The recent collapse of the Senate Democrats’ resistance to the government shutdown was a stark lesson for workers in class politics. Seven Democrats and an independent who caucuses with them joined Republicans to reopen the government and abandoned the fight to protect healthcare for millions.
Their capitulation, under pressure from big business and their billionaire donors and consultants, did not just end a political standoff—it exposed a fundamental truth: Capitalist politicians cannot and will not wage a consistent fight for democracy. That historic task falls, as it always has, to the working class.
First, let’s be clear that the shutdown was a crisis manufactured by the ruling class to attack the social wage: Their sights were set on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. The Democratic leadership initially positioned itself as a bulwark against this assault. They correctly read the public mood.
But when the moment demanded unwavering steadfastness, a critical faction crumbled. These political cowards traded their votes for nothing more than a promise of a future healthcare vote that Sen. Bernie Sanders rightly called a “totally meaningless gesture.”
Let’s be clear: This was not a failure of individuals, but the logical outcome of their class allegiance. These politicians are products of a bourgeois democracy—a system where their survival depends on appeasing corporate donors like the airline industry. Their interests are bound to the preservation of capitalism, a system of profit-before-people, not its democratization. The daily crises of the working class are, at best, bargaining chips to them.
In fact, as Amiad Horowitz wrote in People’s World last week on the bi-partisan use of government shutdowns: “The threat of shutdowns keeps public workers insecure, weakens unions in the federal sector, and reinforces the narrative that ‘government doesn’t work,’ paving the way for further austerity and privatization.”
Lenin’s lesson: Who can lead?
This moment demands we revisit a critical question: What class has the objective interest in fighting for democracy to its logical conclusion? V.I. Lenin, in his 1905 work Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, provided a clear answer.
He argued that in the fight against autocracy and for a democratic republic, the bourgeoisie is “inconsistent, self-seeking, and cowardly.” It fears the revolutionary power of the workers more than it desires full democracy and will always compromise with reaction to protect its property and privilege.
Sound familiar? The shutdown “compromise” is a textbook example of this bourgeois cowardice. The Democratic Party leadership, representing a section of the capitalist class, proved it would rather allow a deal that sacrifices the healthcare of 36 million people—14 million off Medicaid in the next decade, 22 million people off the ACA exchanges—than risk a prolonged conflict that could radicalize the public and strengthen the hand of the working class.
Lenin counterposed this with the role of the proletariat. The working class, he insisted, is the “only consistently revolutionary class.” It is the only class whose liberation is impossible without the fullest democracy, and whose victory requires it to lead the broad masses in the democratic struggle. For the working class, the fight for democracy is not a tactical maneuver but a life-and-death necessity—the very “first step in the revolution,” as Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto.
The false choice and the path forward
Some union leaders, like Everett Kelley of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), fell into the trap of pressuring Democrats to surrender. Others, like International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, gleefully joined in with Republicans to pass their version of the spending bill. They presented a false choice to their members and the working-class public: either end the shutdown for our members’ paychecks or continue the fight for everyone’s healthcare.
Rank-and-file members rightly rebelled, penning an open letter stating, “on this issue, you do not speak for us.” They correctly understood that a victory for the ruling class on healthcare is a defeat for all workers, federal or not. This demonstrates that we cannot follow the lead of capitalist politicians or those labor leaders who accommodate and capitulate to them. To do so only prolongs our hardship and deepens the crisis.
As I argued last year in the run up to the 2024 elections: “The working class needs to consciously struggle for the interlocking interests of all segments of the class as a whole.” The fight of the federal worker for back pay is inextricably linked to the fight of the auto worker battling cancer against skyrocketing premiums, and to the fight of 42 million people for their SNAP benefits.
The working class needs only to look to itself. Our real power does not lie in the halls of Congress but in our capacity for mass organization, mobilization, and independent political action. The democratic struggles of today—for trade union freedoms, for community control of police, for tenants unions, voting rights, and for universal healthcare—are our battles. They are the training ground where we learn our strength and develop our own leadership.
Lenin advocated for a radical expansion of democracy that goes hand-in-hand with the struggle for economic justice. The road to this workers’ democracy is through the fight for socialism. The bourgeois democracy we are told to cherish is a limited, shackled thing, designed to keep real power in the hands of the monopolies. The shutdown betrayal proves this beyond a doubt.
The working class, united across all lines of oppression and in alliance with all progressive strata, must become the leading force in the political life of this country. Our fight for democracy is not to restore a mythical past where “America was great,” but to win a new future—a consistent working-class democracy that curbs the power of the rich and paves the way for a society based on peace, equality, and socialism.
Our future depends on which class leads, and we must ensure it is our own.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the opinions expressed here are those of the author.
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