Political crisis startles the United States

Political crisis startles the United States

Editorial, Masses 623, November 8, 2020

Whatever the election, its bourgeois class character remains hidden. As for this social content, it doesn’t matter whether it was more or less democratic, or whether it was clean or fraudulent. The essential is that elections are an instrument of class domination, through class democracy.

The fierce dispute between Democrats and Republicans is just two general variants of bourgeois politics, in the greatest world power. It is also necessary to clarify that these are two expressions of the most powerful imperialist bourgeoisie. That is why the news everywhere has been largely dedicated to the confrontation between the Republican Donald Trump and the Democrat Joe Biden.

In Brazil, there is an alignment of the great press to Biden. The Bolsonaro government remains semi-quiet, embarrassed that Trump could be defeated – the president declared support for Trump and the military for Biden. The victory of the Democrat will require a political and diplomatic realignment of the Brazilian government. It will sound like a defeat for President Bolsonaro himself. This change in the situation highlights the reflexes of the influence of US imperialism in national politics. It is not new, since the Brazilian bourgeoisie, since the United States overcame English hegemony, began to respond to American interests and guidelines. What matters is the particularity of the alignment with Trump’s chauvinist nationalism and the fascistizing tendencies that have been strengthening in recent times.

There is hope that the course of the confrontation traced by Trump will reverse if Biden win. Instead of global polarization, multilateral relations would resume, which before Trump took place in international organizations, such as the UN, WTO, WHO, etc., which respected international agreements, such as the Climate Agreement – the most talked about in the electoral dispute. The global divergences, which took on new dimensions after the 2008-2009 crisis, were reflected in a summary form in the electoral dispute. At the bottom of it, there is the structural crisis of capitalism, the disintegrating forces of the world economy, the setback suffered by the United States, the emergence of China, the failure of European unity, and the decline of Japan. And, therefore, the inevitable trade war, which has worsened in recent years, and which has been declared by Trump as the central guideline of the United States.

Biden proposes to manage conflicts, which have become unmanageable. Not by chance, the economic cataclysm in 2008 had the United States as its epicenter. Despite the declines, job closings, and rising unemployment, as well as the huge sums spent by the powers, the general trend of the overproduction crisis has not been reversed. And the powerful power, which emerged from World War II, cannot continue to regress in the face of a rising China.

Trump won the 2016 elections, driven by the economic downfall of the United States, which exploded in the hands of Democrats, during Barack Obama’s first term, which had a limited second term. The Trumpist flag of “America First” conferred a national-imperialist orientation and a belligerent guideline representing the position that the United States could recover part of the lost international terrain and solve internal problems only with the use of economic power and military force. There is no way for Biden to substantially modify this line.

The American bourgeoisie is obliged to curb the retreat of its economy and the reduction of its commercial influence. The same is true for other powers in Europe and Asia. The overdeveloped productive forces clash with production relations, which have become an obstacle to their growth. This explains the prolonged global crisis, marked since 2008 by recession, low growth and stagnation. It is a false idea that, with Biden, the United States will become cooperative, less interventionist and less threatening to world peace. It is not about a good or bad economic orientation, a more or less belligerent disposition, or a democratic and other fascist position. These distinctions in bourgeois politics and in the disposition of economic forces are ultimately determined by capitalist contradictions, which has been manifesting since after the Second World War.

The immense electoral support obtained by Trump, covering different social strata, proves the thesis that, were it not for the pandemic and its economic consequences, Biden’s defeat was the most likely. The division of the masses indicates, on the one hand, the fear of a change in policy, and, on the other, the hope that important changes will come. Much of the vast urban middle class moved to Biden, and the rural remained with Trump. It is quite possible that the working class suffered a division.

The exploited, dragged behind the two variants of the imperialist bourgeoisie, this time will possibly shorten the experience with the new elected and advance in their own field of struggle, as the demonstrations against racial oppression have indicated. However,  the proletariat without the revolutionary party cannot understand the imperialist character of the bourgeoisie that exploits it. But it instinctively moves towards the realization that the most powerful enemy in the struggle to end class and national oppression is in his own country. The years to come will continue to worsen the world-class struggle. The way to achieving class independence never passes through elections. The task is to develop the fighting for the claims and to defend the strategy of the proletarian revolution within the exploited.

On our side, we work to raise the Revolutionary Workers Party, as part of the task of reconstituting the World Party of the Socialist Revolution. The class-conscious vanguard in the United States will continue to struggle against the current of the democratic illusions of the masses. A revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist position on the elections is mandatory.