The ISO, Bernie 2020, and Electoral Work

In light of the trajectory of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party primaries, the socialist left will have to come to terms with what it ventured and what it gained in the last two years. As they assess the Sanders campaign, socialists will disagree with one another. Hopefully a productive debate will lead to a course correction so that “another election cycle will [not] go by with the left rallying support for the Democrats instead of for a left-wing alternative to them.”

The following document, originally titled “The ISO and Elections: Reply to Jen R.,” and published in the International Socialist Organization’s internal bulletin in January, 2019, attempted to propose a way in which the left could build an alternative to the Democratic Party. By its nature—as a response to Jen R.’s earlier critique of my document outlining an electoral policy for the ISO—it is focused on a negative case against the proposition of socialist campaigns using the Democratic Party ballot line. But it also tries to anticipate how socialists committed to political independence from the Democratic Party could respond to the then- hypothetical match-up between Trump and Sanders.

Many developments that could only be hinted at in early 2019 have become clearer over the last year. The first is the hegemony of Sanders’ campaign and of an electoral focus on the Democratic Party that has taken hold of virtually the entire socialist left. One indication of this is former Socialist Worker editor Alan Maass’s well-publicized view that “the ISO position that revolutionary socialists can’t support candidates and campaigns within the Democratic Party under any circumstances has been proven wrong and should be abandoned,” a conclusion that Jen R. also drew.[1] Beyond that, as socialist and Green Party activist Howie Hawkins has argued, the principled defense of working-class political independence from the capitalist parties has virtually disappeared from the socialist left’s agenda. Jacobin, in its self-proclaimed role as the leading voice of the socialist left in the U.S, has, in many ways, become little more than a Sanders campaign organ, as DSA member Andrew Sernatinger has documented.

The second is the domination of an “anyone but Trump” dynamic in the 2020 election cycle. While this was hardly a novel prediction in 2019, its intensity has been overwhelming. It has operated since the opening of the Democratic primaries. Sanders’ continuous assurances that defeating Trump is his highest priority have reinforced it. Rather than emerging in force in the general election between a non-Sanders Democrat and Trump, it asserted itself strongly in the Democratic primaries on the March 3 Super Tuesday elections. Fairly or not, Democratic primary voters—albeit with a lot of prodding from the Democratic establishment—concluded that former Vice President Joe Biden would be the best candidate to defeat Trump. The result has been landslide victories for Biden and what appears, at the time of writing (March 15), to be an extinguishing of Sanders’ hopes.

Jacobin and its allied journal Catalyst had promoted various strategies (from “a blueprint for a new party” to a “dirty break” to a “party surrogate”) ostensibly aimed at leveraging socialist campaigns on the Democratic Party ballot line into an independent socialist party. But as Sanders’ defeat in 2020 became more apparent—and as more socialists drew the conclusion that the Democratic Party was not a vehicle for socialist change—voices advocating an independent party grew fainter. Sam Lewis and Beth Huang argued explicitly that, despite the Democratic establishment’s rallying to defeat Sanders, socialists must refuse any calls for leaving the Democratic Party (a.k.a., #DemExit). And Dustin Guastella, who co-authored a long Catalyst piece advocating a socialist “political party surrogate” alongside Democratic Party electoral efforts as the key to “a socialist party in our time,” characterized as “sectarian” anyone who would advocate a third-party or independent alternative in the wake of Sanders’ defeats. Even worse, Guastella’s call for socialists to run Democratic Party campaigns solely focused on “bread and butter” issues while discarding “fringe” positions (i.e., demands around questions of oppression) harkened to the crudest Economism that has been a staple of mainstream social democracy for more than century.

These counsels to the left in the wake of the Sanders campaign have provoked—and should provoke— a debate on the left over political independence and what kind of movement we want to build. A good example of an attempt to grapple with these questions is Ken Barrios’s recent article. Whether readers agree or disagree with Ken’s argument or conclusions, I think all will agree with his advice: “If we publish articles, or discuss things in person, and state that folks who want a third party are: ‘sectarians’ that promote ‘wacky proposals’ and create ‘chaos,’ then we aren’t making everyone feel respected. Instead, we are silencing comrades and injecting venom into what should be open debate.”

