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Title: An Election in Hell Author: Wayne Price Date: June 28, 2020 Language: en Topics: Elections, US, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review Source: Retrieved on 28th January 2021 from https://syndicalist.us/2020/06/28/an-election-in-hell/ Notes: From Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #80, Summer 2020
The United States is moving toward a national election in the midst of a
collapse of world civilization. It is a disaster of an unknown duration,
consisting of the covid-19 plague and the economic collapse it has
triggered. Meanwhile the catastrophe of climate change continues to loom
over everything. Whatever issues were previously important, the
overwhelming concern now is how President Trump and his Republican Party
have been dealing with the crisis. As any fair-minded observer will
agree, their response has been disastrous.
The reaction of people on the Left has varied. Liberals take it for
granted that they will vote for Democrat Joseph Biden for president to
defeat the vile Donald Trump. Many, perhaps most, former supporters of
Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed “democratic socialist,” agree.
Holding their noses, they will vote for Biden, although they will not
“endorse” or “campaign” for him, they say. Others will not choose
between Biden and Trump. Of these radicals, some (particularly those
close to anarchism) will not vote at all, while others will cast a
protest ballot for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party.
I am not going to argue here about what individual leftists should do
about voting. I do not much care. The votes of a small number of
radicals, out of millions, will not have an effect either way. This is
especially true for most voters who live in “safe states,” where the
outcome is foreordained. (I live in New York State, where the electoral
college votes are guaranteed for the Democrats.)
The real question is what radicals should advocate be done by
progressive voters and organizations. What should the unions be doing
about this and other elections? How do we suggest the African-American
community should act? Latinx communities? other communities of color?
LGBTQ groups? environmental organizations? feminist groupings? These
forces are the base of the Democratic Party (which, like the
Republicans, does not have a membership as such). Their organizing,
mobilizing, get-out-the-vote activities, phone banking and donations of
money have been essential to the functioning of the Democrats. Should
they continue this strategy? Should they attempt to build a new, third,
party? Or should they quit the electoral process altogether for a
strategy of demonstrating, organizing, occupying and striking? As a
revolutionary anarchist, I advocate the last.
The United States is the richest and most powerful nation on earth, even
if its relative power has been declining over the past decades. Its
economy was highly profitable during the decade-long recovery from the
Great Recession. It was “profitable” for the upper classes, not so much
for most people; but there was a relatively high employment rate, even
if jobs were shaky and low-paid. Economists, both conventional and
radical, had been saying for years that the prosperity was brittle and
vulnerable to a shock. Now we have had the shock and the capitalist
economy has collapsed.
Worst of all, public health and the economy have been in the hands of a
completely incompetent government – ruled by Donald Trump, a
narcissistic, ignorant, fool, lacking all empathy let alone common
sense. His stupidity and weak self-confidence make him disdain all
scientific advisors. Vast numbers of people have died due to his
inability to organize an appropriate response to the plague.
It is tempting to see Trump as an accidental freak. Then, when he is
voted out, things will return to “normal.” This is exactly how Biden
presents matters, but it is dangerously misleading. Trump is solidly
supported by his party despite his compulsive lying. Republican
governors are as dangerously ignorant as Trump in regard to health care
and other issues. About 40% of voters support Trump no matter what he
does. Big business, while never wild about Trump, likes much of his, and
his party’s, policies: enormous tax cuts for the rich, deregulation,
reactionary judges, etc. These “conservative” forces will not go away,
even if the Democrats take over the White House and both houses of
Congress. They will be a constant threat – and a temptation for the
Democrats to compromise with, as they have repeatedly done in the past.
This is not to say that Trump or Trumpism is “fascist” (or
“neo-fascist”) as many do. Undoubtedly, there are fascist traits in this
administration and its supporters (including a crazed minority which
does identify as Nazis). Trump is authoritarian, refuses oversight by
the legislative branch, sneers at the courts, attacks and denigrates
most of the media, and undermines the professionalism of the executive
branch. Against the states, he declares that he has “total” power. He
whips up his supporters with nativist and racist rants. He panders to
the most right wing and hysterical part of his base and refuses to
directly criticize the outright fascists.
