Wow, what a trip. Let’s talk about what absolutely, positively, did not happen.
As the editors of Left Voice reminded us, Sawant was a member of the ultra-left Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative, which splintered over the irrelevant question of endorsing Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Whatever Left Voice says about it, the split did not come from a debate over endorsing Bernie. The split came when Sawant’s faction purged a large number of their most active members, including her own campaign manager from her Seattle city council race, from Socialist alternative. Why were they purged? Because they wanted to dual card in DSA. The CWI, which is SAlt’s tradition, stems from the “deep entryism” of the British Militant faction of the labor party in the 80’s. In carrying on with that tradition, a large group of SAlt’s leaders surmised that entering DSA in order to build a Marxist tendency within it, was an important task to combat the reformist nature of DSA. The Sawant faction disagreed and purged them, calling them opportunists, liquidationists, etc.,
The purged faction did join DSA and formed Reform & Revolution caucus, which succeeded, along with other caucuses that emerged around the same time, to establish a left wing majority on the NPC and many central committees. The former SAlt faction published a rather good book on DSA, which gathers views from all over the org and is being used in education programs all over the country.
Like okay, its a criticism of the sectarianism of Sawant, and I agree, she is a sectarian crank. Her campaign was run like a fucking cult, which we discovered when we met a group of very well meaning volunteers for her campaign, who she purged for working with DSA.
But I find it interesting that there is then this long diatribe against Trotskyism which makes up the majority of the article. And I’ve read almost this exact article before, several times in fact: when the purged SAlt faction tried to join DSA. All of the sudden, these DSA rightists become the most stalwart defenders of Stalin. And to be clear, R&R currently has two members on the NPC, and was deeply involved in, not sectarian ultraleft opportunism, but instead, organizing the first NPC majority in 2023, passing the anti-zionism and partyist resolutions in '25 (actually the R&R partyist amendment took a much more confrontational posture toward the Dems, but MUG’s “party surrogate” orientation won out, still a partyist direction though) , and co-writing the Workers Deserve More program which is stirring up political discourse among the working class in the media in a way we haven’t seen other than with electoral wins. Always pushing for a more revolutionary message, and a break from the Democratic party.
Hardly sitting on the sidelines and complaining. This is the same tradition as Sawant, different approaches, but two very close strains of American Trotskyism. But does the author care about any of these very real dynamics in DSA? No, instead he decides to call PSL Trotskyist (LMFAO, what is credibility even), and spin a yarn of abstract doom and gloom portent about Trotskyism and ultraleftism.
Also important to note that Trotsky never appeared at the Dies commission, and rejected the commission’s offer to send a rep to visit him in Mexico.
Any valid criticism of Sawant gets lost in his utter derision for accuracy, opportunistic left gestures, and incurious agenda. And frankly, that’s just how deranged the DSA rightists are.
Was really hoping for a comment like this when I initially posted the article! Really appreciate the insight! You should make it it’s own post! (Or can i?)
What kind of post? I usually comment, and I might want to check some of docs to make sure my facts are straight.
I’m not good at like making up posts but I can write pretty well
Lol I think you just paste it into a self post here on c/electoralism with a link here. I can do it for you and tag you if you want.
I think it provokes good discussion, but nobody is gonna see it at the bottom of an older thread like this
Okay, I’ll edit out what I can’t verify with hard evidence and try a self post!
Debates about “real socialism” are obscure pursuits of the intelligentsia, not persuasive programs that attract support and build sustainable coalitions by fixing the problems created by capitalism, with the goal of replacing it.
This is not a good argument. If you want to actually replace capitalism (and not just have Your Guys win elections for the sake of social democracy) you do need to understand what is and isn’t socialism.
But now people are already using this shit to defend entryism, tailism, etc. as though that’s really what was lacking here.
