The Working Class Breathing Life into Democracy or

Democracy Sucking the Life from the Working Class?

The article which follows is a debut piece written by a young sympathiser of the communist left in the USA. This is the full version which is referred to in the shorter article printed in Revolutionary Perspectives 08. It was written long before Sanders’ predictable effusive endorsement of Hillary Clinton as Democratic candidate for President but the reasons for its inevitability are laid out clearly enough in the article below. Just like the Corbyn campaign in the UK, the Sanders’ electoral bid has given “the left” something to get excited about. This article puts that excitement in its true perspective.

Democracy’s Function as Part of the Apparatus of Oppression of the Working Class

Whenever confronted with signs of a potential future implosion of bourgeois society, the “progressive bourgeoisie” will rally every force they can in their campaign to “defend/restore democracy”. The campaign by Bernie Sanders epitomizes this movement, heavily targeting the young (especially students). This was not some humanitarian section of the bourgeoisie deciding to keep the “bad sides” of capital in check, it is the precise opposite: it is none other than a defense mechanism of capital precisely to ensure its hegemony, and the Sanders campaign was the pinnacle of this. This is part of the class struggle, but from the side of capital against the working class.

Emerging from a society torn apart by contradictions in order to maintain and perpetuate that arrangement of society, the state presents itself as the quasi-social “glue” seemingly outside of the social system yet connecting it together: a medium through which the antagonisms (the working class and capital) which are at the very root of such a society must express themselves (i.e. politically) in order for the particular configuration of social relations to be stabilized. Consequently, the institutions provided by such an organ of society as the state are not the actual mechanisms of power, they are simply the administrative components of capitalism’s drive to stabilize itself, but the state, neutralizing threats to the status-quo as efficiently as it can, will present these institutions as the tools of power which can be captured and wielded by any force organized well enough. We, especially the young, are led to believe that, in the right hands, the political institutions of the state can become near all-powerful tools which can overcome social realities and gradually impose solutions to these social conflicts. This is not the case; in reality it is the other way around. These social conflicts in fact determine the political institutions.

Obviously this not specific to the USA, we can point to other countries to detail how the problem is not some special lack of democracy: the political system is simply the particular arrangement of the bourgeoisie’s dictatorship, a determined structure atop the foundation of the particular arrangement of the relations of the productive process, which itself can only exist atop a particular development of the forces of production. It is completely irrelevant to the question of the class nature of the state whether the bourgeoisie insert candidates they have previously groomed for election into posts they want them to be in, if representatives are truly elected “by the people”, if the bourgeoisie rules through diktats, or if policies must pass a popular referendum before becoming law.

