The U.S.  presidential election approaches, a lesser evil contest between Trump and Biden.

“Do I vote against Trump or help Trump?” Noam Chomsky asks.

The truth is that the choice offered is an illusion. Voters are held hostage by both parties. The Democratic Party is positioned against universal healthcare, ending military aggression, stronger environmental protection, and fair distribution of wealth. By voting for the Democrats at the ballot box, the electorate validates and legitimizes a party that perpetuates war, racism and exploitation which existed long before Trump appeared on the scene.

Americans are programmed every four years for participation in an election that is usually described as the most important since the last one. Eligible voters will choose neither the ruling power’s candidates who act as  puppets for Wall St. This time around the liberal media are telling us that the fear of fascism and end of our democracy is reason to vote the lesser evil. Talk of “our” democracy is like the slaves referring to “our” plantation. The fact is that plutocrats and the oligarchs own and control America’s democracy. “We, the people” have learned only too well how to be slaves. Worse, we have come to think of our servitude as liberty. “We, the people” are asleep. Time to wake up, fellow-workers, and break free of our chains. Election issues such as Trump’s personal taxes or Hunter Biden’s business speculation are irrelevant to the real interests of working people which do not feature on the media agenda. People seem content to sit back and watch the reality TV that passes for politics today. It’s the equivalent of bread and circuses, a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize and control a population. upcoming election will keep workers divided and at each other’s throats, so busy fighting each other that they will never unite against capitalist tyranny. It is time for us all to refuse to be pacified, patronized or placated. The poor are growing. Racial justice and human rights are increasingly non-existent. We are sheep. We are being bred to be followers.

The American political system, from its very inception, was never intended to be democratic. It was designed to be always in favor of the wealthy despite the noble ideals of many of the participants and ever since the history of United States contains the dark shadows of oppression and repression. The deep injustices were covered up by patriotic symbols: the flag, the national anthem and legends that turned the founding fathers and the industrial barons into heroes. Regardless of who is president or the party which controls Congress the official narrative remains one that glorifies the military and worships plunder, justified in the name of Manifest Destiny. The culture of indigenous peoples and the ecology of nature are destroyed in the pursuit of profit for the corporate masters behind the scenes.

One’s refusal to submit to the choice that is offered on the ballot is not throwing one’s vote away nor a mere gesture. It is an act of civil disobedience. Another world is possible, but not without us fighting for it. We must defeat this malignancy of the “lesser of two evils” politics so that we claim our own power.

 According to a recent report published by the Rand Corporation, insulin prices in the US remain five to ten times higher than the prices of the same insulin in other countries.

In May 2020, the Trump administration announced changes for some medicare recipients to cap monthly copays for insulin at $35 a month, claiming the new model would provide an average out of pocket savings of $446 a year, with beneficiaries able to enroll into the new program if they aren’t currently for coverage in 2021. Trump signed another executive order aimed at high insulin costs in July 2020, directing federal health care centers to pass along discounts for insulin and epinephrine to certain low-income Americans, and another order aimed at permitting state insurance plans to allow for drug importation of insulin products made in the USA.

Trump claimed the orders will cut the price of insulin to “pennies a day” without acknowledging the limited scope of his orders, as diabetics are still struggling to afford insulin as costs remain high. During the first presidential debate, Trump falsely claimed his orders lowered insulin costs “so cheap, it’s like water”.

“The executive orders are very narrow in scope and don’t do anything for the root of the problem,” said John Tagliareni, leader of the Iowa Insulin for All chapter and a type one diabetic since 1998. He explained the orders provide a small discount for some health clinics and rely on foreign governments, like Canada, that have negotiated affordable drug prices with insulin manufacturers. “Those executive orders are political talking points, it’s not actual legislation,” added Tagliareni. “It does nothing on overall costs. It does nothing to the pharmaceutical companies for price gouging the American consumer because there’s no competition.”

