"ON DECORATION DAY" Caption: "You bet I'm goin' to be a soldier, too, like my Uncle David, when I grow up." Cartoon by John T. McCutcheon
Today is Memorial Day in the United States. This is a holiday to remember the US troops who have died in war. It is often used to glorify war. During his speech on Memorial Day 2021, President Biden said:
And so we have and so we do again today, in our time, where the children of sacrifice made by a long line of American servicemembers, each a link in that chain of honor. We live by the light of the flame of liberty they kept burning. We’re free because they were brave.
Honor, liberty, freedom, bravery. These are all nice words, but they are also all pure propaganda. There is no honor is dying for US imperialism. These deaths have been for naught, the US remains a corporate oligarchy that will sacrifice the working class for profit. Over one million have died from COVID-19 due primarily to an inadequate government response. In Cuba, there have been 8,529 deaths reported with 1.1 million cases. The death rate is 752 deaths per million people. The United States has a death rate of 3,000 deaths per million. This death rate is four times that of Cuba. If the US had a similar rate to that of Cuba, it could have saved 750,000 lives. Cuba has administered enough vaccines to cover 160% of the population with a double dose. The US has given enough vaccines to cover 89% of the population with a double dose. And this is all under US sanctions and embargoes. Yet somehow we are being told that socialism doesn’t work.
Did these people die for freedom? No, they died for capitalism. Are workers being forced to work at minimum wage and still not be able to afford basic necessities free? Not at all. Like war deaths, COVID deaths were preventable but the ruling class would rather the working class die than their profit making machines be left idle.
It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again. People working from home can feel safe to begin to return to the office.
We’re doing that here in the federal government. The vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.
Our schools are open. Let’s keep it that way. Our kids need to be in school.
And with 75% of adult Americans fully vaccinated and hospitalizations down by 77%, most Americans can remove their masks, return to work, stay in the classroom, and move forward safely. - President Joe Biden, State of the Union, March 1, 2022
The US is still recording 330+ deaths per day from COVID-19. This is what “safe to return to the office” looks like.
Getting back to Biden’s Memorial Day speech - since his speech this year will no doubt be similar, I want to comment on a few other statements he made.
Democracy is more than a form of government. It’s a way of being; it’s a way of seeing the world. Democracy means the rule of the people — the rule of the people. Not the rule of monarchs, not the rule of the moneyed, not the rule of the mighty — literally, the rule of the people.
The US is not a democracy. We don’t need a major study to know this, but UCLA Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern Professor Benjamin Page released one in 2014 showing that the US is an oligarchy. Engels and Marx simply put it:
The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto
Biden continued:
And generation after generation of American heroes have signed up to be part of the fight because they understand the truth that lives in every American heart: that liberation, opportunity, justice are far more likely to come to pass in a democracy than an autocracy.
This is all well and good, true democracy would support the people. But Biden does not support democracy, he is a tool of the oligarchy. Autocracy is fine as long as it benefits the US empire. Biden’s actions do not match his words. He claimed he would make Saudi Arabia a pariah during a debate in 2019.
“I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them. We were going to in fact make them pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.” - Joe Biden, November 20, 2019
Of course, President Biden has acted very differently from candidate Biden. Two years after the debate in November 2020, Biden approved a $650 million dollar weapon sale to Saudi Arabia.
“This proposed sale will support US foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political and economic progress in the Middle East.” - Pentagon statement on the weapons sale
The main benefactor from this weapons sale was Raytheon. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III formerly sat on the board of Raytheon. When it comes to opposing autocratic regimes, the drive for capitalist profit overcomes the promise to back democracy and human rights. Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen has created the world’s worse humanitarian crisis and they murdered and hacked up US reporter Jamal Khashoggi, but there are profits to be made so these matters can be ignored.
Massacre during Colorado Coal Strike at Ludlow, Colorado / Drawn by John Sloan
On this Memorial Day, we should remember the working class heroes who died to fight capitalism in all of its forms. Here are just a few of them:
Anna LoPizzo - Italian immigrant striker, murdered during the Lawrence Textile strike.
Fannie Sellins - Labor organizer, murdered by police during a strike
Joe Hill - IWW organizer, song writer, framed for murder and killed by the state
Ella May Wiggins - Union organizer and song writer, murdered by the state
Malcolm X - Black rights activist and anti-imperialist, murdered in collusion with the state.
Martin Luther King Jr. - Civil rights and labor activist, murdered by the state.
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark - Black Panther organizers, openly assassinated by the state
Che Guevara - assassinated by the CIA.
Jaime Roldós of Ecuador - President of Ecuador, murdered by the US in defense of corporate interests.
Omar Torrijos of Panama - President of Panama, murdered by the US in defense of corporate interests.
Salvador Allende - President of Chile, murdered in a US backed coup.
Over 50 black women killed by police since 2015.
The list could go on and on. There is so much blood on the hands of the US imperialists. Over 1 million North Vietnamese and Vietcong fighters. Over 2 million civilians in Vietnam. Over 1 million dead in Iraq. Between 37 and 59 million refugees created by US wars since 2001. Over 377,000 dead in Yemen. Several thousand dead in “Operation Just Cause” in Panama. Three thousand eight hundred trade unionists murdered in Colombia between 1986 and 2002. Countless dead in pursuit of profit.
As Marx put it, capital comes into the world “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” This Memorial day, we should recognize and remember the countless victims of capitalism rather than glorifying war and US imperialism. The class struggle continues and until the working class wins, we will continue to see countless dead from the ravages of the capitalist system.