An interesting analysis by Marxism-Leninism Today.
The 2016
elections reflect the deepening crisis of the capitalist economic
system in general and the US political party system in particular.
The
Democratic primary contests are over. Sanders has endorsed Clinton.
Supporters of Bernie Sanders are being prodded to accept meekly the
corporate Democrat Hillary Clinton as the Lesser Evil.
Some suggest
that this foreshadows, by some alchemy, a “resounding progressive
mandate,” someday.
For example,
The Nation magazine, a liberal bastion that supported Sanders,
unfurls the white flag of surrender (June 22-27):
“A
Democratic Party that incorporates and embraces the ideals of the
Sanders campaign and the people who supported it will be better
positioned to defeat Donald Trump in November – and to govern the
country with resounding progressive mandate in the years to come .”
This is
magical thinking. Already, at the Democratic Party Platform drafting
meeting in Orlando, Florida, the Sanders’ positions on issues
such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Palestinian rights, and
single-payer healthcare have been rebuffed by the Clintonites.
Yet, there is
an opportunity in this moment. Worsening social discontent sparked
insurgencies in both major parties. With the narrowing differences
between the two monopoly parties, the received wisdom, “Vote for
the Lesser Evil” makes less and less sense to ordinary voters, let
alone to Sanders supporters.
The
Revolt Came
In the 2016
primary season, something new happened. The voter response to Trump
and to Sanders represented a new level of mass disaffection from this
system and from politics as usual.
Everyone knew
voter anger had to come, sooner or later. Forty years of stagnant or
declining wages, the export of jobs and de-industrialization, growing
inequality, police violence against Black youth, mass incarceration,
attacks on unions and labor rights, rolling back the social safety
net, endless wars, the 2008 Great Recession and the halting recovery,
gridlock in Congress, growing poverty and insecurity --- all have
altered the consciousness of tens of millions.
Voter anger
has finally found political expression at the ballot box.
The way anger
has been expressed is not symmetric. In the case of the Democrats,
Bernie Sanders -- against the anointed corporate Democrat
opponent -- offered a version of Scandinavian social democracy.
Political independence was no part of his plan. From the start he
pledged to support the eventual Democratic nominee. To his credit he
moved leftward on a number of important issues. His campaign inspired
sections of the Democratic base especially youth. Sanders wound up
with 12 million votes in the primaries, compared to 16 million for
Clinton.
Progressive/liberal
insurgencies in the Democratic Party are not new: Ted Kennedy against
Jimmy Carter in 1980; Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988; Howard Dean in
2004; Dennis Kucinich in 2004 and 2008. In all cases the insurgency
petered out. Most Democrats ended up voting for the Democratic
nominee, seemingly a “Lesser Evil” than a thoroughly reactionary
Republican candidate.
The
Democratic Party establishment knows how to corral stray sheep.
Conferences
are being organized where Sanders activists can let off steam, but
the conference agenda, on inspection, merely airs a wish list of
progressive public policies. The agenda does not include concrete
ideas on how to organize for political independence of the two
corporate parties. That would
be a conference worth organizing. At one large conference in Chicago,
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was refused permission
to address the gathering.
The Clinton
camp and its surrogates seek to stampede Sanders's supporters back
into the fold, for example, with talk of Trump's “fascism” or his
“McCarthyism,” or the unspeakable horror of “losing” the US
Supreme Court.
Equal
Evils
The Lesser
Evil argument has never been weaker than it is now.
This
new fact is all-important. If,
at the presidential level,[1] the
two big parties are equally evil, then it is incumbent on
progressives to begin systematic political work for independence of
the two-party system.
Trump and
Clinton are equally evil, but in different ways. On domestic issues
(except trade), Trump is obviously worse than Clinton, but on foreign
policy Clinton is demonstrably more dangerous than Trump.
Trump
represents a long US tradition of right-wing populism that mingles
racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and isolationism with nostalgia for
a golden past. Right-wing populism combines attacks on socially
oppressed groups with distorted forms of anti-elitism based on
scapegoating. Recent examples are George Wallace in the 1960s and
1970s, and Patrick Buchanan in the 1990s. In the 1930s, the movement
led by anti-Semitic radio priest Father Coughlin was an example of
right-wing populism.
