On April 5 an article was published by Genevieve R. on Socialist Majority’s (a caucus within Democratic Socialists of America) website that has caused quite the stir online. The article, titled ‘No One is “Politically Independent,”’ argues—as you may have guessed—that nobody is politically independent. The author argues that this is because political parties always need to work in coalitions in order to achieve their aims, rendering any political force inherently dependent. I believe the author is sensing that something is wrong with how most of DSA understands the term ‘political independence,’ but neglecting the fact that DSA’s understanding of the term is moot to begin with, the author ends up treating their conception of ‘political independence’ as the actual meaning of political independence. The truth is that we need to break with the dominant understanding of ‘political independence’ found within DSA—it has nothing to do with actual political independence. Beyond this, the author gives us a lackluster explanation for why the DSA is hyper-fixated on the question of political independence, blaming it on “American individualism.” The article has merit, however, insofar as it does point to a real problem—however the author never really puts their finger on it. I hope to make this problem clearer and highlight where I think the author erred. I also want to make clear that I enjoyed the article—and while I believe the author certainly is misguided in certain respects, the backlash this article has received constitutes little more than slop.
The author, taking the rest of DSA’s definition of ‘political independence’ at face value, begins by denying the possibility of political independence outright:
There is no actually good definition, because "political independence" is an oxymoron: no political force in the world is "independent" from other forces. Politics is a contextual struggle for power between allied and opposed actors, and whether it’s political parties, unions and bosses, protesters and government officials, countries at war, or two people arguing, everyone’s actions directly “depend” on someone else’s.
First, ‘political independence’ is an oxymoron if one sees it the way that our activists in the DSA see it, that is, as a formal organizational relationship between organizations. Key to this is the use of the term “political force.” Political organizations can certainly be independent, but not forces—in this respect the author is right, as long as we stick to the technical-organizational conception of political independence we find all too commonly within the ranks of DSA. Second, we need to make clear that ‘political independence’ does not mean ‘falling out of a coconut tree,’ existing outside of a context—even the way in which, say, Marxist Unity Group uses the term, does not mean such a thing. For them it is a technical-organizational relation, not becoming ahistorical or acontextual. The author continues:
Beyond not making sense, “political independence” misleads members by implying our ideal version of the left is one that ignores important political forces and avoids collaboration with even the most aligned allies. That’s a quintessentially American fantasy of how politics ought to be done, but it’s not how democracy works—or successful revolutionary movements, for that matter.
Once again, the author is not wrong if we take the DSA conception at face value, of course you aren't exactly ‘organizationally’ independent if you are in a coalition, but this is not what ‘political independence’ means anyway—and the only thing “quintessentially American” about this whole thing is not the general fixation on political independence, but rather, the completely economistic conception of political independence everyone in the organization seems to have.
The section titled “All Political Independence, No Breaks” is one of the stronger portions of the article, despite some conceptual shortcomings. She first highlights Marxist Unity Group’s formalistic conception of political independence, which is put in technical terms (“electoral strategy”) and not political ones (this will be explored later). However, she begins to get at the Leninist conception of political independence, despite thinking it is not political independence. Genevieve then cites her experience in New York’s “Socialists in Office” committee to counter an argument put forth in another article by Nick French arguing that DSA should operate as “an independent, party like organization” or “party surrogate” that “use[s] whatever ballot lines are necessary to get elected” and is operated by “Socialists in Office Committees” (like the one Genevieve works in). French’s idea is that these committees will be able to coordinate the activities of the socialist elected officials independent of the Democratic coalition that they seem to habitually fall into. Genevieve argues to the contrary that DSA cannot operate as an “independent, party like organization” because these committees are “virtually always” a minority of the legislatures they operate in (not to mention a non-essential one!), and are thus forced into coordinating with Democrats “to win legislative battles” or into “responding to corporate Democrats with opposition in news cycles and elections.” In essence, what she is saying is that no matter how organizationally independent the socialists may be, it means next-to-nothing when one finds oneself a minority partner in a coalition. Well and good, as long as we stress again the word “organizationally.” Where she begins to lose me is where she cites Michael Kinnucan’s article “The Absent Partner Strategy,” wherein Kinnucan argues that even if we were able to win 100 seats in the House of Representatives, we would still not be able to pass legislation “independently.” Once again (again!) this tracks only if we accept the economistic view of political independence put forth by our DSA activists. The fact forgotten is that organizational independence means nothing at all—it has nothing to do with political independence. If we had 100 representatives in the House, we would absolutely be independent, the fact alone would express it—we would be known in every household in the entire nation, and nothing would happen without at least the mark of socialist activity. However, Socialist Majority sees ‘political independence’ only in terms of what it can secure in bourgeois legislatures, and neglects wholesale any question of political agitation, which is the entire purpose of putting socialists in office in the first place (that is, if they are revolutionary in the slightest). Here lies our divergence in terms of the meaning of ‘political independence.’
