Amid all the campaign controversies and human tragedies of the past few months, you may have missed it when in late September Kamala Harris told us who she was both philosophically and as a political leader. It was in a speech at the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, a pro-business educational organization for the elites of western Pennsylvania. About ten minutes into the speech, she said to polite applause that, “I have always been and will always be, a strong supporter of workers and unions.” Then only seconds later, she said something that completely negated what she had just said: “I also believe we need to engage those who create most of the jobs in America. Look, I am a capitalist. I believe in free and fair markets.” She made it clear who’s side she’s on.
Harris doesn’t really seem to spend much time thinking about the working class and their needs. She and her Democratic Party colleagues are too busy trying to portray everyone who’s not a capitalist as a so-called “middle class” that can be good consumers, be good homeowners, and buy into the system. But most working-class people – at least 62% of the U.S. population – are struggling just to pay their rent and get through the day.
Harris believes in the rights of capitalists to own whatever they want, to exploit our labor however they want, and to get as wealthy as they want. She believes that they have the right to “create most of the jobs” and then profit wildly while the rest of us sit and hope for the best.
While Harris felt obligated to tick off a few policies that might get through Congress and that might help some working people in some situations, those programs and policies are just tinkering around the edges of a system that allows the few to dominate and exploit everyone else, while at the same time destroying our planet. That’s what capitalism really is and really does. There are no such things as “free and fair markets” in capitalism. The biggest and most powerful are always rigging and re-rigging the system to work for their needs. They use politicians and the state to help them do all these things. For Harris, other than a few tiny changes, that’s all okay and she’s willing to defend it. She admitted it when she said, “I am a capitalist,” and that she believed in “free and fair markets.”
In this speech and many other less explicit speeches, Harris was signaling to the real capitalists that she’s willing to be the President who will best help them achieve their goals. She was telling them that she won’t mess with their wealth, their power, their control over workers, their new technologies, their ability to shape our world to meet their needs. She was telling them that even if she’s not one of them, they can count on her to support them and nurture them.
Harris and her party have told us whose side they are on. They have told us directly. We should believe them. They aren’t our friends. They are on the side of our enemies.
