The Democratic Constitution Strategy Is the Blueprint for a New Party; That Means Voting for Democrats in 2024, Even Biden

Gil Schaeffer presents a strategy for building an ideologically and organizationally independent party.

Photography by David De Hart

Seth Ackerman wrote A Blueprint for a New Party seven and a half years ago.  Because we are in the middle of another presidential election campaign, and because that campaign is taking place simultaneously with the genocide in Gaza, and because the problem of how the Left should relate to the Democratic Party is consequently the subject of intense debate, it would be useful to assess where we stand regarding the problem set out by Ackerman in 2016.  I will follow Ackerman’s use of “Left” rather than “Socialist” to refer to this prospective new party (the word socialist does not appear in Ackerman’s article) because the undemocratic structure of the US Constitution is an enormous problem in its own right distinct from socialism, as Ackerman himself outlined in Burn the Constitution in 2011, and because the Left has been jointly defined by both democracy and socialism since the French Revolution.

Ackerman’s main argument was that the US state-enforced, two-party, winner-take-all political system makes it impossible for an independent third party to compete and survive on its own ballot line (at least for the foreseeable future).  His proposed solution to this dilemma was that the Left should still seek to form its own independent political party, but this party should run its candidates (mainly) in the primaries and on the ballot line of the Democratic Party.  Bernie Sanders proved it is possible to use the relatively open Democratic Party primary system to promote Left policies, but Ackerman cautioned we should not place our hopes on the personal whims of individual politicians.  He argued that only a democratic mass membership party with its own program and elected leadership is capable of providing the long-term strategic vision and organizational continuity required for political effectiveness.

Of course, not everyone in DSA agreed with Ackerman’s analysis.  There were many members of the organization who remained committed to a strategy Ackerman called “working within the Democratic Party.”  This “party-less” strategy ceded political initiative to the individual politicians who put themselves forward every election cycle as representatives of “‘the democratic wing of the Democratic Party.’  Each generates a flurry of positive coverage in progressive media and a ripple of excitement within a narrow circle of progressive activists and voters,” but none follow through to create a permanent mass membership organization with its own program and strategy free from the individual politician’s personal control, not even Sanders.

Advocates of ”working within the Democratic Party” (Ackerman cited Harold Myerson as a representative example) disagreed with the independent party proposal because they feared it would lead to abstention from voting for Democrats.  Those fears were not baseless.  A number of traditional third party advocates, such as Kshama Sawant, supported Sanders in the 2016 primary but voted for the Green Party in the general election.  Ackerman believed this “spoiler” problem was real and sought to avoid it by suggesting leftists should keep voting for Democrats until the new party was strong enough to run credible alternatives of its own.

I agree with Ackerman’s structural analysis of the US electoral system and with his plan for an ideologically and organizationally independent Left party, and I also agree Leftists should keep voting for Democrats until there is a viable alternative; but his one-line programmatic proposal for this new party, “it needs to be a real vehicle and voice for working-class interests,” was obviously a placeholder requiring further elaboration.

Since 2016, others have built on Ackerman’s independent party idea, mainly by making explicit that by “Left” they mean “Socialist.”  However, there are important differences of emphasis within this broad political position.  The most recent articles discussing these differences are Chris Maisano, Like It or Not, the Left Can't Get Away From the Democrats, Nick French’s response to Maisano, The Left Can't Abandon Political Independence, Maisano’s response to French, The Left's Electoral Strategy Is Working.  Let's Keep Building It, and Oren Schweitzer, Getting to Work on Acting Like An Independent Party.  I want to add five propositions to this discussion:

1. Socialism by itself is too narrow a foundation on which to build a political movement of the Left.  The political theory of democratic republicanism beginning with the Levellers and running through the work of Tom Paine, the French Revolution, Chartism, the early Marx and Engels, the US Civil War and Reconstruction, the Marxism of the First and Second Internationals, and the US Civil Rights Movement is just as important as the economic theory of socialism for the formation of a Left party.  DSA does recognize the essential importance of democracy to the socialist movement, but its understanding of this relationship is underdeveloped;

