By COOPER BARD
The first 2024 presidential debate showed an incompetent current leader and a charlatan, both delivering exaggerations and lies. The one could only speak nonsense about immigration and other issues, and the other could barely speak at all.
Now that Harris and Walz have been selected as replacement candidates on the Democratic ticket, to face off against Trump and Vance, our options hardly appear more inspiring.
The Democratic and Republican parties claim that the 2024 presidential election is the most important election of all time—as they say about every election. The two parties have a vested interest in preserving the illusion that they represent strongly opposed forms of political rule, rather than two varieties of the rule of the capitalist class, which differ merely in degrees.
The capitalists, for their part, weigh the pros and cons of either potential administration from the perspective of their own class interests, with the understanding that neither administration would have the intention of attacking capitalism. The media’s focus on the personality (or lack thereof) of the given candidates distracts from the essentially similar pro-capitalist policies that they represent. This system also sustains and in turn is sustained by a “culture war” rhetoric that distracts working people from their real exploiters and enemies, the millionaires and billionaires.
This political duopoly has the goal of drawing in first one section, then another section, of the working masses into an electoral battle, thus causing them to withdraw from the mass struggles that could bring real change.
Workers’ Voice proposes action to bring about a system that would be genuinely different, based on the rule of the working class. This requires political groups representing workers and their allies to function independently of big money politics and xenophobic narrowness, and to rely on the strength of international workers’ solidarity.
And it requires breaking with the two capitalist parties of war and exploitation. There is good reason to think that if an uncompromising and class-independent party—based in the unions and the struggle in the streets—were to emerge to contest the two-party system, then millions of workers who are currently apathetic to politics would flock to its banners.
Election apathy and barriers to democracy
One aspect that speaks to the need for a class-independent alternative is the pronounced apathy for elections in the United States. For example, while the 2020 presidential elections had the highest turnout since 1900, still only 66% of eligible voters cast votes. Millions of people who could legally vote either were not registered or chose not to politically support the duopoly. No doubt many thought it would make no real difference. Additionally, midterm elections haven’t gained more than half of the total eligible vote since the beginning of the last century.
This lack of participation, however, is not a threat to the capitalist system. If the working class largely does not participate in elections, it will in no way affect the political outcome—one of two capitalist alternatives.
In fact, there are millions of workers who for numerous reasons are barred from voting. Contrary to Trump’s incoherent ramblings, the Democrats do not, and cannot, “import immigrants” to win elections. The vast majority of migrants who arrive in the U.S., despite finding employment, have no right to vote. The Democrats, and the industries that exploit immigrant labor, have absolutely no intention of giving them that right.
Additionally, there is the massive prison population, mostly working class, Black, and Latino, the majority of whom have been incarcerated for extremely minor crimes and politically targeted for their skin tone. In fact, the mere fact of having been in prison is enough in most states to bar one from voting, effectively blocking ex-prisoners from the chance to participate in “democracy.”
Then there are the numerous ways in which the U.S. political system is structurally anti-democratic, even for the “eligible” voter. Gerrymandering allows politicians to draw up favorable voting constituencies where our choices, as workers, are further limited to those that the duopoly itself consents to—which also has racist effects. The Electoral College was established and continues to exist as a mechanism preventing popular control of the government. At the same time, the nature of the Senate allows tiny minorities to decide on issues for the whole nation. Why is it that a comparatively unpopulated state such as Wyoming gets as many Senate seats as New York, Florida, or California? Also, tightening voter ID restrictions are a fact of life everywhere, a byproduct of the paranoia about who is a “citizen” with rights and duties and who is a “non-citizen” with duties but no rights.
On top of all of this, the Supreme Court decision on Citizens United allows capitalists to practice “speech” through secretive big money contributions, including dark money and the super-PACs. Money becomes speech when we consider the influence of capitalist media during the election cycle. Of course, the fact that the Supreme Court judges are themselves undemocratically appointed for life makes their influence on virtually every aspect of life particularly sour. The Supreme Court has been responsible for wholly anti-democratic restrictions of the rights of workers, women, and oppressed minorities, and it has an ugly track record of siding with the corporations.
The above facts make it pretty clear that the U.S. political system has nothing to do with the “will of the people” and that it actually acts to regulate the population in the interests of the super-rich and already privileged, entrenching and protecting the rights of privileged minorities while suppressing the rights of the majority.
It may be objected that the House of Representatives has seats apportioned by a state’s population, and thus the House and Senate act to promote the supposed “balance” of powers integral to liberal “democracy.” However, House members are generally, like Senators, members of the wealthy class; in 2020 over half of the people in Congress were millionaires. Moreover, they are elected via big-money campaigns and subject to extensive corporate lobbying. And finally, most real economic activity is outside their immediate purview.
