Democratic Party

February 9, 2024

Towards a New Year’s Revolution: Fighting for Our Lives in 2024

Today, we are living in an historic moment. All over the world, and here in the United States, people are rejecting their government’s support for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Millions in the Arab world, in the Global South, and in the West have taken to the streets to say No More War/End the Israeli Occupation/Free Palestine. But the leaders are not listening to the majority voices. When 60% of Americans are calling for a ceasefire and only a dismal few representatives have come forward to actually introduce and support legislation calling for a ceasefire, the system is beyond broken. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is even accusing people who support Palestinians of being agents for Russia, and President Genocide Joe Biden has proudly declared himself a Zionist while sending billions of dollars to Israel to kill more Palestinians. It is time for us, the people, to refuse once and for all, to be the silenced majority.

December 27, 2023

by Atlee McFellin

Revolución Contra el Fascismo

El artículo anterior comenzaba con el difunto Franz Neumann sobre el fracaso de votar por el menos malo contra Hitler. Este fue el camino que eligieron los socialdemócratas alemanes como él, aquellos que priorizaron salvar sus propios privilegios de clase media antes que
detener el fascismo. El presente artículo explora el camino que los socialdemócratas no eligieron, el camino de lo que él llamó “revolución política”. Esto no es lo que los socialistas democráticos de hoy como Bernie Sanders, AOC, y el
“Escuadrón” quieren decir con la frase. Lo que quieren decir es una versión más conservadora
de lo que Neumann argumentaba en contra. Defienden una versión más conservadora de la
socialdemocracia que fracasó contra los nazis.

December 21, 2023

by Atlee McFellin

Revolution Against Fascism

The previous article began with the late Franz Neumann on the failure of voting for the lesser evil against Hitler. This was the path chosen by social democrats in Germany like him, those who prioritized saving their own middle-class privilege over stopping fascism. The present article explores the path that the social democrats didn’t choose, the path of what he called “political revolution.”

This isn’t what today’s democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the “Squad” mean by the phrase. What they mean is a more conservative version of what Neumann was arguing against. They’re advocating a more conservative version of the social democracy that failed against the Nazis

November 25, 2023

by Atlee McFellin

Voting for the Lesser Evil Led to Hitler’s Conquest of Power

This is a quote from a man named Franz Neumann. He passed away in 1954. He was Jewish, a socialist, and among the top leadership of the largest political party in Germany during the rise of the Nazis. They were called the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). It’s where the phrase “democratic socialism” comes from. Back then they called it “social democracy.”

The SPD was handed the presidency of the Weimar Republic from its founding in late 1918, shortly after the end of World War I. The SPD was the largest party until the Nazi’s “soft coup” in early 1933. In the quote above, Neumann is describing the two options that were facing the SPD. When he refers to the Communists, he’s referring to the SPD’s main rival on the left, which was the Communist Party of Germany, the KPD.

October 24, 2022

by Zack Frailey Escobar

Capital’s Card Tricks: student debt relief amid rising interest rates & inflation

The Democrats have spent the majority of the past two years kissing the feet of the party’s rightmost members, fossil fuel lackey Joe Manchin and Arizona-based narcissist Kyrsten Sinema, and trying to hide Joe Biden from TV cameras. After a total lack of response to the catastrophic overturning of Roe v. Wade, and with their poll numbers in the mud, it seemed like they were a party adrift, no longer driven even by the paper-thin motivation to win elections. In the run up to the midterms, however, the Democrats have shown that they still have a few tricks up their sleeve in the form of (some) student debt relief—that is, if the right-wing doesn’t block it through its allies in the judiciary.

August 16, 2022

by Zack Frailey Escobar

The Long Shadow of Michael Harrington: A Review of A Failure of Vision

Doug Greene’s new biography of Michael Harrington brings crucial historical context to debates on the socialist Left today. It is essential reading for newly minted socialists and seasoned activists alike.
Even among socialists, Michael Harrington is an obscure figure, but his work has enormous relevance today, for better and for worse. Harrington rose to national prominence as “the man who discovered poverty” with his 1962 book The Other America, a moving expose on poverty in the United States. In today’s context, his most important contribution is his role as the prominent founder and ideologue of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA has in the last few years become the largest self-described socialist organization in the U.S., since the heyday of the Socialist Party in the early 20th century.

March 22, 2022

by Atlee McFellin

Left Conformity to the Settler Cult

In his book, Fascism: Theory and History, lawyer and historian David Renton outlined what he called “the anti-fascist wager.” It was a gamble the German left made against Hitler, the extent to which the social democratic (SPD) and communist (KPD) parties accurately perceived the uniquely dangerous threat the Nazi’s posed. This is like the gamble we make within settler Amerikkka against resurgent fascism today. Lives hang in the balance, which is why we start with the above quote from an April 2020 interview Noam Chomsky did with Medhi Hasan, who was then still at The Intercept.

January 7, 2022

by Zack Frailey Escobar

What kind of party do we need?

This is a crucial moment for the socialist movement. There has been substantial growth of socialist organization in the last four years and the highest point of public support for socialism since the 1970s. But it would be a mistake to believe that socialism’s popularity will simply continue along this trajectory indefinitely, or that this necessarily translates to a fundamental shift towards class struggle. Membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), largest U.S. socialist group in the US, has recently plateaued. The second largest group, the International Socialist Organization, collapsed 2 years ago. To make matters worse, the trend within DSA which had been moving toward a break with the Democrats and the formation of an independent party has undergone a reversal. If this trend becomes dominant within the socialist movement, the trajectory towards socialist party building will become stunted, and a new generation of potential revolutionaries will be funneled back into the Democratic Party like so many before them.

December 14, 2021

by Justin Akers Chacón

Rebellion and Reaction: behind the attack on Critical Race Theory

The orchestrated attack on Critical Race Theory (CRT) is one facet of the racist and reactionary response to the decade-long Black Lives Matter struggle and the tremorous uprising of summer 2020. The surges of protest and revolt, taking distinct and elaborating form since the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin, have grown in size, scope, and militancy. These movements have shifted anti-racist class politics and consciousness to the left, culminating into abolitionist cadence at its most organized and advanced points. Over one year on, the unified call for radical justice has been countered by the foul, cacophonous, and rage-induced dysphoria of the rattled ranks of the reactionary right.

December 12, 2021

by Bill V. Mullen

Under Siege: why socialists must fight for Palestine and BDS

The struggle for Palestinian liberation from Israel’s U.S.-backed settler-colonial regime has become a cornerstone of most radical and progressive political platforms. Especially since Palestinian Civil Society launched the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign (BDS) in 2004, modeled closely on the South African campaign to end Apartheid; the broad U.S. and global Left have made the struggle to end Israel’s occupation part of a wider critique of U.S. imperialism.

Yet recent events have challenged the unity and momentum of both the struggle for Palestinian liberation on the Left, and its primary global weapon, the BDS campaign. One of those challenges has come from the reformist wing of the Left, the Democratic Socialists of America. Another, even more potentially threatening to Palestinian liberation unity, has come from within the ranks of the U.S. Arab political class and its institutions.