For many of the 26.9 million Americans diagnosed with diabetes, including nearly 1.6 million with type one diabetes who require several daily insulin doses, the struggle to afford insulin is a constant problem.

 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/30/americans-diabetes-insulin-cost

  The current pandemic might cost the world economy $16 trillion (£12.2 trillion) by next summer but it is much harder to calculate the human cost.

A document has been drawn up by an organisation established by the UN, which is known as IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) warns that, without a co-ordinated global plan, more will die from future pandemics more dangerous than Covid-19. The document is tasked with protecting the natural world on behalf of people.  More than five new diseases are emerging every year. 70% of new diseases like ebola and zika, and almost all known pathogens with pandemic potential, such as influenza, HIV, and the novel coronavirus, have their origins in animals.

“The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” – Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania

The Democratic Party decided to risk another Trump term to nominating Bernie Sanders despite his popularity and majority support for his policies, Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free public education through college, demilitarization, and massive taxation of corporations and billionaires. Instead they chose to run against Trump a corporate-friendly candidate who was polling more weakly against Trump. Now millions of people have signaled that they will not vote for either rotten candidate on November 3. 

Meantime, the Left insist that Trump is the anti-Christ and working people should vote for a lesser evil, a saintly grandfatherly figure such as Biden, and yet begin organizing campaigns to try to save the world from that evil they just recommended you to vote for and hopes to get into office. The World Socialist Party of the United States has maintained its integrity and honesty about both candidates, which has angered our opponents who believe that part of supporting a candidate is lying about him.

If you place trust in a Biden presidency believing in him, his presidency will turn out as disappointing as Clinton’s or Obama’s and lead straight to yet another Republican right-wing as Bush’s or Trump’s victories.

For the Democratic Party, Trump has been the perfect pantomime villain and he has served as the Pied Piper for the Right. The Democrats are aligned with Wall St. And much of their opposition to Trump has merely been media PR stunts without any actual political opposition, hence their support for border security, the defense budget and the Patriot Act, as well as Trump’s foreign policies. Real resistance to Trump, top would threaten the Democrats own cozy relationships with the corporations that fund and run the government. And that’s just not something they’re willing or able to do.

Many on the Left will hold their noses when voting for Joe Biden as the saying goes because the lesser evil is still an evil, especially Biden who has a record of war–mongering, being an errand boy for big banks and facilitating the incarcerations of many thousands with his crime bill. Not only have over the years been given abysmal choices for president but they have grown worse with time. It is the ability of industrialists and financiers to buy Republican and Democratic politicians and their control over the news media to choose the campaign issues. The Democratic Party leadership obeys the wishes of its corporate benefactors. Who pays the piper calls the tune. Sanders, a liberal in the tradition of FDR and not actually a socialist (despite what he calls himself) was easily beaten in his two attempts to become the Democratic Party nominee. Many Democrats would have followed the example of Blairites in the British Labour Party who would rather have Tory government than a have Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. Even if Sanders had somehow managed to become President, the corporate Democrats with the enthusiastic assistance of the Republicans would undoubtedly have undermined him and defeated his policies. 

The American Republican-Democrat duopoly is foolproof way keeping power with Wall St. And it is helped by an anachronistic hopelessly out of date Constitution. Has it never occurred to American the general unwillingness of Democrats to amend the Constitution, to make the Electoral College more reflective of the actual will of the voters? Most any other system would be more democratic but replacing it with a more representative proportional multiple-party system would require fundamentally changing political structures. Not totally democratic as  as capitalism’s built-in inequalities and power imbalances can’t be wished away but must be eliminated through the construction of a better world. However, it would be a be at least an improvement.

 The ultimate reason for the two-party system winner-take-all electoral process is that it was designed by the privileged few to serve the privileged few.  It may offers the illusion of democratic choice, in contrast to a one-party system but if the candidate standing for one of the parties is objectionable, then our choice is between the “lesser of two evils.” Voting for a party or an individual becomes a sterile exercise in ensuring the other side doesn’t win. The election campaign strategy is to attract away voters from the other party, thereby encouraging the parties to draw closer to one another, lessening differences between them. The importance of the candidates’ character and personality comes to the fore, blurring political principles.

