The only takeaway from this is that it doesn't matter at all, because small, True Leftist parties have been tried for decades and have consistently failed. We'll get more done with ten million libs who agree on Medicare for All than with ten thousand True Leftists who have the right opinions on a bunch of issues they'll never get a say in.
Assuming that doesn't make it realistic right now. If I think the only way to get to Tierra del Fuego is by plane, that doesn't mean I'm suddenly able to go there. I don't own a plane, or have access to one, or money to buy a ticket on one, etc. There are preliminary steps I need to take before taking that plane trip is realistic.
If you honestly think it's revolution or bust, the task is to identify the preliminary steps of starting a revolutionary organization and work on those. Some of those preliminary steps likely overlap with comrades who think there are other paths to socialism.
If the only way to get to Tierra del Fuego is by plane this remains true whether you have access to a plane or not. Whether it is realistic or not is immaterial. And other people who are offering you bus passes are not going to get the job done
Given that neither approach has thus far been effective in the imperial core, it's baffling to me that to me that you would consider electoralism so self-evidently realistic given while revolution is a pie in the sky idea
There are modern examples of countries taking big steps leftwards via elections (Venezuela, Bolivia).
Almost everyone in the U.S. agrees that elections are a legitimate way to shape politics.
A year ago we saw someone who self-identified as a Democratic Socialist win an unprecedented string of victories in an open presidential primary.
Democratic Socialists hold multiple lower offices and keep winning more.
Electoralism has previously delivered material gains for the working class (e.g., the New Deal, local minimum wage increases) as well as material progress on a variety of social issues (e.g., the Civil Rights Act, state efforts to legalize gay marriage and marijuana).
I consider a revolution to be pie in the sky stuff (at least right now) because:
The SRA -- not even a militant leftist organization, but maybe the closest thing to one -- has only 10,000 members.
The vast majority of people who might someday (if you squint hard) be part of a revolutionary movement are not armed.
The number of people who consider an armed revolution here in America to be a legitimate way to shape politics is low.
That's precisely the problem. Time, energy and money that would be better spend on organizing are spent chasing electoral victories
Whatever Bernie identified as, his politics were stolidly Social Democratic. He also was hamstrung by capital and it's institutions, and there's no reason to believe that had he won he would have been able to bring about even Social Democratic reforms given entrenched opposition within the Democratic Party, the media, and of course capital itself.
While some of these people are indeed actual socialists, and their winning office is in fact a good thing, I don't see this leading to socialism writ large. Historically, socialists have held lower office in the US before but this did not lead inevitably to socialism.
I support anything that materially improves the lives of the working class, but again, the New Deal is not socialism. A minimum wage is not socialism. Legalizing weed is not socialism.
If your goal is to bring about Social Democratic reforms to capitalism, then fine, we've seen it happen often enough in industrialized countries that I believe it is possible through electoralism, but I don't find it at all convincing that socialism will be brought about through electoral politics in the United States.
I don’t find it at all convincing that socialism will be brought about through electoral politics in the United States.
I find it more likely than a revolution, if only because a revolution is so far from reality right now. If there's a 5% chance that socialism in America can be achieved through electoral means, and a 1% chance that it can be achieved through revolutionary means, the odds are firmly against electoralism and yet it's still far more realistic than a revolution. Whatever you think of the Bernie campaign, it at least approached the scale, resources, and organization of a mass movement.
the New Deal is not socialism. A minimum wage is not socialism. Legalizing weed is not socialism.
These are things that take the boot off the neck of the working class, at least a bit. If you can deliver some initial results to the working class via electoralism, maybe you'll build support for more ambitious gains, and you might eventually build the political power and willingness to strike at the fundamental issue of who owns and controls the means of production.
