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2024 CHOICES AND PROFILES IN POLITICAL COWARDICE  
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Max Elbaum
September 9, 2024
Liberation Road Notes
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_ There is an unfortunate history of radical organizations -- like
the DSA national leadership today -- substituting “bold” radical
pronouncements for biting the bullet and making a difficult choice. _

,

 

Fighting effectively for social transformation is hard. Socialists and
revolutionaries don’t square off against our class enemies on any
kind of level playing field. The country’s political structures are
formidable barriers to radical change. We don’t have the luxury of
determining the terrain on which we fight or the timetable on which
battles will be waged. We have to deal with the specific circumstances
shaped by forces far more powerful than we are.

This means, among other things, that practicing radical politics means
making a lot of tough choices. At almost every juncture, our options
are not what we might wish for. Every course holds both opportunities
and pitfalls. There are no easy roads and no guarantees.

So, we make the best assessment of the landscape and balance of forces
that we can, choose a course of action, and then throw ourselves into
implementing it. When a particular campaign or stage of struggle wraps
up, we look at the choices we made, learn from what we got right and
what we got wrong in both conception and execution, and make the next
set of tough choices. 

In late August 2024, the tough choices facing US socialists are front
and center. An authoritarian MAGA bloc that incorporates openly
fascist elements at all levels of its apparatus is bidding for enough
power to impose its white Christian nationalist agenda on the country.
The most powerful current in the opposition offers an alternative
agenda on numerous important issues but is complicit in Israel’s
genocidal war in Gaza and has caved to right-wing fearmongering on
immigrant rights. A general election is approaching whose outcome –
especially at the presidential level – will be decisive in
determining whether MAGA or anti-MAGA holds federal power for the next
four years. Throughout the socialist left – and more broadly in
almost every sector of the electorate – people are wrestling with
what to do when they enter the voting booth. There is a choice to be
made. 

TEMPEST: READY, SET… PUNT 

The Tempest Collective was formed largely by former members of the
International Socialist Organization (ISO) soon after the ISO
disbanded in 2019. Tempest describes itself as
[[link removed]] “an organizing and educational
project. Our goal is to put forward a revolutionary vision that is
clear and understandable, that weighs in on strategic and tactical
questions, and that offers concrete guidance about how to put a
consistent set of working-class politics ‘from below’ into
practice today.”

Tempest has published two articles by Collective members on the 2024
elections this month. Let’s see what “concrete guidance” is
offered in those pieces. Author Ashley Smith writes
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“…we must be crystal clear: The two candidates and parties are not
the same and it is an ultra-left mistake to characterize them that
way. The greater evil is obviously Trump and the far-right GOP. He,
not Harris, is threatening the deportation of 13 million human beings
and the criminalization of queer people. Harris and the Democratic
Party are lesser evils by comparison. But that does not exonerate them
of being evil."

Smith’s article also asserts:

"In this epoch of political instability, socialists must develop a
strategic approach to elections. We are not anarchists; we do not
dismiss elections as irrelevant to the class struggle. Electoral
politics are one of the battlefields of the class struggle."

Putting those ideas together, the article says:

"…what should the Left do? First of all, we should not argue with
individuals about what they do at the ballot box. That is not the key
question and debate to have. Instead, we must argue that activists,
social movements, and unions should _not_ spend our time, money, and
energy campaigning for Harris as the lesser evil." (The other Tempest
article, by Collective member Natalia Tylim
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offers the same punchline: “I want to stress that I’m also not
going to spend my time or resources arguing with individuals about how
they vote as individuals out of their fear of Trump.”)

Wait a minute. The left, and those paying attention to what left
groups and leaders think, is debating electoral strategy. That
strategy is not limited to – but certainly is commonly understood to
include – a stance on who to vote for or against. An electoral
strategy that refuses to take a position on who people should vote for
is not a strategy; it’s a refusal to make a tough choice. Or in
Tempest’s terms, to offer “concrete guidance” to those you seek
to influence.

What we have here is a new twist on an old adage:

When the going gets tough, the tough…. change the subject.

DSA LEADERSHIP REDEFINES THE WORD “BOLD”

The new “Workers Deserve More [[link removed]]”
program for 2024 recently announced by the national leadership of DSA
is similar in essential respects. In a vein similar to Tempest, the
program declares:

“We recognize that a second Trump victory would be catastrophic for
the international working class. Relying on the Democrats to defeat
Republicans isn’t working.” 

