Points of Unity

The US is currently riven with contradictions from the workplace to the political system.

Central to it is, on the one hand, a workforce which is receiving any amount of wage growth for the first time since 2000, and which is already engaging in hundreds of small acts of resistance as the working class grows more aware of its unique strength in this period. A vague socialist consciousness is broader than it has ever been, but that vague sense will always have to navigate through people’s pre-existing consciousness and skills. Thus, a nascent sense of socialism gets turned into unconscious and unorganized work slowdowns, the continued ‘great resignation’, engagement in mutual aid work, or social media activism, all of which have the potential for something more, but as they are they remain individualistic and isolated from the political struggle.

On the political level, there is a massive right-wing offensive led by the fascist right, which stems from the material reality of suburban and rural white supremacist settlerism, as well as the organized ability of the far right, especially Evangelical churches. It manifests in the closing up of the democratic sphere and the democratic rights won during the 1960s, and is targeted particularly at queer people, women, Indigenous people and Black people. The liberal center will not go past its usual tactics, due to a lack of mass organization and class interests which unevenly align them with the right wing offensive. This makes them a poor candidate for some kind of ‘popular front’ between liberals and socialists.

In the present moment we are witnessing a reactionary counter-offensive against peoples movements ranging from the abandonment and maligning of the defund the police movement and criminal justice reform in general being put on the backburner of mainstream politics.

The basic concepts of intersectionality as a form of liberal consensus are being torn down by the right wing as many republican states are banning what they call “critical race theory” from schools and public spaces. The Conservative and Christian right has launched an immensly effective campaign against queer people in media and education who attempted to make our public spheres more inclusive to lgbt people with their own campaign to ban sexual education and discussion of lgbt topics in schools that are a part of a broader strategy to remove queer people from public life.

The current assault of the Supreme Court is a perfect example of this political crisis, it is on the one hand a minoritarian escalation of oppressive forces, and on the other hand a product of decades of legislative inability to solidify rights gained during the 1960s and 70s.

All of these attacks on the oppressed are rooted in America’s strategy of pacifying working class movements by targeting its most politically advanced and oppressed sections in order to prevent them from cohering into a united movement of working and oppressed people capable of toppling the capitalist system.

As always, what is required is a merger between the socialist movement and the workers’ movement culminating in a party which bridges the political & economic struggle. This would manifest in two ways: socialists lending their organizational skills to the workers’ movement, and socialists articulating the most radical possible line within oppressed sections of the workers movement—to bridge the gap between, on the one hand, the political and economic struggle, and on the other organization and militancy.

The socialist movement, as of right now, is not capable of intervening in such a way on a country-wide level, and is only spottily capable of doing this on a local level.

Poor management of conflict has destroyed organizations and, combined with cultish and undemocratic management of many organizations has generally frozen most socialist organizations in a state of passive-aggressive conflict avoidance.

The focus of the ‘normal worker’ (always envisioned as a straight, white cismale trade worker) who must never be challenged by something outside of bourgeois cultural norms, prevents us from articulating and organizing oppressed segments of the workers’ movement.

The lack of interest in theorization and development of political lines prevents us from articulating the most advanced political line.

The domination of a hollowed-out politics of reform points us not to a unification with the working class, but a unity with capitalists, becoming yet another in a long line of liberals who shepherd worker militancy into the state.

Liberal activism has been hollowed out into a politics of experts who act on behalf of the oppressed and exploited, and if our project is to create a politics of the oppressed, liberal organization should only be engaged in a cautious manner. In many cases liberal organizations act as de facto counter-insurgents and compradors, and their capture of socialist organization should be fought against, tooth and nail.

The counterpart of this hollow reformism is a hollowed out radicalism, which sees abstention from struggles engaged in by liberals as the solution to cooptation. This is just as pleasing to capital as reformism is, because in both instances revolutionaries give up the need to coalesce the working class into a political force.