And even if you can't get all the way across the finish line with electoralism, easing the repression of the working class might make it easier to pursue a unionization or revolutionary approach. That's what I mean when I say that some of the preliminary steps to make a revolution realistic might overlap with the immediate goals of people pursuing other approaches. Look at the electoral efforts to demilitarize (or otherwise limit the power of) the police. That's not socialism, but it might help get us there.
bro the point of electoralism as a socialist isn't to change policy (tho you might get some concessions here and there which are welcome) but to give your policies and organization a bigger platform, so you can propagandize. a big chunk of why socialism has come back to public discourse is because of Sanders' 2016 campaign. especially now that socialism is in ascent and only socialists will defend very popular policies (15$ minimum wage, M4A, stimmies/UBI, etc) electoralism can be a very good opportunity for propagandizing and growth of the socialist movement.
will you create the United Socialist States of America through electoralism? no. can it help you get there? maybe, but when it comes to politics, taking power and overthrowing a ruling class "maybe" is as good of an answer as you're gonna get.
I'm not saying that socialists should never engage tactically in bourgeois democracy. There's a time and a place for that. But the DSA's national strategy of being the left wing of the Democratic Party is not one that I have faith in in the long term
i agree with you here, for the most part. but even if the DSA's strategy isn't sustainable in the long-term you can still join one of the more radical caucuses and agitate in the DSA itself. a lot of people will eventually realize that taking over the Democratic party (if DSA leadership even plans on going that "far") is a pretty shitty plan and that the more radical people have had solid criticism of the DSA's strategy and tactics. that will lead to people joining/creating/splitting into better suited orgs for a socialist path.
i'm not from the US but i truly don't see a better org for socialists to join other than the DSA: it's pretty big, its members are pretty open minded to ideas to the left of them, etc obviously keep in mind the limitations of the organization but most other organizations are pretty much irrelevant at the moment and i don't see that changing any time soon.
I'm a DSA member currently, but I don't think I really want to spend my time and energy trying to push the DSA left. I'm already part of a giant, terrible union that is controlled by liberal ghouls with a deathgrip on power. The biggest problem I have is that it's an organization, not a party. It has no ideology (by design). The politicians they endorse and elect aren't accountable to the organization or its membership. There are good caucuses and good chapters, but I've just been feeling like I want an org with some discipline and ideological consistency.
Pointing out that there are no revolutionary leftist groups in the U.S. is a fact, and pointing out that this makes a revolutionary approach unrealistic is a basic inference. Neither of these are excuses, especially if someone is pursuing some other path to socialism.
I wasn't saying your point was a reason not to get involved. But the constant defeatism of "enter org here" doesn't do exactly what I would, is a way to ignore how malleable each org is and how much influence one person can have. You want to make the org more militant organize a school night about militancy in socialism.
No dude bro sitting at home and complaining about entryism is how change was made bro. Trust me bro just keep complaining to the void of online spaces about how none of the orgs are perfectly inline with my political ideology. It works trust me bro.
Exactly. The truth is you don't want to put in the effort and would rather waste your time blabbering online to echo chambers. Talking to people and getting them to the see the importance of a revolutionary struggle takes a ton of effort and time. There's not many people who currently agree with this approach which mean it takes even more effort, so instead do nothing and let the working class and BIPOC folks continue to take the worst possible conditions instead of doing anything to make their material conditions even slightly better currently. What a great comrade.
yeah we all know it's a lot safer to be DSA SocDems than actual Revolutionaries in the imperial core. Maybe if someone had told Hampton to be a DSA member instead, he would still be alive and get elected lol
There are no actual revolutionaries in the imperial core. If you want to point at historical examples (like the Weather Underground, who the Black Panthers disagreed with), they failed to appreciably advance the cause of socialism in America.
The question isn't whether a given approach is safe; the question is whether a given approach might produce results. There are tons of examples of small True Leftist groups (militant or not) and they've broadly failed to produce results.
Generally speaking, big parties start out as small ones. The CPC started with 50 members. Those are the building blocks.
And you can demean parties for having ideological standards all you want, but liberals will never accomplish our goals. We either get actual socialism or we all boil alive from climate change. Medicare For All isn't gonna cut it.
