Fight for Working Class Political Alternative
“America has passed through one of Lenin’s weeks in which decades happen” was how the capitalist Economist magazine started one of its leaders referencing the famous remark of the leader of the Russian Revolution. That was before US President Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing from the US presidential race!
It is the latest expression of the fractures, growing polarisation and instability that engulf US imperialism and its capitalist class.
Not since 1968, when Lyndon B Johnson withdrew from the presidential race, has a sitting president withdrawn before contesting for a second full term. However, against the backdrop of the rise and threat of a return of president Trump Mark 2, the significance is even more heightened.
For weeks, pressure has been piling on Biden to step down since the disastrous debate with Trump in June.
Day after day, leading Democrats have been adding their names to those calling for him step down, and rich backers adding their names or stopping their funds. Many more called for him to go in private or went as far as calling for him to step down without actually saying it.
In many ways, this relentless pressure is an attempt by the majority of the US capitalist class who oppose Trump to get their act together, in their eyes to save US capitalism and imperialism from the chaos of another Trump presidency.
But it still doesn’t hide the fractures within the Democratic Party, part of the wider polarisation developing across the US that can lead to civil war-like situations and local clashes.
Biden’s quick endorsement of Kamala Harris was the first step in her likely quick coronation as Democrat candidate for November’s election. Though there is a desire for a unified candidate avoiding further divisions, it is not without problems for the US capitalist class.
The crisis of US ‘democratic credibility’ hangs over the election and within the Democratic Party itself. This is reflected by calls in the Economist, Financial Times and other capitalist media for a contest at the Democratic National Convention taking place from 19-22 August, next in a few weeks, despite the problems it could open up. If it was to become a genuine ‘open convention’, it likely is they will be satisfied with Harris as a candidate. This despite their concerns and its limitations, including the California-elite image she portrays.
There are now hopes that this puts the Democrats back in position to beat Trump. However, only a year ago, many commented that Kamala Harris was a worse option than Biden to challenge Trump at a presidential election. Her 2020 run for the Democratic nomination rapidly collapsed. Current polls indicate that Trump is still the favourite and he’s at the same levels as before the disastrous debate between Biden and Trump in June.
So called Lefts within Democrats
The so-called ‘lefts’ within the Democrats have been utterly embarrassed. In the lead up to Biden’s withdrawal, the leading proponents supporting him staying were Alaxandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and other members of ‘the squad’, including Bernie Sanders, whose left-wing challenge for the 2016 Democratic nomination enthused millions.
If any had anything about representing the working class and opposing the two big capitalist parties, they’d put themselves forward, as Sanders partly did in 2016 and 2020, and this time, not leave it there but independently organise the growing anger and disillusionment that Trump and his running mate JD Vance are opportunistically seizing. This could be part of a call to the trade unions and wider working class for the largest-possible workers’ stand in future elections, breaking from the Democrats.
It is important to also point to the significant ‘uncommitted’ votes against Biden in the early Democratic primaries and caucuses at the start of the year. These numbered hundreds of thousands state by state. Many not even registered Democrats came out using it as a voice against Biden and against the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli state.
Despite its limitations, that movement and mood gives a glimpse of the possibility and vacuum that exists for the development of a mass working-class political voice in the US.
Many trade unions, much of the trade union leadership, including unfortunately the firebrand leader of the UAW union Sean Fain, simply backed Biden and now Harris as candidates for the ‘pro-union’ party, with no hint of irony.
Millions will not vote. However, many millions, because of the utter failure of Sanders and the trade union leaderships, could be swayed by Trump and Vance.
Vance has styled himself as a man from poverty done good, he described himself as a fighter for the working class. Sections of the Republicans and capitalist press have labelled him ‘the Republican Bernie’. In his own words: “The People on the left, I would say, whose politics I’m open to – It’s the Bernie Bros”.
It’s quite clear that Vance is opportunistically trying to catch the ear of the layer of workers who were inspired by Sanders with calls for a $20-an-hour minimum wage and attacks on big corporations (as well as big unions, of course!)
Like Trump, his populist calls are combined with right-wing rhetoric and policies that pose real threats to working people, the environment and more.
It gives a warning to dangers that exist when the working class has no mass political voice. Therefore, the struggle for a mass socialist working-class alternative is urgent.
Teamsters union president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention 15-18 July, the first teamster to do so in 121 years.
O’Brien has, in the last few years, attempted to pose as a hardline union leader prepared to take on big business, without much follow through. The 2023 national UPS strike, that mobilised huge momentum and power behind it, was called off in the final hours on the basis of limited concessions.
Trump has zero interest in O’Brien’s pro-worker proposals. But having a Teamster president there, giving it the hardline on big business and the elite, just plays into Trump’s fake-populist brand.
Many points O’Brien made in his speech where correct in terms of the plight of the working class in the USA. His comments included: “The Teamsters are not interested if you have a D, R, or I next to your name. We want to know one thing: what are you doing to help American workers?”
“Remember, elites have no party, elites have no nation. Their loyalty is to the balance sheet and the stock price at the expense of the American worker”
According to O’Brien, the Democrats ignored his request to speak at their convention. With many teamsters angered by O’Brien’s own popularist opportunism, his speech has opened up a potential debate and struggle in the Teamsters and wider union movement about the political strategy and democracy of trade unions.
However, many attacking O’Brien from within the union movement and beyond are at the same time simply regurgitating that the Democrats and Harris (and Biden previously) were pro-worker and pro-union. This only plays into the hands of Trump and Vance.
For huge numbers of workers, this shows they are simply out of touch with the realities of life in the last five years of a Democratic president, the decades of Democratic administrations previously, and the many Democratic local and state governments.
Trump used his speech at the convention to call for the UAW to fire its president Shawn Fain. A big shift compared to Trump’s claims he always had the back of striking UAW workers during the month-long autoworkers strike last year.
Fain replied by correctly stating: “America’s autoworkers aren’t the problem, our union isn’t the problem. The working class isn’t the problem. Corporate greed and the billionaires’ hero, mascot, and lap dog Donald Trump, are the problem… Don’t get played by this scab billionaire”
However, in no way does that leave O’Brien or Fain off the hook. Both lead two of the of the most powerful trade unions in the USA. They could put their money and their union’s power where their mouth is. They could make the call for other union leaders, whose unions have been organising in union drives and strikes in the recent period, to break from the Democrats and begin to set the agenda and tone in the political debate and at the ballot box by raising what’s needed for the working class. They could be spearheading the fight for a workers’ voice at the ballot box across the US, but instead they are not prepared to challenge the system.
Such a campaign, if it had been launched last year off the back of the UPS and autoworkers contract struggles, could have laid the basis for a mass union-backed workers’ presidential campaign.
But even now, the union leaders could intervene in this election to counter and stop the opportunistic and hypocritical lies and propaganda of Trump and Vance. This could lay the basis for a mass workers’ stand in future local, state and congress elections.
Many unions have seen the beginnings and formation of rank-and-file initiatives and organisations develop in recent years. As well as playing a key industrial role, organising on the ground, campaigning to force action and make unions democratically run combative organisations, such bodies could also coordinate industrially and raise the need for a fighting political strategy. They could play an important role in raising the call for an independent stand by workers, as the first step towards a new party of the working class.
