Introduction

As decisive developments in the United States political establishment take place and the 2024 presidential elections looms ever closer, we find ourselves in a difficult situation. From one direction, we see a reactionary, fascistic movement led by Donald Trump and the Republican Party make gains among the most backwards sections of the population. From the other direction, we see an impotent Democratic Party attempt to rally the progressive strata with deceptive rhetoric calling for stagnation in the current stage of capitalism, not change towards any new, progressive arrangement.

Further, we see that the Democratic Party of the United States is doing little to defend from the rising fascistic movements in the country, but is in fact taking impotent and permissive stances despite its grave danger.

The capitalist “democratic” system in the United States has shown itself to be nearing its end. It can only go into a deep mire of fascist tyranny or be made superfluous by the revolutionary movement of the working class.

To that extent, revolutionary socialists face many issues despite the clearly moribund nature of the United States. The Democratic Party and pseudo-radical forces associated with it have attempted for decades to deceive the United States working class into supporting their rule, and many have fallen to this effort, and have come to perceive working within the decaying, oppressive framework of election cycles as the predominate if not sole means to attain change in society.  To that extent, it is our duty to reverse this, expose the anti-worker nature of these appeals, to show the regressive nature of electoralism in the United States class struggle.

Background to the Crisis of American Capitalism 

Capitalism has, for the entire span of its existence, has always constituted a system which trends towards decay, malaise, and volatility. As the United States of America represents one of the foremost capitalist powers in the world, it is no exception. 

The historical crisis of capitalism that was the Great Depression in the 1930s demanded the ruling class of the United States to install a president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who could save moribund capitalism from the prospect of socialist revolution in the form of social democratic programs such as the New Deal. Further attacks on the working class were made with the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947 and McCarthyism, which decimated organized labor and radical movements. For the next decades in the 20th century, American capitalism was saved.

However, the welfare system spawned from the New Deal was supplanted with the neoliberal reforms and excesses under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s onwards, the condition of American capitalist democracy has been consistently in decline, particularly after the events of September 11, 2001 and the resulting introduction of even more draconian policies under president Bush and his successors. 

The global capitalist crisis of 2008 generated fertile ground for the rise of reactionary, fascistic movements seeking to turn away the liberal democratic framework while still preserving capitalism. The Tea Party movement and other tendencies emerged, but soon were subverted and astroturfed by the most backwards sections of the bourgeoisie. The nascent discontentment within the petite-bourgeoisie in the United States expanded greatly, and the larger, ruling capitalists quickly exploited this. 

Thus, Donald Trump and his fascistic movement were born, premised on a platform of chauvinism, reactionary populism, supremacy, and so on.  This is the formula by which Trump won the 2016 presidential election. After the crisis of the 2020s began with a pandemic and recession, the capitalist system, to a greater extent, showed itself to be against the interests of the workers, and unrest took place following the murder of George Floyd by white supremacist police officers. Trump and his administration’s expansion of the already draconian police forces to quell these protests, negligent response to and denial of the pandemic, and so forth resulted in a widespread decrease in his popularity prior to the 2020 presidential election. After Trump’s potential in maintaining his leadership diminished, he began to vocally oppose the bourgeois democratic system in the country, and covertly plotted to ensure his position via illegal means. After Trump’s defeat in the election, he refused to accept the results, initiating a self-coup attempt in collaboration with multiple neo-fascist terrorist militias along with unorganized insurrectionists on January 6, 2021. However, Trump’s attempts to maintain power failed, and he was forced to resign from office and allow Joe Biden to succeed him as president.  Thus the present political context in the United States emerged.

Democrats — A Party for Democracy?

"[…] The distinction between the two parties has been diminishing. The fight between these two parties has been mainly over the height of customs duties. Their fight has not had any serious importance for the mass of the people. The people have been deceived and diverted from their vital interests by means of spectacular and meaningless duels between the two bourgeois parties. This so-called bipartisan system prevailing in America and Britain has been one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party."  --Vladimir Lenin, The Results and Significance of the U.S. Presidential Elections, 1912

Since the prelude to the 2024 presidential election began, the Democratic Party has attempted to appeal to workers in numerous ways to obscure their true class position as political representatives of the capitalist stratum. One such aspect of their rhetoric has been to pose as defenders of American “democracy” against the despotic Trumpists:

“Too much of what is happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic. […] MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you" –Joe Biden, speech delivered in 2022

However, despite this fallacious propaganda, the Democratic Party is as much a part of the falling bourgeois plutocratic system as the Republican Party is, both of which constitute the “two-party” system which suppresses working class and socialist political parties and cements capitalist rule.  We must ask ourselves, when president Biden speaks of the “foundations of our republic,” what constitute these foundations?  According to one of the “founding fathers” of the United States, James Madison: 

