Reform & Revolution spoke with three national DSA leaders about strategy toward the Democratic Party after Biden’s victory.

We discussed how to overcome the Democratic Party’s dominance over the US left, whether that’s breaking clean, breaking dirty, breaking later, and whether breaking even matters. There’s a lively debate within the Democratic Socialists of America, and we look forward to continuing the discussion leading up to DSA’s national convention in August 2021. 

We didn’t have space in this issue to include the full transcripts, but the following excerpts address key questions facing DSA under a Biden administration. In the spirit of comradely debate and discussion, we will continue to invite leading voices of different political tendencies and perspectives in DSA to join us for discussions and interviews. Check out our website at reformandrevolution.org for more.

“We’ll find faster opportunities if we are nuanced in our approach”

The urgent task is political education, not the formation of a new party, argues Maikiko James, member of DSA’s national leadership

Robert Shields spoke with Maikiko James, a member of the National Political Committee (NPC) of DSA who is based in Los Angeles, CA. She is also a leading member of the Socialist Majority Caucus. 

At the 2019 convention, the DSA passed that resolution calling for a dirty break. Did you support that resolution and what are your thoughts on the dirty break strategy today?  

I don’t think it makes sense to do that right now, on November 15th, 2020. It’s something we should be talking about in an ongoing way and figuring out if we can grow our power to a point where that is more plausible. Let’s get there. Let’s get to a place where a party entity makes sense. 

I don’t believe I supported that resolution at the 2019 convention, honestly. At this moment I still feel chapters need to understand the terrain of where they are. Sometimes it may make sense to run independent and sometimes it may make sense to be on the Democratic line.

I say that not just about the ballot, but also in how you operate in the political machine, wherever you live. I think forming a third party is a lot of work. If all 80,000 of us were like, “Let’s just focus on that,” maybe something could happen in the next 15 years. 

We don’t necessarily want to stay in a two-party system forever. I think so much about how our political system needs to be abolished. But I think we’ll find faster opportunities and faster leverages if we are nuanced in our approach and find opportunities to both infiltrate and also build independent power.

For me, it’s less about the party question than it is about our politics. I think because we’re not a cohered organization, we need to spend a lot more time in the political education part of our work, as opposed to building the party side of our work. I think we can’t skip that step. 

And I’m really excited, being on the training committee, and having lots of comrades who work in political education, with deeper strategy experience than I do. I would be excited to build the space for our members to talk about what [a break from the Democratic Party] looks like in practice, because until we have those conversations, we have too few people that could actually even envision what this would look like on a practical level in this moment. That’s my opinion. 

“I’m a breaker”

DSA is not the formation to break to from the Democrats because it doesn’t try to be, argues Andrew Sernatinger from the Tempest Collective

Stephan Kimmerle spoke with Andrew Sernatinger, a labor activist and member of DSA in Madison, Wisconsin. Andrew is a member of the Tempest Collective and has written for New Politics, International Viewpoint, and Jacobin.

You wrote an article together with Joe Evica about how to put the break into the dirty break. You outlined that you’ve got some sympathy with the dirty break strategy, but that if you look at what DSA is doing, and what the majority in DSA is promoting, this is an abstract target of break and no real steps towards that. How do you see the situation now with a Biden presidency?

There are two issues that I think are separate. One of them is, where are we at in the political context now? And the other is, in a somewhat abstract way, what would we need to do as a strategy? 

So in the abstract, I think first, if you’re going to break, you have to build something to break to. And I don’t care if it’s a dirty break or a clean break. At this point I would just say, I’m a breaker. I want to break, so how do we do that? I’m open to how that happens. But how it doesn’t happen is—you just don’t build anything and you hope that one day it’ll just come together. If DSA were an organization that was like, “We are running with the explicit purpose of building a new party and we are preparing the ground for that party,” it could do things like use the national electoral commission to try and make a distinct electoral formation. 

I don’t love the Justice Democrats. They’re progressive Democrats. But what they are pretty good at is making it clear that like, “Oh, you liked this person? Well, they’re affiliated with us and you should follow our things and give us money and all that stuff. We’ll have other candidates like them.” That’s not for the purpose of a dirty break at all. But at least they understood that they had to create an independent organization that is coherent.

If we were going to create something coherent, it would have to do something like that. I don’t know what you want to call it. I don’t have a great tagline, but let’s call it “workers’ party.” Then you’d say this DSA person is involved with that. And all this stuff looks similar in terms of branding and go to this website. Then you create an audience for something more than just the candidate, but for a type of organization. 

Why build a new formation, why not do all of that with DSA itself?

