US elections report to and discussion with comrades abroad
The US elections report to and discussion with comrades abroad:
The following notes were prepared for a discussion with comrades abroad who asked for the ILTT/CWG positions and viewpoints. Central to this discussion is the world situation during the terminal crisis of capitalism, its inter-imperialist conflicts, its genocidal wars against the people in the semi-colonies in particular Gaza and Democratic Republic of Congo. Our program has been and remains to fight for a New Zimmerwald against the inter-imperialist and genocidal colonial wars. For a united front for a Mass Labor Party to fight the fascist threat and based on the method of the 1938 Transitional Program. Those arguments are made in a series of articles: Not a Third Party but our own Fighting Workers Labor Party and Your Bosses are Having an Election We Are Not!
The 2024 US election is between two wings of the its imperialist ruling class:
Both the Democrats and Republicans are dedicated imperialist, capitalist, militarist parties. The capitalist class is split between them but many corporations, individual capitalists and even trade unions fund both parties. Open Secrets follows the money at this site https://www.opensecrets.org/?utm_source=ftm
Suffice to say monopoly capital is divided between parties and candidates. Big Capital knows the economic power and influence of their empire is in decline and is split on how to navigate the emerging bi-polar world .
Both parties are fighting to keep US economic supremacy against the rising imperialist competitors of the China/Russia bloc and their BRICS and SCO alliances. The Democrats have tried to jump start manufacturing and US production by a continuation of Trump era tariffs, an infrastructure plan, an “inflation reduction plan” and the Chips Act limiting free trade between European Chip Machine Makers, American Chip manufacturers and China.
Trump is authoritarian, an ultra Nationalist, an outright Zionist, a white supremist, misogynist, rapist, convicted felon for business crimes, internationally he is an isolationist, economically a protectionist, and is outright anti-labor opposing overtime pay and unions in general. He is a grifter and confidence man making money off of his supporters and from business deals political power allows him access to.
On the international stage he is allied to Putin, Orban, Melei, Modi, Bolsonaro, & Netanyahu. His plan for world peace is bluster and threatens to crush China and BRICS with tariffs. He opposes NATO but will likely not withdraw from it. He promises to weaponize the government against labor, the oppressed and his political enemies. He paraphrases liberally from Hitler warning against the leftist enemy from within.
Trump needs to win in order to shut down the multiple criminal cases against him which can land him in jail. The New York felony conviction may result in jail time and the judge will sentence him after the election and prior to inauguration. It is likely the judge will let him off if he is elected and go light on him if he is not elected.
If Trump is not elected he has already mobilized a legal strategy to challenge the election in the courts and state legislatures. While large numbers of the 2021 insurrectionists are in jail this is no guarantee that the MAGAists will not try again.
Harris represents the next generation of the classic imperialist war hawk Democratic Party. She is an outright Zionist, pro NATO, promises to continue the Ukraine war, the genocide in Gaza and projection of power in the Pacific against China. She is just as likely as Trump to be drawn into war with Iran following Netanyahu’s promised next escalation.
She is a bourgeois feminist, daughter of civil rights activists, she presents as a friend of diversity and inclusion, she claims a middle class heritage, sometimes conflating the middle class (petty bourgeoisie) with the working class. She claims to be a friend of labor although she acted with Biden to shut down the RailRoad workers right to strike.
She was propelled up the San Francisco Democratic Party machine under the tutelage of Willie Brown known for decades as the “King Maker”. Her career was one of the prosecutors, first the District Attorney for San Francisco then the Attorney General for the state of California, then to the US Senate for one term then the Vice President.
As district attorney and Attorney General our predecessor groups (Revolutionary Trotskyist Tendency and Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism) confronted her in the streets for her role in prosecuting the oppressed in the black and brown communities, for her keeping unjustly incarcerated in jail and refusing to hear from the family of Kenneth Harding Jr. a black youth shot in the back by the San Francisco Police for not paying the bus fare and running from the police.
She made her reputation as a friend of the exploited by winning major lawsuits against the banks which knowingly made unserviceable mortgages to vulnerable working class homebuyers. Most of the billions won in the court went to “lessen” the burden, but not fully reimburse the victims of the bankers’ crimes. Few individuals were ever made whole although big government pension funds-investors in mortgage backed securities were reimbursed. But none of the biggest purveyors of the bad loans and the “Collateralized Debt Obligations” that tore down the world economy making millions homeless were ever prosecuted, never mind jailed!
