Introduction: Oaklandsocialist analyzes the candidacies of the two main “independent” lefts, Jill Stein and Cornel West. In Part 1 we analyzed the Jill Stein campaign. In Part 2 we analyzed the Cornel West campaign. Here we discuss the role of the left, socialist and otherwise, in relating to these two campaigns along with some further implications. 

Part 3: The “socialist” left
In the past, the left, socialists included, played an important role in the working class movement. Today, it is largely irrelevant. In the upcoming U.S. election,  it would be better if most of the left were entirely irrelevant. That’s what the campaigns of Jill Stein and Cornel West demonstrate.

How did this come about?

Biden speaking with union leadership. The union leadership is the representatives of the Democratic Party inside the working class.

For 50 years or longer, most of the socialist left, including this writer, opposed ever voting for a Democrat. For the most part, that was because we rebelled against the union leadership’s insistence on tying the unions to the Democratic Party. Many of us thought that it was a matter of principle, that there was an inherent contradiction between voting for a Democrat and working to build a working class party. That was because the union leadership made it appear so. It wasn’t that, though. It was simply that the union leadership kept making excuses. “Now is not the time” and “there is no alternative right now” they said. Anyway, the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans paled when compared to the importance of opposing the union leadership’s linking the unions to the Democratic Party.

That changed in 2016, although many, this writer included, only recognized that change a few years later, after we’d had the experience of Trump in office. The majority of the socialist left, however, never recognized this changed situation. They still take the same position today. My 2022 campaign as the working class socialist candidate for mayor of Oakland proved that there is no necessary contradiction between voting for a Democrat and campaigning for a working class party and for socialism.

However, most of the “socialist” left still lines up nearly unanimously behind the “never vote for the Democrats” position. They actually fall into the same camp as some on the far, far right.

Here are some examples of the position of this left:

Freedom Socialist Party
In early August the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign sponsored a debate over whether socialists should advocate a vote for Democrats in 2024 or ever. Arguing for the “no” was a representative of the Freedom Socialist Party. They have not yet endorsed an alternative in this election, but in 2020 they endorsed Jeff Mackler, a nominal “socialist”. Both as an individual and through his role in UNAC, Mackler has been a mouthpiece for Putin and Assad propaganda. That is where the “never Democrat” position led the Freedom Socialist Party.

Kshama Sawant (l) with Democratic member of congress Pramila Jayapal (r). Supporters of Socialist Alternative claim that pictures like this don’t mean that Sawant is “supporting” Jayapal. They were saying the same thing for months about not “supporting” Bernie Sanders… until they turned on a dime and openly supported him. It is a shame that the only elected socialist is moving ever closer to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Kshama Sawant
During the week of the Democratic National Convention, a group called Workers Strike Back held an online forum featuring Jill Stein, Cornel West and others. This group is a spinoff from Socialist Alternative and its most prominent leader is Kshama Sawant. She became prominent when she was elected to the Seattle City Council in 2013. She was the only openly socialist elected official in the United States at that time. She led the campaign for a $15/hour minimum wage in that city. Sawant time and again linked up with and defended the union bureaucracy, for example at this conference on the $15/hour minimum wage. (Note, there was a major debate at that conference over a clause in the proposed ordinance. Oaklandsocialist spoke during that debate. I was the last speaker in this video.) Sawant and Socialist Alternative refused to put the heat on the leadership of the United Food and Commercial Workers, when that leadership failed to support the campaign. As far as the Democrats themselves, Sawant made it clear that she would “work with” them, rather than challenge them. In fact, Sawant worked with the “progressive” Democrats the entire time she was in office. 

This is all relevant because of the position she took at the “Workers Strike Back” conference in early August. There, she attacked UAW president Sean Fain for supporting the

Teamster president speaking at the Republican Party convention. He supported far right US senator Josh Hawley. Sawant had not a word to say about any of that.

Democrats but had not a word to say about Teamster president Sean O’Brien’s appearance before the Republican convention, and his support for extreme right wing Republican Senator Josh Hawley. Sawant called for starting a debate inside the unions on their support for the Democrats, but there was no mention of the union leadership’s support for the “team concept”. “We need to rebuild the militancy of the rank and file” of the unions, she said. But when she was on the city council, she steered away from this like the plague. Treading the well worn path of those who apologize for Putin, Sawant and Co. ignored Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine as well as the Putin and Assad led counter revolution in Syria. While she correctly attacked Israel’s genocidal war against the people of Gaza, Sawant gave a pass to Russia’s bombing of Ukrainian schools, shopping centers, and hospitals and Assad’s crimes against humanity, which are backed by Putin. She attacked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for being a Democrat, but that wasn’t a barrier for her support for Bernie Sanders some years earlier. She pretended that voting for the Democrats necessarily prohibits organizing independently of them, including organizing for a working class party.

Most important of all, like all these opportunist left sectarians, Sawant completely ignored the necessity to build a resistance to the enormous threat that the MAGA Republican cult poses, regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election.

Howie Hawkins debated Margaret Kimberley about Ukraine. He supported Ukraine but as a loyal Green Party member he was unwilling to expose Kimberley’s collaborating with fascists at the 2014 Moscow conference of the Anti Globalization Movement of Russia.

