Re: How DSA fixes a political problem

Marv Gandall writes: "the conundrum the revolutionary left has historically
faced in the developed Western capitalist societies since its inception is
that the working class has generally been interested in democratic rights
only insofar as it  has perceived these to have a direct bearing on its
material conditions of existence - notably, the right to vote in the
electoral realm and to organize unions and bargain collectively for
improved wages and benefits in the workplace."

But the right to vote *is *a democratic right. And workers' concerns go
beyond that too. We have, for example, the scandals around ICE murdering
people. Even before then, there were the protests against police involved
shootings and murders, the most famous of which was the George Floyd
murder. And that doesn't even take into account international issues. So I
don't think economics is all that motivates workers, never mind the youth.

In any case, what most workers think about first and foremost and what
revolutionary socialists bring to the forefront are not necessarily the
same thing. I think Trump's attacks on all the institutions through which
bourgeois democracy functions are vitally important. These include Trump's
attacks on universities, the capitalist new media, major capitalist law
firms, and more. It also includes the presence of election deniers on many
election boards around the country. Almost all revolutionary socialists
ignore these attacks in favor of a crude interpretation of Marxism. They
tend to focus exclusively on the direct class struggle,Trump's attacks on
minorities, etc.. I think this is a huge mistake. We cannot just focus on
relations between the classes; if we are serious we must bring to the fore
what is happening *within* the capitalist class. How else can we develop a
birds' eye view of society? Failing to do this leads to little but
reformism. Yes, of course, we should explain how it affects the working
class, but that doesn't contradict this point.

Of course, how can this be done when discussion of the objective situation
almost never happens? From what I can tell, it doesn't happen in the
"revolutionary" sects, including the "revolutionary" DSA caucuses, and it
doesn't happen in DSA as a whole.

John Reimann


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