A
Shaken Political Party System
Political
parties have a class character. Parties are the expression of social
classes. They are one of the most important instruments by which
classes fight for their interests and for political power. In the US
today, the ruling class has two parties, the Republicans and the
Democrats. To be sure, their mass base differs, but what is decisive
is their funders and their controlling personnel who share the
outlook and serve the needs of the same ruling class, but by means of
different tactics.
If both
parties are capitalist parties, how do we explain the conflicts
within them? Both the Trump and Sanders revolts reflect popular anger
at the way the leaders of both parties have blatantly served
capitalist interests while sacrificing the interests of working
people. While capitalizing on this anger, neither Trump's racism and
isolationism nor Sanders’ social democracy threatens capitalism,
but both men do threaten certain corporate and party interests. This
accounts for the panic and desertion of Trump among certain
Republicans and the panic and wooing of Sanders and his supporters
among certain Democrats
The class
nature of the two parties of monopoly capital, always denied by them,
becomes clear in a crisis and on fundamental political questions. In
a “normal “ situation one party may follow a policy of maneuver
and concessions to the people. The Democratic Party for most of the
twentieth century vied for the allegiance of workers and minorities,
conceding small reforms to maintain that coalition.
The other
party, the Republicans, usually rules with strongly reactionary
methods and works toward strongly reactionary goals.
Deep down,
the two parties are, in the end, owned by the rich and powerful, by
giant corporations and banks. They are committed to preserving
existing economic and social relations.
Rightward
Movement and Narrowing Differences
Since the
late 1970s there has been a twofold evolution in the US party
system. The two dominant US parties have both moved rightward and
have both moved closer together --- at least on the fundamental
issues. Admittedly, differences remain on ‘social’ issues.
The monopoly
stranglehold has become even more blatant now after the 2010
“Citizens United” decision by the US Supreme Court. The ruling
removed constraints on billionaires’ secretive funding of
elections. In 2016, so far, Democrat Hillary Clinton is the
overwhelming favorite of Wall Street funders.
The rightward
drift of both major parties of US monopoly capital first came into
view with sharpening capitalist crisis and the collapse of
Keynesianism in the mid-1970s. More rightward movement came with the
rise of Reaganism and Thatcherism in the early 1980s.
The
differences between the two parties of Big Business have narrowed,
beginning with President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. The
Democratic Party abandoned any pretense of being the party trying to
complete the unfinished New Deal agenda, which it tried to do, to
some extent in the Kennedy-Johnson years. In 1981 Reagan took over
most of Carter’s economic program.
In the 1990s
self-styled “New Democrat” Bill Clinton and his Democratic
Leadership Council were at the heart of the remaking of the
Democratic Party. Over time, the Democratic Party became the “GOP
lite” party that it now is.
World
historical factors were the backdrop to these trends in the US party
system. The downfall of so many socialist states in 1989-91, and the
end of an alternative social system competing for the loyalties of
working people, took away much of the appeal of a two-party system to
US ruling circles. Since the end of the New Deal they had been
satisfied with a stable formula for their rule: a conservative
center-right party, the Republicans, alternating in government with a
mildly reformist center-left party, the Democrats.
The
Waning Influence of Lesser Evilism
A US working
class voter, at least up until recently, may have reasoned,
plausibly, that social pain might be somewhat less sharp with a
Democrat in the White House rather than a Republican. Such a voter
might cast a "Lesser Evil" vote.
Marxism,
however, maintains a longer-range strategic class viewpoint as its
North Star. First, Marxism does not regard electoral politics as the
whole of politics. Second, Marxism’s unique contribution is to
inject a class viewpoint into all politics. In electoral politics,
this means an end to US working class dependence on the two monopoly
parties.
Socialism
means rule by the working class and a revolutionary remaking of
society. A working class always settling for the Lesser Evil cannot
win socialism. For Marxists, to accept “common sense” reasoning
about which candidate or party is somewhat less evil is completely
indefensible. Lesser evilism drives people back into the two-party
fold. Lesser evilism always results in the working class lining up
behind one or another party of the ruling class.