Political independence is a historical fact, not a formal-organizational relation. In order to elaborate further, however, it is worthwhile to establish a few characteristics of our present struggle in order to situate ourselves. First of all, there is no question that the struggle that is playing out now is of a “cultural” character, that is, not explicitly of a class character. This I do not suspect the author of denying (despite point two of Socialist Majority’s points of unity sounding an awful lot like that anti-culture class reductionism that, thankfully, a lot of the socialist movement has grown hostile to). But what does this “cultural character” consist of—what does this mean? It means that the major political demands of the moment consist in securing basic democratic rights. The struggle for which does not undermine capitalism, but rather, accelerates and intensifies it; that is, establishes the preconditions for “all that is solid melt[ing] into air,” and for compelling man to “face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind,” if you will.1 Explicit class demands, as of now, are a matter of the future, and the democratic demands which do find expression in the present are situated neatly within the bounds of capitalism: political rights in the capitalist political sphere, economic rights within the capitalist economic sphere. This should be no controversy, and it is clear that Genevieve understands this. However, Genevieve—and her caucus more generally—seem content with keeping their scope within these bounds, forgoing revolutionary politics outright. They see the task of socialists as no more than being junior partners to the Democratic coalition and passing social-democratic reforms. Perhaps instead of accusing everyone else of being “misleading” about political independence, perhaps Socialist Majority should stop misleading people into thinking they are socialists; they are merely social-democrats. Lenin was keen to note the same phenomenon—social-democrats parading themselves around as socialists—during the aborted 1905 revolution in Russia, when he wrote:
The character of the revolution now in progress […] quite naturally gives rise to non-party organizations. The whole movement, therefore, on the surface inevitably acquires a non-party stamp, a non-party appearance—but only on the surface, of course. The urge for a “human”, civilized life, the urge to organize in defense of human dignity, for one’s rights as man and citizen, takes hold of everyone, unites all classes, vastly outgrows all party bounds and shakes up people who as yet are very very far from being able to rise to party allegiance. The vital need of immediate, elementary, essential rights and reforms puts off, as it were, all thought and consideration of anything further. Preoccupation with the struggle in progress, a preoccupation that is quite necessary and legitimate, for without it success in the struggle would be impossible, causes people to idealize these immediate, elementary aims, to depict them in rosy colors and sometimes even to clothe them in fantastic garb. Simple democracy, ordinary bourgeois democracy, is taken as socialism and “registered” as such.2
Socialist Majority and Genevieve “register” this essentially bourgeois political movement as socialism and are content with the mere achievement of its aims. This is clear enough in their claim that there is a “democratic road to socialism”—a thoroughly petty bourgeois idea that retains popularity only insofar as the American socialist movement is made up of non-proletarian elements. Those who occupy the bottom of society have long lost trust in the system and thoroughly understand that the system is not amenable to their interests, yet we have “socialists” telling them to “trust the process.”3 And while they may not claim to be content with just reforms, this is not a matter of ‘claims.’ It is a matter of a real, objective, relation that Socialist Majority have to the bourgeois-democratic movement—a relation that has a name: subservience. This is no surprise considering the characteristics of the present political moment, where the nature of the struggle is capable of bringing in far more strata and classes than an explicitly socialist one, and hence takes up that “non-party appearance.” Lenin writes:
In these circumstances, the idea of non-partisanship can not but gain certain temporary successes. The slogan of non-partisanship cannot but become a fashionable slogan, for fashion drags helplessly at the tail of life, and it is the non-party organization that appears to be the most “common” phenomenon on the surface of political life… (Ibid.)
“Fashion drags hopelessly at the tail of life”… No wonder why, after years of intransigent abstentionism and sectarian ultra-leftism, the bourgeois-democratic movement (the “culture war”) has dragged the socialists out of their shells in hopes of securing a place in the coalition (and perhaps even coming into leadership). The moment ‘demands’ a coalition (it is a broad democratic movement for political rights, is it not?). The question for communists and socialists is how they will relate to these ‘non-party’ organizations. Those who are “attracted” to this “non-partisanship,” whether they they know it or not, support the bourgeois system in one way or another—on the other hand, genuine revolutionaries understand that only the political party, with aims beyond that of its bourgeois coalition partners, constitutes anything socialist. Lenin continues:
The non-party idea is a bourgeois idea. The party idea is a socialist idea. This thesis, in general and as a whole, is applicable to all bourgeois society. One must, of course, be able to adapt this general truth to particular questions and particular cases; but to forget this truth at a time when the whole of bourgeois society is rising in revolt against feudalism and autocracy means in practice completely to renounce socialist criticism of bourgeois society. (Ibid.)
