This Blog - Facts For Working People - believes that the most urgent task facing working class activists and the DSA is to build a united front, an alliance of working people on the following program.
#Launch an alliance, a campaign, a united front, of all the forces which are fighting :
# The capitalist offensive against wages and benefits, health care, education, women’s rights and the rights of all minorities.
#Racist and sexist attacks, state repression, incarceration rates, gun violence and wars and occupations.
# To end and reverse climate change and the environmental destruction which are inseparable from capitalism.
#Such alliance should also fight for the abolishing of the undemocratic Electoral College and instead for one person one vote and proportional representation
#While working to build such an alliance, such a united front, also seek to build a mass workers/labor party, with roots in the rank and file of the trade unions, working class and minority communities. End the two capitalist party monopoly of US politics.
#DSA should not run candidates as part of the capitalist Democratic Party. With 50,000 members DSA has the resources in many areas to run its own candidates. Or if this is not the case, or if it is preferable, DSA should take the initiative to bring together forces from the rank and file of the trade unions, from the community, workers organizations, the anti capitalist and left and socialist organizations to run single united workers candidates.
#As part of this struggle, those of us who believe that only the ending of capitalism and the building of a democratic socialist world can solve the crisis that is facing life on earth should, in a non sectarian manner, seek to build a socialist current within such a united front, within such electoral campaigns and within such a workers/labor party.
This is the policy of Facts For Working People and our blog. Against this background and with this in mind this Blog thought that it was positive when Ms. Ocasio-Cortez defeated the established right wing Democrat for the nomination in New York. Not because this Blog supports the Democratic Party, one of the two capitalist Parties which hold a monopoly over US politics and the only Party that has dropped atomic bomb on a civilian population, but because we believed this had the potential to hasten the splitting of the Democratic Party and help open the way to the building of a workers or labor party.
However this did not happen. The reason this did not is because the DSA and Ocasio-Cortez are not prepared to fight the capitalist leadership and policies of the Democratic Party. There is no way that the Democratic Party with its multi millionaire leadership, with its representing of Wall Street, Silicon valley the capitalist class, will ever represent the working class. A split of the Democratic party along class lines would help open up the way for the building of a workers party.
It now appears that the DSA leadership has adopted the policy of Bernie Sanders which is to refuse to explain that the Democratic Party will always represent the interests of the US capitalist class. It now appears to be clear that the leadership of the DSA has decided to work as part of the Democratic Party rather than use their resources and positions to build a workers party. It is now clear that the DSA elected members are not standing for the working class. They are now even supporting Pelosi who states clearly that the Democratic Party is “a capitalist party".
A struggle should now be taken up in the DSA against this policy and for the policies and strategy explained above. Otherwise the potential of the DSA will not be realized. There are times when a principled non-sectarian struggle in a left wing party is necessary. This is one such time in the DSA. In advocating this approach it should be noted that the DSA which points to the example of Eugene Debs does not follow the policy of Eugene Debs. He ran as a candidate for the Socialist party not as a candidate for any capitalist party. He famously said: "It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than vote for what you do not want and get it". The DSA leadership should follow Debs lead.
While fighting for these policies, the DSA should also follow the example of the teachers and educators movements in the trade union and organizing work. The teachers and educators movements refused to go along with the policies of their union leaderships, which wanted to capitulate to the attacks on education and the teachers and educator’s living standards and rights. Instead they created their own leaderships and organized and struck and won victories for their own wages and benefits, for education spending, and in some cases for the entire public sector.
1 comment:
Ocasio-Cortez is a DSA member, a socialist. She has not, neither has DSA taken up Pelosi's affirmation that the Democratic Party is a capitalist party and that is it. DSA should run independent candidates as part of the process of building a new movement on the ground and a new political party alternative to the two capitalist parties. This is a slippery slope and if she continues down it Ms Ocasio-Cortez will join many others claiming the mantle of change who entered the black hole. Jackson in 1984 was to the left of Cortez I would say and a threat. I remember going to a rally here in the Bay Area of about 18,000 building trades workers supporting Jackson. The power reigned him in. It's not unlike leftists in the unions, many members of socialist organizations who drop their politics to enter the bureaucracy with their acquiescence and in order to avoid a conflict with them. The thousands of staffers in the labor movement whose job it is to enforce the officialdom's concessionary policies are or have been members of socialist or communist organizations.
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