Debate among American socialists on the Sanders campaign

Submitted by cathy n on 14 March, 2016 - 5:14 Author: Barry Finger

To read the article to which this piece is a reply, click here.


There is much to admire and learn from in Jason’s piece. Not least of which is Jason’s implicit insistence that the base of any future American left currently and for the foreseeable future resides in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, its best elements represented by the Sanders’ insurgency. Obvious as this might be to readers of Solidarity, this is still a disputed opinion on the radical left in America. We – Jason and I - both look forward to that movement developing a breakaway consciousness as it confronts an implacable DP establishment proudly wedded to the status quo. And we both understand that, even if we are only now witnessing the uncertain beginnings of that consciousness, any independent party or tendency that later emerges is most likely to carry all the baggage and limitations of liberalism as it currently exists. It will, in its initial stages, be a more consistently liberal party in program and worldview, probably still with substantial illusions about the “free market,” and an inability to fashion a truly democratic foreign policy. Neither of us would consider this disqualifying. For as a real party, a party controlled by its membership, any mass liberal breakaway, no matter how modest in its political perspective, would present a propitious opening for the left.

But I fear that Jason misses the larger institutional context of the DP that helps us understand why, despite it not being a party in the traditional sense, it is still a driven by the capitalist state rather than the neutral vessel he alludes it to be. And I think some of our differences, as well as our overlapping understanding, reside in this issue, and color our evaluations over the urgency of raising the issue of breaking from the Democratic Party. The “neutral vessel” approach, while different from the old Shachtman-Harrington realignment strategy – a strategy rooted in treating the DP as a traditional party that could be dominated by a labor coalition -- still resides in a functionally deficient analysis of the DP.

I think it’s long been the contention of Marxists that American democracy is more reactionary and less responsive to the will of the masses than most all other democratic capitalist societies. And not by accident but by historical design and evolution. When bourgeois politicians insist that American democracy is the envy of the world, they mean of aspiring as well as established world elites. And for good reason. No other bourgeois democracy has a system so efficiently designed to thwart the aspirations of the people: with its states’ rights, its winner take all elections, its gerrymandered districts, its division into a bicameral legislative body whose upper house magnifies the influence of backward sparsely populated rural states, its enormously bureaucratized executive with unprecedented latitude to amass power, its appointed judiciary, its electoral college, its immensely complex and undemocratic system of amending its constitution, its broken field system of staggered elections for president, congress and senate and its legal encumbrances against the overt public financing of government expenses. At the national level, the Senate and Congress are themselves millionaires’ clubs with an ingrained class bias and a revolving door relationship with the corporate and financial sectors. It exists with the media in an interlocking directorate that works to shape public opinion to the exclusion of radically dissenting voices. The combination of these ingredients creates a seemingly endless, costly and exhaustive network of speed bumps and potholes that generally succeeed in fracturing and frustrating movements for change and resistance.

And lurking behind this, as behind every bourgeois state, is, not least, the permanent apparatus of repression – the dark state of capitalist and capitalist-minded bureaucrats: the FBI, NSA, CIA, Department of Homeland Security all growing in power and arrogance, and with a deep history of being imbued with a scrupulously cultivated contempt for all but the surface formalities of democracy.

But the icing on this “democratic” turd, a system so structurally driven to subvert democratic progress and fragment resistance, is the two-party system itself. And here, despite a multitude of things upon which Jason and I concur, lies the crux of our disagreement. Unlike other bourgeois democracies – although this is increasingly being marketed abroad as an attractive alternative (the Blairites being an outstanding example) -- our party system is fully integrated as the sturdiest frontline buffer against democratic insurgencies.

We both recognize that the main parties are not parties in the traditional sense. They are not membership organizations. There is no institutional accountability, there are no mass meetings, no party newspapers, no internal democratic life, no way of crafting a binding platform, no way of making voices heard. They are public utilities of the capitalist system, financed and regulated from on high and protected from outside competition by a dense thicket of legal obstacles against market entry and competition from upstart parties. The two parties are designed to function as first line dampers muffling the response of political institutions to mobilized groups and mass action from below. They perform this function by demobilizing the public and reorganizing it into political consumers to be surveyed through the test marketing (the primary system) of prospective products (candidates) typically handpicked by various stockowner factions on high, and ratified in the last instance by consumers (voters). And should the selection process get off course, the super-delegate system of DP functionaries and bureaucrats casts its meaty thumb on the scale to do the ratifying for its base.