The Democratic Party and the Republicans may compete fiercely against one another to win elections and that is because they represent different groupings within the capitalist class. But they still remain accomplices and collaborators for their masters on the many issues that the ruling class are at one.

If we are to ever have elected bodies that are responsive to non-manipulated popular will we must overthrow capitalism itself.

THE WORLD SOCIALIST PARTY

OF THE UNITED STATES

 Australia’s summer bushfires were fuelled by climate change a royal commission found. The royal commission explained natural disasters were becoming increasingly unpredictable and difficult to manage as a result of global heating and the bushfire disaster of 2019-20 was a glimpse of things to come.

Craig Lapsley, a former Victorian emergency management commissioner, said the $10bn cost of the bushfire disaster laid out in the report was “staggering”.

“Not to mention the loss of life, long-term health costs, and impacts on Australian jobs and communities,” he said. “Australians have paid a heavy price for climate change inaction and we will continue to do so if federal and state governments continue to back new coal and gas instead of renewables.”

Greg Mullins, the former New South Wales Fire and Rescue chief, called on governments to implement all 80 recommendations made by the commission. “The bushfire royal commission has laid out the facts in no uncertain terms: climate change drove the black summer bushfires and climate change is pushing us into a future of unprecedented bushfire severity.” Mullins said, “The federal government absolutely must act on the root cause of worsening bushfires in Australia, and take urgent steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This clearly means no new coal or gas, and a rapid transition to renewable energy.”

The Australian Conservation Foundation said in the face of climate disasters and extreme weather events, governments were falling short. “We have a small window of opportunity to reduce the impact climate change has on future bushfire seasons and the threat it presents to life, property and nature,” the climate change program manager, Gavan McFadzean, said.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/30/morrison-government-urged-to-cut-emissions-to-tackle-root-cause-of-worsening-bushfires

“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.” – Eugene Debs

We seem to be entering into a new period of serious economic and social crisis. While a socialist revolution seems more than doubtful, all working-class activities in defense of their own interests possess a potential revolutionary character because capitalism itself is always dysfunctional and unstable. Everyone faces the actual crises and has to react to them in some way or another but nobody can predict the dimensions or direction. Working people presently appear prepared to accept, within limits, austerity cuts, if only to avoid the miseries of drawn-out confrontations with the employers and the state. Yet all we are being offered is the choice between different cancers.

The fact that our class enemies fall out amongst themselves over what they consider the better policy in their overall interest does not mean we support them. The World Socialist Party is vehemently anti-capitalist, so we do not support the Democrats or their left-wing nor do we give support to those neo-fascists claiming to be anti-capitalists and anti-State. The socialist response is straightforward. If you want to get somewhere, aim for that destination directly, rather than going on detours and trusting that you will eventually, by a round–about a route, arrive at where you want to get to. 

Working people cannot ignore the history of Democrats and Republicans working together to create institutional impediments that make third-party challenges well nigh impossible. Facilitating the will of the people does not correlate with excluding viable candidates although there exists widespread and historic loathing of the duopoly.

There are liberals who promote the belief that another Trump term would be an existential threat and at all costs he must be defeated. Shall we then forget that Bush oversaw the invasion and destruction of the Middle East and withdrew from Kyoto climate agreement, following his father’s example of invading Panama and Kuwait, that Reagan conducted secret corrupt wars paying the murderous Contras with drug money, invading Grenada, that Kennedy authorized the invasion of Cuba, LBJ’s escalation of the Vietnam War, or that the ‘saintly’ Jimmy Carter continued American support of the brutal Indonesian dictatorship and supported the Afghan Mujahideen, that Bill Clinton passed Wall Street-friendly financial rules and imposed draconian sanctions upon Iraq as well as crime legislation that led to mass incarceration of Americans, while Obama bailed out the corporations but failed to curtail the foreclosure of ordinary American’s homes and increased the deportation of illegal migrants and initiated a drone assassination scheme. Just who has been the greater evil? As for being Trump being dumb, wasn’t it Gerald Ford who was accused of not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Nor do not recall Bush being a great intellectual. Some liberals have a selective memory.

