Labor’s Trump Card: Build a Labor Party!

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SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 2016 5 Despite predictions to the contrary, Don­ ald Trump has been elected the 45th Presi­ dent of the United States. What does it all mean?

First the numbers: 44.4% of eligible vot­ ers (102.7 million people) did not vote. The number of people who opted out is up three percentage points from the last presidential election in 2012.Trump re­ ceived 47% of the popular vote (59.4 mil­ lion); Clinton edged him out with 48% (59.6 million). Libertarian Gary Johnson received 4 million votes (3%), and the Green Party’s Jill Stein received 1.2 mil­ lion votes (1%). Other candidates com­ bined garnered some 800,000 votes, or about 0.7%.

So as usual, “none of the above” was the winner by a landslide. Next in line was Democrat Hillary Clinton, who actually won the greatest share of the popular vote. Nonetheless, Republican Donald Trump was crowned the winner, having benefited from a rigged system that substitutes the undemocratic Electoral College for the popular vote.

Still, the fact that Trump did better than many expected begs the question: why? The answer is not that the American (continued from page 1: “Protests score Trump’s hate-mongering agenda”) spite of his racist and sexist tirades, not because of them. Seventy-two percent of those who voted on Nov. 8 believed that “the economy is rigged to the advantage of the rich and powerful.” Sixtyeight percent indicated that “traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like me.” Trump’s populist demagogy Vote totals revealed that Trump ended up with widespread support among working people, par­ ticularly white workers, some of whom had been voters for Democratic Party candidates in the past, including Bernie Sanders. It appears that a high percentage of the voters were attracted to Trump’s populist demagogy—including his antipolitician, “drain the Washington swamp” mes­ sage that denounced a rigged system designed for the Washington insiders at the expense of the vast majority.

As the campaign proceeded, Trump placed more and more emphasis on populist themes, promising decisive changes in trade, immigration, and health-care policies. He promised to bring back manufacturing and good paying jobs. He promoted a national campaign to rebuild the decaying infrastruc­ ture, and he promised to sweep away the job-stealing international trade agreements of previous adminis­ trations.

Trump called for an end to Obamacare—with its skyrocketing expenses for working people—and for replacing it with a better system, with priority treat­ ment for veterans. He seemed to promise anything and everything he could, almost always without spe­ cifics, to win working-class votes.

At the same time, despite a multi-billion-dollar me­ dia offensive conducted by both capitalist parties and designed to attract voters, many millions stayed away from the polls on Election Day. Forty-four percent of all U.S. registered voters (102.7 million people) did not vote at all. This reflected widespread revulsion and distrust with both candidates. Millions felt both candidates were offensive in their personal charac­ teristics and behavior, what they stood for, and in the way they communicated. For a large minority, there was less a sense of a “lesser evil” choice between the two capitalist candidates, and more a sense that there was no real choice.

As in most past elections, despite the modest efforts of our Socialist Action presidential campaign and oth­ er socialist campaigns, the political voice of the U.S. working class was generally absent in the corporate media. The United States is somewhat unique in this regard, as in many countries a Labor Party, based on the trade unions, or a mass Socialist Party, at least purports to speak for the working class. Without an independent working-class party, the ruling class has a far easier opportunity to convince working people people have bought wholeheartedly into Trump’s racist, xenophobic outlook. How do we know? Because if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic Party candidate, Trump would likely have been defeated by a wide margin. This is so despite the fact that Sanders is a Democratic Party loyalist who only poses as a critic of the establishment.

But however one might criticize Sanders from the left, he is not overtly racist like Trump. A popular preference for Sand­ ers over Trump belies any claim that the Trump vote signals a right-wing, racist turn by the majority of working people. The large vote for Trump, together with the large vote for “none of the above” and the lower than expected obeisance to the manipulative, big business endorsed, mainstream media promoted campaign to coronate Hillary Clinton signals one thing: a desire on the part of working people to say f**k you to the establishment. It’s a way of proclaiming, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” (See the film “Network.”)

Unfortunately, electing Trump or any other Democrat or Republican is not go­ ing to solve our problems. In a society so clearly divided into the 1% and the 99%, every political institution serves one side For the other. And there is no ambiguity about which class the Democrats and Re­ publicans serve.