The parties rely not on membership fees but on external sources of funding. It drives them to fawn over Wall Street, to curry favor with the tech industry, Big Pharma, the telecoms and the well-heeled professionals who toil in such places. And those same tentacles reach out further to most human rights groups such as the NAACP, the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood etc., all reliable sources of Democratic Party funding, who are equally and reciprocally dependent on supplemental corporate contributions, as is the DP itself, to leverage their private membership donations. This effectively places them into receivership, as subsidiary satellite companies – as semi-independent mass organizations – in thrall to the broad DP holding company. Breaking from the DP means effectively losing sources of financing, both corporate and public, that the maintenance of that relationship otherwise engenders. Reliance breeds a self-reinforcing dependency loop.

The labor movement increasingly exists for the DP not as the primary source of funds, or even as vote fodder but as a staffing – get out the vote – service. This service buys influence. It gives labor a seat at the table, along side capital. To be sure, unions do not accept corporate funding, do not place corporate representatives in advisory roles and are not dependent on the DP in the same way as many human rights groups are for public funding. But they are no less boxed in, forced to leverage their influence in the DP by creating both ad hoc and working coalitions with other liberal mass movements who are dependent on the corporate donor class.

Because a mass movement cannot operate effectively on an independent basis within a broader unaccountable institutional framework, bottling the labor movement within the DP necessitates the political demobilization of its membership by its bureaucracy. A labor movement that fully debates, deliberates and votes on its own political platform has, at a bare minimum, every right to insist that the political vehicle it endorses makes itself available for mass democratic intervention from below on the same basis. It has every right, moreover, to demand full membership privileges, to insist on the exclusion of prospective members with hostile political and social beliefs and to limit funding sources on a class basis. All of this is precisely what the institutional framework of the DP expressly precludes.

All unions eventually have to compromise with the bosses. But when a strike or other action is initiated and before it is ended and a contract agreed to, the membership should have a say. The process of eliciting consent is rarely a paradigm of democratic virtue. But without mass consent, contracts can rarely be ratified, much less enforced. Without propagating a degree of rank and file militancy a strike cannot be won. Members who are neither mobilized nor consulted walk away from their unions.

The political compromises made with capital within the DP take place on a far different, wholly anti-democratic footing, through the deliberate exclusion of mass participation and approval. It is the very antithesis in spirit and process from that needed to come to a working agreement with employers during an industrial dispute.. That is why participation in the DP, generally a bureaucratic affair on the part of the AFL-CIO higher ups and its local functionaries, is a breeding ground for political cynicism and indifference on the part of labor’s rank and file. It internalizes and reflects the empty top-down political life of the DP and, in so doing, reduces labor to a weaker and weaker pressure group. Concentrating, for instance as it did not long ago, on electoral means to stop Wisconsin’s anti-labor governor, the union leadership leveraged a winning mass mobilization strategy of paralyzing the state through street action, into an electoral debacle. What was rejected in this referendum was not the labor movement, but the Democratic Party. However working people paid the consequences, and the DP “learned” -- what it always conveniently learns -- to further dampen its liberal agenda, particularly its pro-working class planks.

The labor movement surrenders its political independence by functioning as an adjunct of the DP. It is politically “independent” in much the same way that Jason believes candidates running on a DP line can also be independent, if they only so choose. They, like Bernie, can opt to reject corporate consultants, and decline to place millionaires in key positions. They might only accept nonbusiness donations. On paper DP candidates can be their “own” man or woman. It’s “just” a voting line, according to Jason. And, it is certainly superficially true, that no one can prevent Bernie or anyone else from running on the DP line.

But Jason’s analysis ends, precisely where it needs to be developed.

This assertion of neutrality would be true if the DP had no means of forcing independents within its ranks to toe its pro-business line. But it has a myriad of ways that Jason fails to explore. The DP funds local elections. This is not a problem for candidates in safe districts, where fundraising is not a pressing concern. But where candidates, such as Dennis Kucinich, demonstrate an unacceptable degree of unruliness, the party redistricted him out of existence by creating an electoral amalgam where, for lack of funding, he was no longer competitively viable. But this is an extreme measure. More commonly, the party has somewhat gentler means of coercion. It makes clear to officeholders that funding for local projects requires of them that they behave as team players with the DPs broader corporate and financial perspective. Failure comes at the cost of political viability. Progressive legislation is horse traded against other corporate sponsored bills, one being conditional on the other. Or they are directly fused: a step forward on one front, balanced by a step back on another. All social problems are addressed – as they must in this way– by half measures, balancing class against class, polluters against environmentalists, the anti-war movement against the war machine, black lives against the prison industrial complex, down the line with a clear, ever present bias towards the elites.

