Introduction from Oaklandsocialist: A debate is under way within the left about whether or not to vote for the Democrats. Some on the left oppose voting for the Democrats’ and use the the Democrats’ support for Israel’s genocide as the reason. The truth is that most of those people opposed voting for any Democrats any time, including before this present genocidal war by Israel started. But even for those for whom this war is genuinely their reason for not voting for the Democrats, there are other issues to be considered. Here, Clay Claiborne explains. He starts by making a point about whether Palestinians or black Americans are “suffering the most”. Clay writes:
Clay Claiborne in 1975
It’s not about who’s suffering the most. It’s about the role of various struggles in the US election. While the outcome of this election will no doubt have a great effect on the people of Gaza – and I’m willing to wager they will fare much worse if the Christian nationalists win the election – it won’t be decided on the basis of the Gaza question unless the white left artfully uses the issue to throw the election to the Republicans.
principal contradiction in US “bourgeois democracy”
The principal contradiction in the US 2024 election is its particular derivative of the principal contradiction in the US since its founding and embodied in its Constitution, namely the contradiction between bourgeois democracy and the use of African slave labor as its engine of primitive accumulation. A great civil war was waged to end this period of capitalist accumulation, and a victory for bourgeois democracy was won in the balance. The struggle to complete that work was greatly stifled when black reconstruction was overthrown ~1876. Since then, progress on this front has been slow and halting, but progress has been made nonetheless, and it has brought in its wake, progress on a number of other fronts that seek to fulfill the promise of bourgeois democracy.
White supremacist Christian nationalists like these were the driving force behind Jan. 6
Now, a powerful reactionary movement, a resurgence of white supremacy, has risen under the leadership of Donald Trump. Its aim is to re-establish white supremacy to its position of unchallenged dominance (“Make America Great Again”). It has a mass base and a fascist leadership. It was able to capture state power for the first time in 2016, with a significant assist from the white left, but it failed to consolidate state power, and was forced out by the masses in 2020. Now, they plan to use the 2024 election to seize state power again, one way or another, and keep it!
The opposition to this fascist takeover has very quickly rallied around the new leader of the Democrats, a black-Asian woman—Kamala Harris. This is how what has always been the historic principal contradiction for US bourgeois democracy is playing out in the next 6 mos. in the US. And while issue of Israel’s genocide in Gaza will play little role in the election, the outcome of this election is likely to have an incredibly powerful effect on the course of that conflict, with the difficulties the Palestinians face being much worse if this resurgence of white supremacy is successful in the US.
Fox News is happy to broadcast “abandonDemocrats” activists.
Many both inside and outside the “Uncommitted” movement see its utility as a vehicle for attacking Harris. These include white supremacists both in the GOP and the Kremlin. Already Fox News is giving the most coverage to the “Uncommitted” protests at the DNC. and Chris Stirewalt of the AEI writes in The Dispatch “GOP Rooting for Chaos in Chicago.” They understand that the “Uncommitted” attacks on Harris help Trump. [Oaklandsocialist will be publishing an article documenting the links between Putin, the Republicans and the Jill Stein for president and Cornel West for president campaigns. Stay tuned.]
As far as I’m concerned it also includes that broad cohort of leftists that were silent about the Assad and Putin assaults on Palestinians and others living in Syria who refused to submit to his rule. These “lefts” supported Assad when he massacred over 1300, including ~400 children with sarin. Now, these same “lefts” are hypocritically using Gaza as an excuse to oppose Harris when they would have opposed her anyway.
I find it funny that those that claim both parties are the same, justify their focus on Biden/Harris by saying they are the one’s supporting/committing genocide now. So, according to them, on the one hand, both parties represent US imperialism, but it’s not US imperialism that is supporting/committing genocide, it’s just the party in power now. So, the other party, with the most extreme Zionists, get a pass.
But the election isn’t about who’s in power now, it’s about who will be in power after the election.
I fear the white Left will use Israel’s genocide in Gaza in the 2024 election the way it used the Standing Rock protests in 2016 as a way of seizing the moral high ground while ceding the field to the white supremacist insurgents.
Clay’s blog site can be found here.
Clay Claiborne in 1975
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Categories: History, Middle East, politics, racism, Trump, Uncategorized, United States
Dear Oakland Socialist, John Reiman and others,
I attended your zoom panel on the 2024 elections.
I found the argument about the urgency of fighting the far rights threat quite convincing.
Do you have an answer to the somewhat self-contradictory article by Ashley Smith in The Tempest entitled “US politics today”, thay says electoral work is important, but also says not to call for a vote or to rashly condemn those who vote for Kamala Harris.
It states:
“Electoral politics are one of the battlefields of the class struggle.
We must contest our rulers on all fronts of the system from the economic to the social, ideological, and political. We cannot ignore or abstain from engaging in battle on any of those fronts. If we leave electoral politics to only the capitalist and far right forces that only empowers them to have more influence over the politics, ideology, and organizational priorities of workers and oppressed groups. We ignore elections at our peril.”
But the article concludes that the important work in this election campaign period, is base building in social movements not centered on a vote but on social issues (what we want, Mediare etc).
