"The Political and Economic System in America"

Reflections on a Recent Poll and the Need for Revolution

There’s some interesting data down in the crosstabs of a recent New York Times-Sienna poll of registered voters in the six contested states that will absurdly determine the outcome of the next US presidential election under the openly asinine Electoral College system.

The findings point to the distinct likelihood of the Hitler-channeling fascist Donald Trump taking up residence in the White House for a second time. A key theme in the poll and its reporting is that Joe Biden has lost too much support from young people and minorities to prevail next November.

Nothing new there. Nice job, Genocide Joe, with your hands covered in Palestinian and Ukrainian blood.  

The most interesting part of the Times-Sienna poll was how people responded to this interesting question: “Which comes closest to your view about the political and economic system in America?” (Yes, “the political and economic system in America.”)

Survey respondents were given four possible answers: a) “the political and economic system in America does not need changes; b) “the system needs only minor changes;” c) “the system needs major changes;” and d) “the system needs to be torn down entirely.”

Just 2 percent of the respondents chose a), no change.  Just 27 percent picked b), “minor changes.”  More than half, 55 percent picked c), “major changes,” and 14 percent picked d), “the system needs to be torn down entirely.”

So more than two-thirds (69 percent) think the system needs either major changes or to be completely torn down. And there’s no reason to see the six states surveyed as atypical for the whole country.  

There are four key and interrelated problems with the poll.

First, the poll never specifies or defines “the political and economic system in America.” That makes it difficult to understand the political and ideological meaning of the survey’s findings. Bear in mind that a significant number of Americans have been led to idiotically believe that their nation’s political and economic system is socialist, headed by a “radical left deep state.” 

The Times-Sienna survey makers would never tell their respondents the historical and scientific reality: “the American political and economic system” (which most people in six US states think needs major reform or tear down) is capitalism or, if you prefer, capitalism-imperialism. This system has no moral center. It’s all about private accumulation and profit.  It turns life into a savagely unequal, relentlessly exploitative, competitive, and eco-cidal rat race driven by the sick spirit of “me, me, me mine”:  “everything for me and nothing for anyone else.”  It pits individual against individual, household against household, community against community, social group against social group, nation against nation, empire against empire, and humanity against nature and livable ecology – against itself at the end of the day. It is a de facto class dictatorship atop a mode of mode of production based on the unremitting abuse, corruption, and poisoning of culture,  politics, humanity, and the natural environment.

Basic human rights that most US and world citizens support – the rights to adequate food, housing, health care, education, civil liberties, and a clean environment – cannot and will not be granted to the masses under this “political and economic system.” That's because masses of human beings would not feel compelled to rent out the lion’s share of their waking hours to capitalist exploiters and spend the rest of days scrambling and fighting with each other for the system’s toxic crumbs if they possessed those rights.  

That’s a system that needs to be “torn down entirely.” It can't be meaningfully reformed.

A second problem with the Times-Sienna poll is that never asks folks what kinds of changes they’d like to see in the unnamed system.  One’s person desirable change is another person’s horrific nightmare.  What specific modifications do people support? The re-introduction of slave labor?  Full militarization of society in preparation for a global war with China? The closing of all borders? Full employment based on massive sustainable environmental “green jobs” programs? Universal free national health insurance? The dismantling of the giant US global military empire?    

Third, the Times-Sienna poll does not ask the “torn down entirely” people what they would replace the system with if anything. What’s the point of tearing down a political and economic system entirely if you don’t have an alternative in mind?  Dismantlement with what aftermath? An imagined return to hunting and gathering? Feudalism? Pure anarchy?  How about in order to construct a new socialist republic that privileges the common good over the profits and power of the parasitic rich while putting humanity on a path to a world without exploitation, oppression, and inequality.

Fourth, the Times-Sienna question merges “political and economic” in ways that obscure how “major changes” could transform the system’s political superstructure while leaving the dominant economic base intact.

Regarding this last problem, I want to dig a bit into some other data in the poll. The Times-Sienna survey suggests that many of the “major change” and “tear it down entirely” people are Trumpists. Forty-five (45) percent of the respondents said that a second Trump presidency would bring “major changes,” and 25 percent said a second Trump presidency would “tear things down entirely.”

So 70 percent of the Times-Sienna respondents have Trump identified with sweeping change.

By comparison, Biden was viewed as the status quo candidate. Just 11 percent said he’d make major changes. Fourteen (14) percent said he’d “tear things down entirely.” 

Biden is seen as the candidate of no or little change by 71 percent of the respondents.

All of which makes perfect sense. Biden is a deeply conservative capitalist-imperialist who has said he’d veto Single Payer health insurance if it ever came to his desk.

Biden said this to wealthy Wall Street campaign donors in 2019: “No one’s standard of living would change…nothing would fundamentally change” under a Biden presidency – a remarkable statement in a nation where millions of children lived below the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level and the top tenth of the upper One Percent owned as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Here we are now with the imperialist warmonger Biden trying to claim credit for a supposedly great economy while tens of millions of Americans are struggling with food and rent inflation’s downward impact on their standard of living.  Food pantries are working overtime and evictions are proceeding at a record pace. The super and parasitic rich are still stupendously and parasitically rich while much of the working-class majority is scrambling to keep up with a higher cost of living.

Okay, but what do “major changes” and system “tear down” mean under a second Trump presidency? Trump represents sweeping change in governance, politics, and society but all in defense not reform or revolution of the underlying economic system. The real or pretend billionaire Trump and his fellow Republi-fascists are ready to ruffle some “multicultural” capitalist feathers, but they do not seek anything remotely like major system change when it comes to capitalism. They are for a more openly repressive, racist, sexist, nationalist, anti-intellectual, nativist, and authoritarian capitalism. That’s why they have active and passive support from big US capitalists who are perfectly happy to see the accelerated roll back of the political and ideological superstructure’s waning commitments to previously normative bourgeois electoral democracy, civility, decency, and rule of law (along with juicy plutocratic tax breaks and deregulation).

We need sweeping change of a very different and deeper sort. We need radical system change down to the taproot.  We require actual, that is, socialist revolution, starting of course with the taking and transformation of the political superstructure but then reaching all the way down to the economic base.  We must abolish the mode of production that mandates that human beings have no right to eat, no right to decent shelter, no right to adequate health care, no right to a livable environment.  And replace it with something liberating and beautiful. This has nothing to do with anarchy and “tearing everything down,” Helter-Skelter. 

It’s not true that all radicals are just negative “antis” – all about being against things with no notion of what they are for.  Here’s a useful translation for that standard elitist charge: “we have an alternative and you hate it.”    

Here is a draft blueprint for what a revolutionary socialist republic of North America might look like: https://thebobavakianinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SocialistConstitution-en.pdf Check it out.  Set a few hours aside to read it carefully. It's not what most of us have been led to think about a communist-led political and economic system. What do you think? If you don’t like it or parts of it, suggest changes or try to write a better one. Seriously.  Its long past time for tearing down the catastrophe that is capitalism. We need a robust and revolutionary vision of what we will replace it with.