By Richard Mellor in California
We have stressed on our blog, Facts For Working People, that the era in which the two parties of capitalism dominated US political life is coming to an end. The comments from many of today’s capitalist commentators confirm this and cannot stop it.
US capitalism is in an economic, social, and political crisis. Peggy Noonan, a columnist in the Wall Street Journal, wrote: “Not only do the elites not understand the electorate and the press does not understand the electorate, and the pollsters don’t understand the electorate, but neither of the two parties understands the electorate.” The two parties do not represent the “electorate”.
Political parties have a class content. The right to vote was dragged out of the US capitalist class by workers and all specially oppressed peoples.
Native Americas received the right to vote in 1924, though were still barred from doing so until 1948. In 1887, Native Americans that were willing to detach themselves from their tribe were given the right to vote. After the US revolution, the right to vote was limited to white males who owned property, amounting to about 6 or 7 percent of the population. Property qualifications were eventually removed for white males.
The great betrayal after ‘emancipation’
After the Great Betrayal of 1877, when the Northern troops were pulled from the occupied South under a deal between the two capitalist parties, the Southern White Confederate power returned and the Jim Crow era began as state laws, generally supported by the federal government, were introduced marginalizing the Black population from society (and some whites). Where laws couldn’t prevail, like the poll tax laws, violence, intimidation and mass murder were the norm.
So Biden’s talk of voting being “sacred” is nonsense. As I wrote in the previous post:
The Marx that these forces love to demonize wrote of the state or government being the “executive committee” of the capitalist class, overseeing the interests of the class as a whole. Its institutions are sacred; its political system the only form of governance that works. Trump has threatened that since he warned during the debate with Hillary Clinton when he said he might not accept the results of an election. The US ruling class let out a collective gasp at this possibility.
This is what is happening as this election plays out. Will Trump leave? If he doesn’t, they will remove him. It is my personal opinion they will make a deal with him and tell him to go away. It is the safest way. To war with Trump will undermine the capitalist system and their precious political institutions further.The capitalist class has not lost control and won’t cede it to Trump and his allies.
The battle against the capitalist offensive will continue now under Biden and that “other” capitalist party.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original, and other material on the US election, can be found here.
November 9, 2020
