I don’t much enjoy writing on elections and electoral politics. The election this coming Tuesday however is existential to an extent unseen in the history of representative “democracy.” This is unlike, rest assured, previous elections which were deemed to be the most important of our lifetimes by corporate media. The left and all people of good faith who can vote in the US presidential election must deliver a loss to the current president and send this malignancy walking. Astonishing this needs to be said, from someone not from the boomer generation, and I feel exasperated as I write this. 

A substantial swath of the well-intentioned public, indeed including an immodest section of left-thinking individuals and groups mostly but not limited to the US, unfortunately appear to be unable to see the urgent necessity to get the malignancy out of power. Even if it weren’t for this unprecedented period in human history, given the imminent and increasing dual threats of climate change and nuclear weapons to decent species survival over this next century (which will ultimately depend on decisions made over the next two decades), we’d still have the simple duty, in the midst of a pandemic unseen in a century, of ridding ourselves of impending fascism. A kind of fascism which the likes of Hitler and Mussolini could only dream of, as those figures had nothing near the power to wage instantaneous hot and cold wars globally, the ability to dominate without opposition the world’s financial system through the global reserve currency and sheer military might, the predilection to block any substantial moves internationally to mitigate the climate catastrophe as well as the insane capacity to end life on earth in an instant with a tiny fraction of its nuclear arsenal. 

These are urgent questions which have transcended political administrations, parties, decades and generations, and no doubt will continue to. Due to those dual threats now coming to fruition, these questions have never been near this urgent. Constructively confronting these questions and overcoming them, which should be the left’s task, would always have taken years and decades, indeed generations. They can only be confronted though through day to day activism and the engagement of larger and larger sections of the public. We’ve seen how siloed movements over the past 50 years in particular, have, despite their notable, worthy and crucial achievements, offered as a final tally only a scattering of resistance. A scattering of resistance to “neo-liberal” corporate capitalism at the expense of working populations and its prevailing orthodoxies in media and the educational systems. If groups and movements lack the capacity or the will to deal effectively with all the interrelated crises, then in the end it is due in large part to their inability or unwillingness to involve and engage larger, much larger sections of the public, for the sake of maintaining and perpetuating their own internal power, their own posturing and their own access to revenue streams and connections to media/political parties. 

On the negative side of the balance sheet, one of the defining features of human life is our seemingly bottomless capacity at self-deceit, illusion and passing the buck onto others, in our personal lives as well as in society. The so-called “choices” we are given in this election, two candidates brought forth by machine-oriented political organizations dominated by unaccountable private investor interests, are clearly a reflection of where power lies in society. But let’s face it for once. How many on the left, whatever the extent of their engagement may be, are owning up to the fact that these “choices” are, in the end, in no small part the inevitable result of our own inability to educate, be educated and help to organize working populations? Is it the fault of mainstream politicians and parties? Corporate leaders? A bankrupt intellectual and liberal class? Schools and religious institutions and the courts? Yes, all of the above, and then some. But how about putting the onus correctly on ourselves first due to our own crucial participation in producing the current situation. Did we expect so- called “leaders” in any of those heirarchically dominated and undemocratic institutions to take care of things for us? How often do you give a task to another if you want it done a certain way? Why then should we entertain for a moment the placing of trust in political parties and individuals (indeed even organizations on the left which opportunistically operate on the basis of perpetuating their own power to the detriment of gaining more influence in society among the working classes) to do right by the public, especially when they are dominated by private interests whose power lies in the deficit of the working public’s power? Corporate and coordinator dominated parties, indeed state and private power is felt – correctly so – to be light years away from our working lives and untouchable. This is a direct result of our seemingly staunch refusal to organize among the disengaged working classes. The prodigious vacuum left behind is happily filled by the most retrograde forces of the right, trailed inevitably behind in this ever –right marching context by a pathetic inauthentic opposition party which is 40 years into its abandonment of the working class (to the extent it ever had represented the class).

Constructively taking on power in society, which has been done before, will require not only unprecedented organization at this point in history but some kind of broad front in order to avert climate disaster, nuclear catastrophe, imminent overt authoritarianism as well as mitigating right now the immense cost of present and future pandemics. In the here and now the most vulnerable to the crises are not only the poor and working poor in the US and global north but to a much greater extent their counterparts in the global south, already reeling from untold decades of US aggression, the hollowing out of their economies through international lending bodies firmly in the hands of primarily the US investor class and climate change. Thanks to movements over the last 50 years, attitudes  and consciousness among the population has greatly risen, however power structures, existing institutions, while not left immune, have largely continued to go on functioning within the status quo. Resolving any of the existential crises we currently face will require a fundamental shift in the functioning of these institutions. To do that the left will have to exert pressure like it never has before on existing power, in governments and the corporate/banking sectors, which will in turn require mass movements with greater numbers, engagement and vision with which we have previously seen. 

