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Alexander Riccio

Pleasures of 2020

While 2020 has been mostly miserable I'm counting my blessings by sharing with you content that has given me joy this year. And what better format than a "best of" list? Below are Laborwave's pleasures of 2020.


Books!!!


Published by Haymarket Books.

The goal of this book was to provide a clear, accessible, and modern explanation of capitalist economics through a Marxist lens, and it really delivers. I read about capitalism...a lot, and learned quite a bit by engaging in this work. From the back: "Economists regularly promote Capitalism as the greatest system ever to grace the planet. With the same breath, they implore us to leave the job of understanding the magical powers of the market to the “experts.”


Despite the efforts of these mainstream commentators to convince us otherwise, many of us have begun to question why this system has produced such vast inequality and wanton disregard for its own environmental destruction. This book offers answers to exactly these questions on their own terms: in the form of a radical economic theory."


Published by Bold Type Books.

The title of this book says it all, and I personally struggle with a paradoxical commitment to anticapitalist politics while unable to kick my own addiction to work- so this book hits home! Sarah Jaffe frames this book with real stories from workers on the ground in all types of industries, including retail, education, domestic care, and more, and provides a sound analysis of the development of particular forms of work under capitalism and the ideologies that naturalize exploitation. At the core of Jaffe's argument is how the "labor of love" keeps us bound to miserable jobs and makes us feel guilt and shame at any instance we might dare to complain, or fight back, against the imposition of work. Technically this is a 2021 book, to be public in January, but pre-order it now! We've had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah Jaffe on Laborwave (and will bring her back soon) about the labor movement on our special May Day episode. Take a listen! https://www.laborwaveradio.com/sarahjaffe


Published by AK Press.

AK Press continues to provide the space for writers to develop Black Anarchism, and I highly recommend reading this newer title from Marquis Bey in tandem with another AK Press title, William C. Anderson's and Zoé Samudzi's "As Black as Resistance." That's not to claim that these two books make the same theoretical arguments, but they both push the "anarchist canon" and its proponents to broaden both the concepts and practice of anarchist politics. From the book: "In this bold and expansive treatise, Marquis Bey seeks to define the shape of a Black anarchism—not, he says, by listing “all the Black people who are anarchists and the anarchists who are Black people,” but though a fluid and generative encounter between anarchism and Blackness.'


Classical anarchism tended to avoid questions of race—specifically Blackness—as well as the intersections of race and gender. Skeptical of satisfying himself with the usual finger-pointing this lack invites, Bey addresses it head on, not by constructing a new cannon of Black anarchists but by outlining how anarchism and Blackness already share a certain subjective relationship to power, a way of understanding and inhabiting the world. Through the lens of a Black feminist and transgender theory that unsettles and subverts social hierarchies, he explores what we can learn by making the kinship of Blackness and anarchism explicit, including how anarchism itself is transformed by the encounter.

As Bey frames it, if the state is predicated on a racialized and gendered capitalism, its undoing can only be imagined and undertaken by a political theory that takes race and gender seriously, a theory of anarcho-Blackness."


Published by Verso Books.

What I enjoyed most about this book is it sought to offer pathways beyond Sanders specifically, whether he won or lost, and provided concrete examples of ways organizations like the DSA could help build the labor movement and power outside of the electoral arena. It also contends with the reality that, as I've said a lot, the state is more powerful today than it ever has been. The nexus between the state and private sector has increased to the point where there is hardly any way to distinguish between the two, so how do we fight the state without being completely absorbed into its power structures? Day and Uetricht try to address these questions, and I hope to see more development of these ideas along the lines of prioritizing the role of organized labor. I interviewed Micah Uetricht about the book back in April, immediately prior to the Sanders campaign suspending their bid for the presidency.



Published by Pluto Press.

