The Democratic Party Is Not What You Think
Hillary Clinton speaks at the 2016 DNC. Image: Wikimedia Commons
At first, my friend didn't realize he was a professional Democrat. When he got a job canvassing for “progressive causes," he took them at their word: they raised money for nonprofits so they could do community work.
During his last week there, we got coffee during his lunch break. He told me how once a year, they received a list of candidates to fundraise for - not from the NGOs they contracted with, but from the Democratic National Committee. The “DNC push" meant higher quotas and heavier pressure from field managers. Now, most new hires couldn't take the extra heat. Those who could, though, would have a chance to rise through the ranks, eventually becoming Democratic Party “bundlers" (functionaries responsible for persuading wealthy Democrats to write checks for thousands of dollars). Officially, the canvassing firm was independent. In reality, it was integrated into the Democratic Party, following the Party's directives and funneling its most promising employees into Party careers.
If you listened to political common sense, you'd get the feeling that the Democrats are hapless, incompetent, and disorganized in the face of Republican discipline. Supposedly, they're a loose coalition, with little in common besides opposing the GOP.
That's false. On the ground, the Democrats are a tightly organized party with strong central discipline - much stronger than either their critics or most of their supporters realize. And unless US leftists learn how the Democratic Party actually works, their organizing will continue to fail.
27th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. Image: Wikimedia Commons
Two concepts undergird this analysis. The first, drawn from Marxist-Leninist theory, is the cadre party. High school civics is wrong. Neither major US party is actually a heterogenous coalition. The tight-knit Leninist vanguard model describes them much more usefully.
The second concept here is the social and political base. Now, journalists often say “Democratic base" when they mean “Democratic voters." However, a base is both more specific and more expansive than that. It isn't simply the individuals who happen to support something. A base is a durable, organized community, capable of directing itself in a coordinated way. It's brought into being by the set of social institutions whose day-to-day activities structure their constituents' collective life.
What Is a Cadre Party?
According to Leninism, working-class revolution doesn't happen spontaneously. It requires years of careful preparation, carried out by revolutionary leadership - dedicated Marxists who organize political struggles, spread revolutionary ideas, and (above all) establish a disciplined and militant organization capable of fighting and defeating the capitalist government.
That organization is the cadre, or vanguard, party. This party pursues the long-term interests of the entire working class, agitating for revolution while leading day-to-day struggles. It doesn't let just anyone join - party members must not only commit substantial time and effort to the party, but also adhere to line discipline, enacting and defending all of the party's positions (even those they privately disagree with). They become professional revolutionaries (also called cadres), completely dedicated to making revolution. Sometimes, that means literally working for the party full-time.
Now, there's a contradiction emerging here. On one hand, the party has to inspire the support of as much of the working class as possible. To effectively engage in class struggle, it needs to bring as much of the class into its orbit as it can. But, it restricts membership to those who meet very high standards. So, most of the people it wants to win over aren't actually eligible to join.
Leninism solves that by creating a second level of organization. The party proper forms a hard core of committed revolutionaries. At the same time, it directs a network of mass organizations (or, less charitably, front groups). While they follow the party's lead, they have a much lower barrier to entry. So, the party can incorporate a large number of people without watering down its membership requirements.
When Leninist parties have historically been most successful, those mass organizations would lead to something greater than just a pool of supporters. They'd create a base.
Protestant flag outside the Christian Right organization Focus on the Family. Image: Wikimedia Commons
What Is a Base?
Evangelical white Protestants - the Christian Right's core demographic - only make up a quarter of the US. But somehow, the Christian Right exercises an outsize influence not just on government policy, but also on the overall social fabric of the areas in which it's concentrated. Where conservative evangelicals are strong, they shape culture and dictate norms - but even in a place like Texas, where their influence is hegemonic, they're less than one-third of the population. So where does their power come from?
In the 1970s, very few people were out as gay. Gay Liberation was a fringe movement, even in places with comparatively large gay communities. However, where gays were concentrated, they began to exercise influence - they sent Harvey Milk to the San Francisco city council, and over the years gay and countercultural values came to define the city's image. But, San Francisco has always had an overwhelmingly straight majority - how did gay people get their influence?
In the 1800s, Irish immigrants were economically and politically marginal, even in cities with large Irish communities. But, they came to exercise not just electoral power via urban political machines, but also social and cultural clout - Boston has never been majority-Irish, but St. Patrick's Day and Irish Catholicism have become integral to its identity. How did that happen?
