Gilbert announced her exit from the State Department by email. She explained that she was leaving because the administration lied and continues to lie in its official findings about whether zionists are deliberately obstructing the flow of food and aid into Gaza. The regime’s control over its personnel and the narrative is slipping drastically. Not only is the public no longer convinced, but even the regime’s own stalwarts have rejected its narrative. Josh Paul, the first official to resign from the government, warned that “[T]here are other resignations pending in the near future from officials with similar concerns in their own areas of work.”

USAID is often used as a cover for the most cynical and depraved U.S. spycraft. The State Department carries the sword and shield of U.S. imperial foreign policy all over the world. For members of these departments and agencies to publicly throw up their hands and depart from their own government over the degree of hypocrisy now being exhibited by the bloodthirsty war planners and politicos in Washington is a high-water mark for the weakness of the current administration.

Biden’s support among fellow Democrats and the public has collapsed. We warned earlier this year that the Democrats were so afraid of public opinion that they would attempt to crown Biden in a fait accomplis ceremony at the DNC Convention. They have lived down to our expectations: the Democrats are not even going to nominate him at the convention. They’ll do it by zoom call, beforehand. The official justification the DNC is giving is that, if they don’t nominate their candidates prior to Ohio’s August 7 ballot deadline, he won’t appear on the Ohio presidential ballot. We can speculate about their real reasons. Perhaps they want to forestall massive protests in Chicago and a potential outbreak of violence when the people, long lied to about the weight their voice carries in politics, make themselves heard.

When the zionist genocide began, the White House was dragged along with it. Today, we can no longer say that is the case. Biden himself is personally culpable, not only as a passive bystander, but as an active architect. As this becomes more and more clear to more and more people, all but the cruelest and most heartless of political hacks must abandon him. This isn’t international political inertia — it’s the forging of a new, even more right-wing Democratic Party. From all evidence, the Biden clique’s plan is to out-fascist the right.

We must do more than sit and wait to watch the fireworks of public opinion when the Biden clique seizes the nomination this summer. We must be prepared for Chicago; the voice of the people, muzzled for so long, must sound in the halls of privilege.

Onward, to revolution!

It’s election season in the USA, and once again, we are being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. On one hand, we have Donald J. Trump with his dangerous racist rhetoric, his misogyny, his open bribery and crimes. On the other hand we have Joseph R. Biden with his uncritical support for genocide, his repetition of zionist lies, and his continuation of Trump’s fascist border policies. How is one to choose and proudly cast a vote for either of two obvious evils? 

Comrade George Jackson in 1969 expressed this conundrum succinctly, “The fascists already have power. The point is that some way must be found to expose them and combat them. An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die.”

As communists, we should analyze this election scientifically. We can look at present and historical conditions to reach our answer of what is to be done.  

Rajani Palme Dutt in 1935 spoke on the dangers of lesser evil voting, “the continued hesitation and retreat of the reformist working class leadership at each point (policy of the ‘lesser evil’) encourages the growth of fascism. On this basis, fascism is able finally to step in and seize the reins, not through its own strength, but through the failure of working class leadership. The collapse of bourgeois democracy is succeeded, not by the advance to proletarian democracy, but by the regression to fascist dictatorship.”

We understand that, throughout history, liberals have always sided with fascists. [Editors: Liberals here mean not only the left “aisle” of the U.S. state, but the entire tradition behind liberalism; these liberals — private property owners opposed to absolute monarchy and systems of privilege — definitely turned on the movement for liberation when it attempted to extend its work to property in the middle of the 19th century and have been implacable enemies of anti-propertarian ideologies ever since.] Liberals vote and govern in ways that protect their private property and bourgeois interests. While working class liberal-minded folks can be reached with a message of class solidarity, the professional managerial class will always protect their interests. 

Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds. 

Tailing the Democratic Party is out of the question. This major party is fully beholden to the corporate interests that finance it. The DNC is the party of Silicon Valley, of defense contractors, and is now the party of war in Ukraine and genocide in Gaza. We, not only as communists, but as humans, cannot back Joe Biden for president in 2024. 

It should go without saying, but we also cannot back the Republican Party. They are the party of Christian Nationalism, of right to work laws, of abortion bans and homophobia. No, we will not support the GOP nor Donald Trump. 

Section Four of the CPUSA Party Program states:

Both Democrats and Republicans have collaborated over many decades to restrict ballot access for ’minor’ parties, massively increasing signature requirements to get on the ballot and increasing the percentage of votes needed to remain on the ballot over several election cycles. Many media outlets also restrict democracy by focusing on the horserace and personality aspects of elections, reporting endlessly on polls and perceptions rather than on coverage of the issues of importance to voters.

We, as the Communist Party, are considered a minor party. We are running several candidates in local and state races, but we are not running a POTUS candidate in 2024. While we recognize that electing socialists and communists into the bourgeois system will not change it (only revolution can accomplish that goal) we understand that electoral struggle is one method to spread our message of working class solidarity, and to show the masses that the system under which we live is the cause of our pain. We can and should utilize bourgeois electoralism to advance our cause. 

There are many minor parties running candidates with platforms that align more closely to our goals than those of the major bourgeois parties. So the question now is: “Shall we form a United Front against fascism with one or more of these minor parties?”

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is running a presidential campaign in 2024, and standing with them could be a great opportunity to form a United Front against the fascism of the neoliberal Democrats and the MAGA Republicans. 

The PSL candidates, Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, have seven major policy goals stated on their website: 1. Seize the Biggest 100 Corporations, Create A New Economy for the People, 2. Overthrow the Dictatorship of the Rich — Build a Democracy That Serves the Working Class, 3. End the Rule of Money and Lock Up the Corrupt Elite, 4. Cut the Military Budget by 90% — Peace, Not War with China & Russia, 5. End the War on Black America, 6. Defend Women’s Rights, Full Equality for LGBTQ People, and 7. Save the Planet from Capitalism. 

These seven simple goals are not wholly different from the CPUSA party program goals. Claudia and Karina are also under no delusion that they might win the election or if they were to, that their victory would fundamentally change the United States. It couldn’t, but, as Lenin explained, running socialist candidates at all levels is one way to spread our message of socialism, and this is their goal in 2024. 

Many CPUSA members have a lot of experience working with Party for Socialism and Liberation comrades on the ground in our communities. We understand that they are good, principled comrades. PSL has been incredibly active in the FREE PALESTINE movement, they rallied with us against the Dobbs decision, and have worked with us on lobbying city councils regarding issues of policing. 