This collection of essays analyzes how Amazon has grown into the second-largest global employer and positioned itself as a retailer, logistics hub, and technology mega-corporation. It also features interviews and chapters on ways to attack the giant and pose serious challenges to its dominance. Every labor organizer and rank-and-filer who wishes to think strategically about unionizing Amazon needs to read this book, and check out our upcoming episode with the editors!


Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid During the COVID-19 Crisis edited by Marina Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar

Published by Pluto Press.

The title basically says it all, this is a collection of pieces chronicling all the amazing mutual aid projects and practices that have sprouted all over the world in response to COVID-19. Reading this brought me back into the spirit of Occupy Wall Street and its imaginative potential, and reminds me that, as Rebecca Solnit beautifully writes, “inside the word "emergency" is "emerge"; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.” I also had the pleasure of interviewing Marina Sitrin and Vanessa Zettler about their experiences in Occupy Wall Street and tied to their current mutual aid efforts detailed in this book.


(Books I'd need a second life to have time to read, and wish I did!)


Podcasts!!!

I listen to podcasts non-stop (while cooking, cleaning, or just lounging on the couch half-awake). There are just a ton of amazing podcasts online, and I'm always looking for podcast recommendations. Here's just a sampling of podcast episodes this year I've enjoyed:


Horror Vanguard is regularly at the top of my podcast list, and Ash and Lit Crit Guy talking about John Waters is easily my favorite conversation they had this past year. Joined by Raechel Anne Jolie, author of the memoir Rust Belt Femme!


Doug Henwood is a great interviewer, and this conversation covering the Green New Deal and profit-incentives in pharmaceuticals was particularly important to hear considering the absolute trash fire we're experiencing right now.


Hands down the most illuminating and mind-expanding conversation I listened to all year. Described in the show notes, "prevailing identity politics norms call on people “listen to the most affected” or “centre the most marginalized.” But this often works out quite badly in practice." I also had the pleasure of talking about elite capture with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò this past year, and his discussion on the defeat of the left and how it has impacted politics in general is well worth the listen.


A round table on the manifold crises engulfing higher ed as covid exposes and exacerbates decades of austerity and neoliberal iniquity. As a labor organizer formerly employed with an academic workers' union I resonate with the deep cynicism held by Danny Besnner on this episode- he's right, universities are not radical spaces. But I want to have some of the optimism of the other guests about possibilities for radical movements within and against higher ed.


A podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world, I tune in just as much for the sardonic banter as I do for the film and cultural analysis presented in each episode. Blue Velvet is an ambivalent favorite flick for me, and Will Sloan and Luke Savage help crystallize precisely the ways this movie problematizes the dichotomy between good and evil.


I enjoyed watching The Trial of the Chicago 7, and of course like everyone was eager to learn how much was fact and how much was fiction. Well, turns out the film was mostly fiction. Thanks to Jon Wiener, capable historian, for dispelling the myths while also elucidating a far more interesting and complicated history of the real historical event.


Each episode of this podcast tackles a canonical work of leftist literature and renders it accessible for mass audiences. It's something deeply needed to help us all wade through the thick maze of important writings that's so massive it's overwhelming even knowing where to start your journey. Thanks to the Lit Review, things are easier. This episode breaking down Hammer and Hoe, a masterful work from one of my favorite authors Robin DG Kelley, is immensely enjoyable. Kelley documents the transformation of the CPUSA in Alabama through the active engagement of Black radicals, and shares with us lessons we can learn from this moment in militant organizing.


The Wrong Boys are genuinely hilarious, and the amount of work that goes into each of their episodes, with all the sketches, conversations, and music, is impressive. Of their last year no episode made me laugh as much, while expanding my mind more, than this one on trash. I liked it so much I was inspired to bring Shawn from the show on to Laborwave to talk about utopian futures.


Articles!!!


A fascinating history of the IWW's training program, the OT101, conducted by Marianne Garneau. The OT101 was the first labor organizing training I ever attended, and it went a long way to help me get to where I am now within the labor movement.


The title really says it all, and the longer I work in the system of US labor law the more convinced I am that Nick Driedger's words here are wise.


