https://socialistworker.org/2018/08/09/socialism-on-the-campaign-trail
Socialism on the campaign trail
August 9, 2018
Elizabeth Schulte examines the inspiring example of Socialist Party
leader Eugene Debs for lessons about how revolutionaries view and
participate in elections.
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“We should seek only to register the actual vote of socialism, no more
and no less. In our propaganda we should state our principles clearly,
speak the truth fearlessly, seeking neither to flatter nor to offend,
but only to convince those who should be with us and win them to our
cause through an intelligent understanding of its mission.”
Eugene Debs, 1911
THE GROWING popularity of socialism is finding expression in down-ballot
election campaigns this year, some led by candidates affiliated with the
Democratic Socialists of America like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The 28-year-old socialist stunned the Democratic Party establishment by
winning the party primary election for a U.S. House seat in the Bronx
and Queens, defeating one of the most powerful leaders of the Democrats
in Congress.
In a political system dominated by two main parties that are so tied to
upholding the virtues of capitalism, it’s rare to hear the word
“socialism” used positively in a discussion of midterm elections. Plus,
it’s refreshing to see the political establishment scramble to deal with
candidates making popular pro-worker demands.
Eugene V. Debs speaks during his 1912 presidential campaign
Eugene V. Debs speaks during his 1912 presidential campaign
There is a long history of socialists participating in elections and a
debate among different views about what the left’s goals and methods
should be.
At the most basic level, elections are not irrelevant to socialists,
even if we have no direct participation in them because there is no
socialist alternative to support. They can gauge workers’ sentiments on
various issues or signify shifts in consciousness to the left or right.
If socialists are able to initiate campaigns or contribute to those
initiated by other forces, elections can be a further tool for
presenting our politics to a wider audience and challenging the status
quo. They can champion struggles and movements and the demands that
emerge from them.
Beyond this, things have diverged historically.
The tradition of “reformism” has a long history of socialists putting a
priority on using elections to attain political office, where they can
try to legislate or administer their proposals, both modest and
far-reaching, extending to the transformation of society, according to
this view.
Some of these socialists and their parties have, with the support of
working class struggle, achieved notable advances such as national
health care, free education and union rights — though these reforms have
been vulnerable to being taken away when ruling class parties regain the
initiative.
The tradition of revolutionary socialism starts from the premise that
socialism can only be achieved by the self-emancipation of the working
class, not by electing political leaders into the capitalist state,
where they can legislate socialism into being.
Elections are still an arena of political struggle for revolutionaries,
but we assess the value of electoral strategies by whether they bring us
closer to this goal by empowering the working class.
Winning office is not the goal. Even when revolutionary socialists have
won elections, they understand that they will not be able to enact
socialism on behalf of workers, so they regard holding office as an
extension of the opportunity to present socialist politics and to
champion the causes of workers, while exposing the injustices of the system.
This means we ask a number of questions about elections and socialist
campaigns.
Is a campaign using its platform to not only raise popular working-class
demands, but take a stand on more complicated issues of oppression and
imperialism? Are socialists using any openings to direct anger at
inequality and injustice in society toward opposition to the fundamental
ways society is organized?
And in the U.S., where two capitalist parties, the Democrats and
Republicans, take turns ruling in the interest not just of their
corporate backers, but American capitalism itself, one big question is
whether the campaign challenges the two-party system’s stranglehold on
U.S. politics.
The narrow set of “choices” available to people in the U.S. in elections
is propped up by the image of the Democratic Party as the “party of the
people” — representing women, union members, Blacks, Latinos, etc., and
at least slightly better than the Republicans on most issues.
But the Democrats’ number one priority is always maintaining its own
power and serving the interests of some of “the people”: the rulers of
the business and political world who ultimately control it. The party
leadership and apparatus use the Democrats’ liberal image — and all the
people who are attracted to work and vote for them because of that — to
protect those priorities.
For these reasons, socialists in the tradition of Socialist Worker and
its publisher, the International Socialist Organization, put a high
priority on challenging the Democratic Party’s hold over the
working-class movement.
WHAT DOES a socialist election campaign organized around these
priorities and goals look like?
The presidential campaigns of U.S. socialist Eugene Debs in the early
part of the last century provide some inspiring examples.
