Hands Off Left-Wing Third-Party Candidates!

Hands Off Left-Wing Third-Party Candidates!

(statement by Labor and Community for an Independent Party / LCIP)

Now that both major capitalist parties’ national conventions have ended, U.S. workers are beginning to digest the spectacles they witnessed on national TV.

 We watched imperialist parties employ political drama and celebrities to stir emotional responses from the electorate in their desperate attempt to sway voters to support one camp or the other.

In the wake of these conventions, working people find themselves in robust discussions about which imperialist candidate and party– if any– is the right choice to protect and expand their hard-won democratic rights and to secure the standard of living they expect. 

The capitalist duopoly asks the electorate to choose between a far-right/neo-fascist candidate and a right-wing capitalist candidate who promises greater militarism, stricter border laws and mass deportations of immigrants, environmental devastation, and other reactionary policies.

U.S. workers face the daunting reality of living in an economy that faces crisis after crisis. While the capitalist class makes record profits, working families can’t pay for housing and food; they can’t pay off their debts.

Now more than ever, capitalism is trying to save itself by moving further and further to the right and making the working class shoulder the burden of the deepening capitalist crisis.

The terrible choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump has brought increased critique and debate about whether either candidate represents U.S. workers’ interests at all. Those who dare challenge voting for the corporate parties are being demonized by supporters of the duopoly, accused of acting as spoilers and paving the way for a Trump victory and the end of bourgeois democracy. We must fight this growing anti-democratic offensive.

On August 10, the Democratic National Committee sent a letter to the Wisconsin Election Committee demanding that they remove Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein from the presidential ballot. A final ruling on this matter will be issued on September 27.

We must fight all legal efforts to remove progressive and socialist third-party candidates from the November ballot. Already five states, including Michigan, have called on their state election committee to take a similar action. We say no to the assault on voting rights, wherever they may come from.

In a democracy all voices must be heard.

We demand the protection of the democratic right to freedom of speech and assembly so that all working people can express their ideas and be heard in their critique of imperialist candidates.

We call for an end to all the attacks aimed at delegitimizing critics of the corporate duopoly who are running left-wing third-party candidates for political office.

For decades, the duopoly’s stranglehold on elections has made it difficult for working-class voices to be heard by voters. Both corporate parties have squelched independent opposition through lawsuits, voter suppression, and passing laws meant to keep the duopoly in power.

The Electoral College, a holdover from the chattel slave era, also subverts the democratic process and must be repealed!

These assaults on voting rights have caused nearly half of U.S. voters to abstain from participating in local and national elections.

Anywhere from 35% to 45%of eligible voting-age citizens do not vote because they dislike establishment candidates, voter suppression, and limited access to independent working-class candidates.

Currently, more U.S. voters are registered as independent or a third political party than the Democratic or the Republican parties. Increasingly, young workers are choosing overwhelmingly to be registered as independent.

With a large portion of the U.S. working class neither convinced nor coerced into supporting either faction of the U.S. capitalist class candidates, it is now the time for the working-class movement to engage with these individuals actively and often.

These workers and youth should not be left unorganized and demobilized; they need access to critique and organization.

They need to hear options beyond the two major parties and be prepared to oppose the anti-working-class actions of elected officials, whether or not they choose to vote.

As the far-right movement grows, it is becoming increasingly challenging to criticize U.S. domestic and foreign policy. The Democratic Party has failed to challenge the expansion of the far right. Even the highly publicized Project 2025 plan, created by the Heritage Foundation to seize national power, was developed in 2022 without any opposition from the Democratic Party.

Voting for the Democratic Party candidate is not a plan of action for the working class to defeat the far right. It is only opportunism that compels Democrats to even mention Project 2025. Only when threatened by an election loss did the Democrats focus on Project 2025.

The Democratic Party switching from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris does not in fact oppose the far right. This Hail Mary is simply a strategy for the imperialist Democratic Party to retain control of the executive branch of the United States.

We, the working class, must develop a strategy to educate and organize millions of workers to resist the far right.

This plan cannot wait for the November election. It needs to happen now through education and mobilization.

We must take advantage of this moment in the electoral process to engage with undecided voters and those who have already decided. We must raise awareness of the glaring contradictions in corporate candidates.

Working people must fight the policies of these imperialist candidates, preparing ourselves to loudly oppose imperialism, corporatism, and neo-fascism by either capitalist party.

We believe the most important democratic actions go beyond voting.

Meaningful mobilization includes the right to speak out, assemble, and access candidates representing working-class interests, regardless of whether we vote.

We, Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP), urge all labor and community activists to fight for a genuinely independent and democratic working-class perspective.

Working-class people and marginalized communities need a party by, of, and for ourselves. LCIP believes the best way to build such a party is to start locally by organizing ongoing assemblies in our cities or towns. 

By organizing around specific issues and selecting, training, and running independent candidates from among our own ranks for local offices such as city councils, we can leverage victories to create the base needed to develop a viable workers’ party at the state and national level.

Please join us!