By: Victor Wallis
Louis Proyect expresses surprise at several of the signatures, including mine, that are affixed to the “Dump Trump, then Battle Biden” open letter.
Speaking just for myself, I share his surprise, and I also share his disgust at the figure of Joe Biden. I surprised myself, because the position of advocating a lesser-evil vote – not for myself in Massachusetts, but for those in “battleground” states – is one that I would not ordinarily take. But this is not an ordinary moment, and the allowance for this kind of exception finds strong precedents, including in the strategic thinking of Marx.
Discussing the January 1849 elections to the Prussian Constituent Assembly, Marx distinguished between the movement’s electoral tactics and its longer-range organizing: “Where it is a struggle against the existing government [the Prussian monarchy], we ally ourselves even with our enemies.… Now, after the election, we again affirm our old relentless standpoint not only against the government but also against the official opposition.”[1]
The “existing government” in 1849 Prussia corresponds to the prospective regime that can be anticipated in the event of Trump’s continuation in power. The choice, in other words, is not just between two sets of policies or personalities; it’s between two different regimes.
The Trump-led coup d’état is already in process, with his sabotage of the Postal Service, his equivocation about accepting the electoral outcome (implying that the election will not be “fair” if all votes are counted), and his portrayal of the Democrats as embodying a scenario of disorder and the specter of socialism.
At this point, no one knows what the outcome will be, but the consummation of the coup could take various forms, including Republican state legislatures declaring DP majorities in their respective states null & void, and then installing an alternate slate of Electors, and/or seeing an inconclusive Electoral College outcome thrown into the House of Representatives, where, under the 12th Amendment to the US Constitution, each state, regardless of its population-size, would have only a single vote (which would give the Republicans a majority).
The surest defense against such scenarios is an overwhelming Electoral College victory for the Democrats.
We live in a period of emergency. I don’t need to underline here what a second Trump term would bring (“off the charts,” in the words of the Open Letter). I have no illusions about Biden; that’s why we say that he will have to be resisted from the get-go. I also realize that the fascist forces embodied by Trump will not disappear. But the space for continuing our work – of not only resisting the policies of capital, but also building toward a socialist alternative – will be significantly less constricted if Trump can be pushed out of the way.
[1] Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 18 Feb. 1849 (Marx’s emphasis); see full discussion in Chapter 8 of my book Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); original version in Socialism and Democracy. vol. 24, no. 3 (2010).
Victor Wallis is the author of Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Political Animal Press, 2018), Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S. Politics (Africa World Press, 2019), and Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). www.victorwallis.com
Images: Philly SAVE OUR POSTAL SERVICE Rally. Photo by Joe Piette (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the printing house of the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” (newspaper published in Cologne at the time of the Revolution of 1848–1849). Painting by E. Capiro.
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This is so surprisingly naive to believe that putting Trump down somehow advances the fight against the capital.
Guys,
Wall Street is behind the Democrats 80% – all donation for Biden meant deals they made. Not with Trump!
The Big Tech mega-billionaires are 100% behind the Democrats ! Exactly the guys who doubled their fortunes during the dubious China-virus!
The Big Media is behind the Democrats (CNN, ABC,NBC,Bloomberg, MSNBC, BBC, NYT , WaPo) – and even Fox partially shifted against Trump
Even the Big Government & military corporations + the globalist republicans like Romney and Bush s neocons supported the Dems and not Trump – the first president NOT to start a new war
I believe you are too much fixed into your ideology to see that Trump delivered for the middle class (lowering bureaucracy and taxes for the little guy as well, plus commercial treatises getting back jobs for poor peopleand also protecting poor people in America from mass migration taking their jobs because the Dems want to signal virtues on their back.