Clarifying the Position: Why Communists Will Not Vote in the Elections
In response to our position, the question has been raised: what about the “socialist” or “progressive” candidates on the ballot? These supposedly socialist candidates are those of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the Green Party. It is worth mentioning that both parties have taken a correct stance on the situation in Palestine: opposing the murderous Israeli state, calling for the end of the genocide, and advocating for the complete withdrawal of all military, political, and financial support to Israel. We would be gravely mistaken to hoist our flag here. While we are obligated to present a critical analysis of how both of these parties are yet another element of the bourgeois political system, we will not take up this lengthy task here. On the other hand, we only seek to clarify why we maintain that both of these parties, just like the Democrats and Republicans, cannot be allowed to draw the communists into yet another form of “lesser evilism”.
The PSL
Objectively, most votes in this country tend to be divided between the two dominant political parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. In our view, abstaining from voting essentially means choosing not to support any party on the ballot, including the independent and “socialist” ones. None of them represent the interests of the great majority - the workers and the people. Like the two major parties, we see the PSL as another player in bourgeois antagonisms. It is attempting to carve out a space within the polarizing and intra-bourgeois disputes sharpening within the political scene in our country by raising the banner of other emerging capitalist powers. The PSL does this by presenting a more "Leftist" image while being socialist in name only. How? The PSL aligns itself with international trends of "progressivism," "multi-polarity," and ultimately social democracy. It openly endorses bourgeois governments like those of China, Mexico, and Venezuela. Therefore, like the other parties of the aforementioned trends, the PSL salutes other capitalist powers and only ideologically prettifies the new correlation of forces in the barbaric capitalist-imperialist system with the goal of misleading the workers.
The PSL is also a key member of the International People's Assembly, a hub of opportunism that includes other political parties willing to sell themselves to capitalist interests in exchange for a few seats. Moreover, the PSL’s “independent” media outlet, Breakthrough News, and its cultural space, The People’s Forum are bankrolled by the Justice and Education Fund, which receives donations from some of the very billionaires the PSL claims to oppose - Goldman Sachs. Previous executive director and founder of the People’s Forum and the PSL candidate for the presidential elections, Claudia de La Cruz (2022 secretary and director of Breakthrough News) is tied up in this complex network of overlapping 501c3 and 501c4 organizations moving millions of dollars, all connected by similar ideological constructs.
It’s no surprise, then, that tech businessman, Huawei technical consultant, and representative of Chinese capital, Neville Roy Singham, a major figure in spreading bourgeois ideology, is linked to the funding channels of the PSL's operations. One of Singham’s previous employees from his Thoughtworks Holding, Inc (sold in 2017), Franziska Kleine is the principal officer, director, and president of United Community Fund, a funder of People’s Forum and Vijay Prashad and his Tricontinental Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
It is telling then, that the PSL has aligned itself with modern anti-communist and pusher of the BRICS alliance, Prashad and his Tricontinental which spreads a "Marxism" similar to how it was sterilized by Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky. Tricontinental is also a receiver of the donations of Goldman Sachs along with other organizations such as Codepink and the Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees.
All the above demonstrates that the PSL does not represent a decisive break with the capitalist system. From being directly propped by the members of the exploitative class, it drops the banner of the US in order to pick up one of the other imperialist powers. The smoke they sell us is becoming thinner every day.
The Green Party
The Green Party has now reached its 40th year since its founding in 1984 and has run a national ticket in every presidential election since 1996. Ralph Nader’s presidential run in 2000 put the party on the national stage. Jill Stein, the current presidential candidate, previously ran in 2012, 2016, and now in 2024, after stepping aside for Howie Hawkins in 2020.
Throughout its history, only eight Green candidates have held state-level offices; many were initially elected as Democrats before switching to the Green Party and later returning to the Democrats or becoming independents. Currently, no Green candidates hold state-level office. Locally, four Greens serve as mayors in cities across Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California, with former Green mayors having served in cities in New York, Alaska, and Colorado. In total, 17 current and 27 former Green officials have held positions on city or county councils in these states, as well as in Wisconsin, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maine, Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, Arkansas, and Maryland. Additionally, nine current or former members are active in local governance roles, primarily in Connecticut.