The feature story of an entire issue on organizing within academia, Lindsay Zafir makes clear how universities operate much like "company towns," and, therefore, ought to be approached like them when organizing.


Just a practical advice and veteran tips on moving coworkers pass their fear when organizing. Labor Notes does a great job on refining the methods for doing the nuts and bolts building of all successful unions, and this piece reflects on a phenomenon I encounter constantly where the primary objection to participating in direct action, or union activity in general, is fear. Read some tips on moving your coworkers, and yourself, to overcome fear and fight.


A reflection from a remote worker on the experience of isolation and disconnection from fellow workers when working from home, with a list of great tips and resources on how to still effectively organize despite such distances. I thoroughly enjoyed the first hand account presented here on the day to day grind of remote work and management domination, even at a distance.


Kim Moody continues to advocate the "rank and file strategy" and enters into the conversation around social reproduction in his lengthy response to Kate Doyle Griffiths three pieces tackling his arguments and challenging them to their limits. KDG's three pieces are also worth the read, and I look forward to a possible continuation of this dialogue as Kim Moody appears to have maintained the space for further discussion.








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Alexander Riccio

Strikes Are Not For Spectacle

Universities’ Scholar Strike for Racial Justice is neither a strike nor a protest that amounts to power.*


Perhaps nothing better reveals the character of modern universities than the fact that scholars created a two-day conference when attempting to conjure a strike.


The recent Scholar Strike for Racial Justice took place on September 8th-9th, and was organized through social media by Anthea Butler, an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and Kevin Gannon, a Professor of History at Grand View University. 


Replete with consciousness-raising panels from a constellation of academic workers, the Scholar Strike for Racial Justice billed itself as “both an action, and a teach-in” inspired by recent strikes from professional athletes. The irony, of course, is that those athletes actually did conduct a strike, labelled by pundits a “boycott,” whereas the Scholar Strike is neither of these things but nevertheless claims to be a strike. 


In an article from CNN, the event is described as an effort to “recast direct action” by providing public lectures and hosting them on an accessible website as a protest against police violence and racial injustice. Butler clarifies that the protest is not directed at “our individual universities” but, presumably, casts the entire public at large as its intended audience. 


Presenters included academic workers across Canada and the United States, and it’s anyone’s guess how many of these presenters were actually refusing to perform their regular work functions during the two days. All indications suggest that Scholar Strike will continue as an anti-rascist educational resource hub, but what tangible actions or recasting of direct action are in store remains to be seen.  


This kind of symbolic protest appears to stem from a general misunderstanding of what makes the strike a powerful weapon. Scholar Strike organizers misconstrue Twitter platforms rather than their co-workers as base-building, awareness-raising rather than withdrawing labor as power, and appeals to the general public rather than specific targets as a substitute for demands. 


Players Strike Was More Than A Hashtag

Spotlighting racist oppression is laudable, and it is logical for professors to believe their role is to provide educational foundations within broader social justice efforts. But a teach-in is a distinct tactic from a strike, wherein the operative power of a strike is its withdrawal of labor to gain concessions from an opponent. 


Anthea Butler and Kevin Gannon, the two professors who initiated calls for #ScholarStrike, celebrated professional athletes who staged a wildcat strike in the wake of Jacob Blake’s murder by police in Kenosha, WI. Academic workers were urged to follow the athletes’ lead by participating, if they can, in a two-day teach-in branded as a strike. 


Before digging into the details of the Scholar Strike, it’s worth pausing to consider the lesson being learned by the athletes’ example. Reported by Dave Zirin, the strike was catalyzed by both the Black Lives Matter movement and the particular working conditions faced by the NBA players. Separated from friends and family, NBA athletes have been working in the confines of what’s known as “the bubble,” in, of course, the heralded lands of Disney World. Hollywood likely could not have scripted a more surreal setting. 