Debates about “real socialism” are obscure pursuits of the intelligentsia
I think it’s good that DSA candidates end up somewhat improving people’s lives and respect those that continue the fight but that ain’t for me at all
Frankly I am a defeatist and see the only logical outcome as China becoming the worlds only superpower for the 100 or so years we have left where modern civilization is sustainable before the global ecosystem collapses
I just buy China and hope line go up so I can enjoy a few things before I rot away
I don’t see why you’re bothering to comment this. It’s not really relevant to what I said and is also just a profoundly unreasonable stance but one that I don’t think you want me to make a futile effort to talk you out of.
I’m already tired of the Ultra moniker and it’s only been like a week since they moved on from tankie. I find it really odd to be against electoralism in the Empire when that’s where the masses are. Elections have a long history and people love voting.
The reality is once your candidates win and invariably they are tied-up by the systemyou have something to point to. When they don’t follow through on their promises you can once again ask for more and point to elections are not enough. A win-win for organizers. Even Kshama’s long standing criticism of the progressive Dems can only be done because they won elections. It gives all of us a frame of reference, including those in power.
But anyways the article is mid. Kshama and those around her are awful at organizing the masses, but good at getting a select few to be devout to the Kshama banner and that’s the last thing we need. Organizers talk about the $15 min wage they did more than a decade ago (in collaboration with other orgs and unions) as their big claim. There have been no new leaders that have come from their movement and anytime a new socialist steps up outside their org in the community Kshama immediately comes out to shit on them. I really hope they go away, but I know they have the funding to continue fucking up organizing for a long time.
PSL are not Trots, Trots whole MO is to be sectarian.
I think you’re analysis is really good! Pretty much aligns with my takeaways too. I dont care too much ub for the article itself, but we should be taking a hard look at the “Sawant left” just like everything else (whether successful or not)
If voting ever changed anything…
I pointed to quite a few things in this comment that it changes for organizers. If you are a socialist and don’t consider yourself an organizer, you’re a complainer on a the internet. What does that change?
What does doing what’s been done for a hundred years change?
Growing a leftist bloc in the belly of the beast has not seen anywhere close to this much motion in my lifetime. Your job as an organizer is not to naval gaze at libs and reactionaries for liking to vote. It’s to go to where the working class is currently at and funnel them into a movement of class solidarity.
Then you’re a lot younger than me. Agree with the rest. I disagree that bourgeois democracy is a movement of class solidarity. It’s a static rock of the status quo. They will not allow any candidates who threaten them. And until after however long it takes to realise this, you’ll be back here with me.
I think a lot of this swell is coming from the remnants of the Sanders ratfucking. So I think it’s worth pursuing electoralism even if it’s frustrated by capital as it sharpens contradictions and radicalizes the working class.
bourgeois democracy is where the masses currently engage in politics. Getting DSA people elected helps us with not getting thrown into camps and killed which is what the current government is doing and also helps to bring people into a funnel towards communism. The ends is not the means.
I’ve fully come around on socialists running as Democrats. The DSA is a political party in the traditional sense of the term, the Democratic Party is not.
The Democratic Party is not a true political party, with an ideology and dues paying members who it has the ability to exclude. There’s no requirement to join, and no way to be kicked out. All you have to do to be a Democrat is tick the D box when you run for office. The Democratic Party is an apparatus of the US political system, in the same way that the House of Representatives is.
My biggest issue with the DSA running as Democrats is that they should also be running as Republicans in districts where that makes more sense. In fact, the Republican party is even less of an actual political party than the Democrats, and has basically no system internally to exclude people they’d like to exclude. There are no super delegates in the RNC.
I think the “Democratic Party” is a brand on the surface, and a donor base at it’s core.
The core can’t be co-opted by DSA. If they’re successful in co-opting the brand, the corporate donors will leave.
The brand might be able to be co-opted, though. I dislike the brand as much as any other Hexbear, but other people do like it (🙄), so it isnt the worst electoral strategy to leverage it until it starts to crumble. Even if most of the donor base leaves, there will still be a fair amount of momentum left for “DSA Dems” to regroup and remain an electoral force, not to say it would be easy.
