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This is part two of our three part series on the left and its approach towards elections. In Part I we talked about the strategies of insurgent leftist candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Julie Salazar who shook up electoral politics in the 2018 primaries. This week, we’re going to look at the efforts of left wing activists who tend to work outside the electoral process, often due to a deep seated skepticism of the efficacy of narrow electoralism, or simply a desire to work for social transformation in a more direct way. With the revitalization of left wing activism, and the re-entrance of socialism into the political mainstream, such activists make up an increasing important component of the modern left. From the burgeoning Democratic Socialists of America to Occupy protesters to workers on the picket line and elsewhere, it’s undeniable they’ve managed to have a major impact on the political landscape over the past two years. So lets look into their motives and talk a little bit about what they’re doing, where they’re effective and where they’ve run into problems.

Common Criticisms of Electoralism

While downplaying the importance of elections may be regarded as a heresy here at DailyKos, it’s fairly common among leftist activists. Why do they feel this way? Many just feel they could do more good by working to solve social problems directly instead of going through a political middle man. Others want to avoid getting pigeonholed into the political system, with all its built in hierarchies and false choices. This is a fairly common attitude expressed among activists associated with Occupy Movements. For most, It largely comes down to a belief that electoral politics may be a necessary, but it isn’t enough.

However some, particularly many democratic socialists and anyone to their left, take a harder line by arguing that electoralism alone is just going to leads to movements getting co-opted by the status quo.

In Western Europe, this draws on the experiences of their Social Democratic parties who came to power on the basis of gradualist electoral strategies advocated by people like Eduard Bernstein and the English Fabian Societies. They managed to achieve notable success, but largely ended up reconciling themselves with the status quo before ultimately transforming into technocratic parties operating on a basis of transactional politics. By the time aggressive free market conservatism reemerged in the 80s and 90s, most of these social democratic parties were either unable or unwilling to resist. This was essentially the argument made by Ralph Miliband and Marcel Liebman in their landmark essay, Beyond Social Democracy:

“Social democracy became more and more attuned to the requirements of capitalism; and where these requirements clashed with reform, it was reform that was more often than not sacrificed on the altar of the “national interest,” “pragmatism” and “realism,” or whatever else might serve to cover up compromise and retreat. The “reformist,” transformative project has remained part of the occasional rhetoric of social-democratic leaders, to be brought out on suitable occasions such as party conferences; but the rhetoric has been consistently belied by the actual practice of social democracy. The most it has ever striven to achieve is capitalism with a more human face: the record is consistent across time and countries and continents — from Attlee to Wilson and Callaghan in Britain, from Leon Blum to Guy Mollet to Mitterrand in France, from Ebert to Brandt to Schmidt in Germany, etc.”

​ Ralph Miliband

In the United States, where third parties politics are essentially a dead end, the story has largely gone that successive waves of progressive social movements have found themselves neutered once they become institutionalized parts of the Democratic party. This has led many to give the Democratic Party the moniker of “the graveyard of social movements”.

More generally, there’s a sense that electoral politics is a rich man’s game, and the political system is often explicitly designed to be insulated from the public. A large part of this, of course, comes down to big money lobbyists and donors and their ability to influence on policy. But the problem is bigger than that. Very few people have the time and resources to engage in politics, so naturally the tendency is for people running for office to fit a certain profile: affluent professionals, preferably those like lawyers who have a lot of independence and social connections, who often get into politics more as a matter of social climbing than anything else. As Tom Malleson describes the issue:

“Everywhere that electoral democracy has been practiced — from the US to Brazil, from ancient Athens to the medieval Italian city-states — the same basic problems continually reemerge.

The first is that the electoral process is inherently biased in favor of the rich — thereby undermining the cherished democratic ideal of political equality — because the precondition to winning an election is having the time and resources to communicate with the public and mobilize support, and that will always be done more effectively by those who have more money. This means that electoral democracy, regardless of campaign finance rules, will always be somewhat tilted towards the affluent.”

Solving this issue would require more than simply tinkering with the institutional design of the political system. We would need to radically overhaul it. Some people have theorized on how exactly we could do this. Malleson himself advocates drawing representatives by lot, a system known as Sortition.

