Bia Lacombe was formerly Chief of Staff of Kshama Sawant’s City Council office.

Marxists fight for the independent interests of the working class. The reality is that neither Trump or Harris represent working people. They represent the billionaires and the capitalist system, which breeds war, climate disaster, and suffering for billions around the world. 

Socialist Alternative has endorsed Jill Stein in this presidential election because working people desperately need a political party in the US that represents us. We’ll never get there by voting for Democrats or Republicans every four years—we think every vote for a left, independent anti-war candidate like Jill Stein is a refusal to remain confined within the failed two-party system. It’s a demand for something new. 

While endorsing Jill Stein, we don’t think that the Green Party is the working-class party we need—the Greens are largely absent from politics until the presidential elections come around, and they don’t participate meaningfully in social struggle or the labor movement to fight for real gains for the working class. 

But Stein is the strongest independent left candidate running right now, and millions of votes for her would show that a significant section of ordinary people in the US are fully serious about breaking with the Democrats and Republicans. If built on, a strong third-party vote could be an important step toward a new party. 

There are serious dangers of a second Trump presidency, and we understand the fears that are pushing many working people to vote for Harris as a vote against the far right. Trump represents a particularly sharp right authoritarian danger and another Trump administration will feed the further normalization and growth of the right wing. 

But as Marxists, first and foremost we recognize the longer-term process taking place where right populism and the far right have grown significantly—and can continue to grow unless seriously checked—in the context of capitalist crisis and the absence of a genuine left alternative. 

Harris and the Democrats, if they win, will only make this problem worse by failing to meaningfully improve the lives of working people who are then more easily won over to right wing ideas as an alternative. Our support for Jill Stein is not separate from the strategy we need to defeat the right, it’s a core part of it.

This is quite different from saying we want Trump to win. Unfortunately, not everyone on the left agrees with that.

Former Socialist Alternative City Council Member Calls For “Defeating Harris”

Kshama Sawant, former socialist Seattle city council member and former Socialist Alternative member, has been campaigning for Jill Stein. Sawant recently made headlines for saying that she and her organization Workers Strike Back (originally a Socialist Alternative initiative but now unaffiliated) are “fighting to defeat Harris, not just symbolically but in reality.”

Sawant and a group of thirty others split with Socialist Alternative earlier this year. This was fundamentally because they have abandoned the effort to build an explicitly revolutionary organization in favor of building an exclusively campaigning organization with a broader program. Tragically, Sawant’s socialist politics have been put on the backburner, and her new small group rarely mentions capitalism or socialism. Other significant political changes are taking place as well, such as de-emphasizing the call for a new working-class party independent of the Green Party.

At a rally this month in Dearborn, Michigan, Sawant said: 

“We are not in a position to win the White House. But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.”

She is, in so many words, saying she actually wants Trump to win in order to “punish the Democrats.” In an Instagram post, Workers Strike Back said, “… we are here to ruin the Democrats’ f**king night.” If Harris loses Michigan and the state goes red in November, Sawant and Workers Strike Back will cheer.

Trump winning is not punishment for the Democrats, it’s punishment for millions of working and oppressed people in the US and around the world. It would be nothing to celebrate, just as a continuation of the full support by Biden/Harris for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza is nothing to celebrate. We should also be clear that both parties are united in their drive towards a wider conflict between US and Chinese imperialism.

Socialist Alternative wholly disagrees with Sawant’s new approach, and given her past affiliation with our organization, we feel the need to clarify this. We are strong opponents of the Democrats, but it is genuinely shocking to hear that Sawant thinks it would be a “historic” victory for Kamala Harris to lose this election to Trump.

Trump 2.0 in the White House would be increasingly authoritarian and far more effective at enacting far-right policies than his first term. He and the far right pose specific dangers to the labor movement and oppressed people that no one should be flippant about. Trump winning would also be a massive boost to far-right parties and figures around the world, and his hardened base would be emboldened in terrifying ways.

For us, voting for Jill Stein isn’t about defeating Harris. Harris and Trump are both different figureheads for the billionaire class and bosses, who will continue this endless march toward imperialist war and impending climate collapse. A vote for Stein aims to raise independent working-class politics among people who might otherwise feel obligated to vote for Democrats or Republicans, as well as people who wouldn’t vote for either party. It can be a step toward building a new working class party that can defeat both corporate parties, not just the Democrats.

Whose Fault If The Democrats Lose?

A senior advisor to the Democratic National Committee recently said, “[Stein] put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016 and she’s ready to do it again. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.”

Let’s be very, very clear: A vote for a third party candidate is not a vote for Trump. It’s not the fault of independent voters if Democrats lose. The Democrats only have themselves to blame, as well as the totally undemocratic voting system in the US that they uphold. Ralph Nader is often held up as the example of how left-wing third party campaigns help the Republicans, but the actual history and numbers show this isn’t true.