2. The main expression of the neglect of democratic republican thinking in DSA is the reluctance to identify the political system created by our undemocratic Constitution as the central obstacle to achieving socialism.  The demand for a democratic constitution based on the principle of one person, one equal vote should be DSA’s primary political goal;

3. To fight the Right and advance the struggle for democracy, we not only have to oppose Trump and the Republicans but also the hollow claims of the Democratic Party that it is defending democracy.  The Democrats rely on the undemocratic Senate and other undemocratic features of our political system just as much as the Republicans to fund their wars and block progressive legislation. To highlight this hypocrisy, the “democratic wing of the Democratic Party” should propose the party change its name to the Democratic Constitution Party and add the goal of a democratic constitution to the party’s platform;

4. The Democratic Party became a reform party in the Great Depression, partly to undermine the emergence of an independent left and partly as a strategy to advance its international economic policies over the more domestically based Republicans (see Thomas Ferguson).  Despite the Democrats’ Right Turn in the 1970s, many New Deal and Civil Rights reforms are still in place, which is why millions still vote for the Democrats.  Voting for Democrats as part of a democratic constitution strategy does not mean the Democrat Party’s leadership is a lesser evil.  It only means the Democratic Party’s current electoral arrangements are places to carry on the struggle for democracy and socialism.  At bottom, the fundamental fault line in American politics runs between those who are for democracy and those who are against it, and that fault line runs through the Democratic Party itself.  The aim of the democratic constitution strategy is to separate real democrats from fake democrats and create a genuinely democratic party. 

5. Finally, in reaction to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, some have put forward a No Votes For Genocide Resolution.  If that means remaining uncommitted in the contest between Biden and Trump, then that is a short-sighted reaction that will detract from the formation of an independent Left party dedicated to winning the battle for democracy as the prerequisite for any major progressive change up to and including socialism.

Chris Maisano, “Like It or Not.  The Left Can’t Get Away from the Democrats”

Going only by the title, one might think Maisano is in the “working within the Democratic Party” camp rather than Ackerman’s “independent party” camp, but that would be a mistake.  Maisano is not against Ackerman’s independent party idea as such, only the particular proposals for an independent party currently on the table.  It is admittedly difficult to distinguish Maisano’s pragmatic disagreements with current party proposals from outright rejection of the independent party idea itself because Maisano has many positive things to say about Michael Harrington’s realignment strategy, the “working within the Democratic Party” strategy’s original name.  A few of Maisano’s Harrington-like assessments are:

After beginning to find success through Democratic Party electoral politics, many     socialists—including many in DSA, the traditional home of the realignment strategy—want to run away from it as quickly as possible….

The impulse to reject a realignment strategy is understandable, but such rejection’s long record of practical futility should give us pause….

The American left, despite its best efforts, has never been able to set itself up fully independently of liberalism….

Socialists should come to terms with what this implies, namely the strong unlikelihood of ever having a major labor-based third party….

If democratic socialists want to be politically effective, they need to act, for the purposes of electoral politics, as a left-wing faction of the Democratic Party….

Nick French, “The Left Can’t Abandon Political Independence”

Nick French does not think socialists should settle for being a mere faction within the Democratic Party.  Because he believes the Democratic brand has become politically toxic, he thinks socialists have no choice but to establish their own ideological and organizational independence.  Even without creating a third-party ballot line, socialists can achieve this goal by following the three steps contained in the “Act Like an Independent Party” Amendment passed at the 2023 DSA Convention: 1) develop a list of voters separate from the Democratic Party apparatus, 2) build “Socialists in Office” committees, and 3) create a unified communications network so that socialists can publicly present themselves as an alternative to the Democratic Party establishment.

There is more in French’s article about Michael Harrington and the history of realignment efforts since the 1960s, but it is better to address that issue after reviewing Maisano’s response to French

Chris Maisano, “The Left’s Electoral Strategy Is Working.  Let’s Keep Building It.”

Maisano is puzzled by French’s argument:

I disagree with the thrust of French’s argument, yet I found myself agreeing with some of his specific points and propositions: the need to elect democratic socialists to office through Democratic Party primary elections; the usefulness of ‘party surrogate’-style organizations like Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); the often undemocratic nature of official Democratic Party institutions like state or local committees; and the need for the socialist left to maintain its own political identity. None of this is in question here, yet we find ourselves disagreeing with each other.  Why?

