The Evil of Two Lessers…

Dumb Donald and Sleepy Joe taking aim,

Each with the other in his sights,

Champions both of constitutional rights

Who mark their differences by being the same.

Dumb Donald isn’t lacking in confidence,

Knows his support’s semi-automatic,

Sleepy Joe’s liberally patriotic,

Claims capitalism is common sense.

When votes are in and have been counted,

Whoever gets most may very well lose

Being in the gift of a college to choose,

A great deception having been mounted.

This result comes at considerable cost,

The president wins, while everyone’s lost.

D. A.

 Principle or context?

The World Socialist Movement has traditionally refused to back one capitalist party or politician against another as a supposed ‘lesser evil.’ It has recommended that in the absence of a socialist candidate socialists should ‘abstain from voting for either evil’ and instead write SOCIALISM across their ballot papers. This stance is reiterated in the context of the forthcoming US presidential election in the October 2020 issue of The Socialist Standard (journal of the SPGB, our British companion party)—specifically, in the editorial and in Aljo’s article.

 Recently I have been rethinking this matter and want to share my thoughts. As I currently occupy the post of general secretary of the WSPUS, I must emphasize that I am expressing personal opinions, not presenting an agreed view of the WSPUS. 

The traditional stance of the WSM is based on two arguments. 

First, it is asserted that the differences between capitalist politicians are of minor importance – as meaningful as ‘the choice between cholera and typhoid,’ as Aljo puts it. Rival candidates are likened to the identical twins of an English nursery rhyme – Tweedledum and Tweedledee. 

Second, it is argued that the practice of supporting ‘lesser evils’ is a trap. It keeps the working class permanently in thrall to capitalism, blocking the growth of an anti-capitalist alternative or any movement independent of capital.

In World Socialist Review 22 (pp. 75-80) I identify a recurrent pattern. The disillusionment that follows the election of a ‘lesser evil’ prepares fertile soil for the rise of the next populist demagogue. A vote for a ‘lesser evil’ is therefore – indirectly – also a vote for a ‘greater evil.’ The second of the two arguments is a strong one. However, the first seems to me an overgeneralization. 

Tweedledum and Tweedledee? 

True, very often there does appear to be no great difference between rival candidates. However, I see no reason why this must always be so. Capitalist imperatives place limits on the policies that governments can pursue, but within these limits there is considerable scope for differences. In the United States, for example, the Republican Party has closer ties with fossil fuel interests, the Democratic Party with Wall Street. Recent years have seen a divergence in foreign policy orientation, with the Democrats focused on Russia as the main adversary and the Republicans on China. It may be said that differences of this sort are of no concern to the working class and in most cases that is so. 

However, some differences between one politician and another do affect the working class. I came across one example recently reading Victoria Johnson’s book on the Seattle and San Francisco general strikes (How Many Machine Guns Does It Take to Cook One Meal, University of Washington Press 2008). In 1934 San Francisco employers appealed to the federal government to send troops to suppress strikers in the city. Previous experience led them to expect a helpful response, but the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to oblige. A bloodbath was averted. 

The difference between FDR and his predecessors in policy regarding strikes and trade unions was surely ‘meaningful’ in this instance. Returning to the present, it may be argued that at least some of the differences between Trump and Biden do matter a great deal. 

MP Shah, author of another articleon the US election in the October Socialist Standard, evidently thinks so: ‘If Trump manages to secure another victory, the consequences for the environment will be disastrous.’ I am not sure. The difference between Biden and Trump in environmental policy is that between highly inadequate regulation of business activity and no regulation at all. Consequences for the environment will probably be disastrous even if Trump is defeated, although even an outside chance of human survival is preferable to the certainty of extinction. 

A threat to democracy? 

Of special concern to many people is the unprecedented threat that Trump poses to the democratic elements in the US political system. There is ample basis for such concern. Besides interviews with Noam Chomsky (e.g., truthout. org, August 11), I refer the reader to the series of seven editorials published by The Washington Post, starting September 22, under the heading ‘Our Democracy in Peril’ and to Barton Gellman’s article in the November 2020 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Trump has illegally appointed officials without congressional approval. He has sent federal troops to cities, against the will of their mayors, to confront peaceful protestors. He is systematically purging federal employees and military officers considered insufficiently subservient to himself. His new appointee as postmaster general is slowing down the delivery of mail in order to block mail-in ballots. He has refused to promise to leave office if he loses the election. 

