Can the Left Still Win 2020?
Star Trek tends to be popular with the left because it depicts a version of a utopian leftist future. While we remain a long way from a post-currency, post scarcity society, there is one particular concept popularized in Star Trek that is directly applicable to the 2020 presidential election. This is the no win scenario known as the Kobayashi Maru — a training scenario introduced in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that is programmed so there is no possible way to victory. We face the same type of scenario in the general election in 2020. Both Trump and Biden are tools of the oligarchy. The ruling class put a lot of effort into ensuring that Bernie Sanders did not win the primary so that the working class would have no truly viable option in the election. Stopping Bernie was far more important to the establishment Democrats than was stopping Trump. The ruling class has set up this election so that we cannot win, no matter which way we have voted.
On the one hand, we get an old white man with credible rape allegations, a history of racism, militarism, and support for the corporate agenda. And on the other hand, we have Trump. While there are significant differences between the two, no matter which one is declared the winner— the oligarchy and capitalism win. There are numerous arguments that have been made as to why one or the other lying psychopath would be better for progressives. There are also arguments that have been made for voting third party or not voting. These arguments are a meaningless distraction from the true struggle. As long as we look through the narrow lens of electoral politics, the left is always going to lose.
Electoral politics are the domain of the ruling class. The system is so broken and corrupt that a mildly socialist candidate like Bernie Sanders would never be allowed to win. After two rigged Democratic primaries, it is absurd to think that we can out maneuver the ruling class in their own domain. As Audre Lorde so powerfully told us, “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” It is important that we stop attempting to use the master’s tools, but begin using our own toolkit to change the oppressive system.
While the Kobayashi Maru test was designed to show that sometimes in life there are impossible situations, Captain James T. Kirk challenges this paradigm, saying “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario…I like to think there always are…possibilities.” The way in which Kirk defeated the Kobayashi Maru scenario was by reprogramming the scenario to allow him to win. He went outside of the accepted parameters and created his own solution. This is what we must do with the political situation in the United States — we must both reprogram ourselves and others to get out of this dim cesspool of despair that Biden or Trump presents us.
It is important to reprogram our own thinking. We must redefine winning and losing. As the 2020 presidential election is a foregone loss, we need to move outside of that realm and work toward a better society without being reliant on this broken system of the oligarchy. The media wants us to focus solely on oligarch vs. oligarch. People like Barack Obama want us to think that voting is the single most important thing we can do in our society. We should never feel guilty about our voting — yet vote shaming is running rampant on both social and corporate media. On the left, we must remember that no matter who is declared winner by the corporate elite and the broken electoral college, we were the ones who were fighting the hardest to defeat both candidates when we supported Bernie Sanders. Remember, we would not be in this situation if the 2016 primary had not been rigged — Bernie would have chosen 3 supreme court justices, not Trump. By all means, vote if you want to — but do so with the understanding that the top of the ticket is not the be all and end all of political activism. There are many important ballot measures and down ballot races that can create a small impact of positive change locally. But far more important than checking boxes on a ballot is the organizing that must be done if we are to survive the inevitable collapse of capitalism under climate catastrophe.
“I changed the conditions of the test. Got a commendation for original thinking. I don’t like to lose.” — Captain James T Kirk
Like Captain Kirk, we also must change the conditions of the struggle. With a Green New Deal and Bernie Sanders as president, there was a very slim chance of stopping catastrophic climate change. Now that option has been stolen from us, it is necessary to face the reality that what we are seeing now is nothing compared to what is coming. As Engels once said, “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” Rosa Luxemberg expanded upon this in the Junius Pamphlet, “Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration — a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war.” This statement accurately describes what we face today — with the added pressure of climate change, these are indeed dire times for society. Never have we needed socialism more than we do today.
The most effective counter to oligarchy and the growing threat of fascism is leftist unity. It does not matter who you voted for or did not vote for — what matters is that you believe in the fight for a more just society, a society where the forces of capital no longer use the state to oppress the working class. As Joe Hill was about to die, he wrote a telegram to Bill Haywood saying, “ Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize!” The capitalist class wants the working class to remain divided. This is why they worked so hard to stop the Bernie campaign and have continually attacked socialism. We must not allow our minor differences to divide us — instead we must unite against both neoliberalism and fascism. This can take many forms — begin organizing your work place, join or form a mutual aid society, organize or join a protest, join a socialist reading group, organize around progress issues, and many more. As Che Guevara wrote, “If you are capable of trembling with indignation each time that an injustice is committed in the world, we are comrades…” Whatever you do, comrades, do no despair because the corporate overlords have installed another choice of the oligarchy, we are in this fight together.
I will conclude with the words of two of my favorite men. First, as Bernie Sanders said at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, “Together, together my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America and that revolution — our revolution — continues. Election days come and go. But the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the one percent — a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice — that struggle continues. And I look forward to being part of that struggle with you.” And lastly, in the words of the great Karl Marx, our “battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.”