The Fallacy of Voting for Capitalist Politicians
Why we need an independent, anti-capitalist workers party to win a socialist future
It is astounding to see so many of the U.S. left following in lockstep in support of Kamala Harris, as if she is anything different than Biden. In fact, it doesn’t really matter who we vote for, because our only choices are among the ruling capitalist class in the U.S., and they will do whatever is necessary to protect their command of the massive wealth created by workers—we who manufacture the over-priced products they sell back to us at great profits for themselves.
Capitalism must be able to make a profit—by any means necessary—and the American arms industry is the most profitable in the world. Kamala Harris won’t do a thing to undermine it any more than she will stop sending more arms to Israel.
Even though the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 40,000 (up to 186,000 according to The Lancet) and many more are unaccounted for, sick and starving, the U.S. is sending another $3.5 billion to aid the U.S./Israeli genocide against the people of Palestine.
In an August 10, 2024, New York Times article by Michael Crowley titled, “The U.S. Says it Won’t Halt Aid to an Israeli Military Unit Accused of Abuses, after Israel Took Remedial Steps,” not only will Harris, if elected, continue arming convicted war criminals, but she will continue to arm Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the occupied territories:
“The Biden administration will not block U.S. security assistance to an Israeli military unit found to have committed human rights violations, after Israel’s government took steps to prevent further offenses, the State Department said on Friday [August 9, 2024]. The department determined in April that the unit, the Netzah Yehuda battalion, had committed abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that were serious enough to prompt the invocation of the Leahy Law, which bans U.S. training or the provision of U.S. equipment for foreign troops who commit ‘gross human rights violations’ like rape, murder or torture. …After spending months evaluating information provided by Israel’s government, …the department found that the unit’s violations—which occurred in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the current war with Hamas in Gaza—had ‘been effectively remediated.’ It added: ‘Consistent with the Leahy process, this unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America.’ A U.S. official said that Israel had provided the Biden administration with information showing that two soldiers who Israeli military prosecutors said should be disciplined had left the Israeli military and were ineligible to serve in the reserves. The official also said that the Israel Defense Forces had taken other steps to prevent further offenses, including enhanced screening for new recruits and the implementation of a two-week educational seminar for such recruits. …The State Department notified Congress this week of its intent to disburse $3.5 billion in new military aid to Israel from a supplemental budget bill approved earlier, the department said in a statement. The disbursement was expected to go forward in 15 days. Israel is expected to use the money to purchase arms from the U.S. government or from American companies.” [my emphasis]
Kamala Harris supports sending more aid to Israel as does her running mate, Tim Waltz—as does both the Democratic and Republican Parties, and the capitalist class as a whole.
Capitalist party politicians are no friends of labor
I read somewhere, before Harris made her final choice for Vice President, that she should pick United Auto Workers President, Shawn Fain, as her running mate. He probably would have been up for it since he has thrown his full support behind her campaign!
Fain was one of the first major U.S. labor leaders to call for a permanent cease fire in the U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza, and UAW local 4811 authorized a strike in May in support of student encampments against the genocide.1
It was a bold and courageous move by a major labor leader that led to many more unions taking up the call for an immediate cease fire.
Then Fain came out in support of Kamala Harris for President of the U.S.—placing a damper on his opposition to the relentless bombing and killing of the people of Palestine, unfortunately, he is not alone.
The overwhelming majority of unions have made the same anti-working-class choice and have endorsed Harris for President to convince workers that voting for one capitalist over another will improve our lives.
The fight for human rights, economic and social equality can’t depend upon the representatives of the capitalist class because the very essence of capitalism is that the private ownership of the means of production and control over the workers who produce everything, serves not only to maintain—but to constantly increase financial benefits for the capitalist class—at the expense of the working class.
They pay us as little as possible and keep the rest for themselves. Depending on capitalist politicians to solve our problems is the main underlying problem the working class must overcome if we are to survive capitalism.