Most alarming of all is Trump’s reliance on the support of extreme right-wing and white-supremacist militias like the Proud Boys and the Boogaloos, whose acts of violence and intimidation he refuses to acknowledge or condemn – despite the evidence presented in a recently leaked FBI report. The claim that Trump represents an American variety of fascism no longer seems farfetched.

As socialists we cannot be indifferent to such a prospect. Even if we remain at liberty, which is by no means guaranteed, we could hardly be effective in our work of spreading socialist ideas in an atmosphere of pervasive ‘patriotic’ terror. 

So what?

 Even if Biden is clearly the ‘lesser evil’ in this election, it does not necessarily follow that socialists should give him their wholehearted support. The long-term interest of the working class and of human survival dictates that such support be withheld from any capitalist politician. Support for an establishment politician, however justified its motivation, is a slippery slope that easily leads to the loss of any radical perspective. 

Just consider how Bernie Sanders has changed his tune. At the time of the Democratic Party primaries he dared expose the dirty secret of Biden and his other establishment rivals – their financial dependence on – and consequent subservience to – big business. This truth-telling was crucial to his popular appeal. 

Now, as Bernie begs his reluctant supporters to vote for Biden, the truth-telling has disappeared. Bernie encourages us to take Biden’s promises at face value, despite the man’s sorry record, and no longer even mentions his ties to capitalist interests. As socialists we face a real tension between the short-term and  long-term interests of humanity and the working class.

 We cannot sacrifice the short term to the long term: after all, we have to pass through the short term in order to reach the long term. Nor can we sacrifice the long-term to short-term considerations. 

A compromise of some sort is required. Our first duty is to be as clear and frank as possible in presenting the situation as we see it. As for the choice between not voting, casting an invalid ballot, and tactical voting for Biden in order to oust Trump, let our fellow workers think things through and decide for themselves. They can manage without our advice. 

STEPHEN SHENFIELD

http://www.wspus.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/World-Socialist-Fall-2020.pdf

Led by Wall Street giants Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, 50 top investment banks provided financial services to sectors driving mass extinctions and biodiversity loss worth more than the GDP of Canada in 2019, the analysis found. The world’s largest investment banks provided more than $2.6tn (£1.9tn) of financing linked to the destruction of ecosystems and wildlife last year, according to a new report.

“Bank by bank, the report authors found a cavalier ignorance of – or indifference to – the implications, with the vast majority unaware of their biodiversity impacts, or associated balance sheet risks,” Sir Robert Watson, former chair of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the UN’s scientific body on nature, said. “In short, this report is a frightening statement of the status quo.”

The report says that banks do not have systems in place to monitor environmental harm.

Prof Kai Chan of the Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia and leading author of the IPBES report, said: “A global sustainable economy sits at the centre of humanity’s much-needed transformation to meet the climate and ecological crises. And at the centre of that sit the banks and the finance institutions whose investments power development around the globe.”

 Last month, the UN reported that the world had failed to meet fully any of the 2020 Aichi bioiversity targets that countries agreed with fanfare in 2010, even as it found that biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the pressures driving this decline are intensifying.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/28/banks-lent-1-9tn-linked-to-ecosystem-and-wildlife-destruction-in-2019-report-aoe

Australia’s rich have gotten richer during the coronavirus pandemic.

The total wealth of the 200 richest people in Australia increased 24% over the past year, to $424bn, even as the country was plunged into recession and unemployment soared due to the pandemic.

 Iron ore prices that rose from about US$80 a tonne late last year to a peak of more than US$125 last month have dramatically increased the wealth of what the AFR has dubbed “ore-ligarchs” including Gina Rinehart and Fortescue Metals founder Andrew Forrest.

Rinehart’s net worth has more than doubled, from $13.81bn to $28.89bn, moving her from second to first on the rich list while Forrest’s almost tripled, rising from $7.99bn to $23bn and rocketing him from eighth spot to second. The vast increases in the wealth of the two iron ore magnates pushed last year’s No 1 – packaging king Anthony Pratt, into third position even though his fortune also swelled – from $15.57bn to $19.75bn. Hui Wing Mau, the chair of Hong Kong listed Shimao Property Holdings, a property developer in mainland China, was fourth at $18.06bn, up from $10.39bn last year. Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes was fifth on $16.93bn, up from $9.63bn last year.

