Election is Over—So Who is the Real Party of the Working Class?

Reposted from Concerted Activity: https://concertedactivity.work/party-of-the-working-class

Just as Joe Biden declared victory in the recent presidential race, the GOP suddenly claimed itself to be the real party of the working class. Right-wingers—from the White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere to Breitbart News—highlighted Donald Trump’s success in winning not just 48% of the popular vote but also the largest share of non-white voters of any Republican since 1960.

Senator Marco Rubio: “The future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial working class coalition,” reacting to the election results.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley Tweeted: “[…]the future is clear: we must be a working class party, not a Wall Street party.”

Truth is, none of us had really seen any future for the working class under either party’s leadership—be it with the Wall Street (Democratic) Party or the Main Street (Republican) Party. Conditions have plummeted for all workers both before—and after—Trump.

During this pandemic, mass unemployment has climbed up to higher than it’s been since the recession of 2008. Millions are unable to pay their rent. Many lost their health care when they lost their jobs. 200,000—especially Black and Brown working people—died from COVID-19. There’s job insecurity, rising costs of living and widening wealth inequality.

In wake of the current crises, the two ruling-class parties no doubt had to step up their game. But instead of addressing public atrocities, each party co-opted the notion of “working class”—to lull us to sleep.

Republicans, on the one hand, encouraged different groups of workers to rise up and point fingers at other groups as the culprit—the reason for their misery. “Working class” conveniently serves as a tool to pacify the mass grievances by fanning nationalist dignity and racist sentiments within a subset of workers, often defined by race.

This tactic already allowed Trump to tap into inter-ethnic divisions in the past 4 years, pitting citizens against immigrants, and everyone against Blacks. They flamed the xenophobia and competition that the system had already created among groups, lying and spreading rumors to generate more hatred among us.

Democrats, on the other hand, lean into progressive sloganism to “represent all Americans”, where the “working class” became only one among many identities. They then smugly promoted prioritizing the interests of other groups of more marginalized races, genders, etc, while using it as a cover to suppress real calls for change. In the past election, they indulged in vilifying White Trump supporters as, according to CNN’s self-righteous news headline, “once again showing who they are” for being racist and uneducated.

By contrast, they hailed Black voters for their loyalty in pushing for a Biden win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia. They denounced Latinx voters for losing Texas and Florida. Albeit with a different tactic, the Democrats achieved the same effect as the Republicans of compartmentalizing interests among the 99% —to intensify  their capitalist extractions from every group, particularly people of color. As we became preoccupied with fretting about each of our own privileges, the Dems are able to deepen our infighting under the “all American” banner.

Here we are, in corporate America, baffled by having two parties both claiming to represent the working class, yet, both scheming to further divide the working class. If we allow ourselves to get caught in this limbo, we surrender to bipartisan interests to exploit all of us, regardless of race or immigration status.

But who is the real working class? 

Many working people say that we all have different interests, and that an analysis centered on “class” is outdated and meaningless. Some will say that middle-class workers benefit from the exploitation of immigrants—nannies, gardeners, home health aides. Tech workers, drivers, artists say they are not workers, but independent contractors, self-employed. Unionized workers say immigrant workers can’t be organized, because they’re “lucky to be here”, or better off here than where they came from. Unemployed workers and prisoners (who aren’t paid to work) say they’re not workers because they don’t have a job. 

No doubt there are specific differences among workers, but are they significant enough to keep our fights separate? In fact, both parties spread the myth of limited resources—scarce jobs and public moneys—that say, well, you all will have to fight among yourselves to get. Despite our different situations, we all still have to work to have a place to live, eat, and support our families. We all are being robbed by this system that enriches the big corporations and investors with the labor that we produce—whether what they’ve stolen is our pay, our time, our health, our public resources, or our communities.

The entire year of 2020 only goes to show that many of us are in the same boat—losing ground and struggling to make ends meet. Let’s not forget that during the largest health catastrophe, Democrats and Republicans bridged their divide in passing the CARES Act, sending a significant portion of the hundreds of billions to benefit millionaires and large corporations. Since April, the stock market has skyrocketed. Tax breaks for millionaires will cost taxpayers an estimated $90 billion this year alone.

Where did all that money come from? Us. What we often forget is that it’s us, working people, who produce the profits and the wealth that the system depends on—whether we are middle-class, immigrant, unionized, or unemployed workers. And we, in fact, have the power—if we also bridge our divides—to take back the wealth stolen from us. 

The 2020 Election result was undeniably a win for the working class—not because of Biden’s half-hearted promises to unite all Americans—but because of our successful mobilization and repudiation of Trump’s blatantly racist mantras, which widened the cleavages within the working class—especially with his criminalization of Blacks and immigrants. As a class, we boldly claim our victory: we used Biden’s opportunist unseating of Trump to successfully dispose one of the two ruling-class parties. That is, we used the nominal contradictions between the two parties—one vows to embrace everyone, and the other vows to cast down certain groups—to advance our mass interests. 

If we truly want our own “party of the working class,” our immediate task is to restore our shattered mass base politically. Do the next 4 years not serve as a good opportunity? Without Trump—the perfect villain who galvanized the Democrats—Biden can no longer depend on anyone in the White House to serve as his foil. Instead, with his own Party of Wall Street having a long history with tech businesses and elite corporations, Biden’s rosy promise of representing “all Americans” is doomed to fall apart… We must be ready to organize, hold him accountable, and prepare to take him down once he fails us.

This is how we will lay our groundwork. We bring together working people around demands that both benefit all of us and enable us to organize together with equal rights—starting with the eliminating the criminalization of Blacks and immigrants. These demands serve not only to build unity, but also to lay bare the true nature of our system. They enable workers to see why we need to come together now to push for more than what is deemed politically feasible.