“From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.” [Emphasis mine: S.W.] –James Madison, Federalist Papers No. 10

Indeed, these were views nearly universal among the “founding fathers” of the United States. Their opposition to true democracy in favor of oligarchy is an aspect even their reactionary supporters will confess to. The foundations of the United States were premised on the ability of a small ruling class of rich landowners and slavers in a colonialist context to act freely without reference to popular rule. That is to say — exploitation, genocide, discrimination, minority rule, and unfettered property rights for a few.  These are what defined the foundations of the United States, and to that extent, the Republican Party is not opposed to these foundations but extreme defenders of it in a modern form.  A democracy constitutes the rule of the majority, rather than a powerful minority. Is the Democratic Party an organ for the rule of the people?
The Democratic Party is heavily funded by powerful institutions with millions of dollars each and every year such as Bloomberg LP, Charles Schwab Corp, and many others, a large amount of which concurrently fund the Republican Party. Nearly all of the powerful Democratic officials in the Senate and Congress are millionaires and otherwise very affluent.  The government of the United States, even under an administration aligned with the Democratic Party, have consistently permitted corruption in the form of “lobbying” and have been overwhelmingly more favorable to the interests of the capitalists (a class which much of its leadership belongs to!) while caring little for the interests of the people. 

This overwhelming evidence proves that the Democratic Party is not a party of democracy at all, but — as with their Republican counterparts — a party led by the rich, operating for the interests of the rich, and counter to the interests of the working class. The United States of the government of the capitalists, and the Democrats merely represent the political will of one faction of them. 

In short, the Democratic Party cannot be the defenders of a “democracy” when none exists for the vast majority of the population.

Are the Democrats a “lesser evil”?

There are many, some of whom self-described “socialists,” who will still provide some degree of support to the Democratic Party even after becoming cognizant of its bourgeois and anti-democratic character. This is the politics of following a “lesser evil.” This position of supporting a “lesser evil” is nearly omnipresent in the working class people who are deceived by the Democratic Party. In the 2020 presidential election, the majority of Democratic voters stated that their primary reason for their decision to vote for Joe Biden was because “he is not Trump.”  Much of the proletariat in the United States is not supportive of the Democratic Party and merely vote for it as they know no other valid forms of political struggle. They are lied to by the bourgeoisie in viewing bourgeois democracy as the only arena for political change; not yet knowing of socialist democracy and its infinitely more liberative nature.  The Democratic Party and its aligned corporate media are very much aware of this tendency among their voting base. During the initial stage of campaigning for the 2024 general election, a widespread trend emerged during the presidential primaries among Democratic voters not to cast their support for Biden, but to vote “uncommitted” largely as a measure of protest. In the State of Michigan, over 100,000 voters voted “uncommitted,” many of Arab, particularly Palestinian descent and felt discontented with the continued support and complicity of the Biden administration for the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. While detailing this information, Democrat-aligned academic Michael Traugott stated:

“[Selecting ‘uncommitted’] is not an option for the fall general election, where the only alternative to a Biden vote for Democrats will be to stay home or vote for Donald Trump. Given his past record and proposals to exclude Arabs from immigration to the United States, I don’t believe that will be a realistic alternative for many of Michigan’s uncommitted voters.” 
–Michael Traugott, “More than 100K Michigan voters pick ‘uncommitted’ over Biden − does that matter for November?”, February 27, 2024

This is a view common among the leadership of the Democratic Party as part of their previously mentioned emphasis on fighting to “maintain American democracy.” For the vast majority of the progressive people in the United States, they are faced with a decision: either vote for a right-wing candidate (Biden) who is actively supporting a genocide and is maintaining oppressive policies all while betraying their voting base, or vote for an openly fascistic candidate (Trump) who will not only persist in support for this genocide but expand it domestically against his own people.  Thus, in this case, the “lesser evil” of the Democrats still represents a monstrous, genocidal force. However, this supposedly “lesser” evil has adopted and maintains many aspects of the “greater” evil of Trumpism. Joe Biden has failed to deliver, in part or in full, on the majority of his campaign promises, yet maintained many of Trump’s draconian policies. His administration has continued the construction of a large “border wall” on the border with Mexico which was initiated under Trump and lessened regulations and laws to hasten its progress, continued mass deportations of migrants in large numbers, even surpassing Trump in the number of deportations, and persisted in separating immigrant families and placing children in cages.