The only way to fight Wall Street and the modern-day robber barons is by tap­ ping into a force that’s even more pow­ erful. And there is only one such force: organized labor. Not organized labor as it currently exists, but organized labor as it ought to be. We need to rebuild a mili­ tant, fighting labor movement to counter the economic and political offensive of the corporate behemoths and their two pet political parties. Where current labor misleaders are too cozy with the bosses or the political parties they control, those fossilized labor fakers need to be replaced by young, militant activists willing to help lead the fight that’s needed.

Fighting this fight means rebuilding unions where they are weak or broken; democratizing unions where they’ve be­ come bureaucratic and unresponsive; or­ ganizing the unorganized; and, once and for all, taking the fight into the political arena by launching a party of labor, be­ holden to working people and powered by the economic might of revitalized trade unions.

Such a labor party would harness the justified disgust working people feel for into supporting pro-capitalist candidates, policies, and interests in the name of supporting the “lesser evil.” That’s why revolutionary socialists raise the pressing need for a Labor Party, based on a fighting, re-energized, and re-invigorated labor movement.

Partly due to this void in American politics, a sig­ nificant portion of white workers in the U.S. chose to support the Trump campaign. Despite the reaction­ ary, racist and misogynist tone underlying much of Trump’s message, the broad support that his cam­ paign attracted expressed in a sometimes distorted way the fact that many U.S. workers believe that they are not being heard and their issues and problems are being ignored by the rulers in Washington.

In fact, the anti-working-class actions and policies of the Democratic Party’s Obama administration fed into many workers’ feeling of betrayal. Obama bailed out Wall Street and the banks to the tune of $32 tril­ lion, while failing to create programs to create secure jobs with union wages or public works programs to rebuild depressed U.S. cities. He supported anti-work­ ing-class trade policies without concealing that his prime concern was to guarantee super-profits for big corporations.

Nowhere to be found under Obama were programs to provide adequate and affordable housing, clean wa­ ter supplies, or funding for desperately needed public schools and day-care centers in working-class com­ munities. Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” ended up as a bonanza for the insurance companies and a cruel hoax for victims of the profit-gouging health-care industry. The Socialist Action presidential campaign During the 2016 election campaign Socialist Ac­ tion candidates Jeff Mackler for President and Karen Schraufnagel for V.P. successfully gained a hearing for revolutionary socialist ideas through speaking tours, the two corporate political machines, but finally channel it in such a way as to beat back the long-running corporate offensive against working people and the planet.

We know from our own history—from the heroic labor battles of the 1930s and after—that there is only one force that the 1% fears and only one power that can scuttle the racist, unjust, exploitive agenda of the 1%. That force is class-con­ scious, militant, organized labor. Revital­ izing the labor movement and launching a labor party are key steps on the path to moving the 99% from the defensive to the offensive. A party of labor would demand and fight for: • Money for jobs, not for war! • An injury to one is an injury to all!

Support for Black Lives Matter. Halt rac­ ist killings and prosecute killer cops. • Guaranteed jobs for all. • Health care is a right! Single-payer Medicare for all. • Tax corporations and the rich, not working people. • A rapid transition to sustainable energy, with guaranteed wages, training and jobs for all workers replaced in the process.

We know from the current election that working people are fed up. It’s time to re­ ject the dead end of electoral politics that leaves us begging for crumbs from one or another party controlled by our class en­ emy. It’s time to channel our power effec­ tively. It’s time to organize! n (Above) Students at the University of Connecticut protest on the day after the election. and articles in our newspaper, website, and social me­ dia. Supporters around the country also took part in building our campaign, including distribution of thou­ sands of copies of our four-page campaign platform. Another socialist group, Freedom Socialist Party, called for a vote for Mackler and Schraufnagel because Socialist Action’s “far-reaching platform includes abolishing the U.S. war machine; getting rid of racist, sexist and homophobic laws and practices; providing amnesty and equal rights for all immigrants; and de­ fending labor.”

A number of prominent individuals supported the Socialist Action campaign, while others invited our candidates to participate in debates around the coun­ try with candidates and representatives of organiza­ tions representing Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein.

We call on all who were attracted to the Socialist Action campaign to continue to work with us in the coming months. During the election period we spoke about the need for working people and the oppressed to rely on their own power, organized independently in united action. This will be our focus going forward. The reactionary programs promised by the capital­ ist Republican and Democratic parties underscores the need for all the movements for significant and just social change to redouble their organizing efforts. We must build our struggles on multiple fronts—against U.S. wars of imperialist aggression, for immigration rights and climate justice, against cop violence in minority communities, for full reproductive rights of women, and many other issues.

Join us in building these independent movements, and join Socialist Action! n