Democrats and Republicans -- One, Two-Headed, Oligarchic, Ruling-Class Apparatus:

[Hel_Books]

Hel_Books said:
'. . . non-MAGA Republicans . . . the usual politicians, muddling along . . .'

Trump is reckless; MAGA is a right-wing variant. But portraying non-MAGA politicians as defenders of workers is to ignore shared class policies: bank bailouts, imperial ventures, union busting, austerity and more.

The institutional continuity -- intelligence, military, finance, judiciary -- they all ensure that changes in the regime do no more than shuffle managerial personnel while preserving capitalist rule.

It's politically disingenuous to try to claim that MAGA is bad, but what can you do about it because the rest of the politicians are also bad. There is a difference!

 

[Holy_Seduction]

It's politically disingenuous to try to claim that MAGA is bad, but what can you do about it because the rest of the politicians are also bad. There is a difference!

United States political spectacle [which in recent years includes all our politics] depicts two antagonists.

The material reality is that the US has one ruling class which utilizes two managerial instruments to operate as a political division of labor to defend its property and prerogatives. Dialogue begins with that recognition.

I’ve said already that the Democratic Party’s role is to administer consent, channel and neutralize resistance, and preserve the social legitimacy of capitalism. That happens while the Republican Party’s role is to enforce naked rule by force, austerity and open plunder. Both serve the same class interests. That is not a matter of debate; that is a material reality, as I said. Pointing out these things is not ‘disingenuous.’ This is the necessary result of drawing up a political balance sheet. Far from defeatism [the usual claim], this is truth-telling.

Moreover, this isn’t my doing. The ruling class ITSELF has revealed its own character.

The exposure of Epstein’s web of elite protection plus the Supreme Court tariff ruling illuminate this unity: the scandals show how bipartisan institutions and networks protect oligarchic privilege [and how factions of the ruling order fight over methods] administrative containment versus personalist plunder—NOT over the preservation of capitalist rule itself. The files show the bipartisan milieu of the oligarchy and media containment operations while the Supreme Court ruling shows that despite deep divisions, the ruling class [and indeed, the Court itself!] defend property relations nonetheless!

So before handing out assertions of ‘disingenuous’ like candy, consider that this isn’t my doing. I’m simply point out the implications of a public record that is only too well known. I didn’t do this. They did. And again, unless or until this recognition is forthcoming, any dialogue on public affairs is for that reason, seriously hindered.

On the scourge of ‘lesser-evilism.’

For all the Republican Party vileness, brazen illegality and anti-constitutionalism, the Democratic Party is the capitalist class’s most dangerous political instrument because it neutralizes struggle by deception. The Democratic Party is no mere ‘lesser evil;’ it is a more effective obstructionist to working-class emancipation.

By posing as allies the Democrats disarm, fragment and exhaust movements. To repeat myself [it seems appropriate since it isn't being addressed] the Republican assault is usually more brutal and immediate; yet Democrat-led containment is more corrosive and enduring.

 

[ishtat]

I am blase about capitalism because it's dying. Nothing anyone here can do will delay its end or extend it. Some ruling class wannabes try to revive socialism. That's deader than capitalism. Whatever evolves to replace both is some distance ahead. We approach it at the usual speed of historic change.

Capitalism is not dead in China and Asia. Crony Capitalism in the west, applied by all parties is killing economies by eliminating competition (through selective tariffs or subsidies for examples.)

 

[Hel_Books]

Hel_Books said:
It's politically disingenuous to try to claim that MAGA is bad, but what can you do about it because the rest of the politicians are also bad. There is a difference!

the Republican assault is usually more brutal and immediate; yet Democrat-led containment is more corrosive and enduring.

This is so bogus. All you're doing is complaining that "politicians in the USA are bad."

First of all, this isn't entirely true. I'm sure you can pick a few people you're glad are in office, or that you wish to have elected.

Second, everyone complains. It's easy and gives you a warm, cozy feeling, like farting after a good dinner. But so what? What do you suggest people do? Storm the capitol like MAGA did on 6 January? Vote Democratic Socialist? You don't say, so your entire post, though long, is quite vacuous.

 

[Lazaran]

Left-wing accelerationists helped elect Donald Trump in 2024. Their hope was that if he inflicted enough pain on middle America it would trigger a Communist revolution. It didn’t work. All they did was trash their own brand and prove they’re unreliable allies against the fascists.

Susan Sarandon said it out loud in 2016-2017:

Search Assist

Susan Sarandon suggested that Donald Trump's election could lead to a quicker revolution, believing it might awaken political engagement among the populace. However, many critics argue that such upheaval often results in suffering, particularly for marginalized groups.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/ip3/www.nbcnews.com.ico NBC Newshttps://external-content.duckduckgo.com/ip3/theoutline.com.ico theoutline.com



WE. TOLD. THEM. SO.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

Capitalism is not dead in China and Asia. Crony Capitalism in the west, applied by all parties is killing economies by eliminating competition (through selective tariffs or subsidies for examples.)

Capitalism is what it is everywhere, namely, a system that subordinates human need to private accumulation. The 'variety' of masks disguise the same, underlying historical dead-end found everywhere. The working class must act on that reality—internationally and politically—if we are to escape the twin threats of economic collapse and imperialist war.

How can tariffs, subsidies and state industrial policy in Asia be remedies when they reproduce oligarchy, inequality and export dependence instead of end crises in profitability?

