The Danger of "Lesser-Evilism"

Introduction:

A little over a week ago, one of my mutuals on Bluesky referred me to Hal Draper’s article, “Who’s Going to be the Lesser-Evil in 1968?” Judging by the title, you might’ve guessed that the article was written about the 1968 United States presidential election, and you’d be correct. Though the article was written in 1967, I felt that it is still relevant today as, truth be told, not all that much has changed. One of the more important things that stuck with me was Draper’s idea of the Lesser Evil pattern—this idea has been repeating in my head for the past week now, and I felt compelled to share it with you as well as give some of my own personal thoughts about it.

“Who’s Going to be the Lesser-Evil in 1968?”

Hal Draper wrote this article in 1967 before Lyndon B. Johnson confirmed he would not be seeking re-election, and little did Draper know how chaotic the events leading up to the election would be. The 1960s was a decade of change within the United States. The Civil Rights Movement would finally see the long overdue legislation that it fought so hard for, the Hippies and Yippies developed as a counter-culture against traditional American norms, and the Vietnam War, a war based entirely on overthrowing the socialist government of Ho Chi Minh, raged on to the outrage of protesters back on U.S. soil.

Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964. Goldwater had said that, if he was elected, he’d defoliate the jungles of Vietnam through Scorched Earth. Johnson won in 1964 and proceeded to escalate the war more than Goldwater probably ever could have, considering Johnson was incredibly well-respected in Congress, and, consequently, was able to pass much of the legislation he put forth.

The people were upset—they wanted the troops to come home and the war to end. Johnson wasn’t doing that, so near the end of his administration there was frequent protests across campuses nationwide, riots throughout cities, and a general sense that there needed to be someone else in office.

Obviously Draper couldn’t tell the future, so he didn’t know that Johnson would back out of the race, or that Robert F. Kennedy, a popular Senate Democrat and the brother of John. F. Kennedy, would enter the race and be assassinated a few months before the election, nor that it would end up being Richard Nixon vs. Hubert Humphrey, and that Nixon would ultimately win off of a campaign that rejected the “radical” and culturally “liberal” sentiment of the 60s.

Although Draper couldn’t tell the electoral future of the United States, he did explore an idea that has stood the test of time, and is still as relevant today as it was back in 1967: the idea of the Lesser Evil.

Draper begins by giving the historical, and most infamous, example of the Lesser Evil—1932 Germany. In the 1932 German presidential election the Nazis ran Hitler, and the main right-wing bourgeois parties ran the popular general Paul von Hindenburg, a conservative reactionary, no doubt, but not a fascist. The Social-Democrats who had the power of the labor movement behind them, the Great Depression struck Germany especially hard with the reparations they were still paying back for WWI, and the Communists refused to create a coalition of their own, and run an independent candidate against Hindenburg and Hitler, for both parties believed that the most important thing was making sure that the Greater Evil, Hitler, did not become president, so they backed Hindenburg.

Hindenburg won the election in 1932, and proceeded to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, and then proceeded to die in 1934 while the Nazis took over Germany. Everyone, except the far-right fascists, supported Hindenburg as the more sensible choice just to get both the Lesser Evil and the Greater Evil in the end.

Draper makes the point that it doesn’t matter who the Lesser Evil is because it is the choice that is the disaster, not the answer. When the choice is between one capitalist versus another, you lose by accepting the limitation of that choice.

Looking back now with hindsight, the Social-Democrats and the Communists would’ve been better off running their own candidate and pushing for a far-left revolution rather than accepting the “sensible” choice which led to fascism, and had horrible consequences for the world.

What this teaches us, as Draper says, is “that you can’t fight the victory of the rightmost forces by sacrificing your own independent strength to support elements just the next step away from them.”

What we’ve seen with our own eyes is that the “liberal left” is easily swayed by the Democratic Party, so much so that when the liberal complains about the political situation in the country, all the Democrats have to do is fearmonger about the Republican boogeyman, and the liberals proceed to shut up and vote for the Lesser Evil.

The problem then becomes that the Democrats think they have the entirety of the left vote guaranteed, so they push more and more each election cycle for the moderate vote which, consequently, shifts the entire political spectrum in the United States to the right.

It gets so bad that you end up with a person like Donald Trump, who portrays himself as a conservative populist, but is following the fascist playbook step-by-step, as the Republican candidate while the “Lesser Evil” is someone like Kamala Harris who, by all means, is the Lesser Evil to Trump, but wasn’t willing to guarantee an end to Israel’s genocide of Palestine—which we all know the U.S. President is capable of doing.

The Leftist knew that whichever candidate won wasn’t going to be exactly good for us. Neither of them would’ve pushed to reform or change the capitalist system, or nationalized systems that would benefit all Americans, nor would they have brought us any closer to ending the attempted extermination of the Palestinian people.

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What Draper was seeing in 1967 hasn’t changed all that much except for that we are closer to 1932 Germany than we are to 1968 USA. The bureaucratic statification that Draper wrote about has only gotten worse. It’s now being “dismantled” by Trump which really means he is replacing any bureaucrat that isn’t absolutely loyal to him with ones that are. He is rebuilding the state in his image which is what authoritarian leaders do.

The Democratic Party has abandoned the entire left-wing of the political spectrum. Until we can create a revolutionary left party that is made up of the working-class, for the working-class, we will be stuck making the choice between the “Lesser Evil” or a third party candidate that has no chance of winning within the United States’ duopoly.

The difference between a revolutionary left party and the third parties that we see today is simple: the left party we need to create is so much more than a party, it is a revolution that will challenge the broken system we face, it is not made up of politicians, but revolutionaries that see through the lies that others can’t and demand the change that we don’t just want, but that we need, it is a movement that does not want violence, but will not hesitate to fight against the bourgeoisie with everything it can when it comes to that.

When we believe that the only choice we have is between two capitalists, we’ve already lost, and we’ll always lose if we put limitations on ourselves as to the power we hold and the great things we can achieve with that power. I urge you all to take political action whenever and wherever you can because history has shown that when the people express their power, great things happen.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Hindenburg

https://www.pbs.org/johngardner/chapters/5a.html

https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1967/01/lesser.htm