Berning Questions: What’s the Play for DSA?
Senator Bernie Sanders announced he’s running for President in 2020. “Finally.” His 11-minute announcement video is driven by a policy substance and an ideological clarity that we so rarely see from presidential candidates. Right off the bat, Sanders sets his crosshairs on the most powerful and exploitative forces of the capitalist class: “Wall Street, health insurance companies, drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex, the private prison industry, large multinational corporations.” He calls for raising the minimum wage to a living wage, gender pay equity, universal single-payer healthcare (Medicare for All), transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, free public college tuition, the end of all discrimination. It’s a social democratic platform very similar to his run in 2016, the likes of which we haven’t seen implemented in this country in almost a century and perhaps goes even further beyond.
Oh, and his campaign raised nearly $6 million from small donors in 24 hours after the announcement. Hot damn.
This development should excite leftists and give us hope for the future. The people of this country are ready for something new, something the neoliberal hacks of the Democratic party and the proto-fascists of the Republican party can never offer us: a world a based on solidarity, justice, and economic and political equality. The U.S. is swerving left, but how far can we take it? I hope, much farther than a Bernie presidency.
I’m not interested in litigating Bernie’s political positions for the millionth time; you can find other sources for that important task. At this point, I think it’s reasonable to say that every socialist, whether you support an electoral strategy or not, should find Bernie the best and most viable candidate of all the current presidential hopefuls by a longshot. At the same time, I hope most socialists feel uneasy about turning Bernie into the mascot for socialism in the U.S. Because social democracy is not socialism. A welfare-state with expansive public services and a strong social safety net, while much better than the neoliberal whirling death machine, is not a socialist society where workers own and control the means of production.
The real question then: how is the broader U.S. Left, and in particular the largest socialist organization in the country — the Democratic Socialists of America — to relate to Bernie Sanders’ campaign?
This question is poised to consume our organization for the next twenty months, and certainly for the next several as we approach our National Convention in August. Maria Svart, DSA’s National Director sent out an email to all DSA members to prepare them for the coming debates around an endorsement process — a process spear-headed by the National Political Committee that’s caused much controversy.
So let’s take a deep breath before we begin to assess the stakes, questions, and possibilities attached to the DSA’s potential relationship to the Bernie campaign.
Everything Hinges on What We Do Next
The Left is weak. But resurgent. How are we to direct this huge wave of political unrest and energy from a broadening, diverse working class and young precariat? We in the DSA have been fighting with each other, often with alienating hostility, over this question for the past two years, and the stakes are intensifying. I spoke with a comrade with a different perspective than me, but we both came to the conclusion that the window that has opened for socialism might not stay open if we fail to take advantage of this moment to build a lasting mass movement with a large and committed base. This urgency would explain why we’ve been getting so heated online and in our meetings. If we fail to sustain and grow our movement past the presidential election, we lose our chance to resist the worst of climate catastrophe, make ourselves vulnerable to the vengeful forces of capital, and squander our dreams for a just, democratic, and equitable society for all in our lifetime.
As much as Bernie gives me hope for a better future, the minefield of organizational decisions we have in front of us makes me fear the potential for fatal mistakes. I’m currently afflicted with an anxious agnosticism regarding how the DSA should relate to Bernie, but maybe posing some questions and articulating some principles may help us better consider the way forward.
What Do We Have to Lose?
I’m posing this question towards both strategies that maximize our Bernie campaign efforts and those that would place a Bernie campaign on the margins of socialist struggle. (Note that the DSA can relate to the Bernie campaign in many ways that go beyond a yes or no on endorsement. But for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to frame the two main positions as wanting to dedicate either a lot of DSA resources to Bernie or… not a lot of resources.)
Bernie (and the 2020 race in general) is going to be the hot-button mainstream political item on the public’s mind for the next year and half. Many were galvanized during his run in 2016, but perhaps many more were brought to the Left after he lost the primary and then after Trump won the general, suggesting that your dime-a-dozen centrist Democrats could no longer defeat the most craven, stupid, and vile political forces. Bernie has proven that he will draw much energy and excitement amongst large sectors of the public, probably much more than in 2015 and 2016. If we don’t tap into that energy, we could miss a critical opportunity to double/triple the DSA’s capacity once again. The attention Bernie may garner without DSA’s support may bury any buzz we might generate around our other work. But what if our Bernie campaign can bring more eyes, minds, and hearts to our efforts to shut down ICE offices, organize tenants, or all the other fun things we like to do?
But if we go all-in on Bernie, we may neglect the important local projects, campaigns, and challenges to capital many DSA chapters are working on independent of electoral candidates. We may dump much of our resources on a loss in the primaries or in the general, or on a successful election that results in failures to pass agenda items through a oppositional Congress or failures in consistent adherence to socialist principles, a betrayal of our values. We could lose a sense of independence, our “DSA-ness” that is marked by a variety of actions from canvassing to direct action to mutual aid and, yes, to harassing bourgeois and fascist losers in restaurants. How can we make Bernie a priority without turning into yet another NGO and subsuming the disparate character of DSA into the character of Bernie?