The ability to rise in the DP ranks and stay at the top -- to acquire senior positions on committees that are important to DP independents -- is contingent on one’s matured and properly seasoned political “realism.“ The unwavering support accorded to Hillary by the Black Caucus is the most blatant and shameful example of this process in play. Even among the 69 members of he Congressional Progressive Caucus, cofounded by Sanders himself in 1991 before he was a Senator, exactly two have endorsed him. Careers are in the balance and that balance is tipped decisively in a pro-corporate direction.

Sanders is a political independent, not, until recently, a registered Democrat. But the power brokers of the DP clearly presented him with a Faustian bargain. Acquiesce and renounce in advance any intention to split the party in the event of a Clinton victory. Proclaim your willingness to repudiate your principles in support of a prospective pro-Wall Street candidate and urge your followers to do the same. In return, you will be allowed to participate in debates against other Democratic presidential candidates, voting lists will be turned over to your campaign, local headquarters will be made available for staging your run, and traditional Democratic venues for mass meetings will be placed at your disposal. You can be viable within the DP sphere of influence, but you must understand the limits to your defiance. And our tolerance.

That is how even the most determined independent is brought to heel by the corporate/financial class exercising its control over the Democratic Party. And that’s why we need to stress that labor and progressive groups urgently need to build a party that defends and advances their interests.

Comments

Submitted by Jason Schulman on Tue, 15/03/2016 - 02:26

I appreciate Barry's response to my piece. But I still can't quite agree with it.

It's certainly my contention that "American democracy is more reactionary and less responsive to the will of the masses than most all other democratic capitalist societies." I've been saying this for years. One should note that the Constitutional Framers never intended for the United States to have political parties in the first place. (Think back to James Madison's obsessive fear of "faction.")

I do wish, however, that Barry had noted that if you have to win governorships, mayorships, county executive, and the presidency to fend off the veto possibility by the executive branch, you "naturally" get two very broad parties competing for office. Such is the nature of the U.S. political system. This should be challenged, of course, by changing electoral laws -- but one has to first acknowledge the problem.

I did already discuss much of what Barry brings up. I did make it clear that I think it is highly unlikely that the whole of the Democratic Party could ever be taken over from the left in the way that either Max Shachtman or Michael Harrington came to believe. I discussed the Democratic Party superdelegates -- and I noted that People For Bernie are well aware of the problem of the superdelegates. I even argued that the Sanders campaign should, I hope, come to be the foundation of an independent left-wing (NOT merely "liberal") party democratically controlled by its members.

(A note about the superdelegates: they were put in when the DP became more neoliberal overall in the early 1980s. The DP internally had become more democratic between 1965-78 because left forces (left labor activists, civil rights activists, feminists) forced them to do. With the end of the "Thirty Golden Years," the rise of the New Right and the New Democrats (Democratic Leadership Council) -- only then did the superdelegates come into existence. But every left-liberal and radical doing "DP work" is well aware of the problem.)

So what are we arguing about then? I suppose we're arguing about whether or not it's ever permissible to support Democratic Party candidates. I say yes. Barry, it seems, still says no.

In regards to how Dennis Kucinich was ultimately replaced by Marcy Kaptur -- who is supporting Sanders, I should note -- I ask: if Kucinich had been an independent, or a Green, how would his fate have been any different? He still could have been redistricted out of existence. I never argued that the DP wasn't dominated by forces that are hostile to labor and leftists. Barry also should have checked on this matter, as it appears that redistricting Kucinich out of office was more a Republican plot than a Democratic one. See here: http://www.wtol.com/story/16327202/oh-congress-makes-district-changes

This only makes sense, as Republicans have dominated the Ohio legislature for some years now.

I am as aghast at the Congressional Black Caucus (most of whom never had anything resembling a class-struggle perspective) and Progressive Caucus as is Barry. But my analysis of the reasons for the behavior of at least some CPC members differs from his. As I stated, the U.S. has a particularly horrible campaign finance system and therefore many CPC members end up taking corporate campaign cash. If they endorsed Sanders, that cash flow would dry up. (Example: Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren have voted perfectly on financial regulation issues (and Brown explicitly supports a Robin Hood Tax), yet some in finance still give them money. If they supported Sanders over Clinton, I suspect that would change.) If these elected officials became independents, the campaign finance problem would not suddenly go away. Being an elected non-Democrat (or non-Republican) doesn't mean you just can do whatever you want very easily. It doesn't solve the committee problem unless you have a new party that can very, very quickly sweep away the Democrats. And not only does that party not exist, it could *not* just immediately sweep away the Democrats.

