Democrat and Republican Parties as Collaborationists Against the Working Class
Editor's Note: This post was originally posted on our old site before the transition and is missing some media
Democrat and Republican Parties as Collaborationists Against the Working Class by Joseph Harmon and Izzi Creo
Joseph Harmon, who works in the energy industry and unionized with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, shared the following on Facebook and gave permission to share with the above cartoon, as was inspired by his post:
Republican Party Agenda:
destroy middle class
hide behind the bible
make everyone poor
bitch about people being poor
hate each other especially women
destroy the earth
want ‘illegals’ here to exploit
have a big military budget to help out their donors
hate their own family
hide behind the bible
use abortion to control the poor
lying pieces of shit
Democrat Party Agenda:
if we don’t believe in it, we try to outlaw it.
wants religious freedom, but only in churches and homes
thinks creating laws solve problems
the only gun you need is the one in your pants.
we say we like unions, but we truly don’t give a fuck because we want lobbyist money in our pocket
pretend to be environmentalist until we get paid off
want ‘illegals’ here to vote for them
we want to take care of the veterans but we want to gut the military budget
want religious freedom but want not in public
we hate gay people, too, but want their vote
lying pieces of shit
Oh I’m sure I could spend a lifetime making this list but something has to change.
Workers Struggle emphatically agrees with Joseph Harmon; something has to change.
BY IZZI CREO
Rooted in our interest as the working class, the half-baked offerings presented by the Republican and Democrat (or is that the Democrans and Republicrats?) parties are clear: while their rhetoric is wildly insulting it all amounts to nothing more than a false-dichotomy raining in rapid succession on the backs of the working-class, like the good ol’ one-two. Making it rain surplus-value straight to the pockets of the capitalists! Cha-ching $$$ (Who needs exclamation marks when you have dollar signs in your zombied-eyes?)
Our present condition needs naming and reporting on: We are Under Attack. It is an outright onslaught by capital’s domination and we are floundering under current forms of leadership! Think: Republican/Democrat parties are even trying to slide Bernie Sanders in and calling him a socialist (not true), unions now are businesses themselves, non-profits and their well-meaning “professional activists” slowly but methodically are taking over the role of public-services leaving the tax base to fund the militarization of police and the military operations globally. There is no denying it and naming our antagonizer is powerful.
Our current mode of production and stage of history is capitalism (/imperialism, which is the stage of capital where it’s expansion for domination has reached the global level, hence “China’s taking our jobs.”) These relations of forces (because capitalism is defined by the organization of social relationships, not really a “system”) have not delivered on their mighty-promises that worked to subdue us for the taking, in prior-decades. And now everyone’s looking around wondering, what happened? We took our guard down and became defenseless because we became “individuals”. We lost the celebration of our individuality amongst ourselves as a class, we allowed our unions to become businesses, allowed the two-parties to define political life for us (go vote!, and don’t talk about politics – it’s too ‘divisive’), we allowed right-to-work laws to spread across the country, we allowed non-profits to explode and we bought into this illusion that we no longer need to be engaged in political life because we can get paid to change the world. WE ABANDONED SOLIDARITY and let the capitalists take over, just like a good host to a parasite. In other words, we by and large aligned with Francis Fukuyama’s declaration that we have reached “The End of History.” And, for the worse. But it is not too late.
The two parties are not just bought and paid for and created by the capitalist class, but the electoral politics and the two-parties structurally, in their fundamentals, cannot ever include the deep interest of workers as a class, nor our democratic and fundamental objectives, nor the advancement of history. The minimal ways that it has seemed any minor improvements have been due to the Democrat/Republican leadership is offensively just a slight of hand. The truth is, the Democrats have repeatedly come to take ownership of the demands irreconcilable otherwise that were born out of the struggles and organized demands made by the working class itself.
We do not see a future under the leadership of these parties or the capitalist class itself because at it’s core is the economic mandate: accumulate and expand capital by any means necessary (read: Make a Profit\extract surplus value.) This means they are unable to take us forward: i.e. Trans-Pacific Partnership anyone?!
Reformism will not relieve this vice-grip squeeze and they both prove this mounting-ly so every single day with the distractions and theatrics we have been reduced to encapsulate as a whole as “politics.” We are worth far more than the Bread and Circuses being served up!
Alternatively, Workers Struggle’s position is on constructing autonomous working class organizations, lead by workers ourselves. We do not need any bureaucrat or “representative” to tell us the path forward! We, indeed, have all that we need amongst us to advance our class interest, which is part and parcel of what will advance history, too. The task is: get this parasite of our being!!
It is only the autonomous struggle of workers in organizations and it’s processes that can wield a reckoning to the bosses and phony-representatives alike, to envisage a path forward as we face a horizon event (climate crisis, refugee crises, unemployment crises, rapid rising costs of living.)
The capitalist owned mass-media once again is forewarning that we are well overdue for yet another round of bust-crises (who felt the ‘boom’?), which is a characteristic of capitalism’s ineptness to advance history, where a major bust is expected every five years or so. They call it the ‘business cycle’ or the ‘boom-bust cycle’, in capitalist economics. Yes, it is understood and in-built that these major busts will come along every few years, and who do you think takes the hit in those busts? Working class people lose their homes, retirements, jobs, hope for a future – every time and in that process, capital is consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, each and every cycle. It is only the organized and autonomous working-class, through waging struggle to overcome that can break this vicious cycle for good. There is no better time than now for solidarity, organizations, and most importantly class-AUTONOMY, my fellow sister and brother-workers.
The autonomous struggles of the working class are simply struggles waged by workers, collectively, stripped of the degenerate stain of individualism plaguing us like a fog to achieve our democratic and fundamental objectives.
It is only the leadership of an autonomous working class movement which can offer us an alternative truly free from bourgeois influence (i.e. opportunism, populism and all the other vestiges of the stifling individualist bourgeois nature) and finally stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity to bear witness and unify all the dominated classes towards defeating capital’s domination. This must be pursued without class collaboration, it is only then we can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with each other in solidarity rooted in our common cause and interest. Just as the Chamber of Commerce would never invite workers to their internal meetings, we too must not include our antagonizer to our internal work. With these principles, we will we lead the way…
“I have come to build a bridge,
so come let’s build,
build, build, build.”
~ Nahko & Medicine for the People
Workers Struggle asks you, what ways do you see the Democrat and Republican parties
showing their good cop/bad cop collaboration strategy against the working class?