—Lance Selfa

The ISO and Elections: A Reply to Jen R.

Jen R. begins her response to my piece in PCB #9 with a disclaimer that her document “is not proposing a perspective for our electoral work or our approach to the 2020 elections and the question of Sanders.” That absolves her from responding to the last two sections of the document, that proposed the ISO reestablish its electoral committee, and proposed some guidelines about the ISO and elections. In other words, my document was written to help provide a framework for how the ISO should go about electoral work. It was not an argument against electoral work. However, I do believe that it is important to establish what kind of electoral work: that which supports independent political action, meaning independent of the Democratic Party or candidates running as Democrats.

My document is a restatement of the ISO’s—and the revolutionary socialist tradition’s—principled position of independence from the Democratic Party as it applies to current conditions. Jen uses the words “sectarian,” “defensive,” “arrogance,” “contempt” and “cavalier” to characterize arguments in my document. Comrades should re-read my document and decide for themselves if those descriptors are appropriate. My understanding of sectarianism is derived from Duncan Hallas’s article on the concept. I will quote the opening paragraphs of Duncan’s article, which I encourage all comrades to read in full:

The term sectarianism is used so loosely that it may be as well to start by clarifying what it does not mean. It is sometimes asserted that it is sectarian to try to build your own organisation in the course of intervention in various struggles. This is nonsense. If you believe that your organisation’s politics are correct, or at least more correct than those of others, you will naturally want it to grow and will try to build it. Otherwise you are not politically serious.

Of course, this may sometimes be attempted in an arrogant or insensitive fashion (not, I hope, by SWP members, or not very often), but that is not so much sectarianism as stupidity.

Sectarianism refers exclusively to erroneous attitudes to the class struggle.

“By directing socialism towards a fusion with the working class movement,” wrote Lenin, “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels did their greatest service: they created a revolutionary theory that explained the necessity for this fusion and gave socialists the task of organising the class struggle of the proletariat.”

Fusion, in this context, does not mean the dissolution of a revolutionary organisation into a non-revolutionary one. Lenin was totally committed to building a revolutionary organisation and broke ruthlessly with those, including many of his former collaborators, who wavered on this central point. The key words are “the class struggle of the proletariat.” It is with this that socialists must “fuse.”

Duncan later notes that the sectarians that Marx and Engels had in mind were the utopians who “created abstract schemes derived from supposed general principles” that were deliberately kept separate from the existing working class movement. In light of Jen’s charge of “sectarianism” in my document, comrades should decide if they think that I’m counterposing some sort of utopian or ultra-left position on the Democratic Party to the “existing class movement.”

Given that most of the broad left in the U.S. in one way or another calls for a vote for the Democrats on Election Day, this is a political position that separates the ISO from other organizations on the left. For us, it is how we operationalize our support for independent political action and opposition to capitalist parties. It also shapes our politics of building struggle from below in the place of looking to politicians to save us “from above”. That is no more a “shibboleth” (a secondary position raised for the purpose of distinguishing a sect from the broader class movement) than our contention that socialism can’t be won through parliament—another position that distinguishes us from most socialists (including those in the DSA Bread and Roses caucus, publishers of Socialist Call).

I’ve consistently argued that I believe the ISO Where We Stand’s [i.e. the ISO’s statement of principles] position against supporting any Democratic or Republican candidate is part of the ISO’s principles. Likewise, Alan M. argued this position quite convincingly in the SW debate last summer [2018], and I wouldn’t change a word of what he wrote. As Alan put it,

For revolutionary socialists in the International Socialist Organization, though, it is a principle to not support Democratic Party candidates — or at least a conclusion that is directly related to the principle of working class independence, and that is not subject to revision to make a proposed strategy viable.

The ISO has had different strategies regarding U.S. politics and elections over our 40-year history, but they flow from a position summarized in our brief “Where We Stand” statement throughout: “We do not support candidates of capitalist parties like the Democrats or the Republicans.”