Switzerland, renowned for its “direct democratic” mechanisms, has already passed draft revisions of laws in both sections of its parliament to directly allow the Federal Intelligence Service to intercept and collect data from internet connections coming out of or into Switzerland (collecting metadata, reading content of emails, users’ browsing histories) and the use of “govware”[[1]]. A referendum for the revised laws will be put up sometime in September, but there is no reason to expect that even if the population rejects these laws that it will do anything; “BundesTrojaner” (state Trojan horses) have been used by the Swiss bourgeois dictatorship before, such as MiniPanzer and MegaPanzer which were Trojans for monitoring Skype and other internet (VoIP) calls used by the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy, and Communications (UVEK) from 2006-2009[[2]]. New Zealand, consistently ranked one of the least corrupt governments on Earth[3], still passed laws directly legalizing state hacking of citizen’s computers, spying on internet communication, etc. over a decade ago[4] (not to say it was considered “illegal” before then[5]). More to the point, New Zealand is part of the intelligence alliance with the Orwellian name “Five Eyes” (the other four being Australia, Canada, UK, and USA)[6] which allows them to pseudo-legally bypass national restrictions on data collection, and which the bourgeoisie has even gloated will not be affected by any amount of public outrage[7]. Denmark, hailed as being the least corrupt[8], in January passed laws which tripled the amount of time refugees must wait before applying for family reunification (it increased from one to three years) and which allowed them to search through refugees’ belongings to find cash and valuables of up to 10,000 kroner[9], which they will seize and sell (the only exception being items of “special personal significance” [e.g. wedding rings]), to help “cover the cost” of their “accommodations”[10]. Not only that, the “integration allowance” paid to refugees has them living below the poverty line, is usually not enough to eat three meals a day, and 15% of these families with three or more children will not have enough money to consistently buy fruits and vegetables[11][12]. Norway, currently ranked “the most democratic country”, has a large mass of working class immigrants — making up about 15% of the labor force — who are not able to navigate the union system so aren’t paid the minimum wage (as wages are negotiated by unions, there is no national minimum wage)[13], are working ridiculous hours, and whose bosses give them fake contracts[14]. A large amount of the asylum seekers in Norway were fleeing from Ethiopia, and as European capitalism cannot handle them, Norway made an agreement with the Ethiopian regime in an attempt to forcibly repatriate them[15] (“them” being the asylum seekers and their children [so-called “asylbarn” {asylum children}], many of which were born and raised in Norway)[16]. This agreement was made only one month after increasing aid to Ethiopia too (despite much of the European bourgeoisie even decreasing aid in supposed protest of Ethiopia’s human rights violations[17])! But don’t worry, Norway’s Minister of International Development assures us that “There is absolutely no connection [between the aid and the agreement], as I see it”[18]. These policies were spearheaded, of course, by our good friends, the Social Democrats (Norway’s Labour Party)[19]. In fact, these homesick visitors were so excited at the opportunity to go home that they accidently locked themselves in churches and didn’t eat for extended periods of time[20], one group even ended up inadvertently barricading themselves in a room at the Torshov transit center, luckily for them, the police were able to help by bringing dogs and helicopters[21]. Again, no need to fret, the police assured us that the event was “undramatic” and that they all left voluntarily (apparently the refugees recalling arrests and such don’t remember it correctly)[22]. In 2013, 27% of refugees to Norway were fleeing the repressive regime in Eritrea, often referred to as “Africa’s North Korea”. Democratic Norway’s — and its supposedly “non-repressive” regime’s — response was to attempt to send them back where they may likely be tortured for attempting to flee[23]. They tried again last year (this time by the conservative government, who were earlier supposedly pleading the Labour Party to rethink the deportation of Ethiopians [specifically the children]).

There are so many examples we can give, but you get the picture. The notion that the crisis we face is, or has its roots in, simply one of democracy or responsibility to the public is nothing but bourgeois ideology.

Capitalism is a system of exploitation. You can’t reform away its most essential characteristic. Democracy is simply a (and the bourgeoisies’ preferred) method of organizing the regime which protects this exploitation.

Democracy will only disappear when it no longer fools enough of the working class into believing it can be used by them to create real change, or when it has done its job and neutralized the revolutionary advances of the working class and the only task left is to stabilize capitalism from a crisis situation, which will be accomplished by openly “authoritarian” nationalism (Trump may be a step in this direction, but the Democratic Party and the further-Left successfully limiting working class action to action within the confines of democracy is what will pave the way for something much worse).

What Is the Real Nature of the Campaign by Sanders?

For Utopians, the answer to any problem lies in the political sphere: get the right politicians + the right policies = problem solved. Often problems are even reduced to reforming the mere mechanism of election itself. We often hear the liberal “to-do list” for making the government run more smoothly and being more accountable/transparent/responsible: get rid of electoral college, use instant-runoff/ranked choice voting, things like that. It is assumed that if “the people” (I will come back later to how as long as “the people” are thought to be the agent of change, then there will never be any change) held more control, if they could think up and enforce better regulations for the “evil megacorporations” and banking institutions, if we could control the private donations to politicians’ campaigns, etc. etc., then today’s crisis can be solved and tomorrow’s avoided.

