The Left in the United States seems to be forever at a
crossroads, and there seems to always be someone present proclaiming that being
at a crossroads constitutes a crisis for the Left. These polemics have been
with us for at least 75 years. People come to the Left and leave, and times and
conditions change, but for some of us only an unreasonable and impoverished sense
of crisis remains.
The problems with these formulations seem clearer to me
at this moment than they have in the past. We on the Left can be so
inward-looking that we speak in languages that those around us often don’t
understand and have no reason to concern themselves with. We have an
exaggerated sense of our own importance. We adopt a middle-class framework when
we fail to understand why everyone doesn’t share our opinions. We assume that
all of those who disagree with us have been duped by the media or can’t think
logically, and we either don’t struggle with people over ideology or we make
conversation a one-way street when we do. There is also a middle-class idea
prevalent on the Left that says when we don’t get what we want from an
organization or a movement we are free from our obligations to struggle over
ideas and free to walk away.
People arriving on the Left now are arriving under
different circumstances than people who arrived four or six years ago, and
those people arrived under different conditions than people who were
radicalized in the Occupy movement or in the 2008 period. Radicalization today
might come through the strike wave of the last two years, through the Sanders
movement, or through the way that the COVID-19 virus has emerged and is being
handled. There are qualitative differences between these people and those who
were radicalized under the impact of Black Lives Matter and related movement.
These new lefts, working-class lefts, and people of color lefts are also
different than the Old Left that is passing on and the radicals who joined the
movement in the 1970s and 1980s. We may agree on a few basics or share an
instinctive anti-capitalism, but there our commonality and solidarity often stop.
The jail breaks from these problems are found in studying
Marxist theory with others, engaging in the hard work of organizing for change,
critiquing our actions and views with others, improving our collective
practice, and returning again to Marxist theory as a guidepost. The immediate
barriers to doing this are that individualism runs deep in the United States and
in our movement, that theory and practice look like salad bars to many of us,
that the leading Left organization in the U.S. discourages engagement with
Marxism, and that we have not found a widely-agree-upon way to combine theory
and practice to win people over to revolutionary politics. In fact, we lack
agreement on what “revolutionary politics” means and how important it is.
In better times---in a revolutionary moment---we would
not have to struggle over the definitions of words. We would have general agreement
on what words like “capitalism,” “socialism,” “fascism,” and “solidarity” mean.
We would feel committed to struggling with one another as comrades. We would
not be in a place where so many of us begin with saying “I believe that…” and
then make an essentially moral point based only on our morality and leave it there,
not basing our opinions on theory or practice or Marxist science. We would not
believe that all ideas have equal weight. We would uphold the principle that ideas
are tied to classes and lived experiences. But we are not in a revolutionary
moment.
The Sanders movement has been a necessary defensive
effort. The movement’s program formed around undoing the damage done by past
Republican and Democratic administrations and by the 2007-2008 economic
meltdown, and so it has been a patchwork of needed reforms that speak to almost
everyone and no one at the same time. It could speak from the standpoint of
policy and had a needed flexibility on policy issues. Its collective defense of
its populist and social democratic principles and its resiliency have been
admirable. The movement’s ability to inspire people and birth its future in
young and dynamic representatives to the left of Sanders illustrates how
political struggle moves forwards and backwards in stages. The Sanders movement
has helped to lay a foundation for on-going organizing and political victories.
If the Left does not drop the ball, and if we change course and hold the
biggest part of our base and expand that base through alliances, this could be
the last election in which we face such limited choices.
On the other hand, the Sanders movement has been a
cross-class movement, but it has barely reached the point of being an alliance.
It has been over-confident and dogmatic. It did not ally with Warren’s movement
or move those forces leftward, ensuring that neither would succeed. It could
not hold a coalition of the Democratic Party’s left together.
The Left bears some responsibility for the Sanders
movement’s naivete. This naivete and the Left’s internal weaknesses work
together to prevent us from acknowledging our weaknesses and errors. This
allows the Sanders movement and the Left to blame Americans and Trump for our failures
and to excuse ourselves from self-criticism. This inability to do
self-criticism and change course means that our errors will not be corrected. We
allowed the Sanders movement to substitute for a mature Left and speak to the
American people in our name instead of doing the hard work ourselves. Large
numbers of people have moved in our direction, but the Left cannot win a
national campaign under current conditions.
The Sanders movement is not what a strategic and tactical
offensive from the Left should look like. Neither was Occupy, or the recent
strike wave, or the Warren campaign. These are all notable and necessary
political formations, but they are not strategic and tactical offensives by the
Left. The question is not about the “purity” of these formations. Rather, the
point revolves around the related questions of whether or not a strategic and
tactical offensive from the Left is possible at this stage and what the
relationships should be between the Left, the social movements, and the
political center. Now the question is how the Left should relate to the Biden
campaign and the political center and how we can defeat Trump.
