The 2024 Presidential election is underway in the United States. As is the custom and tradition, every four years the American working class are treated by the bourgeois to another clownish sideshow of debates, political rallies, & advertisements. On social media the masses are bombarded with quippy or alarmist reels & shorts, and all are encouraged to share in the collective narcissism of opinion exchange & debate, joining the chorus of moronic self assured experts and political pundits. This election cycle as the masses choose Democrat or Republican, to turn on CNN or Fox, to eat their Big Mac or Whoppers, to enjoy their Pepsi or Coke, or get drunk from their Coors or Budweiser, we ignore the bourgeois call to exercise our god given right to freedom of choice. Instead, we only call upon the workers to dispose of your ballots into the closest trash can, as we always have.

As the bourgeois pour an unlimited amount of money into the election circus, hundreds of millions of dollars in perverted propaganda is forced upon the public to tell us that to save the nation is to save ourselves and to do that we must “Vote or Die”. This famous slogan of the, selftitled, bipartisan electoral activist campaign fronted by Sean P. Diddy Combs, now forever lives on in infamy as the debauched hiphop mogul and cultural representative of the American bourgeois, is charged with innumerable sexual crimes following a similar exposé of bourgeois insider and sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein. As the Caligula like depravity of the representatives of American bourgeois is increasingly exposed year after year, and the edifice of American imperial hegemony continues its sharp decline, each passing election cycle only confirms the total moral degeneration, incoherence and senility of the entire putrefying bourgeois order.

While the bourgeois, their schools and their media would like us to believe that in this demented ritual known as “elections” we are provided a mirror of the will of “American People” as reflected by the number of votes earned by the candidates, the truth is that this democratic system long ago eliminated any independent working class political expression, fully establishing a two party class dictatorship following the class upheavals at the conclusion of the American Civil War. Within this rotting capitalist civilization there is only democracy for the capitalist class, who selects which Party’s political program it will adopt for the next four years, through a grotesque system of “voting with their dollars” which is nothing other than a competitive propaganda war waged against the proletariat.

Between January 2023 and April 2024, US political campaigns collected around $8.6 billion for the 2024 House, Senate, and presidential elections. Both parties enjoy more or less equal monetary support from the banks & the financial sector, the medical industry, and real estate; however, the Republicans tend to receive more support from the traditional and long established production and extraction industries; whereas the Democrats receive more support from tech, Hollywood, the middle class lawyers, civil servants, the nonprofit industrial complex and elements of the labor aristocracy in the unions.

In 2023-24 Republicans received 92.8% of the financial contributions from the mining industry, 88.3% from the oil and gas industry, 85.1% from Trucking, 81.5% from home builders, building materials 81.2%, automotive 76.0%, steel production 71.8%, poultry and eggs 95.2%, dairy 69.9%, crop production 67.1%, livestock 68.2%, chemicals 68.3%, Sea Transport 65.2%. In 202324 Democrats of all donations received from Electronics Manufacturing & Equipment 64%, 86.7% of the TV/movie industries donations, of all unions 93% of donations, education (universities and schools) 91%, internet companies 85.2%, publishing companies 84.4%, nonprofits 80%, lawyers 78.9%, civil servants 76.4%.

The competing economic interests of the bourgeois shape the basis of the chasms that exist between the Democrats and Republicans in their policy positions; however, both parties have historically played a crucial “bad cop” and “good cop” role in disciplining the American proletariat. In a general sense, the Democrats have tended to represent the interests of the petitbourgeois and the middle classes. While today they attempt to espouse the classical liberal bourgeois rhetoric and pose as a historically progressive force, in the not too distant past they were the party of Manifest Destiny and Black Slavery, then of Jim Crow segregationists and the white labor aristocracy. Today we are supposed to believe they are the champions of the oppressed (just forget about their sending of aircraft carriers to guarantee the free slaughter of tens of thousands of proletarians in Palestine) pitched against a regressive conservative right wing which allegedly seeks to establish a Mussolini style dictatorship.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are a party which has always primarily represented the interests of industrial capital. In this election cycle the Republicans have begun to flirt with the labor aristocracy and attempted to win the unions to its side. The first ever invitation of a union president, Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters, to speak at the Republican National Convention alongside Trump’s visits to UAW picketlines earlier this year, were unprecedented events; however, demonstrating the shallow nature of the Republican’s attempts to win over labor, Trump, in a recent interview with fellow capitalist Elon Musk, expressed his support of breaking with established labor law and firing striking workers.

The Republicans’ current experiment in appealing to workers is based on the old recipe of appealing to white workers fear of immigrants stealing American jobs in order to win the labor aristocracy to the side of industrial capital. This has so far failed, as the Teamsters announced that they would not support either of the bourgeois Party’s this election. Regardless of the reasons, this break with the two bourgeois parties by one of the largest unions in the country represents a significant moment in the history of the working class which is today finding a newly combative footing amid a mass strike wave that continues to grow across the country and the world. While we put no premium of significance on popular opinions, even bourgeois sources show that public approval rates for unions have grow astronomically to 70% in recent decades, while support for the bourgeois parties and government is in constant decline. This is merely an indication of the shifting tides within American society where unions and strikes are increasingly seen as the realm to deliver material gains for workers as the false promises of economic recovery for the working class by the bourgeois parties continue fall flat.

