By JOHN PRIETO
In recent months, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have undertaken their nationwide “Fight Oligarchy Tour.” Hundreds of thousands of people have attended these events or viewed them online. Many say that they have been heartened and even inspired to hear these elected representatives voice their opposition to the reactionary policies of the Trump administration. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez speak of “building community,” “fighting for working people,” “working-class solidarity,” “Medicare for all,” and “taking on the system.” Sanders even blasts the “big money” interests that back candidates of the Democratic Party.
And yet, the Bernie-AOC events deserve some criticism. Both of these politicians have served as sheepdogs for the Democratic Party, funneling those who are fed up with its policies back into the flock. In fact, the major purpose of their rallies is to get out the vote for Democratic Party candidates running for office. Sanders states that “in the near future,” he will roll out his slate of endorsements of political candidates.
This is a method that fails to fundamentally challenge any of the major problems that working people must face; it maintains a clear delineation between those who are merely allowed to indicate a small preference in the elections—the working class and oppressed—and those who actually wield power.
Another event of the early spring was emblematic of the core issues with the Democratic Party and its inability to combat the threat that the Trump administration poses to immigrants, unions, students, and the workers and oppressed more generally. From March 31 to April 1, Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) gave the longest speech in U.S. Senate history at 25 hours and five minutes. Once the speech was over, the regular business of the Senate immediately resumed. Matthew Whitaker, a man who believes all judges should be Christians, among other extremist positions, was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to NATO with the vote of one of Booker’s Democratic colleagues.
Booker’s “filibuster” was a performance, not an actual effort to resist the Trump regime. It was one of many auditions for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president that we will continue to see over the next four years. Other versions include the Bernie-AOC “Fighting Oligarchy” tour—which have brought them much positive reception from corners of the Democratic Party previously more hostile to them—and the town halls undertaken by Senator Chris Murphy and Representative Maxwell Frost. While most of their colleagues do nothing to fight (and in some cases actively support) the Trump regime, the best these fighters can muster is performances. They hope that their feigned motions towards resistance will suffice to endear them to a base that is profoundly disappointed in and disapproving of the Democratic Party. But fear not, billionaires, they will not push the workers and oppressed into motion.
If it’s not for resistance, what is it for?
Those on the socialist left have often referred to the Democratic Party as “the graveyard of social movements.” That is, it is a place where mass movements go to die. Throughout the history of the United States after Reconstruction, the Democratic Party has consistently served as a vehicle for integrating the demands and momentum of mass movements into the institutions of bourgeois politics, and thus cauterizing the festering wounds of capitalism.
When the post-Reconstruction status quo brought questions of civil rights, land ownership, debt, and urban working conditions to the fore of mass politics, a political party, however imperfect, began to challenge the Democrats and Republicans with a base of workers and farmers. That party—the Populist Party—was successfully courted by the Democrats and brought into their fold; its base was dissipated. The same would occur again and again as mass movements and nascent political parties without a class analysis, and therefore uncommitted to class independence, would be absorbed in moments of crisis by the Democratic Party. These formations include the already mentioned Populist Party in the 1890s, the Farmer-Labor parties of the 1930s and ’40s, as well as the civil rights, women’s, and gay movements of the 1960s. The list goes on into the current period.
In moments of crisis and mass political ferment, the role of the Democratic Party has been made clear decade after decade for more than a century: Demobilize, disempower, depoliticize.
A moment of mass politicization
While I have been quite critical of the Democratic Party, and it is right to be stridently critical of them, political activists must be careful to avoid sectarianism—separating ourselves from the mass movement as it exists. Criticism of the town halls of Murphy and Maxwell, the tour of AOC and Bernie, or the “filibuster” of Booker must exist alongside a recognition that these ineffective gestures towards resistance reflect the fact that a mass politicization is taking place and that bourgeois politicians recognize the yearning for an alternative. Those bourgeois politicians cannot and will not provide one, but they will seek to capture that desire for their own ends.
On April 5 and again on April 19, several million people mobilized in protests across the country. Although often organized by liberal NGOs deeply attached to the Democratic Party, this is a sign of a mass politicization. These moments when the masses are in motion provide the greatest opportunities for the advancement of socialist politics. It is incumbent upon socialist and labor activists to take part in these mass actions, even when they have a liberal character, in order to push working-class politics and strategies. Abandoning those brought into motion through these mobilizations will lead to the capture of this momentum by the Democratic Party.
A moment for mass action
If the Democratic Party is the path to defeat for the mass movement, what is it that we need for victory? We need united-front-type mass actions. A real united front brings together a broad swath of organizations of working-class and oppressed people, and their committed allies, to fight for a specific goal without forcing the organizations composing it to abandon their independent political programs. This is best done in a democratic and transparent fashion, creating unity around specific demands but allowing groups to put forward their own political programs and to suggest strategy and tactics within the front.
We must struggle within these united fronts for concerted mass action. Being mobilized in the class struggle is the best instructor in working-class politics. As Rosa Luxembourg once said, “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
It is the activity of the class struggle in which the class learns and develops consciousness. As such, we must create the opportunities for this struggle and learning to take place. Mass action, the concentration of large numbers in active struggle, is both the best method to win the demands of the united front as well as a necessary precursor for the development of mass revolutionary consciousness.
In concrete terms, this looks like the organizing that is being done in Connecticut to build a united front to defend civil liberties and the right to organize. Labor activists have brought together organizations from the Palestine solidarity movement, the environmental movement, religious communities, immigrant organizations, as well as endorsements from the 4 Cs SEIU 1973, GEU UAW 6950, Hartford Federation of Teachers, and Connecticut State University AAUP. These organizations are working together to build a democratic mass meeting on April 26 at 1 p.m. (in the First & Summerfield United Methodist Church, 425 College St., New Haven, Conn.) to constitute a coalition that will call for and organize mass actions to defend civil liberties, immigrants, and the right to organize.
There is reason to expect that the mobilized working class and its allies will ultimately turn their backs on both parties of big business—the Democrats and the Republicans. It will become increasingly apparent that working people need their own independent party, working side by side with a reborn militant labor movement and with the organizations of oppressed people. Unlike the Democrats, a new political party that directly represents working people, and is democratically controlled by them, can provide consistent leadership in organizing the mass struggles against the bosses and their cruel system of war and exploitation.
