We were told that the very existence of our democracy was at stake based on the outcome of this election. We were told that descent into fascism was more of a potential reality than ever. We were told that between these two racist, rapist, capitalists, we had to elect the “lesser evil” as a form of “harm-reduction,” for whatever that means in a fundamentally violent state. All of those liberal claims are lies. The United States of Amerikkka has never been a democracy and certainly not for the downtrodden, hyper-exploited, colonized, Black and Indigenous masses. This is a settler-colonial imperialist hegemony. We’ve been had fascism; we live in a dictatorship of the white bourgeoisie. Deceitful facades of mass participation are used to maintain the illusion of democracy, but, in practice, where is your democracy? In your politics? No. In your jobs? No. In your schools? No, and all of this is how the capitalists like things to be.
In regard to the liberal, “lesser evil” argument, it’s a fallacy to think that for the fundamental evils that oppressed Black people in this society, Joseph Biden is any degree less evil than Trump. These fundamental evils are capitalism/imperialism, its tool racism, and constant mass-violence and hyper-exploitation. Biden’s victory cannot be assumed as a win for Black people in America, because Black people will be hyper-exploited and violently oppressed no matter who the figurehead leader of this country is.
I say figurehead leader, because the real leaders of this country are its capitalists. They influence the governance of this country far more than its elected leaders, because the elected leaders serve only this country’s capitalists. With the election of Trump, the intersection of these two dimensions becomes more clear. To further investigate this, let us briefly review the dialectics between Obama’s presidency to Trump’s, that now leave us with Biden’s. I contend that Trump’s populism and successes have more to do with the economic contradictions of capitalism that increasing class divide in this country than solely anti-Black racism.
As capitalism’s contradictions worsen, meaning the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the poor become disillusioned with the status quo. They begin to recognize that their enemies are actually the people with the most power, and this understanding is part of what fuels Trump’s base. Ironically, his rhetoric was about draining the swamp - meaning getting rid of the corrupt power players making the lives of those poor Trump supporters worse - when Trump is precisely one of the people in power who are exploiting all poor people of the world.
The Undermining Of Your “Democracy” Gave You Biden, the Anti-Progressive
This increasing class divide and push toward populism also explains Bernie Sanders’ campaign successes as well as its failure. To highlight recent examples of the systemic, inherent anti-democracy, we can examine the few months prior to Biden’s nomination and subsequent appointment as the next commander-in-chief of white supremacist, settler-colonial, capitalist imperialism. Let’s think back to the campaign for the Democratic Party nomination.
Beginning the race with popular vote wins in the first 3 primaries - Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, Senator Bernie Sanders’s winning streak quickly propelled his candidacy in front of the other candidates, but popular support can mean little in the electoral realm of this country. Forms of voter disenfranchisement such as the electoral college and its “winner take all” procedure for 48 of the country’s 50 states, redlining, restrictive voter ID laws, felony disenfranchisement, essentially unlimited corporate money can be funneled into campaigns, etc. all undermine de facto democracy.
For example, in Iowa in particular, Bernie received 45,652 votes followed by Pete Buttigieg with 43,209, Elizabeth Warren with 34,909 and Joe Biden with 23,605. So, Bernie received 22,047 more people voting for him than Biden, yet Biden received 14 pledged delegates (the votes that actually have power in these undemocratic processes) compared to Bernie’s 12. How does that make sense? It doesn't, but that's the way the Amerikkkan electoral system works. Go figure.
South Carolina was the next big primary, where Biden received endorsements from key figures such as Democratic Party coon, I mean House Majority Whip, James Clyburn, and won big with 262,336 votes compared to Bernie’s 106,605. Despite the fact that Bernie’s policies would have benefited the masses of Black people in Amerikkka more than Biden’s, Clyburn personally benefited from his support of Joe. This is why he endorsed him. This upset paved the way for this following debacle.
Right when it looked like Bernie would come out on top and ultimately win the nomination, the bourgeoisie consolidated power against him. They sent in their goon Barack Obomber - the famed Nobel Peace Prize winner who, with cruel irony, bombed another Nobel Peace winner, ordered thousands of drone bombings in the Middle East resuling in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, a Black president who actually managed to decrease collective Black wealth while he was in power, and, similar to the Trump administration’s division of trillions of dollars in COVID economic support to the rich while simultaneously denying structural reforms when they are most needed, Obama bailed out his plutocratic buddies while the workers who got screwed were left with nothing to protect themselves and family against the economic depression of 08 instead of restructuring it to work for the people. And like all good white supremacists do, he made sure to scold, patronize, and call “thugs” of the masses of people in the streets who were protesting to profess “My life matters!” A fascist in Blackface is still a fascist.
Shortly after the South Carolina primary, Obomber made a few calls to the race’s other candidates - Pete Buttegieg and Amy Klobuchar, “encouraged” them to drop out and immediately endorse Biden. (Buttegieg then got rewarded by being appointed Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, despite having no experience in this policy area.) Some news outlet barely tried to hide this reality with lines such as:
“The 72 hours between the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday pulled Biden back from the brink of elimination and propelled him to the front of the race for the Democratic nomination. His resurgence is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in modern American politics, and sets up a head-to-head competition with Sanders over who is best to take on President Donald Trump in November. Biden’s comeback was aided by rivals who stepped aside and urged their supporters to back him; by deep connections, particularly with black voters, built up over four decades in politics that helped him overcome significant gaps in his campaign operations in key states; and a growing fear among more moderate Democrats that Biden was the party’s last best hope to stop Sanders, a Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist, from clinching the nomination.”
