The Biden/Harris Administration Will Be No Picnic.

They'll help Folks see what socialism is and what It Isn't

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

1-20-21

It was in the debate with Hilary Clinton in 2016 that I recall the first time Trump publicly threatened that he might not accept the results of the election if he lost. This was amid all his claims of the electoral process being rigged and his further attacks on the “swamp” in reference to the US body politic. I could hear a collective gasp from the US ruling class as Trump’s statement was a direct assault on the electoral process, an integral and sacrosanct part of democracy, or what is more accurately, bourgeois or capitalist democracy.

And what of the so-called Supreme Court? This is just a bunch of old lawyers promoted to judges by politicians that represent the interests of capital and capitalism. Yes, we live in a Democracy, a capitalist Democracy. Greece was a Democracy and we were taught in schools it was the world’s first. Who knows, but I know that the slaves couldn’t vote because it was a slaveowner’s democracy. Capitalist democracy yielding to pressure from below, instituted universal suffrage for difference sections of society at different times. But the set-up is such that you can’t vote capitalism away and you can’t make it fair at the ballot box.

 

Capitalism is inherently unfair, it is a ruthless and violent system of production. The whole political structure is designed to maintain the status quo. Every state has class content. The state in medieval Europe was a feudal state so in the last analysis, the state is an organ of class rule. And the present ruling class, capitalists, were forced to overthrow it and create new structures although this is better kept among themselves as it might catch on.

 

The structure of any state is such that it defends this set up, the economic system on which it rests and the class that built it.

 

Millions of Americans, US Americans that is, are so disgusted with Congress, that they draw the false conclusion that all politics and politicians are bad. They are crooks or simply evil men and women. Trump has fed on this. This is why he is dangerous, he has undermined the institutions of capitalism from the government to the media, the universities which are capitalist think tanks and so on. The US ruling class doesn’t care whether he is a rapist or a racist but the institutions that give the system legitimacy must not be undermined.

 

It’s not an accident that Mitch McConnell refused to initiate the 25^th Amendment even though the CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers supported it. It was a concession to Trump giving him a little more time to perhaps pardon some of his friends, a small debt of gratitude if you like. The invasion of the Capitol by Trump supporters whose intent was to kidnap and perhaps execute members of the US Congress including Pence and McConnell who they consider turncoats, was the last straw for many corporate heads and they too leapt from the sinking ship in droves.

 

It is somewhat sickening to listen to Biden and his surrogates talking about the need for “unity” and “healing”. Heal what? Trump didn’t cause the divisions and conflict in US society; he simply used them for his own aims. All was not well before Trump. Biden has asked that nasty piece of work Pence to his inauguration. Why would he not? Biden and Pence have the same general view about society. Same with Mitch McConnell who now says that Trump incited the attack on the Capitol. These two have spent four years backing Trump’s agenda, his defense of fascists and white nationalists and his misogyny.

 

There is much elation over the Democratic Party winning control of the Senate through the victories in Georgia, but it’s not the first time this Party of Wall Street has had control of both houses and the Presidency and in California we have what is often referred to as a one party state the Democrats have such power; but we have little to show for it. The. Democrats found themselves in this position during the Carter years yet not one piece of legislation crucial to labor was passed and Carter used the Taft Hartley against the miners in 1978. In the first two years of the Clinton administration the same situation arose and Clinton went on to throw working class women off welfare, often in to union jobs without the pay and benefits, brought us NAFTA and also supported the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act in 1999.

 

The US Senate is a thoroughly undemocratic electoral institution the aim of which is to protect the wealthy against the more populous and overwhelmingly urban working class. Each state has two representatives regardless of population which gives small rural states more power. In the 2018 primaries, Democrats received 10 million more votes than the Republicans but this did not lead to any significant  change in the balance of power in the senate as collectively small states with two Senators each were able to keep the more populous urban states at bay.

