02.11.2006

No choice for most

November 7 sees the United States mid-term elections. David Walters reports from San Francisco

As usual, despite pretensions of a democratic choice on November 7, most of North America (Canada's misfortune is to be close to enough to have to absorb the barrage of pointless political propaganda that crosses its southern border) will be given no choice at all - merely a multitude of candidates representing virtually the same programme, same perspectives, and, for all intents and purposes, the same party running under two names: the Democrats and the Republicans.

The US, as most readers of the Weekly Worker surely know, is the only advanced country in the world where a working class political party has never taken root. Our unions have traditionally given their vote to the heirs of Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic Party. Their endorsement has been rewarded with little more than a smile and a pat on the back.

The mid-term elections present us with a Republican Party in disarray over an increasingly unpopular war (the majority of Americans now want the US out of Iraq) and a Democratic Party that is without a unified perspective on how to achieve a US withdrawal. Both try to feed on the 'war against terror' and consider how best to scare Americans into achieving a steady erosion of their constitutional rights. The recent debate over the legalisation of torture by the CIA and other US agencies showed the Democratic Party's front runner for the presidential candidacy, Hillary Clinton, voting for and defending George W Bush's position that it is "OK" to use torture. To be fair, there are a small number of mavericks in both parties who do not like the stink of creeping fascism, but they were hardly heard from.

Besides Iraq and 'terrorism', only the issue of immigration has galvanised any serious discussion among the capitalist candidates, and again the parties are torn on how best to scapegoat the millions of migrant workers who have come here after the US, through various free trade agreements and the lifting of prohibitions on exporting capital, has ravaged the economies of their countries. This particular issue, as galvanising as it was three months ago, has been overshadowed by the discussion on Iraq. Issues of racism, the devastation of the New Orleans working class after the Katrina disaster, the defence of abortion rights and the continued attack on public education and healthcare are left, at best, to the empty rhetorical promises of a small number of 'progressive' Democrats.

Greens

In the absence of a mass workers' party the US Green Party, presenting candidates in many states, will be the most leftwing choice. Perhaps the most dynamic campaign is that of Peter Camejo for governor of California and Todd Chretien, a member of the International Socialist Organisation, for senator, running against 'centrist' Democrat Dianne Feinstein, one of the most powerful politicos in Washington DC. Todd's campaign has clearly been the stronger of the two, with Camejo, though the much more experienced candidate and backed by a team of activists, receiving far less press that Chretien (his very unsocialist but very Green platform can be seen at www.todd4senate.org).

The Green Party is a 'sectoralist' party, with no real vision of a future society. Its programme is a hodge-podge of leftist positions on ecology, war and other issues. The 10-point platform of the California Green Party is a kind of militant liberal version of 'motherhood and apple pie' without an iota of understanding of class or how capitalism works (www.cagreens.org/platform).

The Greens are not the Democrats: they are against war and 'for people'. This, of course, is a simplification of their views: many are very leftwing - socialist in fact. But the majority are 'Demogreens', who openly state their preference for the Democrats and try not to run against Democratic candidates who might actually lose to the Republicans should the Greens pull enough votes away from them. In other words, they are Democrats with Green clothing. But the Greens have not provided a way forward: only the vision of a kind of feel-good, utopian capitalism, where everyone can just 'get along'.

Labor Party

Yes, that's correct: the Labor Party. As long-time readers of the Weekly Worker know, there was a fitful effort to relaunch a Labor Party in the late 1990s, but it almost died a stillborn death after the leaders of most of the unions refused to support its entry into electoral politics, preferring to maintain their ineffective lobbying of the right-moving Democrats. But the LP kept going, even if it was reduced to a one-person operation with a newsletter. Over the last year, the very small AFL-CIO in South Carolina, where only around three percent of the workforce is unionised, decided to seek Labor Party ballot status. Just this summer, that was achieved - but too late to actually run candidates in the November election. Needless to say, this has caused something of a positive sensation among former LP activists like this writer. Money to help this campaign is needed.

The left

Various small leftist groups, mostly of Trotskyist vintage, are running candidates locally, including Socialist Action in California and the heir to the legacy of Gerry Healy in the US, the Socialist Equality Party, which has run some well publicised campaigns recently in California and Michigan.

With the left so weak, movement towards independent black working class political action is again bubbling to the surface in the wake of Katrina. Among many working class black activists contempt for the Democrats is palpable. At a meeting in New Orleans last summer a call to the oppressed masses of Louisiana was made for the founding of a 'Reconstruction Party' (a term with two meanings: on the one hand, it harks back to the times of southern reconstruction after the civil war and before Jim Crow segregation: on the other, it reflects the demand to rebuild New Orleans as a black working class city).

There is a long road to travel for US Marxists. However, the inspirational May 1 immigrant general strike gave us a glimpse of the revolutionary potential of the US working class. While our immediate task is to break our class from its traditional reliance on the Democrats, our long-term perspective must be the organisation of Marxists into a revolutionary party capable of bringing together all those willing to fight for an alternative, working class society.