Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Palestine, and Opportunism — Yet Another Take on DSA and Electoral Politics

This is a rather long piece, and I recognize most people will only skim it, so here is my TLDR:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an opportunist (in Luxemburg’s sense of the term, elaborated below). In short, her stance on Palestine is a betrayal of DSA’s principles for the purpose of short-term political gain. DSA should still support her, but it should do so without illusions.

The American electoral system is the height of bourgeoisie individualist electoral politics. You vote for personalities, not policies. DSA needs to change this — make the policies the center, and make candidates commit themselves to the policies before they receive our organization’s support.

The Issue at Hand

DSA is a proudly multi-tendency organization, and it has seen incredible growth over the last few years. Its members range from experienced organizers well-versed in leftist theory to newcomers without much theory at all. Experienced organizers often have detailed, far-sighted plans for building socialism; newcomers may have few ideas beyond a knowledge that the system is broken and that something must be done to fix it. In between are members with just about every conceivable ideology and level of experience, and so it is little surprise that DSA is subject to constant and fierce internal debates. With so many diverse opinions, the amount of unity and concrete success that DSA has achieved so far is incredible, and speaks perhaps to a widely held desire to move past leftist infighting and to start making real, practical impacts.

Palestine, it seemed, was a rare moment of enthusiastic unity. With a massive vote in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) at DSA’s 2017 National Convention, the direction of DSA seemed clear — the organization would embrace BDS, and advocate for Palestine wherever and however it could.

But then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave a some tepid and uniformed responses to questions about the occupation of Palestine. Perhaps more importantly, she has refused, despite pressure from DSA members, to follow the clear DSA line and to give an explicit and unequivocal endorsement of BDS. Many DSA members found this particularly disappointing in light of her previous statements decrying Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. As Kollontai said: “A great deal was said and well said; but from words to deeds there is a considerable distance” (Kollontai, Workers’ Opposition).

And so DSA is in the midst of controversy, one that won’t fade anytime soon. Every time a DSA candidate finds success, particularly on the federal level, the rank-and-file of DSA will be watching and waiting for a statement on Palestine. And when that statement is anything less than enthusiastic support for Palestine and BDS, the controversy will start again.

To be clear, this debate is very often not about Palestine at all. Many DSA members who have long been skeptical of electoral politics are using this issue as an excuse to take shots at electoral work in general. This is valid, insofar as this controversy raises some very real and important questions about the nature of DSA’s electoral work. But often, the supposed concern for Palestine, even from those advocating for BDS, rings hollow. Too many people on both sides of this argument care far more about pushing their personal ideas about electoral politics than they do about showing actual solidarity for Palestine.

There are two angles, then, from which to examine this issue. The first is as a microcosm of larger questions relating to electoral politics. The second is to focus explicitly on the situation of Palestine. This piece will largely work through the former lens, but some brief words on the latter:

Solidarity with Palestine is a necessity for anyone committed to justice and decolonization, and BDS is one way to actively practice this solidarity. We should be outraged by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s failure on Palestine not because it reflects issues with electoral politics — although it does — but because it shows a fundamental moral failing. Any excuses made about “political necessity” fall flat — not only because these arguments are incorrect, but because they place more importance on American political games than the survival of the Palestinian people.

What Is the Argument About?

There have been, very broadly speaking, two main lines of thought within DSA over the question of Palestine and electoral work.

The first position looks something like this:

Enthusiastic support of the Palestinian people and the BDS movement is nothing less than “political suicide” (this term is problematic on its own, but I have seen it used on multiple occasions in this debate). The important thing is not to take a hopeless moral stand, but to gain actual political power, and to use that power to make real change. We have to meet people where they’re at, and gradually shift them to more radical ideas. After all, DSA campaigns focus on things like universal health care and rent control, not an immediate seizure and redistribution of the means of production. Avoiding certain radical positions is not a betrayal, but is a practical and necessary step on the path to popular support and, ultimately, power.

