What Question Are We Answering?

Kit Wainer

AS VOTERS, REVOLUTIONARY socialists will face the same choice as all other voters in the United States this November: which candidate is the lesser evil, which one represents the greatest threat?

Socialists, however, are not mere atomized voters. We are trying to popularize a critique of capitalism and build a mass movement for socialism.

In that context it is difficult to see how urging support for the Democratic ticket helps. In very specific ways, it will more likely obstruct efforts that socialists are making to encourage the growth of the most vibrant movements in the United States today.

Most revolutionary socialists understand that key to the construction of a socialist movement is strengthening and rebuilding social protest movements. Rank and file movements within organized labor, new labor organizing projects, feminist movements, the Black Lives Matter wave, and, today, the Palestine solidarity movement, are the most likely source of new activists who can form the basis of a new socialist left.

By challenging austerity at work, laws limiting reproductive rights, police brutality, or U.S. support for the genocide in Gaza, activists quickly bump up against the limits imposed by the capitalist state. Some of those will be attracted to the project of building a revolutionary socialist alternative to capitalism.

A discussion of what socialists should say about the 2024 elections — and to whom we should say it — should begin from that starting point. The question, therefore, should not be whether Trump represents a unique historic threat but what we should say to movement activists with whom we are in contact in order to build the revolutionary project to which many of us have devoted most of our lives.

For the moment, it is worth concentrating our attention on how the question of the 2024 elections is being discussed in two key movement sectors: Palestine solidarity and organized labor.

Palestine Solidarity

There is generalized contempt for Biden and the Democrats among large sectors of Palestine solidarity activists. This time, it is not just extreme leftists denouncing the Democratic president. Jewish Voice for Peace and other activists have interrupted Biden fundraisers and protested outside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s house.

Several columnists have raised alarms that young progressives and Arab voters might not turn out for the president in November. That the term “Genocide Joe” has become so commonplace speaks volumes.

Socialists did not create this disdain for the President. A wide cross-section of the most vibrant movement in the United States has come into conflict with the Democratic Party and many activists see its leadership as an enemy.

Were this not an election year, many socialists would recognize in this moment an opportunity to engage in dialogue with a wide range of activists, and to draw larger conclusions about the nature of the Democratic Party and the capitalist state in the United States.

We wouldn’t need to argue with fellow activists about why relying on Democrats is a trap. So many have come to that conclusion based on their own experiences. Instead we would want to work with them to generalize together about the broader implications of the conclusions they have already drawn.

Anyone advocating support for the Democrats in November will face a dilemma. When in conversations with Palestine solidarity activists who cannot bring themselves to vote to continue the genocide, should we argue that they are wrong? That the conclusions they are drawing about the Democratic administration are invalid, or that they should temporarily set aside their revulsion?

That argument might earn the Democrats a few votes, but it will also cut socialists off from most activists in this arena.

While it may seem implausible at the moment, based on past history it is at least possible that a wing of the movement will emerge that advocates toning down the criticism of Biden-Harris administration until after the election — to find a way to denounce Israel without embarrassing the U.S. president. That would likely entail ending the encampments and protests against government leaders.

It would certainly require calling off any effort to protest outside the Democratic National Convention. In short, it would most likely lead to the weakening of the Palestine solidarity movement.

If we believe that the revival of mass movements is key to the growth of a new socialist current in the United States, it is difficult to imagine how we could advocate the weakening of the Palestine solidarity movement.

Labor and the Election

Most union officials will endorse and campaign for the Democratic ticket. In most cases the question will not be debated at any union body to which members have access. Unions will tell their members whom they have endorsed and encourage them to sign up to help the campaign.

One of the unions’ goals will be to show that they can mobilize their own members to campaign and vote. In the minds of most union leaders, that ability makes them valuable allies to Democratic politicians.

Therefore, those union members who want their union to support the Democratic ticket will not have to win a political fight. They can sign up for any number of campaign activities that their union leaders are already planning to organize. Even for many rank and file organizations, the 2024 elections will not be a priority because those who want to stop Trump will have no qualms with what their union leaders are doing. Rank and file organizations can focus on internal union matters.

Socialists in the labor movement will have to pick and choose their battles. Anyone who is or has been a workplace union activist knows how difficult it can be to get co-workers to commit even minimal amounts of time to union activism. Getting a member to take on one small project often requires significant effort.

Getting members to be active in their unions or rank and file organizations should be higher priority than convincing them to vote for or against someone in November.

For union activists, however, the question will be about more than voting. They will have to decide whether it is better to spend that time campaigning for Harris.

Again, if the priority is to rebuild the movements, it would seem inexplicable to stop doing so, even if for only a few months.

Campaigning for the Democrats is not just a draw on activists’ time. It also requires political compromises. Democratic mayors, governors and presidents have been in the forefront of pursuing anti-labor policies such as free trade deals or education reform. It is difficult to imagine how one can urge union members to vote to elect Kamala Harris without also refraining from critical analyses of Democratic policies.

In the recent past, for example, two different New York City Democratic mayors have attempted to strip public sector retirees of important health care protections and compel them to switch to a Medicare Advantage (aka Medicare C) plan. The leaderships of several city unions, the United Federation of Teachers in particular, have been complicit with this attempt.

