White advocates alternate platform in Tuesday talk
Following a tour of Germany, England and Sri Lanka, as part of a nationwide tour, Jerry White, the Socialist Equality Party’s presidential candidate, spoke on campus Tuesday evening to an audience of around 25.
White urged listeners not to be deceived by the politics of the Democratic and Republican parties, both of which, he argued, are preparing to implement deep cuts in education, health care and social services.
His talk, entitled “The 2012 Election and the Failure of Capitalism,” stridently asserted that America is no longer the “land of the middle class” but is instead gripped by class struggle.
White appealed to youth and the working class and encouraged them to unite and vote against the two major parties.
Perhaps unexpected was the scathing attack White leveled against the Democrats.
For White, there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties; both are in the pockets of a “parasitic financial elite,” White said.
In fact, White said that the Democratic Party is worse for what he suggested is its concealment of a de facto capitalistic agenda.
The party, he said, has “repackaged imperial politics as identity politics.”
That, he argued, ignores what he describe as the worsening conditions of the American and international working classes.
White held that the apparent lack of concern for the working class among the Republican and Democratic parties is irrational, as social reform and redistribution are ingrained in the American national consciousness.
Social reform and redistribution are not fanciful ideals, White said, but universal necessities that is the modern-day embodiment of the ideals of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” espoused by the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
White is strident in his condemnation of American politics, which he held has become an oligarchy controlled by a financial aristocracy that doesn’t pursue the interests of the working class.
When asked what he meant by the working class, White said it is the billions of people working “pay-check to pay-check,” producing wealth that is misdirected into the pockets of the financial elite.
White referenced the 2011 World Ultra Wealth Report to define the U.S.’s financial elite, estimating that there are 57,860 “Ultra High Net Worth” individuals in the U.S. with a combined net worth of $7.6 trillion, which is more than half the GDP of the US.
Asked to respond to the criticism that a vote for his party wouldn’t have much impact, White countered that a vote for either of the main parties would be a waste, because both their agendas are hostile to the working class majority.
Instead, White fervently presented the party as a viable alternative and a vote for the future.
But White will not be on ballots in South Carolina. He will be on the national Presidential ballot and could attract voters with Socialist sympathies.
For Marc Ridlehoover, a first-year political science student, the meeting was important to “break down the misconception that there are only two choices for political elections.”