The second position looks something like this:

Palestine is not as controversial for the average voter as some make it sound. It is the politicians who despise Palestine — the people have more diverse opinions. Regardless, compromise on the issue of Palestine is unacceptable. Refusing to take a moral stand for political convenience will alienate our base and lead to a total loss of trust among both rank-and-file DSA members and voters at large.The bully-pulpit offered by such a successful campaign as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s provides the perfect opportunity — and with that opportunity, the responsibility — of unapologetic ally advocating for Palestine on the public stage. DSA has made its stance on Palestine and BDS clear — all DSA candidates should be beholden to that stance.

Let us dissect some of the assumptions underlying these arguments.

“Political Suicide” and the Threat of Opportunism

What is opportunism? There are different definitions, but Luxemburg has this to say about it:

“Now if one says that we should offer an exchange — our consent to militaristic and tariff legislation in return for political concessions or social reforms — then one is sacrificing the basic principles of the class struggle for momentary advantage, and one’s actions are based on opportunism. Opportunism, incidentally, is a political game which can be lost in two ways: not only basic principles but also practical success may be forfeited. The assumption that one can achieve the greatest number of successes by making concessions rests on a complete error. Here, as in all great matters, the most cunning persons are not the most intelligent…

In our no, in our intransigent attitude, lies our whole strength. It is this attitude that earns us the fear and respect of the enemy and the trust and support of the people.

Precisely because we do not yield one inch from our position, we force the government and the bourgeois parties to concede to us the few immediate successes that can be gained. But if we begin to chase after what is ‘possible’ according to the principles of opportunism, unconcerned with our own principles, and by means of statesmanlike barter, then we will soon find ourselves in the same situation as the hunter who has not only failed to stay the deer but has also lost his gun in the process.”

(Luxemburg, Opportunism and the art of the possible)

“Sacrificing the basic principles of the class struggle for momentary advantage.” If we add to this “sacrificing the fundamental principles of internal solidarity,” is Ocasio-Cortez’s stance on Palestine opportunism?

We have been assured, time and time again, that were she to embrace BDS it would be “political suicide.” In this way, avoiding BDS is made to sound more than a momentary advantage — it’s apparently a complete practical necessity. This would arguably still be opportunism — but are we actually dealing with a practical necessity? Would BDS cost her the election? Is it such a controversial issue that it would cause voters in the heart of the Bronx and Queens — in a district that has decisively voted democrat since at least 2000 — to suddenly go Republican?

The terror with which even supposed leftists approach the question of Palestine, the automatic assumption that the vast body of the American people will instantly abandon any politician who dares advocate for BDS, is ridiculous. This kind of disgust for Palestine is fulfilling the goal of the reaction. They want us to be afraid of advocating for Palestine, and when we perpetuate that fear in the name of sound political advice, we’re moving backwards.

Some Americans will leave a candidate who advocates for Palestine, of course — but many of those people would also flee a candidate who called for the abolition of ICE, a policy point that only energized Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters.

We need to be honest with ourselves. Who are we actually afraid of alienating by supporting BDS? Are we worried that the Bronx and Queens hides such a significant number of Islamophobes that BDS will cost Ocasio-Cortez the election? Surely we do not have such little faith in the people. The actual fear — hinted at, but not acknowledged — is that when Ocasio-Cortez embraces BDS, the media and the political establishment will turn on her. Right now, she has been treated mostly as a curiosity, not a threat. There is real danger in a push-back from embracing BDS — the New York Democratic Party has tried to discredit Cynthia Nixon for only the vaguest connection with BDS — but the political maneuverings of the Democratic Party have nothing to do with the actual beliefs of the voters.

Ocasio-Cortez, and those who defend her stance on Palestine, are trying to conciliate the wrong people. They’re trying to conciliate the leaders of Democratic party, people just like the man Ocasio-Cortez fought so hard to unseat. This, certainly, is opportunism — a moral comprise not in response to one’s constituents, but as part of some political game to placate other politicians. All in pursuit of some transitory political power — power that can do no good if the fundamental principles that motivated the seizure of power in the first place have been lost along the way.