It should be obvious that Socialist Majority has effectively renounced any criticism of bourgeois society, retaining only to its criticism of the Democrats’ opposition. The whole idea of a “democratic road to socialist revolution” as alluded to in the very first point of their points of unity should make it obvious to socialist where the loyalty of their caucus lies… squarely within the confines of bourgeois society.
Liberals cannot stand the idea of the communist political party, nor can they stomach what it means to carry out revolution, nor can they stomach the discipline required. As the young, and at the time still radical, Nick Land put it:
A revolutionary war against a modern metropolitan state can only be fought in hell. It is this harsh truth that has deflected Western politics into an increasingly servile reformism, whilst transforming nationalist struggles into the sole arena of vigorous contention against particular configurations of capital.4
But perhaps it is time to get back to the article at hand. Ironically, in the section blaming the socialist movement’s fixation on securing political independence, Genevieve blames liberalism getting in the way of her own liberalism. She, first of all, subscribes to the same mechanical, organizational conception of political independence that all the economists hold, and second, essentially lays the blame for the whole conversation on insurmountable historical factors. Let us say she is absolutely correct that the reason communists and socialists focus on political independence is because “its a fat fucking dopamine hit for our American lizard brains.” What are we then to do about it? There’s no “deprogramming” 400 years of cultural consciousness.
Even so, explanations like these do no service to critical socialist thought. The structure of the argument is closer in methodology to the liberal social contract theorists of the 18th century than anything resembling Marxism. These sort of explanations, in fact, are an active disservice to the socialist movement—they show everyone that we have nothing more to say than an MSNBC pundit trying to sound profound for their middle-class professional audience, they show everyone that Marxism is, in fact, no advancement at all from enlightenment liberalism. Hegel highlighted this methodological error Natural Law when he wrote:
...to explain the relation of marriage, procreation, the holding of goods in common, or something else is proposed [as the determinant] and, from such a determinant aspect, is made prescriptive as the essence of the relation; the whole organic relation is delimited and contaminated.5
While I believe that “American individualism” has nothing to do with the general yearning for political independence among socialists, even if it did, it would be an insufficient argument nonetheless. You cannot explain complex organic relations unilaterally, let alone with any particular empirical characteristic of the relation. But once again, I digress. Back to ‘political independence.’
In the final section of the article, the author begins to discover what political independence means, though she believes she is talking about something else. She says that we need to “replac[e] ‘independent’ with ‘powerful’ in our discourse.” I believe this is a great point, because DSA fails to realize that ‘power’ is political independence—they are not two different things. She continues:
A powerful organization can protect its elected members from consequences for defying the political establishment—and can one day replace it and become the new establishment.
The author obviously sees political independence and power as two separate things, but she also sees power in purely formal-organizational terms, a matter of technical ability to do this or that within various legislatures. Political independence, which I will from this point on fold the term ‘power’ into, is a matter of historical power, of a political movement’s ability to affect the course of events, regardless of the number of seats it holds. The problem, however, is that characterizing political independence as one's ability to criticize the political establishment within a bourgeois political movement is, of course, formal-organizational in scope, but more importantly, is absolutely forgoing of political independence at all. Power, to Socialist Majority, is simply the ability to keep one's place in the Democratic coalition. Breaking with the coalition in order to pursue explicitly socialist class aims is put off for another day, when perhaps conditions are different. The problem with ‘saving that for later,’ however, is that ‘later’ never seems to come, and the party settles in as a fixture in the political scene, much like the European labor parties that were founded by people much more radical than those who operate them today.
The author continues, contrasting ‘power’ and ‘independence:’
Making this switch exposes the misguidedness of addressing our situation by passing resolutions to “act” independent—acting more powerful doesn’t change anything. Becoming more powerful does, and that takes material, measurable increases in our size, resources, and infrastructure. To change the world in the ways we want, we need power for our specific, democratic socialist vision. But you can build a stronger political machine if you don’t reflexively reject every opportunity to rely on anything besides yourself—which is what centering on “independence” instructs us to do.