In a Left-led campaign we would be able to distinguish
between stages of struggle and think in terms of strategic leadership. We would
have agreement and clarity around objectives and distinguish between our
primary and reserve forces. These forces would be mobilized to unite large
numbers of people and exploit our opposition’s vulnerabilities. In a struggle
for democracy this would mean building a majority. In a more revolutionary moment,
a majority might not be as decisive. Having a party of our own and rooting our
party among the masses of working-class and specially exploited and oppressed
peoples, with a tested political line and leadership structures, would be more
decisive.
Political alignment would be very different than it is
now. We would know what is important to the masses of working-class and
oppressed peoples and what they’re taking action on. National campaigns would
not depend on six or eight great senators and articulating needed reform and
make-up packages. Something like a broad united front would exist at the
grassroots, and it would be led by women, people of color, the working-class
and all of the core forces needed for social change. Those core forces might or
might not remain in the Democratic Party under those conditions. We would have
many candidates and many electoral successes, all backed up by street heat.
But we live within the working-class that exists, not the
one that we want to exist. The new left, and particularly the youth and many of
those most attached to the Sanders and Warren campaigns, are struggling with
this. It’s difficult to acknowledge that our views are not widely shared or
have not been well-communicated. It’s also difficult to dig in and summon the
patience to be critical and self-critical in a Marxist framework and to go
about the work of organizing and thinking 10 years ahead. I doubt that many of
those who have come to us through the Sanders movement will make this leap now.
They may find a place in a cause-of-the-month DSA that is preoccupied with
processes and policies and never gets down to Marxism or they may withdraw from
politics entirely. It is unlikely, though not impossible, that DSA will be fully transformed and will educate them in socialist basics. This is an all-around loss
because we all have much to learn from one another and DSA has its moments in
the sun.
Let’s step back and consider the following:
1.
The core forces needed for social change remain
largely within the Democratic Party.
2.
The Left needs these core forces, and should be
about the work of giving them the space to look leftwards.
3.
The core forces have divided their votes between
Sanders, Warren, and Biden. They constitute an important bloc in the
rank-and-file of the political center. Those who live in the Black Belt and
Solid South made a necessary political calculation to vote as they did. That
calculation and their votes must be respected.
4.
To remain aloof from the core forces, to view
involvement with working-class and oppressed peoples as optional in any way,
and to assume that Left or progressive politics constitutes an entitlement to
leadership among them is to abandon radical politics.
5.
Abstaining from voting with the core forces and
struggling with them and learning from them breaks faith with the core forces.
Breaking faith is a final and decisive act. No one can abstain from working
with the core forces, or working against their interests, and expect to be
welcomed in later and taken seriously.
6.
Our American history has evolved under the
special conditions of the color and class lines being determinative factors. The
struggles waged by people of color and working-class people have moved the
center to the left, or have created openings for this to happen. Lincoln was
forced to adopt an abolitionist program because of slave revolts. Roosevelt was
forced to open the New Deal by working-class upsurges.
7.
The Democratic Party exists as a cross-class
alliance of various contradictory social forces. In this sense it is not a
bourgeois party, and it seems unlikely that can be transformed into a labor or
social democratic party. We cannot say that the parties or the candidates are
the same.
8.
Americans have not undertaken the great fights
for social change when things are at their worst. Rather, our struggles gain
support when social conditions begin to shift for the better and when
advancement is blocked or progress is slowed. The labor movement of the 1930s
did not make its greatest advances in the depths of the Depression but when bad
conditions eased somewhat. The modern civil rights movement took on a mass
character when social advancements were made possible and were promised but were
not equally distributed in the post-World War Two economic boom. The Left would
have been frozen out of these movements had we not abandoned our dogmatism and
sectarianism.
9.
The “Bernie or Bust” and anti-Biden rhetoric
from some people on the Left shows a lack of flexibility and a distance from
the working-class and oppressed peoples. It also reflects the opportunism of
social democrats and anarchists. This finds its main expression in DSA. This
lack of flexibility doesn’t work for Sanders, since he has rejected a “Bernie
or bust” position. It does not help move Biden or any other potential nominee
to the left. And since it finds its primary expression in DSA, with its social
democratic and anarchist biases, the “Bernie or Bust” and anti-Biden rhetoric
complicates building a revolutionary political party in the future.
10.
The Henry Wallace 1948 Presidential campaign was
a desperate but noble attempt to hold on to the Left of the New Deal coalition
under Roosevelt and mobilize for jobs, equality, peace, and democracy. That
effort had internal weaknesses and was crushed by the onset of the Cold War,
but sections of the Wallace movement held the line and influenced the New Left
years later. The Humphrey and McCarthy campaigns were insurance policies
against a resurgence of the left-of-center and people-of-color coalition that
had moved the Wallace campaign. Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Presidential campaign
carried some of the heritage of the Wallace campaign with it. Jackson was to
the left of where Sanders is today and did relatively well. The Sanders
campaign has proceeded as if it is the first of its kind, and people entering
the socialist movement today lack a needed sense of history and development.
11.
