The Left Can Only Win If There is a Left
Photo by Randy Laybourne
What are the main obstacles to organizing oppositional political movements and parties? There are many. Deeply-seated racism, sexism, and imperialism keep us divided and in line. Corporate power dominates our political system. Leadership against such a system must both oppose the existing order and envision an alternative to it. Yet, many who might help do that work remain loyal to the system. This “loyal left” is one of the main obstacles preventing the emergence of an effective opposition.
The “loyal left” should seem a contradiction in terms. Still, it’s precisely this paradoxical position we must understand, expose, and oppose. The loyal left follows the Democratic party around. Its obedience blocks one of the most fundamental political conditions necessary for real social change: the left must exist before it can win.
If nothing else, elections reveal who stands where. The two corporate parties still hold power and command loyalty despite their moral, political, and intellectual poverty.
It’s easy to chalk it up to the powers of conformity or propaganda, but many of the loyalists are unionists, intellectuals, and dissenters of some kind. It is among these types — who should be part of an anti-establishment opposition — that we can measure just how deeply the ruling class maintains control and dominates thinking.
They Say Jump, and the Loyal Left Say, “How High?”
Testing and training.
When Hillary Clinton chose anti-abortionist Tom Kaine as VP, she was testing women’s loyalty to see if they were more attached to the Democrats than to their reproductive rights. Obama/Biden repeated the drill when they failed to act on Roe. Obama/Biden killed thousands of Africans and threw Black homeowners under the bus after 2009, but they were still favored by millions of Black voters.
Biden/Harris let the PRO Act die a quiet death, broke their promise on the minimum wage, and, most importantly, crushed the railway workers’ strike. Yet, no major union dared to criticize them publicly, let alone undertake the struggle needed to elect Democrats who “actually answer to workers.” Almost all union officials are steadfast loyalists who settle for photo-ops, promises, and puny incremental changes.
The Reality You Get is the Reality You Make
Today, loyalty is sworn not by old-fashioned anti-communist oaths but by assimilating the dominant ideology that corporate capitalism and empire are the only possible reality. The idea that the existing order is normal, natural, or inevitable does far more to shape behavior than all the fine points of political ideologies.
Reality is the product of human activity and political practice. If you can get people to maintain the system with their actions—no matter how they “hold their nose” or proclaim their socialist principles — their hearts and minds follow. This is why the machine works so hard to suppress any political opposition that encourages action outside established channels. The view that any electoral efforts beyond the two-party system are useless or dangerous is a testament to the near-totalitarian power of the existing political order.
While preemptive strikes against opposition forces continue, the election of 2024 is nonetheless stress-testing the cultural and political hegemony of the existing order. Today’s loyalty oath is like none other: Can the left ignore institutionalized racism, austerity, genocide, and the drive to world war to fall into line behind the Democrats?
Genocide: Testing the Limits of Obedience
I have heard many words of sadness and regret about Palestine and the repression of the peace movement that needs to be put to a simple real-life test. Can people somehow be against the war but favor the war party? Even when war is a joint effort with their supposed Republican enemies? Apparently so. Sanders, AOC, Omar, Bush, and Pressley cry over the war but support the war party. Millions follow. Only Tlaib has turned her opposition into acts of dissent.
The Democratic Socialist project was designed to reform the Democratic Party. It has failed to do so as its leaders have been marginalized like Tlaib, eliminated like Bowman, or assimilated like Sanders and AOC. The real question, however, is not the politicians but the membership of the DSA, many of whom are engaged in productive, even visionary work, outside of the electoral arena. What will they do in light of the hatchet job on the DSA’s project by the Democratic Party bosses? Such hard choices will separate the opposition from the loyal left.
None of this was lost on the activists at Within Our Lifetime. WOL protested progressive Democrats rallying behind Bowman with three straightforward demands.
1. Unendorse Genocide Joe
2. Re-affirm that anti-zionism is not antisemitism
3. Recognize the right to resist in accordance with international law
If you want an actual opposition, look to the peace movement. The recent rally and counter-summit against NATO in Washington, D.C., made it clear: loyalty pledged to the Democrats is submission to the Empire.
