the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 2, 2006
The season of the lesser evils is here.
From now until November, political campaigns will spend millions of dollars, given by rich people, to send endless campaign junk to working class voters.
Every two years we suffer through the same lies by the same politicians who want only to prove how well they can fool us.
Even the candidates themselves admit they have nothing to offer! How do they campaign? Their ads carry the message: “Vote for me because I’m not as bad as the other one.”
Haven’t we seen enough of these elections where lesser evils are elected, and things get worse anyway–no matter whether the lesser evil is a Democrat or a Republican?
Four years ago, Democrat Jennifer Granholm was elected governor of Michigan–the “lesser evil” over the Republican governor John Engler. Granholm proceeded to spend the next three years attacking the jobs, wages and benefits of state workers.
Three years ago in California, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor when the Democratic governor, Gray Davis, who was implicated in California’s sky-high electricity rates, was recalled. Schwarzenegger promptly attacked nurses’ case-load protections and twice vetoed minimum wage increases.
If we let them trap our votes in the “lesser of two evils” ballot box, what does it mean? Simply that we have let them fool us once again. Not only that–we let them know it! When we vote for the “lesser evil,” the politicians and their backers sense that they have some credit, allowing them to carry out the next attack.
The rich don’t care which of the evils we elect. Why should they care? Their interests will be protected in either case. Both the Republican and Democratic parties openly carry out policies to boost business interests and promote corporate welfare.
The parties and their supporters argue that benefits will “trickle down” to workers after businesses succeed. A person has to be blind to believe that lie today. Big businesses are profiting at a record pace, succeeding as never before, while workers’ conditions go daily from bad to worse. Money doesn’t trickle down, it floods up, as corporations and their owners steal greater and greater wealth from the hard labor of workers.
Workers’ gains have always come from putting up a fight. Nothing more, and nothing less. It takes a fight to pry something from the grasp of the “lesser” evil, as much as from the “greater.”
It’s long past time that the working class turned a deaf ear to the pleas of the lesser evils. We need to concentrate our attention on fighting for our real interests. Not for a lesser evil. But for a greater good.