For all that, he does not have an independent organization of violent
gangs, such as Hitler’s stormtroopers or Mussolini’s fascisti. And he
can be voted out of office, which no fascist would let happen. He might
wish to be president-for-life, but the military, political and business
establishments will not let him. They are not (yet?) at a crisis where
they might accept this, nor would they want such a ditzy incompetent as
ruler.
Many radicals had high hopes for the Bernie Sanders campaign. He called
himself a democratic socialist and advocated a “political revolution.”
The Democratic Socialists of America went all out for him. And Sanders
did astonishing well for a “socialist.” He won in a number of states,
getting a great deal of support from young people, from workers, and
from Latinx. However he was never going to be allowed to win the
nomination (let alone the presidency). The Democratic establishment
pulled together all the “moderate” candidates and made a bloc behind
Biden. Sanders was never able to win the African-American vote
(especially older people). A similar steamroller ran over the other
“progressive” candidate, Elizabeth Warren. The capitalists were, if
anything, even more hostile to her than to Bernie, due to her history of
backing strong regulation of banks and other businesses. She had to go.
In any case, Sanders was never much of a “socialist.” He did not call
for the expropriation of any section of big business. He did not propose
to replace corporations with a non-profit cooperative system of
production. His model of “socialism,” he repeatedly stated, was the
Nordic (Scandinavian) countries or the U.S. New Deal. That is,
capitalist, market-driven, profit-oriented economies with government
regulation and a high level of social welfare. Whatever the virtues of
this program, it is inadequate to deal with the fundamental crises which
the system is facing.
None of the socialist leaders who backed Bernie discussed the dismal
history of socialist governments that were elected to office. There was
Mitterand in France, Allende in Chile, and recently Syriza in Greece,
Lula’s Workers’ Party in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, not to mention
the current woes in Venezuela. These and many other examples (the
various Labour Party governments in Britain) show that it doesn’t end
well for socialists to be elected to take over a capitalist state and
its capitalist economy. The socialist regime may be undermined by the
established state bureaucracy or by the ruling rich’s control of the
economy (such as an investment “strike”), causing enough chaos that the
regime is voted out, or the regime is intimidated into accepting the
capitalists’ demands (Syriza), or, if “necessary,” the socialists are
overthrown by the military or fascist forces (Allende). Even if Bernie
had been elected, very likely he would have been stymied in his
progressive programs, making him ineffectual. As anarchists have long
argued, we cannot reach socialism (however defined) by using the state.
What is significant is that a large minority of the U.S. population is
attracted to “socialism,” while others were willing to support a
“socialist,” whether or not they agreed with the label. To the extent
that young people put a clear meaning to the term, they have been taught
to mean reformist state socialism. But the possibility of attracting
them to revolutionary anarchist-socialism is there.
Joseph Biden was an uninspiring politician who lost two earlier tries at
the presidential nomination. His memory was poor and he was prone to
“gaffes,” which are worse now in his seventies. He told lies to look
good (such as claiming to have been arrested for trying to see Mandela
in South Africa). For such reasons, he did poorly in the early stages of
the nomination process and was outshone by younger, more inspiring
“moderate” candidates. His only strengths were his name recognition, the
image (true or not) that he had the best chance of beating Trump, and
that he had been Barack Obama’s vice president. But the Democratic
establishment decided that the “moderates” had to rally around one
person in order to keep Bernie out. They decided that Biden was good
enough. All the other “moderates” capitulated to him. Eventually even
Warren, the “progressive,” and Sanders, the “socialist,” did so too.
Supporting a “lesser evil” means admitting to yourself that you are
supporting an “evil,” which is psychologically hard to do. So many
liberals are trying to persuade themselves that Biden is really not so
bad, even pretty good. They note his progressive words, his appeals to
Sanders’ and Warren’s bases, his admitted changes in political stances.
As he had once made friends with segregationist Democrats and
reactionary Republicans, now he was trying to make up to liberals. How
sincere any of this is is impossible to say. After all, an opportunist
may swing left as well as right, so long as it is not too far left.