If “crony capitalism” alone explains collapse, why do economies with other political forms still tend tendency toward financialization, shrinking real investment and mounting public debt?

When governments in other states use military force and extra-legal repression to secure markets and debt servicing, that shows that the crisis is systemic and international. This means it requires an international working-class response.

 

[Chernosoth]

Capitalism is not dead in China and Asia.

Capitalism requires economic growth, which China doesn't have anymore, and probably won't have for a long time. With the inertia of its huge population, transitioning to something else will take some time, with or without the nation collapsing and becoming a failed state. The future looks brighter for the other nations of southeast Asia, so capitalism could last longer there.

 

[ll74]

Capitalism requires economic growth, which China doesn't have anymore, and probably won't have for a long time. With the inertia of its huge population, transitioning to something else will take some time, with or without the nation collapsing and becoming a failed state. The future looks brighter for the other nations of southeast Asia, so capitalism could last longer there.

China has a 5% GDP growth in 2025.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

This is so bogus. All you're doing is complaining that "politicians in the USA are bad."

First of all, this isn't entirely true. I'm sure you can pick a few people you're glad are in office, or that you wish to have elected.

Second, everyone complains. It's easy and gives you a warm, cozy feeling, like farting after a good dinner. But so what? What do you suggest people do? Storm the capitol like MAGA did on 6 January? Vote Democratic Socialist? You don't say, so your entire post, though long, is quite vacuous.

First, political critique isn’t complaining, and refusal to engage the real question behind my post – that both parties serve Capital – are [on both grounds] false and less than honest. A real reply would locate the difference in class interest and propose independent, working-class politics – not flippantly dismiss the point with moralizing.

The reply is dishonest in two ways: it falsely reduces a political critique to mere “complaining,” and it refuses to engage the real, material question behind the original point — that both parties serve capitalist interests, but do so by different means and with different consequences for the working class. A genuine response would locate the difference in class interest and propose independent working-class politics, not flippant dismissal or moralizing.

When I say that the Republican assault is usually more brutal and immediate while Democrat-led containment is more corrosive and enduring, that is not a generic, moral complaint. That is a political judgement about tactics and effects reflected by an empirical pattern.

Republicans typically DO pursue overt, rapid attacks [privatization, open union-busting, punitive welfare cuts, culture-war mobilization and the like]. Democrats often govern by incorporation, managerial reforms and slow restructuring, hollowing out working-class institutions to create long-term dependence on bourgeois politics.

In class terms, the pattern tracks how the capitalist state and its factions function. One wing uses shock and overt coercion; the other uses incorporation, legal-administrative reform and promises of reform to neutralize and contain dissent. Both serve capitalist property relations. This is exactly the point Marxists make when we distinguish forms of bourgeois rule and party strategy.

Lenin warned about reducing politics to trade-unionist or economistic arguments. He stressed the need to educate and politicize the working class beyond immediate economic grievances; critique without strategy is incomplete, but throwing away analysis because it does not instantly prescribe a single tactic is irresponsible.

Capitalism requires shock AND stability. When markets are threatened or elites need to discipline labor, right-wing, punitive methods are used. When long-term reordering of social relations or privatized management is needed, bourgeois liberal parties implement the necessary restructuring while maintaining social peace.

Trade-union bureaucracies and the Democratic Party tie workers politically to bargains and institutional channels that neutralize radicalization. Repeated Democratic capitulations [welfare reform, outsourcing, financial bailouts that favor capital] corrode working-class confidence and organization.

Brutal attacks from the right provoke sharp, immediate responses, building anger and resolve to fight like 1776. Slow, managerial, ‘lesser-evil’ erosion under Democrats immobilizes the proletariat, and prepares its defeat in long wars of attrition as union bureaucracies demobilize and destroy worker cohesion in corporate interests.

Workers fight at the crack of the Republican whip; but they quail when ingesting the Democratic poison.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

First, political critique isn’t complaining, and refusal to engage the real question behind my post – that both parties serve Capital – are [on both grounds] false and less than honest. A real reply would locate the difference in class interest and propose independent, working-class politics – not flippantly dismiss the point with moralizing.

The reply is dishonest in two ways: it falsely reduces a political critique to mere “complaining,” and it refuses to engage the real, material question behind the original point — that both parties serve capitalist interests, but do so by different means and with different consequences for the working class. A genuine response would locate the difference in class interest and propose independent working-class politics, not flippant dismissal or moralizing.

When I say that the Republican assault is usually more brutal and immediate while Democrat-led containment is more corrosive and enduring, that is not a generic, moral complaint. That is a political judgement about tactics and effects reflected by an empirical pattern.

Republicans typically DO pursue overt, rapid attacks [privatization, open union-busting, punitive welfare cuts, culture-war mobilization and the like]. Democrats often govern by incorporation, managerial reforms and slow restructuring, hollowing out working-class institutions to create long-term dependence on bourgeois politics.

In class terms, the pattern tracks how the capitalist state and its factions function. One wing uses shock and overt coercion; the other uses incorporation, legal-administrative reform and promises of reform to neutralize and contain dissent. Both serve capitalist property relations. This is exactly the point Marxists make when we distinguish forms of bourgeois rule and party strategy.

Lenin warned about reducing politics to trade-unionist or economistic arguments. He stressed the need to educate and politicize the working class beyond immediate economic grievances; critique without strategy is incomplete, but throwing away analysis because it does not instantly prescribe a single tactic is irresponsible.

