The people still in DSA who haven't begun gravitating towards something like the Hawkins or La Riva campaigns or even the MPP by now are going to get sucked completely into the Democratic Party by 2022, and would have already if not for the massive leftward lurch in consciousness this year in the wake of an extremely visibly ratfucked Dem primary. The die-hard Harringtonites who somehow still refuse to learn after the 2020 primary season are worse than useless at this point. Socialists committed to forming an independent left coalition and party to externally challenge the Dems with should build and sustain a leftward pole of attraction to pull the Harringtonites' followers away from them, because the DSA sure as hell isn't gonna purge them from their ranks anytime soon.
what you are saying might make sense if we had a multi-party parliamentary system of the kind marx wrote about when he encouraged a party independent from the social democrats. instead, we have a two-party presidential system. all you can do is send one party the way of the whigs and slap a new name above the door, with mostly the same electorate. it's reforming democrats, either way you look at it. i get it, i hate democrats too. but pursuing an electoral dead-ending ain't the answer. better to ignore elections entirely and do other political work than some kind of MPP gen-x'er participation trophy project. greens are basically the same.
Have you read this? Hawkins wrote this piece back in 2018 and it hasn't aged at all. It includes an analysis of the weaknesses of the Socialist and Green Parties, which Hawkins has dual membership in.
The ecosocialist wing of the Greens running Hawkins and Walker this year (which appears to be their left wing, and which refuses to cross the class line like Bernie and the DSA entryists, afaik) wants to take this seriously.
The Dems are unreformable from the inside, that much should be obvious to everyone by now. The path that turns the Dems into a mostly-irrelevant party like the Whigs or UK Lib Dems, however, that might be worth pursuing if we can actually start building an external workers' party that transcends the limitations of the Greens or the MPP or PSL by themselves. This means bottom-up organizing beyond the scope of electoral politics (in which case even those currently ignoring elections altogether can still play a role in this base-building process), reinstating dues-paying membership-based party structures, and building a sufficient base among the working class to eventually form a united-front coalition capable of challenging the artificial memberless "state party" structure that was used to ratfuck and neuter the Greens and SP.
Took the time read this, I have to admit, I am a little surprised by how much Hawkins seems to understand the structural issues at work electorally and historically. He's not someone I know much about, but seeing his analysis, I find myself mostly agreeing, but disagreeing to some extent on the prescriptive parts. I don't know what his political views are, it reads like he is a Democratic Socialist, which makes his position understandable. If you believe that electoral methods are the primary driver for socialism, then trying to "whig" the Democrats makes more sense. I am not a DemSoc, I think we need revolutionary socialism. I am supportive of what the DemSocs are trying to do, but I think the bourgeois state is incredibly constrained. We might make some gains there, but I ultimately feel like it's like playing with monopoly money in terms of the eventual goal of communism, it's more of a side-gig. So to me, whether you have DemSocs as an independent caucus elected on a Democratic ballot line, or an independent party elected on their own ballot line makes no difference. Inasmuch as you can be "independent" with only a handful of seats -- you still mostly have to be in a coaliting with Democrats, if nothing else to keep the GOP from taking us back to the dark ages.
I don't see how you change the "state party" situation without changing election law in 50 states, which would mean you'd have to be able to move policy, and we can't. So I agree with him about having a separate "member org" that basically what the DSA is doing. But it seems like he is saying, you need that, but it also needs to have a "state party" counterparty that maintains a ballot line, like the SPA. I just don't think it will be a successful model. What do you gain over just winning Dem primaries, which is a much more realistic path to get elected? Nothing requires you to work with (rather than against) other Democrats. You could even switch parties after being elected. There is no formal relationship between the ballot line and holding office. There is no formal "supply and confidence" like a parliamentary system. There is no "government" formed really, it's just a herd of cats.
My preferred model would be to create a true socialist caucus, which could be not only in Congress, but also in the state and local governments. Our federal system doesn't see much of that kind of political crossover outside of Republican and Democrat, but it would certainly be possible to do it. You would just need some buy-in to the idea for a few key players -- is Sanders would form such an org, or maybe the "Squad" then you get the state legislators like Lee Carter and Julia Salazar, and then on down to local officials like the six DSA members on the Chicago city council, etc. While they have practically zero in common in terms of their role in government, they ought to formally associate in a caucus and organize together, and through the DSA in coalition with other orgs. That is the kind of "party within a party" model that I think would work better than trying to get a new ballot line.
That said, I think everything that has been tried and failed before, is worth reconsidering. Technology has dramatically changed individual communication and democratized mass communication, and how people can do organizing. I feel like the left hasn't even begun to tap into the possibilities yet. Bernie's much-vaunted email list and fundraising numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, we got chapo.chat put together in a matter of weeks, just out of an addiction to shitposting! Imagine if we were actually trying to do serious political work.