As such, the Republicans (and by extension, the Democrats) opt to propagandize “cultural” critiques of society, reducing the deepening economic crisis into a narrowly conceived moralistic degeneration that appeals to the reactionary traditional sentiments of the petty bourgeoisie. For instance: amid the global recession that followed the 2020 pandemic a socalled “labor shortage” emerged, as workers began taking up strike action and refusing to work for low wages, the bourgeois screamed,“no one wants to work”. In response the Federal Reserve organized an attack on the working class by raising interest rates, creating wide scale unemployment to reduce workers bargaining power. Likewise, the mass migration to the southern national border which is a result of the imperialist domination of the global South, conveniently becomes the source of American’s losing jobs, the opioid crisis, crime and homelessness; portraying desperate workers in search of employment to be only criminals bringing social blight upon the nation and thereby absolving any responsibility on behalf of the international bourgeoisie.

The Republican Party, offers a border policy which will never completely cut off immigration but instead works to create a section of highly exploited labor constantly in fear of deportation. The national capital has little interest in completely drying up it’s reserve army of labor, merely using its state apparatus to crush them into total submission. The Republican Party’s policy is intended to act as the hammer against the most exploited workers: the immigrants, indigenous peoples, poor Black workers, women and gender nonconfirming; while the Democrats act as the velvet glove that keep the workers in place for the next firing round by offering false promises of upward mobility for a select few minorities to the ranks of the labor aristocracy and middle classes.

While as a result of the growing accumulation crisis within the capitalist economy, the industrial interests are increasingly at odds with elements of liberal democracy and the middle classes who defend it; the two capitalist parties, the collective capitalist class, have always found unity in the patriotic work of beating the American and international working class into submission. Be it from the use of its marines and aircraft carriers or its police, prisons and border walls; nothing will ever change the nature of these two blood drenched social machines of hypocrisy and war which sacrifices all that is sane and beautiful in the world on the monstrous altar of capitalist imperialism.

Regarding the particular issues confronting the bourgeois in this election, the most important is Trump’s proposal of a national tariff of 1020% on almost all imported goods, with much higher tariffs proposed on China. The tariff benefits the domestic manufacturing and extraction industries in the United States, as it helps keep out foreign imports of finished goods and raw materials. Thus it eliminates competition and keeps the domestic market captured by the national industrial capital. From the Biden administrations successful passage of the CHIPS act to this tariff, the US capitalist class is in a mad rush to reestablish its industrial base, in preparation for the next interimperialist war; however, while Trump claims it as a method of developing U.S. industrial production capacity, its ability to actually effect significant growth of the U.S. industrial bases at this point in history is highly questionable as are the other policies recently passed by the bourgeois; despite this, by hamstringing foreign competition it will enable a further attack on the living standard of the US workers by allowing US companies to jack up prices on consumer goods unabated.

The implementation of a national tariff is a major trade policy shift away from the free market policies of the bourgeois in the postwar era. It is a return to the old mercantilist trade policies which predominated the world in the preWorld War era and has always been an essential policy of developing capitalism’s which sought to cultivate their own industrial centers through protectionism. The tariff builds on Trumps “trade wars” which despite his claimed “isolationist” foreign policy allegedly aimed at preventing “world war three”, sets the stage for future imperialist conflict by escalating the respective national capitals competition over raw resource markets escalating tensions with U.S. imperialism’s primary enemy China.

Democrats have branded the tariff a national sales tax which will result in increased costs for each household up to $4,000 a year. Many of the financial interests also feel it will increase inflation. The Democrats currently favor retaining cheap imports from China, while focusing the forces of U.S. imperialism on the in Ukraine with Russia. Trump on the other hand has stated that he would immediately bring about a negotiated resolution to the conflict. Trump’s position on Ukraine is a primary cause of one of the now three alleged assassination attempts against him in the course of the election. During his presidency Trump was constantly at odds with his generals and fired many. It seems his position on Ukraine is out of line with the established consensus doctrine within the U.S. military bureaucracies.

The Democrats under Kamala Harris have made halfhearted calls for price controls to restrict price gouging which has led to inflation. As usual, the Democratic campaign has once again made more empty promises to raise taxes on big businesses and Americans making $400,000 a year; whereas, the Republicans propose a number of tax cuts worth trillions. Harris’s “opportunity economy” attempts to appeal to petitbourgeoisie, by offering competitive relief in their struggle against the big capitalists through various tax breaks and start up capital incentives. Under capitalism, competition is a precondition of monopoly and vice versa; there is no idealistic “small capitalism” that does not eventually result in, or dissolve from, monopolization. Her pie in the sky, plan for the “opportunity economy” offers nothing to the working masses, who themselves struggle against both the petty bourgeois and the big bourgeoisie. It is easy for the Democrats to adopt empty nationalist union rhetoric like “When unions are strong, America is strong”, but when the serious, actual power of a strike like the railroad strike of 2022 was brought to the point of materializing, they destroyed it by necessity, collaborating with the business union bureaucracy to effectively disarm the working class of their strongest economic weapon.