“Greening” Capitalism while in Office
Green Party participation in the various levels of governance have only expressed its willingness to take part in the management of capitalism and its anti-popular policies.
Green mayor of Galesburg Illinois, Peter Schwartzman, has expanded the operations of the police under the guise of “community policing”. Schwartzman has also been a key beneficiary of his own “non-profit” corporation Growing Together Inc. Schwartzmann has headed up a number of ecological projects in Galesburg, starting a number of “neighborhood gardens” on the properties he has purchased throughout Galesburg. To expand this project, Schwartzmann approached the rent-mogul, Doug Ball, to lease out 3 acres of land to expand the operations of Growing Together Inc. A network of community volunteers has been created to sell and distribute locally grown food within the community. This embodies the real intent behind his “economic opportunities” promoted through urban agriculture and startup grants.
Such initiatives reflect a familiar capitalist approach, shifting the role of social policy and state benefits toward private interests. This strategy enables the state to withdraw from public responsibilities, paving the way for full privatization and a reliance on the whims of donors and charitable contributions. "Non-profit" status means the foundation reinvests its income into its own development. However, what often goes unspoken is that "non-profit" doesn’t imply the institution doesn't generate profit, nor that it isn't privately owned. The legal designation does not alter ownership status, nor does it prevent the institution from operating according to private economic principles.
Similar associations with or management of “non-profit” projects can also be seen with the current mayor of Marina, California, Bruce Delgado. Delgado has positioned himself as an advocate of the expansion of Pure Water Monterey recycled water project, against the costly and destructive methods of California American Water (Cal Am) which administers water through desalination. While the recycling method presents a more sustainable solution, the problem is not solved since the management of water, its treatment plants, networks, irrigation, still remain commodities. Only this time in the hands of a “green” company. Therefore it remains commercialized and a source of profit. The true fight here, if it were an option for the working class, would be the complete de-commercialization of an environmentally sound source of water and its removal from private hands. Water is a social good, and it is unthinkable that it's included in another agenda of profitability. Why has the Green Party of California not taken up such an approach? It is the common tactic of “greening” capitalism by presenting environmental-friendly options as profitable outlets for capital under progressive pretexts. His opposition to Cal Am is only a measure of his economic plan for Marina which attempts to make the city a hip place for a younger demographic as consumers, and spurring on more business activity.
In his own words:
“[Businesses] don’t want a bedroom community of a closed army base. They’d much prefer a university town, a lively town.”
Bruce Delgado won the election on an agenda of turning Marina into an attractive site for capital, especially through his plan of investment of “millions of dollars of private transit oriented development.” as well as integrating Marina with California State University, Monterey Bay as a pillar of economic and social growth. He has done this by entrusting the development of Marina in the hands of large development groups, for example Shea Properties, which was called back to the community in 2010 with a $106 million allotment of funds from City Council. Shea Properties is the developer in charge of the Dunes project, a key player in the revitalization plan of Marina.
As we can see with the Greens of California and Illinois, it is only private interests that continue to win.
Green Party Presidential Campaigns
The Green Party has been running a candidate every four years since 1996. Although we gain nothing from the alternations of the Republicans and Democrats as the managers of the capitalist mode of production, the Greens tend to show up every four years only to be a thorn in the side of the Democrats. More than anything, the Greens position themselves as a valve of the bourgeoisie, where disillusioned strata of society, especially the more “radical” and progressive sections of the petty-bourgeoisie find solace.
It is well documented how the Republicans benefit from the antagonism between the Greens and the Democrats. As Trump said during his rally in June of Jill Stein: “I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100 percent from them.”
The Republicans use the Greens during elections in key states to siphon votes away from the Democratic candidate. Republican lawyers and big donors aligned with the GOP have historically helped the Greens. In 2016, Jill Stein, benefitted from Home Depot co-owner, Bernie Marcus. During the 2018 midterm elections, the Fight for Tomorrow PAC, funded by Republican party megadonor, Ronald Lauder, the heir to Estée Lauder, also dumped $91,197 into the Green Party candidate in the NY-19 race between Democrat Antonio Delgado and Republican John Faso. Howie Hawkins, presidential candidate of the Greens in the 2020 election race, even acknowledged the help of the Republicans.
