The US midterm election is fast approaching and the Trump administration is plunging deeper into crisis. Trump’s second term has been devastating for working people. ICE thugs have murdered two more people in Houston and Maine. Billionaire tax breaks have plunged wealth inequality even deeper with more Americans reporting having to skip meals and delay doctor’s visits due to high costs. Campaign promises of being a “peace president” have been exposed for the lies they always were as funding for the genocide in Palestine continues and a war with Iran rages on.
Trump and the far right are bolder and more organized, pursuing the most reactionary agenda in modern US history. Shamefully, Democrats’ strategy for Trump 2.0 has been to shift to the right on virtually all issues. It is no wonder 73% of voters disapprove of the way Democrats are handling their jobs.
Both parties are determined to uphold a ruthless capitalist system that creates trillionaires like Elon Musk while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet. They are both funded by the same major corporations and serve the interests of the elite. As a result, many working-class people are concluding that neither party represents them. 47% of voters today are registered as independents, the highest mark in over a decade.
Ultimately, organizing protests and workplace actions including strikes will be needed to defeat Trump, ICE, and this whole rotten system. Building a new workers’ party that runs independent candidates on a clear left-wing, pro-worker program and organizes movements in the streets would be a boost to these struggles.
Socialist Alternative is supporting several independent candidates this election season. While we do have some political differences with them, a victory or strong vote for any of them can show it is possible to take on the two parties of big business.
Kshama Sawant for Congress in Seattle
The strongest independent candidate running this election cycle is former Seattle City Council member and socialist Kshama Sawant. Sawant is running on a program to end all military aid to Israel, for Medicare for All, for national rent control, and to shut down ICE and all detention centers. Importantly, and unlike any other independent candidates, the Sawant campaign makes the explicit call for building a new party.
For ten years, Sawant served on the Seattle City Council as a member of Socialist Alternative where we used our seat to build movements that won the first-in-the-nation $15/hour minimum wage in 2013 and a massive tax on Amazon and Seattle megacorporations to fund affordable housing in Black and brown neighborhoods. While Sawant chose to leave Socialist Alternative two years ago, we support her independent campaign against incumbent Adam Smith—a thoroughly corporate, pro-war establishment Democrat.
By using the profile of the council seat, victories like the Amazon Tax were won off the strength of working-class movements that included renters, union members, progressive faith-based activists, socialists, and all of the working people in Seattle who gave their time, energy, and donations to each campaign. The political backbone of this work was the collective leadership of our revolutionary socialist organization, Socialist Alternative.
Under this collective leadership, Sawant’s track record on the City Council was one of refusing backroom negotiations and compromise with corporate Democrats. Socialists must use elected office as an extension of a movement-building approach to force the establishment to address our demands. Our victories were not won through clever negotiation tactics behind closed doors carried out by some savvy politician. We took our battles out of the halls of power and into the streets with Sawant accountable to working-class movements.
If Sawant wins, being a lone Marxist in the US Congress will come with intense political pressure and challenges—both in standing up to the establishment of both parties and in fighting to deliver victories for working people. Delivering any part of Sawant’s program will take building a nationwide movement and connecting that to building a new party.
To overcome these pressures, Sawant will have to connect herself with the most fighting elements of the anti-Trump movement, which over the last year has brought millions of working and young people out into the streets, including in the largest single-day protest in US history. Unfortunately, Sawant has been somewhat dismissive of existing movements, including in a rally speech saying the general strike against ICE in Minneapolis was a “historic missed opportunity.” While the Minneapolis general strike was not perfect, it represented a colossal step forward for the movement, and ICE’s retreat from the Twin Cities has been the biggest blow dealt to Trump by working people so far.
In spite of these critiques, a victory for Sawant in Seattle and electing the first ever revolutionary socialist to Congress would be a major leap forward for the workers movement. It would show it is possible to defeat establishment Democrats in a federal race on a clear left-wing, socialist program. All those who live in Washington’s 9th Congressional District should vote socialist Kshama Sawant in the primary this Tuesday, August 4th!
Party for Socialism and Liberation Candidates
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a frequent organizer of anti-Trump protests nationwide, is running several candidates across the country. Among them are Andre Easton for Congress in the South Bronx, Jasmine Brown for Mayor of Pensacola, Florida, Joe Tache for Senate in Massachusetts, and Greg Levy for Senate in Ohio.
PSL’s election campaigns put forward many demands that can excite working and young people. All of their candidates have a clear left-wing program around economic issues, including calls for a $30/hour minimum wage, good union jobs for all, and rental assistance programs. PSL’s candidates take an anti-war stance, particularly against the genocide in Gaza, which is proving to be a major issue especially among young voters fed up with both parties’ warmongering policies.
Most of PSL’s candidates also emphasize the fact that capitalism is a broken system and the need to fight for a socialist world. A strong vote for PSL candidates, even if they don’t win any elections, will show the growing popularity of socialism in the midst of capitalist crisis. Socialist Alternative supports a vote for all PSL candidates where they are running.
