AOC and Class Collaboration
Reject the corporate duopoly and fight for the working class
I am here tonight because America has before us a rare and precious opportunity. In Kamala Harris have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class because she is from the middle class. She understands the urgency of rent checks and groceries and prescriptions. She is as committed to our reproductive and civil rights as she is to taking on corporate greed. And she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home. - Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the DNC
The simple fact of the matter is that Kamala Harris is not committed to our reproductive and civil rights. She is not committed to taking on corporate greed. So technically AOC isn’t lying when she says Kamala is as committed to reproductive and civil rights as she is to corporate greed because she is equally uncommitted to all progressive ideals. The part about the ceasefire was a major whopper though. As Crawdads and I explained on our last episode of Crawdads and Taters, Kamala Harris is fully committed to the genocide.
Biden and Harris do not need to work tirelessly for a ceasefire. It would only take a phone call. But Harris has doubled down on this lie on her issues page.
Vice President Harris will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to protect U.S. forces and interests from Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups. Vice President Harris will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and she will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. She and President Biden are working to end the war in Gaza, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination. She and President Biden are working around the clock to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done.
Arming Israel for genocide and working around the clock to get a ceasefire deal done are contradictory statements. Even though Biden and Harris have both met with Netanyahu in person, they have not made the demands that would end the genocide. This puts them to the right of Reagan. As the New York Times described in 1982:
5:10 P.M. (11:10 A.M., New York time) - Mr. Reagan reaches Mr. Begin for 10-minute telephone call. 5:40 P.M. (11:40 A.M., New York time) - Mr. Begin calls President Reagan to say that a ''complete cease-fire'' had been ordered.
This has not happened today and we are coming up on a year of genocide in Gaza. Biden and Harris have put no pressure whatsoever on Israel to end the genocide and have instead continued to give them the weapons they need to continue the mass slaughter. Biden once claimed that a ground invasion of Rafah was a red line, but that was proven to be a lie.
Lying about a ceasefire wasn’t enough for AOC, she wanted to make it clear that she fully supports Harris.
Because if you are a working parent trying to afford rent and childcare, Kamala is for you. If you are a senior who had to go back to work because your retirement didn’t stretch far enough, Kamala is for you. If you’re an immigrant family, just starting your American story, Kamala is for you. - Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the DNC
As a corporate tool, Kamala is not for any of these people. Here is a picture of “an immigrant family, just starting” their American story.
This photo was taken in September 2021, under the Biden/Harris regime. Just a few months earlier, in June, Kamala Harris told immigrants “Do not come.”
If you are an immigrant, Kamala is not for you. As can be seen from the Biden administration’s near record high deportations, according to Migration Policy:
Combining deportations with expulsions and other actions to block migrants without permission to enter the United States, the Biden administration’s nearly 4.4 million repatriations are already more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration (5 million in its second term).
In addition to shilling for Kamala at the DNC, AOC also went on to attack the Green Party Candidate Jill Stein. In this Instagram video, she claimed that Jill Stein has “run for years and year and years in a row” which is easy to debunk considering that Howie Hawkins was the candidate for the Green Party in 2020. Saying that Jill Stein has been the nominee for 12 years in a row was a clear lie. She also calls Jill Stein “not serious” and “predatory.” This is absurd coming from AOC who is supporting a candidate who is currently carrying out a genocide. What is more predatory than that?
Class Collaboration
What AOC is doing is a clear example of class collaboration with capital. She is siding with the ruling class against the working class. The Democrats are a bourgeois party, to support them is to support the interests of the ruling class.
Collaboration of classes is the practice that arises from the theory that the working class and the capitalist class have some common interests that enable them to work peacefully together to the benefit of both. This practice turns out to be, in reality, the surrender of the working class to the capitalist class, and its deliverance to the tender mercies of its enemy. - Earl Browder, The Workers Monthly
To align with the bourgeoisie is to align against the interests of the proletariat. As Marx and Engels explained in the Communist Manifesto, “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” The proletariat must set itself apart from and against the bourgeoisie. There can be no way forward through working with the enemy.
And AOC is not the only one guilty of this class collaboration, many “socialists” and “communists” have decided to align themselves with the ruling class. Bernie Sanders has lost any spine he may have had and is completely aligned with the ruling class, saying of Kamala Harris, “I intend to do everything that I can to see that she wins.” A section of DSA has also jumped on board the class collaboration train with their “Socialism beats fascism” campaign. Angela Davis has come forward in favor of Harris. And CPUSA has continued their policy of tailing the Democratic Party, going so far as to say that Lenin would vote for Harris.
This is pure madness. Lenin never advocated for class collaboration and understood the importance of class independence.
In fact, Lenin harshly criticized the Social Revolutionary and Menshevik leadership for their class collaboration during the build up to the October Revolution. While these leaders argued for class collaboration, Lenin was fighting for class struggle:
Let us assume that the more favorable eventuality is the case. Even so, there is not a shadow of doubt that the promisers will be unable to fulfill their promises. “We shall—in co-operation with the capitalists—help the country out of its crisis, save it from ruin and get it out of the war”—that is what the action of the petty-bourgeois leaders, the Chernovs and Tseretelis, in joining the cabinet really amounts to. Our answer is: Your help is not enough. The crisis has advanced infinitely farther than you imagine only the revolutionary class, by taking revolutionary measures against capital, can save the country—and not our country alone.
Lesser Evilism has Failed
Many people claimed that it was necessary to vote Biden to stop Trump in 2020 and then push him left. Once Biden took power, he moved right. Lesser evilism has always been a failed ideology as Biden has shown. The working class is suffering under Biden’s policies - homelessness and child poverty are up along with the cost of living.
The Democrats have abandoned their opposition to the death penalty and torture in their 2024 platform. Here is what the 2020 platform had to say on torture:
Democrats believe that torture is immoral and ineffective. President Trump's fondness for torture and other war crimes only gives fodder to America's enemies. Democrats will immediately reaffirm the Obama-Biden Administration's ban on torture and commit to upholding American values at home and abroad. We will condemn the mistreatment of imprisoned individuals wherever it occurs, and we will hold to account those who perpetrate human rights abuses.
Here is what the 2024 platform says:
Yes, that’s the sound of crickets. The word “torture” does not appear in the 2024 platform. And now Kamala has been endorsed by so many pro torture Republicans that The Nation put out an article entitled Torturers for Harris. The list includes Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales, two of the worst human rights offenders on the planet. Alberto Gonzales once authored a memo suggesting the Geneva Convention to be out of date when it came to torture. The platform is a largely irrelevant document since Democrats never govern based on it, but nevertheless the removal of opposition to torture is a disturbing move. This is little different from Obama’s dismissal of their use of torture in his famous “We tortured some folks” statement of 2014.
He at least admitted that torture was wrong here in a very dismissive manner, but there’s a reason why the late Glen Ford referred to Obama as the more effective evil.
If you believe that what Wall Street does is Evil, then Obama’s service to Wall Street is Evil, and there is nothing lesser about it. - Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report
And Kamala is the chosen one of Wall Street, just as Obama was. As Trotsky explained, “The question as to which one of them is the ‘lesser evil’ has no sense, for the system we are fighting against needs all these elements.” The capitalist system is the problem and the corporate duopoly is just one aspect of that system. The workers must be united against both parties in a class struggle for revolution.
Thanks, Birrion. Right on the mark as usual. Be well... and, Peace.
I would hardly describe Ms. Harris's upbringing on the mean streets of Montreal as 'middle class'. She descends from privilege. That is not her fault, no one picks their parents, but to obfuscate her background is extremely disingenuous.