As long as
they are bound to Big Business' political chariot, working people
cannot win any fundamental victories. Political independence, based
on the action of the labor movement in the first place, is a
prerequisite. The monopolies have long understood labor's potential
as the core of an anti-monopoly electoral coalition. Big Business
uses every possible method to keep labor from building its own
political and electoral organizations.
Is Trump such
a danger that Clinton must be supported?
Trump is bad,
but he is not a fascist. Marxism has a time-tested, scientific
definition of fascism: “Fascism is the open, terrorist
dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist, most
imperialist elements of finance capital.” The decisive
test is not Trump’s statements (often contradictory) nor the
thuggish actions of some of his followers.
Rather, the
key test is the class forces behind Trump. As of
this writing (early July 2016) his populism and unpredictability have
scared off much of Wall Street and other big donors, as well as the
Republican Party political establishment. Some have been frightened
even into supporting Clinton. She is getting generous help from Wall
Street.
Another test
is the historical circumstances. Unlike in Germany in
the early 1930s, where revolution was a possibility,
US capitalism is not in any existential crisis. State power is not
slipping out of the hands of the representatives of Wall Street.
True, the Republican Party is in a bit of a shambles. It remains to
be seen whether the revolt of the mass base of the Republican Party
in the 2016 primaries will have lasting effects.
Is the
composition of the US Supreme Court reason enough to support Hillary
Clinton? Only if one believes US lives are more important than
the lives of the innocents abroad who will continue to die under a
Hillary Clinton foreign policy.
Clinton has a
proven record as a war criminal and interventionist, as the peoples
of Libya, Syria, Iraq, Honduras and elsewhere know well. She has been
more than willing to sacrifice the interests of workers and
minorities in our country to the interests of Wall Street and the
transnational corporations.
Accordingly,
there is no Lesser Evil in these two presidential choices.
What
is the Way Forward for Sanders’s Supporters?
Supporting
Hillary Clinton is not the way forward.
Corporate
control of Hillary Clinton's actions will trump any minor changes
that Sanders' supporters were able to place in the Democratic Party
Platform.
Bernie
Sanders's supporters can further progressive change by increasing
pressure from the Left, by strengthening existing forms of political
independence outside the two major parties. By
“independence,” it goes without saying, class independence
is meant -- independence of Big Business financing and control.
US history
teaches that major new political parties are born when a crisis
causes a mass breakaway from old party allegiances and when advanced
forces have patiently prepared the way. The best example: the
Abolitionists and their allies, after unwisely abstaining from
electoral politics, experimented with party after party – the
Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party, eventually the Republican Party.
By the late
1850s the crisis over slavery reached a breaking point. Old political
parties, such as the Whigs, the Democrats, and the “Know Nothings,”
disintegrated or split over the slavery question. But the
anti-slavery coalition was ready: it had a candidate, Lincoln, a
central demand -- no extension of slavery into the territories -- and
a party, the Republicans.
The struggle
against corporate power in the 21st century
is akin to the struggle against the power of the slave owners in the
19th century. The supreme task now is to build a mass people’s
party that will curb corporate power. It cannot be done without an
organized revolutionary vanguard. The Abolitionists were such a
vanguard in their era. A Marxist-Leninist party will be in this era.
Time will
tell whether a mass breakaway from old party allegiances is under
way.
Regardless,
Sanders supporters can and should organize for independence now.
It will be a difficult long-term task. Many questions have no
easy answers: how to move the working class and the other core class
and social forces for radical change, some still mired in Lesser
Evilism, to higher ground.
By rejecting
Hillary Clinton as Lesser Evil and, most importantly, by resolving to
build political independence, Sanders campaign activists and
supporters can make 2016 a year of genuine “political revolution.”
-End-
[1] The
question of the lower reaches of the Democratic Party, where,
arguably, corporate power is not decisive, needs to be evaluated more
fully and concretely.
How
Hillary Clinton Ignores Peace, July 2, 2016, by Robert Parry.