In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and conflagration of protests organized under the banner of Black Lives Matter, players expressed discomfort with returning to play a sport that felt trivial by comparison. At worst, they viewed a return to performing on the court as a distraction from the issues raised by activists. As a lukewarm compromise, the NBA agreed to adorn the courts and players’ jerseys with racial justice messages, and provide press coverage giving players and coaches a platform to speak on the issues. It is in this context that the murder of Jacob Blake provided the catalyst for a strike, because players, already ambivalent about their conditions of work and its meaningfulness, recognized that the “woke branding” and awareness-raising offered as a compromise by the NBA is insufficient for effecting societal change. 


NBA players went on strike explicitly because they were fed up with the exclusive focus on consciousness-raising. Their strike targeted bosses, and demanded these bosses use their economic and political capital toward making concrete changes. In other words, these workers had a plan to leverage their labor power to gain concessions from their bosses. 


Methods For a Fake Strike


Returning to the scholars inspired by the players’ strike, one wonders why they chose to revert to slogans and consciousness-raising as a demonstration of solidarity? They learned precisely the wrong lessons; pivoting away from building an actual strike toward a digital conference which resembled their existing day-to-day work. It’s all the more confusing when Butler and Gannon’s own framing around the action proclaimed it as “time for the academic community to do more than teach classes and offer reading lists on racism, policing, violence, and racial injustice.” Quite bizarre, then, that they proceed to explain how “some of us will, for two days, refrain from our many duties and participate in...YouTube ten-minute teach-ins...and a social media blitz on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to share information about racism, policing, mass incarceration, and other issues of racial injustice in America.” (italics in original) How precisely does this “recast direct action?” 


The outcomes achieved in any campaign are determined by the means used by organizers, and the methods chosen by the Scholar Strike all lead to what is, in the end, a fake strike. Audience sizes ranged from roughly 1,000-3,000 during each online presentation during the so-called strike, but there were no metrics for capturing who was in the room and whether these audiences extended beyond higher ed students and professors. By taking the shortcut of Twitter engagement, the base being built is, at best, a dispersed patchwork of individuals with no ability to leverage power into meaningful demands against a specific target. 


Demands were not issued as organizers deliberately avoided selecting their bosses as targets. A straight line can be drawn from lacking demands to then setting a goal as imprecise as “awareness-raising”. Whose awareness is being raised? How does the education received translate into power? The end result from such methods is a series of conversations where self-selecting “activists” talk amongst themselves while going largely unnoticed by the opponents and potential supporters that should have been the focus all along. Actions such as these are perfectly condoned by university bosses whose endowments, the booty of massive plunder and colonization, remain safe and secure. 


No doubt some will object by pointing to the fact that Butler and Gannon expressly highlight 1960’s style ‘teach-ins’ as a tactic they want to recreate for today. But there are a number of incongruities between these analogues, an obvious one being that the sixties teach-ins were practices at occupying space where specific universities were targets. Natasha Lennard has spoken about the “misplaced nostalgia for what radical politics can look like,” when invoking the sixties legacy. It’s quite a different feat of strength, she explains, to organize events such as the 1960’s large-scale teach-ins, sometimes with more than 30,000 participants, in an era where communications had to take place through face-to-face conversations and word of mouth, as opposed to today’s online methods. The difference being that during the 1960’s those in power observing such feats took their message far more seriously because the tactics required extensive organizing on the ground. This isn’t to say that we should dismiss modern teach-ins wholesale. They can be useful tactics for building support within a larger strategy, but we should reconsider the effective weight of teach-ins by asking what their particular (or exclusive) impact is on those in power. What force do they inflict to those in power on their own?

Perhaps it’s harsh to conclude that in the end, the Scholar Strike amounted to nothing more than thousands of academic workers shouting in the wind. But in trying to discern what is attempting to be accomplished, the closest thing to a concrete source I could find states the purpose being for scholars to “share [their] dismay, disgust, and resolve.” We are left to understand that somehow through the sharing of ideas, action will just organically follow. A more charitable take is that in observing a tweet go “viral,” Butler and Gannon likely rushed to meet the excitement expressed online without pausing to consider the outcomes they hoped to achieve.  