Nick Molnar, the co-founder of controversial buy-now-pay-later outfit Afterpay, vaulting from 194th on the list last year to 50th this year. His wealth exploded by 283%, from $487m to $1.86bn.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/29/gina-rinehart-rockets-back-to-top-of-afr-rich-list-as-pandemic-proves-kind-to-ore-ligarchs

 Two more talks uploaded from the Discord online meetings –

Why socialism? – the power and limits of speculation pt.1 – Richard Field, 9th October 2020

Why socialism? – the power and limits of speculation pt.2 – Richard Field, 9th October 2020

George Orwell pt.1 – Richard Botterill, 16th October 2020

George Orwell pt.2 – Richard Botterill, 16th October 2020

The free school meals campaign hopes it can “make a difference” by helping to reduce child hunger and ameliorating child poverty that the present pandemic has increased and worsened yet it is just one among a number of many noble causes that cries out to be tackled and solved. 

Free school meals…increased welfare benefits…halting climate change…more resources for the NHS…where does it all stop?

Alas, however well-meaning and seemingly urgent they are, it’s obvious that single-issue campaigns can only solve one problem at a time. That is, even, if they succeed. 

And for every one that is successful, money is usually diverted from some other area of need, meaning that the net result for working-class people as a whole is zero or worse. 

You can join 1,001 campaigns and when they’ve ended, another 1,001 problems will have sprung up, while the gap between the richest and the poorest continues to increase.

Instead of going cap in hand for a few crumbs from the table of our lords and masters, why don’t you insist on grabbing the whole cake?

We invite you to join the only campaign that is relevant to the entire working class – the campaign to end the capitalist system once and for all and establish world-wide common ownership. 

No political leaders, no class-based society, no national borders, no money to squabble about because in a truly democratic world where resources are held in common, money won’t be needed.

If you really want to make a permanent difference, join the World Socialist Movement!

RS

 Canadians are increasingly open to welcoming immigrants and refugees.

A new study from the polling firm Environics Institute found that attitudes among Canadians have become increasingly positive, even as millions remain out of work and the country faces grim economic projections.

“These views are not a blip. They’re not chance. They seem to be deeply rooted and widely spread,” said Andrew Parkin, executive director at Environics. “At first, we thought maybe Donald Trump would knock these positive trends. Maybe Canadians would catch the vibe of what’s going on in the States and start pulling back. That didn’t happen,” he said. “If these views are not going to get knocked back by politics in the United States or a major health or an economic crisis, they’re probably not going to get knocked back.”

 Instead of political unrest and xenophobia in America and Trump’s xenophobic views spilling over the border, Parkin suspects they have had the opposite effect in Canada. “It actually seems to have reinforced our sense of distinctiveness.”

The latest results show for the first time ever that Canadians are more likely than not to reject the idea that immigrants are not adopting Canadian values. At the same time, a large majority of Canadians continue to see immigrants as critical to the Canadian economy and don’t feel they take jobs away from other Canadians.  The pandemic, which has so far millions of jobs and left Canadians in precarious financial situations, has not turned residents negative towards newcomers. Nor has the emergence in 2019 of the anti-immigration People’s Party of Canada which has also failed to shift opinions.

Close to one-third of Canadians say that too many refugee claimants are not “real” refugees – sharply down from 79% in 1987.

The shifting attitudes are not found just in heavily populated and diverse cities like Toronto but the research also recorded increasing openness among older residents aligned with conservative political parties and in regions that have faced economic devastation.

Atlantic Canada is often compared to the US rust belt or northern England – rural areas where industry has left, the population is poorer and residents are older.

“In other countries, this all correlates with less openness to immigration. But in Atlantic Canada, they’ve realized that the more immigrants they have, the more businesses that are going to get started there.” 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/28/canadians-immigrants-refugees-study-environics-institute

 Canadians are increasingly open to welcoming immigrants and refugees.

A new study from the polling firm Environics Institute found that attitudes among Canadians have become increasingly positive, even as millions remain out of work and the country faces grim economic projections.

