The 2020 Elections in the United States: A Socialist View from Afar

While votes were being counted after the US elections of November 2020, despots from around the world – in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela and Brazil – crowed over the delay in announcing results.[1] It is easy for rulers in countries where opposition leaders are disqualified, killed or hounded into exile to mock the time taken to count votes meticulously. However, many of us watching with envy from afar  – ‘envy’ because the persecution of minorities, crushing of dissent, domination of the media and destruction of democratic institutions has gone much further in our countries – have nothing but admiration for the way in which a would-be dictator has peacefully been overthrown.

But what about claims by the Trump campaign that the election was stolen? It is clear to us that there have been systematic efforts to steal this election… by Trump and his diehard supporters. That became evident well before the election when he started alleging, in the midst of a deadly pandemic in which many feared the risks of in-person voting, that he opposed extra funding for the Postal Service because mail ballots encouraged voter fraud. At the same time Republican mega-donor Louis DeJoy, who was appointed Postmaster General by Trump on 15 June, began making changes to the U.S. Postal Service – like a reduction in employee overtime hours and the elimination of postal sorting machines – that would sabotage the timely delivery of mail ballots.[2] We saw reports of polling locations being shut down and African-Americans complaining about the long distances they had to travel in order to vote. With Trump instructing his supporters to come out and vote on election day, and several states counting mail-in ballots only after in-person ballots had been counted, the scene was set for his post-election claim that he had won. He expected the case to go to the Supreme Court, and explicitly stated that he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the court because he believed she would vote in his favour.[3]   

The Struggle for Democracy in Sri Lanka

 

Introduction

The terms ‘bourgeois democracy’ and ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’ have often been confused by socialists, because they seem to imply that democracy is a gift of the bourgeoisie, is inseparable from capitalism, and has nothing to do with socialism. It is true that in many revolutions against feudalism, absolutism and imperialism, the mass of working people rise up and inscribe their agenda of freedom, equality and solidarity on the struggle. But once the bourgeosie is in power, it sooner or later seeks to roll back these gains, sometimes in extremely brutal ways, and capitalism can survive for long periods without democracy: there is no intrinsic link between the two. Solidarity in particular is a threat to an insecure bourgeoisie, which therefore encourages divisions, relationships of domination and subordination, and discrimination, exclusion and persecution targeting particular communities.  

In stark contrast with the view that democracy has nothing to do with socialism, Marx and Engels declared in The Communist Manifesto that ‘the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy’ (1); and Engels later confirmed, ‘The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat’ (2). Since they believed that the emancipation of the working class would be carried out by the class as a whole, it made sense to affirm that freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, equality before the law and equal protection of the law, and the right to elect representatives of your choice in free and fair elections were needed to prepare the proletariat to take over government and production.

Given this hostility to democracy on the part of the bourgeoisie as well as sections of the petty bourgeoisie, it would be more useful to see the bourgeois and democratic revolutions as two separate revolutions, with the bourgeois revolution being accomplished fairly quickly while the democratic revolution may drag on for decades. Indeed, even when a democratic republic has been established, it can be demolished and replaced by a fascist state. This ongoing struggle between authoritarianism and democracy is evident in Sri Lanka, with the presidential election of 16 November 2019 being the latest episode.

Sri Lanka: A Democratic Revolution in the Making?

Rohini Hensman and Faizun Zackaria

 

A time for gratitude

 

Two disasters were recently averted in Sri Lanka. The first would have been the re-election of the corrupt and brutal Rajapaksa regime in the presidential election of 8 January 2015. Its defeat can be credited, first and foremost, to democracy activists across the spectrum – Sobitha Thera, trade unionists, students, teachers, women’s groups, political parties, social activists, artists, lawyers, civil society organisations,  the Movement for Social Justice, social media activists, and so on –  who organised the campaign for a common opposition candidate with such skill and courage that it succeeded despite the huge amount of money and muscle-power employed on the other side, and also to the Election Commissioner, who carried out a tolerably free and fair election against heavy odds. Secondly, to Tamil voters, who overwhelmingly rejected the Tamil nationalist plea to boycott the election (Weerawardhana 2015). The Tamil National Alliance in particular has played a commendable role in recent years, affirming their faith in democracy by opposing the continuous slide into dictatorship under the Rajapaksa regime. For Muslims to support the opposition should have been a no-brainer after the state-sponsored pogroms against them by Buddhist thugs of the Bodhu Bala Sena (BBS); that it took so long for their leaders to disentangle themselves from the old regime is a sad comment on the corrupt politics of patronage. Hill-country Tamils, most of whom had hitherto been in the clutches of plantation politicians like Thondaman of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress which supported the Rajapaksa regime, gave an overwhelming message that they can make intelligent decisions on their own.

 

However, there is no way the common opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena could have won without the votes of Sinhalese voters, who voted for change in defiance of the violence, massive expenditure and racist fear-mongering of the Rajapaksa brothers. An analysis of the election results shows that Rajapaksa lost ‘because a large chunk of Sinhala voters who supported him in 2010 voted for the Opposition in 2015’ (Gunasekara 2015). It is notable that even the Buddhist monk party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya, articulated the need for change and mobilised their constituents to realise it. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) played an impressive role both in the campaign and before it, opposing attacks on Muslims by the BBS and highlighting the need for a political-economic democratic programme. Unfortunately, leaders of the mainstream Left parties remained with the Rajapaksas right to the end, although many members joined the common opposition campaign.

 

The second disaster, perhaps even more ghastly than the first, would have been a coup by Rajapaksa in the wake of his defeat in the election. For many people in Sri Lanka, this was the greatest fear. It has been reported that he conceded defeat only after the Attorney General, Solicitor General, Army Chief and Inspector-General of Police refused to endorse an attempt by him, backed by Mohan Peiris whom he had installed as Chief Justice, to stay in power (Sri Lanka Brief 2015). This allegation has yet to be proved, but if it is true, Sri Lankans owe an enormous debt of gratitude to these public officials who saved the country from sliding yet again into bloodshed and chaos.