Build Organizations, Not Conferences


It is hardly surprising that academic workers without unions on their campuses would cast the strike as mere spectacle. Already the organizers of this strike have used their social media platforms to complain that they are doing hard work (which certainly is true) and therefore shouldn’t be criticized for their organizing approach. Such defensiveness is understandable but ultimately misses the point. The challenges being raised to the organizing approach stem from the understanding that tenured and tenure-track professors are a social category of workers who possess considerable power if applied strategically against appropriate targets. Additionally, if you claim to derive inspiration from athletes striking, then you have an obligation to apply the lessons learned from their decades-long efforts in building the capacity and will to seize an opportunity when presented. 


Had the organizers located their power in the workplace, the “strike” likely would not have been advertised for those able to voluntarily skip (or, realistically, just delay) two days of work obligations. No doubt Butler and Gannon would point out that instructors and adjuncts are too precarious to have participated in a full-out strike without consequences, but this should have given them pause to ask why are these workers so vulnerable to retaliation, and how does their precarity shape the overall conditions of the university’s entire workforce? 


Tenure and tenure-track professors comprise an abysmal thirty percent of teachers at universities, and their ranks are overwhelmingly white and male. Since racial justice is on the table for the Scholar Strike, the organizers would do better to simply glance sideways at their co-workers to observe the increasing numbers of adjuncts and instructors represented by exploited people of color. 


Shifting the energy exhausted into actions without demands toward efforts to unionize these precarious workers would have tangible impacts and better serve the cause of racial justice. Indeed, Butler and Gannon could even take notes from graduate employee workers at the University of Michigan, whose current strike efforts include demands to disarm and defund campus police. As evidenced by the UM graduate union’s own admission, the cumulative history that led to this moment spans multiple decades with continuous battles and efforts toward both “bread and butter” victories as well as broader social justice. Building organizations, not conferences, is a necessary precondition for college workers to be in a position to launch serious demands in moments of heightened possibilities. Tenured professors possess considerable leverage in supporting such efforts in campaigns at any given university, but it is leverage often not used. 


Having worked for a number of years as a labor organizer in higher education, I can understand the allure of opting for a social media campaign rather than doing the deep grind of effective organizing. Indeed, in a given year of organizing graduate workers, the elected leadership and myself facilitated an average of 50 workshops covering basic organizing skills because we were always in the position of having to train and build capacity among workers new to the industry. 


Due to  high turnover of contingent faculty, undergraduate students, and graduate workers, ineffective tactics and strategies are often being repeated. Loss of institutional knowledge or the ability to sustain long-term strategies enables university administrators to undermine campus activism by sending the activists’ demands to a newly formed, “advisory” committee where the demands ultimately die. 


But these are not excuses for shortcuts. The dedication to delivering non-stop workshops at my former union were meant to meet the challenges of higher education head-on, and these were only some pieces of organizing required for serious campaigns. Much like any organizing campaign, efforts on campuses require identifying key issues, picking appropriate targets, generating demands, and leveraging the power necessary to win. 


Organizing is a skill. It is not as simple as a call to action on social media where, as when a sorcerer casts spells, mass collective action can be whipped up by a few easy keystrokes. Fortunately, methods can be altered. The Scholar Strike can pivot their target audience from Twitter followers toward their colleagues in order to build the base necessary to exact concessions from their own institutions bound up by histories of racial capitalism. Scholars who genuinely believe the strike is a necessary instrument to meaningfully fight racial oppression can learn from prior missteps by recognizing that their base consists of precarious teachers, that their targets are their bosses, and that their power is in withdrawing their labor instead of workshopping their research. 


Doing the deep organizing work necessary to build a strike contains potential outcomes far more impactful than a handful of stimulating panels. There are no shortcuts toward arriving at the capacity necessary to transcend symbolic protest, but the strike is not for spectacle and hashtags alone will not bring about justice for anyone.  