“These views are not a blip. They’re not chance. They seem to be deeply rooted and widely spread,” said Andrew Parkin, executive director at Environics. “At first, we thought maybe Donald Trump would knock these positive trends. Maybe Canadians would catch the vibe of what’s going on in the States and start pulling back. That didn’t happen,” he said. “If these views are not going to get knocked back by politics in the United States or a major health or an economic crisis, they’re probably not going to get knocked back.”

 Instead of political unrest and xenophobia in America and Trump’s xenophobic views spilling over the border, Parkin suspects they have had the opposite effect in Canada. “It actually seems to have reinforced our sense of distinctiveness.”

The latest results show for the first time ever that Canadians are more likely than not to reject the idea that immigrants are not adopting Canadian values. At the same time, a large majority of Canadians continue to see immigrants as critical to the Canadian economy and don’t feel they take jobs away from other Canadians.  The pandemic, which has so far millions of jobs and left Canadians in precarious financial situations, has not turned residents negative towards newcomers. Nor has the emergence in 2019 of the anti-immigration People’s Party of Canada which has also failed to shift opinions.

Close to one-third of Canadians say that too many refugee claimants are not “real” refugees – sharply down from 79% in 1987.

The shifting attitudes are not found just in heavily populated and diverse cities like Toronto but the research also recorded increasing openness among older residents aligned with conservative political parties and in regions that have faced economic devastation.

Atlantic Canada is often compared to the US rust belt or northern England – rural areas where industry has left, the population is poorer and residents are older.

“In other countries, this all correlates with less openness to immigration. But in Atlantic Canada, they’ve realized that the more immigrants they have, the more businesses that are going to get started there.” 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/28/canadians-immigrants-refugees-study-environics-institute

The Democratic Party (or as we like to describe them, the Damnocrats) is a party that embraces capitalism. It calls for the increased regulation but not the abolition of capitalism.

The hold of patriotic sentiment on the working people in America has created havoc on the development of class consciousness and played into the hands of the capitalists. The “revolutionary tradition” of American history can also be put to use for the advantage of working people not as the romantic idea that Americans are crusaders prepared to shed their blood for noble ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but that the capitalist class did not hesitate to fight for its own class interests. This involves pointing out that George Washington with his 30,000 acres of land; that Hancock and Adams with their mercantile business threatened with destruction by laws passed by a British parliament in the interest of British merchants, acted in line with their class interests. And after the war was over they conveniently forgot their revolutionary principles, ensuring the new constitution which protected their property interests against the artisans and small farmers who had done all the fighting.

It is true that the average American worker does not usually feel a member of a poor, oppressed class but there is a growing impoverishment and insecurity under capitalism  Americans have convinced themselves (or perhaps more accurately, permitted themselves to be convinced) that electing a new president will change things. “It’s gonna be different this time.” But it won’t be. Even when Biden becomes President, it would hardly matter, for his freedom of action is too restricting and he would have very little option but to accommodate the capitalist class and their agenda.  When he is elected there would be a number of cosmetic changes but the fundamental problem, capitalist property relations, would remain essentially unchanged. One of the tasks of Biden is to transform bothersome protesters back into a relative placid population again. Biden makes no secret during his campaign of his “moderate” political outlook. A central theme of his campaign, in fact, is the need for bipartisanism and many on the Democratic Party left view him as just another spineless Democrat. Biden  has never claimed to be anything but a “pragmatist”, which is a nicer way of saying “opportunist”. People have gone from the naïve view that Trump is the root of all evil to the equally simplistic idea that Biden could uproot that evil.

 Once more there is the recognizable political cycle. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that Biden was a significantly lesser evil. For instance, it is argued, isn’t it worthwhile just to re-join the Paris climate agreement (just for the sake of debate, remember) to get him into office does ward off a greater evil. Some capitalist politicians are totally 100% subservient to the fossil fuel corporations and oblivious to the danger of climate change. In their hands we are doomed. Other capitalist politicians are a little less subservient, show a limited awareness of the situation, and try to do something to mitigate it. Something, although much less than what’s absolutely essential and necessary. Biden may take a less confrontational approach, but he still has to bat for US capitalist industry, arguing for the continued use of fracking, for instance. Once in office, Biden comes under irresistible pressure from his capitalist masters to break his “populist” promises, to disappoint, disillusion and betray the working people who placed their trust and hope in him. Some supporters sink back into apathy and despair, while others fall prey to the right-wing backlash. These reactions give the Republicans their chance to return to political power. Those who support the lesser evil play an essential role in constantly reproducing the cycle. They share the responsibility for its persistence. Support for the lesser evil also entails support – indirect and delayed, but support nonetheless – for the greater evil.