For those engaged in a scientific approach, however, we understand very clearly that the crisis is an economic one at root, and that the political crisis is one of the bourgeoisie’s response to the economic. The only real solution to the crisis, however, is social: the abolition of bourgeois society. As always, the crisis most clearly expresses to the working class the real choice — contrary to the delusions fostered by capital in bourgeois ideology — that history gives to it: Socialism or Barbarism. Capitalism is the highest and most advanced mode of production based on exploitation of class by class, where humans interact and relate to one another but create a community of alienation because these relations are regulated not merely by the conscious decisions of people but by the invisible dictatorship of the law of value. Communism is the negation of this whole system. The communist revolution, being the first to carry the transition from a society based on some distribution of the proceeds of an exploitative, alienating, indirectly social labor process (“work”) to one which knows no alienation or exploitation and is directly social, which replaces a society based on some organization of work to one where there is no such thing to be organized, ergo is a more drastic and all-encompassing revolution than every previous one. Commodities, nations, classes; money, states, property; enterprises, democracy, alienation; value, “work”, the individual; no element of bourgeois society is to remain standing after the proletarian revolution, and as long as it does stand it does so only as an obstacle to the proletariat, as a manacle, preventing their emancipation. The destruction of these things is the only rejoinder to the crisis, and it is the historical task of the proletariat to achieve. The communist program is the checklist of human liberation, the annihilation of the aforementioned things which stand in the way of the emancipation of humanity via the emancipation of the working class; the struggle is one of de-proletarianization, the obliteration of every ball-and-chain of the workers, tying them, and thus society as a whole, to their existence as mere toilers, simple tools of capital to multiply and accumulate itself.

On the way to conquering society and overthrowing the current organization of the social organism, the proletariat will indubitably force reforms from the bourgeoisie, but turning this particular subcomponent of the process into the main goal was a century and a half ago a very understandable and more or less inevitable (for large parts of the social democratic movement) error. At the opening of the 20th century, however, the underlying process of the incorporation of the social democratic parties into an appendage of the bourgeois state apparatus could no longer be denied, the collapse of the Second International in the face of the first World War exposed the role of the Social Democratic parties in the transition of capitalism into its imperialist epoch (and, in some analyses, the transition from the formal to the real domination of capital); there was no “betrayal”, by that point, Social Democracy was not a part of the communist movement, it was entirely bourgeois, the proletariat’s interests were not their interests, they were in direct contradiction, the program of Social Democracy was the thwarting of attempts by the proletariat to carry out its program. The failure of the proletariat last century can largely be reduced to its failure to break free from and defeat Social Democracy. Today, one who proposes reforms as themselves the vehicle for the proletariat (especially if it’s not the proletariat, but “the people” or “citizens of ‘x’ country”) immediately exposes himself as none other than the chief enemy of the proletariat, as a more hideous and gruesome weapon of the bourgeoisie than the atomic bomb. And the more it recuperates and appropriates elements, themes, and symbols of the proletariat’s revolutionary movement to create forms grotesquely robbed and emptied of their radical content, the obscener it gets.

We must fight for better lives in the immediate, but have no illusions that anything adequate can be provided by capital, and especially have no illusions that reforms, even those which reach to the highest points of the superstructure and the “commanding heights of the economy”, are adequate. The fight for improvements in capitalist life must be subjugated to the fight to end such “life”. Part of this indeed means that not every struggle will necessarily result in the strengthening of the communist movement, and this must be taken into account before we mindlessly enter every arena and support every action just because it is occupied by or done by workers.

Let’s probe the wonders of democratic politics a bit:

From ever-increasing surveillance to “sting” operations by the FBI which manipulate mentally ill (“retarded fool”) and impoverished (“without a pot to piss in”) Muslims and guide them to jihadism, often providing them with plans for attacks, weapons, finances, incentives, etc., luring them into traps where they will promptly arrest them and announce that they foiled another terrorist plot (“a Hollywood ending”)[24], the bourgeoisie will not loosen its hold over the workers unless they are forced to.

From a speech to the Congress about the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994:

“…how do we talk about the very serious crime problem in America without mentioning that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, by far, with 22 percent of our children in poverty and 5 million who are hungry today? Do the Members think maybe that might have some relationship to crime? How do we talk about crime when this Congress is prepared, this year, to spend 11 times more for the military than for education; when 21 percent of our kids drop out of high school; when a recent study told us that twice as many young workers now earn poverty wages as 10 years ago; when the gap between the rich and the poor is wider, and when the rate of poverty continues to grow? Do the members think that might have some relationship to crime?

