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By Ben Cabral
Donald Trump will be the 47th President of the United States. This is a result that will no doubt carry major ramifications for oppressed working class people all over the US. We can expect to see increased attacks against our LGBTQ+ communities, our black and brown communities, the bodily autonomy of women, and the safety and security of the working class as a whole.
Democrats and corporate media pundits will begin their usual commentary on how the left cost the Democrats this election, but socialists know better. Donald Trump was reelected because Democrats are either unable or unwilling to take the fight to him. Their strategy of courting neo-conservatives like Dick Cheney in order to chase a mythical moderate republican voter that no longer exists was doomed to fail from the start.
So the question becomes where do we go from here? The answer is clear, the left, and the labor movement must detach itself from the Democrats and form our own independent mass workers party. This is a long term goal that socialists and communists and anyone else on the broader left must start working towards. DSA is well positioned to be that mass workers party, but this can only be achieved through a struggle within DSA for a clean break from the Democrats and become a fully independent political entity running our own third party ballot line.
The Democrats Don’t Care About the Left or the Working Class
During the 2024 election cycle the Democrats made it clear that they are a party of the 1% and represent a different faction within the 1% than the GOP. The top spender in the 2024 election cycle was a hybrid PAC, also known as a Carey Committee, called Future Forward USA PAC, who has spent about $517.1 million primarily on ads attacking Trump.
A top contributor to this PAC is LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. However, the largest contributor to Future Forward USA PAC is a nonprofit called Future Forward USA Action who, because of their status as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, is not required to disclose their contributors. This phenomenon, known as dark money, was the primary driver of a record breaking $4.5 billion of outside spending in this election cycle.
While we don’t know all the contributors, a New York Times report shows that media mogul billionaire Mike Bloomberg gave $50 million to Future Forward USA Action, and the super PAC Democracy PAC, funded by billionaire George Soros and gains on invested money, gave $10 million to the nonprofit as well.
So what does this information tell us? It might offer an explanation as to why Kamala Harris sprinted so far to the right that she started to look like a member of the early 2000s Republican Party. In 2020 Harris entered the Democratic primaries running on Medicare for All, ending fracking, etc and yet in 2024 we didn’t hear her say a word about Medicare for all and instead actually came out in favor of fracking. One of her most memorable campaign promises was that, unlike Joe Biden, she would include a Republican in her Cabinet.
Harris would not even firmly support the right of trans people to access gender affirming care, instead saying in an NBC News interview that we should just “follow the law.” Meanwhile we have seen a number of states enact horrific anti-trans legislation aimed at denying trans people their right to exist.
Harris also refused to endorse an arms embargo against Israel, as they commit a genocide against the Palestinians, even though polling data showed that in multiple swing states it would’ve increased the amount of people likely to vote for her. This became clear in the state of Michigan, which Harris lost by about 80,000 votes.
Clearly, the interests of the 1% and American imperialism – which serves the needs of the 1% as well – were more of a priority for Kamala Harris than her own voter base. So it should not come as a shock to anyone that fewer democrats came out to vote in 2024 as compared to 2020.
But don’t just take my word for it, Bernie Sanders, in a statement on the 2024 election results, said “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
Harris and the Democrats made it clear to the working class that they would not support our freedom, our rights, and our ability to live comfortably, so it’s time for the working class to move on from the Democratic Party.
We Need an Independent Mass Working Class Party
It’s time for the labor movement to have our own independent political party that is able to effectively organize our economic power and use it to make meaningful political change.
The labor movement in the United States has been long dormant in the aftermath of the neo-liberal counter-offensive which began in the late 1970s as a response to the falling rate of profit that had been accelerated by a vibrant labor movement. Large scale attacks on union power, such as the Taft-Hartley Act, the emergence and influence of pro-capitalist think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, and the administrations of Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, etc. characterized a large scale coordinated effort of the 1% to strip away the gains that the labor movement had made. For example, the Reagan Administration gave massive tax cuts to the wealthy, reducing their tax burden by half and resulted in the beginning of a redistribution of wealth towards the wealthiest Americans. Reagan also famously fired over 11,000 air traffic controllers who had been striking in protest of long work hours and mandatory overtime, and even jailed strike leaders which ultimately disbanded their union. In a team effort by the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton presidencies, the North Atlantic Free Trade Association (NAFTA) was signed into law by Clinton, which allowed the free flow of capital out of the US and cost the country 100,000s of working class jobs.
This has resulted in a major weakening of the labor movement, culminating in a historic low in union membership of 10.1% recorded in 2022, down from 20.1% in 1983, as well as the rapid deterioration of the living standards for working class people. That being said, we have seen something of a resurgence in union militancy with multiple high profile strikes in recent years, such as the UAW strike from 2023, the ILA strike back in September, and the Boeing strike, which just ended recently, just to name a few.
