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Two sides of the same coin - Capital Democrats and Republicans bound hand and foot to Big Business

The article was on the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Dick Cheney, and the Democrat’s senatorial candidate from New Jersey, Jon Corzine. More specifically, the article publicly expressed concerns over ‘conflict-of-interest’ problems with the campaigns of these two candidates of Capital.

Cheney, formerly chairman of Halliburton, a large oil services company, took an early retirement package in the amount of $37 million soon after becoming Bush’s running mate. This includes 400,000 options and 140,000 shares, added to the 229,000 shares he already owned. He is also allowed to buy an even greater number of shares at special cut-rate prices. This is the glaring ‘conflict-of-interes.,’ As Sloan states: "Halliburton stock tends to move in tandem with energy prices, because higher oil and natural gas prices are good for Halliburton’s business. The potential conflict is obvious."

If he becomes Vice-President, Cheney stands to add millions to his pile of millions by facilitating a rise in oil prices. Cheney’s Democratic counterpart, Corzine, is no less of a criminal.

I’ll let Mr.Sloan introduce the reader to Corzine: "Corzine [is] the former co-head of Goldman-Sachs who bought the Democratic New Jersey Senate nomination by spending an unprecedented $34 million in the primary. Corzine refuses to make his tax returns public, saying that showing the results of some of his personal investments would breach a confidentiality agreement with his former Goldman partners."

Corzine is obviously worried that disclosing his portfolio, which undoubtedly includes investments in some of the most hideously anti-labor and the worst polluting firms, would turn voters against him.

So, here in front of us, on one hand is Cheney, the conservative oil magnate poised to loot the whole population (not to mention the Republicans’ tax cuts for the rich and anti-Medicare agenda!). On the other hand, we have the "Liberal" Corzine, an international finance capitalist buying an election in New Jersey, then having the shameless gall to refuse even disclosing the source of his plunder!

The true face of the Democrats and Republicans is revealed by these two horrifying examples, ironically first published in the corporate media itself, and by a man of Wall Street, too!

The political process in the United States is completely dominated today by a single well-oiled vote-buying machine, the ‘Republicrats,’ who are themselves the paid for agents of the corporations. And, as these examples show, there now exists a growing phenomenon of capitalists themselves running for office. Congress today is a near corporate vacuum - middle class lawyers, who as politicians have more talent in pandering to financial backers, ‘special interest groups’ and AFL-CIO bureaucrats, and are better able to deceive working people, are less needed, because the working class simply no longer votes! The low turnout itself is the result of the stranglehold of the Big Business parties. These two machine-parties only earn the workers’ disgust, at best.

This is not to discount the subtle attraction that Gore exerts over many workers. The illustration above has more to do with Congress. Gore himself has been a career politician his entire adult life, the son of a Tennessee governor. As such, he is more than prepared to take up the task of being the transmission belt by which labor votes are delivered to Capital. The AFL-CIO bureaucracy is also often a source of Democratic candidates, albeit for lower offices.

Gore is banking on these traitors to the working class to deliver votes. Gore’s basic appeal is as a ‘lesser evil’ compared to the idiotic, openly reactionary "Compassionate Conservatism" of Bush. It’s just ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ on a national scale.

But, primarily, the politicians in office have alternating careers as politicians and as business men. Both examples illustrate this. Out of all those sitting in Congress, it is not unfair or inaccurate to estimate that 99 out of 100 are either professional lawyers or businessmen, formerly or at the present time.

The Democrats and Republicans are just two political machines working in tandem to give capitalism a democratic face, while at the same time attempting to strangle in the womb any movements independent of Capital from moving up the steps of Congress. One such movement attempting to fight its way in is the Nader campaign.

Nader, himself an Ivy League barrister, is running in opposition against the two corporate political machines in the November election on the Green Party ticket. The Green’s platform is mostly vague, proclaiming to fight for the environment, labor and consumers. As Nader’s approach is basically to put a smiley face on capitalism by eliminating its worst excesses, he himself is a bourgeois candidate, although the movement behind him is not - but neither is it entirely proletarian. And, taking into account that Nader’s approach is reformist and at the root not radical enough, it is doubtful that even if he is elected he will be able to carry out his reformist clean-up job, especially with a firmly corporate Congress.

If he wins, and if the Greens are successful in their other races, they will probably suffer the same fate as the German Greens, who are in the ruling coalition with the SPD, are almost completely bound to serve Deutsche Bank, although that may have not been their original intent.

It is important, however, to vote against the parties of Big Business, the Democrats and Republicans. In this election, what is at issue is not Nader or the Greens, but taking a stand against Capital and getting the working class to put its foot in the door of Congress. This will open the path for a democratization of the electoral process and for getting the working class into the arena of politics, where the battles for real reforms and real victories will be fought.

To fight the class of employers politically the workers need a mass party, independent of the influence of other classes. In the long-term, the Greens, with their largely middle class composition and outlook cannot fulfill this role.

What is needed to fill the gap is a mass party of Labor, armed with class independence and a platform of demands that echo the true needs of American workers:

1. For a party of labor to power with class-independent and socialist policies
2. The right to strike, the right to union representation and the right to collective bargaining.
3. Outlaw all forms of discrimination.
4. Free, quality health care for all.
5. Full employment.
6. Free, quality education for all.
7. Decent wages for all.
8. Socialist Internationalism.
9. A socialized plan of production for agriculture, the fisheries and timber.
10. Nationalization of the top 150 banks and corporations.
11. Action to protect the environment.

The only way out of lives of debt, exploitation, racism, ignorance, indignation, abuse of rights, inequality and powerlessness for the working class is to fight against the class of bankers, bosses and millionaires, and win.

This struggle for a political voice will itself set the stage for the workers to get rid of the capitalists through revolution. Even with a mass party of Labor, the rich will still run the world. For the working class to finally have complete freedom, they have to remove the bosses from power and appropriate the factories, resources, stores etc., and run these for the benefit of all, not the profits of a few. That new society is Socialism.

And, in order to win that fight, the working people need this mass party of Labor. But this party won’t just fall from the sky like manna; it has to be struggled for and built, in the good times and the bad, with all the courage and determination that the situation calls for, which the American workers have shown throughout history.