Supreme Court is no friend of workers

The recent retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and the fact that racist, fascist President Donald Trump will appoint the new Justice, have caused an enormous outcry from liberals and the media about the disaster to come. This is a dangerous illusion. All levels of government, including the Supreme Court, constitute the capitalist class’s means of controlling and oppressing the working class. The government also settles disputes between competing capitalists. But it is all the bosses’ government.
Class struggle, organized and led by the working class and its communist party, can and will change society, seizing power with a working class revolution. Only then will the government serve the working class.
Distraction from working class struggle
Looking to courts to solve our problems is based on the same illusion as voting. The famous decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), which declared segregation in schools unconstitutional, is a famous example. Black workers showed enormous courage in signing up as complainants in the case. Yet, it was the policy of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund not to organize any mass campaign around this case. Workers were told to leave the fighting to the lawyers. The case was supposedly won, yet schools around the country are as segregated as ever.
Meanwhile, in 1953 the first bus boycott was organized in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Workers were beginning to organize the mass campaign that became the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956. In 1952, there was a boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for Black drivers. Mass working class organizing in this period and on into the even more militant fights of the 1960s defeated segregation, not a Supreme Court case.
Decisions are in the interest of some section of the ruling class
The main liberal wing of the ruling class had a strong political interest in ending legal segregation in the South. During the Brown case, the Justice Department wrote a supporting brief that argued that segregation had, “an adverse affect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts even among friendly nations…” The same brief quoted the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, pointing out that school segregation “jeopardizes the effective maintenance of our moral leadership of the free and democratic nations of the world.” (SCOTUSblog, The Global Impact of Brown v. Board of Education) The big business imperialists needed to defeat communism to maintain the world empire. So they used the Supreme Court, and the FBI, and even the army to crush the Southern, vulgar racists who were making U. S. imperialism look bad all around the world.
Decisions are based on bad ideas
Even when there is every appearance of a victory in a Supreme Court case, the essence is the promotion of bad ideas for the working class. In Brown, the court decision is based on the idea that segregation damages all black children and therefore can never be equal education. However, as anti-racists we understand that segregation hurts all children and all workers. The Progressive Labor Party fights for multiracial unity, which means living, working and learning in multiracial communities. The dangerous distortion of the Brown decision perpetuates racism. It even causes workers today to fight each other over how to desegregate schools (see CHALLENGE, 6/29).
Don’t be confused by the appearance of the Supreme Court. Keep our eye on the prize—communist revolution for workers power.