The 2024 election cycle has once again demonstrated the iron grip of the Democratic and Republican Party duopoly on the American people. Communists have long identified these parties as serving the interests of monopoly capital above all else, and this is why the true progressive work in the United States today is to build the anti-monopoly coalition. The anti-monopoly coalition has the potential to form into a viable third-party movement championing the interests of the labor movement and its allies.
This is not a new idea; Comrade General Secretary Gus Hall of the Communist Party USA identified the need for such a coalition in his prophetic work “Imperialism Today”, published in 1971. Gus Hall’s life demonstrated that these were not empty words, but a life-long commitment. Gus Hall spent years of his life in prison for daring to challenge the established order of monopoly capitalism. Hall’s views were rooted in his background in the trade union movement, as an organizer of the Steelworkers Union.
We quote this text today, which is as applicable now as it was back then, as the domination of monopoly capital has continued:
Today struggles in any sector of life turn into a confrontation with monopoly capital. Search the surface anywhere and you touch some tentacle of monopoly corporate interests. The industrial worker meets the monster on the production line daily. This confrontation is direct and clean-cut. The small farmer confronts the beast in the form of banks, the agri-corporation and monopolies in the distribution of farm products. The small businessman is squeezed between the monopolies who control the economy.
African Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans are the victims of the monopolies’ special system of oppression and discrimination. The students face the fiend in monopoly-controlled college boards. Women face the monster of reaction-inspired male chauvinism.
In the United States one cannot escape the tentacles of monopoly capitalism. They have a choking grip on industry, banking, newspapers, radio, television, magazines, on retail trade. They control the two parties of capitalism. Monopoly capital has a controlling influence on the government on all levels. We have a state monopoly power.
How to unite the victims of monopoly oppression is a serious question for the working class, the victims of the special systems of oppression, the farm groups, professionals and people engaged in small business. To “turn the country around” is to turn it against monopoly capitalism. Any meaningful “new beginning” must be an anti-monopoly beginning. An anti-monopoly coalition is an inevitable political development, because the power of monopoly is an obstacle to any progressive development. It will give rise to a new political party. The struggle will lead to an anti-monopoly political power, to state power. This is an inevitable path of struggle. Because it is inevitable it is necessary to have a continuing dialog about the problems of building a broad anti-monopoly coalition. One must start with the fact that masses will identify with the anti-monopoly struggles who are not for the destruction of capitalism as a system. They are going to be for measures that restrict and cut back the power of monopoly. They are going to be for measures that put the burden of taxes on the monopolies. The anti-monopoly measures will include laws that support workers and small farmers. They will support laws that strike at racism. Inevitably the anti-monopoly direction will move to nationalization of banks and industries. It will move towards greater democratic controls in all areas of life—political, economic, cultural.
If one sees the path to socialism lined with people in struggle over the issues that pain them most, fighting and learning to recognize the real class enemy, becoming conscious of its own class power, and in the process being taught about socialism, then the anti-monopoly struggles become indispensable. In a country like the United States, to ignore the anti-monopoly movement and struggles is to ignore the most basic element of our reality.
The anti-monopoly struggle is an expression of masses who are radical, militant, but a step away from the level of a revolutionary struggle to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism.
In the real sense there is no choice for serious revolutionaries. It is the same masses who are now and are going to be in the anti-monopoly struggles, who are going to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism in the United States.
To turn the country towards socialism is to turn it to fight monopoly domination.
The anti-monopoly concept is a broad, flexible term reflecting the varied nature of the struggle. Anti-monopoly struggles take place in every sector of life, because monopolies dominate every sector of life. The anti-monopoly struggles are laying the bricks for an anti-monopoly coalition. The specific issues that give rise to anti-monopoly struggles are economic, political, anti-war, for civil rights, for democracy. The working class is forced to take an anti-monopoly position. The struggles in all sectors move toward a confrontation with monopoly corporations.
Because of the new role of the state, anti-monopoly struggles tend to become political struggles. The politics of the Democratic and Republican Parties are the politics of monopoly capitalism.
It is an illusion to think that anti-monopoly politics can ever establish a long term political base in these two old parties. The basis for anti-monopoly politics is political independence from the twin parties of capitalism. There will be a period when the independent forces will use the two-party, one-class electoral apparatus which serves monopoly, but the struggle must be for the breaking of that political vise and the setting up of a new anti-monopoly party based on the working class.
The aim of the anti-monopoly struggles must be the creation of an anti-monopoly coalition strong enough to break the economic and political stranglehold of monopoly capital. This of necessity means a struggle for economic and political power. Economic and political power cannot evade the question of state power. It means anti-monopoly state power.
Economic and political power that breaks the grip of monopoly of necessity means the nationalization of monopoly-controlled industries. It may not start with nationalization but the logic of the confrontation will lead to nationalization.
In a country like the United States the advent of an anti-monopoly state power will be an explosive event. It will rock the class structure from top to bottom. Nationalization with democratic controls will change the balance of class power. The role of the state will change. The state will become a bigger factor in influencing and directly regulating economic developments. It will have to add the element of planning. Workers will be drawn into councils that will have power over economic relationships. It is clear these are also necessary steps moving the country toward socialism. As there is a relationship between the struggle for reforms and the struggle to overthrow capitalism, there is a dialectical relationship between the struggle against monopoly and the struggle for socialism. Within the overall framework of the class struggle there are struggles that take place on many levels around a multitude of issues.