In the long term, opportunism means the death of a truly leftist organization. If DSA were to embrace opportunism as a matter of course — and to be clear, the organization as a whole has not shown a tendency yet to do so — it would lose the trust of its members, and it would lose any hope of achieving a truly mass appeal. DSA would become just another corrupt political party, and DSA candidates would become just more corrupt politicians: hunting for advantage, willing to compromise on any issue, and committing no fundamental guiding platform. We see this in the history of many leftist electoral parties, from the Labour party in Britain (before Corbyn, at least; there is some cautious hope now for change) to Syriza in Greece. There’s a tendency to claim such betrayals are an inevitable part of any engagement with electoral politics, but that’s something of a simple explanation. The betrayal comes not from electoral politics in an abstract sense, but from the concrete decision made by supposedly socialist parties to compromise on their principles for the sake of electoral and political victories. To put it more simply, it is a reflection of the tendency for political parties to abandon their principles in the pursuit of power.

If DSA candidates, immediately after being elected, are going to begin acting like politicians — that is, if they are going to compromise the principles of DSA for momentary political advantage — then one wonders what the point of running DSA candidates is at all (the question of whether or not Ocasio-Cortez is a “DSA candidate” is a difficult one, and will be addressed more below). When you start down the path of taking the politically convenient position, you can never be trusted. You will always be able to justify an immoral decision with rhetoric of political necessity.

This is not to say that DSA has fallen down some irredeemable path, or that Ocasio-Cortez has turned into a hopelessly corrupt politician before she has even stepped on Capitol Hill. Ocasio-Cortez can choose to remain consistent to her principles and responsive to the real needs of her constituents, and as an organization, DSA is still far from turning into an opportunist organization — it’s far from becoming an organization with any kind of clear and specific direction, but that’s not a bad thing. But to avoid the slide into opportunism, we need to call it out when we see it, and we need to condemn it for what it is.

Opportunism means the sacrifice of principles and, as Luxemburg says, it also means the loss of immediate success. If DSA members truly believe that electing a handful of progressives to Congress will result in any real, structural change, they are fooling themselves and are dooming the movement. Compromise and political maneuvering will not get them closer to real change — it will only give the bourgeois parties more power.

Why should the Democratic Party support progressive policies when it knows any insurgent candidates that make their way to Congress will be only too happy tocompromise? On the issue of Palestine, every Democratic politician suddenly has an excuse — why should they support BDS or oppose Israeli occupation when even the “radical” Ocasio-Cortez balked at the first mention of the word “Palestine”? When it becomes clear that these insurgent candidates are no real threat — that they are only too happy to become part of the system, and to work hand-in-hand on most issues with the Democratic Party — the Democrats will stop being afraid. The only reason Democrats will ever pass progressive legislation is out of fear that an insurgent progressive will unseat them. The Democrats will appropriate our progressive rhetoric — as they already have begun to do — knowing it will get them votes, and knowing that the people do not have the direct power to hold them to their promises. What’s more, they know we’ll let them get away with it — we let Ocasio-Cortez get away with it, after all.

Do We Still Support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

If we agree that there is no room for compromise on BDS, and that Ocasio-Cortez has taken a clear turn towards opportunism — and obviously, DSA is far from consensus on either of these points — then how should we approach Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign?

My tldr already spoiled this, but we should continue to support her even while acknowledging these fundamental failings.

This is because — unlike many of her less critical supporters — we should not enter into electoral work with any illusions. We should not expect Ocasio-Cortez to make any actual concrete change in Congress — she will still be one of 435 representatives, and she’ll be working against a Trump presidency.

Ocasio-Cortez’s true importance — and doubtless she would agree — lies not in what she will fail to do in Congress but in the inspiration she has already instilled in countless onlookers, in the change her victory heralds for the political system, in the fear she has struck in the heart of the Democrats, and in the confidence she has given activists to continue to work to create concrete, grassroots socialist power (I believe she would agree with the first two statements, at least, and I know far too little about her personal beliefs to know her views on the latter two statements).

You can be strategic without compromising your values, and you can support someone while still openly criticizing them — indeed, uncritical support is no support at all, but a kind of blind faith, ready to break the moment the object of faith inevitably falls below the unrealistic expectations set in the worshiper’s mind.