I am not going to go over the record of Biden as pro-corporate business,
pro-military intervention, pro-racial inequality, misogyny, and
generally pro-status quo. (For a full record, see Nathan Robinson’s
Current Affairs article, “Democrats, You Really Do Not Want To Nominate
Joe Biden.”) Just for example, after pushing Bill Clinton’s repressive
crime bill through the Senate in 1994, Biden cheered, “The liberal wing
of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties [and] …
125,000 new prison cells”! While Biden talks a good game about the
climate crisis, he was part of an Obama administration which vastly
increased fracking and other forms of carbon energy production. As the
radical Kevin Zeese says,
Biden is someone who has been on the opposite side of every issue I have
worked on for 40 years – the drug war, mass incarceration, racist police
enforcement, marijuana prohibition, the Iraq War, militarism and every
war of my lifetime, student debt, climate change, energy policy, racism,
and desegregation, shrinking Social Security, corporatism… I can’t think
of anything significant that I agree with him on. (April 17, 2020;
Actiongreens email discussion)
Zeese said he will vote for the Green Party candidate.
The only real argument for electing Biden is that he is not Trump. It is
that Trump, while not a fascist, is not simply another bad Republican.
That he is something way outside the box, whose politics intersect with
a freakish personality to be exceptionally dangerous in a time of
extreme crisis. Many respected radicals have made this claim.
However, it is also true that the Democrats have had their part in
creating Trump and Trumpism. Look again at the historical record.
Reactionary Republican presidents have repeatedly been followed by
moderate Democrats, who have been followed by an even worse reactionary
Republican. Again and again. Nixon by Carter by Reagan-Bush by Clinton
by Bush by Obama by Trump. In no case has electing Democrats led to the
end of the right-wing Republican threat. The Democrats play the “good
cop” and the Republicans play the “bad cop.” Neither party is able to
cure the ills of capitalism, which has repeatedly driven sections of the
population toward the only other alternative offered by our two-party
political system.
The pandemic was created by global semi-monopoly capitalism, with its
intersection of urbanism, industrial agriculture and wild nature; its
global production chains and travel; its weakened public health
services; and its nation-states. With its unrelenting drive for
quantitative growth, profit and accumulation, capitalism had to upset
the ecological balance between humans and the rest of nature. Capitalism
is the virus. Continuation of capitalism will only lead to more
pandemics, climate catastrophes, economic crashes and disastrous wars.
What strategy leads to a revolution for a non-capitalist, cooperative,
participatory-democratic and ecologically balanced society?
Historically, the main progressive advances in politics have come from
direct action outside the electoral system. The great strikes of the
thirties gave us unions and won the benefits of the New Deal.
African-Americans destroyed racial segregation and gained other benefits
through massive civil disobedience and “riots.” The war in Vietnam was
opposed through huge demonstrations, draft resistance and rebellion in
the military. Gay liberation was fought by the Stonewall “riots” and Act
Up civil disobedience. Women’s liberation developed in the context of
all these popular struggles. And in every case, the movements died down
or were tamed when they turned to working through the Democratic Party
in elections.
Even under conditions of the plague, people have been self-organizing.
There have been strikes by Whole Foods, Instacart and Amazon workers to
demand better health protection and more time off. There have been labor
actions by poultry, auto, sanitation and warehouse workers. Unionized
nurses have been forceful in protesting shortages. Bus workers in
Detroit bargained for fare-free bus service. Workers at GE demanded
repurposing jet engine factories to make ventilators. Car caravans
demanded a moratorium on rent. There has also been mutual aid organizing
for people to help themselves and each other, given the failures of the
government and big business.
How long the coronavirus plague will last, of course I do not know. I
expect the economic collapse to last a good deal longer and the climate
crisis to worsen whoever gets elected. Whatever happens in this election
(and it would say something positive about the U.S. people if they
reject Trump), progress depends on more mass action in the streets, the
schools, the offices and the workshops. Only this could lead to a
revolutionary reorganization of society.
Reference: Robinson, Nathan J. (2020). “Democrats, You Really Do Not
Want To Nominate Joe Biden.” Current Affairs.
www.currentaffairs.org/2020/03/democrats-you-really-do-not-want-to-nominate-joe-biden