REVOLUTION 53
Why it was necessary to vote for Biden in 2020—why it would not be correct to do so again—and how this relates to larger questions of revolution
[Audio transcript]
BOB AVAKIAN—REVOLUTION
Number Fifty-Three: Why it was necessary to vote for Biden in 2020—why it would not be correct to do so again—and how this relates to larger questions of revolution.
To begin, it is important to review what I actually said in regard to the 2020 election, in my August 1, 2020 Statement putting forward the need to vote for Biden in that election. (This statement is available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.)
In that August 1, 2020 Statement, I made the point that, normally, we revolutionary communists argue that people should not take part in the electoral process under this system, because this serves to reinforce this system and all the horrors it continually perpetrates.
So why was the 2020 election different—different enough to justify taking part in this election by voting for Biden?
To get to the heart of the matter: The recognition that, in the concrete situation of 2020, it had become necessary to vote for Biden was based on the scientific analysis that the re-election of Trump then would lead to a further leap in the consolidation of the fascist regime he headed, with disastrous consequences in terms of the fight against the crimes of this system of capitalism-imperialism and, most fundamentally, with regard to the struggle to bring about the fundamental solution to this through a revolution to overthrow this system.
Since the late 1990s, I had been analyzing the nature, and calling attention to the danger, of developing fascism in this country and the consequences of allowing this fascism to go largely unopposed. As I pointed out in the article available at revcom.us There Is No Such Thing As “Totalitarianism”: Fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology and political movement that “is fundamentally anti-scientific and relies on the promotion of ignorance, superstition and crude distortions of reality, and the mobilization of a rabidly fanatical mass of unthinking people motivated by the lowest and most depraved impulses and prejudices, with virulent hatred for all those who are not part of the masculine ‘master race’ of people.”
As a form of political rule, fascism represents the undisguised dictatorship of the capitalist-imperialist ruling class, essentially doing away with the pretense of democracy and rights for the people and openly relying on violence and terrorizing people to enforce this dictatorship. Christian fascism is the driving force of fascism in this country. Christian fascism is not the same as Christianity in general as a religion. Christian fascism insists that government and the rule over society must be based on absolute adherence to the Christian Bible, taken literally, as the “gospel truth” which must be enforced—when the reality is that the Bible, taken literally, involves very real horrors, which I have shown in a number of works, including my book Away With All Gods! Unchaining The Mind And Radically Changing The World.
The Christian fascists, in and out of government, have been the driving force in the move to overturn the right to abortion. And that is just one part of their overall horrific agenda. The Christian fascists are determined to suppress anything and everything that challenges the myth of America as “God’s chosen nation.” So, according to these Christian fascists, exposure of racism, throughout the history of this country and down to today, cannot be allowed and must be removed from school education and other parts of public life. It is no accident that the strongest base of Christian fascism is among white people in the South who have vehemently opposed the struggle against racism in this country, and have never really accepted the defeat of the southern slave-owning Confederacy in the Civil War (which is reflected in the fact that they insist that Confederate monuments must not be taken down).
For more than 20 years before the 2020 election, I had repeatedly emphasized the importance of mass struggle against this fascism, while linking this with the fundamental need for revolution, to overthrow this system of capitalism-imperialism, which has given rise to this fascism.
This fascism took a giant leap with Trump coming to power through the 2016 election. (Trump privately has contempt for Christian fundamentalists, but he made an “unholy alliance” with the Christian fascists, and adopted their dark ages agenda—and now many of the Christian fascists regard him as the “savior” of America!)
Unfortunately, to far too great an extent and for far too long, this truth I was pointing to was ignored or dismissed. As a result, despite the best efforts of myself and the revcoms (revolutionary communists) as a whole, along with some others, there was no truly massive, sustained movement opposing the fascism that Trump represented. So, with the approach of the 2020 election, there was a real and acute danger that this fascism would be further consolidated and entrenched with the re-election of Trump. In my August 1, 2020 statement, I broke down concretely the very real danger of this fascism and the consequences of allowing this fascism to be further consolidated, and I pointed to the unavoidable conclusion that the only means of preventing this, in the immediate situation, was to vote for Biden in the election coming up a few months from then.
In basic terms, this policy of voting for Biden was a tactic to deal with a particular juncture which posed a profound and acute, immediate danger.
The essential argument for this tactic, and how it related to larger things—including the fundamental need for revolution—is contained in the summation at the end of my August 1, 2020 statement (which, again, is available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us).
Let’s recall the situation then, including what followed immediately after the 2020 election: the attempt by Trump to pull off a coup to remain in power after losing the election, a coup which came close to succeeding: Any objective, scientific assessment of the situation then leads to the clear conclusion that my analysis of the acute immediate danger was correct, and the tactical move of voting for Biden was necessary.
To not see this is to fail miserably (or to simply refuse) to think seriously about what is represented by the fascism that Trump is spearheading, and what would have been the consequences of his being able to do what he intended to do if he had remained in power as a result of the 2020 election (or as a result of a coup to overturn the results of the election he lost). And, more fundamentally, it is to fail miserably, or to refuse, to think seriously about what is involved in an actual revolution, and how divisions within the ruling class may relate to that fundamental goal of revolution.
This cannot be seen, or correctly understood, with a very harmful, narrow and petty, dogmatic approach that refuses to make a concrete analysis of concrete conditions and ignores, or distorts, the very real contradictions that set the stage for the struggle against this system. Specifically, this very wrong approach rests on the simplistic notion not only that the Democrats and Republicans are both bad (which is clearly true) but that any difference between them is always irrelevant in terms of the struggle against this system—which is not only seriously wrong but can be extremely harmful.
The correct understanding is that both the Democrats and the Republicans are terrible, truly terrible. In fundamental terms, they are “equally terrible” because they both represent and enforce this system of horrors—but they are not “the same.” As I have spoken to here (and more fully in my August 1, 2020 Statement and other works), this difference between them had significant meaning and importance in the context of the 2020 election, and it has different, even greater and more profound meaning now, in a situation which involves the very real prospect of something even more terrible than in “normal times” under this system, but also the possibility of wrenching something truly emancipating out of this situation—an actual revolution. (This is something that is spoken to in greater depth in my previous messages, particularly numbers Eight through Eleven, as well as in “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating” and other works available at revcom.us.)
In my next message, I will get into this important question: If it was necessary to vote for Biden in the 2020 election, why is it not correct to vote for Biden in the upcoming election this year—when the argument could be made that what is represented by Trump is even more dangerous than four years ago?
I really appreciate these posts. I get what you're saying about the critical juncture of 2020 and being past that juncture now. But I am trying to wrap my head around this line about the two ruling class parties. "In fundamental terms, they are “equally terrible” because they both represent and enforce this system of horrors—but they are not “the same.” If fascism is a more open and blatant form of capitalist dictatorship, and given Trump's openly genocidal rhetoric, what does it mean to say they are equally terrible in fundamental terms?