Behind the scenes, the reason DSA needs the Dems is because of all the data they have on voters and the infrastructure that comes with that data. The issue is they’re not building their own infrastructure to hold onto that data. If the uniparty finds a way through laws or other means to strip DSA from using it, the electoral strategy is pretty much gone.
entryism as heist, not as takeover, might have some legs.
the uniparty uses ballot access to control 3rd parties so if you want to establish a record of governance you have to waste a bunch of effort getting on the ballot at all or you can get 40% of the vote for free by associating with a bourgeois party and then Lieberman it.
The DSA is building this infrastructure. Their National Tech Committee has people working on it.
Good to hear. I’ve been trying to spread the word for a while.
I think that would fail because local and state republican parties usually have the ability to strip the party label from candidates they don’t like. They don’t have super delegates but they also don’t even pretend to be some open big tent party.
Oh do they? Interesting, the Dems do not have that ability lmao
the DSA are very explicit thought that they are not a political party. what makes you say that they are?
They should be running on whatever ballot line allows them to reach the most proletarian voters. In many states that will actually be an unaffiliated ballot line because of primary spoiler laws. In states without those laws though they should run on whatever line seems best. Long shot campaigns for the Democratic primaries should be avoided though.
democratic party is shock absorber of the left though (more like counterinsurgent left
)The Democratic Party: when the “it’s not going to be the graveyard of social movements anymore” insurgency meets the “we’re not going to be the graveyard of social movements anymore” establishment under the big tent and they resolve to keep being the graveyard of social movements
(from here https://nitter.net/shaabiranks/status/2086208662423421398)
Reading this made my mind numb. Of course she couldn’t do the impossible. I the end of the day I don’t believe in electoralism and like the Bolsheviks leftists need simply to be organized and ready to seize in a crisis instead of trying to win votes in a bourgeois government structured to prevent shifts in power. If it weren’t for the crisis in the second government and the first world war they would have never seized power and established a Communist government. The same is going to have to happen in the US with the collapse of the US financial empire.
The Bolsheviks seized power from the reformists, if the American left abandons electoralism for doomsday prepping than when the crisis hits it’ll be the fascists in charge, the equivalent of the White Army already installed in Moscow, that’s not a recipe for a Soviet Union, that’s how you end up with Indonesia 1965
For the socdems to fail and hand the socialists the golden ticket, the reformists first have to be in government
Except the Bolsheviks didn’t waste their time electing reformists. Their whole point was pointing out how useless the reformers were. Don’t pretend as if Bolsheviks endorsed the SRs or kerensky
And yet if the reformists were not in power the Bolshevik revolution would’ve failed because they would’ve been DEAD or still in exile, the weakness and “uselessness” of the reformers was the catalyst that birthed the Soviet Union. Pointing out uselessness only become effective when they were in power
Examining and replicating that dynamic for the modern conditions of the imperial core is an important benchmark for any socialist party that comes to terms with the fact it lives in the west, the socdems regardless of conditions and hypothetical victories are structurally locked in to failure and collapse, that makes them a constant engine of opportunity for emergent western socialist movements
But that opportunity will never emerge if fascists and neolibs win every election
Ok, but electing socdems is also how we got Nazi Germany. As far as I can tell, the Bolsheviks actually winning was essentially a fluke that has never been replicated, with each successful revolution occuring under it’s own circumstances.
Pretending that there is a clear strategy to pursue here as if history is simple doesn’t seem like a recipe for success.
All I know is, attaching yourself to the electoral Democratic Party, is and continues to be, a recipe for electing fascists in the U.S. The centrists will always scurry back to being fascists as soon as a Dem get elected.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t pursue some amount of electoralism as part of a larger comprehensive strategy, but pretending that we know it is THE strategy is silly and doesn’t mean we ever needed to root for an obvious stooge like Platner.