Capitalism requires shock AND stability. When markets are threatened or elites need to discipline labor, right-wing, punitive methods are used. When long-term reordering of social relations or privatized management is needed, bourgeois liberal parties implement the necessary restructuring while maintaining social peace.

Trade-union bureaucracies and the Democratic Party tie workers politically to bargains and institutional channels that neutralize radicalization. Repeated Democratic capitulations [welfare reform, outsourcing, financial bailouts that favor capital] corrode working-class confidence and organization.

Brutal attacks from the right provoke sharp, immediate responses, building anger and resolve to fight like 1776. Slow, managerial, ‘lesser-evil’ erosion under Democrats immobilizes the proletariat, and prepares its defeat in long wars of attrition as union bureaucracies demobilize and destroy worker cohesion in corporate interests.

Workers fight at the crack of the Republican whip; but they quail when ingesting the Democratic poison.

The white working class in the United States elected Donald Trump. Any Marxist critique that avoids grappling with that reality is pure fantasy and can never achieve electoral success or economic justice.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

The white working class in the United States elected Donald Trump. Any Marxist critique that avoids grappling with that reality is pure fantasy and can never achieve electoral success or economic justice.

‘The white working class elected Donald Trump.’

That is a politically inadequate assertion with a kernel of truth.

A revolutionary Marxist response will go beyond a surface demographic claim. It will instead analyze the class forces, historical social processes and political channels that produced Trumpism. Lacking that deeper, material analysis, no effective strategy for proletarian independence or socialist transformation will be forthcoming.

What BSG gets right: the material basis of Trumpism

The real social-material backdrop to Trump’s rise must include long-term economic decline for broad layers of the working class, deindustrialization, precarious employment, the hollowing out of social services, and the collapse of mass labor politics. Such objective changes created resentment, fear and political fluidity among sections of the white working class, especially in key industrial regions.

Capitalism’s crisis produced the political terrain that spawned this demagogic, nationalist alternative.

Politics displays material interests, and the success of Trumpism expresses capitalist restructuring and the failure of labor and the left to provide an independent political voice for workers.

The petty-bourgeois pseudo-left and trade-union bureaucracy both play a role, disorienting, isolating and diverting the working class from revolutionary perspectives.

What is false or misleading about the claim

Voting follows no undifferentiated ‘white working class' monolith. It oversimplifies who actually voted Trump to overlook or to ignore that voting is structured by class, race, geography and levels of political organization.

Significant numbers of middle-class, small-business and affluent white voters [plus a layer of disgruntled petite bourgeois elements] were crucial to Trump’s coalition. Treating the white working class as a single actor masks this heterogeneity and misattributes responsibility and agency. The problem with that?

Instead of locating the cause of this electoral turn in capitalist relations and political institutions, it radicalizes and individualizes the problem. Therein lies the rub! Racism and nativist ideology were mobilized by right-wing forces precisely because they are effective tools for dividing the working class and redirecting anger away from the real enemy — the capitalist class and its political administrators.

That formulation ignores the role of the Democratic Party, trade-union bureaucracy and the pseudo-left tendencies in demobilizing, containing or co-opting working-class anger through managerial, parliamentary and identity-based forms of politics. That long-term ‘containment’ strategy of bourgeois liberalism create da political vacuum and the right exploited it.

Rosa Luxemburg’s insistence on the unity of political and economic struggle is instructive here: mass political questions cannot be separated from trade-union and workplace organization; the fragmentation of these terrains aids the ruling class in neutralizing resistance see Luxemburg on union-party unity.

Notwithstanding BSG’s graphic attempting to situate Marxists as aiding the fascistic right, it is by pursuing its own interests over and against proletarian interests that the petty bourgeoisie itself precipitated this disaster!

Why Marxists must grapple with the reality — and how

The petty bourgeoisie [Democratic Party] faction must begin analyzing material causes rather than blaming others for their self-inflicted woes.

They would do well to learn how capitalist restructuring, financialization and austerity produced the conditions for right-wing demagogy. They should study local labor markets, union density, social-service erosion and the role of employers and media in shaping political consciousness.

The absence of this impetus is why it falls to Marxists to expose the political role of the pseudo-left and liberal containment. If socialists don’t demonstrate how identity-only politics, electoral accommodation to the Democrats, and ‘lesser-evil’ strategies leave workers politically homeless and fragmented — WHO WILL?!?!

Under such conditions, the decisive, political task is to rebuild class structure, to reconnect the most militant layers of the working class through rank-and-file committees in workplaces, cross-industry coordination, and political education that links immediate struggles to the need for socialist transformation.

Under such conditions, political leadership is breaking the program of dead-end nationalism: Trump’s appeal to xenophobia must be answered decisively. Every last nationalist diversion must be repudiated by insistence on International Working-Class Solidarity: workers have no country! Only world socialism can end the mechanisms that pit workers against each other.

Immediate revolutionary tasks

Rejecting both Republican brutality and Democratic containment, the proletariat must build independent political organization, and organize rank-and-file committees in every workplace. There, they must defend jobs, wages and democratic rights, and act as the embryo of workers’ power, while waging political struggle against nationalism and its ugly stepsister, racism, exposing them both as instruments of class rule.

Political education and organization are not abstractions. They are the concrete means to wrest control from the capitalist class and its political retainers — whether or not a Congress or Parliament is ever formed.

