As the day of the US presidential elections approaches, the two bourgeois parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are intensifying the electoral race, while the predictions indicate that it will go down to the wire.

This confrontation, always in the context of the interests of US capital and its various sections, is centred on a series of issues such as the management of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East on behalf of US imperialism, the strategy towards China, the US trade/industrial policy, immigration, etc. Naturally, it is taking on the characteristics of a disorienting brawl, with issues such as Trump’s assassination attempts and sex scandals being raised, celebrities being recruited, and extending to what is called the "culture wars" in the USA; in broad outline, the struggle between the “woke” current and conservatism.

The inter-bourgeois conflict is also reflected in the donors of the two candidates, i.e. the legitimate lobbying and the attempt of the monopolies to determine the outcome. To illustrate: Kamala Harris receives donations from Microsoft, Netflix, Meta, big capitalists like George Soros and Mike Bloomberg, etc., while on the other hand Trump is supported by Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Tim Mellon (billionaire banker), Palantir Technologies, Johnson & Johnson, etc. There are hundreds of capitalists and monopolies donating millions of dollars to the campaigns of one or the other or even both candidates, e.g. the war hawks of Lockheed Martin, who will secure billions in military arms contracts no matter who becomes president.

Democrats and Republicans have alternated in government for over 150 years (!), complementing one another to ensure the continuity of reactionary policies. Their victims are first and foremost the US people, regardless of colour, religion or origin, tens of millions of whom today live in widespread poverty, millions are homeless, and even more are completely excluded from the fully privatized health care and education systems. At the same time, millions of African-American and Latino workers continue to suffer from racism, police brutality and discrimination. But the victims of the imperialist policies of both parties are also dozens of peoples around the world who have suffered imperialist interventions, massacres, coups, blockades and sanctions imposed by the interests of the US monopolies.

The conflict and polarization, which may well take more acute forms, express the different interests of the sections of the big capital in the USA, different priorities and different positions on the policy mix that the state should follow in order to cope with the changes in the international correlation of forces, in its rivalry with China for supremacy in the international imperialist system. This is reflected, for example, in the debate between Trump and Harris on the US tariff policy, on the level of tariffs against China, on which sectors will be affected, on whether protectionist measures are also necessary against the EU states and so on, as both candidates are based on the profitability of the US monopolies.

Similarly, Trump is not a “dove of peace” simply because he declares that he will end the war in Ukraine in a few days, or that he will reassess the role of NATO. He represents sections of capital and the US Establishment that argue that they need to focus on dealing with the strategic adversary, that is, China (the so-called pivot to the east initiated under Obama), and break the common front that Russia and China are forming. On the other hand, Harris states that she will continue her political support for the Zelenskiy regime in Ukraine, noting that any scenario of ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia and any commitment not to join NATO is unacceptable. She lambasts Trump, arguing that his plan for Ukraine is identical to Putin’s. At the same time, the differences between the two candidates do not prevent them from supporting the crimes of the murderous state of Israel against the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon, from rehashing the unacceptable pretexts of Israel’s “right to self-defence” and from pledging to continue economic, political and military support for Israel.

The unfortunate thing for the US people is that the revolutionary workers’ movement is in disarray, as a result of years of ideological and political degeneration. Of course, there are still promising workers’ struggles developing today which, under certain conditions, can be the seeds of class-oriented political emancipation of larger sections of the working class and the US people. The KKE will continue to express its solidarity with the US people and their struggles.

*Published in the newspaper “Rizospastis”, the organ of the CC of the KKE, on 5 November 2024