This sentence wasn’t carved on a tablet and brought down from the mountain. It represents a distillation of our organization’s understanding of the Marxist principle that the working class movement must be politically independent of the ruling class; our analysis that the two main parties in U.S. politics are both capitalist parties; and the whole historical experience of the left and social movements in relation to the Democratic Party.

Having a sentence in the Where We Stand isn’t a substitute for convincing people of it or anything else, and this is far from the limit of what the ISO has to say about the Democrats, as any tired-eyed reader of SW knows.

But it is a position that is foundational to the ISO’s revolutionary socialist politics — so this isn’t just a matter of changing strategy based on different circumstances.

For those who don’t want to describe our position in WWS as a “principle,” I’m fully willing to accept Alan’s characterization of it as “a conclusion that is directly related to the principle of working class independence” or “a distillation of our organization’s understanding of the Marxist principle that the working class movement must be politically independent of the ruling class.” And I agree, as Alan wrote, that this position is “foundational to the ISO’s revolutionary socialist politics.” Alan cites the ISO’s Where We Stand. Is Alan doing what Jen described me as doing, i.e., making a “tautological reference to principles” or treating our position on the Democrats as a “shibboleth?”

Because I believe this position is foundational to the ISO’s politics, I think the debate on the “ballot line” is about more than how the ISO positions itself in relation to candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or what position the ISO will take on Bernie 2020. In this regard, I am not as concerned about what shades of opinion on these questions that different ISO members take. I’m much more concerned about what position the organization takes. In my view, comrades Hadas and Dorian are not proposing a simple change in wording to the Where We Stand, but are proposing a fundamental redefinition of what politics the ISO upholds. I commend them for taking a principled stand to propose this resolution, and I hope it will engender a clarifying debate on this. I will oppose the resolution, and I trust that the majority of the convention will too.

Jen writes that “accusing comrades like Natalia T or Owen H (or other SC members) of creating confusion inside the organization by entertaining [using the Democratic Party ballot line] as a strategic question only inhibits that debate.” On the contrary, I was making a particular case: that the differences being debated are more than “strategic.” I am arguing a political position with which Jen and other comrades are free to disagree. But characterizing my position as inhibiting debate is essentially an argument not to argue on these questions. In the context of Jen’s reply to me, it appears as if comrades who are considering revising the ISO’s long-standing position on the Democratic Party are engaged in a serious exploration of issues, but it is characterized as sectarian to argue the position I hold.

In my presentation at the September 2018 National Branch Council [i.e. a delegated meeting of representatives from ISO branches] meeting, I argued opposition to the Democrats and Republicans as a principle, but also said that for those who want to debate this as a question of strategy, I would argue that running socialists on a Democratic ballot line is also a bad strategy—if the aim is to create an independent socialist alternative to the Democratic Party. In that presentation, in two contributions to the Internal Bulletin, and in a letter to Socialist Worker, I argued this position on a number of points having nothing to do with an invocation of a principle carved on stone tablets. I’ll list them here:

Running on the Democratic ballot line doesn’t build a public identity for the socialist left independent of the capitalist parties. In this way, democratic socialists can be perceived as just another part of the Democratic Party’s “big tent,” not a political alternative that is independent of the Democrats.
When a socialist runs against a Democratic incumbent, it is hard for socialists to measure their influence since they start with a certain “floor” of votes as a challenger that they wouldn’t have running as an independent against the Democratic incumbent. I think this argument is not as strong when the socialist candidate is running in future elections and everyone knows that they a socialist, but that runs into points #3 and #4 below.
The more “success” socialists have with the strategy of running on the Democratic ballot line, the more likely that it is that they will want to continue doing it. This puts off the task of building a political alternative independent of the Democratic Party into the ever-lengthening future.
From a letter to SW: “If socialists become invested in proposing programs and candidates to make the Democratic Party more progressive or more responsive to its “base,” their stated goal of building an independent socialist alternative to the Democrats becomes a paper pledge that they never really put into practice.”
It doesn’t grapple with the fact that the institutional bases of an independent socialist party—labor unions and social movement organizations, African American and Latinx liberal/left groups —remain committed to the Democratic Party. Elements like these—plus other organizations and constituencies that will emerge—will be crucial to the viability of an independent party that will be something more substantial than a project of the far left.
It focuses the new socialist movement’s attention on fights inside the Democratic Party, where these new forces could be working to create something independent of the DP. This is especially possible in one-party Democrat-dominated cities. Socialist and labor educator Kim Moody makes this argument as well, concluding that an alternate strategy that seeks to use the DP ballot line “isn’t just bad politics; it’s poor strategy.”

