Capitalism is in deep decay. The capitalist class has dragged us along their desperate quest for short-term profits, while the rest of us pay with long-term consequences. They bomb civilians, they wreck the planet, and no working person can say their life is any better. Sitting at the helm of this ship, plummeting toward the rocks, is billionaire authoritarian Donald Trump.

Working people know that the future we face is completely untenable and increasingly understand that our lives are run by the billionaire class. But the question is, how can we possibly free ourselves from billionaire rule? We need a force that unites us as a class—regardless of race, gender, nationality, or religion—and charts a way forward to fight Trump, the far right, and the capitalist system as a whole. Each day another immigrant is deported, another bomb is dropped, or another heat record is broken, this question becomes increasingly urgent.

One thing is for certain: that force is not the Democratic Party. And it’s not just socialists who think the Democrats are terrible at fighting the right wing—going into this midterm year, a record high 73% of voters disapproved of the way the Democrats are handling their jobs. When Trump invaded Minnesota, it wasn’t Minneapolis’s Democratic Mayor Frey who put a stop to the violent ICE operations, but a mass movement of resistance and the power of unions backed by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who carried out the first general strike the US has seen in decades. We need a new workers’ party, with working-class leadership, to give sustained structure to struggles like these.

The Case For A New Party

With the Republican Party completely in the pocket of Trump, and the Democratic Party sitting on their hands, it is hardly a surprise that 45% of US adults identify as politically independent, a record high. This number is higher with millennials (54%) and even higher with Gen Z (56%). When “double haters”—those who dislike both main parties—were asked for their reasons, the failure of both parties to stand up to Trump tops the list. The desire for something new is locked and loaded—all that is needed is to pull the trigger and launch a new party.

The Democratic Party establishment is rotten to its core, thoroughly corrupted by the corporations and billionaires it’s tied to. Look no further than 2028 presidential hopeful and Democratic Governor of California Gavin Newsom, who is disingenuously calling for a national billionaire tax while actively opposing a ballot initiative for a state-level billionaire tax. This is in a state home to 250 billionaires and over 180,000 unhoused people (nearly a quarter of all unhoused people in the US).

Recent progressive victories in the Democratic primaries—such as those backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani—offer a glimmer of hope for many working people (see box below) that the party can be pushed to the left. But is the Democratic Party even the right tool for the job?

We need a new political party that actually fights for what the working class needs and wages war against the billionaires—many of whom benefit from the Trump regime—instead of playing nice with them. This means a political party that doesn’t accept corporate donations, has fully recallable leadership and elected officials who take an average worker’s wage, and that can serve as a home for democratic (lower-case “d”) discussion and debate about its platform and the way forward. Such a party would serve not just as an electoral vehicle, but as a permanent working-class organization that actively builds social and labor struggles—from the local level all the way up to a nationwide scale—and whose candidates are rooted in this work.

The Democratic Party cannot be reformed into such a party. This is because the capitalist Democratic Party is so deeply rooted—structurally, financially, and politically—in the interests of corporations, not ours. The biggest enemy of any progressive who runs within the Democratic Party is the party itself, whose billionaire backers will stop at nothing to crush or co-opt them over time if they win. Attempts to reform the Democratic Party over the last decade by so-called democratic socialists Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the Squad have failed. It’s time to stop making the same mistake again and again. If we want to defeat Trump and win real gains for our class, it will take opposing the system that put Trump at its head, and both capitalist political parties, which serve that system.

Democrats Now, New Party Later?

The Democratic and Republican Parties may be tied to many of the same corporations, but that doesn’t mean that they are the same. Trump’s Republican Party has been transformed into a party of right-wing “yes men,” with its worst elements embracing white supremacist ideology. By that measure, one could reasonably argue that the Democratic Party isn’t “that bad.” A new party sounds good, but shouldn’t we at least vote Democrat for now to slow Trump down?

It is completely understandable that many working people see voting for Democrats as a way to stop Trump’s pro-war, anti-immigrant, anti-trans agenda. Unfortunately, “harm reduction” voting and choosing the lesser evil to slow down the greater evil has proven to be a resounding failure. 

Six years ago, after the DNC establishment blocked Bernie Sanders for the second time, Joe Biden was propped up as the presidential nominee, alongside “top cop” Kamala Harris. At the time, Socialist Alternative critically supported Sanders’ campaign and called on him to launch a new independent party to serve as a base for his millions of supporters who wanted to fight the billionaire class. Unfortunately, Sanders and others on the left fell behind the liberal strategy of getting Biden elected and then “pushing him left.” His victory against Trump in 2020 was celebrated as an end to four dark years, supposedly consigning Trump to the history books. But this honeymoon was brief, and the far-right January 6 insurrection should have served as a warning to all those who believed it.

