The United States military is the largest and deadliest in the world, with over 750 military bases in 153 countries and fleets of warships, drones and satellites. Its job is to protect the global investments of the dominant finance capital wing of U.S. imperialism: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil. The U.S. president is commander-in-chief of the U.S. military; for the ruling class, the 2016 elections matter. The capitalists hope to find a winning candidate who can mislead and pacify millions of U.S. workers, as Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012 to accept and fight for their imperialist wars. They especially need the support of Black, Latin and immigrant youth as soldiers in the global conflicts to come, the very same people their cops gun down in the streets.
For the working class, it will make no difference whether the next president is a Democrat or a Republican. No matter which party is in power, racist cops will terrorize Black and immigrant workers and youth. The capitalist court system will imprison them by the million. Women will suffer sexist degradation; thousands of migrant workers will die seeking a better life. Regardless of who wins the big electoral prize, the ruling class will pursue broader imperialist wars and slaughter millions of our working-class sisters and brothers worldwide.
We don’t need the bosses or their rotten capitalist version of democracy. PLP fights for communist revolution to put the working class in power. We say: Don’t vote, distribute CHALLENGE! Don’t vote, fight back against racist police terror and imperialist wars! Don’t vote, revolt and fight for communism!
Elections Settle Bosses’ Fights
The capitalists need presidential elections to sell the myth that voting can force the profit system to address workers’ needs. But that isn’t the only reason. The presidency holds enormous power. Different factions of U.S. bosses slug it out in presidential campaigns — spending billions of dollars along the way — to resolve internal disagreements over how best to handle rival imperialists like China and Russia. Having invested trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the finance capital wing wants to use U.S. military power more aggressively to protect ExxonMobil’s profitable oil-pumping. Obama represents this wing. Most current Democratic and Republican presidential candidates do as well.
In general, the U.S. bosses want workers — and especially Black and immigrant youth — to believe the Democrats are on their side. For the 2016 presidential election, their only credible candidate at present is Hillary Clinton, the wife of former president Bill Clinton. Throughout the 1990s her husband instigated a children’s genocide by blocking food and medicine from entering Iraq. By the time his successor, George W. Bush, was finished, U.S. imperialism had killed 500,000 Iraqi children. Meanwhile, Hillary became a U.S. senator who voted for the 2003 Iraq genocide. Obama later appointed her as his pro-war secretary of state, where she backed the slaughters in Libya in 2011. Like her former boss, Hillary Clinton is no friend of the working class!
Slapping Down Adelson, Warning Rubio
On the Republican side, Jeb Bush, former President’s George W. Bush’s brother, is competing with the likes of Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Scott Walker. Despite their minor disagreements, all of them reflect the growing domination of the main finance capital faction. Rubio’s case is the clearest. As recently as last month, the Republicans’ biggest single donor, billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, made Rubio a front-runner for the nomination and claimed to have the candidate in his pocket. But Adelson has allied with capitalist bosses in China, where his mega-casino profits depend on the favor of government officials. In response, U.S. finance capitalists used Obama to punish Adelson earlier this month:
Details of [Adelson’s] Macau operation have raised red flags in both the U.S. Justice Department and federal financial regulators. If the allegations are proven to be true, Adelson could face severe penalties affecting his empire, namely the suspension of his gambling license, drastically hindering his revenue stream (Jerusalem Post, 5/9/15).
Within days of this discipline, Marco Rubio reversed his positions on military spending. On May 13, he marched into the New York mansion housing the Council on Foreign Relations, the think tank funded directly by ExxonMobil and JPMorgan Chase. Telling these arch-imperialists what they wanted to hear, Rubio said, “Russia, China, Iran, or any other nation that attempts to block global commerce will know to expect a response from my administration.” He also vowed:
[M]y first priority will be to adequately fund our military. ….to modernize them... on the cutting edge in every arena before us — land, sea and air, but also cyberspace and outer space: the battlefields of the 21st century. ...We can ensure that we never send our troops into a fair fight; but rather always equip them with the upper hand.
Rubio also turned his back on the billionaire Koch brothers, the chief domestic rivals of the finance capital wing. Since the Kochs pump and refine their oil within the U.S., they are less eager to commit U.S. resources to the next oil war in the Middle East. The Koch-funded think tank, The Cato Foundation, charged that Rubio’s manifesto “minimizes the costs and risks of our current foreign policies, and oversells the benefits” (Cato Foundation website, 5/15/15).
Lining Up Behind Finance Capital
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was quicker than Rubio to reassure the finance capitalists of his allegiance:
Just weeks before announcing his 2016 presidential bid...Rand Paul is completing an about-face on a longstanding pledge to curb the growth in defense spending. In an olive branch [offer of reconciliation] to defense hawks hell-bent on curtailing his White House ambitions, the libertarian Senator introduced a budget amendment late Wednesday calling for a nearly $190 billion infusion to the defense budget…. (Time, 3/26/15).
One day later, Ted Cruz followed Paul:
I supported...increasing defense spending because the very first priority of the federal government must be protecting our vital national security (National Review, 3/27/15).
Scott Walker, the union-busting governor of Wisconsin, has also fallen in line, “publicly supporting an end to defense cuts under sequestration” (The Hill, 5/11/15).
The Republicans’ problem is that most of their leading candidates come from states with viciously racist anti-immigrant laws. If elected president, one of these politicians will have to convince terrorized immigrant workers to help defend U.S. imperialism.
Don’t Vote, Organize with PLP
The U.S. bosses have killed millions of workers across the globe. Marching into the voting booths will never stop the capitalists’ next mass murder. The fightback in Ferguson and Baltimore showed the way. Under liberal Democrat Obama, the international working class saw only more war and racist terror. All electoral parties represent capitalism. Only Progressive Labor Party struggles for the needs of the working class. PLP calls on workers everywhere to choose communist revolution. We cannot vote on revolution; we must fight for it. Join us!
