Regardless of the result in November, the task of socialists remains the same

A right-wing Supreme Court overturning abortion rights for tens of millions of Americans. The highest numbers of immigrants “repatriated” in decades. A never ending supply of weapons for a right-wing ethnostate ally to commit an ongoing genocide in broad daylight. Brutal police crackdowns on campus protestors and striking academic workers. 

This sounds like the dystopian fate that Democrats warned voters of if Trump were elected in 2016 or re-elected in 2020. Instead, all of these have occurred since the Biden-Harris administration was sworn in in 2021. All but the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision have been either cheered on or supported by both President Biden and Vice-President Harris. 

The simple fact is, whether Trump wins or loses, the task of socialists in this country remains the same—building fighting, independent working-class organizations. The fascist elements galvanized by Trump’s 2016, 2020, and 2024 campaigns are not going away. The decades-long trend of a skyrocketing cost-of-living alongside near-stagnant wages will not end due to a Harris victory. Harris has signaled that Biden’s “unconditional” support for Israel and attempts to outdo Trump on deportations and ending asylum at the US-Mexico border will continue if she is to win. 

In times like these, it’s easy to get pulled into counterproductive debates about whether DSA should get involved in the presidential race—either through backing quixotic “third-party” runs or by endorsing Kamala Harris or actively campaigning against Trump, as Max Elbaum argues in a recent article in Convergence. 

Each of these strategies have been tried by different socialist organizations for decades, with little, if anything, to show for either the Communist Party USA’s (CPUSA) habitual endorsement of Democratic presidential candidates or the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s (PSL) heavy focus on qualifying on state ballots for Presidential elections. Supporting “the lesser evil” has not made Democrats consistently more progressive or Republicans less reactionary. Third party presidential campaigns do not seem to translate into PSL or other socialist organizations being able to win victories for the working class, even at a local level, and the amount of work to maintain ballot access is herculean due to this country’s anti-democratic laws.

Keeping our eye on the ball as socialists means putting in the hard work, day in and day out, to transform DSA into an organization that can develop organizers capable of building and re-building democratic, member-led tenant and labor unions (as well as other forms of class-struggle organizations) that are willing to strike directly at landlords’ and bosses’ profits. This doesn’t just mean building new organizations but also revitalizing existing ones—either through independence from the nonprofit industrial complex on the tenant front or building shop floor organization capable of executing member-led strikes on the labor front. These working class organizations and struggles should be our top priority—no other approach will change the balance of forces in this country between the capitalists and the working class. 

Until socialists have a sea of strong class-struggle organizations to swim in, meaningful electoral and legislative successes will be elusive and difficult to maintain, as DSA has been learning the hard way since 2020 through both defeat and disappointment. When DSA does engage in electoral politics, it should be to elect principled socialists who stand with Palestine, or to support ballot initiatives that protect key rights or raise the standard of living for the working class (including the unemployed). 

All of this activity must be undertaken independently from the capitalist class. That doesn’t mean the shallow, reactionary bipartisanship of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien boosting a transphobic article by right-wing US Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO)—that’s just shopping around for different capitalist benefactors. Class independence also doesn’t mean unequivocally refusing to run socialist candidates on the Democratic Party ballot-line, when it's often advantageous for DSA to do so. 

Class independence does mean that organizations must be of, by, and for the working class and must focus on building the power and level of organization of their own class. The only times that oppressed and exploited people in the US have seen major material gains have been during periods of immensely heightened class struggle (such as the Civil War and Reconstruction, the rolling strike waves of the pre-WWII era, and the Civil Rights era). 

In each of these times, literally millions of organized people (be it through their union, their church, political organizations, or through formerly enslaved people abandoning plantations and enlisting in the Union Army) put clear demands on the United States government in the face of brutal repression, and won major victories against racism, exploitation, and oppression.

The level of heightened class struggle that is necessary to address the challenges we face will require disruption of the economy at a scale that neither Republican or Democratic politicians will be willing to tolerate (unless they are forced to)—as evidenced by the near unanimous bipartisan suppression of railway workers’ right to strike during the Biden administration. So while Harris supporters may be able to point to the Biden administration’s union-friendly NLRB, the level of confrontational workplace organizing needed is an order of magnitude beyond what a Harris administration would tolerate or the NLRB is legally allowed to abide. 

The lack of victories in our current political moment on the same scale as Reconstruction, the best moments of the New Deal, or the Civil Rights era is not for lack of trying. To take just one example, the 2020 uprisings against police repression and racism were some of the most inspiring, sustained, and massive actions against oppression in US history. Dedicated organizers across the country have contributed to an upswell of labor and tenant organizing as well as movements for climate, racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ justice in recent years.

Our class, in this moment, lacks the sufficient vehicles and level of organization necessary to launch the heightened level of class struggle needed to win and defend such victories. Activists bound by a common cause and ideological motivation, organized by unelected nonprofit staff, do not have the same ability to bring the US (and by extension, global) economy to a halt the way that organized and concerted teachers, nurses, and Amazon and UPS workers motivated by a common interest and bound by solidarity built through collective decision-making can. 

The working class and its communal and political institutions have been subject to an all-out political, economic, and ideological assault since the turn to neoliberalism by the US ruling class. This is part of why, for the last four decades, Democratic presidents have overwhelmingly capitulated to reactionaries and capital rather than listen to their actual (overwhelmingly working-class) voters, with the GOP continuing to move right. This trend of proletarian disorganization will continue until our unions and political organizations are vehicles for class struggle and building working-class power, rather than funnels of support and energy for the “least worst” viable candidate running for the highest office. 

DSA’s role is to develop the capacity and ability of ordinary people to transform tenant, labor, and other working-class organizations into such vehicles. Not in order to realign or reform the Democratic Party, but to force the entire bipartisan American ruling class to reckon with an organized, fighting working class. By keeping our eye on the ball and not getting bogged down in the 2024 presidential election, we can continue to lay the groundwork for our class to win the victories we so desperately need for ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and the international working class.