Biden’s Inauguration: Why We’re Not “In it Together”.
Biden’s administration will “bring Americans together”. That was the main message of his inaugural speech. His idealism is based on the hope that progressive workers and reactionary petty-capitalists will somehow conform to his interpretation of “common sense”; that we will all learn to get-along together. There was no elaboration of the social and economic conditions which divide American society, nor what is necessary to permanently overcome such division. Biden’s idealism rests on a vague sense of “Americanism”.
Paradoxically, Biden conceded that divisions, such as racism and inequality, are “perennial” — that they can never be overcome. Clearly then, Biden seeks to create a limited unity. A compromised unity. In other words, under the Biden administration, a level of racism can be tolerable, and a level of anti-racism can be intolerable. Given how much we have learned about how racism works, and where the balance of power lies, it is likely anti-racists will discover the establishment’s limit of tolerance before racists do; socialists will discover the limits before the far-right do; Antifa before fascists. For example, will there be a crack-down on the conditions that cause racist policing as eagerly as there are arrests of Black Lives Matter protesters? Will workers win rights as quickly or with as much ease as businesses infringe on their standard of living? In such circumstances, how can we ever move forward together?
Workers have an interest in creating a democracy that progresses beyond the limits of the capitalism — especially the young proletariat. Capitalists — whether big or petty, liberal or conservative — wish to maintain capitalism for as long as possible. These groups are naturally and irreconcilably opposed, and increasingly so.
Workers voted for Biden not because he represents their fundamental interests but because he puts a temporary brake on fascism and the far-right. Many workers who voted for Trump have been duped, and many of them will develop a belated class-consciousness, although many won’t.
The number of workers that become convinced of progressive socialist ideas, and — critically — become organised, depends on the development of a mass workers movement, which is severely lacking in the United States. Such an organized movement needs to expand patiently — but urgently — in order to develop the consciousness of other American workers, regardless of whether they were Trump or Biden voters; a principled socialist party is needed to spearhead the movement and deliver workers from the potential clutches of fascism and other pit-falls.
Such a movement would be critical of Biden and capitalism by highlighting its inadequacies, inequalities and hypocrisies; such a movement would organise workers and aid the growth of an organic national and international movement to challenge capitalism; such a movement would protect us from a terrible resurgence of Trumpism and fascism in the United States.
Committed Trump supporters and fascists (who have become increasingly intertwined) are not harbingers of “revolution” as some of them claim. They represent the opposite extreme; they are the most-backward element of the petty-capitalist class, desperately trying to prop up a system and a culture that is crumbling around us. The capitalist system exploits all American workers, but nevertheless, it once brought a significant level of privilege to a layer of white middle-class America. Those lower-middle-class elements now cling to their precarious wealth, just as they cling to the chauvinistic culture that accompanies it.
Are socialists and fascists to somehow “get along”? Are they to compromise with a centre-right liberal establishment which they both see as undermining their social-economic condition? This “togetherness” is absolutely impossible under the philosophy of the Biden administration. Socialism, borne from the insufficiencies and contradictions of capitalism, will never be reconciled with it, whether a liberal or far-right. As the system continues to tear itself apart on every level — politically, socially, economically — fascism will always be a symptom.
There is a reason why Biden’s inauguration was full of “hope” and nothing concrete. If the Bidens, Obamas and Clintons were to acknowledge the material conditions that exist, they would be acknowledging the politics of class-conflict. Such an acknowledgement would ignite further class-consciousness and even revolutionary thought which they desire to be suppressed. This is why Democrats — even Left ones like AOC and The Squad — never called for mass protests or rallies against Trumpism etc. Releasing such a tide could wash away the ruling Democratic establishment, or at least significantly disrupt it. Such a tide would not stop in the US, as we have seen with Black Lives Matter. If Democrats sincerely confronted reality — for example that climate change has been caused by capitalist industry and the “1%” — it would be an acknowledgement of their own impotence, and the inadequacy of current ruling ideas and structures to resolve the fundamental issues we face. For now, they continue to square the circle.
