THE 'CLASS WAR' DEMOCRATS

COMMENTARY

ON THE DEMOCRATIC ‘ANTI-POVERTY’ CAMPAIGN

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

This week, the week of July 16, 2007, we have seen the spectacle of Democratic presidential candidates former North Carolina Senator and 2004 Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards and Illinois Senator Barack Obama squaring off to see who is the ‘better’ advocate of ‘class war’ in defense of the downtrodden, or in the parlance of polite society, the “have-nots”. Of course, in response the leading Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has also chimed in on this theme. What is unusual about all of these doings is that the central electoral strategy of the Democrats for at least the past thirty years has been to deny that the class struggle, despite all the evident of relative decline in the standard of living of the working class to the contrary, even existed. The Democrats were content to struggle along with their version of “trickle down’ theory by arguing that a ‘robust’ economy would help float ‘all boats’. Well, we knew, and now know differently and there is no satisfaction in these quarters that these bourgeois politicians have taken up the issue, for the moment. Why?

Their ‘solutions’ are more of the same. Tinker a little with the system to ‘redistribute’ the wealth (a very little from what I have read of these plans) by tax schemes or public works but to keep the system fundamentally as is. Even with the best of intentions this is a plan for failure for working people, especially the marginal working poor. Not only is it necessary to throw much more money at the problem than any bourgeois candidate would dream of doing but the whole thrust is wrong. The culture of poverty, of being poor and without resources to compete in a ‘rich’ society, not only requires money to get out from under but a whole different way of looking at life. In short, to be empowered. This is not our society. We live in it yes but we do not control it. The way to get empowered is through a workers government. This, dear reader, is the hard reality.

That is the crux of the matter and something none of these well-educated, well fed parliamentary types have a clue about. Even the patently reformist Chicago social activist and community organizing guru Saul Alinsky, whom Hillary admiringly wrote her senior thesis on while at Wellesley and whom Obama admired, knew that much. Moreover what I do not hear about from these born-again ‘class-warriors’ is any talk about the necessary first step in raising the ‘boats’ of the poor-unionization. I have hammered away elsewhere on the importance of organizing the South and the desperate need to organize Wal-Mart. That, rather than 'make work' and easily evaded tax schemes would go a long way toward breaking this cycle of poverty.

One final point on John Edwards. Much has been made of the fact that Edwards is the son of a Southern mill worker. Also he more than other candidates has taken this ‘two Americas’ concept as his theme both in 2004 and now. Yes, John Edwards is a son of the working class. However, his career is a very good case study in why those of us who propagandize for a workers party have been stymied for so long. In the normal course of events if there had been in place even a small viable mass workers party Mr. Edwards in his youth might very well have been attracted to such a formation. In the absence of such a formation he saw his main chance as the Democratic Party. Such are the ways of politics. However, until we can break this vicious cycle our work will continue to be that of unceasing propaganda for a workers party and a workers government. Be assured though that in the end we will get our share of real class war fighters.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!