To Combat Trump, And Democrats, U.S. Socialists Need Laser Focus

The Left should reject identity politics in favor of an oppositional economic platform and credible, progressive policy solutions.

As bad as the Left fares in any particular election, there will always be space for egalitarian politics in a world where the elite have enormous power and wealth and the vast majority struggle to get by. A right-wing Supreme Court might dismantle the National Labor Relations Board and severely curb collective bargaining, but as long as the objective contradiction between capital and labor exists, there will always be battles for justice in the workplace.

Yet looking at this longue durée isn’t much conciliation with Donald Trump coming back to power.

Far more than socialists, Democratic Party leadership should own November’s outcome. President Joe Biden failed to communicate the merits of his domestic agenda to Americans. He didn’t direct public ire about the economy towards profiteers or speak with urgency about the impact of inflation on ordinary people. Instead, Democrats spent much of the last four years saying everything was fine, and hoping abortion rights and “protecting democracy” would be enough to keep them in power.

Now is a time for the Left to show its distance from the Democratic Party’s elites and their discredited style of politics.

The first thing to do is to make sure socialist politics are oppositional and rooted in working-class communities. One way is to identify villains — from grocery giant CEOs at the national level to corporate landlords at the local level — that people can blame for their difficulties. Programmatically, we need to focus on the pocketbook issues that workers care about the most. That means not only providing rhetoric but having credible policy answers to both the distributional and supply aspects of problems like the housing crisis.

We’re at our weakest when our demands seem both maximalist and contrary to popular interests, like police abolition. The Left is at its strongest when it has a credible social-democratic response to a problem: “Can’t afford health insurance? Well, we have this policy called Medicare for All that would give everyone free insurance and a direct relationship with their doctor unmediated by expensive, third-party insurances. We can win this good policy, but we need your help to take on vampiric health executives and their allies in Congress.”

It is important to remember, if we campaign on everything, we campaign on nothing. In the coming years, we need to pursue a ruthlessly focused politics that highlights issues that will best build a popular base for the Left.