Dr. Cornel West, while not a Marxist, is running a progressive campaign for president as an independent candidate. His platform contains the following pillars: 1. Economic Justice, including a $27/hour minimum wage and breaking up monopolies, 2. Worker Justice — establishing a workers bill of rights and ending “right to work,” 3. Environmental Justice, 4. Health Justice by nationalizing the entire healthcare industry and protecting women’s and LGBTQ healthcare, 5. Racial Justice, including reparations to Black Americans, 6. Transformative Justice — ending mass incarceration and investing in alternatives to policing, 7. Voter Justice — instituting ranked choice voting, 8. Education Justice — canceling all student debt and making community and state colleges tuition free, 9. LGBTQIA Justice, 10. Gun Violence Justice, 11. Immigration Justice, and 12. Global Justice. 

The Communist Party has worked with Dr. Cornel West in the past through the Poor People’s Campaign. He has never claimed to be a Marxist, but he is an anti-imperialist. Take a closer look at his twelfth campaign pillar, Global Justice. This plan includes the goal of an expeditious closure of global U.S. military bases, disbanding NATO, and ending all weapons shipments to Ukraine to instead invest in peacemaking; ending military aid to Israel, ending zionist apartheid of the Palestinian people, and pressuring the U.N. to establish a program for Palestinian dignity and liberation; ending the embargo on Cuba and normalizing relations by removing the nation from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list; and no intervention, military or otherwise, in Haiti. 

Dr. West’s platform of anti-imperialism is well thought out, and stands in stark contrast to the stances held by either leading bourgeois party in the United States. Working through an independent grassroots campaign like his is one way we can spread our message of working class solidarity and anti-imperialism. He is a candidate who has aligned with us in the past, and would likely welcome our alliance in this election cycle. 

If we want to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, we need to work together with other progressive forces, and this election season is an opportune time to reach out. We have built-in allies in the PSL, the Dr. West campaign, Palestinian liberation and anti-war groups, labor unions, and workers all over the country disillusioned with the two corporate-aligned imperialist parties. We can use our collective power to show people that we don’t have to settle for an “evil” candidate, but that we can demand a different way of life. We can disrupt this election cycle, and use it to bring working class Americans into the struggle. 

So, let’s form a true United Front against fascism in 2024. Let us join forces with other socialist and communist parties, unions, and unaffiliated comrades. Let us work together to defeat all the faces of fascism, including both major political parties in the USA and their corporate overlords. Let us stand firmly against zionism, and all aspects of settler colonialism. Let us collectively say “No!” to militarization of the southern border, “No!” to the oppression of women and trans people, and “No!” to the over-policing of Black and Brown neighborhoods. 

Let us say “Yes!” to solidarity, “Yes!” to working class power, and “Yes!” to socialism. Let us say “Yes!” to a United Front against the fascist threat. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

As this paper has recently covered, the Democratic Party — one of two fascist settler-parties that govern the U.S. empire — is dismissive of inner-party democracy. They have rejected the concept that anyone other than the Genocidaire-in-Chief Biden could claim the Democratic nomination. Plans are already in place for a coronation of either the current president of the U.S. Empire or his second-in-command, Kamala Harris.

The people say no.

This sham of democracy is always a problem for the parties in a bourgeois republic where voting has been extended to working people. Of course, the desires of the working class are discounted by the governing class — when was the last time you can remember voting for a plumber, a construction worker, or a coffee-house barista in the general election? — but the political form of the U.S. republic requires a pretense of democracy. It’s one of the ways the U.S. government has been able to suppress capitalism’s inherent class contradictions and prevent class struggle from sharpening domestically over the last century. If you believe you have a say, you’re less likely to reject the whole sordid affair.

The zionist aggression unleashed by the heroic resistance attacks of October 7, 2023, threatens to undermine the already-feeble appearance of democracy in the U.S. Voter participation in U.S. elections has historically waxed at a mere 66% of eligible voters and more regularly tops out at 50% of the electorate. Around 15% of the electorate votes in local elections for mayors and community leaders. Compare that with the 83.6% voter participation in Cuba, a worker-lead socialist country; the working class of the U.S. empire is already skeptical of the political machine that runs things.

Enter the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Uncommitted Movement.

The DSA is a “big-tent” organization which contains both truly revolutionary and counter-revolutionary streams. DSA Marxists tend to gravitate toward one of the Marxist caucuses within the party: the Marxist Unity Group (MUG), Red Star, and the former Trotskyites of Reform & Revolution. MUG alone, to our knowledge, has forwarded a plan that would see the transformation of the DSA into a vanguard party. While the Pressworker’s Organization at USU does not agree with the potential of the DSA to emerge as the vanguard, we believe organizing within it can be useful to the working class movement and, at this stage, is necessary to reach the masses and increase class-consciousness.

The Uncommitted Movement is a required step in that process. The reformist wings of the DSA, which cause it to tail Democrats and engage in wasteful electoral politics that produce controlled-opposition office holders (Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush in the U.S. House of Representatives, alongside a welter of state officials), has made noise in opposition to the Uncommitted Movement. There are also those Marxists who express their disagreement with the movement and desire to focus DSA resources on bread-and-butter worker organizing.

What Is the Uncommitted Movement?

The movement represents the expenditure of organizing power, time, and money to cause Democratic voters to vote “uncommitted” in Democratic primaries. The mainstream reasoning behind the movement (and the reason some Democrats have signed on) is to “send a signal” to the Democratic National Committee and party leadership that Biden cannot win a general election and that his administration’s continued support and logistical management of the zionist genocide of Palestine must end.

This is futile. That’s not why the Uncommitted Movement is important.

This is the moment to disillusion the working classes with Democratic party politics. The Democratic Party has captured working-class movements and throttled class struggle by using paid labor aristocrats and bought-off union leadership for a century. As we recently published in The Democrats Have Nothing Left to Offer,

In the face of this [early 20th century] labor agitation came the Great Depression. The threat of the final and total overthrow of the capitalist order loomed large as the world capitalist economy melted down and threw twelve million people out of work. The capitalists scrambled to craft a policy reply to the crisis. It finally came in the form of European style social democracy. Thus was born the New Deal. In the words of conservative think-tank the Hoover Institute, the revolution never came because the “man in the White House co-opted the left.”

But there is no more flex in the old unholy alliance of high-level labor leaders, opportunists within the Communist Party of the USA, the working class, the petit-bourgeoisie, and the bourgeois Democratic party politicians. The Democrats literally have nothing left to offer as a bribe for the working class. The only thing either party has left is the stick.