Although it’s a favorite conservative media narrative to link Biden with the left-wing extremists, like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the fact is that the most common criticism of Biden was that he was not progressive enough. Most notably, he is not for

Medicare-For-All nor is he for AOC’s version of the “Green New Deal.” Conservative media continues the drumbeat that he is a “Trojan Horse” or that he will be led by “The Squad” – but those are all tacit acknowledgements that he (Biden) is not CURRENTLY adopting their policies.

There is an attempt to convince voters that Biden, eventually, will make a hard left turn. But, if elected, it’s far more likely that the left of the party will have to move toward Biden – not the other way around.

Democrats and the Republicans are mortal enemies just one day – election day. Then we fight tooth and nail. The rest of the time it’s live and let live with them – bipartisanship.

 Republicans accuse Democrats of collusion with BLM and Antifa to establish a socialist tyranny. Democrats accuse Republicans of marching with the Proud Boys and militias towards a fascist autocracy. Both sides accuse the other of planning a coup if they are defeated in the election. It is all  a distraction. Portraying the two-party duopoly through the lens of its extremist wings is misleading. It leads people to see the two major parties as more significantly different than they are. Hidden behind the spectacle of rhetoric is underlying class unity on matters of importance to Wall St. and the Pentagon.

 While the many problems of Americans are systemic weaknesses of the capitalist system, the public political debates is on the likeability of Biden’s or Trump’s personalities – a character contest.

 Sanctions against Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, Syria, etc. – costing hundreds of thousands of lives – will continue whoever occupies the White House. The multi-trillion-dollar modernization of the US nuclear arsenal will continue. Private healthcare and health insurance profits remain guaranteed to be protected. Deportations of migrants will carry on. The wealth gap will keep on widening.

With unity on the major issues, the two parties of capital try to distinguish each other over their posture on gesture politics – tokenism. But what the two parties really offer is the choice between the good cop and the bad cop. For sure, Trump’s reign in the White House has been reprehensible but so was Obama’s deportations and drone assassinations, Clinton’s crime and welfare bills and both president’s sanctions policies. Let us not forget that it was the Democratic Party, not the Republicans, that defeated the Bernie Sanders soft-left program, first by Hillary and then by Joe. It is not the Republicans who have gone after the Green Party to exclude them from being on many of the state’ ballot. Biden/Pelosi/Schumer control the Democrats not Sanders/AOC. And the Biden alliance have birds of the feather on both sides of the aisle. There is little daylight between Mitt Romney and Biden.

Biden is now the preferred choice of Wall St who are lavishing funds upon the Democratic campaign, which is outspending Trump 2:1. The ruling class are well aware that they are the guaranteed winners whoever prevails right now the Democrats are perceived as better representing their interests.

“The revolution, which will surely come, will be peaceful. Not a drop of blood will be shed provided the socialists are allowed to control the situation. We will win by the ballot. We realize that we can do nothing until we have complete control of the government. We must have the Presidency and Congress before we can accomplish anything, and we will attempt nothing until we control these offices. Then we will simply take, in the name of the people, the means of production and distribution. They have been paid for, over and over again, by the people, and are ours by every moral right” – Eugene Debs

The World Socialist Party of the United States is excited to announce the first issue of our new quarterly journal, World Socialist. It contains articles on the coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, the US–China confrontation, the presidential election, ‘human nature,’ the Wall Street bombing of 1920, revolution in ancient Anatolia,  ‘How I became a socialist,’ and Marx’s idea of socialism — plus book reviews and comics.

For the online version just follow the following link:

World Socialist No. 1 (Fall 2020)

The plan is also to produce a hardcopy version for sale at $2.00, as soon as an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is obtained.

  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