In the absence of any permanent, education program from the longest standing Party in United States history is all the reason and more that socialists need to cast the vision and put it in place. The hour is late. No one who stands for law, equity, truth, justice — indeed, even the premise of human decency — can wait.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

‘The white working class elected Donald Trump.’

That is a politically inadequate assertion with a kernel of truth.

A revolutionary Marxist response will go beyond a surface demographic claim. It will instead analyze the class forces, historical social processes and political channels that produced Trumpism. Lacking that deeper, material analysis, no effective strategy for proletarian independence or socialist transformation will be forthcoming.

What BSG gets right: the material basis of Trumpism

The real social-material backdrop to Trump’s rise must include long-term economic decline for broad layers of the working class, deindustrialization, precarious employment, the hollowing out of social services, and the collapse of mass labor politics. Such objective changes created resentment, fear and political fluidity among sections of the white working class, especially in key industrial regions.

Capitalism’s crisis produced the political terrain that spawned this demagogic, nationalist alternative.

Politics displays material interests, and the success of Trumpism expresses capitalist restructuring and the failure of labor and the left to provide an independent political voice for workers.

The petty-bourgeois pseudo-left and trade-union bureaucracy both play a role, disorienting, isolating and diverting the working class from revolutionary perspectives.

What is false or misleading about the claim

Voting follows no undifferentiated ‘white working class' monolith. It oversimplifies who actually voted Trump to overlook or to ignore that voting is structured by class, race, geography and levels of political organization.

Significant numbers of middle-class, small-business and affluent white voters [plus a layer of disgruntled petite bourgeois elements] were crucial to Trump’s coalition. Treating the white working class as a single actor masks this heterogeneity and misattributes responsibility and agency. The problem with that?

Instead of locating the cause of this electoral turn in capitalist relations and political institutions, it radicalizes and individualizes the problem. Therein lies the rub! Racism and nativist ideology were mobilized by right-wing forces precisely because they are effective tools for dividing the working class and redirecting anger away from the real enemy — the capitalist class and its political administrators.

That formulation ignores the role of the Democratic Party, trade-union bureaucracy and the pseudo-left tendencies in demobilizing, containing or co-opting working-class anger through managerial, parliamentary and identity-based forms of politics. That long-term ‘containment’ strategy of bourgeois liberalism create da political vacuum and the right exploited it.

Rosa Luxemburg’s insistence on the unity of political and economic struggle is instructive here: mass political questions cannot be separated from trade-union and workplace organization; the fragmentation of these terrains aids the ruling class in neutralizing resistance see Luxemburg on union-party unity.

Notwithstanding BSG’s graphic attempting to situate Marxists as aiding the fascistic right, it is by pursuing its own interests over and against proletarian interests that the petty bourgeoisie itself precipitated this disaster!

Why Marxists must grapple with the reality — and how

The petty bourgeoisie [Democratic Party] faction must begin analyzing material causes rather than blaming others for their self-inflicted woes.

They would do well to learn how capitalist restructuring, financialization and austerity produced the conditions for right-wing demagogy. They should study local labor markets, union density, social-service erosion and the role of employers and media in shaping political consciousness.

The absence of this impetus is why it falls to Marxists to expose the political role of the pseudo-left and liberal containment. If socialists don’t demonstrate how identity-only politics, electoral accommodation to the Democrats, and ‘lesser-evil’ strategies leave workers politically homeless and fragmented — WHO WILL?!?!

Under such conditions, the decisive, political task is to rebuild class structure, to reconnect the most militant layers of the working class through rank-and-file committees in workplaces, cross-industry coordination, and political education that links immediate struggles to the need for socialist transformation.

Under such conditions, political leadership is breaking the program of dead-end nationalism: Trump’s appeal to xenophobia must be answered decisively. Every last nationalist diversion must be repudiated by insistence on International Working-Class Solidarity: workers have no country! Only world socialism can end the mechanisms that pit workers against each other.

Immediate revolutionary tasks

Rejecting both Republican brutality and Democratic containment, the proletariat must build independent political organization, and organize rank-and-file committees in every workplace. There, they must defend jobs, wages and democratic rights, and act as the embryo of workers’ power, while waging political struggle against nationalism and its ugly stepsister, racism, exposing them both as instruments of class rule.

Political education and organization are not abstractions. They are the concrete means to wrest control from the capitalist class and its political retainers — whether or not a Congress or Parliament is ever formed.

In the absence of any permanent, education program from the longest standing Party in United States history is all the reason and more that socialists need to cast the vision and put it in place. The hour is late. No one who stands for law, equity, truth, justice — indeed, even the premise of human decency — can wait.

But the Marxists aren’t “organizing rank and file workers committees”. All they’re doing is sniping from the sidelines at liberals while helping the fascists take control. They’re untrustworthy allies in the fight for economic and social justice which is why they’re ignored.

 

[briancamdudetenger2018]

to me in my opinion usa politics since 2016 has been complex

 

[Hel_Books]

Hel_Books said:
This is so bogus. All you're doing is complaining that "politicians in the USA are bad."

First of all, this isn't entirely true. I'm sure you can pick a few people you're glad are in office, or that you wish to have elected.

Second, everyone complains. It's easy and gives you a warm, cozy feeling, like farting after a good dinner. But so what? What do you suggest people do? Storm the capitol like MAGA did on 6 January? Vote Democratic Socialist? You don't say, so your entire post, though long, is quite vacuous.