Other individuals
Sawant/”Workers Strike Back” and the Freedom Socialist Party are joined by a series of independent socialists such as Howie Hawkins. He sees Jill Stein’s support for and links to Putin as well as Stein’s associating with the very worst of the pro-Putin and pro-Assad left as being no impediment to supporting her.

Others on the socialist left simply evade the issue. For example, the former leader of the International Socialist Organization, Ashley Smith, who wrote a 3300 word article in Tempest magazine, which he helps edit. His position there was: No position. “We should not argue with individuals about what they do at the ballot box,” he wrote. Evidently this means that he, himself, doesn’t need to even take any position. Smith then continued, “We should encourage [others on the left and other workers] to join us in agitating for reforms like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, Legalization for All, a Permanent Ceasefire to Israel’s genocidal war, and the immediate end to all U.S. aid to Israel, among many others.” What this shows is that Smith’s no position on how we vote amounts to a “no position” on the importance of who wins the election. It leads to a dismissal of the enormous threat Trump poses to democratic rights – dismissal by simply failing to mention organizing to resist those threats. Smith’s approach is the standard for Tempest magazine, in which he plays a prominent role.

Claudia de la Cruz and Party for Socialism and Liberation
At the far end of the “left” spectrum is the Party for Socialism and Liberation – PSL. They are running their own candidate, Claudia de la Cruz, for president. She is on the ballot in California, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Iowa, Minnesota and New Jersey. It also seems that the financial sponsor of their entire web – Roy Singham – is involved somehow. That is based on the fact that the allegedly Singham supported Brazilian group Brasil de Fato is covering de la Cruz’s campaign. According to the NY Times, this group is part of Singham’s international web. Oaklandsocialist has explained PSL’s international position previously:

“The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)… is an unabashed defender of the fascistic Assad. Among other things, and along with the rest of the Putinized “left”, they engage in the lie that Assad was not responsible for the poison gas attacks on Syrians. Along with their fraternal twin, the Workers World Party, they are part of the misnamed Syria Solidarity Movement (SSM), which should be called the Assad Solidarity Movement. A founding member of the SSM is the fascist connected Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross.

Meanwhile, if you scroll through their coverage of the unions in the U.S., you will  find no critique of how the union leadership links up with the employers on the job. This is fitting – no thought for the interests or role of the working class abroad nor at home.

“A rogues’ gallery of tankie royalty”
In general, this left’s role can be summed up in Charles’ Pierson’s article Putin’s Doves. Charles describes a 2022 conference called “The Real Path to Peace in Ukraine.” He points out that there was not a single Ukrainian voice at the conference. Charles continues: “On

Speakers at the “real path to peace in Ukraine” event. A “rogue’s gallery” of Putin and Assad apologists. (In the end, Corbyn did not appear, but the grand old man of Putin/Assad apologia, Noam Chomsky, did.

November 19, the People’s Forum in New York City hosted a panel discussion: “The Real Path to Peace in Ukraine.” The speakers were a rogues’ gallery of tankie royalty: Claudia De La Cruz, co-executive director of the People’s Forum; Noam Chomsky; Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin; the Green Party’s Jill Stein, M.D.; Brian Becker from the ANSWER Coalition; Eugene Puryear of Breakthrough News and the Party for Socialism and Liberation; and Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute….

[Note: The People’s Forum and Prashad’s Tricontinental Institute are directly financed by Chinese ruling party-linked millionaire, Ray Singham. Code Pink gets a little bit of money from Singham, and their co-founder, Jody Evans, is married to Singham. See “Who is Roy Singham?”] Charles continues, “Major themes were the need for negotiations; ending arms shipments to Ukraine; and that in the interests of peace, Ukraine should surrender all its territory seized by Russia. Oh, and that the US and NATO are to blame for the war.

“To these so-called “anti-imperialists,” the US is the Big Bad. Every nation which opposes the US—Russia, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea—deserves the Left’s support.….”

Charles concluded: “The People’s Forum declares that ‘People power will end this war.’ They’re right. They just don’t realize that the people are Ukrainian.”

Singham with wife, Jodie Evans, who is co-founder of Code Pink

Roy Singham
Some of these types are in the pay of multi-millionaire Roy Singham. His millions give them some ground game. Others just hover around them like fruit flies around an overripe piece of fruit. That is the state of all too much of the left today and that is the real basis of the presidential campaigns of Jill Stein, Cornel West, and also Claudia de la Cruz.

They and their left supporters are systematically and knowingly boosting the election propaganda of Trump, Putin, & Co. It is no wonder that Steve Bannon wrote “The path to [a Trump] victory here is clearly maximizing the reach of these left-wing alternatives… The more exposure these [third-party candidates] get, the better it is for us.” Stein, West, de la Cruz and their supporters claim that those who vote for them wouldn’t vote for a Democrat anyway. Polls show that that is not entirely true, but even if it were, they betray the interests of the working class and the oppressed by distracting attention away from the serious threat posed by the fascist-connected Republicans and by repeating pro-Putin and pro-Assad propaganda. They are in effect boosting the forces of white and male supremacy and doing nothing to resist those forces.

Conclusion
Just as with their mouthing the Putin propaganda regarding Ukraine – and Syria before that – this is a betrayal of the most fundamental obligation of socialism – international working class solidarity.

If a serious, socialist movement is ever to develop, it will do so out of an uprising from below, and the Putinized left will have no positive role to play in it.