Built From The Ground Up

Statement by Socialist Congressional Candidate, Todd Vachon

From The Socialist, Fall 2008 (Election Issue)

Greetings fellow readers of TS. For those of you I haven’t had the pleasure to meet, my name is Todd Vachon and I am running as the Socialist Party candidate for congress in Connecticut, District 2.

I am not a politician. I am not a lawyer and I don’t have a speech writer. I am a union carpenter, a public school teacher, a father of two and a concerned citizen who loves democracy and believes in self-governance. I unfortunately see plutocracy and corporate governance today in our beautiful country.

The one political party, with it’s right-wing and it’s far-right-wing, is the party of big-business. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are bought and paid for by the same wealth. Unfortunately, the corporately owned media is content to have us think that they are dynamic opposites.

As a member of the working class majority I am tired of going to the polls year after year and having to select the “lesser of two evils.” We all know damn well that this party is no friend of labor except when it comes time to get some votes and foot soldiers.

They, the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, represent the interests of big-business capitalism. Most Americans are not capitalists. Most can’t afford a lobbyist. The only inherent goal of capitalism as a system is the accumulation of capital and the never-ending pursuit of profit at everyone and everything else’s expense.

No where does it say “guarantee meaningful work and a quality life for all.” No where does it say “preserve the environment, produce in a sustainable way and conserve resources.” Nope.

It just says “Make more profit. Get that money.” Profit, profit, profit.

So, let’s take a second to review where this quest for profit has landed us in 2008:

- The U.S. is still illegally occupying Iraq in year number 5 – a war built on lies and manipulated intelligence. $3 Trillion spent and 40% of the money sent to Afghanistan has come back to the U.S. in the form of corporate profit. This must be the biggest fleecing in history. - Tens of Millions of Americans still live without health care and a hundred million more are breaking the bank just to keep their families insured. - Our economy is in recession, part of a regular capitalist cycle every 10-15 years. -Property taxes… sky high. Homeowners are losing their homes at levels unseen since the great depression, mostly do to outstanding medical bills. -The “middle class” has been steadily eroding for 30 plus years under both Democrat and Republican administrations and congresses. -Good Paying Manufacturing jobs? Outsourced and replaced by low paying, part-time and temporary service sector jobs, due in part to bi-partisan, pro-business trade deals like NAFTA. - Our public education system is slowly being privatized. Our children and public school teachers are being hung out to dry to accommodate the desires of the for-profit education industry and it’s incredibly flawed NCLB policy. - Our roads, bridges, schools and other collectively owned assets are in complete disrepair due to never ending budget cuts. This conscious neglect will likely lead our congress to determine that this infrastructure should also be privatized. - Our most basic ideals about law and justice have been tossed out and the two parties continue to pass bills that further erode our civil liberties and even legitimize torture. -Our privatized prison industrial complex imprisons more people per capita than any other nation in the world.... disproportionately people of color, mostly poor, mostly black. -We are among the worst of industrialized nations for deaths by treatable causes, due to our private, for-profit health care system. –The U.S. ranks 139^th out of 171 democracies for voter turnout. Roughly 50% of eligible voters don’t bother to vote. When asked why, they say that it doesn’t matter- I guess a whole lot of people do understand that we haven’t really got much of a democracy at all.

These are the times of “jobless recoveries” and “market-based solutions”, terms which both share the same distinct odor as “Reagonomics” and “Trickle Down” economics. As members of the working class, which constitutes 80% of America, the only thing that trickles down to us is instructions and orders from way up the hierarchical ladder of corporate organization.

Class is not about income, it is about power. There may be a formula to calculate a particular income bracket that constitutes the so-called “middle-class”, but the truth of it is this: The boss determines what we do during our 8 hours, which is the majority of our waking time on work days. The boss determines how much to sell the fruits of our labors to other workers for. The boss determines how much we get paid, unless we organize and demand more, and the boss decides when he doesn’t need us any more because we are hurting profits. Whether we go to work in an office wearing a shirt and tie working at a computer or we go to a construction site wearing a hard hat and swinging a hammer the vast majority of us are working class- We do not own the means of production.

Our primary source of wealth, as working-class Americans, is home ownership. However, most homeowners are really debtors. The banks own our homes and likely our cars as well. Even ignoring this fact our collective percentage of the national wealth is merely 16%! That’s right, the bottom 80% of Americans share just 16% of America’s wealth. The top 1% owns 33% of the wealth and the next 19% own 51%, giving the top Fifth of society control over 84% of all wealth. This is exactly the intent of a market based economy. So, not only do the capitalists enjoy empowering work and the access to information to make well-informed decisions, but they also get paid 500% more than their average worker.

I know I’m ranting a bit, but it’s my specialty. It’s what we Socialists like to do before taking action… and we are all chomping at the bit right now.

Grassroots Politics. Direct Action. These are the only ways that we have ever accomplished anything as a class. We can’t count on fundraising politicians to hand out National Health Insurance and Living wages. They only throw us a bone when we make the alternative worse. The driving force behind change and progress has always been class struggle, and this still holds true today. This is why I am running for congress as the Socialist candidate, to get out and speak to people and help raise class awareness.

No candidate from either of the capitalist parties will acknowledge the systemic nature of the problems I have outlined above. They will do little to slow the current destructive pattern: the wholesale privatization, or Milton Freidmanization of every remaining public entity- modern day primitive accumulation.

No, the Democratic Party, as Edwin Laing said, is “where social movements go to die”

and the Republican Party is where CEO’s go for tax breaks.

The capitalist two-party monopoly and it’s corporate media networks offer us two options that are both acceptable to them, then lead us to think that we have some kind of democratic choice.

As the young Howard Zinn so aptly stated more than 30 years ago: “Totalitarian states love elections, they get the people out to the poles to register their approval for the government. I know there is a difference, they have one party and we have two parties, we have one more party than they do you see.”

It’s high time to change that. The Socialist Party runs electoral campaigns to activate that 50% of voters, mostly low income, to stand up with a real alternative to the same old wage-slave-driving parties. It is true that one congressional representative cannot change the entire system, but he/she can fight for reforms that will improve our daily lives and, more importantly, develop the political consciousness/solidarity among the people who will collectively make the real changes in the long run.

I strongly agree with the statement that “capitalism cannot be reformed”, but am faced with the dichotomy of a socialist candidate. As a socialist running for office within a capitalist system my policy objectives may seem reformist or social democratic at best: real universal health care, graduated income taxation, socialized energy and expanded public transportation.

Such simple taxation and funding of social programs does not equate to socialism, but fighting together for such reforms can help to generate the necessary class solidarity to bring about a truly participatory economy. A sustainable form of production for human use and not for profit that replaces hierarchy with equality, cut-throat competition with solidarity, free-trade with fair trade. A complete democracy that extends from the political sphere of electing representatives to the economic sphere of making decisions about production, distribution and consumption. A society where every human being has food, housing, healthcare and employment. Where full civil rights and liberties are guaranteed to all, where every individual is able to fulfill his or her full potential.

As Eugene Debs said nearly 100 years ago: “The Earth is for all people, this is the demand.”

The ruling class already has 500 plus congresspersons representing their interests in both houses of the congress. It’s time that we stop voting for their representatives and start running and voting for our own.

-Todd Vachon (www.votevachon.com)