The Crusade Against Anger: Patriotic Themes in the Harris Campaign
A lesser evil is still an evil!
There is a debate among liberals and leftists over whether to support Harris/Walz against Trump. Change the candidates’ names, and the arguments are the same as 2020,2016 etc. This is at least the fifth “most important election of our lifetime”.
Marxists oppose lesser-evilism for many reasons. Support for the Democratic Party is more than opposition to Trump and the Republicans. It is positive endorsement of imperialism and its wars; regulation and suppression of unions; continued fracking and environmental destruction generally; prioritization of profit over workers’ wages and working conditions; support for police and prison maintenance of the racial and class hierarchy; continued inadequate health care; continued oppression of women and LGBTQ people; support for the obscene concentration of wealth etc.
In this election, the Democrats are running to the right of Trump on immigration pointing out that he prevented a conservative bill that would have gutted asylum rights. Most noticeably, they are defending Israel’s “right to exist” and are funding the horrific slaughter in Gaza. Protesters rightly denounce “Genocide Joe” and his faithful VP, Kamala Harris. Democrats fund the genocide while hypocritically saying they are for a ceasefire. Further, the Democrats flirt with WWIII over Ukraine.
A Question of Strategy
“Working class independence yields more victories”
There are plenty of reasons to oppose the Democrats as well as the Republicans. For Marxists, this is not just a moral question. It is not just the issue of whether to support “lesser” genocide.
The most important reason to oppose the Democrats is strategic. As Marxist Hal Draper put it, you do not defeat the greater evil by supporting the lesser evil. Marxists are for working class political independence from capitalist politics because as long as workers support varieties of capitalist politics, they will never rebel against capitalism.
There is another immediate strategic reason as well: even in the short run, working class independence yields more victories. The capitalist state is not democratic. It is run by and for capitalist interests. The capitalist state grants reforms when it thinks it must. If the state is threatened enough, it will give reforms to buy off discontent. To win reforms, activists must raise the level of discontent. They must threaten the system to extract concessions from it. These threats can be economic through strikes or political through mass movements or both. The capitalists and their agents fear disruption of their system. They respond with both the carrot and the stick, repression and reform. Every major positive reform in U.S. history has come from these disruptive mass movements. The threat of disloyalty to the capitalist system is one such threat. Mass movements cannot show this disloyalty by supporting the lesser evil Democrats.
The Harris/Walz campaign expresses its fundamental conservatism, its embrace of the capitalist system in policy, but also in tone. Its campaign is based around several themes:
1) We are the real patriots
2) The Status Quo is fine — -Don’t Be Angry!
3) Support the middle class
“We are the real patriots”
“Harris/Walz attack Trump for being anti-patriotic”
A key argument of Biden against Trump was defense of American “democracy”. He claimed that Trump would end democracy. Harris/Walz has continued this theme in a lower key way. They point out that Trump called for “terminating the U.S. constitution”. He claimed to want to be a dictator on day one of his new term. He tried to overturn the 2020 election and stop Biden from taking power.
While all this is true about Trump, the Democrats ignore one key fact: the U.S. is a bourgeois democracy, i.e. a democracy for the capitalists! The Constitution was set up specifically to prevent democracy for ordinary people. Only property-owning white men could vote. The founders created checks and balances to thwart the popular will. They created veto power in the Presidency and Supreme Court. They set up an Electoral College to elect the President rather than a popular vote. Over time, mass movements have expanded democratic rights but the U.S. is only a limited democracy. In fact, a recent Princeton University study labeled it an oligarchy. The election is not over democracy versus dictatorship, but between varieties of capitalist rule.
Supporters of Harris/Walz attack Trump for being anti-patriotic. Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania, for example denounces Trump for “shit-talking” the U.S. The Democrats echo the Hillary Clinton campaign, “America is already great!”
The Harris/Walz rallies push this theme with loud and constant chants of “USA! USA!” The Democrats are trying hard to reclaim patriotism and the American Flag. They are reinforcing the system, not opposing it.
The Status Quo is fine — -Don’t Be Angry!
“Instead of addressing the validity of the anger at the Status-Quo, the Democrats try to deny its legitimacy.”
Flowing from their patriotism, the Democrats push the idea that the Status Quo is fine. They push the idea that the U.S. has the best economy in the world. They claim that inflation is down and wages are up. While Biden rarely acknowledged that living standards are down for vast numbers of people, Harris admits this but says she has an answer. She says she will pursue anti-trust measures against price gouging corporations.
