History shows that the Democrats and Republican are not two counterpoised forces, but rather complementary halves of a single two-party system. For over 130 years the two major parties have been extremely effective in preventing the emergence of any mass political formation that could challenge their political monopoly. Both major parties have been dominated by moneyed interests and today reflect the historic period of corporate rule. Every major gain in our history – the battles for Bill of Rights, to end slavery, and to establish free public education – has been the product of direct action by movements independent of the two major parties and in opposition to them. Since the Civil War, without exception, the Democratic Party has opposed all mass struggles for democracy and social justice.

–– Peter Camejo, 1939-2008

Envision

Republocrats running away from the war: GOP not the only one to blame.

"The US will either be a multiparty democracy, or it won't be a democracy at all."

It's Time To Dump The Dems, Support The Green Insurgency, by Scott McLarty, November 22, 2005

The American state does not reflect the image we have been conditioned to see. The political system and its processes are under the control of major corporate interests, whose ownership of major media outlets propagandize the public on behalf of such narrow interests. The appearance of a democracy collapses into the reality of a one-party system -- the "Establishment Party" -- which, election-after-election, provides voters with choices between Tweedledum and Tweedledummer. So-called "popular democracy" long ago faded into a plutocracy, with only the independently wealthy having a realistic chance of getting elected to high office. Nor did the election returns of 2000 -- in Florida -- and 2004 -- in Ohio -- instill confidence in the voting process itself.

Rojong

Quotes & Comments

Certain new facts may, in our time, emerge so clearly as to lead to general withdrawal of loyalty from the system. The new conditions of technology, economics, and war, in the atomic age, make it less and less possible for the guards of the system -- the intellectuals, the home owners, the taxpayers, the skilled workers, the professionals, the servants of government -- to remain immune from the violence (physical and psychic) inflicted on the black, the poor, the criminal, the enemy overseas.

The problem of pesticides in the air, of asbestos in buildings, of lead paint on walls, of plutonium in the earth, of industrial wastes in drinking water, is a problem beyond class, race, sex. It could unite people of all classes and groups in fury against those few in the Establishment who, in their demonic pursuit of more weapons, more profits, keep insisting (like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, like the tobacco companies, like Hoover in 1932 and Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam war) that everything is all right.

With the Establishment's inability either to solve severe economic problems at home or to manufacture abroad a safety valve for domestic discontent, Americans might be ready to demand not just more tinkering, more reform laws, another reshuffling of the same deck, another New Deal, but radical change. Let us be utopian for a moment so that when we get realistic again it is not that ""realism"" so useful to the Establishment in its discouragement of action, that "realism" anchored to a certain kind of history empty of surprise. Let us imagine what radical change would require of us all.

The society's levers of powers would have to be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state -- the giant corporations. the military, and their politician collaborators. We would need -- by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country -- to reconstruct the economy for both efficiency, and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most. We would start on our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the work force -- children, old people, "handicapped" people. Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available -- free -- to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation.