In “A Realistic Partyist Strategy: Electoral Strategy and Organized Labor,” Kent Kiser and Awi Blanc of Red Labor DSA call for a ‘clean break’ with the Democratic Party as opposed to the ‘dirty break’ advocated by Bread and Roses, Marxist Unity Group, and Reform and Revolution.
They base their analysis on two crucial contradictions: the opposition between the capitalist Democratic Party and the mission of the socialist movement, and the opposition between union bureaucracy and union democracy. But their analysis misses the mark based on its failure to draw out two crucial contradictions within these contradictions: the contradiction between the essence and the form of the Democratic Party, and the contradiction between the progressive and conservative wings of the union bureaucracy. This leads them to fail to identify the crucial opportunities these contradictions pose for socialism which make the dirty break the key viable strategy for the current political moment.
Electoral Contradictions.
Kiser and Blanc explain the logic of the dirty break as being that socialist candidates, “with some guidance from DSA,” are “expected to form a socialist fraction that uses the Democratic Party ballot line to get elected and push for reforms while somehow distancing itself from the Party’s thoroughly capitalist establishment.” But those on the left of DSA know that several DSA electeds have failed to stand up to the pressure from the capitalist establishment of the Democratic Party. Does this mean the dirty break is bankrupt?
Anyone familiar with the Democratic Party (and also the Republican Party) knows that there is a profound contradiction between the legal form and the genuine essence of its political existence. On paper the party has state committees elected by its active members, and its registered voters participate by voting in primaries. In reality, a whole series of interest groups, donors, and other unelected, unaccountable forces actually make the decisions behind the scenes – and make up the true capitalist essence of the party which overrides its formal existence at every turn. But we should note that also within this informal wing of the party are a whole series of progressive interest groups and working class individuals who can be won to socialist leadership.
But even if the party is now dominated by capitalists working behind the scenes, can’t the progressive wing take up the formal institutions – namely the ballot line – and weaponize them against the capitalist wing? This possibility has tempted progressives – including Michael Harrington – for decades and is in fact one of the strongest tools the capitalist wing has in order to contain and co-opt movements for reform within the party. But as Saul Alinsky’s 10th rule for radicals states, “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” This is what the dirty break seeks to do – not to realign the party, but to defeat Democrats and destroy the Democratic Party from the inside. And the primary election is a powerful weapon, since it requires less campaign apparatus than does winning a general election and mostly blocks the establishment Democrats from running in the general election (although the experience in Buffalo serves as a caution on that point). We have seen that after decades of successful cooptation, this tool of the capitalist class is starting to blow up in their face.
Bowman or AOC’s limitations were not based on the formal requirements of running as a Democrat. Rather, they were never really socialists – only social democrats – to begin with. There is a difference between candidates “with some guidance from DSA” and candidates drawn from our cadre and forwarded by our organization. As long as a genuine socialist has the organizational support they need to stand up to the capitalist wing, there are no limits that the formal side of the Democratic Party – running on its ballot line – places on socialist leaders.
To quote James Cannon, “We have to hold the conception that a true communist can go anywhere the party sends him and do anything, and still remain a communist—still remain true to the working class.”
Labor Contradictions
Kiser and Blanc are also right to draw out the profound contradictions between the union bureaucracy and the membership. They correctly write that
The term “union bureaucracy” is not a vague deprecation for leaders we disagree with. It has a concrete and precise meaning. A union is bureaucratic when it is controlled by a narrow clique of class-collaborationist officers, who prioritize their dues-based privileges extracted from a membership that has very little influence on or knowledge about their union. Bureaucratic is counterposed with democratic – in the strong (socialist) sense of the word.
But this is not the whole story.
Those who are familiar with the labor movement know of horrible stories of conservative, ineffective, and outright abusive bureaucratic leadership of unions, and hopefully also of genuinely democratic, progressive, and militant unions. But there are far more unions that are caught somewhere in the middle of this archetypical dichotomy. These unions may not be truly democratic or have not yet been captured by a rank-and-file movement, but nor are they conservative or class collaborationist. Their leaders may in fact be to the left of their membership or have struggled to activate their membership, and they may sometimes take deals with bosses while at other times push for militant action and aggressive organizing. The true state of the labor movement can hardly be divided up into two clear camps, but is more like a spectrum with two poles of attraction.
And recently we have seen a genuine movement of progressive bureaucrats, personified by Sean O’Brien, who have staked their careers on an alliance with the reform movement and on an agenda of militant struggle and political proximity with the likes of Bernie Sanders. Now let’s be clear: there will be a time when these less-than-leftist leaders become an obstacle to true democracy and unbridled militancy within the trade union movement, but that time is not today or this year or next year. For now they are a powerful potential ally of the socialist movement, reminiscent of John Lewis’s alliance with the socialists in the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s. But turning this potential into an actual alliance requires a careful strategy.
And in addition to partnering on militant organizing – as the Teamsters and DSA are doing in preparation for the upcoming UPS strike – these union leaders can be valuable allies. They are part of the progressive interest groups I mentioned earlier, and up to now have mainly backed establishment or mildly progressive Democratic candidates. But as AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler demonstrated when she stumped for DSA Massachusetts State Rep Erika Ueyterhoeven last summer, they have no problem partnering with socialists as long as those socialists are winners.
Returning to the question of the dirty break and to Alinksy, his second rule for radicals states that you should “never go outside the expertise of your people.” Union leaders are used to choosing between Democratic candidates to endorse in primaries. Winning their endorsement – and with it their money and people power – to socialist candidates will be far easier on the Democratic Party ballot line than as independents, even if our candidates run with the exact same messaging and platform.
Kiser and Blanc title their piece “A Realistic Strategy,” but the dirty break proves the truly realistic strategy for winning genuine socialists to office and winning unions to our political leadership.
-Henry De Groot
