Joe Biden meets Hegel (and Marx)

The coming 2020 election will mark a crossroads for the American two party system and impending end of the bipartisan political duopoly that has governed the US since the failure of Radical Reconstruction in the 19th Century. The basic division between liberals and conservatives is about to be sublated into their higher logical synthesis. The Democratic and Republican parties are case studies in Hegelian-Marxist dialectical logic illustrating two fundamental laws: the unity of opposites and the negation of the negation.

Before the civil war the DP stood for slavery and the maintenance of the status quo while the Republican party opposed slavery and would have taken measures to modify the status quo and set in motion a dialectic that would,have eventuated, perhaps in a generation to two, in a slow process of emancipation. After the collapse of Radical Reconstruction the Democrats slowly turned into what is now termed “liberalism” especially after the FDR years and LBJ’s capitulation to the Civil Rights agenda of the 1960s.

The pro-slavery  and then segregationist DP negated its previous incarnation and changed into its opposite, while at the same time the Republicans negated their previous incarnation as an anti-slavery group and became supporters of the anti-Black and poor people policies of resurgent crypto-segregationists in the South and their allies: under the false flag of “conservatism” they also turned into their opposite.

For the last 75 years or so politics in the US has been a bipartisan condominium run by the DP (left wing liberals) and the RP (right wing conservatives) resulting in a basic centrist governing class. 

As the history of the socialist movement shows in periods of crisis liberalism and conservatism begin to break down and liberals breakup and move up a notch in their logical progression and move in the direction of socialism or they defect to the conservatives. The same sort of progression occurs in the RP and the conservatives break up and move in the direction of fascism (their ultimate destination) under the banner of the ultra-right.

What is clear is that the center no longer holds and attempts to resuscitate it are ultimately going to be futile. The choices between the road that ends in socialism and the road that leads in fascism are clearly set before us as well as the dead end of centrism offered by political reactionaries governed by the delusion they can recreate the old bipartisan duopoly. These three positions are personalized by Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden respectively. The predictable outcome of this conflict, based on the current existential situation which is that the DP is conflicted between the Sanders road and deadender Biden, while the Trump roaders are unified and undivided despite some minor internal conflicts, is that a Biden nomination will split the DP and strengthen the forces of fascism and could lead to a Trump victory. 

Whether we like it or not, no matter our subjective intentions, any support for Biden objectively strengthens the forces of fascism in the US and we must at all costs support Bernie Sanders or almost any another Democrat if it comes to that, than Biden and if Biden wins the nomination he will split the DP and we will have to urge Sanders to run as an independent and lay the foundations for a real working class Third Party to emerge in the US on the model of the emergence of the Republican Party out of the dissolution of the Whigs and Free Soil Democrats. This would be a radical Revolutionary move for the CPUSA and no matter who would win in 2020, Biden or Trump, it would be in the long term interests of the working class to have a mass Third Party created to further their interests  and it is unthinkable that we would compromise opportunistically our commitment to Marxism-Leninism by telling the working people to support their class enemy Biden as the lesser of two evils and thus, however unintentionally, give aid and comfort to the forces of fascism. 

Uprising in Memphis and the role of the Vanguard Party

In Memphis 25% of the people live in poverty. Poverty destroys people's ability to live free and meaningful lives with dignity and a feeling of self worth and accomplishment and poverty is not a natural situation in a rich industrial country but one created by the type of society it creates. American democracy is a human made social system based on imperialism and the creation of both racism and structural poverty to benefit a sociopathic ruling class served by the Democratic and Republican parties who maintain them for their benefit. 

The spontaneous revolutionary outbreak in Memphis is another sign that the oppressed are still fighting back against their oppressors but in an unconscious and blind way. This quote reveals this: "“There is unrest in this city, and a lot of it is systemic problems,” said Mike Williams, the president of the Memphis Police Association, who argued that police officers were often blamed for policy failures that extended beyond law enforcement’s purview, like education and the economy.''

