Three far left currents: Left Voice, Tempest, and the Philly Socialists decided to open a discussion on socialist perspectives in 2021. Eight organizations made contributions which can be read at https://www.leftvoice.org/the-tasks-ahead-socialist-perspectives-on-2021.
International Socialism Project was unfortunately not invited to participate. We think that comradely dialog on the left is valuable, so the International Socialism Project made its own contribution which we are publishing here.
We welcome the decision to open a discussion on perspectives for the revolutionary left in the new situation. Our common movement can only benefit from a comradely discussion among those who are both committed to building broader struggles and opposed to the dead end of lesser evilism. Most importantly, the discussion should lead us into common work against our common enemies.
The US political situation is dominated by the following points:
A K shaped recovery is well underway—K meaning that the fortunes of the rich are going up and those of the working class are spiraling downward. This is shown by today’s combination of Stock Market highs being coupled by increased job loss and working class insecurity.
The COVID pandemic is far from over. We can be assured that Operation Warp Speed will become Operation Slow Stagger. All the anarchy of the capitalist system (competition, running down of health care, corruption, and a frantic drive for super profits) will hamper the distribution of the vaccine. Essential workers will continue to risk their lives each day.
The institutions of bourgeois democracy have held. Trump will leave office, even if petty obstructions and tweets mark his exit.
Progressive rhetoric aside, the new Biden administration will be a classic New Democrat, DLC brand of neo-liberalism.
Right wing and racist ideas continue to hold sway over large sections of the population, including some sections of the working class.
Socialists have two broad tasks today. One, to do everything in their power to strengthen and extend every instance of working class fightback. Two, to do everything in their power to defend the ideas that reality has confirmed this past year: the capitalist state continues to be an unreformable obstacle to any fundamental social change, that the Democratic Party continues to be the mechanism by which the US ruling class defuses and absorbs social discontent that the road to social change is mass extra-parliamentary struggle not the dreary dead end of electoralism, and that revolutionary work continues to be hampered by the absence of a strong revolutionary Marxist organization.
How do these broad tasks work out in practice? Firstly, the effects of the pandemic on the working class must be at the center of socialist attention. The suffering in the working class is massive. Every struggle against it must be supported. This means supporting the current wave of nurses’ struggles from Albany and New Rochelle to Ohio, along with nursing home workers who have been on the picket lines at Infinity in Chicago. As always, the Chicago Teachers Union is on the frontline, fighting the CPS’s plan for a premature and unsafe opening of the schools.
Secondly, the trade unions remain the basic building blocks of the working class movement. Socialists must be active in every possible way inside the union movement. This ranges from daily conflicts in the workplace, to strike support, along with efforts to revitalize the movement such as the Teamsters United campaign and the work of Labor Notes.
Thirdly, the issues and potential of the Black Lives Matter movement have not gone anywhere. No movement can maintain activity at the pace of the George Floyd summer indefinitely, so some downturn was to be expected. Racism and police brutality remain part of daily life for millions of Black people. Any provocative police action could spark a resurgence of the movement at any time. Socialists will be proud to take their place in this historic movement, as it returns to the streets.
Fourth, socialists must stand ready to build opposition to Biden’s imperialist adventures, whether in the form of wars or military threats.
Socialists need a vehicle to participate in these fightbacks. That vehicle is a revolutionary organization. A large, nationally organized, revolutionary organization is the way to structure and plan our work in these movements. It is our tool to argue that contemporary American reality has verified the ideas of revolutionary Marxism.
We thank the comrades of Tempest, Philly Socialists, and Left Voice for the opportunity to discuss these matters with our comrades in the rest of the revolutionary left.
Adam Shils is a member of the International Socialism Project in Chicago.