This is not a democracy. This is fascism.
Now, to be clear, Bernie is no hero of mine. Although his campaigns helped to galvanize interest in socialism for a new generation, for which I am grateful, he has too often sided with American imperialism and its ruthless, violent exploitation of the underdeveloped, hyper-exploited nations of the world. But this presidential election, his platform was in favor of policies toward ensuring a basic safety net for American citizens. Policies like healthcare for all,the Green New Deal, measures to build worker democracy in corporations, college for all, etc. Popular initiatives which the masses of working people consistently rally support behind. Despite the amount of good these policies would provide people, human welfare cuts into the profits of the bourgeois. The ruling class got spooked by the possibility of these reforms and swiftly acted to cripple the campaign’s momentum.
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No Real Progressive Policies In Sight
There are a plethora of pieces highlighting detailed examples of Biden’s deplorable record from catalyzing mass-incarceration through the Crime Bill to perpetuating segregation with his stances against school bussing, and I’m assuming most readers here already understand that about him, so I won’t spend much time in this article reiterating it. Unsurprisingly, the essence of his 2020 campaign has been “nothing will fundamentally change.”
He has not yet completely filled his cabinet positions, but the ones that have been announced should come of no surprise. They are corporatist Democrats whose interests lie in maintaining the oppressive status quo at your expense. They’re on the payrolls of the companies that produce the instruments of warfare, so we know their interests lie in furthering violent conflicts of oppressed people abroad. They’re cozy with the big banks, so we know they’ll continue to bail them out at the expense of the masses of working people.
What will happen, come January, under a Biden presidency when Black people inevitably continue to be murdered by agents of state violence? My guess? “Nothing will fundamentally change.” Despite this summer’s radical wave of calls for abolition of the police and prison system that was sparked by George Floyd’s murder, Biden has consistently made cases for increasing police budgets, with his top cop Kamala right as his side. We know this will only perpetuate the problems we will face. Instead of taking money from these astronomical budgets of violence and redistributing it to ensure the people’s basic needs are met, the police will continue brutalizing, oppressing, and oinking each step of the way.
Biden’s team is buddies with Big Pharma, so we know they’ll continue letting this ruthless healthcare(less) system forgo the needs of the people. Even in a pandemic, with some polls registering Americans’ support for universal healthcare as high as 63%, Biden still vehemently opposes the notion. 320,000 people in Amerikkka dead when they didn't have to die. Countries such as China, Cuba, and Vietnam have successfully curbed outbreaks by putting the needs of the people over the ability of business to dominate them. But these are measures capitalist America refuses to implement.
The corporate media machine lauds Biden’s climate initiatives as unprecedented but the measures he’ll enforce are so far from actually making significant progress to combat the global implications of climate change. Climate change cannot be effectively fought under a capitalist world order, and no capitalist politicians will take the action necessary to ensure the battle for global human welfare triumphs over the ever present necessity to exploit the earth and all its inhabitants for the sake of monetary profit for a minute section of the global population.
The Fallacy Of Holding Biden Accountable
Holding a politician accountable under capitalism necessitates economic or political power. Economic power, such as corporations’ ability to funnel almost endless amounts of money through SuperPACs to elect certain politicians or pass policies which undemocratically benefit that business and exploit the masses of people. Political power for Black people in Amerikkka requires the ability to organize and act collectively. Strategic strikes are historically one of the most effective (non-violent) measures that the masses of people have to ensure their government works for them. The masses of working class Black people hold jobs that have been noted as “essential work” during the pandemic, so imagine if these essential workers, united together, stopped work, forcing the government to give in to the organized peoples’ demands.
Biden’s intersectional imperialism - hiring people of “diverse backgrounds” to hold roles of the worst violence perpetrators in the world, is “progressive” on paper (or in the bourgeois media and newspapers at least), but is nothing but counter-revolutionary. It is counter-insurgency against all the calls for radical change that we’ve seen over the last few months. Its goal is to pacify you with a false sense of comfortability and assurance. Do not let them fool you.
Make no mistake; capitalism, with all its goons, puppets, and parasites, is our mortal enemy. As long as the resources we need to survive are privately owned and controlled, we will be exploited and forced to work and live in perilous conditions just to survive. Things do not have to be this way. Socialism, the transition period toward communism, is the only effective antithesis to twenty-first century capitalist imperialism. Socialism is the ownership of the resources for livelihood in the hands of those who have toiled to create them. Socialism is the process of procuring reparations from the oppressors and giving back to the oppressed; not in a way that begs capitalists for money at the expense of the rest of the world, like that of the #ADOS (American Descedents of Slavery) movement but instead unites the power of all the worlds oppressed people against our common oppressors. This is the only way we win. Our revolution to correct the ills of the past and confront the challenges of the present and impending future will only come from the united struggle of all oppressed people against the entire systems of power and domination that oppress us.
Resources:
“2020 Primaries And Caucuses - Iowa Results” https://apps.npr.org/elections20-primaries/states/IA.html#date=2%2F3%2F2020&office=P&party=Dem&counties=true&state.
“Foreclosed- Destruction of Black Wealth During the Obama Presidency” https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Foreclosed.pdf
“Inside the 3 days that remade the Democratic primary”
Biden’s Comments about segregationists and the rich are deeply problematic” Washington Post, June 2020
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