First, political critique isn’t complaining, and refusal to engage the real question behind my post – that both parties serve Capital – are [on both grounds] false and less than honest. A real reply would locate the difference in class interest and propose independent, working-class politics – not flippantly dismiss the point with moralizing.

The reply is dishonest in two ways: it falsely reduces a political critique to mere “complaining,” and it refuses to engage the real, material question behind the original point — that both parties serve capitalist interests, but do so by different means and with different consequences for the working class.

You complain a bit too much that I'm pointing out that you're just complaining!

OK, so you've dug up a fancy word so you can call your complaining a "critique," but that just is camouflage for you not actually saying what you think ought to be done. Yes, you say "Democrats do this" and "Republicans do that" etc. etc. etc. But what do you suggest citizens do?

 

[DraggonStone]

The parties were equally corrupt until Dickhead Donald came along and rigged anything he could get his filthy little hands on.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

But the Marxists aren’t “organizing rank and file workers committees”. All they’re doing is sniping from the sidelines at liberals while helping the fascists take control. They’re untrustworthy allies in the fight for economic and social justice which is why they’re ignored.

‘But the Marxists aren’t “organizing rank and file workers committees.”’

Revolutionary Marxists are the SOLE political force building rank-and-file committees [RFCs], and organizing the independent working-class response to both fascism and capitalist austerity. I serve as Secretary for one such RFC.

Contrary to your other claim, it is Democrats and the pseudo-left upon whom the working class must not rely.

The Democratic Party and NGOs, liberal activists, and pseudo-left sections in its orbit are not labor allies.

Their social role is managerial. They ‘labor’ to contain, discipline and channel popular unrest into institutions and electoral forms that preserve capitalist property relations. Their affiliated union bureaucracies also act as a corporate labor police force and ‘protect business climate,’ while enforcing no‑strike clauses and bargaining concessions that stabilize profits.

This is not supposition. This concerns petty bourgeoisie class interest, and socialists have been writing on it for decades. Democratic containment and bureaucratic collaboration produce demobilization, atomization and political dependency among workers. It’s been so for far, far too long.

Since PATCO [the 80s], trade‑union bureaucracy and liberal apparatus have integrated into state and corporate structures. The result is that even while posing as defenders of workers, they in fact defend ‘stability’ and the capitalist rule that works against them. Yet you marvel at the lack of worker support?! Where is your support?!

1981, PATCO air traffic controllers: GOP mass firings were enabled by the refusal of Democratic‑aligned institutions to defend independent worker action. That was a turning point in labor vulnerability.

2018–2019, Teacher uprisings and mass teacher strikes posed a real challenge. National union bureaucracies and Democratic politics contained and limited actions. Local victories were often undercut by settlements and bureaucratic control, by NEA and AFT interventions and injunctions.

2022–2025, Large nurse and hospital worker actions repeatedly faced bureaucratic settlements and managerial containment. National labor politics prioritized negotiated settlements over rank‑and‑file escalation.

2021–2024, UAW and auto sector battles: As RFC rebellions erupted, union bureaucracies worked lengthy deals and political accommodation enabling layoffs and concessions, undercutting mass worker resistance.

2025–2026, San Francisco teachers/Kaiser nurses coordinated actions: Where local militancy produced results, the union apparatus and Democratic officials intervened to settle strikes for paltry gains, demonstrating this recurring pattern of containment and betrayal.

Two days ago [02/23/26], the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals abruptly shut down the month-long strike by 31,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii. There was not the slightest semblance of democratic discussion. There was no new contract. There was not even a tentative agreement. The UNAC/UHCP bureaucracy claimed ‘significant movement at the bargaining table’ and ordered workers back on the job. That underscores the need of a workers’ rebellion against union bosses and both parties. But workers and Marxists are unreliable? Where is YOUR support!

These and many other cases that can be named evidence a political pattern: if workers move independently, bureaucrats and Democrats either block, contain or sell out the struggle to preserve capitalist stability.

The lesson to be absorbed is that unless workers organize independently, the mass potential of the working class will be systematically neutralized. ALWAYS. That is why Marxists ARE creating RFCs.

‘They’re untrustworthy allies . . .’

The petty‑bourgeois, ‘pseudo‑left’ Democratic Party and the union bureaucracies in its orbit abandon workers continually. Why? Because their social function is to manage capitalism, not to lead a proletarian offensive.

As for ‘untrustworthy allies?’ Neither of these applies to the Democratic Party for two, crucial reasons.

• The Democratic Party is an implacable class enemy of proletarians.
• The Democratic Party cannot ‘break’ trust, because we don't believe it in the first place!

But this isn’t the first time you’ve raised that ‘untrustworthy allies claim. Is it. Earlier, I assumed that was so much petty bourgeoisie chutzpah. But seemingly, you actually believe that. So, it’s you who needs reeducation.

Back to school. Consider studying the timeline before making reply to it.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

not actually saying what you think

Dear Hel_Books:

If you can't see the call for worker resistance, class struggle, and new organizational forms to defeat capitalism running through my posts, I'm afraid I can't help you. I have no desire to pummel you. Go and have some fun irritating nasty little Republicans. Don't punch above your weight category.

Take care and be well, Hel_Books.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

‘But the Marxists aren’t “organizing rank and file workers committees.”’

