The defeat of the Republican Party reflects the widespread discontent of tens of millions of working people, but that discontent cannot find an outlet through false political dichotomies.
Original: https://www.rizospastis.gr/page.do?publDate=7/11/26&id=20805&pageNo=8
The so-called midterm elections in the United States, for the legislative bodies of the House of Representatives and the Senate, once again find the working-class and popular strata of the US trapped in the false dilemmas posed by the bourgeoisie and its political parties.
Republicans and Democrats compete over who can better serve the interests of American monopolies, which “formula” can give a boost to faltering capitalist growth, manage the dead ends and contradictions of the system, and confront the inevitable capitalist crisis looming on the horizon, as signs of instability are appearing in the US as well, including in sectors such as new technologies.
Of particular importance is the struggle over which foreign policy can most effectively impose the imperialist interests of the US state and its monopolies internationally—particularly amid the fierce competition with capitalist China for global supremacy, the contradictions emerging with the EU, the imperialist war in Ukraine, and so on.
Therefore, the American people have no reason to celebrate a change in the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats in Congress. These two parties have alternated in administering bourgeois government throughout history and share responsibility for the suffering of millions of people in the US and dozens of other countries.
The scenario where a president's party loses a majority in one or both houses of Congress is not at all uncommon, especially in midterm elections. We needn't look any further back than 1994, when Bill Clinton's Democratic administration lost its majority in both chambers, as did the Republican administration of George W. Bush in 2006.
Did any of this change the anti-people strategy of capital and successive US bourgeois governments? Did it prevent the crimes and massacres committed against peoples in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq? Quite the opposite... One cuts the cloth and the other stitches it together, ensuring the continuity of criminal policies.
The discussion in the bourgeois media about how a Democratic majority in Congress will rein in Trump through the system of so-called “checks and balances” is misleading. This is the institutionalized mechanism for finding consensus and compromises between the two parties in the name of the general and long-term interests of American capital. At the same time, it is an arena for endless political machinations, backroom bargaining, and deals made both above and below the table.
In practice, the Democrats' victory in Congress means that the Trump administration will have to seek compromises and negotiate concessions with Democrats in order to pass legislation and make appointments. For the same reason, presidential executive orders will multiply, while Democrats will also be able to initiate congressional proceedings and investigations against the Trump administration and its officials more easily. All of this, of course, will take place within the framework of US legality and constitutional order. In other words, the people should not hold their breath...
Once again, the privilege enjoyed by monopolies to intervene directly in election outcomes for their own benefit is laid bare: A new record has been set for the amount of money donated by major capitalists to the election campaigns of candidates from both parties.
It is estimated that this year various tycoons have spent more than $11.5 billion through both visible and less transparent channels, such as the so-called PACs.
Particularly revealing is the fact that 498 of the 535 members of Congress—261 Republicans and 231 Democrats—received financial support from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the notorious pro-Israel lobby. Of course, without the backing of donors like these, large or small, and the corresponding obligations that arise from such support, no one gets elected to the US Congress. This exposes yet another aspect of the class character of American bourgeois democracy.
Widespread popular discontent...
The defeat of the Republican Party reflects the widespread discontent of tens of millions of working people over rising prices, shrinking incomes, and broken promises. Energy prices, particularly fuel prices, have risen by 40% over the past year, driving up the prices of widely consumed goods, especially food. According to opinion polls, two-thirds of Americans say that economic conditions and their living standards have deteriorated.
The deterioration of living conditions for working-class and popular forces is objectively intertwined with the imperialist plans and wars launched or participated in by the American state.
It is estimated that the total cost of the war against Iran—that is, both the direct military operations and the additional burden caused by rising oil prices—amounts to $2,000 per American household, or $265 billion in total, a burden placed on the shoulders of the people. Understandably, more than 60% disapprove of Trump's policy toward Iran, directly connecting the war with its consequences for their lives.
The Trump administration, which, we recall, came to power under the banner—now reduced to a joke—of ending wars within days, is increasing the already enormous US military budget by 42% through 2027, sacrificing the people's needs in healthcare, social security, and education on the altar of imperialist plans.
At the same time, Trump, taking up the baton from Biden's crimes:
Attacked Iran in coordination with the murderous state of Israel, causing yet another bloodbath in the Middle East, bringing new suffering to the peoples of the region and to people everywhere through further surges in the prices of fuel, energy, and other widely consumed goods.
