Both Parties Serve Capital
Both major political parties are structurally captured by the same extractive interests. They serve capital, not workers. While they present themselves as opposing forces, their economic alignment reveals a shared commitment to protecting extraction.
Campaign Finance
The same donors fund both parties. Pharmaceutical companies fund both parties to prevent single-payer healthcare. Defense contractors fund both to maintain military spending. The finance sector funds both to prevent regulation. Tech monopolies fund both to avoid anti-trust enforcement. Real estate interests fund both to prevent public housing.
The extractive class hedges their bets by controlling both parties. This ensures that regardless of election outcomes, fundamental extraction mechanisms remain protected.
The Revolving Door
Personnel rotate between government and industry under both parties. Republicans install oil executives to run the EPA, pharma executives to run the FDA, and Goldman Sachs alumni to run Treasury. Democrats allow Citigroup to pick cabinet members, tech executives to advise on policy, and consultants to capture every agency.
Different personnel, same corporate capture. The revolving door ensures that regulators protect the industries they regulate, regardless of party.
Policy Overlap on Extraction
Both parties protect corporate monopolies without serious anti-trust enforcement. Both allow pharmaceutical price gouging. Both subsidize profitable corporations. Both bail out banks and corporations when they fail. Both permit tax havens and offshore profit shifting. Both enable consulting and contractor waste. Both support military budget growth.
They disagree on cultural issues and how to distribute scraps to their respective bases. They agree on protecting extraction.
Why Incremental Reform Fails
Working within either party cannot address the structural capture that controls them. The system is working as designed. Both parties serve their donors. Incremental reform that doesn’t threaten extraction is allowed. Fundamental challenges to extraction are blocked.
This requires building power outside both parties, not reforming either from within. The alternative is detailed in our analysis of why Democrats fail workers and why Republicans fail workers.