“Mr. Speaker, it is my firm belief that clearly, there are some people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them. But it is also my view that through the neglect of our Government and through a grossly irrational set of priorities, we are dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence. And Mr. Speaker, all the jails in the world, and we already imprison more people per capita than any other country, and all of the executions in the world, will not make that situation right. We can either educate or electrocute. We can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails. Mr. Speaker, let us create a society of hope and compassion, not one of hate and vengeance.”[25]

Sanders would then vote for this bill[26], a centerpiece of the Clinton administration’s continuation of the “War on Crime”, which includes: a federal implementation of the “three strikes” rule (the third time an individual commits a “serious violent felony” or drug-related offense, they must be sentenced to at least life in prison without the possibility of parole); an expansion to what someone can be sentenced to death for (including times when no death actually occurred); a reduction of the age at which a minor (someone below 18) can be tried as an adult for a violent crime from 15 to 13; removal of pretty much the only way for poor inmates to get access to a college education, via Pell Grants, “No basic grant shall be awarded under this subpart to any individual who is incarcerated in any Federal or State penal institution” (in the section explicitly titled “AWARDS OF PELL GRANTS TO PRISONERS PROHIBITED”); and the big’un: grants (the “Truth in Sentencing Grant Program”) for building prisons for violent criminals distributed to eligible states, states were eligible if they had “in effect laws which require that persons convicted of violent crimes serve not less than 85 percent of the sentence imposed” or met four criteria in imprisoning and keeping more criminals and keeping them longer since the previous year (1993), including “has increased the average prison time which will be served in prison by convicted violent offenders sentenced to prison”, “has increased the percentage of sentence which will be served in prison by violent offenders sentenced to prison”, and “has in effect at the time of application laws requiring that a person who is convicted of a violent crime or serious drug offense shall serve not less than 85 percent of the sentence imposed” if that person has been convicted of a violent felony or serious drug offense on one or more prior occasions, this money is then allocated to eligible states based on the amount of violent crimes reported by each state[27]. It also, as the official summary states, “Requires the Attorney General, in making such grants, to give consideration to the special burden placed on States which incarcerate a substantial number of inmates who are in the United States illegally”.

As the “U.S. Department of Justice Fact Sheet” on the Act put it, “The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 represents the bipartisan product of six years of hard work. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the country and will provide for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs which were designed with significant input from experienced police officers. The Act also significantly expands the government's ability to deal with problems caused by criminal aliens. The Crime Bill provides $2.6 billion in additional funding for the FBI, DEA, INS, United States Attorneys, and other Justice Department components, as well as the Federal courts and the Treasury Department.”[28]

Sanders’ excuse (or, rather, the excuse made by his staffers) on his website for his approval of this debauchery and democratic horror is that, while essentially all of it is horrific, there were two exceptions: the Violence Against Women Act and a ban on semi-auto assault weapons (he didn’t used to be so worried about gun legislation, but in order to prove his “progressive” credentials he has to pretend like it’s always been a main concern for him). Making sure to point out that he made a show at the time of whining and complaining about some of the most appalling bits, the press release ends with a pathetic redirection to how Hillary supported it _more_[29]. As usual, “furthest to the left”, or “most progressive”, boils down to “best at occasionally pretending to be disgusted by the terrors wrought by the bourgeoisie”.

Under “Issues” on Sanders’ website we see:

“Getting Big Money Out of Politics and Restoring Democracy”[30]

The working class, in America or abroad, has no interest in “restoring democracy”, this slogan is not one of giving power to the oppressed, to the powerless, the propertyless, it is one of stabilizing the regime of our oppressors. When Sanders calls for “Restoring Democracy”, he is making no different a statement than when Trump says “Make America Great Again”.

Unlike the bourgeoisie, the proletariat is an international class with internationalist interests, and for the Barbarism to end, it must organize itself as a class, as the dominant social force, but a revolutionary one with a revolutionary program of none other than its own abolition and with it the rest of bourgeois society.