Workers are beginning to see the direct economic benefits that are won through militant labor unions, and we can see this through the massive shift in the public perception of unions. According to a Gallup poll from 2022, 71% of Americans hold a favorable view of labor unions, which is the highest since 1965 and is up significantly from 48% in 2009. The NLRB also reported a 57% increase in union election petitions filed during the first 6 months of fiscal year 2021.
A mass workers party would be able to take this positive momentum and channel it into coordinated actions. The party would be able to more effectively generate organized mass movement to fight for reforms, such as card check, to transform the widespread positive opinion on unions into more unionized workers. Political education efforts undertaken by the party could give workers the political knowledge they need to not only organize their workplaces, but also to understand the class antagonisms of capitalism and the importance of organized labor beyond the immediate material improvements for workers. Spontaneous action from unions is not enough to end capitalism, the workers must also understand that the political and economic power of the 1% is used to further their accumulation of profit at the expense of the working class. And that the only chance of preventing the further deterioration of, and achieving prosperity for, the working class, is for us to band together and use our collective economic and political power to remove capitalism and implement socialism.
The key to the success of a party like this is independence from the Democrats. The Democrats only serve to funnel grassroots energy back into the election process and drain our movements of their power. The George Floyd Uprisings of 2020 are a very recent example of this, and the promised police reforms never materialized in any meaningful way, evidenced by the fact that in 2023 police killed more people than any other year on record. In recognizing that the 1% is the enemy of the working class, we must also recognize that this includes the Democratic Party, who is fully funded by, and receives their power because of, the support of the 1%.
DSA Must Break Away from the Democrats
DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with 60,000 members nationwide and with chapters based in all 50 states. DSA members are already active in labor unions, and grassroots political movements advocating for a free Palestine, Medicare4All, reproductive rights, black liberation, immigrants rights, and so many other important movements.
And while DSA doesn’t style itself a Leninist vanguard party like some other socialist parties do, this is not what the United States needs at this moment. Right now the United States needs a mass workers party that can reignite the fight against the 1%. A Leninist vanguard party requires a dedicated cadre of professional revolutionaries who are the most class conscious of the working class, have rigorously studied and applied Marxist theory, and are deeply experienced in class struggle. The United States has been lacking a militant labor movement and needs to develop experienced leadership rooted in marxist theory before an effective Leninist vanguard party could be created.
So how does DSA become this mass workers party that we so desperately need?
DSA must break away from the Democrats. Any connection to the Democrats will only hamper our efforts to rebuild a militant labor movement. As was mentioned before, the Democrats function as a party of the 1% is to funnel mass movement energy from the working class back into electoral politics. While there may be some Democrats who are supportive of the labor movement, the party bosses understand that their power is enabled by the support they receive from the 1%. The economic interests of the capitalist class are in direct contradiction to the interests of the working class, therefore it is extremely unlikely that the Democratic Party could be used to create any real power for the labor movement. It also creates a real danger that DSA could inadvertently lead the working class into the arms of the Democratic Party, and the 1%, instead of away from the 1%. This isn’t to say that our party should ignore electoral politics, but it should not be the main thrust of our efforts, and it should be done independent of the 1% and their political organizations.
More and more people are becoming disillusioned with capitalism every day. Incumbent administrations have lost elections all over the world this year in response to high levels of inflation making it harder for people to make ends meet. For these people, they may not see that it is the capitalist system itself that is the source of their pain, so we must be there to reveal how capitalism is their true enemy and help them get organized to fight back. DSA must continue to do mutual aid work, and organize around popular pro working class reforms, such as medicare for all, raising minimum wage, the PRO Act, etc and prove to the working class that DSA will fight for their interests. If DSA continues to be seen as a faction within the Democratic Party, it will be much more difficult for workers to believe that DSA supports their interests when they clearly do not believe that the Democratic Party does.
The labor movement can’t delay this task any longer. Quality of life in the United States and around the world is declining, capitalism is rapidly deteriorating right in front of our eyes, and we have a climate crisis which poses an existential threat to humanity. These problems can’t be solved under the domination of the 1%. The only way to defeat this threat is to cast capitalism aside and move into a socialist society designed for the benefit of the workers, and that begins with an independent mass workers party.
Photo Credits:
“You Can’t Fix Crazy” by Thomas Hawk is licensed under CC By-NC 2.0 You Can’t Fix Crazy | Thomas Hawk | Flickr , Thomas Hawk | Flickr , Deed – Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic – Creative Commons
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