I wrote this in the late Summer of 2019 prior to joining the DSA in an attempt to work through my own changing politics and, ultimately, explain my decision to join the group. Thanks to the friends and comrades who commented on earlier drafts.
A Changed Situation
A Changed Situation
The major organizational development in
American left politics in the past five years has been the dramatic growth of
the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Now boasting upwards of 50,000 members, the DSA has destabilized other,
far smaller socialist groups in one form or another with its gravitational
pull. Perhaps the most striking example
of this has been the International Socialist Organization (ISO), whose members
were departing for the DSA both before and after its official dissolution. Some other socialist groups which have
managed to survive organizationally nevertheless have one foot in the DSA, with
cadre formally maintaining membership in the organization and participating in
its internal life. Yet still other
groups such as The League for a Revolutionary Party (LRP) firmly demarcate
themselves from the DSA, but have failed to prevent much of their membership
from defecting to its ranks. [1]
The stampede of socialists into the DSA has
been a spur to reassessment in many sectors of the socialist left. Even if the current soul-searching often
takes the form of abstruse debates about Leninism and Kautsky, it nevertheless is apparent that a
major realignment in American socialist politics has been taking place, and
that “democratic socialist” politics is the major beneficiary. The fact that the membership of the largest
socialist organizations are voting -- with their feet -- that they are more
comfortable inside a social-democratic milieu reveals certain truths about the
political possibilities of the present moment.
In this article, we intend to explain this sea
change in the American socialist left and analyze its significance. We will also suggest an orientation for the
socialist left today. In short, given
that there are no revolutionary possibilities on the immediate horizon,
socialists would be more productive inside social-democratic organizations,
which have seen some successes of their political model as of late.
DSA
Rises, Others Fall
Many retrospective analyses of the ISO’s
demise remark that the time in which it existed was an unpropitious time for
revolutionary politics, which is surely correct. The conditions in the United States for the
past few decades (at least) have not been fertile soil for revolutionary movements. But the same timespan was also unfavorable
for social-democratic politics. The
“left” in the U.S. was dominated by a rightward-moving Democratic Party (DP),
with little organized presence to its left outside of a constellation of small
Marxist groups. Organized labor’s
leadership hitched its wagon to the Democrats, preventing itself from being the
backbone of a more progressive movement.
Various social movements transpired, but none left a permanent
organizational presence; some melted away into NGOs, new or old. The DSA, until a few years ago, was all but
irrelevant.
The 2016 Presidential Election was the dynamic
that initiated the reshuffling of the left.
Inspired by the Sanders campaign, and negatively inspired by Trump’s
menace and Hillary Clinton’s arrogance and ineptitude, droves of leftists, new
and old, found a new political home inside of the “democratic socialism” [2] of the
DSA. Many came around to the position,
which the radical left had long held, that Democratic Party could not be trusted
as the main organizational vehicle for left politics.
The rocketing of the DSA’s membership past
that of existing Marxist organizations presented the latter's cadre with a
stark and troubling dilemma: why is the DSA growing, and not us? Various Marxist groups attempted different
schemes to win DSAers over to their own organizations, but all proved
unsuccessful. Socialist Alternative
(SAlt) supported the Bernie Sanders campaign, but only inspired an exodus from
its organization. Some SAlt members were
offended by the notion of supporting a bourgeois party candidate like Sanders,
but more simply didn’t see the point in staying in an organization that had
lost any meaningful political difference with the DSA and simplified their
political lives by joining DSA.
The ISO, by contrast, did not endorse the
Sanders campaign. The ISO did, however,
praise the Sanders campaign (and other DSA-associated victories) as positive
developments for socialism, an equivocal stance which left its membership
perplexed. Some opted to resolve the
confusion by departing the ISO for the DSA, and the ISO continued to bleed
members until its final demise. The
ISO’s dissolution released its remaining members to choose another political
home, and many of those believed the DSA to be their best option.
Competition
Creates Collapse
What accounts for the dramatic (and sometimes
terminal) decline of some Marxist organizations in the span of a few short
years? Why did their memberships react
to the rapid growth of the DSA by quickly departing for it? The answer lies in two observations. First, these
Marxist groups were, in essence, practicing a social-democratic politics. Second, during
all but the most recent years of these groups’ existence, there was no
social-democratic group competing for their members’ allegiance. When a social-democratic group emerged that
proved a more natural fit for the members of the Marxist organizations, and
offered the prospect of a large(r) group, and consequently meaningful political
power, it soon won them over. The second
observation should be clear but the first requires some elaboration.
