For independent
2 International Viewpoint #324 September-October 2000
THE outcome of the November presidential elections in the USA remains uncertain. What is certain is that the victor will be a vacuous non-entity in hock to the corporate agenda. We print below a statement by the US socialist
SOLIDARITY is endorsing two presidential candidates for the November 2000 election as alternatives to the capitalist parties and the politics of unchecked corporate power.
AVID McReynolds, the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party USA, is deservedly among the most respected veterans of the U.S. peace movement. A tireless campaigner against militarism and an activist in the gay/lesbian rights struggle as well as a long-time champion of democratic socialist principles, McReynolds will offer the clearest voice for a socialist alternative in this election. At the same time, we feel that Ralph Nader's campaign on the Green Party ticket represents the potential for a big step forward toward a new politics, independent of the capitalist class whose interests reign supreme in this coun try. Nader is not and makes no claim to be a socialist; but the Greens' vision of an ecological and democratic world ultimately entails an assault on the institutions of capitalism and the forging of a working-class alternative.
Ralph Nader is waging a vigorous campaign in 2000 and this campaign appears promising in two ways. First, his message centers on a powerful critique of the strangulation of democracy by corporate control of the political process, of the media and of all economic institutions, and the extension of corporate power throughout the world under the guise of "globalization." This critique resonates with the anger of the tens of thousands who mobilized in the streets of Seattle and Washington, D.C. against the World Trade
Organization, International Monetary
Fund and World Bank. It speaks to millions of workers watching their conditions of life and work deteriorate. This critique also unifies millions concerned with growing inequality and environmental destruction, including the effects of global warming, genetic engineering of food and the loss of biodiversity. All share a common belief that the corporate-dominated political process offers no real solutions.
Second is the development of a "Labor for Nader" movement, an idea endorsed and promoted by leading figures in the Labor Party. (The Labor Party is a new party, whose founding convention was held in 1996, sponsored by a number of international unions and local labor councils.) While the Labor Party itself is not running candidates, "Labor for Nader" committees would create an organizing vehicle through which labor activists can directly challenge the Democratic Party's stranglehold on working-class electoral loyalties. In endorsing both the McReynolds and Nader campaigns, Solidarity is expressing a view that a socialist alternative to a rotting capitalist system, and a populist-democratic critique of the capitalist parties reaching a potentially wider audience, both have a positive role to play. We also recognize that there are weaknesses that can prevent the Nader campaign from realizing its potential.
Against the capitalist parties
The presidential elections in the year 2000 demonstrate the politics of big business. While George W. Bush poses as an outsider to the Washington beltway politician Al Gore, the fact is that both are second or third-generation politicians with the elite background, resources, contacts and money it takes to organize a mainstream campaign. More than six months before the election date Bush has reported raising S84 million for his campaign. Gore is close behind with $74 million. These figures, of course, do not include the unregulated "soft money" that the Democrats and
Republicans will raise for the presidential campaign. While in 1996 "soft money"
totaled $262 million, this year campaign watchers expect it to total $500-750 million. Various proposals to reform campaign financing have gone nowhere because Congress, too, has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo — more than a year before the elections the average congressional incumbent already has stockpiled $350,000 for his/her next race.
organization Solidarity endorsing two candidates with a different agenda, Ralph Nader and David
Macreynolds. *
In any case, corporate funding is the symptom, not the disease. The Democratic and Republican parties are capitalist parties, the political vehicles through which corporate America gets all its welfare from the state, organizes sectors of the population behind corporate interests - including imperialist wars — and promotes various democratic illusions. They are the parties of profit, racism and war. This is why we reject supporting their candidates; a vote for the lesser evil is a vote for the system.
Growing numbers of people today recognize that the government is mostly interested in meeting the needs of the corporations, not enacting legislation in the interests of the ordinary working person. The most significant pieces of legislation passed under the Clinton administration were the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1996 Crime Bill, an end to welfare and deregulation of the communications industry. Thus the man who wanted to be remembered like FDR, when he first arrived at the White House, will be remembered as the president who completed the Bush agenda.
Despite a "robust" economy, the gap between the rich and the rest of the population is widening and the rate of children living in poverty is rising. But neither Gore nor Bush Jr. talk about how the government could begin to reverse these trends, and given their financial base, why would they?
Meanwhile Patrick Buchanan-whose program is to mobilize white working-class anger against the wrong targets: other nations (especially non-white ones), immigrants, people of color, women who dare to exercise reproductive choice or to be economically independent — is building base in the Reform Party (or what's left f it). In a climate of insecurity and politial alienation, the kind of far-right pseuo-
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* USA politics