Against the appeals to the working class in the forms of empty promises for impermanent, infinitesimal improvements in their treatment in the form of “workers’ rights”, which usually come as a package deal — the other item in the set being an assault on the class somewhere else — the class program is the eradication of capitalist work. Opposite slogans for the restoration of democracy, the task at hand requires its overthrow. Counterposing the idealist requests for the restriction of the role of “big money” in elections, we assert the historical necessity for the proletariat to build its own organs where it will deny the bourgeoisie not only the ability to vote but to have any input into the proletariat’s re-organization of society unless they can pry it back out of our hands with its military. Contrary to the Utopian pleas for a more transparent state, the proletariats’ duty is the annihilation of the bourgeoisie’s state and the establishment of its own dictatorship, where it will delegate its tasks of repression of the bourgeoisie and socialization (not nationalization) of production to no one, “not even to the class conscious vanguard [the communist party]”. Repudiating the demand for taxes to support the so-called “middle class”, we maintain that any significant increase in material support for the vast majority of society relative to the development of the productive forces requires the forceful expropriation of the bourgeoisie, the smashing of their state to enable this, and the immediate abolition of money to be replaced by labor vouchers where one is remunerated for their individual labor (minus a bit to support common funds) until distribution is done directly according to need. Disregarding the insistence on an alliance of Islamic nations to crush ISIS, we respond that the communist program necessarily includes the smashing of every bourgeois state whether it takes the name of a (democratic/people’s) republic, federation, Reich, or caliphate. Objurgating calls for national unity and co-ordination internationally to eradicate terrorists, our response is internationalist class unity, working towards the erection of a revolutionary centralized world communist organization, and the eventual implementation by the proletariat, in and via its organ(s) of dictatorship, policies of revolutionary terror to eradicate the true “terrorist” of the social organism: capital and the class it is personified by. Exposing the shallow, liberal bourgeois, merely rhetorical talk of a “political revolution” through the vote, the true answer to the question of our times is a social revolution through workers’ militias.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has a two-fold nature, it is both a typical attempt of the bourgeoisie to distract the working class from any independent action, but it is also the expression of the whimpers of the weak Holy “middle class” — a doomed class with a historical role consisting of nothing but its pathetic attempts to prevent its disintegration (often taking the form of social democracy and the occasional fascist regime after the working class has been defeated by the left). He is the exact opposite of “progressive” any way you look at it. His campaign is the natural evolution of the same processes that made up the majority of the Occupy movement: a middle-class populist reaction (albeit carried by workers) to capitalism’s centralization of wealth, power, and everything else which is the inevitable result of its centralization of production. A false fear of capitalism might as well be the defining characteristic of “radical” petty bourgeois politics; it leeches off the back of the real anti-capitalist movement that is the workers’ struggle, and it overtakes it in times of the proletariats’ defeat.

An illustrative example of this parasitism can be seen by several members of Sanders’ campaign team posing as union members to intrude into employee areas at four different hotels.[31] The unions, especially in an advanced capitalist country like America, are in this stage of capitalism undeniably appendages of the bourgeois state apparatus with which it manipulates and hinders class struggle and can impose and implant itself as a filter to prevent the natural attempts by workers to defend their living standards from within and in support of bourgeois society from developing into proletarian radical self-activity. This is a fantastic demonstration of how the petty bourgeoisie, while pretending to be for some kind of change (e.g. “Political Revolution”), assists in the domination and distraction of the only entity capable of change (the working class) by the bourgeoisie — the actual middle-class (the various professional classes [which should not be generalized to mean “complex labor”], middle management, and the petit-bourgeoisie) will jump at the opportunity to push their agenda (i.e. maintaining its existence at any cost, even going so far as to promote the systematic extermination of sections of itself [e.g. Jews]) down the throat of the working class. The petty bourgeoisie acts as agents of the “progressive bourgeoisie” to graft reformism and class-collaborationism onto the proletariat when its primary weapon of distraction in the everyday struggle via a controlled economic channel, the unions, don’t have their usual efficacy of also imposing a controlled political outlet (voting [typically for the Democrats])). Anything to avoid a self-consciously social response by the proletariat. When Sanders says there needs to be a movement, “more than just getting Bernie Sanders elected”, he is very explicit what the purpose of this is: getting workers into the unions and to force even Republicans to vote for social reform, i.e. to focus all attention and energy into the bourgeois political system and the state’s union appendages (and with a goal of minimal reforms like raising taxes on the wealthy, a higher minimum wage, etc.), to prevent the working class from fighting for its interests outside of the parliamentary-democratic machine and union structures. The “workers’ party” + trade union model proved itself to be nothing but a method of limiting the working class over a century ago.