Organizing to Change Society

But for the most part, the prevailing strategy of electorally averse leftists is to put their energy into creating alternative means of organizing and pursuing more direct action to address social issues. These efforts have flourished in the last two years and have produced notable results. Here are just a few ways people are engaging in direct action and alternative ways of organizing.

Labor Activism

One major way people are taking action outside the confines of conventional politics is by reigniting the labor movement through strikes and other forms of direct action. This year has seen the dramatic reversal of the downward trend in work stoppages, as the number of major strikes has spiked to its highest level in over a decade. These were, of course, driven largely by the rash of teacher strikes in West Virginia, Arizona, and elsewhere, but they’re far from the only ones. The last few years have seen intensifying unionization drives in digital media, political campaigns and other sectors of the economy. Others are pushing for workers to abandon the system altogether in favor of worker managed co-operatives.

​ Red for Ed

More recently, workers have sought to connect their economic struggles to social issues. Workers In the fast food industry have linked labor activism to the Me Too movement by staging walkouts against sexual harassment. Mass prison strikes have sought to push criminal justice reform.

These actions emerged from the grassroots, often over the objections of official leadership or outside organized unions in general. They’re also breaking the misconception that new technology is inherently corrosive to labor organizing. People are organizing on online platforms while activists like John Evans have developed web apps to facilitate labor organization.

Immigration Activism

Much of the energy of activists working outside the electoral system has gone towards directly resisting the Trump administration’s draconian deportation drive. Immigration activists have mobilized to raise funds to free detained immigrants and evicting ICE facilities from communities. Over the summer, Occupy ICE camps sprung up in cities across the country, disrupting ICE activities and sometimes shutting them down entirely. These Occupy protests have largely subsided or been broken up, but they have inspired further activism.

Breaklight Clinics

One popular strategy employed by DSA chapters In New Orleans and elsewhere are brake light clinics. These clinics replace people’s brake lights for free with the objective of helping them avoid being arbitrarily pulled over by police and potentially brought up on more serious charges. These clinics allow DSA members to do concrete work to help people victimized by heavy handed police tactics and build trust with communities.

““But the clinics’ growing popularity among chapters has helped them focus energy around a tangible project and gives members “concrete work, which is demonstrably good and people are grateful for,” Marone says. “DSA is of course not a political party. It’s a political organization. We don’t bring candidates into our line though we do endorse them. What it shows is we’re a political group that goes beyond electoralism and we also care about the people we organize alongside”

Disaster Relief

In extreme situations, activists have engaged in emergency relief. The most high profile instance of this was Occupy Sandy, which was widely praised for its efforts providing supplies and assistance in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy in 2012. But it’s far from the only example. In Puerto Rico, when contractors and the government failed to restore power to communities ravaged by Hurricane Maria, a group of anarchist activists stepped in to begin building a grid based on renewable energy.

Housing Rights

​ The home front

In local communities the last few years have seen a burgeoning housing rights movement, organized by a variety of left wing groups including the DSA. Activists in this movement have worked tirelessly to inform tenants of their rights, stop unlawful evictions, ensure affordable housing through legislation and public housing (or union housing co-ops), and combat unscrupulous landlords and real estate speculators. As the Nation writes:

“These stories and others like them are the visible roots of a nascent tenants’-rights movement taking form across America today. From Massachusetts and Minnesota to California and Colorado, renters are in revolt. They are organizing in individual cities from coast to coast to form tenants’ unions and push new rent regulations, including rent control, just-cause eviction and similar policies. They are working in state legislatures to overturn long-standing bans on commonsense tenant protections. And under the aegis of a national campaign called Homes for All, they are connecting with each other. Out of their disparate and localized concerns, they aim to build a mass movement that can lift housing justice to the very top of the national agenda.

“If we are going to win we have to organize a critical mass of impacted residents across the country,” says Anthony Romano, director of organizing at Right to the City, which is leading the Homes for All campaign. We have to “build an army.””

This is all exceptionally important work. Housing is an issue that effects virtually all middle and low income people in urban areas hard in recent years, and the efforts of these activists are having a big impact. Furthermore, local advocacy on these issues provides many opportunities for directly doing good work while also forging relationships that can help mobilize people at the bottom of society for change.

