Capitalism Is the Disaster

Peter Solenberger

DURING THE 2024 election cycle, liberals, social democrats, post-Stalinists, and even some revolutionary socialists argued that workers should support Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris to prevent the disaster of a second Trump presidency.

They made the familiar “lesser evil” argument: Biden/Harris are the lesser evil to Trump; therefore, progressives should support them. Biden/Harris were indeed the lesser evil to Trump, but the “therefore” doesn’t follow.

While I’m not of the Hal Draper tradition, I like his elegant rejoinder to the “lesser evil” argument in a 1967 article “Who’s going to be the lesser evil in 1968?” Looking back at the 1964 race between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, he asks and answers:

“So who was really the Lesser Evil in 1964? The point is that it is the question which is a disaster, not the answer. In setups where the choice is between one capitalist politician and another, the defeat comes in accepting the limitation to this choice.”

In the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, leftwing advocates of supporting Democrats buttressed their argument with the claim that Trump represents something fundamentally new in U.S. politics, a threat to democracy. The old rules, if they ever applied, no longer do so.

The purpose of this article is to reaffirm the revolutionary Marxist critique of lesser-evil electoralism and to argue that the advent of Trump does not invalidate the critique.

What Happened in November

Kim Moody’s excellent article “Pothole in the Middle of the Road: The Democrats’ Path to Defeat” in the January-February 2025 issue of Against the Current analyzes the 2024 U.S. elections in detail. I won’t go into such detail, but here are some numbers particularly relevant to this article:

• Turnout was high by U.S. standards, 156.3 million voters out of 244.7 million voting-eligible people, 63.9%, up from 60.1% in 2016 and down from 66.4% in 2020.

• The popular vote for president was close, with Donald Trump getting 77.3 million votes (49.9% of those who voted for president) and Kamala Harris getting 75.0 million (48.4%), a margin of 1.5%.

• Trump’s vote was up 3.1 million from his 74.2 million in 2020; Harris’s vote was down 6.3 million from Biden’s 81.3 million in 2020.

• Third-party candidates on the left got 1.1 million votes, with Jill Stein of the Greens getting 861,143 votes as of December 22, 2024, Claudia De la Cruz of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Peace and Freedom Party getting 166,176 votes, and independent Black radical Cornel West getting 82,681 votes.

• The Republicans gained four Senate seats, giving them a 53 to 47 majority. They lost two House seats, giving them a 220 to 215 majority.

• No governorships changed hands.

• Abortion rights won in seven referenda and lost in only two, of which one was a Florida measure that got 57% of the vote but needed 60% to pass.

Trump and the Republicans have no big mandate. They won because of a small shift in voting patterns. In the presidential vote, the Republicans turned out 3.1 million votes more than they did in 2020, while the Democrats turned out 6.3 million fewer votes.

The Republicans and Democrats have hard-core supporters, but most of their votes come from voters who see their candidate as the lesser evil.

Whites and men disproportionately vote Republican, while Blacks, Latinos, other people of color and women disproportionately vote Democratic. Workers vote for both parties. Lower-income and younger workers disproportionately don’t vote.

The third of voters, mostly workers, who saw Trump as the lesser evil — not the racists, xenophobes, misogynists or other “deplorables” — did so because they thought his program of tariffs and border controls would protect their jobs and living standards.

The third of voters who saw Harris as the lesser evil did so because they thought she would do more to protect abortion rights, civil rights, and the environment. The final third didn’t vote because they thought all politicians are liars.

The marginal shift in voting patterns is interesting, and its consequences may be far-reaching. We’ll discuss this below. But a much bigger problem is the political impasse shown by the continuing reality that roughly a third of voters — and a third of the working class — see the Democrats as the lesser evil, another third see the Republicans as the lesser evil, and another third see no reason to vote.

Deliberate Dysfunction

In the section on the Paris Commune in The Civil War in France, Marx describes universal suffrage under capitalism as “deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament.”

This is quite evident in the U.S. political system. The government is deliberately dysfunctional.

The separation of powers, checks and balances, Electoral College, Senate, filibuster, lifetime appointment of Supreme Court justices, states’ rights, local autonomy, the corrupting influence of money in politics, the revolving door between government and business, corporate media, the government bureaucracy and military command, and all the other undemocratic aspects of the U.S. political system mean that the government can do only what the ruling class wants it to do.