The Uncommitted Movement is important because it will expose the Democratic party in the eyes of the working people. The DNC won’t respond — it is constitutionally incapable of taking the feedback of angry voters, as we saw with the internal coup against the very mild left-wing social imperialist Bernie Sanders in 2016. The most the DNC will do is gear up its talking heads to chastise voters, call them stupid, or childish, or short-sighted, or self-destructive. That will drive people away from bourgeois politics.

There Is a Movement, but No Party

This is a necessary precursor for breaking up the ice that has paralyzed the working class movement for so long. We have a situation currently prevailing where there is a working class movement but there is not a working class party.

While the Marxists struggle for unity to give the working class a party through which it can voice its grievances and with which it can wield the weapons of revolution, the DSA is preparing the ground for the movement itself to swell and grow ever-riper. We must disillusion the people from electoral politics. We must break the reliance of the working class movement on their captured labor-aristocrat leaders. We must think, and cause our class-siblings to think with us, about non-electoral alternatives.

Therefore, although USU and the Red Clarion are primarily engaged in the project of uniting the advanced elements of the working class and the lower ranks of the petit-bourgeoisie, we endorse the Uncommitted Movement. We urge it to spread. At this time, full commitment to the movement, full commitment to mass-disillusionment with bourgeois politics, is the most revolutionary act that the DSA is capable of taking. Show the Democrats for what they are, and spit in the eye of their heir-apparent, the murderous Biden and his “top-cop” crony. Defy the coronation, for the good of the working classes.

War. Pollution. Famine. Death.

The Biden-Harris campaign website doesn’t have a single policy on it. Go and look. It urges you to donate, and nothing more. “Why should we tell you what our policies are?” they ask, their dead eyes mocking. “You know what our policies are: we’re not Trump.”

The political horizons of the Democratic Party have narrowed down to a single point. Once the party of “progressive” labor and struggles for racial recognition, the Democrats have jettisoned the last of their betrayed allies and have adopted a blank and stony face. They refuse to make the case for their administration, because they are no longer capable of doing so. As their policies and inaction increasingly alienate and repulse the masses, the only people still arguing on behalf of the Democratic Party are the so-called socialist parties of the United States Empire: the Democratic Socialists of America and CPUSA.

Why is this the case? Surely, there must have been a time when the Democratic Party had something to offer someone other than their ruling-class donors?

There was.

To understand what’s become of the Democrats, and why they have increasingly tacked toward war abroad and law and order at home, you have to understand the history of the 20th century from the point of view of the ruling class. Of course, we’re told one story — the one that we all learn in high school history — but the truth is quite something else.

The story we learn is one about Roosevelt and the New Deal, the incredible progressive dream of equality and freedom for all. We’re told that basically only racists opposed the New Deal programs, that FDR brought about an era of prosperity never-before-seen by the United States, and that he “saved” the country from the Great Depression. This isn’t just the story told by the Democrats, it’s also the one told by the so-called Communists of the U.S. The problem is, none of it is true.

The New Deal With the Devil

To understand the limits of the Democratic Party, we need to begin with the historical composition of the so-called Democratic coalition and how the party realigned at the beginning of the 1930s. Labor unrest had rocked the young settler-republic: in 1877, workers established the brief but influential St. Louis Commune during the 1877 General Strike; nine years later,  in 1886, the Haymarket Affair shook the country. In 1894, the Pullman Strike affected the railroads country-wide. The Coal Wars saw brutal repression of strikers by government troops and Pinkerton agents. In 1919, what came to be called the Red Summer reached  near revolutionary fervor in the major cities, spurred primarily by class consciousness in the Black Belt and returning Black soldiers amidst the shadow of World War I. Acts of white supremacist terror and lynchings, meant to maintain the status quo, were confronted with fierce resistance from Black communities. Hundreds died. Nascent Black liberation movements, such as the African Blood Brotherhood were born from the ashes. This was followed by the 1921 Tulsa Massacre in Greenwood as white supremacist capitalism asserted itself over the wealthiest Black neighborhood in America by razing it and killing between 75 and 300 people.

In the face of this labor agitation came the Great Depression. The threat of the final and total overthrow of the capitalist order loomed large as the world capitalist economy melted down and threw twelve million people out of work. The capitalists scrambled to craft a policy reply to the crisis. It finally came in the form of European style social democracy. Thus was born the New Deal. In the words of conservative think-tank the Hoover Institute, the revolution never came because the “man in the White House co-opted the left.”

But the New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression. For white workers (and European workers aspiring to whiteness), it mitigated the worst harms of the economic collapse that we call the Great Depression, but it was only the outbreak of World War II that stopped the bleeding. Communists in the CPUSA went from accurately assessing FDR as a kind of fascist at the beginning of the ‘30s to openly embracing him by the end of the decade. In the process, they abandoned the revolutionary struggle and contented themselves with economic gains for the working class. The New Deal became the basis of an unsteady alliance between the officers of organized labor — the AFL and other unions, primarily — and the old Democratic party machine.

Government control of the centralized war production industry supercharged the U.S. economy and helped propel the settler-republic into the position of world hegemon. The U.S. stayed out of World War II as long as it could, letting the older empires slug out the fight, hoping that the USSR would be debilitated by their conflict with fascism. As a result, the ruined capitalist world was dominated in the post-war period by the U.S. Control over the complicated machinery of empire meant the U.S. imperial managers could funnel profits back into the domestic U.S. market — and keep funding the social democratic project FDR had promised.

“The traditional colonialist powers represented by Britain, France, Holland and Belgium labored heavily under the War burdens, while Germany, Italy and Japan labored heavily under the burdens of defeat, a situation that enabled U.S. capital to extend and penetrate into all these countries through the reconstruction process,” wrote the Marxist-Leninist People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine in its 1968 analysis of the world-imperialist bloc.

Breakdown

President Carter repudiated the deal between the Democrats and organized labor as the U.S. economy stalled and stagnated in the 1970s. This tack to the right was fully realized by Bill Clinton and the “Third Way” Democrats of the 1990s. The Clintonite period is where we get the term neoliberalism. Like neoconservativism, neoliberalism was a rejection of the traditional left-wing policies the Democrats embraced between 1932 and 1970.

It’s easy to call policies neoliberal, but what does it mean? In content, neoliberalism is the shifting of state-sponsored programs into private hands so they can make a profit. The U.S. Empire never developed a strong welfare state like Europe — despite Lyndon Johnson’s attempts to do so, the security state and the military industrial complex demanded too much money and attention. Instead, it was always somewhat neoliberal, relying on private corporations to recognize their interests in forestalling revolutionary consciousness. These corporations invested in pensions, healthcare, programs, etc. for their employees… until Carter signaled the Democrats’ willingness to turn on their one-time partners, the officers and bureaucrats of the labor unions.