There may be different or more effective arguments that could be made, but I just don’t accept the idea that I haven’t engaged these questions in multiple ways. To me, this is what it means to argue our position on the terms that our interlocutors set for themselves (or as Jen puts it, “that speak to that left and engage in its debates on its own terms.”) Jen writes: “I agree with the principle that the working class must have its own political representation independent of capitalist parties. I also agree that in this country this principle is operationalized as opposition to the Democratic Party as a capitalist party. I have not been convinced that socialists can attempt to use the Democratic Party in order to advance a path towards independence through strategic use of its ballot without necessarily sacrificing its principles and class independence.”

Jen and I agree on the first two sentences. But the third sentence puts a question mark over them. And it contradicts what I understood Jen’s position to be, argued in many venues, including at the Steering Committee (SC) meeting where she made the formulation about a “radicalization against the Democratic Party within the Democratic Party.” Notwithstanding my disagreement with that formulation, she was quite clear that she opposed the ballot line strategy in that presentation to the SC. Moving from being opposed to the ballot line strategy to “not being convinced” of its utility seems to me to be a political shift. If that isn’t the case, and it is instead a rhetorical shift, then I think we have to ask if that shift helps us to make the case against the ballot line strategy or not. Arguing our position on the Democratic Party based on principle, history or strategy isn’t defensive at all if we approach it confidently, and with our facts and arguments marshaled. Other comrades on the left may not agree with our approach, but shifting our position or asserting that we’re not “convinced of” the utility of the ballot-line strategy (rather than saying “we do not support it and here’s why”) starts from a defensive position, in my opinion. Nor should these arguments, however sharp, prevent us from initiating and working in genuine united fronts with other organizations on the left.

A united front approach has two parts: working with other organizations on the left around common goals, while raising questions of politics, strategy and organization that attempt to win those mobilized to our distinctive strategies, politics, and organization. We work both with other organizations on the left and against their politics and strategies at the same time. Otherwise, we’re not applying a united front method that will win people to our strategy and organization based on the superiority of our approach. About my criticism of Socialist Call’s proposal for an independent DSA campaign for Sanders, Jen writes: “I can’t imagine a more sectarian posture in relation to a serious current within DSA – one that includes many of the comrades who have done the most to collaborate with and facilitate organizational collaboration with us.” I don’t accept that characterization of my argument. In any case, as we collaborate with DSA comrades, they are going to want to know what we think about one of their central political projects of the next two years. There’s nothing sectarian about saying what we think about it.

To me, the independent campaign idea resembles the Socialist Alternative position that we criticized very effectively in 2016, except that it’s not even as independent from the Democrats as the Socialist Alternative proposal attempted to be. In fact, the East Bay DSA resolution embodying this proposal (passed in December, 2018) explicitly called on Sanders to run in the Democratic Party primaries. In other words, rather than having a position that Sanders should run as an independent, but that since he will choose to run as a Democrat and that, therefore, DSA would have to accept that, the EBDSA resolution calls for Sanders to run as a Democrat. Unless we are seriously contemplating changing our position on the Democratic Party so as to join Socialist Call’s initiative, we are going to have to confront this sooner rather than later. And I’d rather do it directly than try to trim or obscure our positions so as to avoid key questions in the service of preserving a “unity” without clarity. That way, we avoid the trap of falling into what in 1910 Lenin called “sectarian diplomacy,” when he criticized Trotsky for proposing formulas to bridge what turned out to be unbridgeable divides in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party:

