By Socialist Core*
On November 5, the vote to elect the political leader of the main imperialist power in the world will take place, precisely while the U.S. government and its satellite Israel perpetrate a genocide against the Palestinian people. We stand in solidarity with the labor, youth and Muslim community activists in the U.S. who have mobilized against the genocide in Gaza and have expressed that they will not vote for the candidates of genocide, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. The undemocratic U.S. electoral system chains the elections to reactionary bipartisanship so millions of people will try to choose the lesser evil by opting between two candidates committed to environmental destruction, imperialist domination and Palestinian genocide. For our part, we believe it’s necessary to strengthen the activist pole that will use the elections to protest against the imperialist politics that both Trump and Harris represent. We can do this with a critical vote for alternative candidacies, to the left of the Democrats, such as Jill Stein, Cornel West and other independent candidates, within the perspective of building an independent party of the left, of the working class and the youth to fight against this rotten system of exploitation and oppression.
Harris and Trump represent the continuity of an imperialist and genocidal policy, although they differ in their strategies. Trump is an ultra right-winger, fanatical racist, xenophobe, a misogynist convicted of sexual abuse with openly fascistic ideas while Harris is a liberal who made a career criminalizing poverty hand in hand with the private prison complex, and has been part of Biden’s genocidal government. Both express a far-reaching process of right-wing shift in the U.S. political regime, a phenomenon in which both Democrats and Republicans participate, although the Republicans represent the ultra-conservative wing with more fascistic tendencies.
Reversing this rightward trend in the U.S. will not be achieved by voting for the Democrats every two years, but by strengthening the working class, community and student organizations, building their autonomy, ultimately achieving the construction of an independent leftist political organization that channels the interests of the working majorities, as a counterweight to the political apparatuses of the bourgeoisie, which include not only the Democratic and Republican parties but also the trade union bureaucracy and an archipelago of NGOs that generally serve the interests of the Democratic party.
On foreign policy, Trump and Harris respond in different ways to the crisis and weakening of U.S. imperialism: Trump bets on unilateralism and economic protectionism, Harris is more inclined to consult with European imperialist partners. For nations on the receiving end of the bombs and economic sanctions or suffering under U.S.-backed dictatorships, these differences in most cases are not significant. In terms of environmental policy, Trump is unabashed in his bid for the largest possible share of destruction while Harris prefers destruction covered up by hypocritical speeches and cosmetic measures that do not imply substantive changes nor divert us from the course towards climate collapse. Both are committed to the persecution of immigrants although Trump is more aggressive in his speeches and even proposes the denationalization of Americans of immigrant descent.
Like other ultra-rightists such as Bolsonaro, Milei or Meloni, Trump would like to impose a dictatorship but the correlation of forces doesn’t allow him to do so. There are no important sectors of the bourgeoisie or the armed forces that are committed to the destruction of the limited bourgeois democracy in the U.S., which has served them so well to oppress and exploit the working class for centuries. However, Trump has the support of ultra-right paramilitary groups. Given the foreseeable scenario of an election decided by small margins in a few swing states, legal actions to disavow a defeat may combine with ultra-right mob actions similar to 2020. The working class and youth must prepare to confront the fascists in the face of any attempt to overturn the election. This anti-fascist mobilization can develop in better conditions if it’s not tied to political or electoral support for the Democrats since they oppose mobilizing against the fascists.
Some liberal and social democratic sectors that defend voting for Harris argue that because there are no substantial differences in the genocidal policies of Harris and Trump, the Palestinian issue becomes irrelevant in deciding how to vote. We believe this reasoning is wrong. Taking for granted the genocide in Palestine is a conformist and even racist position. We must deepen the struggle against U.S. imperialism and Zionist colonialism. A protest vote against Harris’ and Trump’s genocidal policies serves to strengthen the struggle in support of the Palestinian people even if it fails to prevent either of them from taking office. It’s important that millions send a clear message to the world: no complicity with genocidaires. And after the elections, we should escalate strikes, university encampments, boycotts and mobilizations by any means necessary to support the heroic Palestinian resistance and defeat imperialism and its Zionist satellite. Facing Harris’ supporters alleging that voting for independent candidates facilitates Trump’s triumph, we answer that the only culprits of an eventual Republican triumph are the genocidal Democrats not those of us who refuse to be their accomplices.
Just as we do not have to choose between the two candidates of U.S. imperialism, neither do we have to fall into the trap of campism, of taking sides in disputes between imperialist powers. We can at the same time oppose the genocidal aggression of the U.S., U.K., Germany and Israel against the Palestinian people, and also confront the Russian imperialist invasion against Ukraine, the French imperialist oppression in Kanaky and Martinique, and the Chinese imperialist oppression against the Uighur and Tibetan people, or the military occupation of Haiti under U.S. orders. Supporting resistance to imperialism and colonialism in each of these cases is the only consistent internationalist position.
The U.S. capitalist and imperialist regime was designed in the late 18th century by the slave-owner class to guarantee reactionary rural over-representation and the supremacy of the big landowners. It remains to this day in its fundamental characteristics. Such modest gains as the democratic principle of one person-one vote, which would require the elimination of the electoral college and the reactionary Senate, are impossible to achieve through constitutional reforms, since they would require an unattainable parliamentary majority. As part of the struggle to overcome this anti-democratic system, we can exercise a protest vote against the imperialist and genocidal candidates by casting a critical vote for Jill Stein of the center-left Green Party or the independent candidate Cornel West or any of the other independent candidates to the left of the Democratic Party. We have major political differences with all of them. For example, candidate Claudia De la Cruz, of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, with a strong presence in social media, criticizes U.S. imperialism but at the same time supports capitalist dictatorships like Assad’s in Syria, and even Russian and Chinese imperialism, embracing an ideology that embellishes inter-imperialist competition in the name of “multipolarity”. As for Stein and West, they are not committed to building an independent, socialist and internationalist anti-capitalist party or movement based on the working class and youth, to fight for the perspective of a workers’ government and socialism with democracy for working people. While we have these fundamental differences, we consider that their independent candidacies can be the channel for a protest vote.
We agree with Stein and West on some of their proposals, such as dissolving NATO, stopping support for the genocidal state of Israel, lifting sanctions on Cuba and closing Guantanamo, and canceling the debts of the semi-colonial countries. We also agree on the need to raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour based on a tax on large fortunes, guarantee decent housing and end ferocious real estate speculation, eliminate student debts, nationalize energy companies among other measures.
This critical vote can help strengthen the political pole of those who are struggling, taking part in the growing strikes, in solidarity with Palestine and in the struggle of black people against racism and police violence, facing the challenges we will continue to encounter after the elections. Whoever wins, the serious socio-environmental crisis and the enormous inequality, as well as the development of popular struggles itself, pose the challenge of building a left and working class party where the new young anti-racist and anti-fascist, environmentalist and feminist vanguard can converge.
October 31, 2024
*Sympathizers of the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International