Meanwhile, the middle-class left is tied hand and foot once again to the Democratic Party. Some groups display much more zeal than in previous elections in backing this party of American capitalism—especially the Communist Party USA, which is trying to portray John Kerry’s America First, pro-imperialist, and antilabor record as “progressive” for working people. Other middle-class radicals say hold your nose and vote for Kerry, many after pointing to Kerry’s pro-war record, because Bush is so bad.

The assumptions of those in the latter category need to be laid bare. What if Kerry were the Second Coming of liberal icon John F. Kennedy, or Franklin D. Roosevelt? What if Kerry had pledged to bring the U.S. troops home from Iraq immediately after he took office, just as Zapatero, Spain’s new “socialist” prime minister, did earlier this year? Would a vote for Kerry then be wholly, or even partly, justified?

The answer is no! Either with the Democrats or the Republicans—or with any other capitalist ticket for that matter, like those of Nader/Camejo or the Greens, which serve as left pressure groups on the Democratic Party, or the Libertarians on the right—working people lose. The argument of “lesser evilism” has been used for decades by such groups in the workers movement to draw working people into the con game of the two-party system of American imperialism and prevent the working class from acting independently of the ruling capitalists on the political plane.

A handful among the middle-class radicals, like the Freedom Socialist Party, call for a vote for the socialist candidates but are oriented to the “left” themselves, not to the working class. An article in the October-November issue of the Freedom Socialist, for example, titled “The unmaking of the movements: Independent organizing takes a back seat to putting Kerry in the White House,” ends with the proclamation: “Break with the Democrats in 2004!”

But to break with the Democrats you have to be attached to them. This is true of the bulk of the middle-class radicals who have become more and more active in Democratic clubs; many of them have recently been running to “swing” states to swing the vote toward Kerry. The Democratic “center” has absorbed not only the bourgeois but also the petty-bourgeois “left,” as the converging course of the capitalist parties has been shifting very gradually but steadily to the right. This is not true for most working people, however, who simply go to vote once every four years—among those who do—for either Democrats or Republicans. It has never been the fact that workers are more prone to be attracted to the program of imperialist liberalism than that of imperialist conservatism, as last year’s special gubernatorial election in California clearly showed.

Along this line, the headline of our October 5 editorial, “How to Defeat the Bush Doctrine” and its concluding sentence about defeating the “‘Bush agenda’ and the program of Kerry too” were misleading. They could easily be misunderstood by many readers as support for the politics of capitalist “third parties” and “independent alternatives” like the Nader-Camejo campaign, which also call for “dumping Bush and Kerry too.” These parts of the editorial were in contradiction with the main point of the Socialist Workers Party’s campaign slogan, “It’s not who you are against, but what you are for!” which we have highlighted and urged support for in many other editorials.

(As an aside, the opening sentence of the October 5 editorial also used the mistaken term “the Bush-Wolfowitz team in the White House.” This could be misread as an adaptation to the conspiracy theories of ultrarightists and liberals that a “Jewish cabal” led by “neoconservatives,” like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, runs the Oval Office. The Militant has exposed such conspiracy theories as false and reactionary. Furthermore, the White House is run by the president of the United States, Bush in this case, just like his predecessors.)

The source of the problems working people face—from job speedup to declining wages to wars of plunder—is not individual capitalist politicians, or even their parties. The root of the problem is the system of capitalism and the small number of wealthy families that rule the United States to increase their profits at the expense of the toiling majority.

Working people do have a choice in the upcoming U.S. elections: the socialist ticket of Calero and Hawkins, whose platform is outlined in the lead article this week. Vote SWP in 2004 and campaign for the working-class alternative, for socialism, through November 2 and beyond!
 
 
Related articles:
‘We stand with workers trying to organize unions’
We support right of oppressed nations to economic development, says socialist in Iowa
Campaigning for SWP slate nets ‘Militant’ subs
Penn. socialists step up campaigning in wake of arson attack
SWP candidate for vice president speaks at Florida NAACP convention
Calero speaks to coal miners, others in Utah  
 
 
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