Uncommitted is Committed to the Democratic Party
At the Intro to DSA call on November 14th, which served as the first major interaction that many new members had with the org, there was a last-minute change in the lineup: instead of a winning DSA-endorsed elected, the right wing of DSA (composed in this instance of Socialist Majority Caucus, Groundwork, and Bread & Roses) voted to swap in Layla Elabed. Layla is one of the most visible leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement, the NGO that co-opted a grassroots movement and turned it into a quick grift for consultants. This shut out ground-level organizers from decision-making and ultimately delivered a Kamala “not-technically-an-endorsement” that flew in the face of the apparent purpose of the whole movement.
Insisting on Elabed as a speaker seems odd: by all accounts, Uncommitted was a colossal failure, largely because Elabed and other leaders like Waleed Shahid (who SMC got to deliver a keynote at the recent NYC-DSA convention) seized the wheel and tried to steer it away from genuine opposition to Democrats, and towards a weak “Vote Blue No Matter Who” posture in the General Election. The Uncommitted National Movement, under Elabed’s leadership, turned early success in Michigan into increasingly diminished returns in a small handful of “strategic” states, all while very vocally promising that they were not ultimately willing to withhold votes from Biden. The campaign culminated in a public begging campaign for Kamala Harris to allow any person of Palestinian heritage to speak at the DNC, a plea that was rebuffed despite Uncommitted setting and giving up on multiple deadlines.
As the Uncommitted National Movement, helmed by Elabed, limped closer and closer toward their predestined capitulation, on-the-ground activists in a number of states refused this liquidationist turn by the self-selected leaders of the NGO, and pivoted to create the No Votes for Genocide movement. Taking the initial premise of Uncommitted to its natural conclusion that committing genocide is disqualifying for a president, they argued that proponents of Palestinian liberation should withhold their votes in the General Election from Biden and Harris unless they changed course on enabling Israel. NVFG was strongly tied into DSA, and internally served as the left-wing foil to the right wing’s Socialism Beats Fascism campaign, which encouraged voting for Kamala Harris.
With the election in the rear-view mirror, and with Harris’ full-spectrum failure as a candidate and as an avatar of a politics fully evident, we can examine the Uncommitted National Movement as a textbook example of cooptation, turning a genuinely oppositional grassroots movement into a toothless progressive NGO. This failure is typical of the “Realignment” strategy favored explicitly by SMC and tacitly by Groundwork, wherein socialists attempt to “Realign” the Democratic Party towards reform legislation that improves the conditions for socialist organizing. Originally promulgated by Michael Harrington, Realignment takes its current form from the current politics of the right wing of DSA.
A Theoretical Dead End
Why do we see Socialist Majority Caucus and Groundwork uniting around an effort to drag DSA into the tailwinds of the Democratic Party? From SMC’s Points of Unity, there’s little surprise: 1) they believe the United States is a multi-racial democracy, and that they can win state power through winning elections; 2) they believe they can do so by running on the Democratic Party ballot line; 3) they believe they can form a popular front with Democrats against Republicans; 4) they think they can wield capitalist state power in favor of constructing socialism. SMC describes their strategy as “Realignment from below."
The reality is that this analysis produces nothing but a prescription to jump headlong into a trap designed expressly to liquidate popular social movements. It pays lip service to the idea of “independence” but produces a strategy of dependence, cooptation, and concessions. If we do win a crumb of state power, we are then forced to wield it in service of capital or else have it taken from us. And that’s the best outcome; in the present moment, socialists have been decisively rejected from “The Popular Front” and SMC is chasing behind it, like a pet abandoned by its owner.
What about Groundwork? From their Tasks and Perspectives, it appears they have a more sophisticated theory based on what they call “class alignment” and “class formation”. Unfortunately, the principal avenue that they have identified in order to bring about this alignment passes directly through the same Democratic Party trap that SMC has wandered into. In order to align the class, they need to pass reforms, and to pass reforms they need state power, and to get state power they need to use the Democratic Party.