Antifascism

And then, of course, there’s Antifa, which is not a movement but rather a set of tactics aimed at strategically stopping fascist movements before they can gain momentum. While the media has tended to associate Antifa with street clashes with fascists, the reality is that the vast majority of efforts by Antifa activists are non-violent. These include infiltrating fascist organizations, exposing the identities of fascists, hacking fascist websites, rehabilitation and other efforts to discourage fascism. And while the media reaction to Antifa has been mostly hostile, most evidence seems to suggest they’ve been highly effective in derailing the incipient white nationalism movement that emerged over the last few years.

“To make the consequences of joining the white nationalist movement appear less appealing — to take the “fun” out of fascism — is precisely the antifa strategy to stymie the movement’s spread. Spencer stating that his rallies are no longer “fun” is music to antifa ears.

It is no accident that antifa tactics beat back the rise of neo-Nazism in the 1970s and 1980s punk scene, or that fighting squads of Jewish ex-service members halted the upsurge of Oswald Mosley’s anti-Semitic, fascist organizing in Britain after World War II. And it’s no surprise that the so-called alt-right has been forced to reconsider its tactics today. While writers for the New York Times opinion section may seek to paint the antifa position as little more than punch-seeking thuggery, the strategy of creating serious consequences for white nationalists who would organize is based on a well-grounded understanding of the desire for fascism and how it spreads.”

Pushing the Overton Window, Changing Institutions

When the objective of activists is to change government policy, the focus is usually on educating the public and generating support for the policies themselves rather than pushing elected officials who may implement them.

​ DSA flier for Medicare for All canvassing event from August

One notable success on this front has been the DSA’s efforts to push Medicare for All into the mainstream by canvassing neighborhoods to reach people directly. The point of these efforts is not to encourage people to vote a particular way in specific election or even push a single piece of legislation per say, but rather to cultivate the demand for a single payer healthcare system that the public is already highly receptive to.

“With chapters organized in their local communities nationwide, the Democratic Socialists of America is spearheading a major grassroots push for Medicare for All this weekend as its members show that the demand for a single-payer healthcare system is ultimately useless if people are not organized on its behalf.

The group said this is its first “nationally coordinated Weekend of Action,” but would not be its last.

“We need Medicare for All because our healthcare system should prioritize the health of working-class Americans over the profits of insurance companies and their billionaire executives,” said Megan Svoboda, who serves on the Democratic Socialists for Medicare for All campaign steering committee. “The Weekend of Action is going to bring that message to people all over the country.”

The organizing push comes a support for a single-payer system, as Common Dreams recently reported, is “spreading like wildfire.””

The Abolish ICE movement has been another successful effort to emerge out of social media. While the outrage over ICE’s inhumane deportation drive has been widespread, the willingness among elected officials to actually dismantle the mechanisms that make it possible are often lackluster. But activists, particularly Sam McElwee, were highly successful in making the idea mainstream. By making clear, resonant demands that could be amplified through social media, Sam and others shifted the debate and encouraged Democratic politicians to incorporate abolishing ICE into their platforms.

“The simplicity of the slogan belies a strategic calculus behind it — reflecting its creator’s background. Mr McElwee, 25, is a graduate student at Columbia University, where he studies quantitative methods in the social sciences, and where his brand of online activism meshes with his studies.

“You make maximalist demands that are rooted in a clear moral vision and you continue to make those demands until those demands are met,” said Mr McElwee. “This is an issue where activists have done a very good job of moving the discussion of what has to be done on immigration to the left very quickly.””

The activist left has also made strides to exert influence on institutions, with unions being a particular area of focus. This is done through a two pronged approach. The first, practiced by groups like Socialist Alternative, is to run candidates for leadership positions in unions who will push more aggressively for change. The second is to take a rank and file approach that emphasizes the grass roots and stresses internal democracy As Kim Moody wrote in her recent Reflections on the Rank and File Strategy.

““We have long known that unions are most likely to win representation when, as Kate Bronfenbrenner once put it, “they run aggressive and creative campaigns utilizing a rank-and-file, grassroots intensive strategy, building a union and acting like a union from the very beginning of the campaign.”

Campaigns like UNITE-HERE’s Hotel Workers Rising or those by the new National Union of Healthcare Workers and National Nurses United appear to have taken this advice more than most. Nevertheless, socialists with potential influence in organizing campaigns should fight for and help organize for this “rank-and-file, grassroots intensive” approach.”

