cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12225
All over the world democratic socialism failed in the face of ascendant fascism, as a fickle fascination with form saw “socialists” ally themselves to bourgeois republics. The many millions of dead call to us from beyond the grave to not repeat this mistake.
The post The DSA Is Repeating the Historic Failures of the Social Democrats appeared first on Left Voice.
Many on the U.S. Left are viewing the current political moment with optimistic caution. They see Mamdani’s victory as evidence of the viability of the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) strategy of electoral entryism in the Democratic Party as a program for achieving socialism on a broad scale. It is in this climate that Left Voice has called on the DSA to break from the reactionary capitalist graveyard of social movements that is the Democratic Party. It’s vital in this disruptive moment to keep a clear analysis of what is happening, what we want to happen, and what history tells us could happen.
Build a Working-Class Party to Defeat the Far-Right
So what does this have to do with Zohran Mamdani? For one thing, his election has created new enthusiasm for the politics of parliamentary socialism, with many newly activated adherents perhaps unfamiliar with how tired and trite some of the arguments for that strategy are. As the DSA debates the merits of a dirty break, a clean break, a party surrogate model, and myriad other “strategies,” they ignore the history of failure penned in blood by their parliamentary forebears, and even fall short of the progressive credentials those groups had. If the SPD in Germany and PSI in Italy were ultimately reduced to the political status of liberals, they still proposed a more progressive agenda than the DSA does now. After all, what good is it to infiltrate the Democratic Party, the most important imperialist party in the world, with a socialist Trojan horse just to end up another liberal albatross? And yet they call to us to join them in the marsh. We, on the contrary, are urging them to change course.
We should also examine the historical role of the elected socialists. What happens when a revolutionary philosophy is applied as an administrative force within a capitalist country?
The legacy of the so-called Sewer Socialists in places like Milwaukee serves as an important lesson. Having accomplished remarkable achievements, like the namesake installation of the sewer system, these officials presided over roughly 40 years of massively popular electoral successes, creating a seemingly unbreakable coalition in the process. While it is hardly fair to task them with defeating the national repression of McCarthyism single handedly, their failure was most importantly in not tying their achievements to a broader revolutionary socialist movement. They occupied a political wilderness in spite of recurring victories, while primarily implementing ideas that were largely amenable to private capital and slapping a buzzword on it. When the hammer of reaction came down nationwide, they stood alone amidst the wonders they had made, unable to rally a fight against it. A lot could have happened in 40 years, but didn’t.
It is in this spirit that rank-and-file DSA members should reorient their organization away from the reformist strategy condemned by history. With the Far Right emboldened and normalized, now is not the time for timidity. This is also not to condemn the powerful role of electoral campaigns. Taking executive positions such as the mayor of New York City without a revolutionary program only leads to well-meaning progressives presiding over the systems they campaigned against, and “socialists” representing billionaires.
From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.
Hey, we’re all just reliving the Weimar years, just with better HRT and worse literature. And instead of millions of WW1 vets with untreated trauma, we get millions of gamers with untreated trauma. Oh and instead of Germany, the epicenter of fascism is now the state with the biggest surveilance apparatus in human history, but at least your airplanes suck even worse than Göring’s.
biggest surveilance apparatus in human history
And also nukes
and space lasers
When the hammer of reaction came down nationwide, they stood alone amidst the wonders they had made, unable to rally a fight against it
This right here is the crux of the issue, what actually were they Supposed to do while that very big hammer was coming down, what were the concrete steps they should’ve taken that wouldn’t have seen them lined up and shot by the empire?
The formula for this kind of left article pamphleting seems to be a habitual habit of misidentifying a military defeat with intrinsic failure and then hiding behind vagueness when the time for useful prescriptions comes around; No plan, only critique
spoiler
We, on the contrary, are urging them to change course.
Are we gonna outline what the new course is? Nope, we’ll just abruptly end the paragraph without any elaboration
It is in this spirit that rank-and-file DSA members should reorient their organization away from the reformist strategy condemned by history. With the Far Right emboldened and normalized, now is not the time for timidity.
