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John Kerry and the Politics of the Ruling Class
by Dave Bernt
On March 20, more than 2 million people mobilized in the streets
worldwide
against the occupation of Iraq. Across the United States, demonstrators
demanded, “Bring the troops home NOW!” But John Kerry, the
all-but-official
Democratic nominee, has stated his own position on the occupation of
Iraq:
send 40,000 more U.S. troops!
The worldwide movement against war and occupation in Iraq and John
Kerry are
obviously on different sides of the fence. Kerry himself seems to think
so.
He recently denounced the new premier of Spain for his decision to
withdraw
Spanish troops stationed in Iraq.
Despite this, however, prominent leftist and liberal activists and
intellectuals and many opponents of the war have endorsed Kerry as an
alternative to the Bush regime.
While many who have jumped on the anybody-but-Bush program are not wild
about John Kerry, they insist that for all his faults he is better then
Bush. Bush, this camp argues, is a racist, war-mongering demagogue who
must
be replaced, even if his replacement is far from perfect. Besides, they
say,
since there are no “third parties” that can realistically win, our only
choices are Bush or Kerry.
Bush is certainly a right-wing fanatic. On foreign policy, for example,
Bush’s reactionary record on is clear enough. But what about Kerry?
John Kerry supported the war resolution in the Senate that gave the
White
House the authority to implement a unilateral war against Iraq. Kerry
has
never opposed the invasion or occupation. His criticisms of Bush’s
policy
have been limited to advocating more engagement of international
forces—that
is, to bringing other imperialist powers into the occupation and
sharing
some of the spoils with fellow imperialists.
Beyond that, Kerry’s program calls for sending more U.S. troops to Iraq
as
well.
Kerry has criticized Bush’s claims that the Iraqi government had
weapons of
mass destruction and slammed Bush for lying about the issue. But let’s
look
at what Kerry stated in the Senate last October, after Bush had put
forward
his so-called evidence. Kerry said, “In the clearest presentation to
date,
the president laid out a strong, comprehensive, and compelling argument
why
Iraq’s WMD programs are a threat to the United states and the
international
community.”
John Kerry repeated the same lies and justification for war as the Bush
administration. And while Clinton was in the White House, Kerry
supported
the sanctions on Iraq, which the UN estimates killed a million and a
half
people, as well as the routine bombings that terrorized that country
and
laid the basis for the current invasion.
While Kerry initially voted against the resolution for the first Gulf
War,
he quickly reversed himself, saying he had been “ill-advised.” He then
voted
to fully fund the war that killed 250,000 Iraqis.
In an NBC-TV “Meet the Press” interview on April 18, Kerry even backed
away
from his own earlier statements opposing the Vietnam War. He said that
his
1971 testimony before a Senate committee, acknowledging that he had
participated in burning Vietnamese villages during “search and destroy”
missions, and characterizing these actions as “atrocities” and contrary
to
the Geneva conventions, was inappropriate and “a little bit excessive.”
Many liberals have argued that even if Kerry is not antiwar, at the
very
least he won’t be quite as willing to use force as Bush. Kerry, they
argue,
will at least seek UN approval before dropping cluster bombs and
uranium-contaminated munitions on innocent people.
Yet even this minor difference, which I don’t think would bring too
much
comfort to the victims, is fictional. In February Kerry announced, “I
will
not hesitate to order direct military action when needed to capture and
destroy terrorist groups and their leaders.” This quote could have come
out
of Bush’s State of the Union speech.
What about Kerry’s other foreign policy positions? Kerry supported the
invasions of Kosovo and Afghanistan. He has always voted for U.S. aid
to
Israel, and has declared that “the cause of Israel is the cause of the
United States.”
Kerry said in the April 18 “Meet the Press” interview that he agreed
with
President Bush that Israel should be allowed to keep settlements on the
West
Bank and that he supported Israel’s assassination of the Hamas leader,
Sheikh Amad Yassin, as a just response against “terror.” He also
reaffirmed
his backing for the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
Beyond the surface issues
Some in the anybody-but-Bush camp admit that Kerry might be bad on
foreign
policy, but they insist that he is better at least on domestic issues.
Again, let’s look at Kerry’s record. He voted for the Patriot Act, the
Homeland Security Act, the devastating welfare reform act, NAFTA, the
WTO
and all other free-trade agreements, and the Telecommunications Act
that
gave billions to big media.
He is against same-sex marriage and has even called for a
constitutional
amendment in Massachusetts to overturn the recent state Supreme Court
ruling
legalizing same-sex marriage. And the list goes on. And yet, the
anybody-but-Bush crowd will say, there are some differences.