I have made it clear that a labor party should have been formed decades ago. It did not form. The most progressive wing of what remains of U.S. labor doesn't have the power to form an independent labor party that could win very many elections all by itself. So I do not blame democratic, left-wing unions like National Nurses United (NNU) for supporting Sanders or supporting left Democrats in general. What choice do they have? Ignore electoral politics? That isn't an option. Are NNU really sellouts, Barry, as you imply? One should not so offhandedly condemn movements that strive for legislative victories and the organizers who work for those campaigns, even if those campaigns are left DP campaigns. Such campaigns are vital organizing tools for building a mass left, not inevitably stepping stones to selling out.

Despite some ambiguity (at least to me), Barry still seems to be saying that socialists, and the labor movement, must stand outside the DP at all times, that an independent left/labor party must -- and *can* -- be formed immediately, right this second.

But every attempt at building such a party has failed because the constituencies that we must reach have had no interest in the various "third parties" of the last 50 years. One could ask: if the social forces in and around the DP (left-wing feminists, trade unionists, Blacks, Latinos, and environmentalists) are too weak to even *weaken* the neoliberal hold on most of the "party", aren't those forces also way too weak to build a credible third party? The creation of a party cannot be put ahead of the movements that would be the basis for that party. I thought Barry understood this.

Now, it seems that times are finally changing. I hope that Sanders' seriousness about a "political revolution" that lasts beyond his campaign does lead to a real movement of the left and not a repeat of the Jesse Jackson experience of 1984 and 1988, even if that movement *initially* takes the form of "Sanders Democrats" getting elected. But note, Barry: every European social democratic party privileges its "electeds" at its convention, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the DP superdelegates. Would a labor party, or ideologically left party, in the U.S., *automatically* be any different? Would electeds would even abide by convention decisions if they didn't have to? There's nothing holy, so to speak, about workers' parties, unless maybe if they are *radical left* workers parties. Absent a commitment to workers' democracy, radical politics, and structures *guaranteeing* one-member, one-vote at conventions and in party referenda, any structure can turn in on itself.

As to Sanders' "acquiescence" -- I've already commented on how little it really means. No, he won't run as an independent if he loses the DP primary. Yes, he'll most likely say "vote Clinton to beat Trump." (As many of his voters will tell themselves, no doubt, out of understandable fears of a Trump presidency -- not that Clinton's foreign policy would be to the left of Trump's in any way.) And that, I believe, will be it. The sheer nastiness of the Clinton/Sanders contest tells me that nothing more "non-defiant" than that is coming -- Sanders will not be WORKING for Clinton, appearing at her general-election events, at the Democratic National Convention, etc. It would be too embarrassing for him, if nothing else.

Nothing will happen that will make it impossible to *work towards* creating the independent democratically-run mass party that we need. Nor will waging electoral class war inside DP primaries ("Sanders Democrats" vs. Establishment Democrats), particularly given the hatred that the two sides now feel for each other (or have you not been following social media, Barry?), make that impossible. If anything, that class war inside the DP will *finally make a split in the party possible.*

My original point was that if Marxists abstain from the Sanders campaign then we will be utterly ignored by millions of working-class people whom we finally -- finally!! -- now have a chance of reaching. I refuse to let this chance slip through our fingers just because the DP is dominated by ruling-class politicians. Again, if the only choice for U.S. socialists is dirty hands or no hands, we should damn well make sure that we have hands.

Submitted by Barry Finger on Fri, 18/03/2016 - 16:40

Jason’s viewpoint is a political step forward from the realignment strategy of the DSOC founders. Harrington would have seen all third party challenges to the Democrats as a dangerous diversion and would have openly advocated against them. And as long as the left insurgency is ascendant in the DP, Jason’s inside/outside position retains the patina of legitimacy. Vote for an independent party of the left where competitive; the best DP candidate where that option is closed.

This is a means of maximizing progressive office holders. It is not a strategy for an independent political party of the left.

And where does that leave him now, when it is all but apparent that the Sanders challenge within the DP has come to its natural conclusion? Sanders raised essential questions of class: of how self-serving moneyed interests dominate political discourse and why a class struggle program against entrenched power is an urgent necessity. But it was defeated by the ingrained habits of subservience to established elites that the two-party system so effectively breeds. Yet the logic of Jason’s analysis leads, one would think, to a capitulation before the lesser evil Clinton mainstream where, unfortunately, a segment of Sanders’ supporters as well as Sanders himself will find themselves.

