powerful US, is a recipe for disaster in an integrated world economy, Smoot-Hawley is evidence of that. But they can’t help themselves.
This pandemic and the pathogen that has caused it as well as many others, are the product of capitalist production, of how we produce and raise food, in short, how we organize production in general in a global capitalist society.
The US government has thrown trillions at the economy to prop up the capitalist system. The economy must be saved at all costs: that’s how capitalism works.
While there is no doubt some concessions will be made, it is inconceivable that it will not be the working class and the poor who will pay for this crisis. We always do. There is money being thrown at the black colleges and black capitalism, in order to strengthen the black middle class as a buffer that can temper or hold back the revolutionary potential of the black working class that ignited and led the recent protests. Even the billionaires that run Blackhawk, the largest private equity company in the world love black people now.
The power of the police unions
The politicians in California, claiming that it is the power of the police unions that is preventing them from clipping their wings, are being disingenuous (This is how educated people call each other liars). The police is an armed force, a security agency whose main function is to defend capitalist property relations and the stability of the state and for the majority of the capitalist class, Trump’s approach is a threat to that stability.
As the assault on workers has intensified over the decades, we have seen the militarization of the police, in order to prepare for events that are unfolding now.
They may change the name, make some cosmetic changes, but the ruling class will neither defund, nor abolish this force. This is why a discussion on the police in their present form is important. We need to offer an alternative; how would public safety be maintained in our communities and what we would replace this force with, in a transitional period, and in the creation of a new social order.
We must not lose sight of the fact that they will be coming to us for payment in the period ahead and there will be a serious reluctance to comply after dragging capitalism from the abyss in 2008. They will resort to racism, xenophobia, and other divide-and-rule strategies, including from those who claim to oppose them now. There will be periods of violence, steps forward and steps back; that is an integral aspect of warfare and made more likely by the absence of any cohesive national leadership or political party. But leaders are born in struggle, great lessons are learned and class consciousness strengthened.
The world has changed and we are in for some major class clashes ahead.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
September 7, 2020