Returning to the ballot for the 2024 elections, Jill Stein and the Green Party have again drawn out the ire of the Democrats with Squad member Alexandria Ocasio Cortez condemning the Greens.
Stein’s image as a “progressive” force in US politics quickly crumbles when we consider her past presidential campaigns. From her dinners with Russian state representatives, including president Vladimir Putin, alongside Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn, to her campaign contributors and personal finances. These strange connections to Russian state representatives and RT employees caused the Green Party of the US to be ousted from the global organization of Green parties.
In 2016, her campaign drew contributions from major monopolies, arms dealers, and business groups like Apple, Amazon, Google, NVIDIA, Lockheed Martin, and Mckinsey & Company. In the 2012 election cycle, she notably received a contribution from the company Thoughtworks Inc. founded by PSLs bankroller, Neville Roy Singham. The 2024 election cycle sees her campaign contributors Microsoft, IBM Corp, and Apple return and join other large contributions making up over 80% of her funds for the campaign. Small contributions only amount to 13.6%. In total, her campaign has raised around $2.4 million.
Stein and her husband are direct beneficiaries of the same system she continues to rail against with a net worth, in 2016, valued anywhere from $3.8 million to $8.5 million. We do not know Stein's exact net worth because financial disclosure forms filed with the US Office of Government Ethics only require reporting investment values in ranges, rather than precise figures. Stein has not filed another disclosure form since 2016.
What we can gather from her disclosure is that Stein belongs to a section of society which accounts for roughly 4% of the US population. A member of the bourgeois class, she had invested between $995,011 and $2.2 million in funds like the Vanguard 500, which hold substantial stakes in Exxon and other major hydrocarbon-based energy monopolies. Additionally, Stein’s investments in funds such as the TIAA-CREF Equity Index total between approximately $1.2 million and $2.65 million, focusing heavily on the financial-services sector. These holdings include significant investments in large banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank.
Moreover, Stein had invested in a fund with notable stakes in mortgage-backed securities, including those based on subprime mortgages and related derivatives—financial instruments that were central to the 2008 financial crisis. Her pharmaceutical investments ranged from $1,130,010 to $2,400,000 in funds heavily invested in companies like Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, and Allergan. Additionally, Stein had between $500,004 and $1,100,000 in funds holding significant shares in Philip Morris International, the major tobacco company producing Marlboro and other tobacco brands.
Although her campaign opposes the military-industrial complex, Stein had between $50,001 and $100,000 in a fund where Raytheon Corp. is the fourth-largest holding, valued at $38 million.
In each of these cases, despite her fierce denunciations of these industries and commitment to tearing them down, she shamelessly rakes in an obscene amount of wealth from them. What is more is that the financial disclosure form excludes real-estate assets. Her claim to this wealth is eerily similar to the laughable statement by Trump on his “small loan of a million dollars”. The difference? She inherited only “over a half-million dollars” as well as stocks in GE, Dupont, and Mercks. Part of the profit gained from these inheritances she claims to have put into the same scheme as other Greens: non–profits.
While she claims to be a part of the “many Americans who hold retirement accounts, pension funds, or who invest in the American economy”. This is a sleight of hand, an attempt to obscure her class background to create an image of herself as a representative of the people; hypocrisy without boundaries.
When she made this claim in 2016, 44.5 percent of US households owned mutual funds. While today, that percentage has increased to 54.4 percent it is still the middle strata of society which primarily owns these funds. According to the most recent data two-thirds of this strata earn less than $150,000, a far-cry from the class background of Jill Stein. The primary goal of these households is saving for retirement and a majority of the ownership in these funds comes from employer-sponsored retirement plans, reflecting the erosion of state guaranteed pension plans and the private sector's continued dominance on the future of our lives.
