Response to the Democratic Party Cheerleaders' Attack on the GPUSA

There is no future if we don't vote for the other Wall Street Party we are told.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, Retired

Member DSA

"The two party system can't give relief because capitalism in large finances both parties.  In one way or another.  We may say it finances the Republican Party more.  But have you ever known Democrats en masse to turn down the enticements of capitalism?

"There should originate, in the leadership of the AFL-CIO, a call to the unions for the only answer that is noble: global unionism is the answer to global capitalism.

"We were never meant to be beggars at the table of wealth.  We were never meant to be the apostles of labor cannibalism on the world stage.  We were meant for a higher destiny.  We were never meant to be the lieutenants of capitalism.  We were never meant to be the pall bearers of the workers of the world." 
Jack Henning, Executive Secretary California State Labor Federation Convention Opening Remarks 1994 *

In some ways 2020 is an election year in the US like no other. Yet in some ways it isn’t. Millions of people dread the thought of waking up the morning after the election to another four years with a degenerate racist and sexual predator in the White House. Who cannot sympathize with that? He is not the only one of course, he’s just open about it.

But in one sense, this election is the same as all the others as the US working class has no political representatives, no political voice of our own. I have good friends and solid comrades who I know will vote for the Democratic Party candidate once again no matter who it is, Sanders, Warren, Biden etc. This situation, the usual “lesser of two evils” option, is why 100 million or more people never voted in 2016 and why millions of US workers are disgusted with politics altogether. It doesn’t work and never has. The mantra now is, anyone but Trump. Now is not the time to split the vote. And while I respect those friends and others who take this position because their motives are sound, many of them not particularly fond of the Democratic Party either, I cannot agree with this position.

I have a very different opinion however of the long-time Democratic Party apologists who penned the open letter attacking the Green Party USA , among them the liberal academics Bill Fletcher, Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich. These individuals, despite having opportunity after opportunity to play a different role, have been devoted champions of the other capitalist party and as a left cover for the right wing bureaucracy that heads organized labor, (see list below for the list).**

Bill Fletcher, who is often touted as a militant rank and file labor activist spent most of his time in the ranks of the labor hierarchy as an official and advisor. He was an advisor to the president of the AFL-CIO for a while. You don’t get that job being a militant rank and file activist. You have to prove you are safe. It reveals the complete bankruptcy and shameless opportunism of these individuals that they can attack the Green Party in this way and not one word of criticism for the trade union hierarchy that is a more legitimate target. The AFL-CIO leadership has for years backed a political party that their members abandoned long ago. It is the Team Concept in the political sphere.

The heads of organized labor bear a great deal of responsibility for the rise of Trump, refusing to offer a political alternative to the millions of US workers disgusted with the status quo.  They've spent billions of dollars of their members’ hard earned dues money over the decades helping get Democrats elected who have participated, with their Republican colleagues, in the attacks of living standards for the US worker. No small amount of the working class votes for Trump were protest votes, or F*&k you votes along with the 100 million abstentions.

When Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Cater in the 1980 presidential election I was warned by some of my staunchly Democratic Party friends that we were now threatened with world war.  Now is not the time to raise the issue of an independent workers/labor party I was told. They let out a gasp of relief in May 1981 when Socialist Party candidate, Francois Mitterand was elected president of France; he was our only hope in these terrible times, one seasoned liberal told me. Reagan continued the deregulation begun by Carter. During Carter’s four years when the Democrats controlled both houses and the Presidency, not one piece of major legislation affecting organized labor was passed in that period and Carter used the Taft Hartley against the miners in 1978.

Huge strikes took place in the 1980’s in response to Reagan’s war against labor after the crushing of the air traffic controller and their union (PATCO). One was the Hormel strike in Austen Minnesota in1985-86. The governor of Minnesota during that strike was a Democrat. We have lost ground under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. The Democratic Party is the only political party in history that has dropped nuclear bombs on populated urban centers. The Democratic Party refused to seat Fanny Lou Hammer and the Freedom Democrats at the 1964 convention.  As Sanders did in 2016 betraying many of his supporters, a third of whom went to Trump, and as the signers of this attack on the Green Party are doing now and have done for their entire political lives, they direct any potential independent movement of working people in to the Democratic Party where it dies a slow death.

Despite Trump, there is no guarantee that things wouldn’t have been worse under the warmonger Clinton. There will be no guarantee that replacing Trump with Warren or Biden will change too much when it comes to the basics, it will at best slow the decline as it tempers the resistance. As far as US foreign policy, things will remain the same if not worse. Outside of his persona the main problem with Trump for the Democrats as the other party of capital is that he is undermining the institutions of capitalism, which includes the mass media, and he is moving too fast threatening social upheaval.

I concur with Cindy Sheehan in her response to this anti-democratic appeal to Green Party members to vote Democratic who wrote:

“Clinton has supported every U.S. imperialist war that ever came her way and as her tenure as Secretary of State, she engineered the coup of a legitimately elected government in Honduras and the complete destruction and debilitation of Libya.”

As a registered Green I voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and am normally registered Peace and Freedom Party here in CA. I do not feel at all responsible for Clinton’s defeat. Putin did not elect Trump, GPUSA voters did not elect him either; the undemocratic Electoral College and a pathetic campaign from a Democratic Party that could hardly be described as an “opposition” did.

The two parties of US capitalism are in crisis and the era during which they have dominated the economic and political life of US society is over. I have my share of criticism of the Green Party but the signatories of this letter, alongside the right wing bureaucracy atop organized labor and its hangers on, are far more responsible than the Green Party or its supporters for Trump sitting in the White House.

*Henning was a great speaker. Unfortunately he never used his power toward this end and made sure the resolutions for a Labor Party based on the trade unions that I introduced as a delegate from my Local, Afscme 444 in Oakland California, were not adopted. 

** Here's the list of people who signed the letter:
Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Leslie Cagan, Ron Daniels, Kathy Kelly, Norman Solomon, Cynthia Peters and Michael Albert.