Between Carter and Clinton, the Republican Party became the main vehicle for ruling-class action. Having repudiated the old progressive deal, the Democrats no longer had anything to offer the ruling class in terms of mass mobilization. Carter and Clinton, the bookends to Democratic control, were both indistinguishable from Republicans in their economic policy; Clinton, in fact, ran to the right of former CIA director H.W. Bush in 1992 on almost every economic issue.

The Obama Administration, despite its pretensions to restoring the voided social contract of the 1950s and 1960s, increased the party’s commitment to neoliberalism and the degradation of unions. A financial catastrophe comparable to the stock market crash of 1929 put the Obama White House in a position quite similar to that of the FDR White House. However, since 1929, there had been major developments in the state’s repressive machinery. No one was afraid of labor unrest or a looming revolution; the Occupy movement was easily disarmed and countered. What was the answer of the 21st century Democratic Party to the New Deal? FDR provided relief to the working class. Obama provided relief to the owning class.

To prevent total economic meltdown, the federal government infused the economy with new money; it “bailed out” banks. Not one of the criminal bankers responsible for the crisis was ever held accountable. The banking system itself was put on life support as federal regulators eased restrictions on lending that have remained in this “foot on the gas” position until this very day. Interest rates were cut, reserve requirements were overturned, and the U.S. (and thus the global) economy was puffed up on “aid” while still remaining fundamentally unsound.

Bidenomics and the Working Class

The economy is unsound because the rate of profit is in decline. Despite its sharp recovery after the life-support system installed by the Obama regime, it once again began to tumble and continues to fall to this day. This is the law of capitalism: the concentration of capital leads to declining rates of profit worldwide.

In the chart above, we can see the sharp spike in the rate of profit when the U.S. destruction of the Soviet Union brought markets back into the capitalist world, but even with this shot in the arm, the rate of profit continues to fall over time.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the rate of profit was appreciably higher than it is today.  The rate of profit began to decline in the middle 1960s. It was at this time that the social-democratic program of the Democrats gave way to Carter in the early 1970s, and the breakup of union power with the failed Chrysler strike and culminating in the PATCO strike of the air traffic controllers. PATCO — the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization — was a trade union operating from 1968 until it was decertified in 1981. Just like the railroad workers that Biden forced back to work, PATCO demanded a shorter work-week to increase safety. Carter instructed the Federal Aviation Agency not to give in to the demand to provoke a strike he knew was in the offing. Reagan took up Carter’s torch and, even though he had supported PATCO vocally during his election campaign, he followed the ruling-class line shared by Democrats and Republicans: the PATCO strike was declared illegal and the union was decertified.

The fact is that, as of Biden’s assumption of power, the progressive potential of the Democratic Party has been completely exhausted. The chair of the party is Jaime Harrison, a “former” lobbyist for the Podesta Group where he represented Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Berkshire Hathaway, numerous pharmaceutical corporations, and Walmart. The main funding arm of the Democratic Party is run by the board member of a CIA cut-out, the National Democratic Institute, which often works with the infamous National Endowment for Democracy to instigate regime change in socialist or nationalist countries in order to make them palatable to American business interests.

This leads us to the Bidenomics of today: massive debt relief and loan programs for private businesses while the working class see only the steep climb of inflation. Prices have climbed 20% since the 2020 implementation of Biden’s relief plan for the rich. Wages have risen, but only roughly 10% in that time. That means every dollar in 2024 can buy what 80 cents could buy in 2020 — a devaluation that is now almost the equivalent of having robbed every working person in the United States of a quarter of their income. Getting paid an additional 10 cents on the dollar doesn’t make that much better.

There is no appetite among the Democratic Party’s ruling class supporters to budgeon any economic issue. We have seen Biden break rail strikes even when the rail workers repeatedly warned that the health and safety of the entire country was on the line. His administration is only interested in offering relief to one class: the ruling class. Since 2020, the concentration of wealth in the hands of billionaires has increased 70%. This is under Biden’s watch.

What about social issues? These, too, have been surrendered by the Democrats. The Biden regime has failed to codify abortion at the federal level, failed to protect trans rights, which are under assault in the right-reactionary stronghold states of the South, failed to even try to hold the police accountable for violence doled out on oppressed communities (he’s worked hard to increase police funding and presence in the wake of George Floyd’s death), failed to stop the creeping entrenchment of crisis-fascism amongst the Republicans, and failed to step down from an aggressive, hawkish foreign policy that sees all countries and all realms of the earth as the prerogative of the U.S. Empire’s intervention.

There Is Nothing Left

The last of the progressive elements in the Democratic Party were sacrificed to the profit drive long ago. Social democrats are merely chum in the water for fascist retrenchment. Today, they serve as seductive sheepdogs, struggling to lead the working people away from the realization that the entire system is corrupt.

The bargain is a raw one!

For too long, we have been induced to trade our economic freedom in exchange for economic security. Now, even the lure of security has been taken away. All that remains is the threatened cudgel of Trump. For this, it is clear, the Democrats love him. Oh, not the rank and file, not the Democratic voter, for whom Trump is the expression of every foul and carnal urge, but for the Democratic politician there could be no more effective whip to mobilize those disaffected portions of their former electorate.

“We have nothing to offer you. Don’t look for us to offer you anything other than this: we aren’t Trump.”

That’s not enough, Mr. Biden. We must not stand by and allow the Democrats to bully us into another unholy bargain. We must stand up against them.

Israel alleges that twelve of those 13,000 relief workers played some role in the October 7 attack against Israelis by the Palestinian Resistance.

These allegations – which remain unproven, to say the least – implicate slightly less than one-tenth of one percent of UNRWA employees. Even so, the UNRWA has already fired nine of the twelve accused. But the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria and Romania are using the unproven allegations as the basis to cut off funding for UNRWA.

That’s two-thirds or more than $760 million cut from the budget of the primary organization providing humanitarian aid in Gaza. The chief of the UNRWA says that with the funding cuts the agency may be forced to “shutter” its operations within a month. Current levels of aid are already a trickle compared to the period before October 7, and the people of Gaza are facing famine and the spread of preventable diseases in addition to the ongoing deaths caused by Israel’s bombing and its ground operations.

The corporate media has described Democrats in Congress as “divided” over support for UNRWA funding. So far, though, it appears the only public appeal for restoring UNRWA funding has come from congressperson Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes.

“Cutting off support to UNRWA—the primary source of humanitarian aid to 2 million+ Gazans—is unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media. “Among an organization of 13,000 U.N. aid workers, risking the starvation of millions over grave allegations of 12 is indefensible. The U.S. should restore aid immediately.”

