Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 07.03.2024
Biden the war criminal and the coward is likely to lose the elections in November
“Over 200,000 people cast “uncommitted” or similar votes in the Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday, a strong rebuke of President Biden over his ongoing complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Pressure on the Biden administration is at a breaking point. Biden’s team has taken to hosting smaller events and keeping locations a secret until the President arrives, lest he be heckled by pro-Palestinian protesters. In Minnesota, uncommitted ballots accounted for nearly 20 percent of the vote, meaning the uncommitted movement will get to send 11 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, in addition to the two uncommitted delegates being sent by Michigan. In North Carolina, 12 percent of Democrats — nearly 90,000 people — cast a “no preference” vote. In Massachusetts and Colorado, uncommitted or similar options received 9 and 8 percent of the vote, respectively“.[1] This is the reaction of the American masses to Biden unconditional support for the genocide of the people of Gaza.
“A day after over 100 starving Palestinians were massacred by the Israeli military while waiting for humanitarian aid, Biden announced that the U.S. would conduct a series of aid airdrops — a last-ditch effort to save face and stave off the impending famine. Experts say these airdrops are both expensive and inefficient.
The grim irony of these aid drops isn’t lost on us. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians aren’t just starving, they’re being starved by the Israeli government, an ostensible U.S. ally that continues to receive billions in U.S. military funding. The Israeli military, in turn, uses these American weapons to fire on UNRWA trucks and gun down Palestinians queuing for aid.”
That does not mean that Trump is better.
“Despite international pressure on the U.S., Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump voiced explicit support for Israel’s war on Gaza Tuesday.”Yes,” Trump responded when asked during an interview on Fox News if he was “in Israel’s camp.”The interviewer then asked if the former president was “on board” with the way Israel was executing its offensive in Gaza.”You’ve got to finish the problem,” Trump responded” [2]
It is clear to a growing number of Americans that the two parties are parties of the enemy.
It was Eugine Debs the American socialist who said: “We are today entering upon a national campaign of the profoundest interest to the working class and the country. In this campaign there are but two parties and one issue. There is no longer even the pretense of difference between the so-called Republican and Democratic parties. They are substantially one in what they stand for.
They are opposed to each other on no question of principle but purely in a contest for the spoils of office.
To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation of the workers, and for wage-slavery.
Both of these old capitalist class machines are going to pieces. Having outlived their time they have become corrupt and worse than useless and now present a spectacle of political degeneracy never before witnessed in this or any other country. Both are torn by dissension and rife with disintegration. The evolution of the forces underlying them is tearing them from their foundations and sweeping them to inevitable destruction.” [3]
Unlike Sanders that acted in the Democratic party, Eugine Debs organized a worker’s party supported by millions of workers.
This is the time for organizing a worker’s party. A worker’s party does not mean a call for a reformist party as Trotsky said in 1938:
“Trotsky: This question is very important and very complicated. When for the first time the League considered this question, some seven or eight years ago – whether we should favor a labor party or not, whether we should develop initiative on this score – then the prevailing sentiment was not to do it, and that was absolutely correct. The perspective for development was not clear. I believed that the majority of us hoped that the development of our own organization will [would] be speedier. On the other hand, I believe no one in our ranks foresaw during that period the appearance of the CIO with this rapidity and this power. In our perspective we overestimated the possibility of the development of our party at the expense of the Stalinists on one hand, and on the other hand we don’t [didn’t] see this powerful trade union movement, and the rapid decline of American capitalism. These are two facts which we must reckon with.”
I can’t speak from my own observation, but theoretically. The period of 1924 I know only through the experience of our common friend Pepper. [18] He came to me and said that the American proletariat is not a revolutionary class, that the revolutionary class are the farmers and we must turn toward the farmers, not toward the workers. That was the conception of the time. It was a farmers’ movement – the farmers who are inclined by their social nature to look for panaceas: populism, FLFism, in every crisis. Now we have a movement of tremendous importance – the CIO; some 3,000,000 or more are organized in a new, more militant organization. This organization which began with strikes, big strikes, and also involved the AFL partially in these strikes for a raise in wages, this organization at the first step of its activity runs into the biggest crisis in the U.S. The perspective for economic strikes is, for the next period, excluded, given the situation of the growing unemployed ranks, etc. We can look for the possibility that it will put all its weight in the political balance.
The whole objective situation imposed it upon the workers as upon the leaders – upon the leaders in a double sense. On one hand they exploit this tendency for their own authority and on the other they try to break it and not permit it to go ahead of its leaders. The LNPL has this double function. I believe that our policy need not be theoretically revised but it needs to be concretized. In what sense? Are we in favor of the creation of a reformist labor party? No. Are we in favor of a policy which can give to the trade unions the possibility to put its weight upon the balance of the forces? Yes.
It can become a reformist party – it depends upon the development. Here comes the question of the program. I mentioned yesterday and I will underline it today – we must have a program of transitional demands, the most complete of them is a workers’ and farmers’ government. We are for a party, for an independent party of the toiling masses who will take power in the state. We must concretize it – we are for the creation of factory committees, for workers’ control of industry through the factory committees. All these questions are now pending in the air. They speak of technocracy [19], and put forward the slogan of “production for use.” We oppose this charlatan formula and advance the workers’ control of production through the factory committees.” [4]
This struggle for a fighting labor party will find the obstacle of the bureaucracy of the CIO-AFL that ties the hands and feet of the workers to the capitalist class and its party the democratic party and this bureaucracy must be replaced by fighting leadership.
Down with the twin parties of the capitalist class!
For a fighting labor party!
Endnotes:
[1] https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/03/06/why-biden-is-hiding/
[2] Leon Trotsky on the Labor Party Question: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/04/lp.htm
[3] https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1912/twoparties.htm
[4] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/04/lp.htm