Even in their core areas, each of these groups has always been outnumbered. In the latter two cases, they started out categorically excluded from social and political power. Yet, they all became highly-organized forces, dedicated to pursuing their interests with vigor and discipline. That let them grow powerful.
Each of them became a base. Conservative Christians aren't simply individuals with private beliefs. They're constituted into a base by a network of institutions: churches, charities, para-church groups, media outlets, and even businesses (anyone who's been to the small-town South has seen the Jesus fish on everything from auto parts stores to restaurants). Those institutions then coordinate the community's overall activities and goals, allowing it to act in a unified way. Because they're integrated into the day-to-day lives of their participants, to opt out of them is to opt out of the collective life they facilitate. The same analysis holds for San Francisco's gay bars, bathhouses, publications, and activist organizations, and for Boston's Irish churches, mutual aid societies, labor unions, and social clubs.
With a coherent infrastructure of institutions, a disjointed population can become an organized and powerful base.
Image: Polk County Democrats
On paper, the Democratic Party is a broad coalition. In practice, it is a cadre party.
It is controlled by professional Democrats - activist NGO managers, politicians' staffers, “political operatives," etc. These cadres set the Party's priorities, oversee its day-to-day work, and keep any potential leftist competition under control. Some of them work for the Democratic Party proper, but most don't. Officially, their "progressive nonprofit" employers aren't Democrat-affiliated. Materially, they are the Democratic Party's front groups. The small, self-selecting core uses them to bring in supporters. It's not coincidence that the same person grant-writing for Greenpeace one year is working for Emily's List the next. It's the same people. They are their Party's cadre structure, and they keep their front groups in line.
Sure, they align with different internal factions. Their competition is important enough to keep plenty of political reporters employed. But the drama of Bernie vs. Hillary obscures a deeper, more important reality. The faction fights and power struggles never step outside the overarching ideological boundaries of the Democratic “party line." Sure, Berniecrats want comparatively more social programs, and Hillary supporters comparatively fewer. However, none of them deviates from the Party's core program:
A capitalist economy with some regulation, but very little state ownership;
Collaboration between the government and businesses for “job creation" and social services provision;
Social liberalism, expressed through moderate affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, official statements of support for oppressed demographics, and a few changes to police codes of conduct;
An expansive military through which the US enforces its global hegemony;
Nominal support for immigrants' rights, but without full amnesty or open borders;
Opposition to expanding ballot access for minor parties;
A day-to-day political practice of lobbying, running campaigns for office, and symbolic “expressive protest."
No member of the Democratic cadre structure would dare deviate from that framework. If they did, they'd risk losing their job; certainly, their career prospects would vanish. Do they always interpret the core program the same way? Of course not. But they do always uphold it.
Why does that matter, though? What, concretely, does their discipline mean? Well, nearly every activist organization in the US is a Democratic front group. After all, even if they didn't want to be, their commitment to “conventional activism" demands it. When you spend your time waving signs and, perhaps, lobbying officials or supporting candidates, what's your mechanism for enacting change? The only way you can bridge the gap between protest and power is through the support of Democratic politicians - and you can't get that support if you won't align with their Party. And, of course, activist groups don't typically want to be independent in the first place. After all, their leaders and staffers are Democratic cadres. Their careers will take them across the whole extended Party structure.
The Democratic Party and its fronts don't just have passive supporters. They've grown an entire community and social scene around their institutions. Because of that, they shape the social and cultural fabric of the places where they're strong, wielding influence disproportionate to their numbers. In other words, the Democratic Party has a base, constituted through its fronts.
That base doesn't overlap with the activist subculture - it is the activist subculture. There is no distinction. The activist scene exists because the day-to-day activities of the Democratic Party's fronts bring it into being, providing an anchor for the informal activities and social networks that surround it. To participate in the activist subculture is to join the Democratic Party's base.
That doesn't just go for consciously Democratic liberals. Anarchist affinity groups form out of protest-based social scenes; concretely, they need protests in which to operate, and large protests only happen when the Democratic Party uses its fronts to mobilize people. The anarchist scene emerges from the Democratic base and relies on the Democrats' institutional infrastructure.
Leninist organizations run fronts of their own, attempting to imitate the more successful Democratic ones. However, they also depend on the Democratic base. They draw on the same pool of activists, advocate for the same causes, and usually show up at the same demonstrations. So, they only attract support when they hide their Leninist affiliation and follow the Democrats' lead - as Refuse Fascism (a Revolutionary Communist Party front) discovered in November, when it called for protests without Democratic support and nobody came.