The Democrats, under Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act allocating billions as concessions to the population in the form of tax credits, lower prescription prices, taxes on corporate stock buybacks, and promised to collect taxes previously avoided by millionaires and billionaires. The program promised to slow inflation and put millions to work. The program shows up as infrastructure projects seen in many communities upgrading old and failing infrastructure. The bill claims to address the climate catastrophe projecting to roll back CO2 emissions to 2005 levels by 2030. To pass this bill had to gain bi-partisan support and many billions and bits of the program had to be cut.
Today the Harris campaign runs on the accomplishments and projections of the Inflation Reduction Act, the commitment to NATO, the commitment to the Zionist project and the commitment to counter the rise of China/Russia and the BRICS.
We don’t have a crystal ball for the outcome. But a few important points before we address both the possible outcomes and the prospects and tasks for working class political action.
The United States is not a democracy. The only democratic branch of the US government is the lower house of congress, because it is apportioned by population. However it is compromised by billions of dollars of campaign funding by corporate lobbyists who generally write the laws they legislate. Likewise the Zionist lobby is not a foreign entity– it is wholly American and makes generous contributions to both parties and any politician who will take their money and most do.
The upper house of congress, the Senate, is apportioned at two per state regardless of population. Thus states with small populations get equal representation as large population states.
The Senate confirms the president’s nominees for the supreme court and lower level federal court appointees, thus the small states have undemocratic leverage over the federal judiciary and the supreme court.
The President is not elected by the popular vote. Rather voters of each state vote for electors to represent the state in the electoral college which then elects the president. The number of electors is apportioned based on the total number of representatives of both houses of congress. Therefore, of the 538 electors 100 are based on the number of Senators; these are not apportioned by population.
This is why it is possible that the popular vote for president does not coincide with the winner of the electoral college. This occurred five times in US history. Clinton, being the last instance, won the majority of votes in 2016 and Trump won the electoral college.
How things look at this moment in the campaign.
Trump is increasingly unhinged. He is increasingly distracted and the New York Times, which until recently did not call him out for his incoherent rambling speeches, can no longer deny his mental decline. Trump’s economic plan has been exposed for its potential to fail and likelihood to add trillions more to the national debt than the Harris plan will. He regularly berates venues, cities, his supporters and staff. His rallies are poorly attended, and recently he stranded 5,000 supporters in the middle of the desert after a rally with no way to get back to their cars parked five miles away in 93 degree Fahrenheit heat. At another event his campaign could not afford air conditioning and a number of people fainted, so he ended the question and answers discussion and played music dancing like a fool for another 30 minutes. It is old news that Trump regularly defecates in diapers during political events and hashtag #diaperDon regularly trends on Twitter now known as “X”.
The Harris campaign on the other hand has all the appearances of an ascendant winner. Her rallies are massive and her voter registration and get out the vote campaigns are reflecting a large turn out in her favor. Such was needed to counter the ongoing voter suppression campaigns regularly run by the Republicans. Yet the Democrats are far from democratic and have suppressed attempts by third parties to get on the ballot in many states in fear that they will take votes from the Democrats. In addition the use of the state by the Democrats to violently suppress the Palestine Solidarity protesters just as they militaristically crushed the “Occupy” and the anti-police brutality movements of 2011-2016.
Yet despite appearances the polls are neck and neck. Harris is likely to win the national vote and may well lose the electoral college. Short of a major and unlikely surprise, such as Harris flipping Florida or Texas, the election will be decided in a toss up of six states which may go either way. Despite Trump’s mental decline and his penchant to lie, promote conspiracies and promise an authoritarian future, and despite the large number of Republican politicians including his former Vice President and many former supporters who have abandoned him, it is his base who will turn out the vote. A large portion of his base are Christian Nationalists, Christian Zionists, many are either two faced or unabashed racists, misogynists, anti-immigrant, and anti-union lower petty bourgeoisie. Trump does attract large numbers of the working class but not its majority who still vote Democratic.
In the event that Trump wins outright the Democrats will hand power to a fascist and commit to being a loyal opposition from within. This week Kamala Harris proclaimed that Trump is a fascist in a CNN interview.
In the event that Trump loses outright it is likely there will be a constitutional crisis where the Republicans will try to use the Supreme Court to overturn the election. This may well be backed up by a right wing uprising.
The socialist workers movement is in total disarray.
The Reformist Stalinists and social democrats like the DSA give their usual support to the Democrats and while formally they are for working class political independence they have been voting tactically for the Democrats for so long it looks more like a strategy. It is their strategy and has been since Dimitrov formulated the People’s Front.