The people still in DSA who haven't begun gravitating towards something like the Hawkins or La Riva campaigns or even the MPP by now are going to get sucked completely into the Democratic Party by 2022, and would have already if not for the massive leftward lurch in consciousness this year in the wake of an extremely visibly ratfucked Dem primary. The die-hard Harringtonites who somehow still refuse to learn after the 2020 primary season are worse than useless at this point. Socialists committed to forming an independent left coalition and party to externally challenge the Dems with should build and sustain a leftward pole of attraction to pull the Harringtonites' followers away from them, because the DSA sure as hell isn't gonna purge them from their ranks anytime soon.
what you are saying might make sense if we had a multi-party parliamentary system of the kind marx wrote about when he encouraged a party independent from the social democrats. instead, we have a two-party presidential system. all you can do is send one party the way of the whigs and slap a new name above the door, with mostly the same electorate. it's reforming democrats, either way you look at it. i get it, i hate democrats too. but pursuing an electoral dead-ending ain't the answer. better to ignore elections entirely and do other political work than some kind of MPP gen-x'er participation trophy project. greens are basically the same.
Have you read this? Hawkins wrote this piece back in 2018 and it hasn't aged at all. It includes an analysis of the weaknesses of the Socialist and Green Parties, which Hawkins has dual membership in.
https://isreview.org/issue/107/case-independent-left-party
The ecosocialist wing of the Greens running Hawkins and Walker this year (which appears to be their left wing, and which refuses to cross the class line like Bernie and the DSA entryists, afaik) wants to take this seriously.
The Dems are unreformable from the inside, that much should be obvious to everyone by now. The path that turns the Dems into a mostly-irrelevant party like the Whigs or UK Lib Dems, however, that might be worth pursuing if we can actually start building an external workers' party that transcends the limitations of the Greens or the MPP or PSL by themselves. This means bottom-up organizing beyond the scope of electoral politics (in which case even those currently ignoring elections altogether can still play a role in this base-building process), reinstating dues-paying membership-based party structures, and building a sufficient base among the working class to eventually form a united-front coalition capable of challenging the artificial memberless "state party" structure that was used to ratfuck and neuter the Greens and SP.
Took the time read this, I have to admit, I am a little surprised by how much Hawkins seems to understand the structural issues at work electorally and historically. He's not someone I know much about, but seeing his analysis, I find myself mostly agreeing, but disagreeing to some extent on the prescriptive parts. I don't know what his political views are, it reads like he is a Democratic Socialist, which makes his position understandable. If you believe that electoral methods are the primary driver for socialism, then trying to "whig" the Democrats makes more sense. I am not a DemSoc, I think we need revolutionary socialism. I am supportive of what the DemSocs are trying to do, but I think the bourgeois state is incredibly constrained. We might make some gains there, but I ultimately feel like it's like playing with monopoly money in terms of the eventual goal of communism, it's more of a side-gig. So to me, whether you have DemSocs as an independent caucus elected on a Democratic ballot line, or an independent party elected on their own ballot line makes no difference. Inasmuch as you can be "independent" with only a handful of seats -- you still mostly have to be in a coaliting with Democrats, if nothing else to keep the GOP from taking us back to the dark ages.
I don't see how you change the "state party" situation without changing election law in 50 states, which would mean you'd have to be able to move policy, and we can't. So I agree with him about having a separate "member org" that basically what the DSA is doing. But it seems like he is saying, you need that, but it also needs to have a "state party" counterparty that maintains a ballot line, like the SPA. I just don't think it will be a successful model. What do you gain over just winning Dem primaries, which is a much more realistic path to get elected? Nothing requires you to work with (rather than against) other Democrats. You could even switch parties after being elected. There is no formal relationship between the ballot line and holding office. There is no formal "supply and confidence" like a parliamentary system. There is no "government" formed really, it's just a herd of cats.
My preferred model would be to create a true socialist caucus, which could be not only in Congress, but also in the state and local governments. Our federal system doesn't see much of that kind of political crossover outside of Republican and Democrat, but it would certainly be possible to do it. You would just need some buy-in to the idea for a few key players -- is Sanders would form such an org, or maybe the "Squad" then you get the state legislators like Lee Carter and Julia Salazar, and then on down to local officials like the six DSA members on the Chicago city council, etc. While they have practically zero in common in terms of their role in government, they ought to formally associate in a caucus and organize together, and through the DSA in coalition with other orgs. That is the kind of "party within a party" model that I think would work better than trying to get a new ballot line.
That said, I think everything that has been tried and failed before, is worth reconsidering. Technology has dramatically changed individual communication and democratized mass communication, and how people can do organizing. I feel like the left hasn't even begun to tap into the possibilities yet. Bernie's much-vaunted email list and fundraising numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, we got chapo.chat put together in a matter of weeks, just out of an addiction to shitposting! Imagine if we were actually trying to do serious political work.