Biden was not pushed to the left. Any discussion of Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and a federal $15/hour minimum wage was completely dropped. Despite majority control of both houses of Congress for two years, the Democratic Party failed to codify Roe v. Wade into law, provided no answers to the cost-of-living crisis, and wrote a blank check using US tax dollars for war against Russia and the genocidal onslaught in Gaza. The Democratic Party did not defeat Trump—their failures galvanized the far right and rolled out the red carpet for Trumpism to come back stronger, more coordinated, and far more dangerous.

Since Trump’s re-election, the Democrats have done nothing meaningful to stop him. Instead of standing firmly against draconian attacks on trans people, they’ve voted for sports bans. Instead of building a movement to fight the racist threat against the Voting Rights Act, they’re pouring money into gerrymandering. Even Bernie Sanders publicly expressed agreement with Trump’s border policy. Any step to the left is followed by two steps to the right, bending to the right wing instead of opposing it.

Some may ask, “What can they possibly do as a minority in Congress?” Trump’s administration is historically unpopular, providing countless openings for a real fighting party to seize. His immigration crackdown provoked enormous protests culminating in a general strike—a working-class party would use elected positions in coordination with its affiliated labor unions to escalate the strike movement to a crisis point for the regime. His wars repulse workers across the political spectrum—a workers’ party would call for mass protests and strikes against war.

But disrupting business as usual and the flow of profits is not an option for the Democratic Party, who value their relationships with rich donors more than the lives of ordinary people. Democrats are terrified that if they unleash a mass movement against Trump, it won’t stop there but would continue to demand policies that they too oppose. This would undermine capitalism itself, which both parties serve. 

A midterm “blue wave” may be a welcome reprieve from total right-wing rule, but it would not solve the fundamental issues facing working people, nor would it quell the further rise of the right. Also, Trump will not be a traditional lame duck. Though facing mounting challenges from both working-class struggle and opposition from within his own party, he will work overtime to find every avenue to plow forward with his reactionary agenda. Trump is a convicted felon who has already been impeached once. He has no regard for who holds what seat and has no problem throwing even his closest political allies under the bus. Trump will not be defeated through the courts or through Congressmen shaking hands. Trumpism will only be defeated through working-class power, which will be held back as long as we tie ourselves to the Democratic Party. The stakes are too high to continue to kick this project down the road.

What Way Toward A New Party?

Deep dissatisfaction with the two-party system does not mean that a new party will simply drop from the sky. It must be actively built by the labor movement, social movements, left activists, and ordinary working people. Every hour, every dime, that unions, NGOs, and left organizations put toward electing more Democrats is time and money that should be put toward building a new workers’ party. 

Some left activists believe we need electoral reform before a new party is possible. No doubt, our electoral system is far from democratic, with the electoral college essentially giving more power to vacant land than to high concentrations of people of color. In addition to abolishing the electoral college, reforms like ranked choice voting are raised as a way to make room for third-party candidates that avoids the “spoiler effect.” While socialists should get behind any serious effort toward pro-working-class electoral reform, it needs to be connected to the building of a new party, not an excuse to put it off. The Democratic Party has no interest in reforming an electoral system to benefit working-class candidates over their corporate candidates. We cannot wait for electoral reform to start building a new party.

Others on the labor left argue that we need a stronger labor movement before we can build a new workers’ party. This argument overlooks the impact that a new workers’ party could have on the labor movement, including a revival of militant struggle. Instead of funneling union dues into electing Democrats, unions could put real resources into seriously organizing the unorganized and building militant struggle. For example, imagine if the Minneapolis labor leaders who helped organize their general strike worked with national labor leaders like Shawn Fain of UAW to use the explosive energy of the anti-ICE struggle to launch a new political party, one that could translate that heroic struggle to building the labor movement and ramping up resistance across the country?

So how can we get this party started? Certainly a sizable break from the Democrats led by left-wing officeholders such as Bernie or Zohran would provide the critical mass needed to win the confidence of workers across the country. This doesn’t appear likely in the near-term, but it shouldn’t be ruled out. It could also be kick-started if several left-wing unions pulled their purses from the Democrats and announced campaigns for independent candidates on working-class platforms, as a step toward building an enduring independent political vehicle. Rank-and-file workers, disgusted with both parties, will need to exert pressure to make this happen, but these campaigns could serve as real challenges to the right while exposing the bankruptcy of the Democrats.