No strategy is airtight and defeat is always a hairsbreadth away and I don’t disagree with your assessment about the relevance of orthodox Leninism in the modern era, I was being charitable and indulgent so the local lemmygards don’t throw a fit
But I disagree with the strategy not being clear, I base my assessment on empirical results and ironclad conditions; the military power of the United States is overwhelming on the domestic end, socialists are hard locked into a legalist mode otherwise it’s prison or death, third partyism is a solid dead end for the left and has been for 75 years, Kshama Sawant eating shit is another data point confirming that
The immediate goal of the American socialist left should be the destruction of the two party system, the thesis is simple; socdems win elections under the empty democratic banner which leads to the neolibs pushing the self-destruct button on the party, “The centrists will always scurry back to being fascists as soon as a Dem get elected”
This results in the mass disillusionment of millions of liberals and makes third party bids viable as the former democratic base will have to desperately search for an alternative, THAT IS the window of opportunity for an independent worker’s party to emerge
For this strategy to work it requires socdems to win elections and remain popular afterward, Mamdani provided a useful template in that regard
And for both the socdems and neolibs to act according to their nature; socdems will remain naive and idealstic and never see the sucker punch coming, the neolibs will remain ideological fanatics who will not tolerate a return to Keynesianism and will sacrifice the two party system to gurentee it never happens
This isn’t the Golden Path, but it’s the best articulable roadmap I’ve yet seen accounting for current conditions, unless anyone else has an alternative plan?
your theory only makes sense if your ends are to win in liberal democratic elections
unless anyone else has an alternative plan?
i feel like dozens of people at this point replied to you at various points over the past year with alternative positions/plans. but you are still stuck on your DSA-right agenda. im fine with that, but then you have to own your defence of socdems. you cant advocate for a communist party, a socdem party and left-lib party at once.
If winning liberal democratic elections blows up the two party system, then yes my theory makes sense
i feel like dozens of people at this point replied to you at various points over the past year with alternative positions/plans
Cool, pull up the best one you agree with, let’s see these profound empirically backed plans that will bring about socialism
you cant advocate for a communist party, a socdem party and left-lib party at once.
Yes I can, it’s called tactics
I don’t think they will sacrifice the two party system, simply because there is no two party system to sacrifice. It’s a one party system with two sides. They will simply become Republicans.
Not only that, but they have the resources to continue this song and dance forever, and will never give up control of the reins of the DNC, no matter how many elections Demsocs win. Winning elections never fucking mattered anyways, it was just an excuse.
What is necessary is actually radical movement that actually threatens those in power that forces the U.S. to focus more of its dwindling resources on it’s internal enemies than external. They already think and act like that level of radicalism and organization exists. Why not actually deliver on it? You say we are stuck in legalism because we could be made illegal, but wasn’t that always the case? And will it not become the case eventually anyways?
We have to think much more broadly, and much more long term.
I don’t think they will sacrifice the two party system, simply because there is no two party system to sacrifice. It’s a one party system with two sides. They will simply become Republicans.
That’s perfect! That’s one way to blow up the two party system, whether they make participating illegal or third parties emerge, the results still end up with our numbers swelling and the radicalization of millions of Americans, DNC neolibs becoming Republicans is the best case scenario, they’d lose most of their base and it would destabilize the Republican party
And the necessary radical movement that could contest the powers of the US leading to a focus on internal politics simply doesn’t exist and likely won’t for decades; that’s a question of pure military logistics, the left would need numbers that could sustain and absorb military casualties exceeding the levels of the Spanish Civil War at the least, that’s requires a base of tens of millions, not hundreds of thousands of dispersed online radicals
We are stuck in legalism because to do anything else will see an individual in the trunk of a burning car with bullet holes in it, the fates of the first BLM organizers should be in every leftists mind because those are the stakes and yes I will tolerate socdems getting elected if it means the left can grow to the point where those deaths come with a hefty price for the state
We have to think much more broadly, and much more long term.