Unfortunately, Maisano’s answer to this Why? question confuses more than it clarifies.  The problem lies in his making two closely related assumptions: 1) that an independent Left ballot line must be a third-party ballot line, and 2) that advocating for an independent Left party is equivalent to advocating for a third-party ballot line. Neither is true.  George McGovern, a progressive antiwar candidate, won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972; and Bernie Sanders ran competitive campaigns in both 2016 and 2020.   That is proof the Left does not necessarily need a third ballot line to promote its politics.  The corollary is that advocating for an independent Left party does not necessarily entail leaving the Democratic Party and establishing a third ballot line.  That may be French’s ultimate intention, but there is also the possibility of the Left gaining a majority position within the Democratic Party itself.

French rejects the idea of transforming the Democratic Party from within because he thinks it is tantamount to accepting some form of an electoral coalition with wealthy donors and pro-capitalist party elites.  On this point, Maisano and Eric Blanc, We Should Focus on Scaling Up Working-Class Power, Not Debating the Dirty Break, have the better argument: socialists have already demonstrated it is possible to differentiate themselves from corporate Democrats while still using the Democratic ballot line.  This conflict within the Democratic Party will continue and has two possible outcomes: 1) the Democratic establishment might change electoral rules to exclude the Left, or 2) the Left could win a majority and the establishment might withdraw and attempt to sabotage the Left, as it did in 1972 against McGovern and threatened to do against Sanders in 2016 and 2020.  In either case, the Left would then have a strong claim to be the real democratic party.  In both cases the Left would end up with its own ballot line, but by a different route than envisioned by French.

However, if I side with Maisano and Blanc against French about where the Left party should focus its activities, I differ with all three about what the political content and aim of that activity should be.  Rather than socialism being the primary ideology and aim, democracy and a democratic constitution should be the primary ideology and aim.  Oren Schweitzer takes a small step in that direction.

Oren Schweitzer, “Getting to Work on Acting Like an Independent Party”

Within what is otherwise a reiteration of French’s view on the path to an independent party, Schweitzer adds that YDSA passed a “Winning the Battle for Democracy” Resolution at its 2023 Convention urging:

DSA as a whole to take up a stance of opposition to the Constitution, openly indicting it as undemocratic and oppressive, encouraging all DSA members in office to do the same, taking concrete actions to advance the struggle for a democratic republic such as agitating against undemocratic judicial review, fighting for proportional representation, delegitimizing the anti-democratic U.S. Senate, and advancing the long-term demand for a new democratic constitution.

Schweitzer also adds that the fight for a democratic state has historically been a central demand in socialist and Marxist party programs for centuries, but he then drops the problem of an undemocratic Constitution and moves on to a discussion of Kim Moody’s theory of base building and a plan to scale up New York City DSA’s Socialists in Office strategy to the federal level.  There’s the catch: the Constitution stands in the way of scaling up state political strategies, which benefit from the Supreme Court’s "one person, one vote" rule of representation, to the national level, which doesn’t.  That leaves us in the same position as past socialist parties who made winning the battle for democracy their primary goal.

The Similarity Between 1968 and 2024

The Left today faces many of the same questions the Left faced in 1968.  In 1968, an unpopular Democratic administration was prosecuting a war of mass murder.  Some of the antiwar forces tried to reform the Democratic Party from the inside, while others sought to build an anti-imperialist Left completely separate from the Democratic Party on the outside. And in the presidential election of 1968, the Democratic nominee faced a notoriously reactionary anti-communist.  

The reform forces within the Democratic Party succeeded over the next several years in both democratizing the presidential primary system and nominating an anti-war progressive in 1972 (though this temporary “realignment” of the Democratic Party against the Vietnam War had nothing to do with Michael Harrington’s version of an anti-communist, labor-based realignment: Harrington did not oppose the war until 1972).  But the Democratic establishment, including AFL-CIO President George Meany, publicly undermined the McGovern campaign and soon took back much of the party after McGovern’s overwhelming defeat.

