Rachele Fruit: the working class alternative in 2024
The widely discussed June 27 debate between President Joseph Biden and former President Donald Trump confirmed that neither capitalist candidate — nor their parties — are capable of addressing the social and economic crisis facing workers and the growing danger of more wars around the world.
“There was nothing there for the working class,” Rachele Fruit, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, told the Militant.
Fruit, her running mate Dennis Richter, and Socialist Workers Party candidates around the country call on workers to make a clear, class political break from the bosses’ parties and reject their lesser-evil shell game.
“We need a party of labor that would fight all year round to involve working people in defending our own interests and to realize what workers are capable of accomplishing when we come together,” Fruit says.
Some 48 million people watched the debate, nearly one-third fewer than the 2020 debates between the two capitalist candidates. A third capitalist candidate, Robert Kennedy Jr., was excluded from the debate, as was Fruit, the only working-class voice in the election.
“The debate showed the political crisis of both capitalist parties,” Fruit added. “This is the best they have to offer! It’s another sign that U.S. imperialism, the world’s last empire, is in decline.”
She urged workers looking for a way forward to endorse the Socialist Workers Party 2024 presidential ticket — the working-class alternative — and encourage others to do the same.
No ‘lesser evil’
For decades the U.S. rulers have tried to convince workers they should choose the lesser evil of the Democratic or Republican candidates. But voting for Trump, Biden — or whoever the Democrats might now choose to replace him — or for third party capitalist candidates like Kennedy is a dead end.
To the extent they have differences, it’s over how best to defend the interests of the ruling rich, not how to defend the life and livelihood of working people.
“Trump and Biden blamed each other for the state of the economy, inflation, and for who was responsible for the war in Ukraine,” Fruit noted, “as if one individual in the White House controls the crisis of capitalism. But the central problem is not the policies of one or another capitalist government. It’s that the boss class is driven by their dog-eat-dog competition for markets, natural resources and profits to increase the exploitation of workers.”
Trump and Biden argued over whether higher or lower tariffs and higher or lower taxes on the rich would lead to more hiring. But as long as the capitalist class holds power, workers will continue to face layoffs and job cuts when the bosses deem it necessary to defend their profits. Just as we will confront their assaults on our wages and working conditions.
The real question facing working people is which class should rule? The capitalist class or the working class?
Class bias was reflected in the questions from the debate moderators as well, Fruit said. “There were no questions on the increased interest among the working class in organizing the unorganized, on using unions to fight for dignity and being able to live like human beings.” Neither Biden nor Trump mentioned — not once — the need for labor unions.
Build, strengthen the unions
Trump and Biden claimed to support Israel’s war to eliminate Hamas and to oppose Moscow’s war on Ukraine. But in reality the U.S. government does not start from the defense of the sovereignty of Ukraine, nor from fighting Jew-hatred and defending the right of Israel to exist as a refuge for Jews. All the U.S. rulers care about is advancing their own economic, political and military interests against every one of their competitors. Their foreign policy, under either of their parties, serves that purpose.
The working class needs its own foreign policy, based on the interests we share with workers worldwide against the U.S. imperialist rulers and all the other exploiting ruling classes around the globe.
And there was no mention in the debate of the rise in Jew-hatred, no mention of the recent series of physical and verbal threats against Jews in the U.S. or worldwide.
Biden claimed he was doing better than Trump in lowering the number of people “coming across the border illegally.”
In fact, his administration, as Trump’s did, serves the needs of the U.S. capitalists. Today they want — and need — so-called illegal immigrants to fill jobs at lower wages than U.S.-born workers and drive down wages more broadly, boosting their profits and competitive advantage against their rivals in Europe and China.
Trump demagogically repeated a dangerous theme of his campaign, that “illegal” immigrants are “taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs.” That’s aimed at dividing the working class and undermining solidarity.
Fruit, Richter and other SWP candidates raise instead the need to fight for amnesty for workers in the U.S. without papers. The unions must reach out to those workers, invite them to join the union to fight together for better wages and working conditions for all.
A spate of frame-up criminal cases and other lawsuits against Trump are being orchestrated by the Democrats, dealing blows to constitutional freedoms. Trump has said they’re aimed at preventing him from winning the election.
“Trump has threatened to do the same thing to Biden and other Democrats if he gets elected,” Fruit said. “For their partisan interests, both parties are engaged in dangerous attacks on rights the working class needs today, constitutional protections won in struggle.”
The bourgeois press is full of stories about Biden’s poor debate performance, the lies told by both candidates, their questionable mental acuity and ethics, etc. Two papers that back the Democrats, the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, called on Biden to bow out of the race so the Democrats can choose another candidate they hope will have a better chance to win.
Whether that happens or not, none of the capitalist candidates point a way forward for working people.
“We have to organize independently of the capitalist parties to unite the working class to fight in our common interests,” Fruit said. “To fight against all national oppression, racism that is inherent in the capitalist system; to fight for the emancipation of women; to build a party of labor; to combat Jew-hatred today. To open the road to working people in our tens of millions taking power out of the hands of the capitalist war makers.
“Join us!”