I agree, this plan is merely the first step, going from zero to one, the emergence of an independent Worker’s party with national reach doesn’t imply anything about it’s success or it’s ability to actually contest power, the only benchmark now in 2026 is mere existence
please explain to me how having 100+ years of reformism in europe has improved communist organising
For one thing Europe didn’t have “a 100+ years of reformism” it’s had a oscillating cycle between fascism, neoliberalism and social democracy, and every time the cycle handed the fascists power the left was wiped out and every time socdems got in power suddenly twenty percent of populace became socialist, the socdems in their ignorance are useful shields for the actual left
i see it very differently. i dont think debating the last century would be very productive in this thread, so i will leave this argument here.
the end of the day I don’t believe in electoralism
Ok but this is c/electoralism
Ok, I read the article and it reaffirmed what I believed and didn’t convince me. Am I not allowed to disagree with the take of the article and must agree with electorialism to participate in a community about it when I am subject to the laws and politicians that are put into power this way? I didn’t say that no one should be into electorialism, This didn’t sway me.
must agree with electorialism to participate
Kind of, in my opinion it’s equivalent to going into c/anarchism or c/Marxism just to comment about how much you disagree. It isnt impossible to have a productive discussion I suppose, but it doesnt seem like you are engaging with an open mind by my impression.
Im really not trying to be rude or anything, it is just a bit frustrating at times because anti-electoralism is the dominant view of the instance, which stifles discussion around the topic for those of us who care to engage with it. I view c/electoralism as the venue where we can set aside anti-electoralism and have those discussions, since the whole rest of the instance still exists.
another banger from platner left
(genuinely, compare and contrast platner nut huggers (jacobin, assembled podcast crowd, hasan piker, aryan grim) on the “left”, and those who now gleeful about kshama eating shit, as well as majorly ignoring her existence (last time i checked fedcobin published about kshama in 2022))
Definitely stealing “A. Ryan Grim”, lol
It’s clear that Hexbear’s politics don’t match my own. I’m fine lurking here but is there a Hexbear type place that’s more positive about electoralism, DSA, and more pragmatic organizing? No shade on this part of the left. It’s just not where I am.
I would advocate that c/electoralism be moderated as a “democratic socialist” comm in the same way we have c/anarchism and c/Marxism (and maybe others are kinda like that). It would be healthy for the instance as a whole for both existing and new users to get a little bit libbed up, to slow the user attrition and maybe even make some healthy gains. Cross-tendency conversation (anti-electoral viewpoints, for instance) can happen literally anywhere else on the instance.
I think that the snark and hardline “elections dont matter, why do you waste time even thinking about it?” Type comments stifle discussion (as demonstrated in this thread).
Just an idea I had bouncing around, but if you find a better alternative DM me or something, id be curious to check it out.
i actually second this idea. it would be clearer deliniation. i think it would also make sense because people who are critical of DSA get automatically labelled as anti-electoralists, while i don’t think its true. i am very critical of DSA, but at the same time i’m in a party that participates in elections and i door-knock for our candidates etc. etc. (but i think people would label me as anti-elections all together).
the comm could be renamed like it was done with c/slop to like c/demsoc or something
I think there could be room for your perspective in the reformed comm! I guess it doesnt have to be DSA-specific or anything. A lot of it has to do with how any time there is an electoral failure or shortcoming there are immediate comments that are along the lines of “fell for it again, you’re stupid for caring about succdem electoral politics”. It just kind of sucks to have the tone of “I knew they would fail and you 100% believed [mamdani or whoever] would succeed at building socialism, and i hope [mamdani or whoever] continues to fail so i can be more correct.”.
If you arent carrying that energy, and you’re interested in having a constructive conversation, that’s just an educational opportunity, which is kind of the whole idea! I would like to see people filter in to the instance and get exposed to more revolutionary perspectives and left-criticism! We need to have a friendlier space in order for that to happen, though.