This is where I can concur with Genevieve: passing resolutions to “act” independent does not change anything—it has no effect on the march of events. However, Bread and Rose’s (another caucus) resolution to “act independent” has nothing to do with political independence anyway. They (once again!!) see ‘independence’ as a purely organizational question, only in its formal sense. Never considered by Bread and Roses or Socialist Majority is that ‘independence’ is an objective historical relation, not a technical paper relation. This is the difference between the ‘technical’ understanding of political independence and the ‘political’ one. It is highly worth looking at Lenin’s Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (a book I recommend-) in order to understand further the ‘political’ understanding political independence.. Quoted many times in Geese:
The question is not whether this or that Social-Democratic group will want to dissolve in bourgeois democracy or whether they are conscious of the fact that they are merging. Nobody suggests that. We do not suspect any Social-Democrat of harboring such a desire, and this is not at all a question of desires. Nor is it a question whether this or that Social-Democratic group will formally retain its separate identity, individuality, and independence of bourgeois democracy throughout the course of the revolution. They may not only proclaim such “independence” but even retain it formally, and yet it may turn out that their hands will be nonetheless tied in the struggle against the inconsistency of the bourgeoisie. The final political result of the revolution may prove to be that, in spite of the formal “independence” of Social-Democracy, in spite of its complete organizational individuality as a separate party, it will in fact not be independent, it will not be able to put the imprint of its proletarian independence on the course of events, will prove so weak that, on the whole and in the last analysis, its “dissolving” in the bourgeois democracy, will nonetheless be a historical fact. This is what constitutes the real danger.6
I may as well have copied this quote down and forgone writing anything of my own. I have stated that this is not a “question of desires” nor about retaining “separate identities.” It is about the real course of events, about our power to affect it. It is a sorry state of affairs to have to explain this to both sides of the debate table, but someone has to do it. Genevieve’s article, despite its flaws, was fun to read, which is extremely rare for anything that comes out of any corner of DSA. She, though still operating within the framework provided by the dominant understanding of the concept in the organization, highlights very real pitfalls the “DSA left” has fallen into with its use of the term ‘political independence.’ Her highlighting of power as the key aspect of political independence (even though she considers them different things) was extremely refreshing. Most discussions in DSA about independence—or anything at all for that matter—are always about “infrastructure” and “doors” and all sorts of technical metrics. Power and politics are put second, if put anywhere at all. I believe that this article, in its angry arousal of the entire DSA subculture, is nothing less than a nascent and unconscious critique of the activistic conception of politics—in which all questions are matters of technique—but one that does not break with the logic it attempts to break with (much like J. Moufawad Paul’s critique of economism). Regardless, it is a valiant and valuable undertaking in this direction nonetheless.
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1 - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto – The quote in full:
“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
2 - V.I. Lenin, The Socialist Party and Non-Party Revolutionism (1905), Marxist Internet Archive
3 - If anything, this reflects “American individualism” more than anything else: trust in bourgeois democracy, in bourgeois institutions. No proletarian trusts anything to do with politicians or Washington—it is why they are increasingly falling for “small government” rhetoric employed by the conservatives.
4 - Nick Land, Fanged Noumena, MIT Press, p.79 – It is worthwhile to read the rest of the quote. He continues:
“But, as I hope to have demonstrated, such nationalist struggles are relevant only to the geographic modulation of capital, and not to the radical jeopardizing of neo-colonialism (inhibited synthesis) as such. Victorious Third World struggles, so long as they have been successfully localized, do not lead to realistic post-capitalist achievements, and certainly not to post-patriarchal ones, since the conservation of the form of the nation state is itself enough to guarantee the resinsertion of a society into the system of inhibited synthesis.”
5 - G.W.F. Hegel, Natural Law, University of Pennsylvania Press, p.60 – Rest of quote, continuing from quoted passage:
“Or, in the case of punishment, one specific aspect is singled out—the criminal’s moral reform, or the damage done, or the effect of his punishment on others, or the criminal’s own notion of the punishment before he committed the crime, or the necessity of making this notion a reality by carrying out the threat, etc. And then some such single aspect is made the purpose and essence of the whole. The natural consequence is that, since such a specific aspect has no necessary connection with the other specific aspects which can be found and distinguished, there arises an endless struggle to find the necessary bearing and predominance of one over the others; and since inner necessity, non-existent in singularity, is missing, each aspect can perfectly well vindicate its independence of the others.”
6 - V.I. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, Foreign Languages Pressp. 48-49