A different road for socialists

An across-the-board opposition to socialists supporting and participating in the Democratic Party—one of the two capitalist parties that rule U.S. society—has been a constant theme of this website. We have argued our case theoretically, historically, and most importantly of all, practically.

Our work has been devoted to essentially arguing a negative point—that it’s fundamentally wrong to see any part of the Democratic Party as the road to social change. This viewpoint obviously poses a major question: if socialists shouldn’t be supporting Democrats, then what should we be doing instead? What is our alternative course of action? The purpose of this article is to explain the tasks facing socialists in this country today.

How social change is made

Our strategy begins by identifying how social change is made. Mass movements in the workplaces and streets are the forces that enable the working class and oppressed to marshal their strength and wrest victories from the ruling class. American history is full of examples of this process. We have seen the role the suffragist movement played in winning the vote for women, the 1930s CIO strike wave that won great changes in union rights and social legislation, how the civil rights movement defeated Jim Crow and won the right to vote for Black people in the South, and the role of the 1960s youth rebellion and anti-war movement in forcing the US withdrawal from Vietnam.

Our task becomes seeing where the potential for such movements currently exist and then working out the best ways to become involved in them.

The working class movement

There’s no need to explain the central place that the working class and labor movements holds for socialists. What can we do to be active in the trade unions?

1) Daily union activity. Every socialist who is a member of a union should be as active as possible in that union. The unions are the vehicle by which workers each day defend their interests in the workplace. They are ground zero in the struggle with the employer. Socialists aim to be an integral component of this movement. This means supporting the activities of the local, aiming to get as involved as one can as an elected steward, building rep, Executive Board member, Bargaining Team member, griever or whatever other form of activity is appropriate in the given circumstances. Socialists will only be taken seriously by their fellow workers if they prove themselves in the small daily struggles.

2) Strike solidarity. A strike represents a highpoint in the struggle between workers and management. It gives a chance for workers to feel their potential power and develop solidarity. Supporting strikes is a top priority for all socialists, even those not in unions. There are always some strikes going on in a country as large as this. For example, this article was written in late June when the following strikes were taking place:

The large and well publicized strike of the Screen Writers Guild.
The week of strike action by Starbucks Workers United.
The strike of helicopter engine workers at Northstar Aerospace.
The militant United Electrical Workers Union is on strike at Wabtec in Erie Pennsylvania.

Our procedure should be to speak with the picket captains of a strike and find out what help the workers need: food and supplies, picket line participation, attendance at solidarity rallies, etc. The socialist movement in this country has a great history of participating in workers strikes. It’s high time to revive it.

3) Movements for union democracy and militancy. All too often, our unions have fallen into seeing the employers as allies, not opponents. This attempt to curry favor with the employers has a hundred names: team concept, partnership, win-win, collaborative bargaining, etc. Fortunately, there are a number of movements inside of the unions who stand against this approach and fight for union democracy and assertiveness. Socialists should work to build these union oppositions. Three of the most important such organizations are:

Labor Notes. Last year’s 4,000 strong conference showed that Labor Notes is the center of the left in the American trade union movement. Its extensive programs of conferences, schools, publications, network formations, and organizing meetings merit our full support.
Teamsters for a Democratic Union. From a small but courageous grouping subject to vicious physical attacks, TDU has grown to be a major force in the Teamsters Union. It played a major role in the defeat of the old Hoffa administration. Today, it’s heavily involved in strike preparations at UPS.
Unite All Workers for Democracy. UAWD is the opposition movement in the auto workers union. They have not only fought concessions and multi-tier contracts, they also played a central role in the successful struggle for one member- one vote in the recent UAW elections.

Defending the oppressed

1) Abortion rights. Following last year’s Dobbs decision, abortion rights are gravely endangered. Abortion is now totally illegal in fourteen states. “Gestational limits” (laws prohibiting abortion after a certain number of weeks) are in place in a further six states. In a number of other states, court cases that seek to ban abortion are moving forward. This situation cries out for a mass movement to defend abortion rights. Yet after an initial flurry of activity in the days immediately after the Supreme Court decision, the movement has become silent. Except for some honorable exceptions such as the Chicago for Abortion Rights group, there is no pro-choice movement on the scale that the urgency of the situation requires.

It’s no mystery why the movement is quiescent. The main women’s organizations see electing Democratic Party candidates, not mass demonstrations, as the way to defend abortion access. This is expressed in their slogans such as “Roe, Roe, Roe, Your Vote”, “March to the Polls”, and “We’ll Remember in November”. The electoral approach has directly led to the de-emphasizing of demonstrations and mass actions.

The job of socialists is to reverse this process. The Chicago for Abortion Rights (CAR) coalition provides some good examples on how to do this. Their central, but not exclusive, priority is street demonstrations. The actions, while making links with other struggles, put abortion rights front and center. Abortion rights don’t get lost in the shuffle of a myriad of other issues. CAR has striven to unite in action all of the different components of the abortion rights movement. Efficient marshalling at its actions makes marchers feel that they are part of a well- organized and competent movement. These Illinois organizers have developed an approach that we can use to develop the abortion rights movement on a large and national scale.