PSL’s campaigns do have some important weaknesses that need to be addressed in order to strengthen the movement we are all fighting to build. These campaigns all avoid mention of some very key parts of PSL’s program, most notably their approach of providing cover and support for any enemy of US imperialism. This includes their support for Chinese and Russian imperialism and its defense of the right-wing dictatorial Iranian regime. Rather than taking a position of international working-class solidarity that unites workers against their ruling classes, PSL takes a nationalist position of backing one capitalist nation state against another. In practice, this means taking up a position of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Socialist Alternative opposes both US and Chinese imperialism, as well as the reactionary Iranian regime responsible for crushing the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement just a few years ago and killing tens of thousands in anti-regime protests earlier this year. Our approach is to stand firmly with workers of all countries in their struggles against imperialism and reactionary governments. This is why, for example, International Socialist Alternative has sections both in the US and China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to unite workers in their common struggle against both imperialist powers.
PSL’s campaigns are also inconsistent on taking up issues of oppression. While Greg Levy’s campaign raises demands to fight anti-Black racism like good union jobs for Black workers and community control over the police, Jasmine Brown’s website does not mention the need to build a fightback against the right wing’s attacks on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. There are pressures for left-wing candidates to lower or drop altogether a program on fighting special oppression. Unfortunately, recent polls show more Democratic voters believe the party needs to move to the right on immigration and transgender issues. But, we cannot fight the capitalist class without fighting for the whole working class. Socialists need to lead from the front in boldly fighting for the rights of all oppressed people.
Finally, PSL does not emphasize the need to build a movement to win any parts of its program, and it does not call for a new, mass working-class party, instead focusing narrowly on building PSL. The capitalist class and its politicians will fight tooth and nail against any socialist in office, and it will not be nearly enough to simply elect the “right” candidates. We need to organize on the streets and in our workplaces around a left-wing program and build towards a mass workers party where elected officials are democratically accountable to the members.
Left Progressives in DSA
The recent wave of primary election victories for democratic socialists as well as the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York show the potential for a new left-wing party to receive support.
Socialist Alternative has supported the campaigns of candidates running on working-class platforms but within the Democratic Party. This has included campaigning and knocking doors for candidates like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani. Even while confined by the Democratic Party, campaigns such as these can act as a lightning rod for working and young people looking for a left-wing alternative to corporate politics.
In the case of Mamdani, his campaign helped popularize demands like fast and free public buses, free childcare, and seizing properties from slumlords. Importantly, his campaign did not just exist on paper, but drew in over 100,000 working and young people to actively campaign for these demands. Recent DSA primary wins continue to express a rejection of the Democratic establishment and the status quo amongst ordinary people. This mood urgently needs to be connected to the building of a new workers’ party.
At a certain stage, these campaigns and seats will inevitably come into direct conflict with the thoroughly corporate Democratic Party. Socialists cannot coexist in the same party as corporate politicians who champion the same anti-worker, pro-war policies we are fighting against. All of these candidates, including Mamdani, must break from the Democrats to begin building a new party on a working-class program and prioritize the building of mass movements to win the demands they ran on, not the dead-end strategy of negotiations behind the scenes.
New Party Needed
This year’s midterms will be an important opening to popularize independent, left-wing politics and the need for a new mass working-class party. Labor unions, anti-ICE activists, and all working and young people should support and vote for these independent candidates.
Unions should pass resolutions endorsing these local independent candidates, and in favor of working to build the new party we need. Anti-ICE activists and neighborhood groups should vote to endorse these candidates, as well as canvass their communities. Raising the profile of independent candidates can be connected to building a new party that fights against ICE instead of funds it, like the Democratic Party.
Building independent working-class power using elections also means these candidates and their campaigns must be rooted in struggle. The general strike against ICE was not organized by the Democratic Party and came following months of total inaction by the liberal establishment. It took workers organizing neighborhood defense groups to protect their community from ICE thugs. Union leaders called for strike action afterICE had detained dozens of their members and activist Renee Good was murdered in cold blood by the federal occupiers. Workers across Minnesota organized a day of “No Work, No School, No Shopping” to demand ICE out of their state, and inspired solidarity protests across the country in the process.
This was an important warning shot at the Trump administration that they had overstepped, and working people were not willing to put up with it. Since then, Trump has been forced to back down from mass military-style ICE invasions, though six months later, and with a downturn in struggle, ICE is on the offensive again, resulting in two more murders in Houston and Maine and a new surge in detentions nationwide. The movement against Trump’s reactionary agenda needs independent working-class leadership, rather than continually being run headfirst into the graveyard of social movements by Democratic misleadership.
So long as the workers’ movement in the US does not have a political party that represents its interest against the two parties of big business, we will be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.
This party must establish a clear left-wing, pro-worker program. It should not take a dime in corporate donations, and all representatives should be accountable to the membership, including being subject to recall. All of the left-wing independent candidates running in this year’s midterms should start connecting their campaigns with the need for a new party, which will be essential to defeating the far right and ending this rotten system.