Asserting that Marxist organizations were/are
not practicing a revolutionary politics may seem like a condemnation of them
for being insufficiently militant, but it is not meant to be. Instead, the point is that what a
revolutionary group’s practice should be in non-revolutionary times is
ambiguous. Mostly these groups default to
fighting for reforms -- a worthy goal, but one which makes their political practice
virtually indistinguishable from a social-democratic group. A Marxist might put a Luxemburgist spin on
this reality, saying that revolutionaries do not counterpose reforms to
revolution. True enough, but without the
realistic expectation of a revolution, such a qualification becomes
meaningless.
These “revolutionary” groups were in fact
social democratic groups, just with better discipline and organization. None of them (to their credit) ever
realistically contemplated any kind of insurrection against the state. Nor could they even stipulate a series of
plausible conditions that might lead to such a situation. True, members tended to be quite committed,
and involved themselves intensely with the affairs of the organization, whether
this meant participating in its protest culture or the many study groups that
the organization sponsored. Much ado was
made about independent working class organization, but when push came to shove,
these organizations would often back the efforts of organized labor leadership.
The only major distinguishing feature of these
organizations’ practice that was incompatible with American social-democratic
politics was their refusal to support any DP candidate. When this taboo was flaunted, it opened the
floodgates to their memberships’ exodus.
Having collapsed any realistic distinction between the DSA and
themselves, these “revolutionary” groups ensured their own demise.
Change
and Continuity
In our view, the weakening of these Marxist
groups is not a cause for despair. But
neither do we want to tastelessly dance on the graves of these groups, since
they contributed to righteous causes, and especially because many of their
members experienced their sudden collapse as an acute and traumatic
betrayal. Rather, so long as their
erstwhile members continue in socialist politics, we can modestly celebrate the
current political realignment as a sober reaction to changing political
circumstances. If these “revolutionary
organizations” no longer hold sway in America, it is emblematic of a
clearheaded recognition of the impossibility of revolution in the near future.
Ending membership in a “revolutionary
organization,” may at first seem like a severe blow to the ego of those who
defined themselves as revolutionaries, [3] however it is difficult to identify any principles one is abandoning by
transitioning to a social-democratic organization. Even the DSA’s distinction between
“democratic socialism” and “social democracy” stipulates that the former desire
a social revolution, and think it may be possible at some point in the
unspecified future. How is this
meaningfully different from the ideologies the erstwhile cadre espoused?
Indeed, many of the major philosophical
foundations of the Marxist worldview remain intact. Class conflict remains the indispensable
narrative with which to interpret history and social reality. Democratic centralism is the only
meaningfully democratic way in which to organize a political group. [4] The working class, however unmobilized or
lacking consciousness at the moment, is
still the only class with the ability to run society in the interests of the
entire population, and the only group which holds a strategic power to accomplish
this. A dictatorship of the proletariat
is the only way to exercise working-class power at the state level in a way
that will be able to disorganize bourgeois class power, and a revolution
(however distant in the future it may be) will likely be needed to carry out
such a task.
The
Real Dilemma: The Democratic Party
The real contemporary challenge to the Marxist
perspective, however, is how leftists should relate to the Democratic
Party. It is no coincidence that it was
this issue that triggered such turmoil, theoretical and otherwise, in Marxist groups
in the last several years.
The bitter truth is that advocacy of socialist
political independence from the DP has been a political failure in the past few
decades, and remains so today. Marxist
groups that continue to advocate complete non-cooperation with the DP -- of the
Spartacist variety, for instance -- have not succeeded in attracting many to
their cause (and, indeed, are in the process of a protracted disintegration,
held together only by the tight grip of a clique of aging organizational
stalwarts). As many have pointed out, the unique and undemocratic
structure of the American political system makes the formation of a stable and
long-lasting independent working-class party a daunting task.
DSA has charted a course of pursuing
organizational independence (that is, it exists as an organization separate
from the DP) but not political independence, i.e., it regularly cooperates with
the DP in a variety of ways, including running candidates on the DP’s ballot
line. And the DSA has not just had success
with this method, but has in some ways redefined America’s political
culture. Factional disputes within the
DP now pit the DSA’s candidates (e.g. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib) against the
centrist DP establishment. Right-wing
propaganda networks have unceasingly portrayed Ocasio-Cortez as the demon of
socialist radicalism since her election to the House of Representatives. With these and other victories (e.g.,
Salazar) the DSA has demonstrated itself to be a large and growing threat to
entrenched centrist DP control of New York (and potentially elsewhere). Policies such as the Green New Deal (whatever
our criticisms of them) would have been not just unthinkable but unvoiced in
the halls of power without these electoral victories. These triumphs may be modest, but they far
exceed whatever accomplishments may have been achieved by other contemporary
Marxist groups.