To achieve this, one of the crucial acts to begin with will be to take the few minutes break from our educating and organizational activities to remove from power what amounts to, given the historical moment of unprecedented crises and the unparalleled power the US holds, the greatest criminal in human history, who is at the political head of the most criminal and menacing organization in history – the Republican so-called “party.” The current president is, as is clear and understood by most, a cancer born out of a cancerous socio-poltical-economic system for which the Democrats are of course a substantial part of. As is also clearly understood, removing the malignancy will not come near to solving our existential questions. It is an insufficient yet necessary – and effortless act.
By failing to recognize the urgent need to remove this cancer next week the left, like an individual refusing to recognize his or her responsibility in the failing of a relationship, will have engaged in the extraordinary human capacity to illude itself of his own responsibility for finding itself in the circumstances it is already in. It will have demonstrated that it has engaged in, ironically, one of the most astonishing and imbecile forms of identity politics that one could imagine – identifying yourself and your political being with a party you used for 2 minutes to prevent an incalculably worse catastrophe from occuring. (Perhaps even more astonishing on the last point is the inability to notice that one can’t really be involved in much real work to improve conditions for working people if you’re identifying yourself and others with the 2 minutes taken on a strategic vote to prevent the worst, and are probably more interested in “purity”, a likely outgrowth itself of an identity crisis.) The left will have also ironically displayed its plunge into the depths of the acceptance of the meaning of politics as elections and nothing else. This liberal class/managerial class profoundly demobilizing conception of politics is what the left had always seemed to avoid for the most part until recently, when it began siloing itself even further by occupying itself with talk of “lesser evilism” – not realizing that that this talk is in itself yet another form of encroaching cancerous and specious identity formations which could only exist when this left is unengaged with real activity among its own working populations. To have adopted a liberal conception of politics through one’s actual disengagement with real politics – regular non dogmatic, non sectarian education and organization in class solidarity – while pretending to be more radical than thou is an irony beyond my ability to describe. To say this is disheartening is a great understatement as it seems to me to define a not unsubstantial section of the left. 

Any sober look at the current situation will tell you that the poltical-economic status quo is not only unsustainable but will only be fundamentally altered with the forging of new bonds both within current groups and movements on the ground and electorally but also within the broad disengaged population. This will require new committment, probably new strategies and more, much more numbers. The crises facing us are also not contained within nation-states, therefore neither can the battles waged against them. The left has to regain and build upon this understanding and work –now- to strengthen existing international ties while building up promising recent developments, such as the Progressive International and if in Europe, diem25. 

The calcification of political power – a mirror to the concentration of economic power in fewer and fewer hands – defines the current state of electoral power thanks in huge part to the absence of a popular left front. Thus the choices next week, neither good, one utterly and completely catastrophic. Unfortunately it is a truism that in this real context of enormous power systems mostly unresponsive in recent decades to popular opinion, small differences can and will make for huge discrepancies in outcomes. Take the Iraq war with its millions in the middle east killed or displaced, or tax cuts transferring trillions to the elite at the expense of working people. In the situation confronting us, a Biden administration can in real terms be more susceptible to reenergized popular movements than any other in the last 50 years. A second Trump administration will be immune to it to put it mildly, with authoritarian consequences the likes of which never never been seen. All this may pale in comparison alongside the fact that the next 4 years will be the most crucial in history with regards to decisions made at high levels on the climate crisis. The left will simply have a better playing field with which to work if Trump and the Republicans are out of the executive branch. Supposing the left can finally walk and chew gum at the same time, this will entail an understanding that the same party – which can right now be engaged to keep out the most disastrous possibilities of the far right – will also eventually need to be at least radically altered or dismantled all together along with many other political and economic institutions over the coming years in order to stave off disaster for humanity. This is especially true of the US political system but also of its counterparts all over the world. 

The Rand corporation, no leftists by any stretch, have recently calculated that in the so-called “neoliberal era” of the last 40 years, 47 trillion dollars have been transferred from the population to the top percentiles. Surely with the immeasurable effects this has had on societies the broad left can take advantage of all it has in common, which it in fact does on most crucial questions, progress on these with new momentum and put aside petty notions of mistaking common sense electoral tactics with an ideology. Tactics like preventing the worst from happening in incalculably destructive power systems. The vote is a defense mechanism, not an ideology or identity. 

The left needs to work on bringing way more numbers into engagement. Asking working people what their concerns are. Asking for instance how we can gain a public health care system which actually adheres to scientific warnings and prepares for pandemics, putting public health ahead of private profit(a worldwide question, even here in Europe where public health, while immensely better positioned than that of the US, was still woefully unprepared due to its capture by the inherent logic of the market). Relating to those same people the depth of the crises we face, while together putting together and providing realistic and very necessary visions for a fundamentally more equitable and just society which is gained through concrete steps we can all understand and relate to. More, much more democracy in the workplace and in communities, lessening the distance between ourselves and power structures far off in capitals of states, nations and economic centers. New conceptions of the commons and corresponding proposals for all kinds of public ownership, with concrete examples given in the real world, which do exist. Decisions transferred to the working population from governments and financial institutions. Some form of a green new deal which terminates fossil fuel use and provides the basis for dignified work in publicly and worker managed and owned sectors. An understanding that military expenditure comes at the cost of not only such proposals but democracy and peace the world over as well as sustainable solutions to the ecological disaster. 

We will be in a dire position to engage aggressively on all these issues with the Trump malignancy in power another 4 years, with unimaginable consequences for the climate and future generations in the coming years. The left will in that case continue to be in solely a defensive position, a grievous yet defining feature of it in the last 50 years, at exactly the moment it must be poised to go on the offensive given the unprecedented moment we’re in, a moment we’ve played a critical role in manifesting but can still turn around. 

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