Almost everybody says it does matter who wins the presidency in November. Filmmaker Michael Moore and Def Jam founder Russell "Rock the Vote" Simmons think so. So do AFL-CIO labor leaders, antiwar volunteers with United for Peace and Justice, the National Organization for Women, and Human Rights Campaign.

The "anybody but Bush" crowd admits to John Kerry's glaring problems, but he's still their man. As they see it, the Democrats just need a backbone. The top priority is to kick the Republicans out of the White House and get the country back to "normal."

But remember the Clinton presidency? Depleted uranium bombs dropping on Yugoslavia; sanctions and bombing in Iraq; missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan; the destruction of welfare; expansion of the "war on drugs" and death penalty. Who can forget the "benefits" of NAFTA, the Defense of Marriage Act, and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that Clinton pushed for gays and lesbians in the military?

Can those truly be the "good old days"?

Bush's unconstitutional attacks on freedom of speech and association through police agencies and the courts are indeed a manifestation of budding U.S. fascism. His lies about Iraq and his grotesque expansionism, the brutal treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the denial of the rights of immigrants, strikers, and demonstrators, the coup against President Aristide in Haiti: all this leads liberals and labor officials to argue that the Democrats are the only hope for saving civil liberties.

What they don't or won't see is that the problem is not Bush or even his party, but the system itself.

The threat of American fascism is not short term, and cannot be eliminated in the next election or any election. Fascism does not arise from the bad will of malicious demagogues, but from a crisis of capitalism so severe that it cannot be solved in any other way. When the capitalist class can no longer maintain stable rule through relatively democratic forms of government, it resorts to a police state. If necessary, it will provoke a violent, racist, anti-Semitic, nationalist, homophobic, anti-woman, and anti-union mass movement a fascist movement to impose its will on rebellious workers and dissenters.

As long as capitalism exists, the danger of fascism exists regardless of who sits in the White House.

Free-traders of both parties, including Kerry, promised that neoliberalism would bring prosperity to our hemisphere. Instead it has been a disaster.

In Latin America, joblessness has doubled in the last 10 years, incomes have shrunk, and 200 million people live in poverty. In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs have dried up. Dissatisfaction boils over the healthcare crisis and corporate corruption. Public education, social security, credit card debt and affordable housing are flashpoint issues. At the same time, the European Union is challenging the economic hegemony of the U.S.

For U.S. imperialism to stay on top, workers in this country must be forced to work longer for less, fight the rulers' wars, and expect less social benefits from their taxpayer dollars. This will spell impoverishment for millions of people and generate enormous discontent just as it has in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, and throughout Latin America. The unfailing result will be a widespread desire for radical change.

No political force on our planet is stronger than the U.S. bourgeoisie except the U.S. working class. In this profound fact lies the hope for the hemisphere and the world.

The multi-racial, multi-national U.S working class is capable of overthrowing the system that breeds demagogues like Bush and replacing it with socialism, a sharing of the bounty workers create. But first workers need a leadership that has broken with the failed strategy of being a pressure group on the Democrats.

In 2000 and 2002, the AFL-CIO [America's TUC] and its affiliates spent $187 million to elect Democrats, most of whom voted for the Patriot Act and the Iraq war. This year, the AFL-CIO will spend $44 million. And for what? A man like Kerry who wants to send 40,000 more soldiers to Iraq and is more hostile to Cuba and Venezuela than Bush!

It is time for a new Workers' Declaration of Independence from the twin parties of capitalism, independence from labor bureaucrats who sabotage strikes, independence from those who make war on working people here and abroad.

Join the Million Worker March in Washington, D.C. (www.millionworkermarch.org) on October 17! Ask your union or labor council to endorse the march and its independent working class agenda. As the song says, "In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold!" All we have to do is use it!

Issued by: Freedom Socialist Party, Seattle. www.socialism.com