America badly needs a vigorous socialist party. America is a plutocracy, which means a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. Everything supports that fact. The American working class have been fooled into accepting the concept of common interests wherein the problems of the capitalist class and the state machine are theirs also. The suggestion is that people in the US all belong to one of the world’s mightiest military and industrial powers, sharing equally in the glory; so let’s all work still harder to increase the arms and wealth of the rulers. The belief that there exists a community of interests from which we all derive common benefits is a mistaken one but nevertheless held strongly. Two crucial political fallacies permeate American workers thinking.

First, that the present system can be so organized that it will operate in the interests of the majority, through a process of applied reformism, and second, that ‘proper leadership’ is an essential requirement. However, neither of the foregoing will ever remove any of the major social evils and the socialist mission is to demonstrate that fact.

 Without vibrant grass–roots movements changing reality, the richest people in power will keep on trampling upon the working class. We need BOTH activism on the streets demonstrating against specific grievances AND we need effective electoral action for social change. A powerful socialist party should be the conduit for change. Protests have often been aimed at the wrong target. Occupy Wall Street was a step in the right direction. We now need to go further. A socialist party is an organization which can connect the dots between issues and movements — from winning justice for workers to fighting for immigrant rights to interacting with global social justice movements. We cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which we must battle.

In 1904 Eugene Debs wrote that, ‘The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles’

Fifty years earlier, one former slave wrote:

‘The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from him, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered and by the same plunderers’

(Frederick Douglas, My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855).

Let us make no mistake, when the election is over it will be business as usual for the masters of the wage-slaves.

Trump’s eager white supremacist supporters are keen to have four more years of his rule. Trump has proved himself a blundering buffoon and although the competition may be close, he might just be the most dim–witted president in US history. By all accounts, he is certainly dysfunctional, hailing from a traumatizing and traumatized family. Like his father before him Trump is a bully, a psychologically damaged man.

Judging by the mainstream media, most liberals reckon another Trump presidency to be a worse outcome than a new Joe Biden administration would be. We are not so sure. There is no reason to assume that he represented the lesser of two evils. As vice-president to Obama, Biden was complicit in normalization of extrajudicial killing by drones, deported more immigrants than Clinton and Bush combined, and accepted the destruction of Libya. Biden has expressed similar narcissistic delusions as Trump falsely claiming to have marched with the Civil Rights campaigners and been arrested for trying to meet South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. He has shown himself to be the friend of the bankers by chaperoning corporate-friendly legislation through congress.

Despite the hyperbole of some progressive commentators, America is not the Germany of the 1920s an 1930s and Trump is no Hitler. He is, however, reflective of a global rise of autocrats across the world such as Putin, Duterte, Orbán, and Erdoğan.

Trump is a xenophobic populist, playing to the crowds, offering salvation to the powerless poor who have lost their jobs to foreign free trade pacts along with their white privilege. 

To socialists seeking a world without exploitation, war, nationalism, racism and sexism, it matters little which butcher is currently wielding the cleaver when it comes to austerity cuts in public spending on social welfare. Whether Trump or Biden, both of these politicians speak and act in the interests of the ruling class.  When Trump stood  delivered his State of the Union Address, he said:

“Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

 Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, applauded in approval as Trump expressed this bipartisan consensus shared by most Democrats with the Republicans. 

Nor are we persuaded by Sanders and his Justice Democrat supporters who see socialism as a form of Scandinavian safety-net. The ‘socialism’ of these progressives does not entail the dispossession of the capitalists from their wealth and property and the transfer of their productive assets to common ownership and democratic control. They continue to accept capitalism, with its market as given.

Other than world socialism there is no deliverance of humanity from wars, from hunger, from the destruction of millions and millions of human beings. The World Socialist Party’s task is abolishing capitalism altogether and building socialism. The only way for the socialist revolution to  flourish is on a world scale. Revolution is total or it is nothing. Only two possibilities face the world – socialism or barbarism. We are left with nothing but the cataclysmic vision. Whilst capitalism dominates the world economy as a whole, inter-capitalist rivalry creates contradictions which aid the struggle for socialism.