Lesser Evil: The Left Debates the Democratic Party and Social Change

In three debates Marxist leaders explain why a government that advances the interests of the working class and oppressed cannot be established through support to one of the two parties of big business in the United States. And why backing the “lesser evil” of the Democratic or Republican candidates will not slow down or defeat the right wing.

They explain how working people—as they learn through growing struggle that they are part of a class with interests opposed to those of the employers—will build a mass political party of their own to stop the bosses’ march toward fascism and war.

Jack Barnes (1940– ) is national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. He joined the SWP in May 1961 and has been a member of the party’s National Committee since 1963 and a national officer since 1968.

Since the mid-1970s Barnes has led the political course of the SWP and its sister parties worldwide to build communist parties whose members and leaders in their large majority are workers and unionists organizing workers to forge and strengthen trade unions and lead the working class and its allies toward a successful socialist revolution.

Barnes is a contributing editor of New International magazine and author of numerous books and articles on revolutionary working-class politics and the communist movement.

His writings include:
Are They Rich Because They’re Smart?(2016)
The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party (2019)
Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power (2009)
The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working People (2016)
“The Stewardship of Nature Also Falls to the Working Class: In Defense of Land and Labor,” in New International no. 14 (2008, coauthor)
Cuba and the Coming American Revolution (2007)
Their Trotsky and Ours (2002)
“US Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War” in New International no. 11 (1998)