The Democratic and Republican Parties Serve the Same Plutocracy, But in Very DIFFERENT Ways
by John Spritzler
March 22, 2024
The URL of this article for sharing it is https://www.pdrboston.org/both-parties-serve-the-same-ruling-
Also see "FOX and NPR Are a Team Against the Working Class"
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party (a.k.a. "GOP" for "Gallant Old Party" from 1875 referring to its having "saved the union" during the Civil War) in the United States both serve and are both funded by the same ruling plutocracy of billionaires. Both parties are instruments that the plutocracy uses to perpetuate the class inequality that is the basis of its vast wealth and power and privilege. The plutocracy uses both parties to control the rest of the population. But the parties serve the plutocracy in very different ways.
The particular ways that both parties served the plutocracy have changed a bit since Donald Trump gained leadership of the GOP.
The Pre-Trump Era Saw the Parties Operate This Way
The GOP gave people who are the most pro-capitalist (the wealthiest people and also those who are hopeful of being wealthy one day) very coherent, and hence effective, pro-capitalist ideological leadership. The purpose was to make the most pro-capitalist people have the great confidence that is necessary for them to be business, cultural and government leaders--leaders who believe that class inequality is a good thing because it motivates people to work harder and thereby make the proverbial "pie" bigger so that even the poorest people with the small "slices" will end up with more "pie." This pro-capitalist ideology has been honed to perfection over many centuries, from Adam Smith's "invisible hand" in the 18th century to the late Rush Limbaugh's more recent daily doses of it and continued by other conservative talk radio hosts. It's an ideology that works--it gives strength and confidence to people who like class inequality today.
In stark contrast, the Democratic Party gave (and continues today to give) the opposite kind of ideological leadership to the opposite kinds of people. The Democratic Party said (and continues to say) that it is the party of the people at the bottom of our unequal society, and the leadership it gave them was (and still is) designed to weaken them with absurd and contradictory ideas that make them a laughingstock. For example:
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The Democratic Party tells white working class people that they benefit from---enjoy a "white privilege" (the word "privilege" means by definition a benefit) as a result of--the fact (yes, it is a fact!) that non-whites are treated worse by the police and the rich and powerful in society. But white working claas people are HARMED by racial discrimination against non-whites, not benefited by it. The "white privilege" concept is absurd, and designed to undermine the confidence of white working class people in the justness of their desire to have a better life than what they "enjoy" at the bottom of our capitalist class inequality. If you don't understand this, read about it here and in the articles linked to from here [and also in my more recent What CRT Censors.]
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The Democratic Party tells its followers that they would be bigots unless they approve of "transgender bathroom" laws like the one in Massachusetts that makes it a crime (punishable by a fine and prison) for a woman in a public-access shower or locker room to tell a naked adult person there with male genitalia to leave. If you don't understand this, read about it here.
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The Democratic Party tells its followers that they would be racist or anti-humanitarian if they opposed letting Muslim terrorists enter the country to kill us, or if they opposed letting relatively high paying jobs in fields such as construction be destroyed by illegal immigrants doing that work for peanuts. The Democratic Party (and the GOP also) never tells people the TRUTH about these issues so that they could have a sensible opinion about them; it makes sure that they are only offered an opinion based on ignorance of the relevant facts and one that is easy for GOP followers to ridicule. If you don't understand this, read about it here and here.
The Democratic Party makes its followers be perceived by others as dangerously idiotic. It makes its followers defend things without being able to do it persuasively; it makes its followers have to rely on insults and outrage instead. This does two things. 1) It renders the followers of the Democratic Party ideologically too weak to mount anything close to a real challenge to the plutocracy and its class inequality! 2) It results in pitting about half the population against the other half: divide-and-rule.
In the Trump era the parties operate this way
In the Trump-GOP era, the parties operate a little bit differently. Though absolutely anti-working-class when in power (see the gory details in "The Billionaire Class is No More Afraid of Donald Trump Than of the Tooth Fairy") Donald Trump uses unprecedented rhetoric designed to make working class people think he is their champion against the rich and powerful (i.e., the Democratic Party big shots and the 'Republicans In Name Only.')
At the same time, the Democratic Party downplays its claim to represent the working class even at the cost of losing votes (as reported by The Guardian here.)
The result is the same: to keep the haves in power and the have-nots out of power.
It's important to understand how differently the two parties serve the plutocracy. Saying that the two parties are identical or that there's no real difference between them (on the grounds that they do indeed both serve the same plutocracy) is half right but also half wrong. People know very well that there is a difference between pro-GOP personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump versus pro-Democratic Party personalities such as Robert Reich and Elizabeth Warren. These people will think that anybody (such as myself when I say voting isn't going to remove the rich from power) who says there's no difference between the parties is delusional. We don't want people to think we're delusional, do we?
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Postscript: May 17, 2022
A neo-Nazi murdered a lot of black people in Buffalo, NY, recently after issuing a manifesto all about "replacement theory." Replacement theory is the notion (preached by Fox TV's Tucker Carlson and some GOP politicians) that the Democratic Party is replacing (or diluting the votes of, as Carlson puts it) white voters with non-whites (immigrants) in order to make life even harder for white working class people while making life easier for non-whites.
If the Democratic Party were truly championing the values and interests of working class Americans--all of them, white and non-white--against the contrary values and interests of the ruling upper class that treats all working class people like dirt (read how here), then the racist "replacement theory" would persuade hardly anybody. But because the Democratic Party has utter contempt for the values and interests of white working class people (which are the same as those of non-white working class people even though the Democratic Party proclaims otherwise by spouting its false and poisonously divisive "white privilege" BS) the "replacement theory" is persuasive to an increasingly substantive number of white working class people, some of whom in consequence become neo-Nazi mass racist murderers.
The appeal (to white working class people) of Fox New's Tucker Carlson is that he pretends to be championing the values and interests of white working class people, in a society in which NOBODY ELSE DOES.
The oh-so-liberal leaders of the Democratic Party and owners of the liberal mass media pretend to be horrified by the recent neo-Nazi racist mass murder in Buffalo, but they and their Democratic Party work tirelessly to ensure (give this linked PDF file time to load) that the "replacement theory" that drives such racist violence is maximally persuasive to white working class people. Why do they do this?
These establishment liberals are part of, or beholden to, the ruling plutocracy; they know that the vast majority of Americans hate the class inequality that enables this to happen:
and that results in most Americans beings treated like dirt by the rich and powerful. They know that the only way for the upper class to remain in power is to ensure that the have-nots are maximally divided against each other. And they know that dividing us along race lines has been proven to be one of the best ways to keep us divided. So they do whatever it takes to ensure that there will be violent KKK or neo-Nazi whites.