What’s never voted on
The worker does not get to vote on who runs their factory, what products are made at the factory, or the methods by which they are produced. The worker does not vote on who owns X, Meta, Google, and by extension, how and why information of any kind arrives on our phone or computer screens. Nor do we vote on whether the Waltons or the Bezoses of the world should really be making thousands of dollars a minute while children still starve on planet Earth.
Regarding Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, voters can certainly vote for a more or less jingoistic expression of capitalism, but they cannot vote to have their boss provide fewer hours at the same rate of pay, thus allowing both immigrant and domestic workers jobs and sustenance. Trump screams against immigrants taking jobs but cannot explain to workers why the capitalist is offering only so many jobs and at such and such pay.
This is an example of how the basic flaws of the economy, which act as a source of extreme anxiety during election time, are themselves not subject to the democratic will of the masses. Without a union, workers can only obey the edicts and norms that the capitalist dictator sets down at work, and both the Republicans and the Democrats, despite their rhetoric, show contempt for the unions through their policies.
The minority of billionaires and millionaires who own property in land, and as capital, have inordinate dictatorial powers to make economic decisions that affect millions of working-class people and impact the environment—dictatorial powers protected by our capitalist government. This includes all of the choices related to the running of businesses, such as what jobs to provide, who to do business with, and what investments to make. We don’t get to vote on their rule, nor on the rich’s influence in drafting legislation with the cooperation of the duopoly.
Speaking of which, workers cannot decide on the details of government spending on the military, R&D, or public works—which determine much of economic activity as well as the availability of jobs. We can register dissatisfaction at the next election, but on a fundamental level, our choices as workers are severely limited under capitalism.
When it comes to U.S. foreign policy—imperialism—the choices might touch on some strategic issues but never on its substance, namely, the economic and/or military domination of much of the world by the U.S. and by extension, the billionaires. We didn’t vote to enter Vietnam in the 1960s; nor were we allowed the right to vote ourselves out of it. No “eligible voter” consented to the CIA’s sabotaging pro-democracy struggles in Latin America and Africa. We did not vote on the terms of the shameful invasions and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the case of Vietnam, it took a decade of sustained struggle in the streets and in the ranks of the U.S. Army—to say nothing of the heroic self-defense of the Vietnamese people—to stop the war. Similar mass action promoted and organized by the workers’ own organizations is what we propose in order to rid ourselves of the unelected capitalists and their farcical duopoly, as well as to stop U.S. support for genocidal wars.
Unions, break with the Democrats!
The unions have the organizational capacity, the power, and popularity to move forward on a class-independent course immediately, if they so chose to. This is true in matters of money, personnel, organization, and political clout.
In terms of money, both private and public-sector unions have spent, through Political Action Committees (PACs), hundreds of millions of dollars towards political contributions to both sides of the duopoly, although the vast majority of contributions have gone to Democrats. The UAW alone has since 2023 sent over $1.5 million to liberal political campaigns. Thus, in pure money terms, the unions could easily fund the political campaigns of actual working-class people on the ballot, running on the ticket of their own working-class party, rather than throw it to the already obscenely wealthy.
Unions have the personnel to make real political change. Many Democratic politicians owe their midterm successes to union-organized door-knocking campaigns. Just as the bosses on the shop floor need us more than we need them, so to do Democratic politicians need the unions more than the unions need them. Working-class people deserve far more than what the Democrats can give, and the unions could easily deliver it.
There are currently over 33 million unionized workers in the U.S. With this mass of organized workers, the unions can be more than separate bargaining groups against separate bosses but also serve as a great force in this country for the political interests of the working class as a whole. The elements of a strong and organized working-class party already exist in these unions.
They could bring behind their class-independent, unified banner millions of dissatisfied workers. According to a 2022 Gallup poll, 71% of the country supports unions (even though only 10% are currently unionized!). This number is much larger among the youth. Thus, there is every good reason to believe that a class-independent workers’ or labor party, starting with the unions, could achieve immediate successes.
Organizing for union power
Considering the latest campaign by the UAW to unionize Southern autoworkers, why not use some of the money it donates to the Democrats to pay the salaries formore full-time union organizers? Right-wing governors in the U.S. South have already declared war on the UAW, as they desire to protect the exploitation of the Southern worker (immigrant or domestic) on the behalf of capital. The sum of $1.5 million dollars would go a long way to organizing Southern labor against the exploitation of the bosses, and every advance of our class in organizing in the workplace is an advance of our political power.
Beyond the question of the ballot box is the most important thing of all, the ability of the worker to withhold their labor power. Whereas the Democratic Party has proven that it will attempt to stop the economic action of the working class (as when they betrayed the rail workers in 2022), a working-class party would support all such strikes, acting as the political expression of our class.
We cannot leave political leadership in the hands of capitalists. Their system is from top-to-bottom aligned against the interests of working people and for our continued exploitation, and they intend to keep it that way.
A resolute and open political campaign by the working class to take political power away from the capitalists is necessary to show that a better world is possible. A labor party would be one means by which the working class can politically express itself and must be considered as part of a strategy of mass mobilization and strikes.
