Many were relieved at what the media called the “stunning victory” of Democratic Party politician Doug Jones over racist pedophile Roy Moore in Alabama, USA. Black workers, especially black women, made the difference. The main wing of the ruling class is pushing this as a model for the 2018 elections.
However, capitalist elections can’t improve things for us! We need to mobilize for communist revolution to put an end to racism, sexism and exploitation, to have a world where the masses’ needs are met. The rulers use elections to divert angry masses from communist revolution and to divide them. They help the capitalists keep their dictatorship over the masses of workers as they fight among themselves over how best to exploit and control us.
Communist leaders are and will be those who are most committed to mobilizing the masses for communism—in practice. That means building and encouraging others to build communist collectives. Encouraging and developing leaders, not elections, will be part of the daily fight for communism. Today, we need millions of communist leaders to mobilize millions more to fight for communism.
Moore and Jones’s Alabama
Roy Moore, an open racist, said the greatest time in US history was during slavery! He sexually harassed and assaulted teenage girls when he was in his 30’s. Even so, 68% of white voters in Alabama, mobilized by Trump and Bannon, voted for him. This shows the depths of racism there.
As a US attorney in 2001, Doug Jones helped convict two KKKers who had killed four little black girls in a church bombing in 1963. He bragged about this during the election, but the information leading to their conviction had been there all along. In communism, masses will immediately mobilize to prevent and deal with racist terror.
Since the election, Jones has said that he does not support trying to fire Trump over the testimony of the women whom he sexually assaulted. He said that he didn’t need to be seated in the Senate before they voted on the tax bill and that he supports cutting taxes on corporations. He supports increasing defense spending. One percent of the people in the US own as much as 90% of the people in the US, and the tax bill will only increase this inequality. But that’s ok with Jones.
Racism is deeply embedded in capitalism—in Alabama and everywhere. Mass incarceration of every group is part of US capitalist terror. In Alabama, the median household income for whites is below the poverty line, and blacks earn about 60% of what whites make. Alabama is the state with the third highest incarceration rate, and black people are incarcerated at twice their percentage in the state population.
No election or capitalist politician will change this.
The black workers, especially black women, who organized to guarantee that racist Moore was defeated deserve much better! They and all workers deserve a communist world without racist terror, exploitation or sexism.
There’s a lot to learn from the fight of black and white workers in Alabama in the 1930’s, led by black communists from the steel mills, mines and farms. The Communist Party (CPUSA)-led Sharecroppers’ Union fought Jim Crow racism and Ku Klux Klan terror, and combated the slave conditions of convict labor at US Steel. Tragically, the communist party did not mobilize these courageous anti-racist fighters for communism, but instead for a “united front” with supposedly lesser evil capitalists—like Doug Jones. This condemned workers to intensified exploitation, racism and war. Today’s anti-fascist fighters must fight for communism.
Capitalist competition needs racism to super-exploit a section of the working class. Racist terror and mass incarceration attack the most militant section of the working class . Racist ideology justifies all these attacks and divides and weakens our class.
To get rid of racism, we need a world without wage slavery, money, cops or prisons. We need a world where we collectively produce everything to meet our needs as workers, and where everyone is encouraged to develop to our full human potential in communist collectives dedicated to meeting the masses’ needs. We workers deserve no less.
Sharecroppers’ Union, Alabama 1930’s