Stein sidestepped the barbarity of capitalism the rest of us face—scrambling for any thread of stability to protect our families and hoping the final chapters of our lives aren’t left to drown in debt. Unlike the people Stein claims to be a part of, she enjoys the “individual freedoms” of capitalism, of choosing where or in which mutual fund she will invest her inherited wealth, while the rest of us are subjected to the coercion and exploitation of the capitalist system.
The Green Party Platform
The current Green Party Platform, upon which Jill Stein's platform is based, represents a political framework that tries to humanize capitalism. It is social democracy repackaged as a managerial system for capitalism.
Are there any policies which the Greens present that will allow us to breathe? Certainly, but if we understand that the capitalist mode of production under which these plans will be implemented does not change, that the United States is a dominant imperialist power built on the interests of its monopolies with a foreign policy of militarism, then we can accept that another United States is not possible.
Setting aside what may seem good, like other bourgeois parties, the Greens are committed to guarding and protecting the interests of large capitalist monopolies, but they do so from supposedly "leftist" positions, occasionally using "radical" language and even socialist terminology (like "socialize") to deceive and manipulate workers and society as a whole. Yet reality inevitably exposes social democracy, revealing it to be just as exploitative, poverty-inducing, and violent toward workers as past governments. Their rhetoric hinges on ideals of freedom, equality, and solidarity without disrupting the production relations, clinging to the utopian notion that the exploitative system can be reformed. A primary tactic of the Greens is to use the State as the collective capitalist, promoting nonprofits and cooperatives as supposed avenues to achieve social and economic justice.
Some so-called "communists" argue that it's necessary to support parties like the Greens and entertain the possibility of a government led by them. This suggestion comes despite the fact that, under such a government, the means of production in the U.S.—the economy’s levers—would remain firmly in capitalist hands, and the country would stay ensnared in imperialist alliances or substitute them with new ones. For instance, the Greens propose disbanding NATO in favor of "a modern, inclusive security framework that respects the security interests of all nations and people." This is pure fantasy, ignoring the fundamental issue: the class character of these frameworks. As long as the alliances the Green Party maintains (T-MEC, USMCA, IMF, World Bank, OECD, etc.) or intends to establish include states governed by capitalist laws, market forces, capitalist ownership of production, and bourgeois power, crises and wars—the intrinsic rot of capitalism—will persist. No system of exploitation can evade this reality, regardless of the form it takes or the label it assumes. This is why its position on Palestine is hypocritical. It opposes the genocide but plans to keep us all trapped in the system which generates it, in the same alliances which benefit from it. Communists cannot set as their goal the safeguarding of equal relations between the capitalist states.
The Greens also promote the Green New Deal, which is nothing more than a thinly veiled scheme to reinvest surplus capital and establish new profit streams for monopolies. Supposedly, this fresh outlet for capital will address the struggles of the poor and marginalized. Compared to the Democrats’ version, the Greens offer an "Ecosocialist Green New Deal"—a utopian scam claiming to socialize key productive sectors while simultaneously acknowledging the continued existence of giant corporations. Socialization without expropriation is an illusion.
This reveals the typical social democratic proposal of a mixed economy—a model rooted in the Keynesian management of capitalism. Over the past 40 years, countries like Greece, Portugal, China, France, Italy, Mexico, and others stand as clear examples, proving these models are mere attempts to mask the barbarism of capitalism. The recent tragedy in Spain, with over 200 dead from flooding in Valencia, exemplifies that no matter how "left" or “green” a government claims to be, it cannot disguise its servility to the ruling capitalist.
The Green Party’s reliance on Keynesian management is evident in its repeated acceptance of corporations and nonprofits, its plans to regulate monopolies, its reheated utopian vision of fostering worker cooperatives, rent controls, and its use of the State to orchestrate the controlled destruction of fixed capital—specifically, dismantling dirty energy infrastructure—and directing key productive sectors. The Greens claim that it seeks a new path; one between corporate capitalism and state socialism (a clear slight against the dictatorship of the proletariat). These are gestures which are aimed at maintaining social support and which present a decisive strategy in pulling communist forces down the path of opportunism, away from the revolutionary path.