But we've tried the small party thing for decades now. It hasn't worked, and it hasn't produced much of anything. It didn't even get large numbers of people talking about socialism, which is a significant step in a country so diametrically opposed to it. The Bernie campaigns at least did that, and at least generated some concrete policy proposals you can bring up and get taken seriously.
Medicare for All isn't going to cut it, but that's not the end goal. That's an immediate goal, and building a mass movement around that might offer a path to bigger goals.
But we’ve tried the small party thing for decades now.
Nobody is consciously setting out to keep their parties small.
It hasn’t worked, and it hasn’t produced much of anything.
Nothing's worked in the US, and "small parties" isn't a strategy; the question should be how to make socialist parties bigger, because that's the only thing that's worked anywhere in history, and it's worked for entire countries.
That’s an immediate goal, and building a mass movement around that might offer a path to bigger goals.
Building a mass movement around a liberal reform that most of the world already has won't bring us even remotely closer to achieving socialism.
The PSL, for instance, has a higher bar to entry than the DSA. That's a conscious decision to have a smaller number of members in exchange for more vetting. One easy way to help your socialist party grow is to not require interviews.
Building a mass movement around a liberal reform that most of the world already has won’t bring us even remotely closer to achieving socialism.
It absolutely will in a country as right wing as the U.S.
The PSL, for instance, has a higher bar to entry than the DSA. That’s a conscious decision to have a smaller number of members in exchange for more vetting. One easy way to help your socialist party grow is to not require interviews.
They do that to keep cops, reactionaries, wreckers, and assholes out and to maintain ideological consistency, which is actually important if you want an effective party. A bigger party isn't necessarily a better one. (Note: This doesn't mean that the goal is to keep the party small. It means that the goal is to hold all members of the party to a consistent set of personal and ideological standards, which an org can't do if it's indiscriminate about who it lets in. See: landlords in DSA. [Not that I'm even anti-DSA per se.]) Again, this is what historically successful parties have done. Doing away with ideological standards is not a shortcut to communism.
It absolutely will in a country as right wing as the U.S.
How? By what process? Europe is absolutely no closer to revolution now that they have universal healthcare programs.
They do that to keep cops, reactionaries, wreckers, and assholes out and to maintain ideological consistency, which is actually important if you want an effective party.
Yes, it's a conscious decision to trade size for all of these benefits. But a party the size of the PSL is ineffective by default; they've struck the wrong balance.
How? By what process?
Demonstrating that mass collective action can produce material improvements could catalyze bigger changes in the same direction. There's also the idea that taking the boot off the neck of workers, at least a little bit, can make non-electoral strategies easier.
The only takeaway from this is that it doesn't matter at all, because small, True Leftist parties have been tried for decades and have consistently failed. We'll get more done with ten million libs who agree on Medicare for All than with ten thousand True Leftists who have the right opinions on a bunch of issues they'll never get a say in.
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I don't want to do entryism in the DSA to try and get them to stop doing electoralism though
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What armed group would you recommend?
If you have to ask, is a revolutionary approach realistic right now?
If you don't believe electoralism will work, it is, in fact, the only approach.
Assuming that doesn't make it realistic right now. If I think the only way to get to Tierra del Fuego is by plane, that doesn't mean I'm suddenly able to go there. I don't own a plane, or have access to one, or money to buy a ticket on one, etc. There are preliminary steps I need to take before taking that plane trip is realistic.
If you honestly think it's revolution or bust, the task is to identify the preliminary steps of starting a revolutionary organization and work on those. Some of those preliminary steps likely overlap with comrades who think there are other paths to socialism.
If the only way to get to Tierra del Fuego is by plane this remains true whether you have access to a plane or not. Whether it is realistic or not is immaterial. And other people who are offering you bus passes are not going to get the job done
Whether it's realistic is the most important question if you're assuming that's your only option.
Simply insisting that it's the only way will get us nowhere.
