This is all true, but on the tactic of running campaigns to get socialists in office, that tactic itself can be a detrimental failure if those campaigns are always doomed to fail from the start. Putting resources and time and effort into only running failed campaigns doesnt win you anything, plenty of political parties have proven that over the past decades and have faded into obscurity. Also people mean different things when they say third party, most just mean it in the sense of a third party ballot line, because people think that "whats wrong" is that we "dont have the right politicians in charge", so they elevate the tactic of elections to that of a strategy and it becomes the goal of what they think it will take for us to win.
The main org that has shown a real strategic undertaking in the matter of building the socialist movement has been DSA, theyve been the only ones to grow substantially and undertake multiple tactics all while balancing the need to grow with the need to push for a socialist movement. People can shout all they want but these tactics work and theres of course a ton more to do, but theres a reason DSA doesnt run its own candidates as everyone is often demanding. I dont think we're anywhere near that level, it would only eat up time and resources which we could instead be spending now to grow by focusing on work that matters much more like labor and housing organizing.
The current moment needs people to come together and work collectively on strategies that build up the socialist movement, definitely not focus on third party ballot lines as some sort of neat trick to prove some point.
This is all true, but on the tactic of running campaigns to get socialists in office, that tactic itself can be a detrimental failure if those campaigns are always doomed to fail from the start. Putting resources and time and effort into only running failed campaigns doesnt win you anything, plenty of political parties have proven that over the past decades and have faded into obscurity. Also people mean different things when they say third party, most just mean it in the sense of a third party ballot line, because people think that "whats wrong" is that we "dont have the right politicians in charge", so they elevate the tactic of elections to that of a strategy and it becomes the goal of what they think it will take for us to win.
The main org that has shown a real strategic undertaking in the matter of building the socialist movement has been DSA, theyve been the only ones to grow substantially and undertake multiple tactics all while balancing the need to grow with the need to push for a socialist movement. People can shout all they want but these tactics work and theres of course a ton more to do, but theres a reason DSA doesnt run its own candidates as everyone is often demanding. I dont think we're anywhere near that level, it would only eat up time and resources which we could instead be spending now to grow by focusing on work that matters much more like labor and housing organizing.
The current moment needs people to come together and work collectively on strategies that build up the socialist movement, definitely not focus on third party ballot lines as some sort of neat trick to prove some point.