Socialist Action /August 2000
A Tale of 'Lesser Evils'
By NAT WEINSTEIN
According to AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney
and other top union officials and many well-meaning "progressives,"
there are as many as three "lesser-evil" candidates seeking election
as president of the United States.
There's Sweeney's choice of Al Gore; there is UAW
President Stephen Yokich's choice of either Gore or Ralph Nader; and then
there is Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa Jr.'s choice of either Gore, Nader
or Pat Buchanan. In the case of the UAW's Yokich and the Teamsters' Hoffa,
the likely choice in the end will most likely be Gore.
Why? Because these so-called labor "leaders"
believe that Gore is the only one of the three that can win against the
"much greater evil," George W. Bush, Jr. In other words, these
bureaucrats are busily pretending to weigh in their mental balance scales
which of the three "lesser evils" is the least evil.
What the politicians promise
It's no mystery what people want and expect from
those they elect to run the country. They want politicians who will pass
laws that they think will be good for them and most people. Consequently,
the standard vote-getting promise of capitalist politicians is that they
will pass laws that are good for all the people.
Let's leave aside for the moment the matter of
politicians' promises and their deeds (since jokes like "How can you
tell when politicians are lying? When their lips are moving!") are
deeply rooted in American culture. But the biggest lie of all is that there
are, indeed, laws that are in the interests of "all the people."
A good example of the absurdity that there are
laws good for all the people comes up when we look at the matter of taxes.
There is no way to assess taxes that will please everyone. It certainly
would not please capitalists to simply tax the rich and not the poor-although
that would be both eminently fair and logical.
After all, a tax that might cost the rich, at worst,
an inconsequential part of their many luxuries, would cost the poor some
of life's basic necessities, like enough milk, meat, clothing, shelter-not
to mention dental and health care-for themselves and their children.
In fact, there is absolutely no one with even the
tiniest income that does not pay any tax whatsoever. Even those on welfare
must pay what are correctly called "regressive" sales taxes, which
tax rich and poor exactly the same rate on all taxable goods purchased.
In fact, the income tax, which is alleged to be
a "progressive" tax-i.e., providing for those with higher incomes
paying a progressively higher percentage of their income-is not what it's
cracked up to be.
Among many other special breaks for the rich are
deductions from their gross taxable income that the rest of us are disallowed-like
so-called company cars, apartments, penthouses and even yachts, jet planes
and mansions.
Capitalists pay no personal income tax on the profits
used to purchase these "company-owned" properties, but they enjoy
their use, nevertheless, just as if they were their own personally owned
properties.
Furthermore, there's the matter of the extremely
regressive Social Security tax. Not only do rich and poor pay this tax at
the same rate, but wages and salaries above $76,200 annually (as of 1996)
are not taxed at all!
In fact, there's hardly a law that doesn't have
extremely different effects on the rich and the poor. For instance, laws
governing such things as wages, hours, working conditions, benefits, and
other parts of the wage package are either good for capitalists and bad
for workers or vice versa.
Even laws leading to war or peace are far from
neutral. War, after all, is a source of huge profits for the rich while
providing lower living standards for workers mobilized in the armed forces
to kill and be killed in defense of capitalist profits.
All this serves to make it patently obvious that
no one can be for "all the people" at one and the same time.
But, one might ask, aren't some capitalist politicians
easier on the poor and harder on the rich than other capitalist politicians?
That illusion certainly is what all capitalists and their supporters work
hard to create and sustain-hence, the myth of the lesser evil.
However even if we were to discount the vast gulf
between their words and deeds, the differences among competing capitalist
politicians are exactly like that between hard cops and soft cops.
The tough cop uses brutality and terror to extort
a false confession while the nice cop says plead guilty or this crazy cop
might kill you. Besides, your chances of acquittal are virtually nil. So
you'd better plead guilty on a lesser charge and get off with a "lighter"
sentence- like life in prison as against the death penalty.
Reform versus revolution
Contrary to accepted wisdom, revolutionary socialists
see no contradiction between reforms and revolution. In fact, reforms-that
is, changes in the status quo that improve the lot of the victims of capitalism-are
an inevitable byproduct of the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism
and for socialist revolution.
But reformism as a strategy is something else again.
It is premised on the notion that the interests of labor and capital are
not diametrically opposed and, therefore, a compromise between competing
interests can be negotiated peacefully. Consequently supporting lesser-evilism
exemplifies the strategy of gradual reform of the capitalist socio-economic
system.
This is a mistaken strategy that many of those
with the best of intentions unwittingly fall into. This strategic misconception,
for example, has led many opponents of the evils of capitalist globalization
to support the protectionist wing of the capitalist class-that is, they
support the "good" capitalists against the "bad."
Lesser-evilism, in short, adds up to backhanded
support to the profit system and the miseries it heaps on the super-exploited
and oppressed around the world.
On voting 'because they can win'
Finally, a few words on the matter of voting for
an Al Gore as a lesser evil "because he can win." This refers
to those who would rather see Ralph Nader elected president but will vote
for Gore because he can win and Nader can't.
But the lessons of history provide overwhelming
evidence that reforms are not gained by the goodwill efforts of "humane"
capitalist politicians who claim to be motivated by the best interests of
"all the people."
Even those independent representatives of the working
class (and Nader, a pro-capitalist politician, is not one of them) who may
be elected to public office cannot win reforms for the exploited and oppressed
masses by legislative action alone.
On the contrary, the labor and socialist political
parties and their elected representatives attempt to use the electoral process
to accomplish the following objectives:To use election campaigns to educate
working people and their natural allies to understand that reforms that
benefit the exploited and oppressed are won by mass independent working-class
political action in the streets and workplaces of the country.
- To use election campaigns and the elected representatives
of the working class to mobilize the exploited and oppressed for mass independent
political action in the streets and workplaces.
- To use the electoral process, more generally,
to lead the masses to the understanding that every reform won through their
own independent mass political action increases their own confidence in
their inherent power to change the world. Thus, each small victory won
by what we call the strategy of class struggle brings them one step closer
to socialist revolution.
- And finally, this brief outline of a revolutionary-that
is, effective-strategy cannot be consummated through the political institutions
created by the exploiting classes. Social revolutions are never accomplished
by the capture of parliamentary and other institutions created by capitalists
as their preferred instruments of class rule.
A fundamental social transformation can and will
be carried to a successful conclusion only through the institutions of social,
economic, and political power created in the course of the mass independent
struggles against capitalist injustice by the working class and its natural
allies.
And like everything in nature, the transition from
capitalism to socialism-a society dedicated to human needs as opposed to
private profit- can only be accomplished by what physicists call "a
quantum leap.
In plain English, that's socialist revolution.
Socialist Action /August 2000 |