Of course, occasionally radicals do start an organization with the potential to break away from Democratic control. When that happens, Democratic cadres work very hard (and sometimes very ruthlessly) to co-opt it. Because of its institutional position, the Democratic machine can recuperate nearly anything that emerges from the activist subculture. Just look at the Greater Seattle Neighborhood Action Coalition. Founded after Trump's election by an ad hoc left-liberal coalition, GSNAC explicitly took inspiration from the Rojava revolution. Officially, it committed to practicing direct action and mutual aid while abstaining from electoral politics. With that program on offer, GSNAC initially attracted several thousand participants. However, within a few months, a clique of professional Democrats seized control of the organization by undemocratic means. Without consulting other members, they not only began committing to liberal lobbying campaigns in GSNAC's name, but also unilaterally filed incorporation papers, naming themselves as GSNAC's officers. Within a couple of months, the overwhelming majority of participants left. They'd been promised something different than conventional activism, but the Democrats made sure GSNAC didn't deliver that.
The US Left may not realize it, but nearly all of it is part of the Democratic Party's extended machinery. However, leftists are excluded from the Democratic cadre structure; they can't actually direct its course. That leaves them with two options: embrace the Democratic line, or marginalize themselves.
Do you support leftist politics? Leave the activist subculture.
The task of radicals, at present must be digging in deep to the class, going “to the masses,” building long-term relationships with layers of oppressed and working class people, and organizing in our neighborhoods and workplaces. This is the punishing, demoralizing grind work that activists prefer to avoid, but it constitutes the only way forward.
The Left shouldn't take part in conventional activism. But what should it do?
Well, what does the Left want? Strategy follows goals; tactics follow strategy. For revolutionaries, the goal is to literally overthrow the government. Revolution means replacing the existing political and economic system with a better one, based on the mass cooperative control of economic, cultural, and political life. The working class carries out all the activities that sustain human life and society. However, it's excluded from power and subjected to oppression by the capitalist class of business owners and investors. So, it has the ability to carry out a revolution - the capitalists need it, but it doesn't need them. Further, because of its position of exploitation, it stands to benefit from the abolition of class distinctions.
But how, exactly, can it go about that? If revolution isn't on the menu yet, what's the path from here to there? Well, the working-class must become a well-organized social force - so well organized that it can exercise power and assert its interests, even when the ruling class uses violence to try to stop it. So, carrying out a revolution means first developing an institutional infrastructure capable of directly combatting the capitalist state. In communist lingo, a structure like that competing with the government is called “dual power."
Now, obviously, a dual power situation can't be willed into being overnight. Its constituent institutions must be built, piece by piece, however long that takes. Since the process of doing so means organizing the entire working class to act for itself in a coherent way, the working class must become a base. So, the “dual power strategy" for revolution is fairly straightforward: you develop autonomous institutions of class confrontation and mutual aid, through a process of base-building. Eventually, you reach a “critical mass" and can challenge the government directly.
When leftists engage in conventional activism, they pre-empt their ability to do that. Do you go to protests and wave signs? You're competing with the Democratic Party on its home territory. You're going to the Democratic base and telling it to stop being pro-Democrat. But it can't stop. It only exists in the first place through the Democratic Party's fronts. You have to go somewhere else and build a revolutionary base, instead.
Now, base-building is slow. It's a grind. It's not sexy and it's rarely cathartic. You don't get the high of being one of thousands of people in a big demonstration, chanting and raising energy. You don't get the quick gratification of networking with established activists and feeling like you're part of an “authentic social movement." Instead, you spend your time serving the people: creating constituencies by creating institutions and knitting them together, struggle by struggle, project by project.
The dual power strategy is not for the impatient. This work is too important to rush. There are no shortcuts. The activist subculture may look like one. And sure, taking over a ready-made base looks appealing, next to the difficulty of creating your own. However, it's a pipe dream. The Democratic base can't be separated from its Party. It only exists through that Party's institutions.
Now, the human cost of capitalism grows every day. And thanks to climate change, there's an ecological clock ticking. Slow and patient, on the face of it, hardly feels appropriate. The need for change is urgent; can we afford such a protracted approach? The dual power strategy is an uphill fight, sure, but at this point it's the only possible shot. There's no more time to waste on dead ends.
So stop protesting. Build a base instead.
Sophia Burns
is a communist and polytheist in the US Pacific Northwest. Support her on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/marxism_lesbianism