Common Dreams, “Ocasio-Cortez: US Should Restore UNRWA Funding ‘Immediately,’” 1/29/2024.

NOT ONE of Connecticut’s Democrats in the House and Senate have said they support restoring US funding for UNRWA. When urged to support a ceasefire these elected officials insisted they were doing the most good by supporting humanitarian aid. Now humanitarian aid has been cut and they are silent.

As we have warned, union organizing is the beginning, not the end, of class consciousness. This week, the United Auto Workers proved that it is a corrupt organization, its very bones riddled with the infection of political opportunism. Shawn Fain, mastermind of the UAW strike, hailed by the naive and undiscerning as a new labor hero, gave a full-throated endorsement of Butcher Biden and encouraged all UAW workers to vote for him. On the same day, protestors at one of Genocide Joe’s events were drowned out by UAW workers who support the murderous president of the current White House regime.

You heard that right! Butcher Biden, who spent a huge amount of his presidency breaking the backs of unions, endorsing anti-union legislation, and chastising workers for asking for too much, is the new darling and political ally of the supposed firebrand Shawn Fain. This man, who proclaimed his intention to organize toward a general strike and a shutdown of the U.S. imperial economy in favor of the workers, has come out in a full-throated endorsement of the genocidaire that his own rank and file denounced mere weeks prior.

Unionism, when untethered from the international struggle for the rights of the working people, is merely political opportunism. In 2018, the UAW president made $207,000 from his UAW salary alone — hardly the wage of a struggling proletarian — even after a voice vote from the union delegates voted down that 2018 salary increase. Fain has followed in the footsteps of the past presidents of the big business unions and accepted the crumbs of imperialist superprofits for his members while bowing to the unholy union of labor and capital that is represented by the Democratic Party.

Fain has abandoned the surging internationalism pressing him from below. Rank and file UAW members, ever staunch internationalists, have called for a ceasefire resolution from Butcher Biden. They’ve gone so far as to interrupt Biden speeches. “A president who supports genocide and is actively funding weapons to israel to kill children, families, that’s not something that I feel has earned my endorsement,” said member Johannah King-Slutzky. At least 500 UAW workers signed the ceasefire petition circulated internally in the UAW. Indeed, the union has its own committee called UAW Labor for Palestine. As recently as last week, Fain said “We don’t stop our fight for justice because it’s not the right time. When and where there’s a war, whether it’s in Vietnam or Gaza, we call for peace.”

But Fain can’t put his money where his mouth is. He’s constitutionally prevented from it! Only a resurgent internationalist movement from within the rank and file of the UAW can overthrow the stagnant slime of opportunism; if it is not swift and powerful, upsetting the entire order of the union and throwing off the old, Democrat-loyal chains for independent action, it won’t be long before the UAW lobbying arm is pouring union money — rank and file members’ money — into Genocide Joe’s campaign chest.

Merwan Beydoun, a 29-year member of the UAW in Dearborn, Michigan, withdrew his support of the UAW’s political arm ahead of the endorsement. “It is disheartening to note that some politicians associated with the UAW PAC have not actively called for a ceasefire…. I believe that endorsing and supporting candidates who prioritize the cessation of hostilities is essential for the promotion of peace and justice.”

Yet, there is Fain, on stage, parroting the lie that Biden has been a “pro-labor” president, all while the Butcher still stinks with the blood of the SMART Transportation and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, who he condemned through state action to continue to work without sick time. As trains crash and explode with increasing frequency on the U.S. rail lines, both parties celebrate the chaining of union expectations to the decaying political consensus of Washington. Why do we call for death to the UAW? Because its leadership is dead already. All rank and file members must recognize their necessary commitment not just to increasing the contract payments and benefits of their members, but to the international working class. Death to the labor bureaucrats and their lackeys! The UAW membership must kill the beast, and forge a new future!

Biden was born on November 20, 1942, in Scranton Pennsylvania. Biden’s father, Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr., was an executive at the Sheene Armor Company, owned by his uncle Bill Sheene, Sr. The family purportedly went through a period of hardship; young Biden himself went to college (and did poorly) at the University of Delaware. He then went to law school, where he plagiarized a paper for one of his courses from the Fordham Law Review.

He worked very briefly as a public defender, then opened a law firm and began a small property-management business for landlords. In 1969, Biden ran as a Democrat for the New Castle County Council, and served on the council from 1970 to 1972. He entered the all-empire public stage in 1972 when he ran for the U.S. Senate.

It was in his 1973-2009 career as a U.S. Senator that his most vile qualities were encouraged, enlarged, and exaggerated — likely by constant exposure to the odious class politics of the U.S. political system. He wheeled and dealed with the lobbyists and developed the same cronyist habits that most lawyers and politicians eventually exhibit. In 1981 he became the ranking minority Democratic member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and, by 1984, he took the lead as a “tough on crime” legislator.

During his time in the Judiciary Committee, he joined segregationist senators to help lock up Black Americans. “The truth is,” Biden said in 1993, “every major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the State of Delaware: Joe Biden.” He was close friends with many segregationists: Sen. James O. Eastland of Mississippi, whose foul, racist policies once led to him being accused of “Hitlerism” on the Senate floor, helped place Biden on that committee. He partnered with legendary hatemonger Strom Thurmond to author many crime bills.

In 1977, with Eastland’s support, he pushed for mandatory minimum sentence laws. In 1989, he criticized George Bush, Sr., complaining that he wasn’t doing enough to put “violent thugs” in prison. In 1993, he warned of “predators on our streets.” In a 1994 Senate speech, he said: “Every time Richard Nixon, when he was running in 1972, would say, ‘Law and order,’ the Democratic match or response was, ‘Law and order with justice’ — whatever that meant. And I would say, ‘Lock the S.O.B.s up.’”

Biden opposed the busing program in Wilmington, a plan intended to even out the racist segregation of schooling. “The real problem with busing is you take people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school, and you’re going to fill them with hatred,” he said in 1975.

He was responsible for the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which established mandatory minimum drug sentences, and the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which created a disparity of one hundred times the penalty for possession of crack cocaine over powder cocaine. When working for Clinton’s disastrous and vile 1994 crime bill, Biden rhetorically asked the Senate “What do you need?” He answered himself: “The first thing we need is more cops…. The second thing we need is more prisons.”

During his time as president he has ruthlessly worked to suppress unions and prevent or end numerous strikes, all the while crowning himself the most union-friendly president since FDR.

But over the last few weeks, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., secured himself as one of the most bloodstained presidents of this bloodstained oligarchic republic in its history: he has given his explicit approval for the zionist state to exterminate, relocate, and ethnically cleanse the entire Palestinian population of Palestine.