For example, Noam Chomsky, the respected radical critic of U.S.
imperialism,
admits that Kerry is “Bush-Lite”—that is, he supports most of the Bush
agenda. But Chomsky has stated that he supports Kerry for president
since
even the small differences between the Democratic candidate and Bush
can
make a big impact on people lives. Chomsky says, “In a system of
immense
power, small differences can translate into large outcomes.”
The basic flaw of this argument is that it only looks at the surface
issues.
It is true that there are some slight differences on paper between Bush
and
Kerry, such as on the question of women’s abortion rights. Bush is
anti-abortion; Kerry says he is against federal intervention in the
matter.
Kerry defends the environment, supports workers’ rights and trade
unions,
wants to spend more money on education, and so on.
But again, this is just on the surface. For Kerry and the Democratic
Party,
all these issues are subordinate to the needs and dictates of U.S.
capitalism.
Politicians do not make public policy as individuals; their laws are
written
by and for the ruling rich of this country. We live in a country where
1
percent of the population controls as much wealth as the lower 75
percent.
Wealth, and as a result power, is highly concentrated in the hands of a
tiny
elite.
The wealthy make the decisions and they call the shots. They control
and
fund the think tanks and policy institutes that write the legislation
that
both parties support. They own the media that frames the debates. They
fund
the elections, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to candidates.
Most
major corporations give contributions to both parties—in order to
maximize
the influence they have over Republicans and Democrats alike.
And in most cases, like the 2004 presidential elections, the candidates
of
the two major capitalist parties are members of the same wealthy class
they
represent. John Kerry is a billionaire. He attended Yale and joined the
same
elite rich-kid club, the Skull and Bones Society, as George Bush did.
Two look-alike parties
Since the Civil war, the U.S. political process has been totally
controlled
by the two main parties of the capitalist class. For at least a
century,
Democrats and Republicans have implemented essentially identical
programs.
The two parties are distinguished from each other by little more than a
division of labor. On the one hand are the Republicans, who are open
about
their support for big business. They take pride in cutting taxes for
the
rich, giving away billions in corporate welfare, and so on. They preach
free
market principles and argue that what’s good for General Motors is good
for
all Americans.
In recent decades, the Republicans have also appealed for support on
racist,
anti-women, homophobic bigotry and Christian fundamentalism. In years
past,
the Southern Democrats like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond played
this
role.
The Democratic Party, which traces its origins to being the party of
the
Southern slaveholders, has opposed every progressive struggle—including
those for labor, civil rights, women’s rights, and the movement against
the
war in Vietnam.
However, the Democrats often play a different kind of game than the
Republicans. They seek to co-opt mass social movements in order to
bring
independent, militant struggles for social change into the fold of the
two-party shell game. Using populist rhetoric and adopting some modest
aspects of these social movements into their official program, they
take
these movements off the streets and into the safe confines of bourgeois
politics.
Once the Democrats de-mobilize these movements they implement the same
program as the Republicans. Of course, they do it with a smile. In this
way,
the Democrats are often even more effective at implementing reactionary
legislation then the Republicans.
Bill Clinton, for example, campaigned as a populist. He said that he
wanted
to end the trickle-down economics of the Reagan-Bush years. He
denounced the
massive social cutbacks of Reagan-Bush and promised low-cost health
care for
all. He vowed to defend abortion rights and even to pass a law to
defend the
right to abortion.
Clinton promised to pass an anti-scab law and otherwise protect workers
rights. He said he supported civil rights and was anti-racist.
As a result, Clinton got the support of trade unions, the major
civil-rights
groups, feminist groups, and other social movements. But after Clinton
won
he threw his support to legislation attacking the interests of all of
these
supporters.
Clinton implemented more cuts in social services then the combined
three
Republican administrations that preceded him. He slashed Medicaid and
Medicare. He passed so-called welfare reform, which threw millions off
public assistance and into the street and desperate poverty.
Hillary: “We didn’t have to march”
On April 25, the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other
organizations supporting women’s rights called the first major
demonstration
against the attacks on women since the days of the George Bush I
presidency.
This historic mobilization of over a million people was a great victory
for
women.
However, these types of actions have been needed for over a decade,
given
the constant erosion of abortion rights nationwide. Unfortunately, NOW
and
the other major feminist groups place their hopes in the Democratic
Party.
When the Democrats are in power NOW stops mobilizing.
Hillary Clinton summed up the position of NOW when she said from the
speakers’ platform on April 25, “We didn’t have to march for 12 long
years
because we had a government that respected the rights of women. The
only way
we’re going to be able to avoid having to march again and again and
again is
to elect John Kerry president.”