I don’t think DSA is this thing, because it doesn’t try to be that. Michael Utrecht and Megan Day, in their book, [Bigger than Bernie], have said things like, DSA is that dirty break vehicle, but DSA is not a political party, and it doesn’t aspire to be one. It has some flirtations with the idea that there should be a party. But it certainly is not taking any of those steps to be one. And none of the political life of DSA internally is about determining its electoral facing work. All of that stuff pretty much happens when a candidate shows up and says, “Hey, it turns out I’m a socialist and I want to run for this position. Will you support me?” And the chapter says, yeah, right. 

Seth Ackerman has promoted this term of a “party surrogate.” That could be an attempt to bridge the gap, at least in theory, between what DSA is and the need for a future party. Is this a bridge?

Actually, Ackerman is agnostic on whether or not a separate party needs to exist. And he says that in his article. He does not speak about a party surrogate for the purpose of breaking from the Democrats. He outlines the limitations of the existing system and then says, how could we have something that functions like a party? He’s pretty effective in outlining what he thinks that should be, but he does not actually take up any of the tasks of what it would be like to break from the Democratic Party because that’s not his aim. And I think that everybody should be clear on that. He’s not a theorist of a dirty break, he’s a theorist of a political instrument. 

“Run as a democrat only if you absolutely need to”

DSA is simply not ready to fully break and become a fully independent party, argues Austin Gonzalez, a member of DSA’s national leadership

Ty Moore spoke with Austin Gonzalez, who was elected to DSA’s National Political Committee as a member of Build in 2019. Austin is not part of any caucus in DSA today, and continues to play a leading role in the Richmond, Virginia chapter.

In 2019, DSA passed a resolution in favor of breaking with the realignment strategy to embrace a dirty break strategy. What did you think of the resolution at the time? How do you think DSA should position itself to push further toward a dirty break in the next four years under Biden?

I feel that’s the question that’s on everybody’s minds. To answer your first question directly, I did indeed support the resolution at the time because I did and I still believe that DSA’s dependency on the Democratic Party is, frankly, a hindrance to our movement,as well as a hindrance to the movement internationally, since an effective US left is just good for the world.  

With that said, I should say I’ve come to believe–from my experiences on the National Political Committee–that declaring ourselves a party whenever we see fit to do so would not be a move that I would be supportive of. Just breaking from the Democrats abruptly and saying we are no longer working with Democrats.

That would be the clean break strategy …

You’re right. And I think, referencing the previous question, there are many internal structures and processes that need to be fleshed out before we can move in the direction of becoming an independent party, which I do believe should be an aspirational goal. I think it is something we should be working toward. And I do think that we are well on the way to breaking with the Democratic Party. 

But in the short term, my philosophy regarding working with the Democrats is a simple one, and it is: run as a Democrat only if you absolutely need to. 

I see no reason to make a hard declaration one way or the other regarding working with the Democrats, at least now.

You’re saying a candidate should run as a Democrat when there’s a clear, tangible advantage, but we should be striving to run independently wherever there’s not some major disadvantage? 

Exactly, yes. But the fact of the matter is that we are currently not at that point nationally. My experiences in Richmond and looking at local races in Virginia which are nonpartisan—to me that’s ideal.

That’s ideal terrain for getting our feet in the door, so to speak. And I think we should have more of an investment in those sorts of local races as well, to further our independence from the Democratic Party. I do think that breaking from the Democratic Party is the aspirational goal. I think being strategic about it is extremely, extremely important. That does mean working with Democrats. Or let me rephrase that: that means effectively using the Democratic Party ballot line, in the short term.

One of the other people we’re interviewing, Andy, wrote an article saying, “Let’s put the break in the dirty break” and saying, in practice, there’s not a lot of difference between the realignment strategy and most of the electoral work in DSA that is ostensibly touted as the dirty break strategy. What do you think of his critique?

I would have to read that to get a clear idea of what he was getting at. However, from how you have described it, I think that’s definitely accurate. And I think a lot of times people fail to realize that. I think that is a very interesting point, and one that I would agree with personally.

One idea that Seth Ackerman is most famous for talking about is the party surrogate strategy, the idea of trying to prepare DSA to be more party-like and to run independently, using the Democratic Party ballot line strategically where it’s a big disadvantage not to, but developing a platform, developing a program, developing more systems of accountability to try and transform DSA more into a party-like organization. What do you think of arguments along those lines?

Absolutely. For me, that is the short-term goal. Personally, I emphatically agree. My philosophy, as you’ve referenced, is to run as a Democrat only if you need to. Only if you absolutely need to. And I think that the party surrogate concept is precisely the most suitable for being able to facilitate that sort of development, to move in that direction, and to eventually move away from the Democrats. 

We simply are not ready to fully break, to become a fully independent party. Our election laws, frankly, will prevent any sort of success, and our organizational structure is not currently at that level that it needs to be to run a successful party.