“Vote Socialist”

California’s Democratic Party rulers have long been the epitome of “woke” liberalism. Behind this mask, the Dems have for years lorded over the state, ravaging working-class, black and immigrant communities in building the fortunes of the country’s largest concentration of billionaires. The upcoming California primaries pit a slew of Democratic contenders for the governor’s office against Republican Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, and Trump favorite, Steve Hilton. Workers, though, have an opportunity to protest this rat race at the ballot box. They can express their opposition to the Democrats’ one-party dictatorship and their Republican rivals by voting for candidates running on the Peace and Freedom Party’s “Vote Socialist” slate.

This slate’s candidates, most of whom are supporters of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, include Ramsey Robinson for governor, Frank Lara for school superintendent, Lalo Vargas for insurance commissioner, Meghann Adams for controller and Alice Stek for lieutenant governor. Crucially, they openly present themselves as socialists. And their demands speak to the needs of working people: free healthcare, quality education, the abolition of the price-gouging insurance companies, guaranteed union jobs, ending the war on black America and full rights for immigrants.

By voting for these candidates, workers can take a stand for their interests in the elections and send a rebuke to the union misleaders who have tied labor hook, line and sinker to the Democrats. This campaign could be a vehicle to begin to break away from the Dems’ anti-Trump resistance and polarize the state along class lines. The wider the forces of the left that rally behind the campaign, the greater its potential impact. Speaking at an April 10 PSL campaign meeting in Oakland, a Spartacist League supporter explained that a strong showing by the PSL candidates “will build confidence among workers and the oppressed to struggle under their own independent banner and for a workers party.”

In its canvassing material, the PSL says: “We believe working people should have political power and they should use the wealth we create to provide for the needs of the people.” We share this aim. The problem is that PFP candidates have muddied the waters by joining a “Left Unity Slate” with Green Party candidates. In a post publicizing this vote-swapping scheme, the PSL said that all candidates are “united in the fight against billionaire rule in California.”

The main point of unity is that the PFP and Green Party candidates all want to enact laws that would impose greater taxes on the billionaires. But none of the demands the PFP says they’re fighting for will be won by the state legislature tinkering with the tax system. To get the rulers to shell out more for health care, education or housing will take a serious fight. This requires mobilizing the working class in a confrontation that makes the rulers fear that they stand to lose a lot more if they don’t cough up some money.

However, the Green Party’s aim isn’t to mobilize the workers to fight for their class interests, but rather to get society to transform its values. Their demands are entirely based on moral appeals for “all people of good will” to elect a more humanitarian government. Far from getting any traction in the working class, such appeals are likely to just drive workers away. They are fed up with being told to “do right by others” while trying to put food on the table. Adding environmental justice to the mix is not going to help. Workers can and must be convinced to step up to defend others under attack by the billionaires, but only if this defense is linked to the defense of their own material standing and position in society.

In its campaign literature, the PSL says it is “building a political party that represents and empowers the working class.” But the PSL saps this very potential by making common cause with liberals, not least the Green Party candidates of Left Unity. Nonetheless, although undermined by mixing banners with the Greens, the PFP candidates are running on their own independent platforms, and their campaign still provides a separate lever from the Green Party for workers to pull to register opposition to the Democrats and capitalism.

This has gored the ox of a spokesman for the DSA’s Socialist Majority Caucus, who complains that the “Vote Socialist” campaigns “only make it harder for organizations that are building the mass movement needed to replicate the success of Mamdani and NYC-DSA.” By taking on the Dems, the PFP candidates call into question the total subordination of Socialist Majority and other DSA Right caucuses to the Democratic Party.

Mamdani has more than earned his spurs as an accomplice of the Democratic Party establishment in his first 100 days in office. His promises of ending the affordability crisis have gone up in smoke in deference to the powers that be in the Democratic Party and the Wall Street bankers, real estate magnates and other money bags who actually rule the city and run the Democratic Party. To its credit, the Cal YDSA is calling for a vote to the PSL candidates running on the PFP ticket as a way of “building the power we need to take on the Democratic Party establishment.” Clearly, the DSA Left could learn a thing or two from them.

After years of mostly being an echo chamber for Democratic Party liberalism, the left is small, splintered and largely irrelevant to the working class. Uniting behind the “Vote Socialist” campaign can both serve as a rallying point to build a working-class fightback and provide a forum for debating our differences on the road forward.