EDITORIAL
Elections Are Over, Reality Didn’t Go Away

Nov 17, 2024

Almost 89.7 million people who have the right to vote didn’t. Put all together, their votes could have beaten either Trump, who got only 76.5 million votes, or Harris, who got 73.8 million.

Well, did those non-voters throw their votes away—as some politicians and preachers put it?

What about the people who voted for Trump? Trump is already claiming their votes give him a mandate for measures he wants enacted—like tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country.

Harris would have done the same, claiming popular support for measures like the subsidies she and Biden pushed through for the big corporations and their super-wealthy owners.

Talk about throwing your vote away! Isn’t that what you did if you gave it to politicians who carry out policies that favor the big-money class, at your expense?

In any case, the election is over. But reality didn’t go away.

Staring us smack in the face is the capitalist economy, which has never provided a decent-paying full-time job for all those who need to work. And now, companies from Silicon Valley to Detroit are cutting more jobs, closing plants and other facilities. This is the logic of capitalism: squeeze more work out of fewer workers. It’s great for company profits, which flow to the whole capitalist class—but not great for those who need to work.

The logic of capitalism, with its search for more profit by whatever means, also leads to inflation. It may not be going up as fast as last year, but prices are much higher than they were last year. Funny how that works. But it’s not so funny that most of us can’t buy the same groceries, or cars or houses. Can’t even rent a decent apartment.

The same capitalist logic created school systems that can’t educate the children of the working class. There aren’t enough teachers, not enough classrooms, not enough books, supplies, lab facilities. In other words, the schools do not have enough money. The money that should go to schools—and all the other social and public services needed—is going to subsidize capitalist profit and pay for tax breaks to the super-wealthy. Increasingly, it is going to war.

Today, the extent of war is hidden because it is being fought by U.S. surrogates like Israel and Ukraine. But it’s being fought with U.S.-built weapons, U.S.-funded planning, U.S.-organized spying. There may not be U.S. troops there—yet—or not many. Not many? There are at least 30,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East right now, and more than that in Europe surrounding Russia. There is a U.S. armada in the South China Sea. War is creeping up on us.

The elections did not and could not give an answer to this reality. Not from the standpoint of the working class.

There can be no answer to this situation until the working class begins to act as a single, unified class—workers who didn’t vote, workers who voted for Trump, workers who voted for Harris.

In mobilizing to fight for itself, the working class can find a way out of this mess we find ourselves in—if it sees the need to bring all its forces together, no matter whom they voted for, no matter what their nationality or citizenship is, no matter what their skin color or gender is.

The working class today works in the center of the economy. This gives it the potential of transforming its own situation IF it understands that the changes it needs can come only when it works to get rid of the capitalist system, only when it drives the capitalist class from power.

When Trump demonizes immigrants, he is trying to drive a wedge in the working class. He would destroy working class unity, the very thing workers need to carry on their struggles.

Harris would not have been a protection for the working class. She made it absolutely clear that her allegiance was to the capitalist class—and when it wanted the working class divided, she did that.

The working class, and only the working class, will create its own unity, and thus start on the road to building a collective society.