US Capitalism Emerges Unscathed from 2024 Elections
by Jeff Mackler
Lessons to be learned
For those on the left who struggle for a better world, agreement with the above propositions is the essential starting point. Neither capitalist party can be reformed in any significant way. By definition they exist to advance and defend the interests of the ruling elite.
Working people need our own independent political party, but not just any kind of party conjured up and announced by well-meaning activists, but a special type of party. Here we refer to a trade union-based Labor Party, a working class party based on independent fighting unions democratically organized and controlled by workers at the workplace, and nationally – a party whose program and activities are determined by the rank-and-file. Today, to be frank, no such party exists, not even the nucleus of a class struggle left wing that aims to build such a party. Indeed, today’s labor movement stands at the lowest point in the modern era, representing barely six percent of the private sector workforce. Today’s bureaucratic mis-leadership is largely corrupt and a virtual appendage to the Democrats, if not the Republicans. It is largely exempt from rank-and-file control; union elections are limited to the exclusive purview of the existing, largely corrupt mis-leaders, a privileged layer whose salaries and “benefits” often parallel corporate executives. The ruling class prefers it that way, not infrequently investigating and imprisoning corrupt union leadership, especially when the rare few, for whatever reason, decide to travel the class struggle road.
No doubt the above is a pessimistic, yet honest assessment of the state of today’s unions. But history repeatedly demonstrates that in times of struggle and fightback, working people strive to recapture, democratize, rebuild and qualitatively expand their working class-based organizations, if not organize news ones. Militant workers invariably place the most honest, courageous and unifying leaders in leading positions. There are no shortcuts to this way forward. But there are several key issues that the construction of new fighting democratic unions must confront.
Inclusion of the oppressed and exploited in rejuvenated unions
Key among them is that fighting, democratic unions must strive to include as equals in every respect all the oppressed and exploited, especially immigrant workers and workers of the oppressed nationalities. That Harris and Trump threatened to persecute, if not massively deport immigrant workers, fostering the idea that immigrants take jobs from US citizens, informs us that capitalism’s twin racist parties benefit from dividing workers, pitting one against the other, knowing full well that the mere existence of the lowest paid non-union workers inevitably exerts a downward pressure on the wages and conditions of the unionized.
Serious trade union activists understand full well that only a united, democratically organized, inclusive trade union movement is capable of challenging ruling class prerogatives. Again, history repeatedly demonstrates this elementary proposition. “United we stand: divided we fall.”
Opposition to US imperialist war
Capitalism’s twin parties are united in pursuing genocide against the Palestinian people as they are united in pursuing US war and intervention for capitalist profit across the globe. Simply put, “War is good for profits” under capitalism, no matter if US imperialism wins or loses. Some $1.3 trillion are budgeted annually to line the coffers of the ruling elite, who own and control the military-industrial establishment. For them, endless war means endless profits. Given the near-monopoly control of the few corporations that comprise this industry, the highest near astronomical profits, are near guaranteed, profits that exceed the cost of production often more that a thousand fold. A future article will more than adequately document this basic truth.
Working people have zero interest in supporting US imperialist wars anywhere on earth. Today, the majority of the world’s people, including in the US, oppose the US-backed genocidal slaughter of the Palestinian people.
[Editor’s note: Residents of Cunningham Township in Illinois, which comprises most of the City of Urbana, home to the University of Illinois, voted on November 5, 2024, on a non-binding ballot measure calling for an end to funding the Israeli military. It passed by a margin of 70 percent to 30 percent, winning by as much as 82 percent of the vote in every one of the 23 Cunningham Township precincts. The ballot measure read: “Shall the United States federal government and subordinate divisions stop giving military funding to Israel, which currently costs taxpayers 3.8 billion dollars a year, given Israel’s global recognition as an apartheid regime with a track record of human rights violations?”]