Trump is Their Trump Card and it’s a Losing Hand
For the loyalists, Trump or MAGA is the avatar of all evil. The systemic and institutionalized reality of corporate power, empire, and creeping fascism is obscured from their vision by Trump’s great girth.
The revulsion at Trump or Project 2025 allows someone to believe they are struggling against fascism when fascism — in its 21st-century form — is the dictatorship of big money that governs both parties. They’re selling the spirit of heroic struggle on the cheap since it never requires anyone to stand and fight their own ruling class. This retreat is sugar-coated with the evidence-free assertion that it will be easier to organize under the Democrats. Instead, union density shows a painful decades-long decline regardless of which party rules. But, the repression of the student peace movement is clear evidence that Democrats are willing and able to wield the police state they so generously fund.
Lesser evil arguments are insidious forms of surrender that allow people to accept genocide, austerity, and climate chaos while still maintaining a left identity and thinking of themselves as righteous and reasonable. The loyalists sleep in this field of dreams — that is the point.
The Loyal Left Cannot Act Decisively
Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.
If Democrats are reelected, they will certainly go to sleep as they did after 2020 when the lullaby “Vote for Biden and then we will pull him left” soothed their troubled minds. It’s not just that they failed; with rare exceptions, they hardly tried. Why? MAGA will always be a threat as long as the two-party system remains intact, while their failure to act against Democrats preserves the system just as it is. It is a trap the loyal left cannot escape from unless they stop punching left and make a credible threat of exit backing up their words with action.
A group of loyalist intellectuals called Convergence is playing the same losing game in 2024. They claim they will “block and build” while trying to “converge” young activists with the party machine. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice……
We will get some joy out of the loyal left if Trump wins. There will be a few spectacular demonstrations like last time. Still, actual oppositional movement building and the kind of organizing that demands is a genie the Democrats do not want to let out of the bottle. Will they fight the Democrats to help build an anti-war movement? Doubtful. MAGA will always be there to keep them in line.
What will happen when the Democrats’ “resistance” becomes the “assistance” on matters of bipartisan consensus, such as war budgets and corporate control—as was the case after 2016? Their loyalty is the kill switch—you cannot buy one-half of the two-party system without buying the entire system. It’s not shopping.
The Loyal Left is Giving Trump Their Permission to Continue War, Austerity, and the Drive Toward Fascism.
Trump now knows for sure that genocidal war, world war brinksmanship, austerity, and the growing police state are not deal-breakers for either the Republican or Democratic base. When “left” supporters let Democrats literally get away with mass murder, Republicans see that and like it. They are broadcasting — loud and clear — that nothing will trigger their resistance against the system itself. Does this make it more likely or less likely that Trump will move toward even more fascistic rule? With a left like that, it’s no wonder both parties have moved to the right for decades.
Building a Useful Left: Opposition, Action and a Positive Program
Where can we assemble a real opposition capable of contesting and challenging power? Where can the machine not reach? Where the corporate mindset is weakest? Where there are no money trails?
Where actions speak louder than words, and the system is not sacred.
We must have a positive program. A loyal left cannot create one as they remain under the tutelage of the Democratic Party — that is the lesson of the two failed Sanders campaigns and the squishing of the Squad.
We can build a program for peace, economic and political democracy, and immediate climate action, which is already being born by the activists in the social movements.
First, look to the young. Austerity and climate chaos are their lives, weakening their loyalty to the established order. From recent organizing experience, trying to get the Green Party on the ballot in deep blue New York, I’ve seen that younger people are open to change.
The peace movement is leading the way on and off campus. Mutual aid and communal efforts, rank and file groups in our unions, civil rights movements, Stop Cop City, and all those against the bipartisan police state have solid oppositional politics. Jill Stein’s platform is a fine example of a positive program.
Much of the world is no longer quietly submitting to US dominance. Why should we? Someday, the empire will fall, as all empires do. The two-party system is leading us to disaster since it only represents the corporate ruling class. When will the loyal left get the message? Be on the right side of history and help organize a left that is up to the task.