One view on unity may place in the forefront the “reconciliation” of “given persons, groups and institutions”. The identity of their views on Party work, on the policy of that work, is a secondary matter. One should try to keep silent about differences of opinion and not elucidate their causes, their significance, their objective conditions. The chief thing is to “reconcile” persons and groups. If they do not agree on carrying out a common policy, that policy must be interpreted in such a way as to be acceptable to all. Live and let live. This is philistine “conciliation,” which inevitably leads to sectarian diplomacy. To “stop up” the sources of disagreement, to keep silent about them, to “adjust” “conflicts” at all costs, to neutralize the conflicting trends—it is to this that the main attention of such “conciliation” is directed.

To be frank about our disagreements with DSA comrades about the Democratic Party in general and the Sanders campaign in particular takes both their and our arguments seriously. And it in no way precludes collaboration on any number of issues: women’s rights, fighting the far right, defense of immigrants and much more. My document, however, focused primarily on the areas where we will likely have our most important differences: the 2020 elections.

Thoughts on ISO electoral policy and Bernie 2020

Jen objects to my judgment that an “anyone but Trump” mood will dominate the 2020 elections (assuming Trump isn’t out of office by them!) and, as a result, “will tend to close down opportunities for independent political activity on the left, at least on the presidential level.” The qualification in that sentence “at least on the presidential level” should have indicated that I was referring to electoral activity in the presidential primaries and general election. I did not say anything about, nor did I intend to comment on, the potential for struggle or strikes in the next two years. In relation to the presidential elections, I was simply saying that mounting an independent presidential candidacy (in the Green Party or some other left formation) will be difficult as long as a Sanders candidacy is viable and/or when an “anyone but Trump” dynamic takes hold. I don’t think that’s an unusual or pessimistic position to hold. This was certainly the case, for example, in the 2008 presidential election, when Barack Obama was the first African American major party candidate as the U.S. economy spiraled down into its worst crisis since the 1930s. We recognized that the vast majority of those who wanted change would vote for Obama, rather than for a third party alternative.

Regarding elections in localities, Jen argues: “There are many localities where the ISO could run candidates in city council or other races. In many places, such runs would be enthusiastically supported by DSA comrades who we could draw into common activity. This would allow us to participate in the electoral field while maintaining our independence and begin to engage in concrete dialogue with other activists.” This statement is compatible with points II and IV under “What Are Some Guides for ISO Work Around Elections?” in my PCB #9 document. I may differ with Jen on the number of such localities, and I think electoral activity should be evaluated in light of other work branches and districts set out to do. But I don’t think this is an all (all branches must engage in electoral work) or nothing (no branches should engage in electoral work) proposition.

Let’s take seriously the scenario that Hadas and Dorian pose in their document: a Sanders/Trump choice in 2020. Given a looming recession, potential impeachment of Trump and who knows what else, I don’t rule out the possibility that this could be the situation that we face in November 2020. Holding fast to our position of no support for Democratic or Republican candidates would put tremendous pressure on the ISO. It would have to “defend” a position that will be directly opposed to the “common sense” of hundreds or thousands of people around us. Does that mean we should change our “Where We Stand” to drop our opposition to the Democrats and to make it possible to call for a vote for Sanders? In my opinion, no. That’s because we have shown in theory and practice that we know how to apply our politics in multiple different situations without changing our core commitments. I think our approach to Obama in 2008 is instructive, and I encourage comrades to re-read the editorials and analyses SW published then.

Since Sanders is a singular figure who has a long-established relationship of collaboration with the Democratic Party, a vote for Sanders would be a vote to put a Democratic Party administration in power. Our propaganda would point that out, and it would also point out what Hadas and Dorian argue—that a Sanders administration is no guarantee of winning radical demands. I could foresee an ISO approach to the election that would emphasize the political crossroads that a Trump/Sanders choice would symbolize, the possibility and necessity for far-reaching change, solidarity with those who look to the election for change, a need to organize in the labor and social movements against the right and for our demands, and an election day recommendation to our supporters of “voting your conscience,” but getting ready to struggle on the day after.