Ocasio-Cortez is an opportunist. Ocasio-Cortez will fight tirelessly for vital, desperately needed policies. Ocasio-Cortez will inspire countless individuals, and she will — she already has — contribute incredibly to DSA’s growth. These are all true statements. DSA should support her without illusions, and without ever letting up the pressure on Palestine. We should knock on doors and make calls for her, we should send out email blasts and support her on social media, we should put as much energy as we can into her campaign — and every step of the way, we should acknowledge her opportunism; every moment, until her election and, if necessary, every day of her term in Congress, we should demand that she endorse BDS.

I say with all seriousness that DSA members should be ready to knock on doors for Ocasio-Cortez one moment, and protest her failures on Palestine the next. We should be strategic and pragmatic, but we should never compromise on our principles. To abandon Ocasio-Cortez completely is foolishness, but to make excuses for her failure on Palestine is an abandonment of our principles.

Candidate Accountability — Are We Running DSA Candidates? Should We?

“But,” cry those who shun all electoral politics, “Ocasio-Cortez has betrayed us! If we continue to support her, even if we do so critically, we just prove that candidates can ignore our organization’s priorities without consequence. We should not, we can not, support candidates until we can be sure they are totally accountable to our organization.”

Did Ocasio-Cortez betray DSA? How can we ensure accountability to our organization — and should accountability to DSA our goal?

DSA members definitively believe they have something of a claim on Ocasio-Cortez, and that she is obligated to support DSA’s policy priorities. After all, she’s a DSA member, and DSA organizers spent an incredible amount of time and energy supporting her campaign.

But DSA was hardly the only organization to support her. Our Revolution, MoveOn, and Brand New Congress (BNC) all endorsed her and provided varying levels of support — it was supposedly BNC that originally convinced her to run. Should all these organizations, and the slew of other liberal to progressive organizations that supported her, have an equal say on her platform while in Congress? Or should we engage in some convoluted arithmetic by which the groups who are somehow determined to have contributed “the most effort” to her campaign receive the most influence in determining what policies she should embrace?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will doubtless point out that, regardless of what organizations support her campaign, it will ultimately be the people of the Bronx and Queens who actually elect her, and it will be to them, not any specific political organization, to whom she owes her loyalty. This is very true, but it’s also an excuse — you can vaguely claim the support of “the people” to embrace all kinds of reactionary policies, or to avoid all kinds of progressive ones. This is because “the people” are not, of course, a unified body — the people have different and conflicting needs and interests, and unless you’re engaging in directly democratic processes to find their true feelings on an issue — a referendum, perhaps — you don’t actually know what “the people” want.

Now surely a socialist, when consulting the needs of her constituents, should specifically listen to the needs of the most oppressed and exploited. Surely she considers first the needs of the workers and the unemployed, the homeless and the people barely paying rent, the people of color harassed and killed by the NYPD, the immigrants detained by ICE, the disabled people struggling to navigate an incredibly inaccessible subway system. And surely she considers first the needs of the colonized, of those who are fighting everyday for the very survival of their people. Palestine itself is not actually within Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district, to be fair, but certainly all the values she claims motivate her campaign necessitate her solidarity — every moment she avoids BDS, she names herself a hypocrite.

But saying that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should support Palestine because it’s a moral necessity is very different from saying she should support Palestine because DSA supports Palestine.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should make her decisions based on the direct input of the people of the Bronx and Queens, particularly those who are the most exploited, oppressed, and excluded by our current political and economic systems. Society. This doesn’t mean she should make her decisions based on the wisdom of DSA. Surely the people themselves know better than DSA what they themselves need, and the relatively small number of DSA members from those boroughs cannot claim to speak either for all of the people, nor for the most oppressed. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a valid reason for not being particularly concerned about the principles voted on at DSA’s national convention, and for being more concerned about what her most vulnerable constituents think (though, again, this is hardly a reason to abandon BDS).