Will we detail what this new orientation will look like and how it will be organized? NOPE, we’ll just pivot immediately and put on our Captain Obvious costume and point out the far right is emboldened, damn who knew
A revolutionary perspective, on the other hand, observes an opening to raise real, substantive demands. We can look to elected leaders like Myriam Bregman from the PTS in Argentina, who fulfill their electoral responsibilities without legitimizing the right-wing extremist presidency of Javier Milei
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere, a figure who can provide us with replicable strategy to combat the raise of modern fascism…
More importantly, Bregman presents the world with a model for using elected office to strengthen a revolutionary movement
Never mind, we’ll just allude to the “Model” without relaying any of its achievements or it’s organizational structure and the theory that underlays it
The specific timeline of recent events is shocking, and it shows the political fragility of the moment through which the Far Right can continue to consolidate without real opposition. Mamdani won the election on an affordability agenda, which, while not a socialist campaign and to the right of DSA’s program, massively strengthened that organization. That sent the wrong message to the working class that is interested in changing the status quo, telling them that they can use the Democratic Party to win. The Democratic Party followed this by massively fumbling the government shutdown, showing a stunning lack of leadership in a fight that was seriously jeopardizing a struggling Trump administration. They then scoffed at the apparent sympathies of the people by voting with Republicans to symbolically condemn socialism, a gesture as pointless as it is foolish. This is all happening at the same time as saber rattling against the Maduro government, and as a massive military escalation in the region seems poised to unleash a devastating conflict there.
A decent critique, shame we had to bury it under 8 paragraphs of vague nonsense to get to something that should’ve just been a twitter post
Yeah, it’s a long-winded way of saying: Build a true working-class party, in the Leninist sense. Currently, the DSA isn’t a political party but rather a political organization. They run candidates, but never under their flag, and as a result, they lose the people who engage with their candidates instead of funneling them into a reovlutionary party. They avoid whole arenas of struggle that come with simply getting your party on the ballot. Not much would need to change, except for the DSA to take seriously the task of using the electoral process to build their movement. Right now all they seem to do is build up the hopes of voters, only to dash them on the rocks.
I don’t think the author is in any way a Leninist, considering the only external source he bothered to post was a even more long-winded Trotskyist pamphlet from 1938, which basically amounts to the typical disconnected elaborate worldbuilding Trotsky was famous for
to be fair to trotskyists, they are for building a working class party. it is in line with marxism-leninism.
There’s a reason for this. The information is available and has been available in the literature for over a century. It’s all there.
But you can’t publish it in a news article. You can’t even publish a summary of it. Because it would be seditious
What, like the anarchist cookbook? What are you referring to?
No. Start with the basics - Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao.
It will become apparent what the path forward is and why it can’t be openly discussed.
That sent the wrong message to the working class that is interested in changing the status quo, telling them that they can use the Democratic Party to win.
So the answer is stop running as democrats, right?
Is that the whole answer? I’d just call that rhetoric, and unless the left wants to end up with its own version of “Just don’t be Trump” then we’re gonna need something more substantial
i feel like organising a workers party is quite substantial. not running as democrats is a start
If simply not running as dems was the start, then we’d have a workers party by now, since that’s not the case then we’re clearly missing something crucial and far more substantial
Which is why I find this scorched-earth tactic concerning electoralism totally unconvincing
The value of electoralism in these historical moments (the situation we are in is not unique in history) is to show the working class that electoralism doesn’t work and in fact works against them. It’s not to try to convince them through rhetoric but rather to select their best and brightest hope (AOC, Bernie, Obama, Mamdani, whoever) and when they get into office just watch how they fail to achieve the goals of the working class.
In the meantime, the left shouldn’t be wasting it’s time and energy and money and social capital striving and struggling to get votes for someone. They should be organizing the working class and developing class consciousness.
It would have been great for the left to get Bernie elected because he would have failed the working class so spectacularly they would have had a major consciousness rising moment.
So long as people believe there is an electoral path they will cling to it to avoid the grief of the alternative. But the more their favored candidates win and fail, the more they will become willing to let it go.
The value of electoralism in these historical moments (the situation we are in is not unique in history) is to show the working class that electoralism doesn’t work and in fact works against them
I agree, but that demonstration effect cannot be activated unless electoral victories prim the populace with an expectation that change is possible and is instead being denied them
Electoral defeat and non-participation doesn’t create that demonstration effect, it simply demoralizes and deradicalizes the population, electoral engagement creates the realization you’re looking for, not apathy
There’s a difference between electoral engagement (voting) and spending your organizing time in service of another organization that doesn’t have your interests in mind
If simply not running as dems was the start, then we’d have a workers party by now
Not sure what the logic here is
