Both parties have a similar problem

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.