DSA can’t demand or expect accountability of candidates while it remains a relatively small group of largely white, middle class socialists out of touch with their larger communities. The very nature of elections means that all the constituents of any geographical region have a direct claim on the person elected — by what right does DSA supersede these constituents?

There’s a larger question here — is insisting upon accountability to DSA undemocratic in the sense that it denies constituencies who are not DSA members from voicing their own concerns? Should candidates be accountable to DSA, or should they be directly accountable to their constituents? Should we run explicitly DSA candidates, chosen from our own ranks, accountable to our organization, or should we work to support left-wing, grassroots candidates when and where they arise, and encourage more of these candidates to step forward?

Or perhaps we should look beyond the candidates, and build the movement.

Platforms, Not Politicians

What follows is a vaguely defined series of ideas. This is meant to serve as inspiration for how DSA can improve its electoral work, but is not a concrete proposal. The main point here is that, when deciding the priorities for electoral work, and when deciding specific platforms that DSA expects candidates to commit themselves to, we must involve our communities directly in the process. DSA cannot be an exclusive, arrogant group dictating to the people what needs to be done — it needs to be grassroots and democratic, building platforms from the bottom up. If you want to join a vanguard party, there are plenty of others to choose from — DSA is explicitly broad tent and directly democratic, and should apply these principles to its electoral work.

As pointed out previously, running candidates committed to DSA’s policies essentially means that DSA is imposing its own ideas about necessary policies upon the people who would actually benefit from those policies. Palestine is slightly different — this is a matter of international solidarity — but one can easily imagine troubling situations. What if a local DSA chapter — mostly white and middle class — develops a different demand around preventing police violence than a person of color centered group in the same community? What if a DSA chapter claims that any specific issue shouldn’t be a priority, and the people most affected by that issue disagree?

DSA also has a tendency to worry too much about finding the “right” candidate — an issue endemic to America’s uniquely corrupt brand of electoral politics. To repeat my TLDR, the American electoral system is the height of bourgeoisie individualist electoral politics. You vote for personalities, not policies. DSA needs to change this — make the policies the center, and make candidates commit themselves to the policies before they receive our organization’s support.

We need to create broad-based platforms that take direct input from the individuals and community groups most affected by the oppression and exploitation of our current society. Platforms should be developed in open, directly democratic processes which — and this is vital — involve non-DSA members. That doesn’t mean that just anyone should be involved — these should mostly be the members of progressive and radical community groups and unions, particularly those groups that can offer perspectives that DSA lacks. This can be done in a wide range of ways — neighborhood assemblies, local conventions, or by simply going up to community groups and unions and asking them what policies are most important to them.

At first, engagement will be low. That’s ok, and it’s important to expect this to avoid discouragement. But then DSA will develop a platform, will choose a candidate who commits themselves to that platform, and the DSA candidate — running on an explicitly radical and democratically developed platform — will win. And next time, more people will come to the meetings to determine the platform — a situation that will create its own difficulties, but will be a welcome change.

We can’t be sore winners — after our candidates are elected, we need to continue the process, and invite community members and community groups to continue to give input on policy. Directly democratic engagement needs to be maintained during time in office, not just during elections — it is another symptom of exclusionary bourgeois politics that makes us think we should only be involved in the governance of our communities once every four years. When important issues arise that were not clearly addressed by the platform, the constituents, not the politicians, will decide what is to be done.

The labor at first will be on DSA members — they will need to do their best to figure out what the community groups want, and put those desires in their platforms — even if those groups don’t choose to involve themselves directly in the process, and even if they scorn DSA as a group of white middle class liberals (this is not a matter of pride). This does not mean that we should seek out any and every group, and place every idea that comes up onto our platform. Judgement will still need to be used, and we should be engaging with groups that already share basic fundamental principles with us — but we also need to be ready to swallow our pride and recognize that the individuals directly facing a problem will always know more about it than those studying it from afar.

Those who are most affected by certain issues should have more influence on deciding priorities for policies meant to deal with those issues. For example, if 48% of voters in an area support rent control, but 80% of people who actually rent their homes support rent control, the platform should probably include rent control, and it should be understood that the needs of property owners are not the priority for a socialist organization. It will be difficult to adapt this principle into a formal process, and the process should probably be kept flexible, but it’s an important component to keep in mind.