Because both of these caucuses have theories of change that require us to take and wield capitalist state power, the Democratic Party appears to be a tempting shortcut for socialists to win elections. However, the Democrats are incredibly adept at stifling, co-opting, and neutering left-wing popular movements. Wherever we get close to them, we end up getting compromised, bought off, and sidelined. Our electeds end up voting for arms to Israel, or for the IHRA anti-semitism definition, or for police budgets. Our cadre get hired as campaign managers and decide it doesn't make sense to run as an open socialist, and on and on.
Both SMC and Groundwork seem to see the Democratic Party as essentially a weak opposition to the Fascist Republicans, and their main problem with Democrats is that they aren’t doing their jobs well enough. They want to Realign the Democrats to make them a better representative of the working class. In SMC’s case, they tend to do this directly through personal involvement in Democratic Party and NGO positions, and in Groundwork’s case it tends to be via “pressure campaigns” and phone banks. In each case, their theory of change blinds them to the constant corrosive pressure that the Democratic Party is exerting on the foundations of their political projects. Constant compromise, constant cooptation, and constant failure gets spun as “building power” in some nebulous and undefinable sense.
While the blunt mechanisms that Republicans use to thwart left-wing organizing are well understood, the mechanism of Democratic Party cooptation is inevitably too subtle for Groundwork or SMC to recognize. It’s not that our comrades are dumb. To the right wing of DSA, things like the Uncommitted National Movement are proof that their strategy can work, so it’s impossible to see them clearly as bait designed to endlessly string them along. Their interest in these projects’ viability creates an environment that rewards focusing on “building power,” and anyone who tries to warn them about the hook is treated as a detractor or saboteur and dismissed. Their flawed analysis of the Democratic Party leads them back again and again into a well-known dead end.
DSA has to demonstrate the failure of realignment
Presenting the Uncommitted National Movement as an example of successful opposition to Democrats is ridiculous; Democratic Party apparatchiks were staffing, running, and funding it. The Uncommitted National Movement was an example of precisely the risks that we run by working alongside the Democratic Party apparatus and letting Democratic Party affiliates take political leadership in campaigns.
The resources, professionalism, and base of support for the Democratic Party is appealing to Socialist organizers, who have to run shoestring campaigns against fierce opposition for anything they want. But that tantalizing image is a mirage, and the harder we chase it, the more it recedes. Whenever we try to take hold of the ready-made machinery of the Democratic Party, we inevitably find out that we’re the ones being wielded for their purposes.
By now, almost everyone in DSA has learned to at least claim to favor an independent political organization, distinct from the Democratic Party. In practice, this independence is often the first thing that gets discarded in favor of pursuing electoral odds, more resources, or favorable relations with Democrats. By exalting the “strategic” choice of compromising on our independence, SMC and Groundwork contribute to the prolonged captivity of socialism as a minor faction within the Democratic Party.
People come to DSA because we represent the possibility of a genuinely new direction within U.S. politics, and a genuine independence from the two-party system. This independence from the parties of capitalism is a unique asset for DSA, and has to be carefully guarded and defended. We can’t simply declare our independence and continue to pursue a strategy that requires us to accommodate and play nice with the Democratic Party. Workers need a hammer to smash the existing order of oppression and to forge a new world; DSA can become that hammer, or it can become another discarded tool behind the Democratic Party shed.
It was particularly disappointing to see Bread & Roses throw in with the right-wing effort to valorize Uncommitted and the Realignment project as the face of DSA. At a time when people are more disaffected than ever with the Democratic Party as a guarantor of working-class interests, DSA should be trumpeting its independence, rather than showcasing failed efforts to influence the Democrats. Bread & Roses has taken a strong stance in print in favor of independent socialist power, but when the rubber meets the road, they’re too willing to compromise with right-wing realigners instead of fighting for their political principles on the NPC.
Having Layla Elabed hype up new DSA members with a riveting account of the potential of Uncommitted won’t fatally compromise DSA’s efforts toward working-class independence. It’s one small battle in a long political struggle between reform and revolution, a tale as old as time. But we should at least be clear that this struggle is happening, that it is taking place in the often unspoken fight for Realignment, and that this was a small and unnecessary loss for those of us who want to chart a course away from the U.S. duopoly, and who don’t see a future for DSA as remora to the Democratic Party.
Further Discussion
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