Reformism and the popular front vs. independent working-class organizing
For decades the U.S. labor movement’s leadership has been stymied by a policy of collaboration with sections of the capitalist class who, by their own laws and guns, control the land, property and the means of production while profiting from the labor of the masses of workers who toil for them on their farms, in their factories and places of business for just enough money to survive.
The leaders of the labor movement have been corrupted. By their own admission, they brag that they are “in partnership with the bosses.” They claim that their partnership with the bosses will somehow result in decisions more sympathetic to workers.
But the truth is the opposite. Labor support for capitalist politicians only serves to reaffirm the myth that if we elect this or that capitalist candidate—we are electing a “friend of the working class.”
Workers can never gain by partnering with capitalists because our interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the capitalist class.
The main interests of workers are to benefit from the fruits of our labor, and the only way to do that is to take the control of the means of production out of the hands of the capitalist class and use the wealth of this production, of our labor, for the benefit of all. But we can only achieve this by ending capitalism and building socialism. The interest of the capitalist class is to maximize their own wealth and profit off the labor of the working masses.
The test of time and the lessons
of history
This struggle between the two primary contending classes today—the working class and the capitalist class—is not a new idea.
In 1931, Spanish workers made a series of attempts to take power into their hands to “guide the fate of society.” Trotsky wrote about it in 1938 in his thesis, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (popularly called The Transitional Program)2:
“In all countries the proletariat [working class] is racked by a deep disquiet. The multi-millioned masses again and again enter the road of revolution. But each time they are blocked by their own conservative bureaucratic machines. The Spanish proletariat has made a series of heroic attempts since April 1931 to take power in its hands and guide the fate of society. However, its own parties (Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists, POUMists [Workers Party of Marxist Unification])—each in its own way acted as a brake and thus prepared Franco’s triumphs. In France, the great wave of ‘sit-down’ strikes, particularly during June 1936, revealed the whole-hearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist system. However, the leading organizations (Socialists, Stalinists, Syndicalists) under the label of the Popular Front succeeded in canalizing and damming, at least temporarily, the revolutionary stream. The unprecedented wave of sit-down strikes and the amazingly rapid growth of industrial unionism in the United States (the CIO [The Congress of Industrial Organizations]) is the most indisputable expression of the instinctive striving of the American workers to raise themselves to the level of the tasks imposed on them by history. But here. too, the leading political organizations, including the newly created CIO, do everything possible to keep in check and paralyze the revolutionary pressure of the masses.
There is a name for this type of class collaboration—the popular, or people’s front:
“As a bloc, a political coalition, the popular (or people’s) front is not merely a matter of policy, but of organization. Opportunists regularly pursue class-collaborationist policies, tailing after one or another bourgeois or petty-bourgeois force. But it is in moments of crisis or acute struggle that they find it necessary to organizationally chain the working class and other oppressed groups to the class enemy (or a sector of it). …The popular front, of course, claims to stand for all things ‘progressive’: ‘human rights,’ ‘peace,’ racial harmony, etc. The framework is usually presented as ‘democratic’ and it is always bourgeois. But the popular front is more than just the usual hypocritical and empty phrases of capitalist politics: it is a guarantee by the misleaders of the workers movement to the rulers that in case of emergency, as the ranks radicalize, the workers organizations will stand in the way of revolutionary action, enforcing the discipline of their bourgeois ‘allies.’ …The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favorable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (S.R.s [Socialist Revolutionary Party], Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.’”
What’s happening in our time, is that while the divide among the capitalist class is widening, and the far right is gaining strength in their attempt to further divide the working class against each other—blaming immigrants, people of color, the LGBTQ community, the homeless and the poor—as the cause of all the problems in our society. The Democrats carry out these policies, but claim their hands are tied by the far right.
But there are very encouraging signs that today’s working class is recognizing that collaboration with capitalists is a trap, and they are beginning to reject it.