Revolutionary Marxists are the SOLE political force building rank-and-file committees [RFCs], and organizing the independent working-class response to both fascism and capitalist austerity. I serve as Secretary for one such RFC.

Contrary to your other claim, it is Democrats and the pseudo-left upon whom the working class must not rely.

The Democratic Party and NGOs, liberal activists, and pseudo-left sections in its orbit are not labor allies.

Their social role is managerial. They ‘labor’ to contain, discipline and channel popular unrest into institutions and electoral forms that preserve capitalist property relations. Their affiliated union bureaucracies also act as a corporate labor police force and ‘protect business climate,’ while enforcing no‑strike clauses and bargaining concessions that stabilize profits.

This is not supposition. This concerns petty bourgeoisie class interest, and socialists have been writing on it for decades. Democratic containment and bureaucratic collaboration produce demobilization, atomization and political dependency among workers. It’s been so for far, far too long.

Since PATCO [the 80s], trade‑union bureaucracy and liberal apparatus have integrated into state and corporate structures. The result is that even while posing as defenders of workers, they in fact defend ‘stability’ and the capitalist rule that works against them. Yet you marvel at the lack of worker support?! Where is your support?!

1981, PATCO air traffic controllers: GOP mass firings were enabled by the refusal of Democratic‑aligned institutions to defend independent worker action. That was a turning point in labor vulnerability.

2018–2019, Teacher uprisings and mass teacher strikes posed a real challenge. National union bureaucracies and Democratic politics contained and limited actions. Local victories were often undercut by settlements and bureaucratic control, by NEA and AFT interventions and injunctions.

2022–2025, Large nurse and hospital worker actions repeatedly faced bureaucratic settlements and managerial containment. National labor politics prioritized negotiated settlements over rank‑and‑file escalation.

2021–2024, UAW and auto sector battles: As RFC rebellions erupted, union bureaucracies worked lengthy deals and political accommodation enabling layoffs and concessions, undercutting mass worker resistance.

2025–2026, San Francisco teachers/Kaiser nurses coordinated actions: Where local militancy produced results, the union apparatus and Democratic officials intervened to settle strikes for paltry gains, demonstrating this recurring pattern of containment and betrayal.

Two days ago [02/23/26], the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals abruptly shut down the month-long strike by 31,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii. There was not the slightest semblance of democratic discussion. There was no new contract. There was not even a tentative agreement. The UNAC/UHCP bureaucracy claimed ‘significant movement at the bargaining table’ and ordered workers back on the job. That underscores the need of a workers’ rebellion against union bosses and both parties. But workers and Marxists are unreliable? Where is YOUR support!

These and many other cases that can be named evidence a political pattern: if workers move independently, bureaucrats and Democrats either block, contain or sell out the struggle to preserve capitalist stability.

The lesson to be absorbed is that unless workers organize independently, the mass potential of the working class will be systematically neutralized. ALWAYS. That is why Marxists ARE creating RFCs.

‘They’re untrustworthy allies . . .’

The petty‑bourgeois, ‘pseudo‑left’ Democratic Party and the union bureaucracies in its orbit abandon workers continually. Why? Because their social function is to manage capitalism, not to lead a proletarian offensive.

As for ‘untrustworthy allies?’ Neither of these applies to the Democratic Party for two, crucial reasons.

• The Democratic Party is an implacable class enemy of proletarians.
• The Democratic Party cannot ‘break’ trust, because we don't believe it in the first place!

But this isn’t the first time you’ve raised that ‘untrustworthy allies claim. Is it. Earlier, I assumed that was so much petty bourgeoisie chutzpah. But seemingly, you actually believe that. So, it’s you who needs reeducation.

Back to school. Consider studying the timeline before making reply to it.
View attachment 2598680

Last summer, I was out in the streets of LA protecting my neighbors from ICE. What have your rank and file committees done?

 

[latecomer91364]

Last summer, I was out in the streets of LA protecting my neighbors from ICE. What have your rank and file committees done?

I seriously doubt that, mostly because you reveal yourself to be a lying cunt, time after time.

Yeah, you were on L.A. streets fighting ICE.

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!

 

[Chernosoth]

Marxists are notorious for joining nonpolitical groups and organizations and dragging them into politics, with zero concern for the groups' original purposes. They practiced entryism. They consistently failed to gain any support for Marxism, but entryism has still spread across the political spectrum and all over the internet.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

I seriously doubt that, mostly because you reveal yourself to be a lying cunt, time after time.

Yeah, you were on L.A. streets fighting ICE.

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!

I wasn’t “fighting” ICE. When the raids started last summer I was on my neighborhood watch as an observer. ICE has gotten much more erratic and violent since then.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

Last summer, I was out in the streets of LA protecting my neighbors from ICE. What have your rank and file committees done?

Socialist Equality Party interventions take form not as electoral support for, but against bourgeois parties, in direct work to politicize, radicalize and organize the working class in workplaces, schools and industries, to defend worker safety and democratic rights, and to expose the union bureaucracies and the Democratic Party in their role of containing and betraying worker struggle. It is through our RFCs that our interventions occur.

We intervened in Teacher rank‑and‑file initiatives and supported the 2018–2019 uprisings. We intervened politically in the teachers’ strikes that erupted in Chicago, Oakland and other cities, organizing independently of the union apparatus. We promoted democratic strikes through rank‑and‑file methods that include a broader working‑class strategy. Our efforts include the political education needed to prevent containment by the NEA and AFT bureaucracies and other organizations in the Democratic Party orbit.

