Last Wednesday, Florida Gubernatorial candidates Ron Desantis and Andrew Gillum performed their second debate before the midterm elections this Tuesday. Their race for governor has attracted national attention along with races in Georgia and New York because of “fresh” candidates like Stacey Abrams and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Their campaigns have been full of ploys like Jay-Z references, hashtags, and viral videos to galvanize key millennial voters.
Across the country, US House, Senate, Gubernatorial, and local electoral candidates have been spamming inboxes, mailboxes, Youtube and TV ads with empty propaganda soundbites. The attack on LGBTQ peoples, pipe bombs mailed to Democrats and “liberals,” a shooting at a synagogue, a caravan of Honduran immigrants on their way to the US border, and Trump’s open claim and call of nationalism reveal a country in absolute turmoil, and politicians of all stripes are trying to rally our vote to make things right again.
But whether or not we’re sitting rapt in front of our TVs, computers, or smartphones to stay on top of the latest election news, the larger crisis at play is obscure to us. The extreme politics we see around the world are expressions of the structural crisis of capitalism and divisions among the capitalist class about how to address the many contradictions they face. Trump and his cohorts’ efforts to enforce borders, increase tariffs, increase national production, and privatize everything is part of the effort to bring back industrial production in the US and to continue the expansion of markets. This is to combat the toxicity of finance capital, which has speculated, indebted, and credited the global economy into complete degradation.
Through imperialism, finance capital has become like heroin for the capitalist class – they know it’s bad for them, but they simply can’t quit. All fractions and sectors of the capitalist class are wrapped up in both imperialism and finance, but “nationalist” and “globalist” alternatives are currently duking it out for power. Under bourgeois democracy, this stalemate within the capitalist class manifests in the extreme ideological polarization we’re witnessing in electoral politics, with all alternatives representing capitalists’ interests.
On one hand we have the clearly fascist implications of nationalism, stoking a political base of racist, misogynist, homophobic, and anti-semitic supporters. But its alternative, while “progressive” on its surface, is only the opposing side of the same screwed up coin. Calls to “invest like a woman” and “bank black” are an attempt to open new markets “combatting” the subjugation of marginalized groups that have historically been dominated by the capitalist class – the only people to benefit from both oppression and reformism. They get away with this by limiting our political consciousness to issues of identity and representation. While the masses genuinely try to address the dehumanization of black and brown, femme, gay, lesbian, and trans people, the bourgeoisie co-opts a veneer of this work to benefit their own accumulation.
We see the same thing playing out in electoral politics. After decades of ignoring and disillusioning the poor, the young, and people of color, some fraction of the Democrats recognized the need to re-brand with faces like Andrew Gillum, Stacey Abrams, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But #VotingThemOut won’t solve the economic crisis instigating the fascist alternative, and playing into the mass desire for justice with populist rhetoric won’t stop the inherent violence of capitalism. Calls for healthcare for all, abolishing ICE, and holding rapists and racists accountable are band aids for the broader issues that arise from global and local exploitation.
The consolidation of Fascism is irrevocably underway, as is obvious with the recent appointment to the Supreme Court and the power wielded by people like Betsy Devos and Andrew Wheeler. We’re witnessing the rise of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie – a segment of the capitalist class that accumulates capital through the state. Under the leadership of Trump, the fascists are successfully working to be a hegemonic force, whether they occupy elected posts, or not. As Democrats and the “left” lean on bourgeois democratic rights to “fight” fascism, fascists are systematically dismantling these rights, while galvanizing a broad social base who won’t just go away because Democrats take office. This reality is unfolding globally. This political and ideological consolidation is not something you can “vote out.”
Every alternative is a class alternative. We are witnessing a global struggle for power among the capitalist class, one which is likely to be resolved through violent conflict. We need to push back against the consolidation of fascism through our own independent and autonomous organization. We need to be ready for and encourage popular democratic uprising to slow the fascists down.
We cannot keep going back to the “lesser of two evils,” hoping to reform capitalism, making it a little nicer for ourselves, ignoring an arrangement that hinges on exploitation and destruction of people and planet. At this point in its decomposition, there is nothing progressive that can come from capitalism. We need to break free from ideological domination and quit handing our struggle over to the capitalists. Fascism has been enabled by all capitalist parties and a “left” that keeps insisting that we can use bourgeois democracy to achieve “socialism” or “revolution from the inside.”
As individuals, our power doesn’t live in the ballot box. We don’t gain power from refusing to vote, either. Our power always has and always will lie in organization and movement. Real political action isn’t pawning off your voice to an electoral candidate, it is finding people in your workplace, your neighborhood, your family, and your friends who will build an independent and autonomous alternative that serves our needs, the needs of the masses.
STAND UP. FIGHT BACK. ORGANIZE.
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