On Kshama’s Campaign and Its Left Haters

Votes are still being counted in Washington’s 9th Congressional District, but as we write this statement Kshama Sawant’s campaign for Congress has nearly 9000 votes and will certainly pull in more as the remaining ballots are counted. This is an impressive showing for an independent socialist candidate, especially in a race where the Democrats and Republicans pulled out all the stops to sink the campaign below the top two and save the seat of arch-Zionist Adam Smith. The phony campaigns of Basler and Chaudhry were explicitly about stopping Kshama from advancing into the second slot, which would have given her an opportunity to send Smith packing in November. As of now, they seem to have succeeded in doing so, and the bourgeois press has called the primary for Smith and Basler.

Those who campaigned for Kshama, phonebanked, raised money and canvassed have every reason to be proud of their efforts–whether or not she got past the primary, getting that many votes for an independent socialist campaign is a real win. However, even with all the dirty tricks by the Dems and the GOP, there was a path to victory in the primary: a real united-front campaign to send Kshama to Washington. The outlines of such a strategy were visible and viable. Sawant was endorsed by the Spartacist League, Revolutionary Communists of America, Seattle Revolutionary Socialists, Socialist Alternative, International Socialist Alternative-Revolutionary and United Front for a Workers Party. Within the DSA, the Just Break Already caucus, Labor Militant and ISA-R pushed for DSA to endorse Kshama’s campaign and build it.

Yet the response from the left inside and outside DSA was to ignore the campaign, denounce it, or endorse it but do nothing to build it. In every instance, sectarianism prevented a united-front campaign from coalescing behind Kshama. The end result is that a Zionist Democrat who wants to merge the US and Israeli militaries is going back to Congress. In the first camp, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is probably the biggest culprit. Running its own campaigns in a half dozen states (some of which, like Andre Easton, were endorsed by Kshama) that also deserve the support of socialists and working people, PSL didn’t say anything about Kshama’s campaign despite having endorsed her in the past and running campaigns virtually identical to hers. Had PSL come out in support of Kshama (and Kshama in support of all the PSL campaigns, not playing games with the Greens in California), the campaigns of both would have been strengthened and there would have been a real opportunity to break down sectarian barriers between the “Marxist-Leninist” PSL and the Trotskyoid milieu supporting Kshama. But of course, not all Trotskyoids are created equal.

Left Voice, which has published Sawant on their website, couldn’t be bothered to endorse the campaign, instead wasting time wading into disputes between capitalist Dems in the Michigan Senate primary, puffing up the “growing support for immigrants” supposedly represented by DAC’s win in New York, etc. The most galling example was this statement in Left Voice’s article on the Michigan Senate race:

“Rather than steering all the energy of our movements towards elections within an imperialist party, we need independent candidates that mobilize people to resist Trump by building opposition through organization in our streets, our communities, and our workplaces. It is time for the U.S. Left to raise its political horizon in Michigan and throughout the country.”

Earth to Left Voice: There are plenty of candidates running right now you should be supporting if this is what you actually believe!!

The DSA played an outsized role in the entire Kshama saga. With the resources and numbers to tilt the scale for an independent socialist, they instead piled onto Kshama for criticizing DSA’s electeds and refused to support her. What were Kshama’s criticisms? AOC voted to break a rail strike and supports weapons for Israel! There are plenty of DSA Leftists critical of AOC for the same things and who profess to want an independent socialist party. So what did they do? MUG members vociferously opposed endorsing her in Seattle! The rest of the DSA Left spent last night anxiously awaiting election returns for Dems like Cori Bush (who supports funding Ukraine) and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, who proudly describes himself as a capitalist. Bush got smoked and El-Sayed won, but neither are socialists and these election results don’t mean a damn thing for socialists. The only race that counted was Washington’s 9th Congressional District, but rather than build the campaign of an independent socialist, the DSA drew its line pretty clear: no support for “non-viable” (aka non-Democrat) candidates, no support for socialists who take a hard line against Zionism and strikebreaking.

And then there are the paper endorsers: RCA and Socialist Alternative. Both came out late in the election with endorsements of Sawant (a good thing) but neither actively built the campaign at all. SAlt didn’t even put their endorsement on their website until two days before the election! What’s the point of endorsing a campaign if you’re not willing to build it? For sects like these, every action is subordinate to self-replication. If they can’t run something or use it to build themselves (even if it comes at the expense of building the socialist movement more broadly), they don’t do it. So for the r-r-r-revolutionary RCA and the ultra-opportunist SAlt alike, a paper endorsement can get everybody asking what they want to do about the Kshama campaign off their backs without actually committing anything to it.

Meanwhile, Kshama’s own sectarianism undermined the possibility of turning her campaign into a real united-front effort. Denouncing her own supporters, banning Movement for Kshama from campaign events, cozying up to the Greens instead of building links with the rest of the independent socialist candidates–all these contributed to weakening the campaign and reinforcing sectarian barriers on the left.

Lessons must be learned from the Kshama campaign. This was the most high-profile independent socialist campaign in the country and not making it past the primary does not bode well for the campaigns in November, especially if there is not a fundamental shift in strategy on the part of the Marxist left.

First, the left should unite behind the independent socialist campaigns still in play: Brittany Kubicek in Rhode Island; the PSL campaigns in Ohio, New York and elsewhere; the Working Class Party candidates in Illinois and Michigan. Whatever our differences, the largest possible vote for these candidates would put the working class in the best possible position to resist Trump and the Dems’ assault on working people. We can debate these differences as part of a united front and push forward a fighting strategy for uniting these campaigns and building the socialist movement.

Second, the left should find ways to organize those who supported Kshama’s campaign. The upcoming Socialist Town Hall hosted by United Front for a Workers Party could be a start to do this in a real way, to clarify questions which divide the left politically and hammer out a real plan of action to close the gap between working people and the left. A real united front of all left groups on the basis of opposition to the Dems and the Greens and support for independent socialist campaigns would be a major step forward.