When we manage to create a platform in a specific area — a process that will, without a doubt, be long, hard, and controversial — we will then need to find a candidate who commits themselves to the platform. Their willingness to commit themselves completely to all aspects of the platform should be the defining feature of whether or not someone is chosen as a candidate. Yes, you ideally want someone charismatic, and you certainly want a candidate who reflects the diversity of the constituents they are running to represent (that is, you don’t want a white guy running to represent a majority person of color district), but these are secondary concerns — you’re pushing for your platform, remember, not your candidate. You can have spokespeople from DSA and the community groups involved in the process act as surrogates.

How do you ensure commitment? Anti-electoral leftists are apparently convinced of the inherently corrupting miasma of congress — put a good person there, they will always come back corrupt. But that’s because even the best leftists have been put into government, time and time again, believing that they as individuals will need to decide on priorities, that they will need to make deals to pass legislation. They go in expecting to be compromised — they are defeated before the step through the door. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s refusal to adopt BDS is a clear first step of this process. So you stop the corruption by removing the autonomy of the politician — the politician becomes nothing more than a representative of the movement, and they should gladly and enthusiastically see themselves as such even before they are chosen as a candidate.

There are formal measures that can be taken, as well — candidate contracts is one idea that has been around for awhile, though these have the disadvantage of relying on the formal legal system to work.

But in the end, it’s the mindset that matters. Someone who buys into the myths of bourgeois representative politics — who actually believes that they, as an individual, can make a difference through nothing but their own intelligence and determination — will be eaten up and spit back out either corrupted or disenchanted.

This, of course, is nothing close to an ideal system. It is simply a way to move away from the individualism and personality contests of bourgeois representative democracy towards a truer form of direct democracy.

Democracy is a complicated process. To be clear, this process is not meant to suborn the principles of DSA to a random assortment of meeting attendees. A neighborhood assembly open to all, to which some 100 people show up, can hardly claim to speak on behalf of the entire constituency. Unless a situation of relative direct democracy occurs — as in a referendum with almost universal turnout — it can be nearly impossible to claim with any accuracy what then majority of the population actually wants in relation to any specific policy issue. But a series of assemblies, drawing (ideally) thousands to tens of thousands, held primarily in neighborhoods traditionally left voiceless by the current political system; or a convention of delegates from a wide range of progressive organizations within a certain geographical area; these are processes that can at least get closer to real democratic principles than our current representative system, where candidates are elected based on personality, not on policies, and where turnout is regularly far below 50% of eligible voters.

Going into the process, DSA will need its own list of minimally necessary policy priorities — and BDS should feature prominently on that list — but these priorities will only be guidelines, and they can be refined and added to throughout the process. As we have more and more success, we should expect disruption — Zionists organizing turnout at a public meeting to oppose BDS, white petite bourgeois coming to oppose affordable housing. When this happens, we should take it as a victory — we will have suborned legitimacy from the two-party system. Instead of going to the state, or to the Democratic or Republican parties, people will be coming to us to protest and complain. As long as those protests come from the privileged, we shouldn’t be worried, and these protests can’t be seen as a reason to abandon DSA priorities. But if we are truly successful, the protests will come from the other side — the oppressed will come to tell us we are not radical enough, that we are not doing enough to address the real issues, and they will be right. This is an issue for another discussion, and we are a long way off from that right now — but the short answer is, always listen when those who are directly affected by an issue tell you that you are not doing enough to combat it.

The point of this is not simply to pass progressive policies. It’s to fundamentally change how we engage with politics, to undermine the electoral system even as we use it to gain power. Let our candidates work not as politicians,but as mouthpieces for the people, sending up rallying cries. Don’t stop at polices — use the connections and organization created through electoral work to take direct action in your communities. When Congress fails to pass the policies the community has already collectively agreed are necessary, take to the street and enact the policies yourselves.

And as such does social-democracy play an essential role in revolution.

At least, so thinks

Spailpín