Through his five campaigns in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920, Debs used
the electoral platform to spread the ideas of socialism, build the
organizational strength of the Socialist Party, and take aim at
capitalism and the parties that serve its interests.
This meant that Debs didn’t just talk about bread-and-butter issues and
how, if elected, he might pass such and such legislation for workers.
His campaign speeches were about how and why workers were exploited
under capitalism, and why they were the ones who had the power to change
this unequal state of affairs.
Debs’ attitudes were shaped by the fact that before he became a
socialist, he had been an active member of the Democratic Party.
He was elected to the House of Representatives in his home state of
Indiana in 1885. He learned through his own experience about the limits
of holding office when a bill he supported to protect railway workers
injured on the job was gutted by fellow lawmakers — and another
supporting the women’s suffrage failed. After this, Debs vowed never to
run for office again.
His experience as a leader of the American Railway Union — particularly
during the 1894 Pullman Strike, when Democratic President Grover
Cleveland called in federal troops and provoked violence, resulting in
the deaths of 13 strikers — cemented his opposition to the Democrats and
his commitment to socialism.
During his campaigns, Debs used his platform to explain why workers had
to have their own organization independent of both capitalist parties.
He suggested that disaffected Democrats should find a new place with the
socialists, as he did in a 1904 speech in Indianapolis:
In referring to the Democratic Party in this discussion, we may save
time by simply saying that since it was born again at the St. Louis
convention, it is near enough like its Republican ally to pass for a
twin brother. The former party of the “common people” is no longer under
the boycott of the plutocracy, since it has adopted the Wall Street
label and renounced its middle class heresies.
The radical and progressive elements of the former Democracy have been
evicted and must seek other quarters. They were an unmitigated nuisance
in the conservative counsels of the old party. They were for the “common
people,” and the trusts have no use for such a party.
Where but to the Socialist Party can these progressive people turn? They
are no one without a party, and the only genuine Democratic Party in the
field is the Socialist Party, and every true Democrat should thank Wall
Street for driving him out of a party that is democratic in name only,
and into one that is democratic in fact.
During his 1908 campaign — with Debs traveling across the country on a
train called the “Red Special” to campaign — he spoke to nearly half a
million people.
Some 323 newspapers and periodicals took up the cause of socialism that
year. The Appeal to Reason, one of the most widely read socialist
papers, reached a circulation of 600,000 papers in 1912. Debs’ campaign
translated not only into votes for socialism, but a significant growth
in the membership of the party, especially in places where left-wing
chapters supported local struggles.
As historian Ira Kipnis points out in The American Socialist Movement,
1897-1912, the SP in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where members participated
in union activity and strikes, experienced a 300 percent increase in
Socialist votes from 1908.
WITHIN THE Socialist Party — which was a broad tent, including
revolutionaries like Debs and more conservative socialists like Victor
Berger of the Wisconsin SP — there were divisions about what could
accomplished with these election campaign.
While Debs ran on a platform of workers organizing themselves and
joining socialist organization, other prominent SP members disagreed
with Debs’ revolutionary rhetoric and confined themselves to what they
considered reasonable demands — with the idea that this would get them
elected more easily, which was their primary goal as socialist candidates.
By 1912, infighting among the different wings with conflicting goals
created disarray inside the party. Debs made an appeal at the time for
the party to reject opportunism — including candidates tailoring their
message to get elected — and affirm its commitment to socialist
organization and the idea of workers’ power, with elections serving as
only one means to these ends.
Debs made this plea in 1911 in an article titled “Danger Ahead”:
Voting for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal.
Socialism must be organized drilled, equipped and the place to begin is
in the industries where the workers are employed...Without such economic
organization and the economic power with which it is clothed, and
without the industrial co-operative training, discipline and efficiency
which are its corollaries, the fruit of any political victories the
workers may achieve will turn to ashes on their lips.
Obviously, much has changed since Debs ran for president 100 years ago,
but his example can help guide socialists today.
If elections can help socialists convince others to be part of building
an independent political alternative and strengthen left-wing
organization at the grassroots, we want to participate — but this must
include challenging the two capitalist parties that dominate the U.S.
political system.
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