Given that neither approach has thus far been effective in the imperial core, it's baffling to me that to me that you would consider electoralism so self-evidently realistic given while revolution is a pie in the sky idea
I consider electoralism to be realistic because:
I consider a revolution to be pie in the sky stuff (at least right now) because:
Responding point by point:
If your goal is to bring about Social Democratic reforms to capitalism, then fine, we've seen it happen often enough in industrialized countries that I believe it is possible through electoralism, but I don't find it at all convincing that socialism will be brought about through electoral politics in the United States.
I find it more likely than a revolution, if only because a revolution is so far from reality right now. If there's a 5% chance that socialism in America can be achieved through electoral means, and a 1% chance that it can be achieved through revolutionary means, the odds are firmly against electoralism and yet it's still far more realistic than a revolution. Whatever you think of the Bernie campaign, it at least approached the scale, resources, and organization of a mass movement.
These are things that take the boot off the neck of the working class, at least a bit. If you can deliver some initial results to the working class via electoralism, maybe you'll build support for more ambitious gains, and you might eventually build the political power and willingness to strike at the fundamental issue of who owns and controls the means of production.
And even if you can't get all the way across the finish line with electoralism, easing the repression of the working class might make it easier to pursue a unionization or revolutionary approach. That's what I mean when I say that some of the preliminary steps to make a revolution realistic might overlap with the immediate goals of people pursuing other approaches. Look at the electoral efforts to demilitarize (or otherwise limit the power of) the police. That's not socialism, but it might help get us there.
bro the point of electoralism as a socialist isn't to change policy (tho you might get some concessions here and there which are welcome) but to give your policies and organization a bigger platform, so you can propagandize. a big chunk of why socialism has come back to public discourse is because of Sanders' 2016 campaign. especially now that socialism is in ascent and only socialists will defend very popular policies (15$ minimum wage, M4A, stimmies/UBI, etc) electoralism can be a very good opportunity for propagandizing and growth of the socialist movement.
will you create the United Socialist States of America through electoralism? no. can it help you get there? maybe, but when it comes to politics, taking power and overthrowing a ruling class "maybe" is as good of an answer as you're gonna get.
I'm not saying that socialists should never engage tactically in bourgeois democracy. There's a time and a place for that. But the DSA's national strategy of being the left wing of the Democratic Party is not one that I have faith in in the long term
i agree with you here, for the most part. but even if the DSA's strategy isn't sustainable in the long-term you can still join one of the more radical caucuses and agitate in the DSA itself. a lot of people will eventually realize that taking over the Democratic party (if DSA leadership even plans on going that "far") is a pretty shitty plan and that the more radical people have had solid criticism of the DSA's strategy and tactics. that will lead to people joining/creating/splitting into better suited orgs for a socialist path.
i'm not from the US but i truly don't see a better org for socialists to join other than the DSA: it's pretty big, its members are pretty open minded to ideas to the left of them, etc obviously keep in mind the limitations of the organization but most other organizations are pretty much irrelevant at the moment and i don't see that changing any time soon.
I'm a DSA member currently, but I don't think I really want to spend my time and energy trying to push the DSA left. I'm already part of a giant, terrible union that is controlled by liberal ghouls with a deathgrip on power. The biggest problem I have is that it's an organization, not a party. It has no ideology (by design). The politicians they endorse and elect aren't accountable to the organization or its membership. There are good caucuses and good chapters, but I've just been feeling like I want an org with some discipline and ideological consistency.
People will make excuses to sit at home not doing anything for any reason.
Pointing out that there are no revolutionary leftist groups in the U.S. is a fact, and pointing out that this makes a revolutionary approach unrealistic is a basic inference. Neither of these are excuses, especially if someone is pursuing some other path to socialism.
I wasn't saying your point was a reason not to get involved. But the constant defeatism of "enter org here" doesn't do exactly what I would, is a way to ignore how malleable each org is and how much influence one person can have. You want to make the org more militant organize a school night about militancy in socialism.
I'm not making excuses for not doing anything
There's no org that fits exactly what I want to do so I don't join any.
You know you could become the change you want to see in the org? It's not like PSL and DSA are like working at Amazon.