Overlaid on this structure is the two-party system. The Democrats and Republicans are both capitalist parties. They depend on donations from capitalists and recognition from the capitalist media. Their top politicians move back and forth between government, the military, business, and academia. If they aren’t wealthy when they enter politics, they can quickly become so.

The Democrats traditionally favor more government intervention to promote employment, reduce poverty, extend civil rights, and protect the environment. They favor multilateralism in foreign policy.

The Republicans traditionally favor lower taxes, less government regulation, leaving economic matters to the market, and leaving political matters to the states. They project a law-and-order image and assert the virtues of marriage, nuclear families and religion. A wing of the party favors multilateralism, while another wing openly proclaims “America first.”

The deliberate dysfunction of the government and the two-party system reduce most of these differences to rhetoric. Immigration is an example.

Barack Obama professed sympathy for immigrants, but his administration deported immigrants at a higher rate than that of his predecessor George W. Bush, or his successor Trump. He adopted the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, but only after Dreamers began to occupy his campaign offices in 2012 and made clear that they would sink his presidency if he didn’t act.

Trump expressed hostility to immigrants, but his administration maintained DACA and deported immigrants at a lower rate than that of his predecessor, Obama, or his successor Biden.

Biden expressed sympathy for immigrants, but his administration deported immigrants at a higher rate than that of Trump. In June 2024, Biden went full-Trump by adopting his predecessor’s policy of refusing to accept asylum applicants who crossed the border without prior approval. Vice-president Harris was the administration’s point person on immigration throughout.

The result of all this is a governmental alternation at the federal level between the two capitalist parties, generally every eight years. One party makes promises, energizes its base, gets elected, fails to carry out its promises, discourages its base, and gets voted out, giving the other party its turn. The alternation traps workers into endlessly chasing the lesser evil.

The disaster is the limitation of choice to the two capitalist parties, which leaves the workers forever cheated and wanting to “throw the bums out,” one set after the other, while capitalism spirals downward.

Does Trump Invalidate the Critique?

In a sense, events have answered this question. Electing Biden in 2020 didn’t stop Trump. It just postponed his second term. But let’s dig more deeply. What might a second Trump administration do?

We can’t know for sure, since much depends on the level of resistance workers and the oppressed put up. The title of the editorial in the January-February 2025 issue of Against the Current is fitting: “The Chaos Known and Unknown.”

But we can examine the distinctive points in Trump’s announced agenda — leaving aside basic bipartisan policies around private property, neoliberalism, economic bailouts, the military, police and prisons, Israel, most other foreign policy, Social Security, Medicare, etc. — and consider what his administration could really do on each point.

Legislatively, the Republicans have a brief window of opportunity. They have slim majorities in the House and Senate and will probably lose one or both in the 2026 midterm elections. Now is their moment to act.

Taxes. The second Trump administration will presumably move to extend the tax cuts for the wealthy enacted by the first Trump administration and set to expire next year. The tax cuts were the only major legislative victory of Trump’s first term, and they’re dear to him.

It seems likely that he can get the cuts renewed, since that would only continue the status quo. But the revolt of congressional Republicans against his demand to suspend the federal debt limit for two years shows the limits of his control.

Tariffs. Trump has said that his administration will impose an additional 10% tariff on imports from China and a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, unless they act immediately to stop the smuggling of drugs and people across the U.S. border.

The additional tariff on Chinese goods is part of the U.S. economic war against China and, in itself, will have little effect.

The Canadian government has objected that few drugs or people are smuggled into the United States from Canada. Trump’s real goal may be to reduce the $50 billion per year trade deficit with Canada, but the deficit is due mainly to oil imports that the U.S. can’t make up with domestic production. Will the pro-hydrocarbon Trump administration really reduce oil imports and raise gas prices?

Immigration is the main issue with Mexico. Drug trafficking is too profitable on both sides of the border to restrict, and the administration needs imports from Mexico to help replace imports from China. The Mexican government is already doing everything the U.S. government asks around immigration, but the tariff dance lets Trump posture and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum claim that she’s acting under duress.

Abortion. The Supreme Court has ruled that states may determine the status of abortion rights. The main fight now is at the state level. A majority of states protect abortion rights, including the seven that voted to do so in November.

Trump has said that he opposes a federal ban on abortions and would veto one, if it got to his desk, which seems unlikely, given the balance in Congress. But Trump could interfere with interstate shipment of mifepristone and misoprostol for medicinal abortions.