 

Washington DC, which has a population of around four million also has a large black population who are also denied equal representation as they are nationally being largely centered in the urban centers. There is a movement for statehood for Washington DC as there is for Puerto Rico, a US colony in the Caribbean. In some ways the Senate is not unlike Britain’s unelected House of Lords and James Madison noted this pointing out that the US Senate should function in a similar manner to, “…protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”

 

Despite having a slim majority in the Senate, the filibuster will undoubtedly be used to obstruct any aspect of Biden’s agenda that Wall Street objects to and some Democrats will participate willingly. We should not forget the Democratic Party was originally the party of the Slaveocracy . The filibuster, like the Senate itself, was a useful tool for southern slaveholding states says Adam Jentleson, author of Kill Switch: The rise of the Modern Senate “It arose as the need to maintain slavery led southerners to search for new ways to defy the majority.” * During the 20^th century it was used “almost exclusively” to stop civil rights legislation.

 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek points out that during the Obama presidency, Mitch Mconnell used the,  “filibuster to block or limit almost every bit of legislation” as anything but the “most popular” legislation has to overcome the 60 vote threshold. Unlike Biden, Jentleson, a former aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada has a far more realistic assessment of McConnell, “It’s remarkable how, despite everything we’ve seen over the last 10 years, Democrats will still engage with McConnell in the very next negotiation as if he’s a good-faith negotiating partner,” Jentleson tells Business Week ,and that old school politicians like Biden, “…refuse to see McConnell for the savvy, cold-blooded realist they believe he is.”

 

Jentleson argues that “Any path to a functional Senate……entails eliminating or reforming the filibuster to restore the framers’ vision of a place where votes are decided on a majority rule basis.”.

 

This is all well and good from Jentleson’s point of view, but his objection is that the present political crisis as it is being played out in the Senate is bad for business, is counter to a stable environment for profit making. Making it more “democratic” does not change its inherently undemocratic nature and purpose as far as working-class people are concerned. The role of the Electoral College is also to protect against the mass of the population in this representative democracy to make sure the “right” people are represented.

 

The most important issue for working class people is grasping the reality that it’s not just the Senate or the Electoral College that prevents legislation that serves our economic and social interests form becoming law; it is the entire structure of government or the state. It’s not crookery or flawed character that drives the politicians to do what they do or why they lie; it is the policy of the parties that they represent. The Democratic and Republican parties are capitalist parties. Yes they are different and have also changed in time but in the last analysis these parties have class content and they represent the interests of capital not labor; the purchaser of labor power not the seller of it.

The term, “workers of the world unite” strikes such fear in the minds of the capitalists, the bankers, industrialists and coupon clippers who control the two parties, because workers uniting leads to all sorts of problems for them. We begin to question not just individual aspects of society but the system of production itself. We don’t always arrive at that conclusion easily, normally through the experience of struggling for reform. Martin Luther King himself began to draw that conclusion through his life experiences saying in a speech to the Southern Christian leadership Conference in Atlanta Georgia on August 16, 1967:

 

“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…”

 

The battles in the US body politic in the coming period is between different sections of the ruling elite over how best to continue the plunder of society and exploitation of the worker, both at home and internationally, in the most stable way possible while maintaining profits and the present state of affairs. Let's not forget that Biden made it clear up to this point that for business, nothing will fundamentally change and on China he reminded us that the American worker has to become more competitive. We know what that means. With no political party of the working class to engage this process at this point, no major opposing position will be present and it's quite likely we will see a more organized right wing political party. The Trump support will seek organizational expression at some point.

 

The other more explosive battles will be in the streets, workplaces and working class communities of the country. This is a battle workers engage in and where we have the advantage as we have the numbers and are well situated in the economic life of society to stop the economy from functioning. This is how we have won what we have so far. While we must defend the right to vote as we won that from them as well, we have won very little from the ballot box. All the social legislation of the 1930’s and 1950’s and 60’s came about after it was already won on the ground through the great labor struggles and occupations of the 1930’s and the Black revolt and Civil Rights movement that followed. But be sure, in the aftermath of the Capitol invasion we can except increased surveillance, the continued build up of state security forces and a curbing of civil rights in the name of fighting terrorism.

 

Returning to the rich and militant class struggles that makes up the history of the US working class and all exploited people is what will open the door to real change in the future. It's the only option.

 

*Kill Switch, by Adam Jentleson. Quoted in Business Week 1-18-21