Why do you assume I'm not doing anything? I'm active in my union, I'm a DSA member and I'm trying to leave and join PSL
The way I read the thread seemed like you were waiting for a militarized org to join before joining any of them. My apologies. Good job on your work!
Hell if I know, I'm just rationalizing my DSA entryism
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No dude bro sitting at home and complaining about entryism is how change was made bro. Trust me bro just keep complaining to the void of online spaces about how none of the orgs are perfectly inline with my political ideology. It works trust me bro.
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Exactly. The truth is you don't want to put in the effort and would rather waste your time blabbering online to echo chambers. Talking to people and getting them to the see the importance of a revolutionary struggle takes a ton of effort and time. There's not many people who currently agree with this approach which mean it takes even more effort, so instead do nothing and let the working class and BIPOC folks continue to take the worst possible conditions instead of doing anything to make their material conditions even slightly better currently. What a great comrade.
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Oh true. You're just here to try and get people to do nothing. Well better luck next time.
Rejecting one approach which has never worked in favor of the other approach which has never worked.
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yeah we all know it's a lot safer to be DSA SocDems than actual Revolutionaries in the imperial core. Maybe if someone had told Hampton to be a DSA member instead, he would still be alive and get elected lol
There are no actual revolutionaries in the imperial core. If you want to point at historical examples (like the Weather Underground, who the Black Panthers disagreed with), they failed to appreciably advance the cause of socialism in America.
The question isn't whether a given approach is safe; the question is whether a given approach might produce results. There are tons of examples of small True Leftist groups (militant or not) and they've broadly failed to produce results.
We literally already have that and we have exactly nothing.
It's at least the building blocks of a mass movement. A small party, no matter how ideologically pure, isn't anywhere close to that.
Generally speaking, big parties start out as small ones. The CPC started with 50 members. Those are the building blocks.
And you can demean parties for having ideological standards all you want, but liberals will never accomplish our goals. We either get actual socialism or we all boil alive from climate change. Medicare For All isn't gonna cut it.
But we've tried the small party thing for decades now. It hasn't worked, and it hasn't produced much of anything. It didn't even get large numbers of people talking about socialism, which is a significant step in a country so diametrically opposed to it. The Bernie campaigns at least did that, and at least generated some concrete policy proposals you can bring up and get taken seriously.
Medicare for All isn't going to cut it, but that's not the end goal. That's an immediate goal, and building a mass movement around that might offer a path to bigger goals.
Nobody is consciously setting out to keep their parties small.
Nothing's worked in the US, and "small parties" isn't a strategy; the question should be how to make socialist parties bigger, because that's the only thing that's worked anywhere in history, and it's worked for entire countries.
Building a mass movement around a liberal reform that most of the world already has won't bring us even remotely closer to achieving socialism.
The PSL, for instance, has a higher bar to entry than the DSA. That's a conscious decision to have a smaller number of members in exchange for more vetting. One easy way to help your socialist party grow is to not require interviews.
It absolutely will in a country as right wing as the U.S.
They do that to keep cops, reactionaries, wreckers, and assholes out and to maintain ideological consistency, which is actually important if you want an effective party. A bigger party isn't necessarily a better one. (Note: This doesn't mean that the goal is to keep the party small. It means that the goal is to hold all members of the party to a consistent set of personal and ideological standards, which an org can't do if it's indiscriminate about who it lets in. See: landlords in DSA. [Not that I'm even anti-DSA per se.]) Again, this is what historically successful parties have done. Doing away with ideological standards is not a shortcut to communism.
How? By what process? Europe is absolutely no closer to revolution now that they have universal healthcare programs.
Yes, it's a conscious decision to trade size for all of these benefits. But a party the size of the PSL is ineffective by default; they've struck the wrong balance.
Demonstrating that mass collective action can produce material improvements could catalyze bigger changes in the same direction. There's also the idea that taking the boot off the neck of workers, at least a little bit, can make non-electoral strategies easier.