Bernie =/= “Democratic Socialism,” Bernie =/= DSA
Bernie calls himself a socialist. It’s great to bring the word to the big time — to the mainstream political stage. But let’s not kid ourselves. We should not let elected officials determine the meaning of the word “socialism,” to distort or water down socialism to the level of social democracy. You cannot be a socialist and a capitalist at the same time. A socialist believes that workers should collectively and democratically control what, how, and why they produce. This is not a hard or complicated stance; it is the basic vision for democratic socialism across tendencies. Bernie’s idea of socialism does not appear to be the same as the DSA’s idea of socialism (nor is he a member of DSA), and so his platform differs from ours in important ways. Perhaps supporting his campaign, however, can allow us to articulate DSA’s vision — one that is to the left of Bernie’s — to a much wider audience.
What Does “Critical Support” Look Like?
Can we campaign for Bernie while at the same time calling on him to support the freedom of Palestinians, the dignity of sex workers, and the abolition of ICE?
Does building an independent campaign, while criticizing Bernie’s major faults, constitute a confusing, incoherent message that may come to constitute a politically incoherent and fragmented organization?
Can we craft a campaign for Bernie that doesn’t devolve into blind enthusiasm and celebrity worship, in which we can develop and grow an American public that both supports Bernie but understands that he is not the be-all-end-all of socialist potentiality?
Is There a Bernie-to-Socialism Pipeline?
Are Bernie supporters more likely to become informed and active socialists? Or does courting Bernie supporters threaten to drag the signifier of “socialism” into the tar pit of tepid social democracy?
Can canvassing for Bernie turn a passive electorate into socialist organizers? How can we follow up with supporters to ask for their creativity and participation, rather than their dollars and signatures?
We Need a Massive Political Education Apparatus
For anyone who joins our ranks because of Bernie (or because of something else), we need a robust political education program to ensure lively and informed debate within our organization centered around shared principles. We need accessible education on theory, history, contemporary political issues, and perhaps most importantly, on organizing and civic skills. Should we devote more time and effort to a national political education project for our Bernie-loving friends or for a Bernie campaign itself? Can we strike an appropriate balance?
What Kinds of People Would We Bring in from Bernie?
The DSA is currently made up of mostly young, white, college-educated, downwardly-mobile, middle-class people (including myself). Anyone with a sense of socialist integrity would realize that this reality cannot sustain a truly mass movement of the working class. This reality is born of particular material conditions outside of the organization, but may also be fostered by the organization’s internal culture and political priorities.
What will a Bernie campaign do to the racial, class, and gender composition of the DSA? Is a Bernie campaign capable of attracting a multiracial coalition? Will a Bernie campaign activate the politically disengaged?
Ideally, we want to bring as many people to the movement as possible. But what are our immediate goals? Do we prioritize convincing those already on our page or close to our page to take action beyond posting and voting? Or do we prioritize politicizing the most thoroughly depoliticized, who are often the people most neglected by our political and economic system? Should the Bernie campaign shape our priority on this question, or should we develop a strategy independent of his run?
We Need Membership Retention
We do not need an army of donors and posters (gods know we have more than enough of the latter). What causes people to cross the threshold into long-term membership and in-person participation? Is it conversations at the door about exciting candidates and campaigns? Is it political crises that frighten people into action, like the election of Trump or fascist violence in Charlottesville? Is it media coverage of protests and political victories that garner the inspiration of onlookers?
What keeps members around? Why do certain people check out a meeting or event and never show up again? Does our internal culture scare people away? Would the average Bernie supporter feel welcome in our organizing spaces? But should we also challenge average Bernie supporters, and our members more generally, to feel a little uncomfortable through a comradely dismantling of opinions, behaviors, and practices that don’t align with our values?
We should consider developing a social and educational model for our chapters that facilitates mentorship programming and practices that help new members get a sense of community and belonging in our organization, regardless of how they end up here.
What Will Bernie Do to Our Other Campaigns?
How can we make sure we support our local electoral candidates, especially those who are active DSA members themselves, if we coordinate an intense national campaign at the same time? In Media, PA, outside of Philadelphia, DSA member Kristin Seale lost her race by 400 votes. If she chooses to run in 2020, I hope Philly DSA finishes the work they started and flip that seat for an excellent and dedicated candidate. Can a concurrent Bernie campaign help or hinder that work?
Will our Medicare for All work be folded into a Bernie campaign? Bernie’s bill isn’t even the best one. The fight for single-payer gets an obvious boon from Bernie’s run, but how can we make sure we get the best version of it?
We Need to Work Together
I’m sorry that I have a litany of questions yet so few answers. And we should be asking ourselves so much more than what I have asked here. I haven’t even touched on the endorsement process, which probably deserves its own post, one that I will not be writing.
But I do know that we have to work together to answer these questions, that we need to listen to one another in good faith, that we need to build ourselves up in solidarity as the sharpest socialist organizers the world has ever seen. So much depends upon our cooperation and comradeship in this endeavor. We need to remember that we are not just fighting for a socialist presidency or for a membership bump, but to fundamentally transform the economic and social relations that control our world.
We must remember that we are fighting for our lives.
