US Presidential Elections and the lost cause of the American left

When the US stock markets sneeze, the world catches a cold! This idiom has been in currency ever since neo-liberalism strengthened its roots globally with the US becoming the undisputed leader of the unipolar world order. With Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US Presidential Elections, there have been mixed reactions in the world, as liberal democrats, who often identify themselves as “left”, express their concerns and the far-right feeling exalted. 

Amid the polarised elections in the US, where Trump, a billionaire who claims to represent the interests of the American working class, blamed the “communists” for hijacking the US, labelled the Democrats as a communist party and used the cliche “cultural Marxism” that generally the far-right use globally to blame what is an inverted form of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche to score brownies, the real “left” and the progressive forces made some progress in terms of numbers, even though it’s not impressive looking at the larger picture.

What’s left of the “left” in America?

The Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) remained the mainstream communist party for decades; however, it has also been in a dormant state. It has been accused of becoming a support club of the Democrats despite the latter’s complicity in imperialist wars and genocides like the one in occupied Gaza. 

Soon after Trump’s victory, the CPUSA started retrospecting the reasons behind the defeat of Kamala Harris and the Democrats by blaming the American people. It shows the total isolation of the party from the working class and its expectations.

However, at the same time, new developments show that there has been a gradual effort in rebuilding the CPUSA in a completely new form, which conforms with the American realities of the 21st century. The foundation of the American Communist Party (ACP) by a section of youngsters who support Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) campaign tactically, is one of the remarkable recent developments, which has weaned away several local chapters of the CPUSA.

Although the ACP, like the CPUSA, didn’t enter the electoral fray, the alternative left and anti-imperialist forces fought it on their own and despite a highly bi-partisan polarisation, managed to increase their votes slightly, compared to the past.

Jill Stein from the Green Party and Claudia De la Cruz from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) have made remarkable progress in their respective tallies. While neither Stein nor la Cruz could reach anywhere close to the main parties, they have exemplified a changing mood among Americans, especially those who identify themselves as progressives and can’t approve of the genocidal and imperialistic approach of the Democrats.

The tally

Stein ran as the Green Party candidate with Butch Ware as her running mate. Stein received around 641,062 votes, 0.4% of the popular vote, far less than what the major contestants got, but if one analyses her, as well as the Green’s performance over the decades, it will show that this is the second-best performance by Stein, following her 1,457,218 votes, or 1.07% of popular votes, in 2016, when a similar contest took place between Trump and Hillary Clinton. She had run with Ajami Baraka as her mate.

Comparatively, the score of the Green Party had dipped during the 2020 elections, when Howie Hawkins ran with Angela Walker as his running mate. Hawkins received around 407,068 votes, 0.26% of the popular vote.

While the Greens are never considered as a challenge by the two parties that control the US political system, and play a musical chair game, the environmental group has been an option for a minority that’s tired of the duopoly of the flawed American democracy.

Meanwhile, the PSL, formed as a breakaway from the Trotskyist Workers’ World Party in the early 2000s, has been gradually increasing the number of votes it gets in every election, in three elections. During the PSL’s debut election in 2016, Gloria Estela La Riva and her running mate Eugene Puryear bagged 74,401 votes only, which was 0.05% of the total votes scored that year when Trump won his maiden victory.

In 2020, when Trump was booted, La Riva ran with her mate Sunil Freeman and again bagged 0.05% of the total votes, but slightly higher at 85,685. The party managed to increase 10,000 votes in four years amid a surge of left-wing activism.

In 2024, in her maiden attempt with running mate Karina Garcia, PSL’s la Cruz increased the tally by over 12,000 votes. The PSL bagged 98,222, or 0.10% of the total votes; far lesser than the Greens, but showing a steep increase from what the party had got in 2020.

The increase in the votes of Green’s Stein and PSL’s la Cruz during the 2024 US Presidential Elections may not look significant considering the number of votes the two main parties have bagged from their traditional supporters, but the numbers are important as these two candidates bagged votes purely on the basis of their promises of stopping the genocide in Gaza, stopping the American aid to Israel, to take affirmative climate actions, etc.

The importance of the 2024 US Presidential Elections

The performance of Stein and la Cruz in the 2024 US Presidential Elections shows that there is still a very minuscule section of American society that sternly opposes neo-liberalism and the genocide in Gaza. The majority still endorses Zionist genocide and war, which is normal considering the amount of money US-origin transnational corporations spend on propaganda.

In this scenario, the results of the 2024 US Presidential Elections show a few distinct features of the society. 

Firstly, there is a general sense of anguish in American society over the neo-liberalism that the dominant section of the American ruling classes has been promoting over decades and its cultural values that are labelled as “cultural Marxist” by the ultra-right. 

Secondly, the US working class, predominantly white working class, is highly conservative in its social approach and can’t stand the ultra-liberal woke ideas that the neo-liberals have been promoting. 

Thirdly, there is a growing discontent over American taxpayers’ money going to fight a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which has nothing to do with American security.

Finally, the sense of social insecurity due to an intense economic crisis has been quite at its peak. The immigrants are considered a threat to the American working class and xenophobia is in currency.

Amid these, the score of the Greens and the PSL shows that these parties need to do a lot to wean away the major support base of the far-right—ironically the working class—towards itself using a lot of counter-propaganda and grassroots work.

But there is a big question on whether they, especially parties like the ACP or the PSL, can do anything likewise as they are eclipsed outside the social media canvas by the might of the American capital and its tight hold over the labour movement.

Can America’s real left replace the official “left”?

Although for many in the American resurgent labour-driven left movement, it has become imperative to reclaim the space lost to the Democrats and the neo-liberal globalists to combat the rise of the ultra-right effectively, the US’s political structure won’t let them grow beyond a point.

For the Steins and la Cruzs of the US to even score 5% to 10% of the total votes in a presidential campaign or any significant presence in the US Congress appears as a challenging task for one reason—the power of American capitalism to subjugate its labour movements.

Over a century ago, Russia’s Marxist revolutionary VI Lenin had cited the emergence of the “labour aristocracy” within the West’s working-class movement due to the massive centralisation and accumulation of capital in the hands of a few that happened during the era of finance or monopoly capital’s development. 

As the monopoly capitalist system has reached its peak since the last decades of the 20th century, it has been able to earn immense super profits from the colonies and neo-colonies.

With even a minuscule part of this money, they can shape the ideologies of the labour movements and customise them accordingly at home and abroad, using a large base of “leftwing” economists and academics on the CIA’s payroll, to ensure labour organisations don’t go beyond the “pressure cooker” status, which allows an occasional vent to let the steam out rather than promoting any radical structural changes.

Thus, within the US, there will be continuous efforts to limit the labour movements within the boundaries set by the Democrats and it will continue to gain traction. With its inclination towards the status quo, it’s unlikely that the ACP can make any difference in the long term. The PSL can be cancelled easily during the Trump era as a “Chinese agency”, leaving the US working class with no representatives as the Greens will only focus on environmental issues rather than smashing the American war machinery.

In this scenario, within the existing electoral framework, the genuine left may remain a “nobody” for a long time. The US political system that aims at preserving the hegemony of the two major parties representing its capitalists and corporates, won’t let the genuine left grow beyond a certain limit unless the latter can organise and mobilise the traditional white working class, who are now thrown into an abyss by the big corporations. 

Can the parties like the APC or PSL do anything like that?