The State’s role in administering capitalism becomes undeniable when examining the Greens’ proposal for labor; its plans to promote class collaboration. Their demand for worker representation on corporate boards is merely an attempt to smooth over the inherent conflict between labor and capital, pushing the dangerous illusion of a consensus between exploiters and the exploited. Further, the State positions itself as a mediator between labor and capital, supposedly stepping in to act on behalf of workers in disputes—a farce that only entrenches control by the bourgeois State. Communists do not advocate for a government that merely "works" for the people, nor do we compromise or negotiate with our exploiters. We stand for political power that draws in the exploited masses to govern society and suppresses those who exploit them—a power rooted in the direct participation and control of workers. The mistake of opportunists and the Green Party to confuse participation of the workers for control is a deception that must be confronted.
By embracing parliamentarism, the Green Party paves the way for stripping democracy of its class character and absolutizing it, treating the State and its institutions as neutral or being capable of being reformed into a pro-people mechanism. According to the Greens, we can revive “our democracy” by instituting freedom of choice on the ballot. Combined with the plans for state intervention on behalf of the workers, we are reminded of Marx’s mockery of La Salle in 1863.
The Greens promote the illusion that a multi-party system can resolve the crisis of the bipartisan structure, yet, in reality, this merely legitimizes the various political options of the exploiting class. It leaves untouched the separation of the judicial, executive, and legislative branches, which can be manipulated at any time by any faction of the bourgeoisie. Communists, on the other hand, advocate for the fusion of all three branches, enabling elected and recallable representatives of the working people—chosen directly by workers in democratic elections. True power lies in the cells of workers' control: the production units, the workplaces, where social and workers’ control over the direction of production is exercised.
We reject the premise, disguised as “critical support” for the Greens, that they represent a so-called independent mass "left" party. It is, in reality, falling for the cunning and deceptive ploys of social democracy which will continue to operate inside the political-economic framework of capitalist society. The line aiming for a “left government” is a line of assimilation, ultimately a call for disarming the revolutionary movement.
Based on the experience of the international communist movement, this approach has ended in catastrophic failure for the working class—leading to widespread disillusionment, disgust with politics, and fueling the surge of far-right and fascist movements now sweeping across Europe. Instead of workers’ power, it has transformed communist parties into mere extensions of the bourgeois state, reshaping them into opportunistic, toothless forces that chain workers and the masses to the whims of capital. In every case of the Green parties, reforms are glorified and revolution is denied.
The majority of the Green Party (i.e. “eco-socialism”) platform is based on the ideas of Murray Bookchin (social ecology) and “mutalist” economics of Proudhon. Howie Hawkins alluded to these influences in 2020. Confrontation with these ideas must be carried out decisively. We cannot forget that the “green” movement, however much it may be cloaked in an aura of scientificity and objectivity, is nothing more than a social movement, and a series of questions must always be asked: who is leading it? Under what ideology? With what interests? Once these questions are formulated, it is easy to see how the answers fit perfectly with the proposals made by the various green political figures and, specifically, the green parties as political representatives of the bourgeoisie.
The CWPUSA’s line of struggle has dispensed with the demand for an intermediate stage between capitalism and socialism or any form of government which attempts to reform capitalism. Our struggle lies against the illusions fostered by social democracy and its governments of the “left i.e. “The People’s Economy” by the Greens. We argue that the solution to all of the issues highlighted in the Platform of the Greens cannot be solved through management of capitalism or simply curtailing the power of the monopolies. They can only be solved through workers’ power which is the only course of removing the country from all imperialist alliances, through the socialization and expropriation of the means of production and implementation of scientific central planning - that is socialism-communism. Class struggles of the period 1848-1871, culminating with the Paris Commune, helped Marx and Engels to arrive at the conclusion that the proletariat cannot "receive" the bourgeois state apparatus and use it in its favor, on the contrary, it has to "smash" it and to replace it with a new one that corresponds to its own interests. Lenin developed this further, showing that the communist party was the necessary tool for the victory of the proletariat.
To this we commit our fight.
Manolis Rodriguez
Member of the Central Committee of the CWPUSA