As many of my readers know, I am an activist member of the Democratic Socialist of America here in Wilmington, NC. I was unable to attend the recent "How We Win" conference sponsored by the DSA, The Nation, and Jacobin, but was particularly impressed by the following summation by Michael Kazin, which I am posting in its entirety.
The article (and the underlying position of most of the DSA as far as I can see) follows the same conceptual framework as the modern abolitionist movement; what we, as socialists, are doing is building a movement towards a socialist horizon. We have, and must always maintain, a vision of what a better world will look like, and insist that what we support in our struggle today must be consistent with building toward that vision.
Having recently returned from a delegation to Cuba, it is clear to me that the leadership of their revolutionary government has that vision; I could see it in everything we learned about while we were there. That is why we, who live in the "belly of the beast", must support the Cuban people and work to end the US blockade.
This vision is what Marx and Engels talked about in the Communist Manifesto 175 years ago, when they wrote that our task is to "represent the movement of the future in the movement of the present". We must understand that while we fight for ourselves and our class today, we are laying the ground work for the struggles of our children and our children's children for a better world. In the words of the FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Movement, A luta continua, vitória é certa.
The Socialist Emergence Inside the Democratic Tradition by Michael Kazin, from the American Prospect, June 21, 2023
“Labels get in the way sometime,” remarked Dylan Wegela, a
first-term state representative from Michigan. The teacher and former labor
organizer was responding to a question about whether his belief in democratic
socialism prevents him from reaching voters in his largely white, working-class
district in the suburbs west of Detroit. “I never deny I’m a socialist,” he
continued, “but my community doesn’t know what it means. They do like things
socialists want, though, like Medicare for All and affordable housing.”
The occasion for these reflections was “How We Win”—a
conference sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Fund, The
Nation, and Jacobin—held last weekend at Gallaudet University
in Washington, D.C. The 50 or so politicians in attendance occupy elective
offices in mostly blue cities and districts all over the nation. They include
state senators from Brooklyn and Philadelphia, council members from Knoxville
and Pittsburgh, an alderman from Chicago, the mayor of Burbank, California, and
a theater director who sits on the board of education in the Riverhead School
District on the east end of Long Island. It was a decidedly young crowd. I saw
not a single pol with even a trace of gray or white hair, unless one includes
Bernie Sanders, who briefly addressed the group via Zoom.
At times, the working conference rocked like a celebration.
“This is the largest gathering of socialist elected officials in decades,”
exulted Maria Svart, executive director of the DSA Fund. Happy shouts and a
stamping of feet followed her statement and other speakers who echoed it. Since
Sanders ran for president seven years ago, DSA has boomed to close to 100,000
members; voters have chosen more than 150 socialists to govern them at levels
from the House of Representatives to that school board in Long Island. Indeed,
not since the heyday of the old Socialist Party of America, more than a century
ago, have there been so many victorious politicians who sport the “S-word” on
their bios.
Yet, Wegela and his fellow officials devote most of their
time to advocating for winnable reforms in the only system we have, not
planning how to hurl the rotten machinery of capitalism into the recycling bin
of history. Svart claims they all share the goal of learning “how to shift
power from the owning class to the working class.” But every panel I attended
discussed such practical goals as how to build and support labor unions, reduce
the fear of crime, persuade Latinos to spurn right-wing candidates, and stop
cities from financing lavish sports arenas. Every official who attended, I
believe, had run as either a Democrat or in a nonpartisan contest. I heard no
one mention launching a radical third party or backing any of the marginal ones
that exist and are running self-described democratic socialist candidates for
president next year. During the conference, “socialist” got mentioned almost
exclusively as a term of self-identification rather than as the goal toward
which all were striving.
The current surge of elected DSA members, while modest,
would not have occurred unless socialists ran as Democrats.
The ideological ancestors to this new generation of
socialist elected officials defined themselves and their work rather
differently. The nearly 1,000 American socialists who got elected to office in
the early 20th century ran as the nominees of a party of that name, which
proudly belonged to an international socialist movement that was much larger in
Western and Central Europe and was growing all over the industrial world. Like
their 21st-century comrades, they tried to deliver on the promise of a government
that would curb the powers of corporations and the rich and serve the interests
of ordinary people. The so-called “sewer socialists” who ran cities like
Milwaukee, Berkeley, and Schenectady, New York, instituted factory inspections,
built new hospitals and schools and parks in working-class neighborhoods, and
prevented the police from aiding employers during strikes.
But they were quite forthright about the limits of what they
believed those reforms could accomplish. When Eugene Debs, a former Democratic
state assemblyman and union leader, accepted his party’s nomination for
president in 1912, he declared, “The Socialist Party is organized and financed
by the workers themselves as a means of wresting control of government and of
industry from the capitalists and making the working class the ruling class of
the nation and the world. Since the socialist revolution cannot be achieved in
a day, never for a moment mistake reform for revolution and never lose sight of
the ultimate goal.” That year, 19 Socialists held office in the state of
Michigan alone.
The current surge of elected DSA members, while modest,
would not have occurred unless socialists ran as Democrats, a process Sanders
began when he nearly beat Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination in 2016.
But that affiliation does raise a question: How does a progressive Democrat who
identifies as a socialist differ from a progressive Democrat, like so many in
the current party, who does not, when their stances on the key economic and
cultural issues are identical or nearly so?
Participants in “How We Win,” a conference sponsored by the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Fund, The Nation, and Jacobin, gathered
last weekend in Washington.
At the end of the “How We Win” conference, a few panelists
did suggest an answer. I had to leave early, but David Duhalde, chair of
the Fund, a veteran DSA activist, and organizer of the meeting, summed up
their arguments in an email: “We are building for a world where democratic
socialism is possible, and that democratic socialism is impossible absent
political power.” He adds, “The socialist identity is key to show our long-term
vision and … counter-intuitively attenuate the effects of some types of red
baiting. You can’t accuse someone of being a socialist when they are open about
it!”
In the past, American socialists made their most valuable
contributions as dedicated, shrewd, and uncorruptible organizers of mass
insurgencies, not by dreaming out loud about a revolution to come. Their work
was indispensable to the growth of and the gains achieved by the movements for
Black and immigrant rights, feminism, organized labor, and more. Most of the
socialists at the D.C. conference entered politics through contemporary
movements, too. While in office, they continue to employ the kind of methods
that succeed outside the electoral realm. “You have to knock on people’s doors
not just before elections but all through the year,” advised Phara Forrest, a
member of the New York State Assembly who is also a registered nurse. “You have
to teach people how to organize themselves.” As two young socialists named Karl
and Friedrich put it in a manifesto 175 years ago: The task is to “represent
the movement of the future in the movement of the present.”
To expand their influence, the comrades now serving in
office and those who follow them may have to be content to regard their
ultimate aim the way many a Christian thinks about the Second Coming. As Irving
Howe and Lewis Coser wrote 70 years ago in one of the first issues of Dissent:
“Socialism is the name of our desire … the desire arises from a conflict with,
and an extension from, the world that is; nor could the desire survive in any
meaningful way were it not for this complex relationship to the world that is.”
Meanwhile, there is a good deal of vital work to get done,
and many elections to win.
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