"We have got to end this outrageous voter suppression which is taking place in dozens of states — efforts that are intentionally denying low-income people, people of color and seniors the ability to participate in the political process…

“As President, my job will be to increase voter turnout, not decrease it. My job will be to see that the United States has one of the highest voter turnouts in the world, not one of the lowest."

The bourgeoisie cannot let the proletariat come to the realization that they actually have no power in the capitalist state organized as a “democracy” (or any other way, for that matter), and that there is a communist alternative, so the bourgeoisie have two options: either they must make sure the working class is completely pessimistic and apolitical and has no inkling of an idea of its own power — the Republicans’ strategy, or they must be deceived into believing they do, or can, have power inside the bourgeois parliamentary system — the strategy of the Democrats and the Left which is in orbit around them. These are the choices confronting the bourgeois class, that is, unless there is any re-emergence of communism, if the proletarian class begins to fight on its own terrain — the streets, the workplace, the neighborhood, the pillars of social reproduction — then, of course, option number three becomes open to the bourgeoisie: unremitting force, the shedding of the democratic illusion as the democratic nation-state reveals what it truly is: the apparatus for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Sanders is simply advertising himself to be the most effective at deceiving the working class.

The choice is power being held solely by the class which owns the means of production and commands the productive process — the application of labor, which it must exploit — in pursuit of the accumulation of capital, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship with the aim of preventing change, or power being held solely by a class — the class which has nothing to sell but its labor power — dissolving itself, a dictatorship of the proletariat, the only actor of change, a dictatorship with the aim of the negation of class society. A dictatorship of the past which becomes more ruthless the more the capitalist crisis deepens or a dictatorship of the future, destined to dissolve as wage labor disappears and the whole population is absorbed into a classless society of freely associated producers.

The Fictitious “Independence” of Sanders

Sanders has received support from “the Democratic Party apparatus” and raised funds for it in return, such as hosting events at resorts in Palm Beach for big donors,[32] but it’s okay because he says he did not explicitly “go and ask financial people for money”,[33] so I guess it’s also okay that he took $10,000 from Hillary Clinton’s Political Action Committee when he was running for senate in 2006[34] (Senator Sanders the “socialist” 2006, supported by the representatives of Allen & Company [the head of which had and still has a place on Coca-Cola’s board of directors], Farallon Capital Management, Atalanta Sosnoff Capital, Silverstein Properties, Citigroup, and — I shit you not — a group called International Profit Associates[35] [{run by a marvelously horrible capitalist who sexually harasses female workers, has attempted to buy sex from a teenage prostitute, and has attempted to commit larceny[36]}]). It doesn’t leave much to the imagination about what kind of relationship he has to the Democratic Party when in 2004, he, an “independent”, stated his position on Nader’s run: “Not only am I going to vote for John Kerry, I am going to run around this country and do everything I can to dissuade people from voting for Ralph Nader. . . I am going to do everything I can, while I have differences with John Kerry, to make sure that he is elected.”[37]

Tied to the bourgeois state like all other politicians, his “independence” is, and always has been, fictitious. He was, at the beginning, spouting the rhetoric of fairly typical bourgeois leftism (giving nice gestures here and there towards various red-painted capitalist regimes [something along the lines of: ‘the regime in Cuba is really repressive, but they have nationalized healthcare and great education, how cool is that? Those dumb proles over there should shut up and accept the wonderful opportunity to have a “socialist” government’[38]], hard not to think of the GMIL[39]), he worked with a couple Trotskyist groups (namely the Socialist Workers Party [not to be confused with the Socialist Workers Party in the UK]), and he has shifted from capital’s left-wing to its center-left. He merely will make t