Democrats have lost support everywhere, even in their traditional stronghold areas, for failing to improve the lives of working people because it would run counter to the interests of their billionaire donors. This is precisely why the Democrats are totally ineffective at fighting the right wing. Instead, Harris and Walz have moved to the right on nearly every issue! 

Harris could win back hundreds of thousands if not millions of votes if the Democrats refused to fund the Israeli military to push for a ceasefire in Gaza. But that’s not going to happen. The Democrats are so good at pushing voters away on this issue that Trump has the edge over Harris among Arab Americans, according to recent data from the Arab American Institute.

“Punishing” The Democrats

It’s not just Arab American voters turning toward Trump, it’s also an increasingly large section of Black and Latino voters, especially men. Many people of color planning to vote for Trump see it as a kind of protest vote against the status quo that has not gotten any better for them under the Democrats. And we shouldn’t forget that tens of millions of Americans will just stay home in November because they’re so disgusted with both candidates. 

A key point, then, of endorsing Jill Stein and a concrete third-party option is to offer an alternative to the Democrats that isn’t the right wing, and to pull them away from becoming disillusioned with politics completely. It’s a very good thing that the Abandon Harris organization has endorsed Jill Stein. But we disagree that the point is to punish Harris, and saying so will not help us win more votes, it hurts us.

Saying we need to punish the Democrats suggests that a protest vote will fundamentally alter their pro-billionaire, pro-imperialist war politics. It suggests that the Democrats won’t support Israel’s genocidal war anymore if we make them lose the election, even though socialists know that they will continue to support the Israeli state because of US imperialism’s geopolitical interests in the Middle East. 

Actually Ending The War On Gaza

Trump will continue the same brutal imperialist policies as the Democrats, and there is no question that he would continue funding the Israeli state with billions of our tax dollars going towards war and misery instead of funding crucial social programs. There will be no end to the slaughter with him in office. 

Saying you want Harris to lose immediately pushes away working and young people who are correctly worried about Trump. Many of those people are also extremely upset about what’s happening in Gaza with US support! The role of Marxists in this situation is to patiently win people over to the idea that fighting the far right and fighting US imperialism are the same struggle as fighting the corporate Democratic Party, and that we need to get independently organized in order to win.

But how could Sawant and WSB point that out, when they barely even mention capitalism or imperialism anymore? In their emails, they don’t say a word about the fundamental issue, which is capitalism’s inevitable drive toward war and destruction, and the need to fight against the entire system in order to end all wars for good.

What’s happening in Gaza didn’t simply begin with the Democrats, and “punishing” them won’t end it. Defeating Chinese imperialism is a priority for the US ruling class, and one the Democrats and Republicans agree on. Israel is the most important ally the US has in the Middle East to counter Iran, which is allied with China. That means ending US support for the Israeli military will require an international anti-imperialist mass movement that is prepared to take on the capitalist system itself with socialist revolution. 

Sawant used to know this, but it seems like it’s no longer her priority to tell the whole truth to the working class. 

Build, Organize, Fight The Right

Socialists shouldn’t be taking sides in this capitalist competition for the most bloodthirsty imperialist. Millions of working people are correctly fearful of another Trump presidency, and we can’t win them over to the idea of a new party with such insensitivity so as to seem totally ignorant to the very real dangers Trump represents. One key reason to oppose the Democrats is precisely because they can’t effectively fight the right, not because we’re okay with the right winning.

As we said in a recent article: “To stop right-wing attempts to scapegoat oppressed people, we need to go beyond sporadic waves of big protests. We need to build new fighting organizations with democratic structures independent of both capitalist parties. Protests should build up to escalating actions that can disrupt the billionaires’ profits. We need occupations, strikes, student walkouts, and mass direct action. This should all be coordinated and organized, which will require thousands of people to step up into action.” 

That’s the foundation on which a new party could be built. But again, none of that is really what Sawant and Workers Strike Back are calling for anymore, unfortunately. They’re overly focused on campaigning for Jill Stein to try and “punish the Democrats,” but in the process they’re actually giving the liberal establishment a gift and undermining support for independent politics among working people. 

Sawant and Stein have made it much easier for the Democratic Party and corporate media to attack independent voters, and the political establishment is taking full advantage of it. The majority of people who see what Sawant is saying will be horrified at seeing supposed leftists who think Trump winning could be positive.

Socialist Alternative members will be voting for Jill Stein in November, but more importantly we’ll be organizing on the ground in our communities, workplaces, and schools to fight back against the right wing in the (actually effective) ways the Democrats never will, and for what the working class needs and deserves. We’ll be fighting to rebuild a militant US labor movement and anti-war movement that can help spur the development of a new working-class party. If you’re sick of voting for the lesser evil and seeing things only get worse, you should join us.