Forget his time as a struggling lawyer; for 52 years, Biden has lived in the lap of luxury, first as a U.S. Senator, then as the Vice President, and now as the President of the U.S. Empire. This U.S. aristocrat has spent his entire political career as a vocal zionist. Now, on the eve of the zionist ground invasion of Gaza, after weeks of brutal bombing campaigns designed to terrorize, kill, and exterminate the Palestinian population in the strip, he has doubled down on his commitment to the zionist state.

On October 27, 2023, after zionist bombings of hospitals, during the intensification of the air campaign against Palestine, the White House said that it will not “draw red lines” for Israel. The Biden State Department instructed its representatives not to speak about popularly-demanded ceasefires or de-escalation. His government has been shipping weapons into the zionist state, and Biden himself has been on a tour of the legislature to argue for more appropriations for the zionist war machine. His support of genocide is so blatant, it prompted a senior member of the State Department to resign. “I cannot work,” wrote Josh Paul, “in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse.”

Although in the past few days, Biden has made some mealy-mouthed asides about “protecting civilians,” as the zionist state annihilates Palestine, in the first hours of the brutal air assaults, he pledged public “unconditional” support.

Godfather of mass imprisonment, gleeful participant in wiping out Palestinian lives. The message is clear: Joseph Biden is not merely an enemy of the American people — he is a genocidaire.

The bankruptcy of the supposed representatives of the U.S. Empire is on full display. Biden, at the head of a lockstep contingent of almost the entire Democratic caucus, have been baying for blood. They applaud the salivating “Bibi” Netanyahu as he calls for extermination on zionist television. They upbraid the handful of politicians who dare to challenge them. They support the silencing of pro-Palestinian and antizionist voices. This country is exploding in protest. The world is exploding in protest. Biden, one hand gripping the wheel with white knuckles, continues to drive the U.S. into deep, criminal complicity with the worst and most genocidal acts of the world’s most heinous regime — because he is, at heart, himself a killer. Joseph Biden is a blood-soaked enemy of the people.

Trump, worth some 2.5 billion dollars according to Forbes magazine, was ordered to pay 5 million dollars to Ms. Carroll. A settlement of this kind — undoubtedly soon to be subject to various challenges by his legal team — would reduce his net worth from 2.5 billion USD to 2.495 billion USD, hardly threatening him with destitution. In fact, this judgment is likely to further inflame his already ravenous right-fascist base and energize them in the run-up to the 2024 election. Ms. Carroll, on the other hand, has an estimated net worth of between $1–3 million USD. This would represent a substantial victory for her.

Of course we cannot discount the personal forces at work here: the trauma, disgust, and anger felt by Ms. Carroll and her personal investment in this suit. However, neither can we be willfully ignorant to the political meaning of the suit. Although the suit represents the righteous culmination of a decades-long campaign to hold the misogynist Trump accountable for his actions, it is also the theater in which the latest campaign of the war between the left-fascists and right-fascists is playing out. Although Ms. Carroll’s legal teamtime has made valiant attempts to keep the case from becoming a political dogfight, nevertheless — this is a right-fascist presidential hopeful, and the eyes of the ruling class are on him. Trump, along with the brutal right-fascist governor of Florida, DeSantis, represents the political ascendency of the largest and most reactionary monopoly capitalists: Sheldon Adelson; the ultra-Zionist, Isaac Perlmutter; shipping company Uline; finance capitalists at Blackstone; etc.

Newspapers and television stations have trumpeted the verdict. “A stunning result,” writes Politico’s Ankush Khardori, calling it a “new first – and a new low.” We know, of course, that this is far from a new low. President Clinton was a sexual abuser, and Nixon was a far worse criminal than either man; the sitting president, Biden, was credibly accused of forcing himself on staffers.

For Trump and his supporters, this has been the perfect opportunity to demonstrate his callousness, his “fitness,” to be the strongman that the right-fascists are slavering for. Even as the verdict came in, Trump’s campaign surged over contender DeSantis. What’s brewing on the left-fascist side? The blue-tie-wearing mummy Joseph Robinette Biden is as much of a cipher as Trump — he is merely the empty suit into which the ruling class pours their ambitions. Neither man is anything in-and-of-themselves. Despite the challenge to Trump in the courts, Biden still trails him by six points.

The ruling class is performing its behind-the-scenes calculus. We can see the results of their mathematics: despite the trial, they are swinging in favor of open right reaction. As for Trump, his trial strategy was designed to send a surge of energy through his supporters, through the most violent brand of fascists, and to play along the most reactionary lines in the country. He didn’t even show up to the trial, and his lawyers essentially abandoned any pretense of defense. This is typical strongman positioning, which Trump and his puppeteers must hope the ruling class will find appealing.

So far, they do. We must ask ourselves: how many ruling-class men see themselves in Trump? How many of them abuse the women around them wantonly, openly, and callously? Are Trump, Biden, Clinton, the outliers within the ruling or political classes? Or are they merely the standard, the white patriarchal archetype by which all ruling-class men judge themselves? We should be unmoved by the machinations of the capitalists. They are playing a game in which they alone are the victors. Trump, Biden, DeSantis, whoever they choose, will be the person that benefits their bottom line — and saving the bottom line of the capitalist elite means damning the rest of us.

In truth, this defeat has been years in the making. When SARS-CoV-2 first emerged, it shook the world’s public health systems from their slumber. Scrambling to adjust to the calamity of a novel virus that is capable of spreading through the air, transmitting in disguise, and wreaking havoc on its victims, these institutions quickly settled on a policy of collaboration with the invader. They offered us only half-truths and false hope, smothered all talk of its true capabilities, ignored the pleading of experts, and began working on a campaign to pacify, rather than protect the masses.

Under the reign of the first President-Collaborator, we saw the excess deaths of over 500,000 Americans. Seeing the political opportunity presented by Donald Trump’s dismissal of the carnage, Biden’s team began hammering home the message that these deaths were on Trump’s head — a completely true assessment. He pledged to “follow the science” and end the pandemic, not by wishing it away, but through a coordinated plan of attack. Yet, from the moment Biden assumed office, he immediately began reproducing Trump’s exact failed strategy. What “science” would ever recommend a policy of mass infection? The only difference between the two administrations was the presence of vaccines — vaccines which, far from ending the pandemic, only ameliorated some of the harshest outcomes of acute infection. This was the only weapon employed by the Biden administration, which began openly telegraphing its intent to draw down all other half-baked pandemic protections instituted by the prior administration.

