What are USA politicians fighting over?
What are USA politicians fighting over?
The USA is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, this is known. From the vast sums of money dumped into political campaigns by monopoly capital, to the cushy corporate lobbyist jobs awaiting elected officials after retirement, to the huge gulf between the values and desires of the people and the voting records of their so-called representatives. But there's one thing that I heard a lot of "progressive" liberals (or whatever you want to call them) saying over my many years in the USA: if voting didn't matter, they (referring to the republican party, naturally) wouldn't be trying to stop you from doing it.
Voting, and the outcome of elections in the USA, matters to somebody. Again, the capitalist powers that be invest quite a bit of money and effort into these political campaigns. But why? Why should contests over political office be so expensive and complicated if the result -- that imperialism wins -- is a foregone conclusion? Is it just the battlefield for the redivision of the domestic markets? How do the fights over civil rights issues and such factor in, or is it precisely because capital doesn't really care either way that bickering over those issues is so fierce?
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Say someone is apolitical. "Maybe I should get invested in politics" they think. They only know of the contradictions between the democrats and republicans because that is mostly what is shown. They need to fight to have buy in to the system. By making it so obvious that you have a choice it hides how much you don't have a choice.
I guess there is a divide within the bourgeoisie in some sense. Mostly a difference in industry.
Republicans represent manufacturing, agriculture, hotels, oil, and many small business industries.
Democrats represent lawyers, entertainment, finance, and tech industries
But then still, why invest so much into it? Surely many of those companies would rather pocket the extra profits than spending it on some kind of elaborate political theater performance. But they all play ball, they all invest in their own little cadres of corrupt officials, so there must be something to be gained from these little political battles beyond just a conspiracy to hoodwink the working class.
I think that's more to the core of my question though, if democrats represent tech, entertainment, etc. and republicans represent manufacturing, agriculture, etc., what are the contentious economic policies that cause that split?
I think I can oversimplify this to a difference in vision of what workers they want to exploit:
Democrats support policies that create workers that are highly educated and culturally sophisticated to do more work in their industries, have a consumer base for those goods and services, and be able to suppress wages with the abundance of these kinds of workers.
Republicans want as many uneducated workers as possible to scramble for the few low paying jobs that exist to keep their industries afloat.
Anti abortion laws create people that are desparate, both the women and the born children. Allowing abortion allows high end uterus-having workers to work longer putting off having children to be more effectively exploited. Our immigration policy creates workers of ambiguous legal status that can be abused to work for less than legal wages. Whereas industries supported by democrats want to exploit the most technically adept from around the world for as long as possible.
No real change can occur if it undermines existing industrial interests, thus social democratic policies are suppressed by both parties even if many industries would benefit from them, particularly the Finance industry.