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| Source: Huff Post |
By Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
The pages of the Wall Street Journal, the main journal of US
capitalism, are full of triumphant glee in the aftermath of what it refers to
as the “Republican Tide”. Even Democrats
were impressed. Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s former press secretary and campaign
adviser, described the results as a “wipeout.” The Republicans will have the largest Senate
majority since 1946, control of 68 state legislative chambers, the largest
number since 1946, and 4000 state legislative seats, the most since 1928,
according to the WSJ. Mia love of Utah,
became the first black woman to Represent the Republican Party in Congress and
is a convert to Mormonism. Why a person of color would want to join an
organization that barred people for years on the basis of their skin color
baffles the mind, but politics makes strange bedfellows as the saying goes. In
all. “The GOP has gained at least 13 seats in the House and has won at least
243 seats” the WSJ reported yesterday.
The mood among the liberals is bleak, “Losing the Senate
should make us all weep.”, one Democratic Party activist in my area wrote on
Facebook. The liberals after all do not see the working class as a force in
society, they do not imagine that the working class can govern society and they
cling desperately to what they imagine as the liberal wing of the bourgeois,
the friendlier face of capitalism represented by the Democratic Party. But there is no such thing. The US working
class, less enamored with Democratic Party rhetoric and all the phony talk of
being the party of the people, has a much more pragmatic view-------they’re all
rotten.
In many Democratic areas, the curtain fell heavily as voter
turnout among Blacks and Latinos fell in key states. In Baltimore where 63% of
the voters are black, 20% of eligible voters “didn’t turn up” the WSJ
reports. If we were to take the mass
media too seriously it would indeed seem that there has been a revolutionary,
or counterrevolutionary shift in the electorate. The masses have finally grasped the
conservative ideal.
But a closer look shows that, as Michael Robert’s comments
pointed out on this blog earlier this week, the “No
Vote Party” won again. In his news
conference after the elections, Obama stated twice that that “Two-thirds of
voters” stayed at home. I assume Obama is talking about registered voters, but
if we include those not registered, the abstention number rises. According to the Statistical
Abstract of the United States, there were 229 million people of voting age
in the US in 2010 and 41.8% of these voted in the Congressional elections.
Figures do show that 215 million are citizens which would raise the percentage
a bit but either way, when one considers that people that do vote generally
“hold their noses” and go vote fore the lesser of two evils, it is clear that
there is disgust at the electoral system and with the two parties that have a
dictatorship over political life. in the US.
Liberals generally argue that this is because the US working
class doesn’t care, is apathetic, too stupid or any combination of the above. But millions of US workers and sections of the
middle class have drawn the conclusion that the entire electoral process is
rotten and that neither party can or will serve their interests. They are not
depressed; they are disgusted with all of them. The US political establishment
and its electoral process in particular is well portrayed in the satirical
movie Being There,
Peter Seller’s last movie. It’s worth a watch as political satire goes it’s one
of the best.
So claims by both Democrats and Republicans in the media
Wednesday that “the people” have spoken, is inaccurate at best. Some people
have spoken but even there, the dwindling number of workers that do vote and
more so the traditional middle class liberals, having no real choice jump form
one sinking ship to the other every two years or so in the hope they can keep
their heads above water a little longer or, as is often the case, they vote on
moral issues.
The union hierarchy that throws its eggs and members’ hard
earned money in to the Democratic basket, delivered yet another defeat for the
rank and file and workers as a whole. “We had a tough night last night,” Mary Kay
Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union told the Journal. Workers do not put ourselves in the “we”
category with the Democrats like labor officials who often become candidates of
this party themselves. “You can’t go through an election like this and not
challenge your assumptions and rethink how you do the work,” Steve Rosenthal, a
Democratic political strategist and a former political director of the AFL-CIO
was quoted as saying in the same article. Unfortunately Mr. Rosenthal and others like
him refuse to draw the conclusions most workers have; that the Democratic Party
cannot represent the interests of working folk. They refuse to “rethink” how they work
because the conclusions terrify them. Mobilizing the working class in any way
can only lead to chaos form their viewpoint.
Organized Labor is a
conduit through which ambitious and in many cases opportunistic careerists in
the workers’ movement enter the Democratic Party and mainstream politics. One
co-worker liked to remind me that the difference between Republicans and
Democrats was the Republicans “Stabbed you in the chest.”. This was always a
favorite excuse from labor bureaucrats, after Democratic Party betrayals, NAFTA
and EFCA for example. Workers have lost
ground under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. In Rhode Island,
Democrat Gina Raimondo, the state treasurer who was elected governor Tuesday as
union opposition split, had waged a war against state employees imposing deep
pension cuts as the WSJ points out. What
sort of choices are these?
But for the labor
hierarchy, blaming politics in general, and the Democratic Party in particular is
preferable to building an independent political party of workers and the middle
class which would put them in the uncomfortable position of producing the goods,
something they cannot do with their present ideological baggage. This inaction is a major reason why the two
parties of the 1% have a monopoly in the political sphere, and the capitalist
offensive is so aggressive.
Some of the post
election comments from Obama are evidence as to why workers have abandoned
politics altogether. All the talk now is
of “compromise” when any party claiming to represent workers’ interests would
be declaring war on our opponents. Obama said of Mitch McConell, the new Senate
leader whose policies openly condemn women, ethnic minorities, the working
class in general and the environment, to an unstable and doubtful future that, “He
has always been very straightforward with me……..we’ve had a productive
relationship.”. Is that so? That should be a warning to all of us. Obama
went even further claiming he, “….would enjoy having some Kentucky bourbon with
Mitch McConnell.” WSJ 11-6-14 . What class conscious worker
would want to spend any time with these two?
While the class
collaboration of the labor hierarchy is hugely responsible for the present
situation, and redistricting and other tricks keep workers from the polls like
the 600,000 in Texas that were unable to vote due
to a lack of ID’s, the
working class and all those who are disgruntled and dismayed with the present
state of affairs are not blameless.
The same applies to
union members that moan constantly about the failure of the union leadership to
halt the capitalist offensive but refuse to do anything about it. We all have an obligation to step forward, to
wage the political struggle to change the direction of our organizations but
also to build an alternative to the dictatorship of the two Wall Street parties
over the political process. We cannot
sit idly by as the thugs that run this country take us in to more predatory wars
and continue to amass trillions of dollars in wealth. To continue to defend the
lesser of two evils approach only slows the decline and demoralizes people
further. By supporting the Democrats one
has then to defend them and offer them as an alternative to the Republicans and
when it comes to the future, both these parties represent Wall Street and the
1%. They intend, as we have stated on this blog many times, to place US workers
and the middle class on rations. They
are driven by the laws of the market to take this road.
When workers fight
back or criticize the 1% and their wealth, their politicians and mass media goes
on the offensive accusing us of introducing class warfare in to US politics and
society. But class warfare exists, it is
a permanent fixture of capitalism and it is the 1% that wages it day in day
out.
Their mass media and
politicians refer to austerity and the need for workers and the middle class to
“tighten out belts”, that we have been “living beyond our means”. There is no mention of class warfare then.
They only call it
class warfare when we fight back.
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