If, instead, Jason and those who think along similar lines, chose, as I am sure they will, to cast a protest vote for the Greens – who have no practical chance of winning – what then is left of Jason’s approach? There is no bridge in his analysis from the mass base of disaffected DP liberalism to independent politics. They exist as two ends of a metronome, a controlled swing from one approach to the other without resolution.

The thunder in American politics now resides largely on the right. Reagan Democrats have soundly rejected the conservative economic pabulum they have long been forced fed: a perpetual taxpayer funded bribe to corporations in exchange for the mirage of decent paying jobs that never materialize. They see in Trump a lone wolf business benefactor, a Henry Ford corporate savior, who will restore the glory days of 1950s American capitalism, where the white working class was the envy of the world. He promises to tighten labor markets by casting out undocumented workers who he viciously scapegoats for corroding wages and by erecting tariffs and trade walls to rein in the outflow of factories and jobs and the inflow of goods. Where Sanders offered a stripped down class struggle program, Trump offers America-first nationalism.

The long dormant American working class is restive. It’s now a controlled burn in the Democratic Party, but a rampaging fire on the right. And it threatens to tear apart the Republican Party. How soon will it be before an overtly pro-Clinton Republican constituency begins to coalesce, if, for no other reason than to undermine that insurgency from without and restore the historic balance between the two parties? Or where the threat of that competes against time with those who would drive out the Trump movement by depriving him of a nomination that is rightfully his, or by withholding resources needed to be competitive in a national election?

Both augur one thing for Clinton. She will tack to the right, secure her hold on Wall Street and offer a safe harbor for traditional Republican elites until the dust settles. And that dust may not settle any time soon. It will be triangulation on a grand scale and the Sanders movement will be isolated as an albatross in Clinton's march to the right. It is time, abundantly time, to disabuse Sanders supporters, if there are such left, who still harbor the illusion that their challenge has forced Clinton to the left. The DP promises, now more than ever, to be a political dead end for progressive forces. And the Sanders’ movement if it remains in the DP will be defeated.

The pending split in the Republican Party gives license and urgency to those on the left who have long called for independent politics, for a party of our own. A Republican Party in disarray and turmoiI is vulnerable. That very vulnerability undermines the mainstream argument that an independent challenge from left hands a victory to the right. Only the bankrupt message of the Clintonites can do that.

If the left cannot begin to offer a meaningful alternative for hard hit American workers, nationalist demagogues on the right will arise now and for some time to come to do just that.

The Sanders' campaign has created an incipient third party within the existing framework of the DP. His movement has shown that class struggle politics has traction with independents, and disaffected white working class voters. Its appeal is making headway into minority communities. He has created an independent political apparatus, an impressive ground game, and has accumulated a massive voter list. He has demonstrated that parties can be self-funding membership organizations.

He has created the pre-condition for the political revolution he sought.

What we desperately need is clarity about the DP: what we desperately need to do is convince the Sanders movement of the urgent imperative to complete their split and chart a new path to political independence.

Submitted by Jason Schulman on Wed, 16/03/2016 - 23:29

How the Vermont Progressive Party grew out of the Rainbow Coalition and the Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns:

https://pplswar.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/breaking-out-of-burlington/

I think this story makes clear that dissident Democratic campaigns can, in fact, lead to independent political action.

With that, I have to stop -- work, deadlines, etc. require me to do so. But thanks to Barry for a worthwhile debate.

Submitted by rman on Fri, 18/03/2016 - 06:50

Both Barry and Jason make excellent contributions. I have to say as a Canadian, one point made by Barry strikes me as odd. He refers to an appointed judiciary. But in fact, one of the few advantages of the American system is precisely the fact that most of the judiciary and even district attorneys are elected by the people. The American left is probably well placed to win third party seats at the vast number of local offices. For these positions, fundraising is less likely to be an issue. But in fact, I would suggest the lack of a system of judicial appointments on the basis of merit has often allowed right wing demogagues to campaign and win. It ought to be possible for Black Lives Matter activists and trade unions to win local office and reverse, in some small way, say the drug war by winning judicial office. The book Detroit I do Mind Dying documents some earlier efforts in this regard. By focusing on local office, independent working class political voices in the tradition of Hal Draper and many others could be built now.

Submitted by Jason Schulman on Fri, 18/03/2016 - 22:08

Judges at the state ("province") level are elected, yes. At the federal (national) level, they're appointed by the government. The president nominates them, the Senate approves them (or doesn't). I think that's all Barry was referring to.

Submitted by cathy n on Mon, 28/03/2016 - 12:22

Jason has written another reply to Barry, an edited and extended version of the piece above. This can be found here.

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