It's coming! In just eight months, two hundred million Americans will be summoned to vote. The two candidates have been picked - Bush and Kerry - and both are frantically collecting money from their richest supporters: Kerry has already got 35 million dollars, Bush over 160 million.

It promises to be exciting. Still, less than half of all eligible voters will cast their vote. A majority of them think they (i.e. the politicians) are all the same.

And that's not far from the truth: this wonderful democracy with a government "by the people, of the people, and for the people" (as Abe Lincoln used to say), isn't going to decide much in this election: do the Americans want as their next president a corrupt multi-millionaire or a different corrupt millionaire? God bless democracy!

As Bill Hicks explained: "I'll show you politics in America right here: -I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs. -I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking. -Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding both puppets! -Shut up! Go back to bed America! You're government is in control."

But are both candidates really identical? Not quite: Bush has about 25 million dollars - Kerry just 5 million (of course his wife is sitting on a pile of 600 million dollars). Kerry's father was a Senator, while Poppy Bush was President. Kerry is from the North East and Bush is - also from the North East, even though he lived a while in Texas. Despite such striking differences, both candidates are members of the same secret society from the elite Yale University, Skull & Bones.

But all differences aside...

We have to look at the politics of both candidates.

By now everyone should be familiar with the Republican George Dubya Bush: the warmonger, who in four years started two major wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) alongside numerous "interventions" (i.e. mini-wars) in Bosnia, Venezuela, and recently in Haiti; Bush the corrupt businessman, whose friends caused the biggest financial scandals in history (Enron, WorldCom, etc); Bush the idiot, who constantly uses nonexistent words ("compassionated", "misunderestimated", "subliminable", "nucular", etc.) and can't find Kosovo or Slovakia on a map.

So what about his opponent, the Democrat John Kerry? He's largely unknown - which is understandable, since his political record consists of being a faceless rubber stamp in the Senate for his financial backers. He'd like to be seen as a "reasonable", "peace loving" alternative to Bush, a "man from middle America". But this self-portrait is deceptive. For example Kerry demagogically criticizes the use of American soldiers in Iraq - but in the Senate he voted for the invasion! His "criticism" is just about the imperialist occupation being too expensive. Or Kerry criticizes the human rights violations that go on day for day under the Bush Administration - but once again he voted for the "Patriot Act", which dramatically limited civil rights in the US.

One need only think back to the "golden ages", when the Democrats were in office, under Bill Clinton. Clinton also launched missiles: in Somalia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Iraq (fewer missiles than Bush, but still!). Under Clinton jobs were destroyed: thousands of American factories were moved to Mexico - tax free! - as a result of the free-trade area NAFTA, which was proposed by Reagan and implemented by Clinton. Clinton made all kinds of social cuts: he promised to save the miserable health care system in the USA with state funds, but at the end of his term there were 40 million Americans without health care, more than ever before.

Pretty much anybody?

Because of all this the election is causing incredible confusion. On the one hand, everyone knows a Kerry victory wouldn't change American politics. On the other hand, Bush is an alcoholic, unintelligent, probably even illiterate. Shouldn't it be a priority to get this guy away from the red button that controls the nuclear weapons?

That's what most of my friends think. They would vote for "pretty much anybody" to get Bush out of the Oval Office. So in this election what counts shouldn't be principles or preferences, just "electability". That means, one would have to vote for any old moron, even an old moron like John Kerry, to make Bush lose.

But it's not a coincidence that Bush and Kerry push the same politics. They are representatives of the same class: the American big bourgeoisie.

Let's picture the capitalists pulling the strings of both candidates: they can allow the masses to "throw Bush out", as a protest against the war in Iraq and the recent tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. So a new guy moves into the White House - and it's still their puppet! Now that the millions of angry citizens could blow off some steam, maybe they'll stop going out onto the streets so often. And the occupation of Iraq continues, the tax cuts remain untouched, the people without health insurance remain without health insurance, etc.

If you bet on both men in a two-man-race, you can't lose!

No choice!

As Karl Marx explained in the "Communist Manifesto" (1848), the modern capitalist state is little more than an "executive committee for the entire Bourgeoisie,"

That means the state ensures the profits of the capitalist class and every few years stages a little performance called "Democracy", to keep the working class from getting too pissed off. And whoever wins the game, the functions of the state do not change: hold down the working class, regulate the affairs of between big businesses, conquer new territory in order to get bigger markets for products, etc.

As every child knows: "If elections could change anything, they'd be illegal." Or to put it a different way: a profound social change is only possible if this state is smashed, i.e. revolution.

That's why there's never a place for "Communism" on the ballot. The mass actions necessary to break through the bounds of capitalist society don't fit in a ballot box.

We will only get what we fight for on the streets. Neither a Democrat nor a Republican will end the occupation of Iraq - that can only be done via armed resistance in Iraq and class struggle in the US.

The anti-war movement showed that the workers and youth of the US are ready and willing to fight back against the Bush administration - like the dock workers of the West Coast, who organized protests against the war and were oppressed by the president with vicious anti-union laws. Any serious left candidacy would have to be based on the half a million people who protested against the war on February 15, 2003 in New York. But there is no candidate like that - not even "Lefties" like Howard Dean or Ralph Nader.

Therefore: Don't trust "right" or "left" bourgeois politicians. Organize the struggle for your own interests! Or as American radicals used to say:

Don't vote! Organize!