2) Against right-wing attacks. Every day the far right opens a new front in its cultural wars. The latest target may be a school district supposedly implanting “Critical Race Theory”, a book that offends the right’s sensibilities in a library, Trans youth fighting for their basic right to exist, or even a Drag Queen Story Hour. Hate filled herds of right-wingers gather to scream at their opponents. Socialists should be a firm part of the demonstrations and pickets opposing these attacks on human rights and civil liberties.

3) Immigrant rights. Immigrants have traditionally been a target for the right. But today, there is a new tactic in the toolbox. Republican Governors such as DeSantis in Florida and Abbott in Texas have bussed Latino immigrants to cities that they see as their enemies such as Chicago and New York. The Governors’ aim is to galvanize their political base by raising their middle finger to the “woke”, “sanctuary cities”. “See how they like it” is the racist refrain.

In this context, the socialist response is clear. The popular slogan “Immigrants are welcome here” is our standpoint. We should join actions for immigrant rights as an important component of our overall fight for working class solidarity and for defense of the oppressed.

Now, obviously socialist work can not be confined to the tasks that have already been discussed in this article. New issues can crop up at a moment’s notice. A summary of main national projects does not include every specific task or campaign.

Socialist perspectives are more than just work in the mass movements, important as that is. We need to consider two further questions if we are going to make a rounded and complete assessment of our plans: how should we approach elections and how to build a new revolutionary socialist organization?

How should we approach elections?

Most socialists in America today see elections as their main political priority and area of activity. We disagree with this approach for the following reasons: First of all, elections are not the way in which society can be transformed. Historically, the ruling class has normally just rode roughshod over any legislative decisions that it hasn’t liked. Like history’s repetitions, this has been both tragic and farcical. Tragic, when the Chilean military murdered tens of thousands of worker militants when it overthrew the Allende government in September, 1973. Farcical, when Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson extended the controversial ShotSpotter program, which he had opposed as a candidate. Johnson’s excuse? An error by the robo-signing machine!

Our full programmatic position on elections is spelled out clearly by Paul D’Amato in an excellent 2008 article. Our belief that elections are not the road to working class advance does not mean socialists cannot sometimes use election campaigns and elected positions as a means of winning support for revolutionary ideas and workers’ struggles. An excellent recent example of this is Socialist Alternative’s Kshama Sawant in the Seattle City Council.

How do these general ideas apply in the United States today? There are two main points that need to be made here. First, ninety-nine percent of so-called independent and progressive campaigns today are really just supporters of the Democratic Party wearing different hats. Sometimes, a candidate may be technically independent, but sees the way forward as being in close collaboration and coordination with the Democrats and their supporters. Other times, an election may be formally “non-partisan”, but the candidate is really a Democrat. These campaigns are a political dead-end for socialists.

Secondly, what about campaigns that really are separate from the Democratic Party, such as the Green Party? Really militant and socialist campaigns stem from an upsurge in the class struggle. They have little traction when the class struggle is at a low ebb. Socialist electoral progress is a result of rising struggles, it is not a cause of these struggles.

Take the example of the Green Party. In 2020, the Greens had an excellent candidate in Howie Hawkins. He stressed his Teamster roots and an eco-socialist program. Since the election, Howie has distinguished himself by fighting for a principled internationalist position on the Ukraine war. This website was happy to endorse his campaign.

But truth be told, through no fault of Howie’s, the campaign never really took off. It was pushed to the sidelines by the tidal wave of lesser-evilism that spread across the left. There was no base of support for a large scale left electoral alternative. This promises to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.

These are the reasons why we don’t believe that elections should be a central part of socialist activity at the moment.

Building a new, united, revolutionary organization

Revolutionary socialists are in a weak situation today. We are divided into a number of organizations. Socialist Alternative and the International Marxist Tendency are the largest organizations. There are a host of much smaller ones. Differences divide our movement. Sometimes, these different approaches concern important issues such as the approach to candidates in Democratic Party primaries and non-partisan elections or the war in the Ukraine.

These type of topics deserve serious debate and discussion.

Other times, there are old organizational loyalties and doctrinal disputes whose relevance to the current world is frequently quite unclear. On some occasions, the differences reflect a legitimate and real discussion about how to handle complicated tactical questions. Discussions like these could easily take place inside of one united, democratic organization.

If there’s a need for a new united organization, the preconditions for it are not yet there. Our groups do not have the history of common activity, respect, and discussion that would be needed to create a new larger organization.

So, what can we do about this? The first steps are quite modest.

We need to accept the revolutionary credentials and bona-fides of comrades in other wings of our movement. Just because we disagree, the other comrades are not betrayers, revisionists, or class enemies. We should see them as revolutionaries who see the world somewhat differently than we do.
Socialists should begin a habit of informal discussions with comrades in other tendencies. We should exchange experiences and information about the struggles that we are involved in.
Finally, and most importantly, we should strive to work together in the struggles of the labor movement and the campaigns of the oppressed.

It requires no great summit meetings or negotiations to begin this process. All that’s needed is to see one another as, to borrow a happy phrase from the French revolutionary left, “different fractions of the future revolutionary party”.

This article has covered a number of different points. Taken together, they show that there is a different road for socialists.