Yet under Clinton, when the women’s movement “didn’t need to march,”
access
to abortion clinics greatly declined. Eighty-seven percent of the
counties
in the United States have no abortion clinics. Clinton never challenged
the
Hyde Amendment (signed into law by Democrat Jimmie Carter in 1977),
which
banned Medicaid funding for abortions. He never even proposed the
abortion
rights law he had promised.
Clinton did nothing to stop the anti-abortion fanatics who harass and
terrorize women and abortion providers. And during all of this, the
National
Organization for Women and other major feminist groups never organized
one
major protest.
Clinton passed legislation to hire 100,000 more cops. He dismantled
affirmative action. He passed the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death
Penalty
Act, which was the precursor to the Patriot Act. That act also made it
harder for the hundreds of mainly Black and Latino death-row inmates to
appeal their death sentences.
Clinton never passed the anti-scab law, used the Taft-Hartley bill to
stop
strikes, and passed NAFTA and other free-trade agreements designed to
bolster U.S. economic domination of the Third World.
After the Teamsters won their historic strike against UPS in 1997, the
Clinton administration framed up and removed the democratically elected
militant leader of the Teamsters union. Meanwhile, labor did nothing.
No
major protests, no mass strikes. Instead, they waited for their
so-called
friends in the Democratic Party to bail them out.
We can look back at history and see the same thing repeated over and
over.
In the 1930s most top trade-union leaders supported the administration
of
Franklin Roosevelt, seeing him as a lesser evil. FDR thanked them for
their
support, and then mobilized the National Guard to break strikes.
Labor historian Art Pries noted in his book, “Labor’s Giant Step,” that
“from 1933 to 1935 alone, of 42,737 National Guards called to duty,
32,645
or 77 percent were used to break strikes.”
Roosevelt made his own position on unions clear in 1940 when he said,
“Labor
will not attempt to take advantage of its collective power to foment
strikes.” He imposed a no-strike law during World War II. Far from
being a
friend of labor, Roosevelt was a violent strike-breaker.
In 1964 Lyndon Johnson was the “lesser evil” to the war-mongering
Republican, Barry Goldwater. The same forces that support Kerry today
backed
LBJ in the election, who rapidly escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam,
a
war that killed at least 4 million Vietnamese and 60,000 U.S. soldiers.
The game has been played over and over again. Every time social
movements
have backed the “lesser evil,” they have compromised their stated
objectives. Looking at the paper differences between the parties is an
ineffectual exercise. Don’t look at what they say, look at what they
do.
Nader and the Greens
Both the Green Party and Ralph Nader have taken a stand against the
anybody-but-Bush crowd and are running as independent candidates. It is
shameful that Ralph Nader has been hit by a barrage of attacks from
liberal
commentators and the Democratic Party establishment, who have slandered
him
as an ego-maniac and a self-serving spoiler in the elections.
Unfortunately, Nader and the Greens have fatal flaws in their political
program and election strategy. They call merely for reform of the
capitalist
system; they advocate making the system friendlier to the environment
and
labor. Capitalism, however, has little room for reform; it depends on
exploiting the environment and labor, and on fomenting war and racism,
for
its very survival—although the earth itself may be destroyed in the
process.
We need to work for a new social system that serves the interests of
people
instead of profit—that is, for socialism.
In addition, the Greens and Nader have not broken out of the two-party
shell
game. They are both calling for a “safe-state” strategy, in which they
encourage voters to only vote Green in states where the outcome is
certain
and Democrat where the outcome is in doubt.
They also both call for votes for liberal Democrats at the
congressional
level. In other words, Nader and the Greens still hold on to the idea
that
the Democrats, as the “lesser evil,” warrant our support.
Instead, we must organize a complete break from the two-party system
and
form a new party directly representing the workers and the oppressed. A
mass
workers’ party would mobilize people in accordance with a program for
revolutionary change, one that would fight to put control of the
economy and
society in the hands of working people instead of the ruling rich.
Unfortunately, today there is no mass party of the workers. In the
meantime,
we must continue registering our protests by mobilizing and building
the
mass demonstrations against the war and for all major social struggles
History shows that all the major gains that benefit the majority have
been
won through mass struggle. The civil rights movement was won in the
streets,
trade unions were won in the streets, and the Vietnam War was stopped
in the
streets. If we are going to stop the occupation of Iraq, end racism,
end
poverty, and build a new society we need to continue the struggle in
the
streets. This includes mobilizing for the next big antiwar
demonstrations,
on June 5 in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Electing a lesser evil will only bring us more evil. The future of
humanity
depends on building a movement that once and for all ends the rule of a
tiny
elite and replaces it with the rule of the majority.
This article first appeared in the May 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
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