Am I right to say that in my opinion, Ashley Smith does not want a major focus on the dangers of far right authoritarianism (fascism?) in case of a Trump victory in the present (2024) election period?
Comradely
John Barzman (from afar, Le Havre, France).
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I haven’t read his article (although I will now that you mention it) but in general Smith tries to please everybody. There is no contradiction to encouraging a mobilization in the streets and voting for the only candidates that can stop Trump & Co. from taking over the White House and congress. In fact, the two go hand in hand because the only excuse for not voting for the Democrats is to equate them with the MAGA Republicans. That can only mean minimizing the danger of the latter, in which case how can one encourage a mobilization in the streets? I hope you will attend and participate in the upcoming forum (Sunday, Aug. 25) on the Republicans plans to overturn the elections.
Thank you for your two replies.
I know the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign (USSC) is a coalition and not a front-group of Oakland Socialist. I mysef prefer the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (which in my opinion is broader than USSC, though it may be useful to have a “socialist” wing within it). Ypu were right to answer my question on Oakland Socialist as it deals more with socialist politics in the US.
Your general comment on Ashley Smith is interesting. Where can I find more about his logic and trajectory?
Comradely
John Barzman
In the first place, regarding the fact that the USSC is explicitly “socialist”. I was the one who first suggested putting that in the name. My thinking was that we would not be able to materially affect the outcome of Russia’s invasion although of course we would do what little we could. But what I did think was that The majority of the socialist movement here in the US has betrayed the most fundamental principle of socialism – international working class solidarity. They have crossed a rubicon and cannot turn back. Therefore, an entirely new socialist movement must be constituted. I had no illusions that the USSC could “be” that socialist movement, but I hoped that we could play a role in its development. I still have that hope.
Regarding Ashley Smith’s article: To understand his trajectory and that of Tempest you’d have to take some time studying the past of the International Socialist Organization (ISO). Having now read his article, I can comment further: I agree with a lot in it. That includes his general assessment of how socialists orient towards elections. Also, he comments that Biden’s policies have been Keynesian. I was noting that back in 2021. This is as opposed to the overwhelming majority of the socialist left here, which claims that Biden followed neoliberal policies. In the past, Biden did, but he’s not now. For the majority of the left, nothing has changed.
Smith’s political tradition – the ISO – tries to be all things to all people. Whatever was popular with socialists at that time they would tend to accept. So, in this article, Smith says socialists should not take a clear position on whether or not to vote for the Democrats. I think he is mistaken. How can we fully explain the enormous danger that the MAGA Republicans pose and then turn around and in effect say “do whatever you like; we don’t think it matters if Trump or Harris wins”? Of course, by failing to call for a vote for the Democrats one avoids a conflict with the majority of the left while, on the other hand, calling for not voting for them would leave a potential millstone around one’s neck if they get elected. There’s something else: What do socialists have to say about the campaigns of Stein and Cornel West? I’ve been clear, as you see in my most recent article. But again, that will cause some conflict within the left.
Smith’s political tradition (which is the tradition of most socialist groups) also involved not directly organizing among the rank and file union members against the policies of the union leadership. And here is where the main problem lies: As with so very much else in politics, one can often tell more from what somebody doesn’t say than what they do say. Notice how Smith skirts all around what is the central issue for socialists in the US: the role of the union leadership. Not “the unions” in the generic sense, but the leadership of those unions. I spent 30 years inside the carpenters union campaigning for the idea that our union, and the unions in general, must break from the team concept and mobilize to really fight the employers. That included both in the “industrial” arena of fighting for better contracts, etc. and in the political arena of breaking from the Democrats and building a working class party. This meant organizing against the union leadership. There is simply no way around it. I will take it even further: The entire union leadership has waged a 75+ year war against all the best traditions of the US labor movement. I’ve written on that frequently. This war has had disastrous consequences, one of which is the low level of class consciousness and the alienation that the great majority of union members feel towards their unions. Smith recognizes that some workers support Trump & Co. It’s worse than that. The former president of the UAW estimated that 40% of UAW members supported Trump. An activist in the Teamsters commented that it’s about the same in that union. I’ve seen teachers and nurses who support Trump. I’m not saying the majority of workers support Trump, but it’s possible that the majority of WHITE workers do. There simply are no reliable statistics on that. In other words, the US working class is in crisis. That crisis is reflected in the support tens of millions of US workers have for Trump, on the one hand, and on the other a tendency towards passivity. The great majority of union members don’t participate in their unions, but on the other hand are unwilling to participate in a struggle to transform their unions. This assessment is based on my 30 years in the labor movement. I don’t blame the members themselves; I blame that 75 year war waged by the union leadership in collaboration with the propaganda of the capitalist class.
That view has some very concrete conclusions. In my opinion, and what I will argue for on Sunday when we discuss the threat of MAGA and the Christian nationalists to overturn the elections, the unions have to be at the center of resistance to this. But the problem is that the union leadership insists on following the lead of their Democratic Party masters. The conclusion is that we must find the ones and twos of rank and file union members who are willing to go into their unions and organize among the members to wage a battle to change course, which means a battle to transform the unions from top to bottom. That is not an easy thing, but it’s more necessary today than ever.
There’s a lot more to be said, but I’ll leave it there.