Biden and his political allies trumpeted every failure as a new “victory”: “We have gotten America back to work! Classrooms are full once more! Fresh air smells sweeter without a mask!” Every policy of forced infection met with adulation, relief, and death. Since the beginning of the “Great Unmasking,” the U.S. has racked up a further 750,000 excess deaths. Millions more have contracted Long COVID. Society has become utterly inhospitable for those with weakened immune systems, with many more joining their ranks every day. Medical leave and early retirement has skyrocketed, with an estimated billion days of lost labor since the start of the viral assault. Every day, that number only grows. Workers in the most tenuous economic positions teeter over the edge every day. How many more lives will be lost, how many more will be disabled, how many more communities will be ravaged, now that the virus has been declared the victor?

With the end of the public health emergency comes the end of any state-coordinated resistance. Uninsured testing is over. Surveillance of new cases, variants, and deaths is over. Economic safety nets are over. Public awareness and caution is over. Those few who refuse to lay down and accept this mass death are labeled scurrilous, melodramatic, mentally unwell fearmongers. Those who seek treatment or accommodation for their chronic conditions are gaslit and abandoned by the healthcare system. It is far from a new story, but it is now a common one.

As the state now lays down its arms and attempts to hail the bloodthirsty conqueror as “the new normal,” the duty now falls to us to defend ourselves. It is incumbent on all who stand opposed to injustice and pointless death to regiment our defiance. Like the resistance movements in Nazi-occupied territories, we cannot allow ourselves to submit to despondence in the face of a vicious juggernaut aided by a collaborationist government. If we cannot drive the virus into extinction ourselves, we can at least keep it out of our communities and organizations. Our weapons in this fight are as follows:

• Virtual meetings at every available opportunity (an obvious measure for inclusivity, regardless of the ongoing pandemic)
• Tightly-sealed respirators (cloth and surgical masks provide less protection, but are preferable to nothing) at all times in public spaces
• Ventilated and HEPA-filtered indoor air
• Frequent PCR testing, even when asymptomatic
• Immediate reporting of suspected or confirmed cases
• Isolation and rest when infected until you are fully recovered (this may take much longer than the CDC’s pathetic recommendation of 5 days)
• Abstention from gatherings which require attendees to be unmasked (restaurants, bars, events lasting long enough to require food and water breaks).

Organizations might find it useful to integrate the language in this document into their bylaws. COVID protection guidelines should be the explicit, enforced policy of our organizations. Do not succumb to the lure of “convenience”; it is far more inconvenient to contract a disease that can — vaccinated or not — leave you bedridden for weeks, give you a chronic, debilitating condition, leave you vulnerable to future infections, or kill you. We know that this won’t be easy. Jobs won’t give us the time off. The constant stream of fear being pumped into the atmosphere about masks means that you may very well be accosted by angry, confused people in the street. The government does not have our backs. The government has left us to die. That’s why we need, more than ever, to look out for each other, to organize and demand that our places of employment take proper precautions, that we are given time off when we need to isolate, and that guidelines be followed.

The state was never with us. We survive by our own hands.

Last week, left wing capitalists announced, through their decrepit mouthpiece Biden, that their lackeys were finally prepared to forgive a limited amount of student debt. Working people in the U.S. Empire have had predatory loans pushed on them by their own government and the capitalist class for decades, forcing them into impossible repayment contracts and perpetual debt peonage. Many have their loan repayments calculated so that they never repay the loan’s “principal,” instead forever on the hook for the growing interest payments. The plan unveiled by Biden would make $10,000 ($20,000 for those with Pell Grants) of student loan debt held by families making less than $250,000 and individuals making less than $125,000 forgivable by the government. This announcement comes after over a year of pressure from the public for the doddering and largely absent Biden administration to fulfill the promises made on the campaign trail.

The Biden Department of Education has canceled $32 billion in student loan debt since October of 2021. Biden’s lackeys, through their Department of Education, forgave the following debts:

• $7.3 billion to individuals who are now working as public servants;
• $5.8 billion in loans for disabled borrowers; and,
• $11.45 billion in loans for individuals who went to schools that defrauded students.

The new plan dwarfs the prior debt cancellation. It makes, by one estimate, $486.6 billion in debt eligible for loan forgiveness. In total, this brings the regime’s various cancellation and “forgiveness” programs to $518.6 billion. As of the first quarter of 2022, student loan debt stands at $1.75 trillion. Thus, the new plan brings the Biden administration’s debt cancellation or forgiveness to cover just over one fourth of all outstanding student loan debt.

At first, this would seem to go some way toward fulfilling the promise the jackal Biden and his cronies made to the debt-burdened working classes on the campaign trail. In his bid to gain control over the criminal U.S. settler-government, Biden promised full student loan relief — that is, the forgiveness of every penny of the $1.75 trillion owed to the federal government by those earning $125,000 a year or less. Even the reactionary AFL-CIO has been pushing Biden to forgive at least $50,000 in student debt — five times what his Dept. of Education is prepared to forgive.

The difference between the promise — $1.14 trillion dollars (the amount of debt owed by families making less than $97,000) and the $486.6 billion available for forgiveness under this new plan — is huge. We’re used to empty campaign promises by now. That’s the stock and trade of the Democrats, who have to lie to the working classes to whip votes for their dying party. (Republicans don’t need to lie about what they’ll do: they quite boldly proclaim their plans to cut social service programs, launch new wars, and reduce taxes on the wealthiest Americans). In essence, the Biden White House has provided yet another empty promise with their loan forgiveness scheme. Not only does the plan fail to live up to the lofty lies of the campaign trail, it doesn’t even live up to its own numbers. By the time anyone actually receives loan forgiveness, it will be nowhere near the order of $486.6 billion that media outlets are calculating. Why?

You have to apply.

None of the loan forgiveness is automatic. It doesn’t merely happen. That $486.6 billion that Biden is set to forgive is only potential forgiveness. Even if you qualify for debt forgiveness, if you don’t go through the steps the way the government wants you to and the channels the government has provided or pre-approved (and, as we will see, the government has been purposefully vague about how to do these things), you don’t get loan forgiveness.

This method of offering something and then requiring a series of difficult-to-follow steps and extra work to achieve the initial promise (we might call it “weeding people out”), is one that corporate advertisers have used for half a century. We’ve all seen “free” products that you need to send away for, fill out forms to get, or talk to someone on the phone to actually receive. In the same way that cable companies increase their rates and only decreases them again after a long, painful conversation with their representatives, the Biden financiers expect the extra work, the long and complicated processes that people will have to try multiple times, and the fact that people will have to affirmatively apply to greatly reduce the number of individuals that seek and are ultimately granted debt relief. That $486.6 billion dollar number doesn’t take any of this into account.