Continued supporting the reactionary Zelensky government in Ukraine with millions of dollars and military equipment in its conflict with Russia, a war for which the peoples are paying in blood, which has already lasted four years and claimed millions of victims. Trump's efforts to reach a compromise with Russia to end the war have nothing to do with any peaceful sentiments on his part, but rather with US priorities in its strategic competition with China.
Supported the murderous state of Israel by every means in its genocide of the Palestinian people and the destruction of Gaza, which has cost the lives of more than 70,000 people, including tens of thousands of children, as well as in the invasion and occupation of parts of Lebanon and Syria by that murderous state.
Attacked Venezuela in yet another unacceptable, bloody imperialist intervention aimed at imposing the interests of US monopolies more broadly across Latin America, while proceeding, in cooperation with the local social-democratic government, to plunder the country's wealth.
Further intensified the brutal imperialist blockade of Cuba, which has created enormous shortages and deprivation for its people, while escalating threats of imperialist intervention in the near future.
...that finds no hopeful way out
The justified discontent of the American people cannot find a genuine outlet as long as it remains trapped within the Democrat–Republican dichotomy. The occupants of Congress may change, but unfortunately those who hold the keys to the economy and political power remain the same: the great monopolies and powerful economic interests.
It has never challenged the framework that treats healthcare and social security as extremely expensive commodities, leaving working people terrified at the prospect of needing hospitalization because they may subsequently face bills amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. Nor has it ever challenged the framework under which young people must take out student loans to attend university, only to spend the rest of their lives paying them off, and so on.
It is an affront for the Democratic Party to present itself today as an antiwar and peace-loving force, when its successive administrations have been responsible for countless crimes against peoples, from the Vietnam War to coups and interventions in Latin America, Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, and, more recently, Ukraine and Palestine.
On every major issue, the Democrats' proposals are a different mix of the same anti-popular strategy:
They oppose Trump's tariff policy and propose a variation of it: reducing tariffs on imports from the EU while simultaneously increasing tariffs against China, in the name of the bourgeoisie's strategic alliances and the protection of domestic monopolies in international competition.
They denounce the manhunt launched by the Trump administration against immigrants and the crimes of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), while simultaneously defending their own anti-immigration policies, including interstate agreements with the governments of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and others to detain (i.e., imprison) migrants before they reach the US, carry out deportations, and so on.
They exploit the Trump administration's “institutional abuses,” scandals, and “favoritism” to promote the fairy tale that defending the institutional order, legality, and meritocracy of the American state will improve the quality of “democracy” for the people. They obscure the fact that this is a bourgeois state, anti-people by its very nature, whose fundamental purpose is to promote, defend, and safeguard the interests of American capital both domestically and internationally, at the expense of the American people and the peoples of other countries.
The role of the Democratic Socialists
At this point, the Democratic Party will use its victory to create the conditions to prevail in the next presidential elections in 2028. It will intensify the effort to channel popular discontent into avenues that pose no threat to the system, while cultivating false hopes among the people for a fairer administration of capitalism.
In this context, a useful tool has emerged in recent years, which functions as a bulwark against any potential radicalization of the popular masses: The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the party of the well-known mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders (Democratic senator), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democratic congresswoman), and others.
As their name suggests, they are a social-democratic party of the “left” variety, whose declared objective is to pull the Democratic Party “to the left” “from within,” in order to pursue a “left-wing” administration of capitalism in the US. After all, the DSA participates in the so-called Progressive International, which its best-known figure, Bernie Sanders, co-founded together with “our own” Yanis Varoufakis.
It employs superficial “anti-capitalist” rhetoric and slogans calling for “deep democratic reforms,” targeting the manifestations and consequences of capitalist exploitation and the oppression of the working class and popular strata, while leaving the underlying causes untouched: the ownership of the means of production by monopolies, the capitalist economy, and capitalist political power.
The DSA's positions remain within the established boundaries of comparable social-democratic forces internationally, such as the creation of a Keynesian-type "mixed economy" with enhanced state intervention to regulate market unruliness, the nationalization of public utilities, the adoption of a Green New Deal, the creation of a strong "welfare state"—for example, through the coexistence of public and commercialized healthcare facilities and services—and reducing police budgets while perpetuating the repressive character of policing, among other measures.