Immigration. The Trump administration will make border enforcement more cruel, but the Biden administration had already reverted to the Trump policy of keeping asylum-seekers out.

Trump talks of rounding up and deporting undocumented immigrants, but the U.S. economy needs them, particularly in agriculture, construction, food-processing, restaurants and hotels. Trump himself makes millions from undocumented workers. This will limit what he can do.

The optimal policy for the capitalists — or so they see it at cynical moments — is to keep undocumented workers terrorized and vulnerable to abuse. (Free-market guru Milton Friedman openly proclaimed that illegal immigration is beneficial for the economy, as long as it remains illegal.)

Transgender rights. The Trump Justice Department will likely revert to its 2017 position that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, does not apply to gender identity. In more progressive states, trans people will still be protected by state law, but their rights will be under constant attack.

Environment. The Trump administration will try to roll back government regulations intended to limit emissions, curtail drilling and fracking for oil and gas, and promote electric vehicles. The rollbacks will be harmful, but the government was doing nowhere near enough to begin with. And the administration has its own internal conflicts: Trump’s biggest booster is Elon Musk, who makes billions selling electric vehicles.

Democracy. Trump will pardon even the most violent of the January 6 rioters and has already attained immunity from federal prosecution for himself. He will resurrect the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover and have the FBI investigate his opponents. But Democratic Party administrators and officials are already repressing Palestine solidarity activists and other dissidents, with no need for Trump’s help.

In short, Trump is loud, vain and vile, but his second administration is unlikely to be much different from his first one. He aspires to do more than he can. Chasing the lesser evil doesn’t work. The critique holds.

Our Tasks Ahead

The immediate task for workers and the oppressed is to resist. When the Republican-led Congress went after immigrants in 2006, millions of Latinos struck in protest, and Congress was forced to back down. When Democrats wavered on DACA in 2012, Dreamers began occupying their campaign offices, and Obama was forced to act.

When police murdered George Floyd in 2020, millions of Black people took to the streets, millions of whites and Latinos joined their protests, and local and state government were forced to make concessions.

When the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, millions of women organized pro-choice state referenda and networks to help circumvent anti-abortion laws. Millions of men joined them. The number of abortions is higher in 2024 than before the reversal, mainly because of the from-below effort to make them more available.

Union strikes, although not yet political, have broad support in the rest of the working class. UAW President Shawn Fain proposed that unions coordinate their contract expiration dates for May 2028. Whatever Fain’s intentions, a general strike then would be a fitting end to the Trump administration. A strike at Stellantis over jobs and working conditions now would be a promising start.

Individual acts of violence by MAGA fanatics and fascists against people of color, Jews, LGBTQ+ people, and leftists may increase. Unions, communities of the oppressed, and the left need to organize defense.

Strategic Goals

Militant mass action could break the political impasse by creating a situation in which the capitalists had to choose between abandoning democracy — “the best possible shell for capitalism,” as Lenin put it in The State and Revolution — and implementing electoral and other reforms that would allow a workers’ party to compete effectively.

The capitalists wouldn’t like this and might try authoritarian measures first. But in all other advanced capitalist countries, the bosses long ago learned to live with “bourgeois workers’ parties” as Lenin called them, parties with a working-class base and the politics of trying to reform capitalism through government regulation.

Even a reformist workers’ party would be a step forward for the U.S. working class. Just running workers’ candidates against candidates of the capitalist parties would be a step forward. But revolutionary socialists shouldn’t assume that a reformist party is the limit.

We should propose an anticapitalist transitional program — a program for jobs, healthcare, education, abolition of police and prisons, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, drastic cuts in military spending, peace, and a just transition to clean energy, industry, transportation, construction, and agriculture — a program that only a workers’ government could implement.

In Britain, Canada and many other countries, the level of class struggle at which the working class gained political representation was too low for the workers’ party to be revolutionary from birth. Should that prove to be the case in the U.S. case, revolutionaries will be on our familiar ground of combating reformism.

In short, the tasks of revolutionary Marxists in the United States fundamentally remain what they were under Biden and would have been under Harris: to help build unions and other mass organization and to promote democracy and militance there; to lead struggles for jobs, wages, working conditions, democratic rights and equality; to expose capitalism, imperialism and the two-party system, to resist militarism and war, to build solidarity with Palestine and all other anti-colonial struggles; to build a workers’ party, and — with an eye to a socialist future — to build a revolutionary party and International.

March-April 2025, ATC 235