Photo composition portraying a can with a woman wearing a Russian shapka with the sickle & hammer communist sign along with a caption reading “Comrade Kamala.” Photo: X/@NewNorm.
By Stansfield Smith – Sep 25, 2024
The final stretch of the presidential election season never fails to bring out leftists waving the white flag to the Democrats. Jim Lafferty, former national Director of the National Lawyers Guild, recently crumbled with his Why Socialists and Anti-Capitalists Must Back Kamala Harris. This type of leftist assures us that the two capitalist parties are really one party of corporate America, but this election is different, the most important in our lifetime. The fascist threat to our democratic rights—always coming from the Republican—demands we must vote Democratic.
On cue, a great number of leftists have rolled out this story every four years since at least with “fascist” Nixon, probably much longer. Back in 2020, Chomsky submitted his capitulation, Open Letter to the Green Party.
How can it be that the two parties are one corporate America party, yet one party supposedly imposing fascism and the other supposedly opposing it? This they do not explain. Even more ridiculous, they want us to swallow the nonsense that the rulers actually give us the power to vote in fascism or block it.
Lafferty beseeches us to defeat the deadly threat of Trump fascism in 2024. Just forget we lived through four years of Trump “fascism,” which seemed rather like the four “democratic” years before him and the four after. Are we to believe the fascists permitted an election in 2020, which then voted them out of office? Rather democratic for fascism. But this time, if we let Trump win, “fascism will ultimately prevail.”
That would imply the Democrats will take no significant steps to stop it after his victory. Which must mean Lafferty believes the Democrats are more on board with fascism than with defending democratic rights. If so—it is so—then why pressure people to vote for them as an alternative?
Lafferty, who declares himself “an uncompromising Socialist for at least the past 60 years,” does admit “on the matter of ‘capitalism’ from a socialist or anti-capitalist perspective, there is no truly meaningful difference between Harris and Trump.” However, this leftist only concedes that as a lead-in for why we should vote Democratic.
Now comes the leftists’ second just-so story they repeat every four years: voting Democratic will “thereby give us more time, the time we desperately still need, if we are to build the massive anti-capitalist, anti-fascist movement it will take to finally defeat both capitalism in America, and the fascism from whence it springs.”
Angela Davis sings the same tune. There’s “no question about who progressive people should vote for… It’s not just about electing Kamala Harris.” It’s about opening space for “those of us who are more radical than Kamala Harris to put anti-capitalist and anti-racist programs forward” and increase the pressure for change, “especially in the first place when it comes to the genocide being inflicted on the people of Palestine.”
Lafferty, the “uncompromising” Socialist, discreetly avoids mention of the US sponsored slaughter in Palestine. Davis raises the Biden-Harris administration mass murder as a reason to vote for her. You decide who is more depraved.
Davis combines her call to vote Democratic with the standard leftist spiel about building a movement against capitalism, patriarchy and racism. They usually also throw in the need to build a workers party, as soon as we defeat the Republicans in the election.
That, they think, puts a bright red wrapper on the package they want to sell us. Once the Democrat wins, these words are forgotten, until resurrected for the next election.
This type of leftist definitely doesn’t want to look at the last twelve years, for that shows the opposite of what they claim. The anti-racist BLM movement, the movements to defend immigrant rights, to defend women’s rights, were broader and larger under Trump than under Obama or Biden. Nor do Lafferty-Davis types want to look at what happened to these movements. Their type of leftist played a prominent role in steering these movements into the Democratic Party, which then put them to sleep.
Lafferty says vote for Harris because “I understand just how powerful a grip capitalist Corporate America already has on the governance of this nation.” The Lafferty-Angela Davis leftist thinks voting for the candidate that Darth Vadar Dick Cheney endorses is going to weaken that grip?
Vote for Harris “Because I’ve read much of the truly alarming Project 2025 report.” Better read “Project 2025” Is Just “Project 1981” first.
In fact, this “vote lesser evil” ideology (always assumed to be the Democrats, though people vote Republican for the same reason) only reinforces domination by corporate America. You betray us by telling us to vote for someone the ruling class selects to oversee their empire. People are fed up with the inhumanity and lies of the US empire at home and abroad, and these leftists respond, “You need to vote for the empire again or we are doomed.”
This “Republicans are fascists” claptrap also seriously miseducates people about fascism. So long as corporate America has the liberal-left tied to their two party system, they have no need to resort to fascism. They need fascism only when their customary method of rule breaks down and they face a very direct threat of losing control to revolutionary forces. The historic function of fascism is to smash the radicalized working class and its allies, destroy their organizations, and shut down political liberties when the corporate rulers find themselves unable to govern through their charade of democracy. The US rulers clearly face no such problem.
These leftists are really saying no time is a good time for a labor party. Every election is the wrong time. Every election vote Democratic. Never try to build a third party. Then they cover up the crimes and inhumanities of the Democrats while hyping those of Republicans. The Biden-Harris administration is entering a full year of continuous mass murder in Gaza. Instead of imposing a ceasefire on Israel, they are rearming it to expand the slaughter into the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and even Iran.
How can leftists advocate voting for people knee-deep in genocidal slaughter? Can you discredit these people more than they themselves do?
These leftists are telling Democrats “You commit a genocide for over a year, you can threaten humanity with nuclear war with Russia, and we will still press our allies to vote for you.” This tells the Democrats they can move as rightwing as they want, they can ignore people’s protests against their heartless policies, and they can still take our votes for granted. Is there a bigger ideological enemy of building an independent working class movement?
SS/OT
Stansfield Smith
Stansfield Smith is a Chicago based anti-imperialist activist. He was active for over a decade in the Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5. His work is now on ChicagoALBASolidarity.wordpress.com. He has written on Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and on North Korea for Counterpunch and others.