Producing Results on the Ground

These strategies have had many notable achievements, as we’ve seen. We can also see that there are a lot of ways in which they excel. First, they address problems directly without getting bogged down in electoral politics and the sausage making of governance. They also allow activists to establish long term relations with communities which allow them to accumulate trust and social capital. This allows activists to become institutions within communities, or allows them to influence preexisting ones.

Moreover, these strategies can be quite effective in shifting the political debate to more favorable terms. Activists have been able to find ample support for bold, popular progressive ideas by going directly to the people. This has helped win over the public to a program of broad social change. It’s also laid the groundwork for future popular mobilization, and has helped cultivate a left self-identity independent of established political parties.

​ 1929 NAACP Annual Conference

And while advocates of these strategies are often written off as starry eyed dreamers who sandbag reform by refusing to play ball, in fact the truth is very much the opposite. A strategy of more direct action can compliment rather than detract from an electorally based strategy of gradual reform.

Indeed, as Paul Heideman notes, many of the historic tent poles of the left’s political infrastructure were based on such strategies, and its exactly the fact that they exerted influence outside electoral politics that they were so effective.

“The NAACP was founded largely due to the efforts of William English Walling, an American socialist who bitterly opposed Bernsteinism in the American movement. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), perhaps the most important force for egalitarianism in American life in the 1930s and 1940s, was built out of union struggles led by socialists and communists. Even the Industrial Workers of the World, typically remembered for its revolutionary zeal, pressed demands like restricting anti-union injunctions to improve workers’ lives.

This history also reveals a profound flaw in Berman’s argument that parliamentary democracy has delivered “reforms without bloodshed.” Contra Bernstein, winning ameliorative measures has often required high levels of struggle outside the electoral sphere — and capital and the state have been more than willing to spill blood to resist them. The effort to enfranchise black Americans was only won after a series of pitched battles, from demonstrations to free the Scottsboro Boys to marches in Selma amid police batons. The New Deal, the centerpiece of American reform for social democrats like Berman, came only after intense local struggles by radical groups like the Unemployed Leagues, and was extended only after workers battled cops and company thugs to achieve union recognition. Though political democracy has certainly been a critical advance, it is equally true that, by itself, it has all too often proven insufficient to civilize bourgeois society.”

Drawbacks

But it’s also obvious that this approach has its own flaws. First, much of the criticism of electoralism may be a little unwarranted. Certainly many social movements have found it to be a dead end, but I think it’s a little unreasonable to discount the 50 year ascendancy of the Social Democrats and the New Deal and their many permanent gains as ephemeral or trivial half measures. There’s plenty you can accomplish through conventional politics.

Moreover, while the objective of activists who eschew electoral politics is to broaden their campaign into the society at large, often they end up just pigeonholing themselves into narrow projects that mean nothing to the broader public, or even most other activists.

Also, working entirely outside the system often means having no say in determining the political context. Often activists will campaign for something, win in the public space, but then find their wins turn to dust in back room dealings because activists don’t have anyone in that room.

Moreover, operating outside conventional politics makes it easy to isolate and demonize activists. The various measures meant to outlaw Antifa tactics are draconian, but with no allies in the halls of power and a broadly hostile media activists have little recourse for blocking them. Even more unambiguously positive efforts are often treated with as vaguely dangerous. This can lead to a vicious cycle where activists treated as almost a criminal element start to see themselves as a criminal element, which leads them to do things that further alienate them from the public.

This is perhaps why, despite all their good work, so many activists working outside conventional politics found themselves isolated and rudderless until fairly recently.

Conclusion

So, taken together with last week’s installment, we see a picture of the left as two incomplete movements. Leftist insurgents running in elections and the organizations that back them have created an expansive network for parlaying progressive energy into a nationwide movement, but often lack the roots in local communities due to consistently translate this into success. Apolitical activists have lots of projects to address local needs which build up social capital in communities, but lack the focus and critical mass they need to achieve the social transformation they desire. Leftist insurgents face frustrating setbacks on the path to long term wins. Apolitical activists often have lots of short term wins, but have nowhere to go with them.

It seems obvious, then, that these two movements stand to gain quite a lot from one another. And while many in both camps tend to be a little wary of the other’s methods, it for the most part many are starting to recognize that they stand at a political moment when they can achieve breakthroughs if they can start to work together. Next week, we’ll cover how these two movements are coming together.