AOC's Appeal For Unity. Between Capitalists and Workers.

Follow this link for the video short.

Richard Mellor

 

Which “we” is she talking about? The boss and the worker? The Democrat and the Republican? The banker and the bus driver? Yes, we’re all in this together. 

She is one of the Democratic hopefuls in the 2028 election; she wants to obscure the class divide, bury it. Though not a Democratic Party supporter as anyone that reads this blog knows, I was somewhat excited when she first arose on the scene defeating an entrenched Democratic party machine incumbent. 

But there are great dangers when you are thrust in to the enemy’s camp. It’s one thing to criticize the system and its rottenness and bias from without; as a small minority. But to enter its tangled web even if you are forced in from below and have a significant class base, you are faced with an insurmountable challenge. 

We cannot defeat them. We cannot transform society through the ballot box. Look at the Iran war; most Americans oppose it but it’s not ending. Most Americans want health care but the ballot box can’t deliver it and so on. A victory like hers and Mamdani’s is forced to deal with the laws of the system as it is; just calling oneself a socialist is not enough. The interests of the working class, the vast majority of us, cannot be realized within the present economic system of production. 

 

I suggest folks read John Clarke’s piece on this blog that deals with this issue. On the Primacy of Building Movements and the Limits of Electorialism.

The only way to avoid betraying one’s base and instead building on such a success like this woman had in penetrating the club’s defenses, as Mamdani and others have and will, is build and strengthen the movement on the ground. Broaden the struggle against the system of oppression and concentrate on the workplaces, communities, organizations of the working class and youth.

AOC’ appeal for unity here is an attempt to undermine the class conflict inevitable in a system of exploitation. She is lost to the working class not because she is a coward or weak. It is because she does not recognize that the economic system we know as capitalism is heading headlong toward the abyss; it cannot be made nice. And she has no alternative to it. She does not see that that working class can govern. That the working class is the only force in society with the social weight to change it. 

It’s not utopian to see the world in this way. It’s utopian to think we can continue down the path the so-called free market is taking us and avoid catastrophe.