Both
parties have a similar problem. At their core they are servants of the ruling
class. But, to survive, they must find votes among the masses. Traditionally
this has been done with patronage. To some extent that is still the case. But
the scale of an American presidential election exceeds any hope of getting more
than a framework from patronage. To succeed in this arena the parties must each
create their own dream state for their mass voters.
For
the Republicans this is becoming simpler each cycle. They have only to enroll
those members of the working class who have abjured the political program of
their own class. This is not false consciousness, This is inverted
consciousness. It is the belief that the greatest danger to themselves is the political
program of their own class. Its source
is a will to submit. It is no accident that a surrender to Jesus is so often
also a surrender to the GOP.
Democrats
will often profess confusion and astonishment at repeated Republican cannonades
against creeping socialism, seen as advancing on all fronts, and now embodied
in a Marxist-Leninist president. But in this, I’m afraid, there is more clarity
on the right side of the chamber. If the main enemy of the present system is
the revolutionary working class then all attempts at compromise with the
program of that class, even such venerable institutions as Social Security, are
subversive.
The
Democrats have a more complex task. They must collect the votes of a working
class which is not revolutionary but which, nevertheless, is aware of its
interests. It does this by the proposition that the class interests of its
voters must be subordinate to the party’s ability to contend each election. This
is not a tactic. It is the substance of the party. The political, economic structure
of the world is unchangeable. The contending classes must, therefore,
compromise.
And
so the two blocks of working class votes are corralled by two tendencies within
the ruling class, by the contradiction within capitalism itself. On the one
hand it cannot escape its dependency on human labor to produce and reproduce
value. On the other it cannot deny the antagonism between ownership and labor.