Currently, the Democratic mayor Eric Adams appears inclined to significantly reduce health insurance benefits for working members as well. Normally, this would be an opportunity to engage in conversations about why the DP is committed to such painful neoliberal policies. It would seem contradictory and probably impossible to have such conversations with union members while also urging them to campaign for the Democrats.

Movements Derailed

There is a long history of social movements being derailed over the perceived need to support Democratic politicians. When President George W. Bush launched the Iraq War in 2003, it sparked the largest antiwar movement the United States had seen since the early 1970s.

As the 2004 elections approached, however, many movement leaders and activists decided the priority was to defeat Bush and elect John Kerry, the Democratic candidate. An antiwar movement was particularly embarrassing for Kerry because he had not yet turned against the war.

There was no specific decision to end antiwar protests. However, as key movement activists shifted their energies toward the election campaign, the movement lost steam and there were not enough activists left to keep it going. Although the war became even more unpopular after 2005, the protests never recovered their pre-2004 size.

Similarly, after the election of Donald Trump, a massive women’s movement emerged under the banner of the “Women’s March.” Millions protested Trump’s inauguration all over the United States.

While the protests continued for months and new activists got involved, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi skillfully attracted many key leaders to the idea of using the momentum of the anti-Trump “resistance” to win a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives in 2018.

That election resulted in returning Pelosi to the speakership and the swearing-in of the first members of the progressive “Squad.” But the protests fizzled. And instead of returning to Women’s March organizing, many activists prioritized the 2020 presidential elections instead.

Part of the problem is that movements cannot just be revived at will. Activists cannot return from a hiatus of election campaigning and expect to find the movements they left behind. Movements rise and fall. Socialists need to prioritize extending the upward trends and solidifying as much as possible those who get activated.

We also need to be there, organizing, to have any chance of convincing activists to become active socialists. Leaving the movements, in order to join Democratic election campaigns, means abandoning that priority.

The Trump Threat

The resurgent ascendance of Donald Trump does represent a dangerous threat that socialists should not ignore. It is most likely the consequence of two separate developments.

The first is a generalized despair over the failures of both political parties to improve the standards of living of the majority of the working and lower middle classes since the onset of what Michael Roberts calls the “Long Recession,” which began around 2008.

The same forces that produced the intense desire for change during the 2008 elections have led more recently to discouragement and anger. Among sections of the middle classes and professionals, this has heightened the appeal of explicitly racist and classically national-socialist solutions, i.e. anti-immigrant, anti-“bourgeois,” and implicitly antisemitic messages.

These voters make up the “base” of the Republican Party in the sense that they dominate among Republican primary voters. Republicans running for any office need to appeal to those voters and echo their views if they want to become the Republican nominee.

The second factor is the slow-moving demographic shift which is making the country less white, increasing the pool of voters the Democrats take for granted.

This process has not moved as quickly as the Democratic leadership had hoped. Many Democrats and election analysts believed this shift had already progressed to the point that it made Hillary Clinton’s election in 2016 inevitable. The reality has been more complicated.

The growing sections of nonwhite voters have had lower propensities to vote, and some have been blocked by racist voting restrictions. There is even some evidence that some men of color have shifted toward Trump. Nonetheless, the Republican demographic base is still shrinking and this change has turned Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina into swing states.

After President Obama’s reelection in 2012, the Republican National Committee commissioned a post-mortem analysis in which it argued that the Party needed to improve its messaging to non-white voters. That was probably never a realistic strategy.

Trump has shown instead that Republicans can counter that trend by doubling-down on the mobilization of angry middle-class white voters and increasing their turnout, even if their share of the total electorate is slowly shrinking. His strategy is probably the party’s most logical choice — it is why so many other Republicans have thrown away the dog whistle and resorted to more explicitly racist messaging.

It is also why even more traditional Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, whose top priority is regaining a Republican majority in the Senate, always return to the Trump fold. It is despicable but a smart election strategy both for primaries and for general election turnout.

Nikki Haley might have had more eager corporate supporters, but she likely would have faced an enthusiasm problem among the voters she would need to win in November.

Even after Trump is gone, the Republicans will not easily return to Reaganite, neoconservative messaging. “Chamber of Commerce” Republicans are not as electable under current conditions as are alt-right MAGA politicians. And if the party can’t win elections it will have difficulty attracting capitalist support.

Therefore, it is likely that in most elections in the near future we will see Republican candidates who represent semi-fascist threats, even if Trump is vanquished or imprisoned in 2024.

Looking Forward

Any assumption that we can take a political detour for this one election, then return to an orientation of trying to revive mass movements and build a revolutionary socialist alternative from among activists there, is unrealistic. Much more likely is that socialists will have this same discussion in 2026, 2028, and so on.

Revolutionary socialists should evaluate the 2024 elections in light of a larger strategy for building a socialist movement and ultimately ending capitalism in the United States. If the priority is to elect Democrats in every election for the foreseeable future, it is hard to argue that it also includes building mass movements which will inevitably clash with Democratic leaders.

If, on the other hand, the priority is to build the movements, that is where our focus should be and we shouldn’t take our eyes off that prize.  

September-October 2024, ATC 232