SW’s pre-election editorial in 2008 included one sentence that read “But Obama doesn’t deserve the vote of people who are committed to independent working-class politics and fundamental social transformation.” In the 2020 context, I could imagine a similar formulation in SW reading “We don’t believe a vote for a Sanders/Democratic administration will advance the cause of building working-class politics independent of the capitalist parties. But we understand that millions will want to dump Trump and will look with hope and anticipation to a Sanders administration. So we urge our supporters to vote their conscience on Election Day, but to join us in the struggle to win our demands and to forge the independent working class alternative that we need.”

While there are obvious differences between the political situations in the U.S. and Mexico, the PRT comrades took an analogous approach to AMLO’s landslide election last year. Its campaign slogan was “votes o no votes, organízate” (whether you vote or not, get organized). Its election statement concluded: “Our hopes lie not in the ballot boxes, but in the people who struggle, with women in the struggle, with the resistance of Indigenous people, with all who stand up to war and who defend life—this is the rallying point that’s broader and more substantial than the meaning of a vote.” (my translation)

Clarity on the ISO’s approach cannot wait for what-if scenarios such as Trump vs. Sanders. The Democratic Party presidential primary field is likely to be crowded, and therefore the issue of whether to participate in an “independent campaign for Bernie 2020” will be a key question in 2019. The Democrats have already announced that their earliest debates will take place in June 2019. In my view, the ISO should clarify its views on this at the outset, and at our 2019 convention. I outline an argument below.

We agree with the criticisms of mainstream/corporate Democrats laid out by DSA comrades. We go further, however, in affirming the bourgeois class character of the Democratic Party and its role as a pillar of U.S. imperialism. These factors preclude participation in such a party.
We agree that socialists inside and outside of the Democratic Party should enter the political debate by giving a clearer class content to discussions of socialism and to take up issues that go unaddressed, such as U.S. imperialism.
We disagree that it is possible to run an “independent” campaign in the Democratic Party without legitimizing the Democrats as a vehicle for the socialist left and sacrificing the project of building a genuinely independent socialist alternative.
We will look for opportunities to run truly independent left/socialist campaigns outside the Democratic Party in collaboration with other forces.
We will continue to collaborate with DSA and others on the left in organizing around the key issues of the day, from Medicare for All to fighting the far right.

During Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 Democratic presidential campaigns, we were largely isolated on the left in refusing to support Jackson’s primary campaigns. This was not easy. The Jackson campaigns brought with them the social weight of the African American working class and moral authority of the civil rights movement. But we conducted the debate by seeking to uphold and build upon the socialist and Black revolutionary traditions, educating our members and audience at that time. This was an important task, as the majority of the revolutionary left, dominated by Maoist organizations, liquidated themselves into the Democratic Party in that period—many of them via the Jackson campaigns. (Again, I urge comrades to read Warren Mar’s discussion of this.)

Does that same approach hold three decades later, given the election of socialist candidates in the Democratic Party? It does, because the class character of the Democratic Party and its relationship to the state and U.S. imperialism has not changed. To systematically argue this point with comrades in DSA is not sectarian. It is a basic proposition that our forebears have raised since the time of Eugene V. Debs. If there is to be a socialist break from the Democratic Party of any significant size, independent organizations making a revolutionary Marxist case for independent socialist organization can only strengthen such a development.

That, of course, has been the ISO’s approach for its entire history. While the Sanders/DSA phenomenon represents new conditions, we should not abandon that approach. That method should underpin the ISO’s approach to electoral politics, which, after all, was the focus of my document.

[1] In a Facebook post promoting Alan’s piece, Jen R. wrote: “I reached a lot of the conclusions Alan details here while still in the ISO, and wanted to open up space for these discussions, but also tried to maintain some kind of middle ground for a very, very long time.”