After nearly two years of a right-wing blitzkrieg that has devastated democratic rights, spiked prices, and put the war machine into overdrive, U.S. workers desperately require a course shift. As the November midterm election approaches, many will seek to ride a big blue wave and just sweep away Trump’s enablers in Congress. But this will not bring about the changes needed.
Recycling the “lesser evil” mantra
The union anthem Solidarity Forever speaks of the power that workers have to better their lot in life through withholding their labor. But throughout the summer and fall, a different tune will be heard — the lesser-evil drumbeat. At union conventions, leaders will tell delegates for the umpteenth time, “This is the most important election in our lifetime!” as they try to corral members behind the Democrats.
If delegates think back, they will see where this strategy leads. If supporting Democrats were the path to liberation and justice, we would be living in a workers’ paradise by now!
Instead, politicians from each of the twin parties, when in power, have delivered wars, deportations, an increasing concentration of wealth, and an accelerating climate crisis, just to begin the list. These are evils the profit system depends upon to maintain its exploitative ways. So, capitalist parties, be they red or blue, will continue on this path.
A hard-won right and the bitter reality
It’s important to note that the right to vote, especially for the oppressed, was not won by cautious people restricting themselves to the electoral arena. With great sacrifice the Civil Rights Movement pried some measure of fairness from a racist society with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
The act has since been eviscerated, and further attacks on voting rights get more brazen by the day. These need to be vigorously opposed.
But, in the U.S. two-party system, the Democrats and Republicans have electoral politics in a stranglehold. The right to vote is meaningless without candidates worth picking — candidates who would represent the interests of working people for real, and not just in campaign speeches. It is a right on paper, hollowed out of any power to hold rulers to account. It provides an illusion of choice, locking voters into that same “lesser evil” cycle year after year.
Onward to the socialist solution
The ruling class has declared all-out war, and only mobilizing workers’ economic and political power as a class will defeat them.
The massive No Kings marches and the January general strike in Minneapolis show the readiness to fight. A general strike that goes national would be a weapon of mass inspiration challenging all the tyrants, from Congress to CEOs.
There is no reason to stop there — workers can replace the profit system with one that meets human needs and ensures a brighter future for all Earth’s creatures. This year people in the U.S. commemorate an all-out revolt triumphing over a despotic and outmoded regime. It is high time for the next revolutionary chapter.