In the preamble, the DSA leadership lays out their view of dilemma US
voters face and offer their guidance as to how to proceed:

“In the 2024 elections, working people have few good options. In
most races, Americans will have the choice between far-right
Republicans and corporate Democrats. In both cases, workers lose, and
our politicians will remain controlled by their corporate donors, not
the ordinary people who voted for them…. Neither major party is
capable of advancing a positive program for the 2024 elections that
meets the needs of the majority of Americans. That’s why the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is presenting a bold
alternative course of action. In our 2024 program, “Workers Deserve
More,” we hope to bring together millions of people throughout the
U.S. to fight for a true democracy where working people have control
over their own lives, their government, and the economy.”

What follows is a list of 18 demands/programmatic goals (Medicare for
All, Tax the Rich, Free Palestine, etc.).

Again, wait a minute. Isn’t something missing? That list of
programmatic goals is good. But aren’t similar lists put forward by
many progressive and left organizations? And is fighting for them
really an “alternative” to taking a stand on who people should
vote for in 2024? Doesn’t the DSA text imply that prospects for
making headway toward those goals would be immeasurably more difficult
under a Trump administration than a Harris one? Isn’t calling it an
“alternative” just another way of saying we don’t like the
options so we’re taking a pass on making a choice? What is
“bold” about that?

And how about some candor about why no recommendation is being made?
Pretty much everyone in or anywhere near DSA knows that members of the
organization – including members of the national leadership body –
are badly divided on who to vote for in 2024. Is there a reason not to
come out and say so? Isn’t one of the hallmarks of “democratic
socialism” supposed to be that it rejects the practice of a left
organization or party projecting an image of monolithic unity to the
working-class public when that is not the case? Where is the
credibility in an organization saying it hopes to “bring together
millions of people across the US to fight for a true democracy” when
it won’t offer any guidance on who workers should vote for two
months from now or explain one of the reasons it is sitting this one
out?

“REVOLUTIONARY PHRASE-MAKING”    

It’s no secret that I advocate a vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 to
prevent the MAGA authoritarians and fascists from taking control of
the federal government. I’ve argued in numerous articles and
webinars that advocacy of abstention or a third-party vote is a
profound error that underestimates the danger of MAGA, misunderstands
the way working-class and revolutionary organizations can build
political power, and does nothing to strengthen our immediately urgent
or long-term Palestine solidarity efforts. (See here
[[link removed]], here
[[link removed]], here
[[link removed]], and here
[[link removed]].) But a certain respect
is due to those who advocate abstentionism or third-party voting: they
put their politics out there and fight for them. That’s a serious
way to do politics.

Respect is also due to most issue-based and constituency-based
organizations that do not offer a who-to-vote-for recommendation.
Matters regarding the specific issue which is their main focus, the
sentiments within their base, and/or internal differences in groups
whose main focus is not electoral need to be taken into account. And
the main thing is that such groups do not promote themselves as
offering a revolutionary vision for the US working class or as
building a new party that will lead the working class to socialism. 

Organizations that do self-identify that way and issue pronouncements
about the tasks of socialists in today’s class struggle have greater
responsibilities. They need to be held to a higher standard. Part of
their responsibility is to make tough choices, or in cases when they
cannot make a choice, straightforwardly explain why. 

There is an unfortunate history of organizations not doing so and,
like Tempest and the DSA national leadership today, substituting
“bold” radical pronouncements for biting the bullet and making a
difficult choice. There is even a term for this practice –
“revolutionary phrasing-making” (or “the revolutionary
phrase”) – coined by none other than V.I. Lenin
[[link removed].]:

“Revolutionary phrase-making…is a disease from which revolutionary
parties suffer…when the course of revolutionary events is marked by
big, rapid zigzags. By revolutionary phrase making we mean the
repetition of revolutionary slogans irrespective of objective
circumstances at a given turn in events, in the given state of affairs
obtaining at the time. The slogans are superb, alluring, intoxicating,
but there are no grounds for them; such is the nature of the
revolutionary phrase.”  

“Superb, alluring, intoxicating…” – perfect for battles on
twitter or Facebook and the publication of “bold” programs.
Unfortunately, outside of actual revolutionary situations, practicing
working class politics usually involves making choices between
less-than-ideal options. No radical organization or party will get
those choices right every time. But organizations with an aversion to
choosing, and especially those that encase their taking a pass in
clouds of radical rhetoric, are avoiding rather than engaging with
objective circumstances and are traveling a dead-end road. 

_Max Elbaum has been active in peace, anti-racist and radical movement
since joining Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s. He
is the author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to
Lenin, Mao and Che
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Books, Third Edition, 2018), a history of the 1970s-‘80s ‘New
Communist Movement’ in which he was an active participant. He is
currently a member of the Convergence Magazine Editorial Board._

* elections
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* Donald Trump
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* lesser evil
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