Even its selective criticism of imperialist aggression and US interventions remains within the boundaries of bourgeois pacifism. It does not address the underlying causes that produce imperialist rivalries, wars, and interventions, much less struggle to eliminate them, thereby defending the interests of the monopolies and capitalist exploitation.
The usefulness of the DSA, as a more “traditional” social-democratic force, lies in its capacity for grassroots organizing, its activity among the popular masses, trade unions, mass organizations, and movements, on the basis of “social partnership,” and its ability to highlight pressing popular concerns about wages, housing, healthcare, and so on. Its objective is to rally popular forces, whose collective strength it ultimately channels into efforts to elect its own candidates on Democratic Party ballots...
In any case, and to avoid any misunderstanding, the DSA recoils from “authoritarian conceptions of socialism” at every opportunity, as the devil would from holy water, referring to the experience of building socialism in the Soviet Union. Indicatively, an extensive “strategic” article on the DSA's official website states, regarding the USSR, that “hopes for a rapid democratic transition to socialism were destroyed by the horrors of Stalinism,” regurgitating the endlessly repeated anti-communist propaganda of capitalist centers of power.
The above may seem “communist” and “extremist” to the hysterical McCarthyite anti-communists of the US, but in practice it is the familiar, bankrupt narrative that capitalism can be made more humane, that the system can be changed “from within,” through its own institutions, and that the rotten system of exploitation can be administered in the interests of the people.
The company they keep…
As expected, international social democracy is celebrating the “blue wave,” the "rising hope", the defeat of Trumpism, and so on, as do the Greek parties of discredited social democracy—PASOK, Tsipras's party, and SYRIZA—all of which have established track records of anti-people and anti-worker policies that the Greek people have experienced firsthand.
The leadership circles of the imperialist EU are also celebrating and expressing hopes that the Democrats' victory will put the brakes on Trump's tariff policy against EU member states and torpedo efforts to reach a Trump–Putin compromise over Ukraine, so that support for the Zelensky regime can continue with weapons and billions taken from the pockets of the people.
One could describe as comical—if it were not dangerous—the attempt to cultivate expectations among the Greek people for the election of various members of the Greek diaspora and “philhellenes” to Congress. It was not so long ago that the Democrats' previous “great friend of Greece” in Congress, Bob Menendez, ended up... behind prison bars for his involvement in a corruption scandal.
Even more flimsy and discredited is the attempt to portray members of Congress “with a Greek great-grandfather” as guarantors of Greek sovereign rights against Turkey. Meanwhile, the strategic priority of American administrations is maintaining the cohesion of NATO's southeastern flank, and the US State Department has twice in recent weeks told the two sides to “work it out,” thereby playing into the hands of the Turkish bourgeoisie's claims.
The eagerness of Greek bourgeois political circles to find allies in Congress reflects the aggressive ambitions of the Greek bourgeoisie for deeper involvement in imperialist plans, in competition with other bourgeois classes in the region, through its strategic alliance with the US, NATO, the EU, and Israel. These developments pose new and serious dangers to our people, particularly as speculation mounts about a resumption of the war in Iran.
The real hope
As the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has pointed out on previous occasions, the great historical problem facing the American people is that the revolutionary workers' movement is in a state of disintegration, the result of prolonged ideological and political degeneration. This was not always the case, but opportunist erosion, combined with ferocious repression and subversion by the bourgeois state, has produced paralysis lasting for decades.
Of course, even today there are promising workers' struggles which, under certain conditions, could become the seeds of class-based political emancipation for broader sections of the American working class and people. There are examples of courageous struggles among workers in many sectors, as well as efforts to establish trade unions in fierce confrontation with the employer intimidation and repression practiced by monopolies, such as at Amazon and elsewhere.
Similarly, it is no small matter that dockworkers' unions from Oakland and San Francisco are participating in the mobilizations of the International Day of Action at the ports under the slogan: “Ports for workers, peoples, and peace—not bases for imperialists!”
The KKE will continue to express its solidarity with the American people and their struggles, while following and supporting the arduous efforts to rebuild the revolutionary communist movement from its ashes, such as those undertaken by the Communist Workers' Platform USA.
Notes:
1. In previous weeks, $ 2 trillion was lost from the stock value of the monopolies of Artificial Intelligence and micro-processors. It is an expression of the overhaul of the capital that does not find the desired profit rate.
2. Political Action Committees (Political Action Committees), US organizations established in order to gather money to support election campaigns or
3. https://gen-us.space/data/aipac-spending