Although Joe Biden had campaigned as a “pro-labor” candidate, he has quickly revealed himself as being as anti-working class as any prior president. During a strike by rail road workers suffering from abhorrent working conditions in late 2022, the Biden administration first refused their demand of two weeks worth of sick leave and instead suggested a single day, and then proceeded to enact repressive measures making the strike illegal.  Biden and the Democratic Party have done very little to end the suffering and hardships of the working class. His administration has done nothing to reduce inflation and its resulting consequences for the workers, made critical and negligent errors during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, failed to institute any sort of rent cap and other regulations during massive increases in eviction rates and homelessness, allowed continued police militarization and has done nothing to combat their infiltration by neo-fascists, implemented large-scale neoliberal privatization and austerity measures, and many other extremely anti-working class actions. In the instances where the Democratic leadership does propose certain nominally progressive legislation, such proposals never manifest into anything meaningful as they are quickly diluted, privatization schemes are including into the bill, etc. all the comply with the demands of the American ruling class.  In addition, under the administration of the Democratic Party, supposedly a “left-wing” party, mass repression of working class and progressive movement by police and other state agents have continued. The United States government has responded to nonviolent anti-Zionist protests which started in response to the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza strip with brutal crackdowns and repression, deploying hundreds of militarized police onto college grounds to assault students and other protests and committing other gross violations of human rights in the name of defending a genocidal and colonialist regime at the behest of their corporate masters. Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidential election since late July 2024, is not at all distinct from Biden in these stances.  On July 24, 2024, when Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal and genocidal leader of the State of Israel, came to the United States to deliver a fascistic speech during a joint session of Congress, protests erupted against this blatant show of support for a genocidal fascist regime. In response, police again used brutal methods to quell the protests. A day later, Kamala Harris made a public statement:

“Yesterday, at Union Station in Washington, D.C. we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protestors and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric.  I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews. Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation.  I condemn the burning of the American flag. That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way.  I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.” [Emphasis mine: S.W.] –Kamala Harris, Statement on July 25, 2024

No matter if the politician is a Democrat or Republican, the same inhumane and vile beliefs are held; making use of democratic rights such as freedom of speech and expression are “unpatriotic,” opposing a blatant endorsement of an overseas fascist dictator in the chambers of the government is “hateful,” all of the millions of Palestinians are associated with “Hamas,” peace protests are not allowed if it contradicts capitalist-imperialist interests, and condemning one’s government for supporting an ongoing genocide is “antisemitism.” It is clear what sort of “lesser evil” the Democratic Party is. The Democratic Party is an anti-democratic, imperialist association made up of and operating for the interests of the capitalist ruling class. To support this “lesser evil” means to support police repression, mass deportations, genocide, imperialism, wars, austerity, and the continued exploitation of one class over another. There is nothing that the working class can attain from supporting this vile imperialist organization anymore so than the neo-fascist Republicans, a party which the Democrats are all too willing to collaborate with and empower.

​Supporting this “lesser evil” means to excuse any and all of their crimes and atrocities and absolve them from failing to make any meaningful change. Since the Democrats are “not Trump,” all of their actions or inactions become justified, and their responsibility to their voting base becomes irrelevant. This has been shown with the whole of Biden’s presidency, which has seen nothing but unimpeded hardship for the working class yet has acted as a prelude to the rise of American fascism in part due to the Democrats’ own impotence. 

What must be done?

The conditions which warranting that working class movements operate within the capitalist electoral framework have long disappeared, and the recent events in the 2020s have shown this to be particularly true.  The “democratic” government of the United States only allows two political parties to exercise political power, the right-wing Democratic Party and the far-right Republican Party, both of which are simply the political arms of the capitalists to maintain their rule without any sort of democracy for the working class. The Democrats have no ambitions for the abolition of capitalism or any other working class interests. Rather, the Democrats are simply present to ensure division of the working class movements and progressive elements while the fascist Republicans dismantle bourgeois democracy itself. As the Republicans fall further into fascism, the Democrats need only to tail them and appear slightly more “moderate” to manipulate young voters eager for change yet fearful of fascism into supporting them. This is always the case even as the Democrats continually move to the right in tandem with the Republicans.  Neither the Democrats nor Republicans are to be supported in any capacity by revolutionary movements. Instead, communists in the United States must ensure the separation of socialist and otherwise working class organizations from the Democrats, expose the anti-working class and reactionary nature of this organization, and form a new revolutionary communist party which will not fight for the maintenance of this repressive capitalist system, but will bring about revolutionary change and a truly democratic socialist republic for the working class. 

Our goal for communists in the United States is, in short, neither Democrats nor Republicans — revolution!

Workers of the world, unite!