The Reformists have been joined by a large number of Right Centrist outfits like the third camp League for A Revolutionary Party, Oakland Socialist and prominent “Trotskyists” like Dan La Botz arguing for a tactical vote for the Democrats, claiming they are still for a labor party someday, but because now there is none the workers should give critical support and work to elect the Democrats against the fascist threat. Some even mention in passing that in the event of a fascist coup against a Harris victory there should be strike action to defend the outcome of the election. The right centrists of the LRP cite Engels (in On the Prussian Military) and Lenin (Left Wing Communism-No Compromises) justified blocking with the bourgeoisie and voting for the lesser evil bourgeois candidate against the monarchist reaction.
We are not ultra left so we do not exclude the tactic of common actions with bourgeois factions (including defence of bourgeois rights) PROVIDED such a tactic will advance the interests of the proletariat. The LRP cites ‘military’ alliances as one such tactic. We agree, but always say no political agreement with the bourgeois parties. Military defence of the bourgeois government in Spain from fascism is a good example. However in terminal late stage capitalism NO fraction of the US bourgeoisie defends bourgeois democracy from fascism. Therefore the tactic of critical support with the Democrats against Trump is opportunist and reactionary. To claim that the Democrats are the lesser evil to Trump when they have destroyed bourgeois democracy in the genocide in Palestine is social imperialism – imperialism abroad, socialism at home. In addition the Democratic Party regularly uses administrative and judicial means to exclude third parties.They too are vote suppressors. And suppose they were to say they will declare martial law to suppress MAGA fascism? Would we call for a vote for Democrats because they proposed to do so? Hell no!
The LRP cites Engels and Lenin’s blocs with the bourgeoisie against the monarchists and the remnants of feudalism, but these conditions do not apply in the U.S. of the 21st century. Are these reformists telling us that a section of the bourgeoisie has a progressive role to play similar to the abolition forces of the North in the Civil War of 1861-65? That’s ridiculous liberalism.
Trotsky in the article “The Dutch Section and the International”
‘… “The question of questions at present is the People’s Front. The left centrists seek to present this question as a tactical or even as a technical maneuver, so as to be able to peddle their wares in the shadow of the People’s Front. In reality, the People’s Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch. It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism. For it is often forgotten that the greatest historical example of the People’s Front is the February 1917 revolution. From February to October, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who represent a very good parallel to the ‘Communists’ and Social Democrats, were in the closest alliance and in a permanent coalition with the bourgeois party of the Cadets, together with whom they formed a series of coalition governments. Under the sign of this People’s Front stood the whole mass of the people, including the workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ councils. To be sure, the Bolsheviks participated in the councils. But they did not make the slightest concession to the People’s Front. Their demand was to break this People’s Front, to destroy the alliance with the Cadets, and to create a genuine workers’ and peasants’ government.
“All the People’s Fronts in Europe are only a pale copy and often a caricature of the Russian People’s Front of 1917, which could after all lay claim to a much greater justification for its existence, for it was still a question of the struggle against czarism and the remnants of feudalism.”
—Leon Trotsky, “The Dutch Section and the International” (15-16 July 1936), in Writings of Leon Trotsky (Popular Front: Not a Tactic But a Crime – No to Popular Frontism!)
The Morenoists, Lambartistes, Freedom Socialist Party, Fourth Internationalists and some Maoist or Marxist Leninist outfits in general take a principled stance against voting ‘lesser evil’ and some have held forums calling for a Labor Party but only the FSP and the Morenoist Workers Voice have presented a joint forum to that effect. In most cases these organizations have little impact or hearing among the mass movements.
The neo-Stalinist PSL, the petty bourgeois Green party and radical-liberal Cornel West Party of Justice are running Third party campaigns. Each has been either soft on or outright supportive of the Putin/Xi alliance and orient toward the BRICS. They joined together in an “Abandon Harris” campaign orienting toward the disaffected Palestine solidarity movement and the Arab community who find voting for Harris intolerable. Oddly enough the Spartacist League which recently emerged from its hibernation during COVID, has endorsed the PSL just as they did the EFF in South Africa. The right centrists mentioned above are already blaming this layer for a possible Trump victory.
The Left Centrists such as the renamed IMT, now presenting as the Revolutionary Communist International and Revolutionary communists of America, as well as a Forsterite outfit, the Party of American Communists and their League of Communist Youth, (and like the Maoist Progressive Labor Party ,) present a min-max program and disorient the youth with revolutionary iconography and campaigns for an instant communism as the only solution. They do not fight for a united front for a labor party or for a united front against the fascist threat; rather they run their members out on the streets under the hammer and sickle flags and campaign for radicalizing youth and workers to join them.
We are working on an article to counter the pragmatism and empiricism of the right and left centrists with the dialectics which we intend to publish before the elections but have taken a few hours out of that project to provide this electoral update for this discussion with the comrades.