We intervened in wildcat strikes for pandemic workplace safety: In 2020, the SEP led and popularized the program for workplace safety, calling for plant shutdowns where necessary and supporting wildcat actions when union bureaucracies [predictably] refused to protect workers.

The Socialist Equality Party actively intervened in auto sector rank‑and‑file rebellions, supported challenges to the UAW apparatus, and advocated independent factory committees, politically backing militant candidates and shop‑floor militants as the means to break the bureaucracy’s hold. We backed a Trotskyist for UAW President. We are doing so again. The SDA section of the Democratic Party has slandered him already.

We formed an international alliance of our committees in continuity with SEP interventions. If a strike begins in a US plant, we inform workers for that corporation in Germany, Japan, Sri Lanka, etc.’ They refuse to add shifts and up production. That prohibits Corporate from sabotaging a strike in the US. Strikes are supposed to hurt.

The short reply to ‘what have your RFCs done’ is, we intervene in all the places that Democrats won’t.

As Democrats wept that ‘he’s too strong’ and insist, ‘we can’t,’ the SEP with no representation in Congress, organizes the political defense of democratic rights against state repression and fascism. Democrats can’t, but we train militants for political action. When bourgeoisie parties incapacitate workers in crucial moments, we show independent organization as the sole effective alternative. We intervene to politicize and organize responses to threats of authoritarianism, to link protests against police and ICE violence. With Trump’s ascent, we now add the threat of a presidential dictatorship to the need of independent working‑class organization.

When in his first term, Trump Goons™ started kidnapping lawfully protesting Democrats on the west coast, we demanded his immediate removal. Did Democrats support that? When Biden was put in office, we demanded that ICE be dismantled. Did Democrats support that? Or did they scoff? You know. The SEP called for a general strike and elaborated in practical terms how to form RFCs, strike councils, legal and strike-fund infrastructure, and prioritized economic choke points as the sole force able to end paramilitary repression.

Did you support that?

Whether you cede your role in the present disaster or not, it is the refusal of YOUR faction to admit any truly efficacious measures which allows this state of affairs to continue.

At every turn, the Democratic Party validates repeatedly the Socialist Equality Party insistence on political independence from bourgeois parties and the necessity of building working‑class organs of power! And we will continue to expose the Democratic Party and pseudo left betrayals, and explore the most effective ways of doing so without alienating workers. We connect the struggle against fascism with Democratic betrayals of worker struggles, which disillusions workers and points them to consider fascism in the first place.

 

[Wilson23]

The American party system is NOT one two-headed oligarchic ruling class apparatus.

However, it IS a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater.

 

[Pavlovsdog6862]

The Epstein files expose far more than the depravity of individuals. They illuminate the organic unity of a ruling class whose political expression takes the form of two parties that are adversaries in spectacle but allies in substance. This clarification is required because of this recent post:

View attachment 2597085

The Republican and Democratic parties are not rival social forces representing distinct class interests. They are two intersecting factions of a single capitalist ruling class, alternately deployed to manage consent, suppress revolt and secure the conditions for private accumulation that neither could impose alone.

View attachment 2597081
Far from a conspiratorial aside, this is a structural fact of capitalist political rule, laid bare by the Epstein revelations.

Epstein – bipartisan social integration at the highest levels.

Epstein files show intimate social and fiscal ties binding figures across the partisan divide. From Trump to Clinton, from corporate financiers to university elites, the traffic moves in the same social spaces as exchanges, favors and influence happened with impunity. Epstein’s circle included presidents, former presidents, billionaire financiers, and Silicon Valley titans. Lead figures of BOTH parties united in their own, elite social universe. The partisan theater [Republican fury, Democratic moralizing] operates while class solidarity binds patrons, donors and officials behind closed doors.

Policy convergence on class rule fundamentals.

Both parties have overseen the same transfer of wealth to finance, the same deindustrialization and the same assault on labor power—through bailouts, deregulation, union-busting and militarized foreign policy. Democrats and Republicans alike share responsibility for financialization, for gutting of social programs and for constructing a surveillance and prison state—measures that protect capital and punish labor from both sides of the aisle. The result is a political duopoly whose differences are managerial and rhetorical, NOT STRUCTURAL.

Institutional interdependence and mutual and bipartisan reinforcement.

Party, state, intelligence, law enforcement and corporate power—form a unified apparatus. The Epstein case shows how legal institutions are marshalled to shield elite clients, how intelligence and legal exemptions are used selectively, and how congressional theatrics substitute for prosecution while protecting key interests. Whether deployed by Republican administrations or Democratic ones, the state’s coercive instruments serve the shared goal of reproducing the SAME, capitalist relations, disciplining dissent and guaranteeing capital’s priorities.

Bipartisan social function and ideological division.

Cultural battles [identity skirmishes, culture-war polarization and ‘lesser-evil’ politics] channel working-class anger into electoral dead ends. It is no accident that the partisan spectacle conceals class unity. Intense cultural and identity-based conflicts serve the objective function of concealing the essential divisions of social class and absorbing political energy, thwarting potential organization against the rule of capital by which both are privileged. To that end . . .

Democrats trap opposition into parliamentary reformism. Republicans offer authoritarian venting that ultimately secures the same pro-capital policies when it matters. Both breeds together sustain the legitimacy of the system.

Crises require coordinated bipartisan defense of capital.