If we fully participated in the Democratic Party
on the basis of being the forces needed to carry out the most progressive
aspects of their program where it intersects with ours, and if we used this as
a means of learning and teaching and as a platform to advocate for a more aggressive political push by the Democrats,
we would stand a better chance of winning great numbers of the core forces to
our side and changing the debate within the Democratic Party. We need the will to earn leadership and respect by doing the hard work in principled ways. This is not about
reforming or transforming the Democratic Party, which might be a by-product of
our work if it occurred, but of making socialism and socialist practice
accessible to people at the grassroots. It would be better to attempt this and
to change course later if it did not work or to be expelled by a Democratic
establishment then it would be to reject attempting this.
Consider the following practical-philosophical points:
1.
The most advanced or radical ideas are not those
that we come up with in our heads. Rather, the most advanced and radical ideas
are those that we can rally most of the core forces around.
2.
The most “revolutionary” ideas are not always
the most radical. A “revolutionary” position may feel good, but it has to meet
the tests of resonating with the core forces and fitting into the ebb and flow
of organizing and struggle.
3.
It is struggle that resolves differences.
Investigate and study, act, evaluate, and act again in order to arrive at a
correct position. Sterile debates set us back.
4.
There are correct and incorrect ideas. We discover
what is correct and incorrect by acting with others.
5.
No tactic is wrong in itself, but strategies and
tactics must correspond to stages or moments in real time. Abstaining from
voting or from allying with the political center might make sense when we have
tens of millions of people with us. Who needs an alliance with the center or
participation in elections when we can wage mass strikes and civil disobedience
to win radical demands? But abstaining from voting now breaks faith with the
core forces and isolates us.
6.
To say that Biden or some other Democratic
nominee is unelectable is to say that there are inevitabilities, which is to
deny the power of the people and the ebb and flow of struggle. It is the people
who make history, not defeatists. We mobilized millions to defeat fascism in
Europe, over 100,000 people participated in the Long March in China, we
mobilized to beat Jim Crow segregation in the US, we overthrew apartheid, and
we beat American imperialism in Cuba and Vietnam. Our history is that of being
told that the prisons will outlast us—and then we tear the prisons down. We can
stop fascism in the U.S.
7.
Political alliances are a necessary foundation
for political strategies and tactics.
8.
A movement for democracy can become a movement
for radical democracy. A radical-democratic movement can become a revolutionary
movement. A revolutionary movement can become a socialist movement. Socialism
brings power to the workers and all of the oppressed. There are necessary
stages to development, and occasional leaps, that call forth different
alliances, but alliances are needed at each stage.
9.
Alliances are a matter for the present, not the
future. We are in a defensive stage and engaged in a struggle for democracy.
Under these conditions our main task is to unite the many against the few,
build capacity to fight and win within that cross-class and all-people’s
alliance, stop the Republicans, involve or win over tens of millions of people,
and build a path to democratic power. That will move us from being on the defense
to going on the offense.
10.
In doing so we must be honest about our politics
and state our disagreements with others, but this must be done in constructive
ways. This implies that we have a political line and are grounded in that line
and that we are rejecting whatever seeks to substitute for a political line.
11.
We are not anarchists. We support the conquest
of state power by the working-class and oppressed peoples, the creation of the
democratic means to carry out planning and distribution of value and wealth,
self-determination for oppressed peoples, and the eventual use of legal
coercive means against the exploiters.
Some on the Left talk about “class struggle elections”
and a “rank-and-file strategy” as if the center of political gravity is with
the Left, as if the class struggle is on the offensive now, as if the Left is
leading the class struggle and doesn’t need allies, and as if union leaders
form the main barrier against class struggles. This is self-isolation, an
add-on to the “Bernie or Bust” tendency. DSA and others who roll with this are
painting themselves into a corner at a time when there is a breeze---not a
wind, but a breeze---in our sails. Let’s instead talk about “class struggle
elections” and a “rank-and-file strategy” in terms of the labor movement
leading a coalition with a “bargaining for the common good” platform; mass
union organizing; the need to build worker leadership in the joint struggle
against the Republicans, monopoly capital, and COVID-19; or in winning survival
space and gains in the Solid or Black Belt South, among indigenous peoples, and
in immigrant communities.
In line with this, I am recommending
1.
That the Left devote our collective energies
where they exist to the study of Marxism.
2.
That we actively engage in debates and in
political alliances with the center and that we leverage our positive relations
with the center to win a more progressive Democratic Party platform and move
forward more progressive candidates.
3.
That we act within social movements on the basis
of where the most progressive aspects of the Democratic platform and our
program intersects.
4.
That we push for a debt jubilee, jobs or income
now, a Green New Deal, and a full minimum program for social change based on
the programs of the Movement for Black Lives, the Sanders campaign, and the
labor movement.
5.
That we commit to voting for Democratic Party
nominees now.
6.
That we support using the Democratic Party
convention as a primary means of making the case against Trump to the American
people.
7.
That we vote Democratic not in support of Biden (or
another nominee) or against Trump, but in order to help defeat the ultra-right
and raise the level of contradiction between a left-center coalition and the
far-right.
8.
That we prepare ourselves to either provide an
opening for a Democratic president and the center to move leftwards if they win
or to wage the most militant workplace and community struggles possible in
coalition with the core forces if the Democrats lose.
9.
That we endorse a revolutionary path and, in
that context, work for Democratic candidates without endorsing them.