The avoidance of constructive political struggle, and engagement in useless factional non-struggle, has resulted in siloization between different kinds of organizers, and localism as an escape from the danger of disagreement. This is true of the left in general but particularly in the Democratic Socialists of America.

We are—

• We are Socialists. We seek to end the political hegemony of the capitalist class and the creation of a socialist society for and by the working and oppressed people of the world. To this end we seek to end the commodification of bodies, labor, and time and to bring about a world where humanity is free to determine our future without the cohesive forces of capitalism and the profit motive. We seek to cohere the social forces currently present in the United States towards a revolution which is democratic, decolonial, and socialist in character. That is, it would expand the workers’ democratic rights, undo the national oppression of colonized peoples, and end the exploitation of labor by capital.
• We are internationalists. We support the struggles of workers across the world against unfair working conditions and the struggles of oppressed peoples fighting for freedom against imperialist domination of resources and land. We support the right of self-determination of oppressed nations and the right to oppose imperialism. Furthermore we oppose US imperialism in all its forms, including internal imperialism enforced by the US’s internal military force: the police. As internationalists we do not seek the resolution of conflicts by supporting our own government’s expansionist desires or those of its proxies nor do we seek to etch out a niche in bourgeois geo-politics by unconditionally supporting the enemy of our enemy. As racism, patriarchy, colonialism, bigotry and revanchism are barriers to true proletarian internationalism we seek to overcome these forces politically and in our organizations.
• We are Marxists and Leninists rooted in the lessons of the international and historical communist movement, who seek to unite all trends within the contemporary revolutionary movement. In the United States today each tendency and organization is deeply flawed, and can only be improved through deep evaluation and analysis.
• We seek to build a party of socialists and workers which would break from the capitalist two party system: The exact method and means of doing so should not be based on any dogmatic formula; however to face the current political moment the left must break out of being the auxiliary force of the democratic party. Although it would be ideal to do so after electoral or constitutional reform makes a left-wing electoral project more viable, we must understand that the creation of an independent socialist left can not wait for these reforms nor must it be satisfied to exist as a niche electoral project.
  
  

We believe the left needs to—

• Develop socialist leadership, while learning from local activist traditions. The seeds of a workers party have existed throughout the largest metropoles of almost every major US city. These seeds have failed to take root because of the active counter-insurgency campaign waged by the US state and capital to co-opt oppressed autonomous organizers into ‘non-governmental organizations’ which are in fact extensions of local machine politics. Furthermore, while the socialist movement languished in irrelevance these local organizations lacked an overarching socialist vision that could let them cohere into longer lasting, sustained political campaigns capable of challenging capital politically on a national scale. It is our task to see every new activist as a potential new socialist leader but also to make a concrete analysis of the “NGO-Industrial Complex” that takes the brightest minds of the inner city and turns them into cogs for the democratic party and local political machines.
• Build a revitalized socialist labor movement. This would include both militant revitalization campaigns of existing labor unions within the sphere of production and the formation of new unions, both in unorganized industries and sectors and non-traditional unions in the sphere of social reproduction.
• Articulate the demands of all social movements in the most total and revolutionary way possible, which illustrates the connections between seemingly different forms of oppression, thus allowing for a unified political struggle.
• Elevate its consciousness through consistent reportbacks and theorization of the work we do.
• Foster a culture of criticism and self-criticism which will enable us to overcome our divisions and shortcomings and build a principled unity among the socialists and between the socialists and all revolutionary forces, including ultimately the heroic masses at large whom we seek to transform into a conscious and collective political subjectivity.

We Want to strengthen the socialist’s ability to lead and articulate worker militancy, through—

• Trainings regarding conflict and the scientific analysis of conflict within the socialist movement and it’s resolution
• The development of circles of comrades doing similar work or working in similar cities allowing comrades to reflect on their work in the company of equals.
• Helping organizations develop local programs which illustrate how their work is connected and how that connects to a revolutionary transformation of US society.
• Develop the skill of writing useful summations and training the skill of theorization, creating a theory by and for practitioners.