Trump has provoked immense struggle over the last year. If anti-ICE rapid response groups, for example, put up independent candidates to challenge milquetoast Democrats and rallied a similar level of community involvement to campaign for them, it would generate huge support. This would cut across the all-too-common tale of the Democratic Party co-opting our movements, but also across the anti-electoral apathy that sometimes exists in movements. By coordinating with and supporting other independent working-class candidates, the foundation can be built for a common platform linked to a new party.

For ten years, Socialist Alternative used our independent elected Seattle City Council as a beacon of mass movements. Councilmember and Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant served as an organizer of working people—in the struggle for a $15/hour minimum wage, the movement to tax Amazon, fights for renters’ rights, and more. The Democrats aimed to block Sawant every step of the way, siding with Amazon execs, landlords, and even pro-Trump billionaires instead of with the working-class Marxist and the movements we helped build. But because of the power of our fighting movement of ordinary people, they lost, again and again.

Despite the immense power expressed from one small council seat and the mass movement behind it, electing independents alone is not enough. As union activist and organizer Jonathan Rosenblum writes in his book We’re Coming For You and Your Rotten System, which details ten years of our socialist council office, “1,000 Kshamas wouldn’t solve the problems of the working class; to win radical change we need a powerful working-class movement, centered in the labor movement, that has strength, militancy, and political independence.”

Popularizing a decisive break with the Democratic Party is a central task to building real movements with teeth. This should include rank-and-file workers, community organizations, and left activists putting mass pressure on labor and left leaders to begin building a new political party. 

A Step Toward The End Goal

The formation of a new party will be far from perfect. There will be much debate around what kind of political program the party should adopt, who should lead it, and what tactics it should take up. We’re not just looking for more options to choose from. We need a true workers’ party that is run by working people and actually stands for what we need.

Fighting to raise the minimum wage to at least $25/hour, creating a new green jobs program, canceling all student debt, and taxing the rich to fund public education, affordable housing for all, and universal healthcare—this would be the start. A new party must also go beyond economic demands, opposing all imperialist war and fighting against all attacks on the oppressed, including trans people and immigrants. To properly resource a society that truly represents the interests of ordinary people, the biggest banks and corporations will need to be taken into public ownership as part of a broader democratic plan for the economy.

A government implementing these demands would create a monumental clash with a system predicated on profit. We can achieve them, but only by replacing the capitalist system, which bases production and distribution on the profit motive, with a socialist economy based on public ownership and democratic workers’ control.

Such a threat to capitalism’s power would be met with colossal backlash from the ruling class and would require a massive, revolutionary struggle. As socialists, we see a new workers’ party as a crucial step toward the kind of working-class power that can carry out this transformation of society. When we base our movements in the power of the multiracial, multigender, multinational working class, we can defeat the bosses who divide us. 

Socialism is not a lofty utopia—it’s the only viable answer to a system of exploitation, oppression, and crisis. Socialism is possible, but only if we build the weapon needed to fight for it. That weapon is the organized working class with a revolutionary leadership at the tip. It’s time to break with the billionaires and build the new workers’ party we desperately need!

DSA Wins Big In Midterm Primaries
by Atalya Tamara

Last month, three Zohran Mamdani-endorsed candidates—Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and liberal Democrat Brad Lander—won their Democratic primary races. Their campaigns highlighted their opponents’ backing by AIPAC and called to cut all military aid to Israel.

After Zohran’s victory in November, this sweep of left congressional candidates, dubbed the “Hateful Slate” by the right-wing New York Post, has once again shaken up the Democratic establishment. All three candidates ran on affordability platforms, calling for affordable housing, universal healthcare, and taxing the rich.

Joining these self-described democratic socialists are Janeese Lewis George who is poised to win DC’s mayoral race, Melat Kiros who trounced an incumbent in Colorado’s congressional primaries, and Nithya Raman who will face LA Mayor Karen Bass in the second round of elections.

Despite the idea that in order for Democrats to win they must pander to the center, the DSA-backed primary victories reflect that working people are increasingly disgusted by war, the devastation in Gaza, and endless military aid to Israel. This is a revolt against the Democratic Party establishment.

But winning quality affordable housing, higher wages, and a complete end to perpetual US military spending requires building militant mass movements that use class struggle tactics like walkouts and strikes—organizing outside of election campaigns. The far-reaching change that these candidates stand for can’t be won without this approach, an approach completely unacceptable to the Democratic Party. Every genuine fighter who has won their race in the past within the Democrats has made mass movements secondary at best, and therefore had little chance of withstanding incredible levels of pressure and co-optation by the establishment. 

Real victories will require organizing completely independent of the Democrats, who reject class struggle tactics that challenge the status quo and halt the flow of profits.