[Credit Jim Bourg / Poll via Getty images]
Note: This article was written before Biden dropped out of the race, and therefore contains outdated references to his campaign. The author maintains that the content of this strategy still applies to any Democratic Party ticket which continues its support for genocidal foreign policy in Palestine.
The remarkable speed at which the Uncommitted and Blank Vote campaigns were coalesced and organized in the wake of the Israeli state’s murderous rampage in Gaza has been an encouraging thing to see, and has contributed to putting high-political questions back on the agenda for the socialist movement as we attempt to chart an approach to the 2024 elections independent of the two capitalist parties. Within DSA, comrades have organized phonebanks, canvasses, and uncommitted delegations for Democratic Party primaries, to mobilize a vote of protest against the United States’ continued political and material support of the Palestinian Genocide. In the wider far-Left milieu, organizations like PSL and pro-Palestine rank-and-file labor caucuses are attempting to rally sections of the working class into a movement in the streets which draws a class line against the continued genocide. And of course, throughout broader society, within the camps of the ruling class and even within the state apparatus, the Palestinian genocide has caused a schism between the stewards of American imperialist foreign policy and the seemingly more compassionate members of the progressive liberal bourgeoisie.
What I would like to discuss however is DSA’s role in this ongoing process, and the importance of developing a proletarian class point of view with regard to all questions of political importance, but especially regarding issues of foreign policy and imperialism, both within DSA and in broader society.
In his 1902 ‘Iskra’ article, “Political Agitation and ‘The Class Point of View’”, Vladimir Lenin addresses criticisms against socialists supporting certain “liberal” movements or demands as being insufficiently revolutionary or abandoning a (proletarian) “class point of view.” In this particular article, Lenin is addressing the so-called “economists” who chastised the move away from pure economic struggle towards a form of political agitation which aimed at the whole of society, claiming that doing so amounted to abandoning the class struggle. For our present purposes, I’d like to highlight a particular aspect of Lenin’s argument, which will require a lengthy but substantive quotation (emphasis mine):
“Let us recall also the words that the Communists support every revolutionary movement against the existing system. Those words are often interpreted too narrowly, and are not taken to imply support for the liberal opposition. It must not be forgotten, however, that there are periods when every conflict with the government arising out of progressive social interests, however small, may under certain conditions (of which our support is one) flare up into a general conflagration. [...] Hence, it is our duty to explain to the proletariat every liberal and democratic protest, to widen and support it, with the active participation of the workers. [...] All-sided political agitation is a focus in which the vital interests of political education of the proletariat coincide with the vital interests of social development as a whole, of the entire people, that is, of all its democratic elements. It is our direct duty to concern ourselves with every liberal question, to determine our Social-Democratic attitude towards it, to help the proletariat to take an active part in its solution and to accomplish the solution in its own, proletarian way. Those who refrain from concerning themselves in this way (whatever their intentions) in actuality leave the liberals in command, place in their hands the political education of the workers, and concede the hegemony in the political struggle to elements which, in the final analysis, are leaders of bourgeois democracy.”
As it stands, the mass movement against the genocide that has found a political expression through the Uncommitted and Blank Vote campaigns is the result of very diligent and long-term organizing work by the Palestinian solidary movement and BDS, raising the consciousness of Americans on an issue which previously did not exist in the political mainstream. In little more than a decade it has successfully transformed the struggle for Palestinian national liberation from relative obscurity to the most pressing question of the present moment. Socialists have been an important part of this movement, organizing contingencies of BDS, agitating for an end to American subsidies to Israel, and generally advocating for an anti-imperialist understanding of the origins and continued existence of the occupation.
But we also recognize that, currently, the mass consciousness of these struggles is generally liberal-progressive in its ideological character, stemming from a forceful resistance to the moral bankruptcy of the Zionist colonial project but also the visceral reaction to the images of unrepentant slaughter. Many protesters in the street and voters in the Uncommitted campaigns will go on to either line up behind Biden and the Democrats in November, or abstain from voting entirely in the face of strategic indecision from the organized socialist movement. Members of the initial Uncommitted campaign in the Michigan Democratic primary stated in no uncertain terms that they would not be calling on people to withhold their votes in the general election. For now, I am going to leave aside the question of how effective it is to make a demand while simultaneously disarming your only form of leverage for achieving it . Instead, I want to discuss how the political moment we are living through necessitates and in fact demands from us, the socialists, to put forward a “class point of view” as it pertains to the Uncommitted campaigns. These were not just attempts at electoral pressure on the Democratic Party, as many on the abstentionist “direct action” wing of the socialist movement might claim, but rather a potential means of coalescing a proletarian class movement against the entire genocidal political order.
PSL has taken the initiative on this question, declaring a vote for La Riva in 2024 as a signal to the US ruling class that workers refuse to abide by the carnage in Palestine. This vision for a politically independent rejection of the two party system should be the strategy for the whole socialist movement, and not the property of a single bureaucratic sect. Within some sections of DSA, the discussion has been mostly concentrated on how to conduct Uncommitted campaigns without stepping on the toes of any of our already existing electoral campaigns. This in my opinion is an example of a socialist movement which does not have its priorities in order.
The essence of the problem concerns what Lenin was explaining above, the socialists need to be the political voice of the working classes in a society where the mass of people are enraptured by notions of voting for Biden to (somehow) stop an allegedly worse Trump presidency. It is a profound confusion to claim, on the one hand, that we can't vote for Biden in the primary because of his support for genocide in Gaza, and on the other hand, that we must vote for Biden in the general to stop Trump. The responsibility of the socialist movement is to pose a concrete alternative that rejects this false choice and strategic dead-end.
In a straightforward sense, DSA’s orientation to Uncommitted/Vote Blank is a case of tailing the mass movement, in which we hope to organize and relate to an existing autonomous initiative but only insofar as it conforms to the current understanding of the mass of people at this point in time: i.e. push Biden but not so hard that we get Trump. By doing so we are ceding the responsibility of advocating the class point of view, which means making the logical and necessary political connections between the Uncommitted campaign and a campaign of No Votes for Genocide (NVFG). Flowing from the rejection of the two capitalist genocidal parties in the Democratic Primary, we must work towards the full implementation of this independent orientation in the general election, in lieu of a socialist ticket which can represent the whole movement. We need to convincingly make the case that only a mass independent party can stop the U.S. from continuing down its genocidal path.
Beyond the transitory considerations between this or that race or candidate, campaigns such as Uncommitted and NVFG can be enormously instructive for the political education and consciousness building of our class, they can be a way to turn specific political issues or movements into “general conflagrations”, and they can be a way to grow our movement and our organization. But only if we recognize the moment we are living in and consciously assume the leadership that is necessary.
As the largest and most politically plural socialist organization in the U.S., DSA more than PSL or any other organization of the Left has the opportunity to develop the “class point of view” on Palestine and build towards a working class party which truly embodies the struggle against imperialism. We should be seriously considering how to relate to the independent consciousness that is starting to emerge against the genocidal state regime, and we should also be considering how PSL’s campaign offers an opportunity for a rapprochement of Left wing organizations towards a unified common front for anti-imperialism. There is no contradiction between our current orientation towards running candidates on the Democratic ballot line and beginning to plant the seeds of a future oppositional working class political movement that could bloom into a mass majoritarian struggle for democracy and socialism. Between now and November there will be opportunities for DSA to do this. All that is required is a recognition of our present conditions and the courage to take the first step at the head of the mass movement. We look with the anticipation to consideration of the No Votes for Genocide resolution brought forward by Marxist Unity Group members on the National Political Committee, and to the YDSA National Convention which will consider a similar resolution later this month.