Financial crises, wars, bailouts and anti-labor offensives have all been conducted with cross-party complicity. From the 2008 Wall Street rescue, to pandemic-era profit over life prioritization, WHEN capital is threatened, party labels dissolve into unified class action, enforced by state power. The Epstein documents reveal elite interests spanning over party lines, and show accountability being blocked by that transpartisan solidarity.

Conclusions:

The Republican–Democratic alliance is essential, integral and inseparable. Both factions in this anti-worker alliance are committed to, and perform the indispensable managerial functions, and maintain the divisions of capitalist rule.

One faction polices consent through legalistic liberalism and technocratic governance; the other polices through reactionary force and nationalist mobilization. Together, BOTH factions impose conditions of austerity, privatization, militarization and social atomization that NEITHER faction could sustain nor legitimize alone. The ruling class requires both faces: persuasion and coercion; spectacle and enforcement. This is an unacknowledged alliance.

Working people should demand serious replies to these questions:

If the two parties truly represent opposing class interests, why do both overwhelmingly preside over the same concentration of wealth, the same corporate-friendly legislation, and the same network of elite social relations revealed by the Epstein files?

How can electoral competition be said to offer structural alternatives for workers when successive administrations from both parties enforce austerity, deregulation and union suppression that consolidate corporate power?

If partisan difference is decisive, why are the legal and intelligence institutions that protect elite networks [from redactions to limited oversight] institutionally invariant across administrations of both parties?

Does the spectacle of culture-war polarization not function effectively to fragment working-class solidarity and divert mass anger away from unified struggle against capital—and if not, what alternative explanation accounts for its persistence and intensity?

If one accepts that elite social integration exists [ex: Epstein’s bipartisan circle], how can one logically separate moral condemnation of individuals from the political necessity of contesting the system that produced and protects them?

The working class must demand answers those questions. DO NOT be satisfied with appeals to personalities or punditry, but with independent organization and a program that recognizes the bipartisan character of oligarchic rule.

So let me see what you’re trying to say???? That people who insist there democrats or insist there republicans are the same ??? yeahhhhhhhh we have one educated American

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Socialist Equality Party interventions take form not as electoral support for, but against bourgeois parties, in direct work to politicize, radicalize and organize the working class in workplaces, schools and industries, to defend worker safety and democratic rights, and to expose the union bureaucracies and the Democratic Party in their role of containing and betraying worker struggle. It is through our RFCs that our interventions occur.

We intervened in Teacher rank‑and‑file initiatives and supported the 2018–2019 uprisings. We intervened politically in the teachers’ strikes that erupted in Chicago, Oakland and other cities, organizing independently of the union apparatus. We promoted democratic strikes through rank‑and‑file methods that include a broader working‑class strategy. Our efforts include the political education needed to prevent containment by the NEA and AFT bureaucracies and other organizations in the Democratic Party orbit.

We intervened in wildcat strikes for pandemic workplace safety: In 2020, the SEP led and popularized the program for workplace safety, calling for plant shutdowns where necessary and supporting wildcat actions when union bureaucracies [predictably] refused to protect workers.

The Socialist Equality Party actively intervened in auto sector rank‑and‑file rebellions, supported challenges to the UAW apparatus, and advocated independent factory committees, politically backing militant candidates and shop‑floor militants as the means to break the bureaucracy’s hold. We backed a Trotskyist for UAW President. We are doing so again. The SDA section of the Democratic Party has slandered him already.

We formed an international alliance of our committees in continuity with SEP interventions. If a strike begins in a US plant, we inform workers for that corporation in Germany, Japan, Sri Lanka, etc.’ They refuse to add shifts and up production. That prohibits Corporate from sabotaging a strike in the US. Strikes are supposed to hurt.

The short reply to ‘what have your RFCs done’ is, we intervene in all the places that Democrats won’t.

As Democrats wept that ‘he’s too strong’ and insist, ‘we can’t,’ the SEP with no representation in Congress, organizes the political defense of democratic rights against state repression and fascism. Democrats can’t, but we train militants for political action. When bourgeoisie parties incapacitate workers in crucial moments, we show independent organization as the sole effective alternative. We intervene to politicize and organize responses to threats of authoritarianism, to link protests against police and ICE violence. With Trump’s ascent, we now add the threat of a presidential dictatorship to the need of independent working‑class organization.

When in his first term, Trump Goons™ started kidnapping lawfully protesting Democrats on the west coast, we demanded his immediate removal. Did Democrats support that? When Biden was put in office, we demanded that ICE be dismantled. Did Democrats support that? Or did they scoff? You know. The SEP called for a general strike and elaborated in practical terms how to form RFCs, strike councils, legal and strike-fund infrastructure, and prioritized economic choke points as the sole force able to end paramilitary repression.

Did you support that?

Whether you cede your role in the present disaster or not, it is the refusal of YOUR faction to admit any truly efficacious measures which allows this state of affairs to continue.

At every turn, the Democratic Party validates repeatedly the Socialist Equality Party insistence on political independence from bourgeois parties and the necessity of building working‑class organs of power! And we will continue to expose the Democratic Party and pseudo left betrayals, and explore the most effective ways of doing so without alienating workers. We connect the struggle against fascism with Democratic betrayals of worker struggles, which disillusions workers and points them to consider fascism in the first place.

Conspicuously absent from the list are any actions against Republicans. You only seem interested in attacking Democrats and unions.