R. Nesbitt and Keegan D. | Red Phoenix correspondents–

On July 21, 2024, President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy for re-election in the November contest and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him in the campaign against Donald Trump. The contradictions within capitalist imperialism are ever-sharpening, and now is the time for the masses to organize along genuinely revolutionary lines in the class struggle.

Biden stepping down as the Democratic Party nominee comes as the capitalist donors of the party begin to recognize the likelihood of a political loss if he were to remain the nominee, to the degree that they are willing to break long-standing political norms. The bourgeoisie is both divided and anxious, as exemplified by the current political crisis of leadership as the capitalist order becomes increasingly difficult and implausible to maintain. As the capitalist class cannibalizes itself in a desperate attempt to maintain the current economic mode of production, both sides attempt to garner the support from the working class. Just as they exploit the labor of the working class in society’s economic base, they attempt to utilize the working class to advance their aims in the political superstructure. In other words, the capitalist class is attempting to condemn the working class to be both replaceable parts of the economic machine of capital, and pawns to be sacrificed at the political level.

The situation before the working masses is a mess of historic proportions. The Democrats have, in many ways, humiliated themselves by accepting the general strategy of a meek, undistinguished, often confused man of rather advanced age to even run for the primaries in the first half of 2024, perhaps not desiring to break with the tradition and ease of a sitting president running as the Party’s candidate in a re-election bid. Biden’s poor performance, unpopularity, and apparently ailing health have forced him to stand down and for the Democrats to adopt unusual tactics to attempt to secure their victory against Trump in November. Of course, the Democrats have exposed their hypocrisy by pushing through Biden with no opposition permitted in the 2024 primaries, clamoring on about the need to defeat Trump all the while, and yet they still concede at the last moment when it becomes clear that this careerist doesn’t have any fight left in him anymore. Never mind the fact that his success in the first place, in 2020, comes only from riding the coattails of bigger politicians, tremendous super PAC fundraising and the sabotage of Bernie Sanders, yet again, in those primaries.

The Democrats are of course no strangers to the tokenization and weaponization of identities to feign representation, inclusion and concession to historically (and presently) oppressed minorities. The advancement of Kamala Harris as the the first potential female president will be drawn out to all of its luster by the Democrats because they have nothing else to stand by. There are few fulfilled campaign promises, and no sweeping positive changes the Democrats can point to for the Biden/Harris administration, so they will debase themselves in the most performative of ways to curry favor, particularly against the despised Donald Trump.

“Performative” must be emphasized, because only a political cretin lacking any nuance would charge the critic of liberal identity politics immediately with the stain of racism, misogyny, prejudice, and bigotry in general. But the meat of the question poised by such critics, of great import to the workers (of all identities and backgrounds), is: to whom will Harris be of service? Power wielded against whom, and for whom — against the workers, for the bourgeoisie; or vice versa? Obviously Harris, who has undermined higher minimum wages and adequate stimulus bills; has rejected immigrants fleeing the abuses of our empire; and has wavered on ending the genocide of the Palestinian nation, among countless atrocities going back to her time before entering national office; cannot be trusted to speak for the interests of the American or global workers regardless of any shared kinship and hollow representation of systemically oppressed demographics. What a comfort it will be to the Black working woman whose union is crushed, whose job is shipped overseas, who is denied socialized medicine or controlled rent, who continues to be discriminated against in housing, education and employment because of her sex, gender and race, that President Harris sits in the Oval Office signing more of her taxes away not to that worker’s benefit but to war in Ukraine!

It cannot even be said there is inherently anything wrong with a man as old as Joe Biden running for office. Bernie Sanders for instance is only a few years his junior whose acerbic wit, intelligence and charm cannot be called into question. His fatal flaw is in his social-democratic convictions — a wooden shield in the ongoing class war against super PACs, superdelegates, electoral colleges, and the military-industrial complex, to name only a few of the threats to the working class. No reasonable person would call Donald Trump coherent or logical or sharp-witted, but his incredulous stupidity and incompetence cannot be credited to his age but to his status as a privileged nepo baby for a pathetic bourgeois investor. Indeed, Trump has been inconsistent, incoherent and incredulous these 30 years of discourse and flirting with office! The issue with Biden lies in his incompetence, his prevarication, and his exhaustion in the role that personally complicates his abilities as a statesman.

No attacks on the basis of age, race, or gender can be permitted in any display of rejection or disgust with the capitalist system which would remain the same whether Richard Nixon or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran for its highest executive office. Do not surrender this barricade to the pandering pundits of petulant and performative liberalism. Charge the painted running dogs of the capitalist gamblers with the true crimes they must be held accountable for. As workers we must not stake our bets on this or that dog coming out ahead. The criticism of the candidacy of Harris, in contrast to the praise that has already been thrown at her feet for playing the part of the first Black female Vice President, does not come from a place of bigotry or prejudice but in the aim of exposing the Democrats for what they truly are: the more covert and subtler agents of the bourgeoisie, who do not divide and rule as transparently as the Republicans, but instead attempt to console, soothe, and promise and “inspire” the working masses of this country to vote, and vote, and vote, until the promised land wafts from the heavens unto these capitalist states. We must not and can no longer be deceived by either the carrot or the stick. We must have the courage to go beyond them if we are going to survive and thrive as working people.

It is the opinion of this author that Donald Trump must not permitted to win, for even as dangerous, meager and reactionary the Democratic Party has become, only one candidate has tried to coup an elected government with a fascist putsch of landlords and flooring contractors; who was already martyred as a “victim” of repression for his felony convictions and other charges against him; and who, after the failed assassination attempt in Butler, PA, was positively deified by the RNC in Milwaukee in the following days.

As Camilo Lazo, the Chair of the American Party of Labor, in speaking at the counter-convention in Milwaukee declared: “Yesterday was Bastille Day, today… they’re crowning a King! Remember, as then, as now, as tomorrow, revolution is the solution!” This is the true danger of a Donald Trump returning to power: the bourgeoisie will know they can force through anything, they can take any concession, prop up any puppet, skew production and wealth accumulation ever more in their favor, and the working masses will permit it.

Donald Trump must not win, Kamala Harris must not be trusted to genuinely represent us, and regardless of which capitalist comes ahead in the race we must continue to expand and grow our independent organizations along revolutionary lines. Such organizations must work together around common goals of boycotts, unionization, solidarity, and protest, and not along hollow, performative lines. We as workers must continue to educate ourselves, must work harder to make our collective wills known, and must deny the Pettyking Donald Trump while giving Harris and the Democrats the chance to expose and humiliate themselves for all to see, and for all to know that revolution is the solution.

Categories: Elections, Government, U.S. News