Yet despite majority national US opposition, according to all polls, the war continues, now expanding to Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran. One can only imagine the result if referenda like the one in Urbana Illinois referenced above, were on the ballot across the country. In the US, of course, working people never have the opportunity, not to mention the right to vote on the critical issues of our time, including war itself. Again, this is restricted to the ruling class elite.
Lessons of the Vietnam War era
During the Vietnam War era, the antiwar movement often organized to place antiwar propositions on the ballot. Towards the latter years of the war, when 78 percent of the US population supported the demand, “US Out Now!,” these referenda invariably passed, dramatically exposing the contradiction between the will of the vast majority and the warmongering profiteering ruling class elite. The results of these popular antiwar referenda were no doubt influenced by a mass movement that took to the streets in unprecedented united front type, democratically-organized mass protests in the millions demanding an end to the US genocidal horrors in Vietnam, that slaughtered 4 million Vietnamese, not to mention some 57,000 US troops.
Democratic united front antiwar coalitions
Today’s antiwar movement can benefit from this experience, that is, the organization of nationally coordinated, democratically-organized united front type coalitions to bring millions into the streets demanding an end to the US-backed Zionist genocide in Palestine, not to mention to related demands like “$Trillions for jobs, education and healthcare not war.”
Millions united in the streets in legal peaceful protests, not to mentions millions more, united around every critical social issue – systemic racism, racist police murder, poverty, sexism, LGBTQI discrimination, global warming, etc., has the potential to raise mass consciousness and threaten ruling class stability itself. In point of fact, every critical social gain in the modern era has been won in struggle against the capitalist status quo and never at the largess of the imperialist exploiters. This includes the fundamental right to form trade unions, the legal outlawing of institutional racial discrimination and overt discrimination against women, not to mention the forced US withdrawal from Vietnam, allowing the Vietnamese people their right to self-determination and freedom. Today, with the US maintaining 1100 military bases in some 110 countries, this fundamental right to self-determination is essentially denied to a vast proportion of the world’s people.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass said it well, Power concedes nothing without a demand.” We would add that our demands point to a counter power only when they are accompanied by millions and in the streets, millions that physically imply massive majority support, millions that imply in their unity and mass actions the will to begin to challenge the foundations of the capitalist system itself.
The revolutionary socialist party
Here we must add a very special issue for all those who seek fundamental social and political change, that is, the conscious construction of a revolutionary socialist party. In our view a revolutionary socialist party is akin to a scientific institution. It stands on the record of achievements of past scientific advances in endeavors to uncover the basic laws of nature, whether they be the laws of biology, physics or mathematics. A revolutionary socialist party aims to embody in its program, history, activities and members, the lessons of all past struggles for human freedom and liberation, including the lessons and defeats of past revolutionary efforts to challenge capitalist rule. Revolutionary socialists in the Marxist and Leninist-Trotskyist tradition base themselves on the view that capitalist exploitation, war, racism and sexism are inherent in the system itself. The replacement of this system by a democratic, egalitarian socialist society based on a democratically organized working class majority-owned, controlled and planned economy is our goal. Socialism is a new society founded on production for human need not capitalist profit. In a socialist society technological and scientific advance would automatically bring on a reduced work week with no cut in pay, that is, a society with ever-increasing leisure time to enjoy the benefits of art, culture, free education, etc. Under capitalism, technology and the very nature of capitalist production for profit, bring on ever increasing misery, unemployment, speedup, exploitation and wars of context. A revolutionary socialist party aims to organize and win the vast majority to challenge minority capitalist rule. History has demonstrated with zero exceptions that no minority ruling class in human history has ever voluntarily relinquished its power to rule. In the face of massive organized opposition to its rule it has always resorted to violent repression. Defense against and defeat of this repression requires a deeply rooted mass revolutionary party that has won the allegiance of the vast majority, including the broad working class, the soldiers in the military the oppressed nationalities and all others who interests coincide with working people in struggle for a better world.