They are realizing that the capitalist class, whether on the “left” or the “right,” are two sides of the same coin, and the only way to ensure that fascism will not take hold ever again is to unite the entire working class in self-defense against fascism—capitalism’s inevitable descent into barbarism to preserve their power, wealth and dominance over the working class and any who support them.
Workers reject fascism
In an August 9, 2024, article in the New York Times by Megan Specia titled, “Liverpool Sends a Message to Far-Right Rioters: Not Here,” in response to week-long anti-immigrant violence in their community:
“What they got, instead, was a night of near celebration by people opposed to the racism and anti-immigrant sentiments that drove the week of rioting in cities and towns across Britain. People in Liverpool had been especially unnerved since an online list of what were said to be new far-right targets for protests included a local charity that works with asylum seekers. Neighbors texted neighbors to head to the streets to counter any racist rioters. Local unions and leaders of neighborhood mosques also put out the word, as did a nationwide collective called ‘Stand Up to Racism.’ …People carried signs reading ‘Not in our city,’ and ‘Will trade racists for refugees.’ … What united many of them was the feeling that working-class people are in life’s struggles together. As the evening light turned golden and night slowly set in, one young woman raised a sign that read, ‘The Enemy of the Working Class Travels By Private Jet Not Migrant Dinghy,’ to applause from many standing nearby. …Matty Delaney, 33, who lives just outside Liverpool, said he had heard on Instagram about the demonstration against racism and thought it was important to deliver a clear message to those who had rioted, particularly as a young, white, working-class man. ‘We’ve got more in common with an Indian nurse, with a Black bricklayer than we do with the Elon Musks, the Nigel Farages, the Tommy Robinsons, of the world—all these people who are stoking violence,’ Mr. Delaney said.”
The power of the working class is that we are the overwhelming majority. The capitalist class makes up less than one percent of humanity. Our power lies in our ability to unite not just the working class, but to bring small business owners, farmers, professionals and all those in the middle between the working class and the capitalist class—over to the side of workers in opposition to capitalism, and in support of socialism. It is the only hope for our survival.
Solidarity among workers can overcome the divisions between us and finally end capitalism’s class-structured society that keeps the one percent on top and the masses in service to them.
This will happen only if popular-frontism is torn asunder and a new, united front of the working class against capitalism is formed.
This is a struggle for power over the wealth we workers produce. Fascism is the ultimate weapon the capitalist class will use to prevent us and our allies from uniting against them because they know we have the power to defeat them if we do.
We can’t change society by supporting capitalist parties and their representatives at the ballot box—because the elections are controlled by the rich. Corporations routinely support both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates with large financial contributions.
Our labor misleaders do the same with their support of Democratic or Republican candidates—and the campaign contributions they make to them with our union dues.
The “partnership” between labor leaders and the bosses is a large part of how the ruling rich maintain their control over the working class.
Today, our task is to bring workers, en masse, into the struggle to defeat capitalism and establish socialism—first, by taking the leadership of our organizations into our own hands and out of the hands of the labor fakers who partner with the bosses against us.
Our goal must be to form a united, socialist party of the working class—a party that could not only seriously contest the capitalist electoral process—but have the power to challenge their rule once and for all.
A united front of workers and our allies against capitalism and for socialism will have the power to put a halt to fascism and war, and usher in a world of social and economic justice and equality, and a future for all life on the planet. The alternative cannot be contemplated.
Note: Socialists are on the ballot in California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. 3 The same candidates and other socialist candidates are on the ballot in a few other states, so some of us can cast a protest vote for socialism this year.
1 “UAW 4811 authorizes strike over response to Gaza encampments”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5lq9HtjMIc
2 Excerpts from Leon Trotsky’s The Transitional Program, 1938
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/internationalist/pamphlets/Pop-Front-OptV5.pdf
3 The candidates of the Peace and Freedom Party in California are Claudia De La Cruz for President and Karina Garcia for Vice President—representatives of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.