*Gratitude goes out to the editors at Organizing Work for their comments and revisions on this piece.

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Alexander Riccio

Democratic Socialists of America Lost A Boss Fight

Updated: Jul 30, 2020

Lessons can be learned from the loss of the Sanders campaign by examining it through the lens of a workplace campaign against the boss.


A trending sentiment passing among socialists is that the defeat of the Bernie Sanders campaign for president is a defeat in name only, as his electoral strategy actually won many victories, primary among them the battle over hearts and minds. In a general sense I recognize this claim is true. Sure, certain socialist ideas, like healthcare ought to be a social enterprise, seem to now be more solidly endorsed. But, if we are to believe the goal wasn’t to win the presidency and was instead to accomplish something like popularize Medicare for All, then the reality that we are not anywhere closer to universal healthcare in the United States surely exposes how this goal has also not been achieved.


Paul Heideman’s rushed opinions on the matter are stark evidence of the problems in adopting the above sentiment. The most telling vagueness over his strategic advice comes when Heideman clumsily draws a parallel to the challenges in organizing workplaces with the challenges of winning in the electoral arena, suggesting that since we haven’t abandoned the former neither should we abandon the latter. A weak analogy, but ironically Heideman sets up an opportunity to take a workplace organizing view of why the electoral strategy failed.


The Sanders campaign was a ‘boss fight’ where the boss was the Democratic Party establishment, and its organizers vastly underestimated the boss’s power. They were not able to move a larger base of people past their fear (euphemistically called “electability” by mainstream pundits), and this is because they did not bring forward the needed tactics or produce a methodical plan of action that could contend with the instruments of repression and sabotage utilized by all bosses. For instance, the coup d'etat orchestrated by the DNC immediately prior to Super Tuesday, where they coordinated the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar to fall in line, should have been predictable for Sanders' organizers. Any workplace campaign knows the lesson that the boss disciplines their middle-managers and maintains a company line with rigid authority. You won't likely find a manager going against the boss, as these are a cadre who rarely (if ever) are willing to bite the hand that feeds them, and a workplace organizing view of the campaign would have known all along that a tactic like the one pulled on Super Tuesday was coming and would be swift and effective.


Amid the current plague and uprisings in the streets, this commentary likely seems trivial as more pressing matters are at hand. But the strategic content animating our politics has significant consequences, and variations of the electoral strategy to socialism continue to seek influence over the left in general. Pieces such as Heideman’s encourage a spin on the Sanders loss as a “productive defeat” in order to goad progressive and leftist organizing towards the electoral arena and imagine it as the only place where “mass politics” can be advanced. Quite frankly nothing shatters Heideman’s argument more forcefully than the mass rebellions in the streets sparked by an uprising in Minneapolis over systemic racist policing and the murder of George Floyd. Already it’s been demonstrated that riots accomplish results too, and these current uprisings are not fixed to any electoral campaign or specific ruling political party. Reading Paul Heideman’s short and shallow take, however, would reasonably lead one to believe that anything outside of electoral politics is simply not politics at all.


Shifting Goalposts


At least two general weaknesses in strategy engender views such as Heideman’s. One is an impreciseness around the goals for socialists going ‘all in’ on the Sanders campaign. What was seriously trying to be accomplished, and what plan was generated to realize this goal? The second, and in my view all too common among leftists, is an overcommitment to the belief that ideas and ‘consciousness raising’ are the primary paths to achieving victories.


In not having clearly defined goals, benchmarks for measuring effectiveness become murky, and failed strategies go improperly assessed and repeated without adjustment. A perfect example is Heideman’s strange claim that the electoral arena must become an even larger priority for socialists after a major defeat in this strategy. Assessments become clouded, while historical and political analysis suffers when we do not clearly define our goals from the onset.