The poverty, racism, and oppression are created by, and result from, the laws, regulations, and values of those who control the "education and economy" i.e., the elected politicians and the ruling class that funds them and they use the police to protect themselves and unleash state violence against the oppressed masses to put them down and keep them in their place. They also keep the police and the masses at odds by protecting, and thus encouraging, excessive police violence, shootings, and extra-judicial executions (murders) thus the oppressed blame the police for these policies which are actually imposed and protected by the legislators of the Democratic and Republican parties and their officials.
The "thin blue line" is the wall placed between the people and the ruling class as the shock absorber that keeps the racist, imperialist American Democracy functioning and the masses ignorant of the identity of their real oppressors. The 25% of the surplus population consigned to poverty and hopeless are given over to the sacrificial altar to protect the "middle class" and prevent it from turning against a racist imperialist system whose trickle down benefits keep it appeased.
I hope the CPUSA makes this clear to the American people in the coming election and develops tactical programs which have a greater depth than the two and four year election cycle offered by the imperialists to keep us occupied and leave them alone. At this time our strategy to eliminate monopoly capitalism needs long term tactics in which elections have an important but secondary role to play to organizational problems related to recruitment and education of the masses -- which is the main function, and only existential excuse, for a communist party which is either a Marxist-Leninist vanguard or a social democratic sideshow.

NYTIMES.COM

Memphis Unrest: Dozens Injured After Man Is Killed by Marshals

Federal marshals opened fire on Wednesday night, killing a man, and more than two dozen police officers were injured in confrontations later.

Like

A Trip to the Democratic Party Zoo

After a trip to the Democratic Party Zoo it appears that there are only three candidates at all worthy of consideration from the Clintonian dreck that has emerged from the follies of the DNC’s rigging of the nomination process in order to derail the Sanders campaign and thus ensure the Republican ultra-right takeover of our pseudo-democracy. Those three are BERNIE SANDERS without a doubt since his Nordic Social Democratic liberal capitalist views posing as “socialism” are positively revolutionary in the US context and the menace of Trumpism. Second choice, if we can’t have Bernie, would be ELIZABETH WARREN, who unlike the remaining contenders has a thought out program and has answers and proposals for all the major issues. Finally, there is TULSI GABBARD who we want to hear from as she is the only one whose foreign policy is actually not a variety of neoliberal imperialism. There is one inhabitant of Zoo who has to be caged permanently and kept out of sight for the good of humanity: JOE BIDEN and if you don’t know why you are probably a blue dog Democrat at heart who accidentally chanced upon this Facebook page. I got these views from the Zoo Guide (Andrew Levine) who, as it were, gave me a tour of the Democratic Zoo - here are some highlights on which inhabitants to adore and deplore for the nomination:

“Most obviously, it is not too soon to rule out Joe Biden and “moderates” like him. Our troubles now were brought on, in large part, by people like them, and they have not changed their stripes. Who cares what they have to say!

“It is not too soon either to start supporting Tulsi Gabbard – not for the nomination itself so much as for inclusion in the coming debates…it is important that she be in the debates because, of all her many rivals, she stands apart from the field in holding “realist,” as distinct from liberal imperialist or neoconservative views on foreign policy. 

“Elizabeth Warren is good for moving the conversation along on many fronts, not just one; name the issue and she has a plan. She is also, along with Sanders, the most progressive candidate in the race, notwithstanding her inclination to badmouth “socialism,”…  and her reluctance to challenge mainstream thinking on matters of war and peace. However, the main reason to favor her … is that were she to be elected, it would put the Democrats’ “glass ceiling” explanation for the 2016 electoral debacle to rest. Clinton … lost because she was a poor choice to start with, because she ran a terrible campaign, and because Clintonian (neoliberal, liberal imperialist) politics has seen its day…. Blaming her loss to Trump on that mythical glass ceiling is even lamer than blaming it on Russian meddling.”

The whole tour can be found here:https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/07/democrats-get-ready/