Nevertheless, the DP old guard (and its
constituency) remains an obstacle to the goals of socialist politics. Therefore, every effort must be made to
heighten the contradictions between socialists and the DP’s sclerotic wing. Eventually, an independent socialist party
will be necessary for qualitatively increasing the influence of left-wing
politics. Much debate can and should be
had about how, and when, to accomplish this task, since it will involve the
tricky maneuver of some degree of utilizing the DP to such an end. The only certainty is that the DP
establishment will do everything in its power to prevent it.
Many socialists for generations have decried a
strategy of having anything to do with the DP as opportunism, i.e., as a
betrayal of working-class interests for the sake of others’ gain. However, the political strategy that truly
represents the working class is a great deal more uncertain today than in the
era of mass social-democratic or communist parties (even putting aside the
historical question of whether working-class interests were always faithfully
represented by these parties). We can
not betray a party that does not exist, and it is not clear that working-class
interests are better served by pursuing the (to reiterate, failed) strategy of
agitating for the immediate formation of an independent working-class party
than some other strategy. Pursuing the
reforms that AOC and other DSA members are calling for, on the other hand, does
seem to have some traction, and enlarging the welfare state would be a striking
working-class victory.
Other socialists have decried collaboration
with the DP as a return to the US Communist Party’s (CPUSA) Popular Front
strategy. However, the tragedy of the
Popular Front, as its detractors acknowledge, was that it disbanded the most
militant segments of working class organization that had been painstakingly
built up in the preceding years. The
dubious merit of the present moment is that there are no such formations to
abandon. The 2010s differ from the 1930s
in many ways, and socialist strategy should take these discrepancies into
account. (Another key difference is that
the CPUSA was perennially attempting to “Americanize” its largely immigrant
party. A present-day task for the DSA is
to “internationalize” the party, both in its constituency -- which remains
largely English-monolingual and US-born -- and in its politics, which
unfortunately largely ignore international issues. [5])
Conclusion
There are many uncertainties about a future
revolution: how it could be realized, what society it would produce, and how to
prevent it from degenerating into a nightmare, as revolutions have
unfortunately sometimes done. While
these questions are the topics of speculation, the only certainty that we have
about revolution in the present-day American context is that it is an
impossibility right now and for the foreseeable future. There are many features of American politics
to bemoan, but more on the left coming to this realization is not one of
them. The recent collapse of
“revolutionary” organizations and growth of the DSA is testament to the fact
that more are moving towards this position.
Sparking intra-party fights in the Democratic
Party has recently proven to be a successful way to move American politics to
the left. Socialists should continue
this assault on the right wing of the DP, which will inevitably entail some
kind of involvement with the DP. How
this will be done, exactly, is both unresolved and precarious, given the DP’s
long history of combating such efforts.
However, it does seem a more promising socialist strategy than any other
on offer at present.
[1] One can find more detail about some of these
changes in this polemic by the Internationalist Group (a Spartacist League
split). There also has been upheaval in
more secretive Marxist groups such as World Workers Party (WWP) and Liberation
Road (the former Freedom Road Socialist Organization - Freedom Road) which we
would speculate, similarly, has something to do with the rise of DSA. Another Marxist group, Solidarity, is
reportedly effectively dissolving into DSA.
[2] For the purposes of this article, “democratic
socialism” and “social-democracy” are interchangeable terms. Some try to draw a distinction between the
two by claiming the former has not renounced the possibility of revolution at
some point in the unspecified future and the later has, but it is not clear
that that is an accurate characterization of most social-democrats’
beliefs. Presumably, many
social-democrats would also be willing to concede the hypothetical far-off
possibility of revolution.
[3] Self-identification as a revolutionary is an
odd self-conception to hold, since it ties one’s identity to a strategy that
may or may not be appropriate in a particular context. The goal of every socialist is a free
society; revolution is simply one possible means to that end.
[4] There have been many polemics written
recently about the nature of democratic centralism and its relevance to Marxist
organization. But whatever democratic
centralism is supposed to mean in theory, it was implemented in certain Marxist
groups as a culture of secrecy and unaccountability. Such an organizational structure was able to
maintain these groups so long as their leadership went unchallenged, but once
serious internal questions were raised about strategy and accountability --
prompted by the recent change in political circumstances -- “democratic
centralism” was unable to contain the controversies. In any event, the internal democracy of the
DSA, whatever its flaws, compared favorably with the internal organization of
the Marxist organizations that were repelling its departing members.
In
our view, democratic centralism remains a valuable method of Marxist
organization, one that has little to do with how it is/was misinterpreted in
certain Marxist groups. Indeed, the term
“democratic centralism” becomes almost or actually redundant if it is realized
as it was originally intended: an effective implementation of democracy inside
a political organization.
[5] There are many other practices of the CPUSA
that the DSA would do well to emulate, and of course others that it should
avoid like the plague. This, however, is
a topic for another essay.