To continue with Heideman, he claims Occupy Wall Street is an example of an ineffective “movementism” and finds himself in the position of arguing against social movements in general, while propping up Black Lives Matter and Bernie Sanders campaign advances as evidence of a better way forward. In doing so, he fails to recognize the confluence of forces that went from OWS to BLM, the reality that BLM does not prioritize left electoral strategy, and the obvious fact that Bernie Sanders himself openly embraces the language of OWS (the 1% versus the 99%) in achieving his popularity amongst voters.


Heideman conjures a ridiculous caricature of OWS (apparently Occupy was just hippies having drum-circles) to accomplish bending the reality of its history to fit his polemical narrative. Yet do not be fooled, Bernie Sanders is the symptom, not the cause, of social movements and working-class insurgencies of the past ten years. Occupy was one of many causal factors enabling openings in the political terrain that directly benefited Sanders’ rise to electoral relevance.


False Dilemmas


An either/or choice between social movements and electoral politics is presented in Heideman’s line of argument. By posing these methods of struggle as dichotomies, Heideman is guilty of reproducing an insular phenomenon on the left where people take on a strategic position as if we’re rooting for one sports team against another. He’s not alone in reproducing this unfortunate situation, ironically, however, this is precisely the thing he claims to be advocating against by characterizing OWS as an inward-facing subculture with no broader societal impact. Not surprising that Heideman would present us these false choices in strategy because when we pull back the layers of his argument we are left to understand that “mass politics” is nothing more than a good campaign slogan. Politics is a corporate campaign. Once the best ideas are presented in the most palatable way possible then those ideas gain primacy and, somehow, win the game.


Certainly some will find this an unfair characterization. Consider, though, his broader argument; electoral campaigns are the true stuff of “mass politics” and political action that does not center its strategy in the electoral arena is participation in an insignificant subculture. An electoral strategy to democratic socialism requires securing many elected government positions, and if those positions are at the national level we would be required to actively persuade enough centrists and liberals to endorse the ideas of one candidate over another to actually win those seats. Electoral campaigns, for all their bumper stickers, robocalls, text messages, yard signs, and awful television debates are the functional equivalent of an “awareness campaign.”


Yes, ideas matter and engaging in political conversations with masses of people is an important complement to a larger strategy for victory. However, ideas and awareness raising are not enough. No working class person is completely satisfied with their lot in life, but moving them to engage in class struggle is not simply a matter of getting people to come to a “consciousness” over their unhappiness or having them express this sentiment in a proper ideological syllogism. Feelings of powerlessness, underpinned by fear, and a sense of futility at fighting back is what keeps most people on the fence.


Moving people to act is a matter of having a credible plan for victory where every individual can see how their participation can help the plan succeed. People’s ideas are challenged, reassessed, and developed through participating in purposeful struggle and through the relationships built during such efforts. Ideas are abundant; what we lack are plans and organizations with the capacity to bring such ideas into being.


The Sanders campaign, for its flaws and limitations, did create ways in which many ordinary people could imagine that their participation was playing a part in broader social change. So did Occupy Wall Street. Choosing between the two is not a real choice that needs to be made. Instead, we should measure these forces on their results and recognize that both failed, for different reasons and in varied ways, in advancing their goals.


Heideman’s proposal that we should pursue more relentlessly the electoral arena while foreclosing other strategic approaches is hopefully not one held by many other socialists. For organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, assuming their participants are genuinely trying to locate the “road to socialism,” my comradely critique is that their prior goals in pushing a Sanders campaign were flawed for mistaking a tactic for a strategy. Perhaps if they’d have articulated an agreed upon goal from the onset it would have been clearer that elections better serve as benchmarks for assessing our progress within a larger and more sophisticated strategy.


A strategic plan of action containing accessible entry points, multiple angles of approach, and clearly defined goals can help better equip us to win the boss fights ahead, and move beyond a shallow view where politics is conceived as a matter of winning over the hearts and minds of vast numbers of people to one that recognizes our politics as the activation of class struggle organizations.






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