No to US Twin Parties of War, Racism and Poverty!

Oct 1, 2024 | by Jeff Mackler

The two multi-billionaire-backed, 2024 presidential candidates faced off before some 67 million ABC-TV viewers on September 10. Pollsters recorded that Democrat Kamala Harris handily “won” the debate by a 66-34 margin. The New York Times’ fact checkers found that Republican Donald Trump lied or distorted facts 33 times; Harris made but one slightly inaccurate statement, said The Times, a Harris supporter.

In truth, both candidates lied by omission, as is the norm with all capitalist elections. Indeed, whoever is elected, the fundamental decisions that govern the capitalist state’s affairs are made behind the scenes, in the leading corporate boardrooms where the nation’s elite assign their representatives to craft the annual $7 trillion 4,000-page US budget that guarantees their interests. These include annual $trillions for the war machine and the US “national security state,” and enormous corporate tax gifts made by a few pen strokes in the unseen tax codes.

All working class candidates are, for all practical purposes, excluded. Even “left” capitalist reformers like Jill Stein (Greens) and Cornel West (“independent”) are mostly eased off the ballot. Indeed, both Stein and West, with zero working class base, have regularly advocated “lesser evil” votes for Democrats in “contested states.” 

Democrats brag of US military’s dominant “Lethal” power

“Lethal” was the term Kamala Harris chose versus Donald Trump on Sept. 20, referring to the US military-industrial complex. With that single word she indicated that she is fully prepared to rain death and destruction, crippling sanctions, endless wars of intervention and occupation, drone wars, special operation wars and assassination wars on any country that threatens US imperial interests. She assured her rich backers of her absolute fealty to Zionist Israel’s ongoing genocidal war against Palestine and the West Bank, as well as to the US proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

She also made clear that she would place no obstacles to the US fossil fuel industry’s profits and especially to their massive and deadly fracking operations that made US corporations the greatest natural gas exporters and the biggest polluters in the world.  Both ruling class parties are equally committed to funding 1,100 US military bases in 110 countries.

The truth behind bipartisan US immigration policy

The explanation for the rise in immigrants “illegally” entering the US is the imperialist destruction of the economies of many Latin American countries, including the instigation of military coups, installation of dictators, massive corporate theft of land and natural resources, the imposition of devastating economic sanctions, embargoes and blockades.

The truth is that US capitalists are the prime beneficiaries of the often below-minimum-wage labour of immigrant Latin American workers who are hired, in the millions, in agriculture and other usually non-union, monopoly capitalist sectors. 

The right to abortion

The Democrats today try to score debaters points on the right to abortion, but their presidential candidate offered no explanation why every Democratic Party administration, even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency, failed to approve federal legislation that guaranteed the right of women to control their bodies. For 50 years Democrats failed to overturn the reactionary Hyde Amendment that blocks the use of federal funds (Medicare and Medicaid) for abortion. Before Hyde some 300,000 women, mostly poor and minority, used federal funds to access abortion. After Hyde the figure dropped to near zero! 

Racism is profitable in capitalist America

In the US, every form of discrimination is employed to deflect attention from the inherent consequences of a capitalist economic system based on the exploitation of human labor for profit. Pitting one section of the working class against another – Black, Latinx and Native American against whites, immigrants against citizens, documented against undocumented, legal against “illegal,” men against women and LGBTQI folks – that is the capitalist norm. Today, Fortune 500 corporations “employ”, at an average of 50 cents per hour, millions of near slave labor prisoners in the increasingly privatized for-profit prisoner-industrial complex. We demand, “Open the borders!” “No human being is illegal!” and “Full rights and citizenship for all!”

Capitalism’s multiple crises

Working people have zero interest in supporting any capitalist candidate or party. “Lesser evil” politics have proven to be the graveyard of all fighting social movements. The future of humanity resides in the capacity of working people to build our own independent, mass fighting organizations, including a mass, democratic, fighting Labor Party, capable of challenging capitalist rule at the point of production and in the political arena. To advance this goal join Socialist Action! socialistaction.org