In fact, real wages for the majority of workers have stagnated and declined over the last 50 years. Costs of rent, healthcare, education and now food have gone way up. Real wages dropped further under Covid. Newly created jobs are often part time. Over the same 50 years, the wealth of the top 1% has skyrocketed. The result of increased productivity has gone primarily to the ruling class. All of this has happened under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
This concentration of wealth has impacted workers, small capitalists and independent professionals, creating justified anger. Unfortunately, much of this anger has ended up supporting Trump and MAGA. Support for MAGA is further fueled by racism and misogyny as middle-class white men and even some working-class men see their social position slipping.
The direction of this anger is counter-productive and must be fought. However, the anger is justified! Instead of addressing the validity of the anger at the status quo, the Democrats try to deny its legitimacy. They claim that the Trump campaign’s appeal to anger is “weird”. Instead, they substitute a return to joy. They claim that the American people are tired of Trump’s stridency, divisiveness, scapegoating and anger. This may be true for large numbers of people, but the roots of anger and discontent are real.
Other very legitimate sources of anger are the global environmental crisis, U.S. militarism and imperialism, police murder of Black people, the continued undermining of reproductive justice, the attacks on immigrants and LGBT people etc. These issues tend to produce a response to the political left.
The Democrats are ignoring these roots. The Democrats are saying “the system is fine. The only problem is Trump and his supporters. We will make things even better”. This is a very conservative appeal and reinforces resignation. It undermines the fight for any real transformation.
Support the Middle Class
“There is a fundamental class conflict within what the Democrats call the middle class”
The Harris/Walz campaign uses the “middle class” as a catch-all that reinforces its patriotism and conservatism. It claims its policies will help the broadly defined middle class. To the Democrats, anyone above the poverty line and below the top 1% are middle class. This distorts real economic relationships. In Marxist analysis, a large majority of the U.S. population is working class — -people who live off of their wage or salary and not primarily from ownership of property. This encompasses 75 to 80% of the U.S. population. The working class is in an antagonistic relation with the capitalist class and the petty bourgeoisie, the small capitalists. These classes live by exploiting the labor of workers.
This means that there is a fundamental class conflict within what the Democrats call the middle class. However, Harris and Walz claim to support the interests of workers and also small property owners. Their slogan is that they support “the middle class and working families”. In fact, working families are often in direct conflict with the actual middle class, the small property owners. The Democrats are explicit about wanting to help out small business.
The Democrats reinforce this by claiming that their policies will allow everyone to become middle class. This is impossible under capitalism! Capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers. Capital accumulation comes from not paying workers the full value of what they produce. If all workers became middle class, there would be no workers to exploit.
Even if the Democrats only mean middle income, their claims are a pipe dream. Capitalism is based on the concentration of wealth. The poor are poor because the rich are rich. There is no way that capitalism can become a society where everyone is middle-income. This is even more true under neoliberalism and austerity which Democrats and Republicans both support. Despite the Democratic claims, their policies actually further the concentration of wealth.
The rhetoric about the middle class serves to undermine class struggle. Unfortunately, union leaders who support Harris/Walz are playing the capitalist game in going along with this.
SLOGANS
Some of the key slogans of the Harris/Walz campaign reinforce the political points they are trying to make. Harris/Walz are stealing “When We Fight, We Win” from the left wing of the labor movement. Sometimes the Democrats modify this to “When We Vote We Win”.
This cooptation is an effort to steal the energy of the labor movement. It is an effort to claim identification with the workers struggle while pursuing a capitalist agenda.
Other slogans are also supportive of the status quo: “We Won’t Go Back” is opposition to a reactionary shift, but also a celebration of America as it is today. The accompanying calls for health care and child care for all are promises that won’t be carried out and that the Democrats in practice have opposed.
“Mind your own damn business” is used by the Democrats to support limited abortion rights as they were before the overturn of Roe vs. Wade. This is similar to the sentiment of capitalist libertarianism when it comes to business regulation.
There are plenty of reasons to oppose lesser-evilism! Lesser-evilism lets the capitalists off the hook. It wins political support for capitalist exploitation and oppression. It supports policies that hurt workers and people in general. It reinforces the status quo. Importantly, it entrenches capitalist ideology by promoting the campaign slogans and rhetoric of the Democrats. This undermines working-class politics in the battle of ideas.