Yet, despite all this, we see posturing between the two bourgeois parties– both claiming to represent the workers and accusing the other of being the “real enemy” of labor– even though the emancipation of the working class is simply impossible through the very system that enslaves it. At their logical conclusions, these parties can only “develop” to the point of the aforementioned consolidation, realizing fascistic or socialdemocratic forms. Thereby achieving temporary national bourgeois political unity and openly subordinating the working class for the interest of the national economic interest. Such was the strategy of the ruling classes in the period of crisis leading up to the second World War with the emergence of European fascism, Stalinism, and FDR social democracy.

The Republicans’ disproportionate backing by the traditional landed industrial interests compared to the liberal middle classes which forms a large part of the Democrats base, explains how the increasing polarization and hostile partisanship between the two bourgeois parties has emerged amid an increasingly unhealthy capitalism facing a profit accumulation crisis which forces the big bourgeois to eat up the middle classes and labor aristocracy to retain its rate of profit accumulation. As a result the two bourgeois parties find themselves increasingly unable to come to agreement on many key issues, including the federal budget on a recurring basis.

In this election cycle Trump continues to diverge from the norm in American bourgeois politics by openly threatening use of the military and legal system to take retribution against political rivals within the bourgeois while also alluding to the possibility of establishing himself as an unelected head of state. In response, the Democrats have again taken up an anti fascist rhetoric in a campaign to “save democracy”. Many Republicans have openly discussed the possibility that Trump’s election may be the last presidential election in the United States amid more comments referring to a possible civil war should Trump not be elected. In light of the events of the January 6th “insurrection” where a disorganized mob of a few thousand Trump supporters stormed the Capital, as well as the subsequent failed legal prosecution by the Democrats, Trump has certainly become a martyr to his base which is composed of a large section of declassed petitbourgeois and lumpen elements who see the liberal order as needing replaced by an authoritarian leader imbued with special powers.

While Trump’s own comments and those of other Republicans indicate that the idea of shedding the democratic veneer to the bourgeois regime is certainly being considered by many within the ruling class, Trump himself in this election cycle has made contradictory comments about his own ambitions this election. His chaotic leadership style, unpopularity within many in the military and the general division among the bourgeois amid the absence of a true existential threat to their class order in the immediate future, make it highly unlikely for their class to consolidate itself around Trump at this time. The presence of a strong and defiant Democratic Party means that it would be very difficult for Republican’s to establish a thoroughgoing one Party state. Regardless of whether or not Donald Trump himself strives to become a full blown dictator in the immediate future, it does not deter from the long established world wide march of the bourgeois states towards increasingly authoritarian and fascistic methods.

As Marx poetically noted, “The structure of the economic elements of society remains untouched by the storm clouds of the political sky”; the stage of development of economic production is always, in the last instance, the deciding factor of a nation’s actions, and individuals are only but a living conduit of their corresponding class force. As long as the capitalist mode of production prevails, it can only provide capitalist forms of political expression in its system.

Heading into this upcoming election we are faced with other inevitable crises on the horizon: the next great war of the most developed bourgeois nations continuously encroaches, the rising price of goods and the ability for the masses to replenish their natural needs is becoming harder and harder to obtain, and the looming natural disaster brought about by capitalist overproduction is largely unaddressed.

Imperial tensions in Europe and the middleeast are reaching deadly peaks, with bourgeois wars ravaging innocent working masses through the guise of national “selfdetermination” on all sides. In America, many are horrified by the inevitable results of such wars and are confused by their own country’s role in the devastation; some protesting in the streets with proclamations of pacifism and “general” democratic freedoms yet again. Only now, the protests are happening under Democratic Party rule which has promised to continue making the American military the “most lethal force in the world”, despite also hypocritically claiming to be an alternative to Trump’s “violent” demagoguery.

We are reminded, as was established in the Third Communist International, there is no “general democracy” that is above class; it is always firstly a tool of the ruling class and shaped around its protection. Who is elected will make little if any serious difference in the everyday life of working class Americans, because in the end, American workers are presented with one choice with two faces: Capital and Capital will elect which ever candidate best suits it’s interests regardless.

The only path forward towards emancipation for the proletariat is to continuously organize ourselves along the class lines of our economic reality as workers and to struggle against capitalism and all of its expressions(including it’s bourgeois parliamentarianism), not relying on “democratic” tyranny to “free us” from itself; for if there are “stormclouds” forming, they are not the clouds of bourgeois electoralism, but the impending final confrontation of the two warring classes engaged in a protracted battle for the fate of history.

It is only through the victory of the proletariat directed by the historical organ of the working class, The International Communist Party, that the irreconcilable contradictions between labor and capital can finally be put to rest; by destroying the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie and realizing new systems of proletariat dictatorship, thus eliminating class society once and for all.