The independent anti-imperialist left eventually developed into the New Communist Movement (NCM), but its expectations of an intensifying imperialist crisis and its plan to form a new revolutionary party were upended by Mao’s meeting with Nixon in 1972 and the end of the Vietnam War.  In Max Elbaum’s interpretation in Revolution in the Air, the NCM was blinded by its adoption of orthodox Marxism-Leninism and failed to understand these changes.  He further concludes there is nothing to be salvaged from the Leninist tradition, which he thinks is irredeemably sectarian; but Elbaum fails to take into account the extent to which Marxist-Leninist ideology was a distortion of the pre-1917 Lenin in particular and Russian and Second International Marxism in general.  Neil Harding, Lenin's Political Thought (1977), and Hal Draper, "The Myth of Lenin's 'Concept of the Party'" (1990), had already dismantled this myth before Revolution in the Air was published in 2002; and Lars Lih, Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (2006), has added to the reevaluation of Lenin since then; yet Elbaum still hasn’t taken these studies into account: “Learning from the New Communist Movement,” Jacobin Interview, 9/30/2018.

I have my own history of the New Left and the New Communist Movement, “You Can't Use Weatherman to Show Which Way the Wind Blew,” that does take into account the Harding-Draper-Lih view of Lenin and places the primary goal of the 1903 Programme of the RSDLP at the center of its analysis:

Therefore, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party takes as its most immediate political task the overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy and its replacement by a democratic republic, the constitution of which would ensure:

1. Sovereignty of the people—that is, concentration of supreme state power wholly in the hands of a legislative assembly consisting of representatives of the people and forming a single chamber.

2. Universal, equal and direct suffrage, in elections both to the legislative assembly and to all local organs of self-government, for all citizens and citizenesses who have attained the age of 20; secret ballot at elections; the right of every voter to be elected to any representative body; biennial parliaments; payment of the people’s representatives.

My first thought when I read this in 1971 was: the US needs this, too!  Since then, Lenin and a democratic constitution have been fused together in my brain.

The Difference Between 1968 and 2024

The two most important political and ideological differences between 1968 and 2024 are: 1) most of the reforms of the Democratic Party primary system are still operative and provide openings for the Left to challenge the Democratic establishment; and 2) since 1968 the intellectual and political history of the democratic republican component of classical Marxism has been recovered.  In combination, these two changes supply the elements of a democratic strategy that is ideologically and organizationally independent of the Democratic Party leadership but uses the Democratic Party primary system and ballot line to displace that leadership.

There is no hint of awareness in the No Votes For Genocide (NVFG) proposal of these two changes and their political potential. The first clause of NVFG claims “DSA’s opposition to the genocide in Palestine is how we are most visibly independent of the Democratic Party,” yet the Resolved section acknowledges there are also many opposed to the genocide who will nevertheless vote for Biden and other Democrats in order to block Trump and the Republicans.  Like the traditional third-party conception of political independence, NVFG wants to draw people out of the Democratic Party rather than build on Ackerman’s conception of forming an independent party that avoids the spoiler role. 

NVFG recognizes its abstentionism is vulnerable to the charge of aiding and abetting a Trump victory and makes two arguments to deflect responsibility.  First, it adopts a “don’t blame us, blame Biden” stance if Trump should win; and, second, it confesses DSA is actually too small [and too concentrated in blue states] to have an impact on the presidential election anyway.  Since it is true DSA is too small to affect this presidential election, the main purpose of NVFG is to project an ideology and strategy for DSA’s future.  Like French, NVFG views the Democratic brand as toxic and seeks “to mobilize, organize, and retain the increasing number of dissatisfied workers, particularly young workers, and workers of color, who are opposing Biden and the Democratic Party because they support Israel’s genocidal occupation of Palestine.”  This view of the Left’s political base is too narrow and short-sighted.  Opposition to the Palestinian genocide is also taking place within the Democratic Party and is certain to be a major point of conflict at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

DSA should take the concept of a “democratic wing of the Democratic Party” literally. Neither the US Constitution nor the Democratic Party are democratic, and DSA should contest the claim they are by committing itself to the traditional democratic republican goal of a democratic constitution.  Marx and Engels’ great political innovation was to add the goal of socialism to democracy, not to replace democracy with socialism.  DSA should do the same: the democratic constitution strategy is the blueprint for a new party.