The window for applying for loan forgiveness is set to begin at some point in October of 2022. There is no set date yet. The loan repayment pause ends on December 31, 2022 and the window to apply for loan forgiveness will close on December 31, 2023. That is, if you do not successfully apply between October of this year and the end of next year, your loan will not be forgiven.

You have to be approved.

Being considered for forgiveness does not mean your loans will be forgiven. Right now, the only published criteria for the forgiveness program is that you, as an individual, have student debt owned by the federal government (it doesn’t apply if your debt was sold to a private collections agency), you have an individual income of $125,000 a year (or, if you’re married, a household income of less than $250,000 a year), and you file your application.

The state hasn’t made any other requirements public, but it has indicated that it will look at past years tax returns to ensure that the applicants really do make less than $125,000 or $250,000 a year. Although Biden and his lackeys have put it out that 43 million people are “eligible” for student loan forgiveness under this new plan, the Biden Department of Education has only pre-authorized 8 million people. That means, for the vast majority of the people Biden claims are eligible, we do not yet know whether they will be approved.

Your loan servicer probably doesn’t understand the way the plan works.

If you have student loan debt, you know you don’t repay the federal government directly. Instead, the government contracts a loan servicer to keep track of your debt, collect your payments, and call you at inopportune times. Policy changes can’t just percolate down from the Department of Education and flow to you directly. The servicers, the managerial middlemen who make their living by serving as the government’s hired leeches, need to enact Department policies, except right now they have no idea what those policies are, how they’ll be applied, or how to make them a reality. Every step of confusion runs to the benefit of Biden and his smirking capitalist handlers.

Servicers have an incentive to keep people on the hook. Student loan borrowers are often put into “suspended payment” plans and told they don’t have to start repayment for many years (so they can accrue interest for the lender) and are never told of the income-driven repayment plans that federal law requires these servicers to offer. Loan servicers often enroll borrowers in forgiveness plans that already exist knowing they won’t be eligible. In 2017, the servicer Navient was discovered to have collected $4 billion in incorrectly calculated rates.

Biden Never Intended to Forgive Student Loans

Behind President Biden’s vacant stare and his jackal grin, he is a creature of simple drives and interests. He holds the presidency by the grace of the class he serves, and he has served those class interests well. His extremely long career as a representative of the capitalist class has seen him not only support, but design some of the most repressive laws to make it through the U.S. Senate. Recall that, until 2005, federal student loans were subject to bankruptcy protections. Then-Senator Biden pushed for the so-called “Bankruptcy Abuse Protection and Consumer Protection Act” which made it almost impossible to discharge student loans under bankruptcy.

When he stood before the public and promised to forgive student loans in their entirety, he knew his handlers would never agree to any such thing. Student loans are a powerful tool in the arsenal of capitalist control. The price of tuition has increased exponentially as the logic of capitalism has gutted U.S. higher education and transformed it into an investment opportunity. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 1980 the average cost to attend a four-year college full-time (including tuition, fees, room and board, and adjusted for present inflation) was $10,231 every year. As of 2019-20, that average has increased to $54,500.

The average student loan debt owed is $28,950 — more than even the most generous amount of forgiveness Biden is pretending to offer would cover. This loan could be refinanced – but the only way to do that is to give the debt over to a predatory private collections agency. The average household in the U.S. with student loan debt owes $58,957. This ballooning cost of education necessitates taking out loans. The government swept in to provide a financial market for unscrupulous loan servicing companies and capitalists fleece students coming and going: through hugely inflated costs, and through the unfair and impossible-to-repay rates of the loans they’re forced to take to compete in the increasingly narrow job market.

People with student loans have to work. They are forced to work for lower wages than they would otherwise accept. They have to work for longer, and may not be able to retire. This reinforces the power of the capitalists over the working class. Anything that makes labor weaker makes capital stronger.Biden did not ever intend this promise to be something he could fulfill. His handlers knew he needed “progressive” sounding campaign promises that would get fouled up in the details. The only reason that the Biden camp is now offering this hollowed-out loan forgiveness program is the November elections.

This Is A Scheme for Midterms

The Democratic Party is situated to lose badly in the November midterm elections. Biden’s slumbering administration has allowed COVID to surge again, has sent the economy on a roller-coaster, has permitted inflation to run riot, and has, just last week, promised to engage in the kind of economic policy that destroyed the U.S. economy in the 1970s — the “Volcker Shock.”

The Democrats represent the left wing of the capitalists. Since the 1930s, they have attempted to fuse the interests of the working classes, the petit-bourgeoisie, and labor unions with those of the big capitalists by dominating the working classes in a collaborationist party, submerging the real interests of the workers beneath the leadership of the left wing of capital. During the Nixon years, the Republicans surrendered the field when it comes to social issues and the Democrats have positioned themselves as the “progressives,” championing working class values in their speeches without ever following through on the real material change they promised, partly for fear that a communistic revolution might rise up inside U.S. borders. Since the U.S. destruction of the Soviet Union, however, the Democrats have seemed singularly uninterested in providing any relief to the working class. They have no more U.S.S.R.-financed revolution to worry about. Clinton and Obama both turned up their noses and turned up the heat on war and incarceration.

One of the ways the Democrats controlled the workers was to corrupt and undermine the labor movement. State-controlled or infiltrated labor unions integrated with Communist-led unions; the CIA worked to purge Communists from union organizing, the second “Red Scare” drove Communists out of the AFL-CIO, and CIA support for a mafia takeover in union organizing eventually corrupted almost all labor and industrial unions in the U.S. These captured, capitalist-friendly (what are called “business” unions by the I.W.W.) unions were tasked with representing the workers demands while ensuring those demands were never voiced too loudly and the workers remained shouting rather than striking.

Since Biden took office, outside groups have joined voices with the AFL-CIO to demand the administration take action. The ruling clique has become so removed from the everyday needs of the working people that even their pet unions have begun to clamor for the barest consideration.

As though finally waking up to the fact that the party has neglected to do anything noteworthy since the defeat of the reactionary Trump clique in 2020, Democrats have put on a blitz of electioneering. Democrats have war-baited like the best Republicans by flying repeatedly to Taiwan, in violation of agreements with the People’s Republic of China, hoping that the threat of looming war will convince voters (and, more importantly, bourgeois donors) to “stay the course.” This latest feeble noise from the Biden White House is part and parcel of a last-minute plan to bring scorned allies on board: the unions.We cannot allow the naked ambition of the Biden clique to fool us. We must reject these scraps, these illusory crumbs. We do not accept the little the capitalists give us. We must take what we are owed — as the man once said, “Our demands most moderate are: we only want the earth.”