Oil Prices Plus DSA Campism and November’s Elections

Will the stupidity of the “socialist left” combine with the selfish shortsightedness of tens of millions of voters to deliver a victory for the fascist-connected Republicans in November? Consider these two sets of statistics:

• First is the falling price of oil and gas.

In an article entitled “A Sudden Glut of Oil Threatens to Weaken Iran’s Hand in Talks”, the Wall St. Journal writes “Oil prices have fallen to prewar levels. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is recovering fast. Gulf producers are already restarring idled wells…. some are predicting oil prices – durrently around $70 a barrel – will fall even more in the months ahead, providing further relief to drivers and airlines. Analysts at Macquire and Citigroup both forecast this past week that prices could sink to $60 in coming months.”

In fact, Trump’s war against Iran, which was a massive negative in the polls for him could turn into its political opposite if he can claim some sort of even partial victory. That is what the headline of that WSJ article shows, because the Iran regime’s bargaining power will, indeed, be weakened if oil prices continue to fall.

The fact that oil prices will only fall to prewar levels or that Iran’s situation will differ little from its situation under Obama’s JCPOA is irrelevant. Tens of millions of voters will only be thinking of what is the situation compared to a month or so earlier, at the longest.

• Now, combine that with what actually happened in New York’s recent primaries.

The victory of the most out of touch of all the winning candidates, Darializa Avila Chevalier, is instructive. According to the NY Post, there were 449,000 “active voters” in Chevalier’s district, and Chevalier won 33,000 votes. That’s just 7% overall. The Post further reports, “The district is predominantly Hispanic and black, with respectively 52% and 23% of residents, according to US Census data. Roughly 28% of residents have a college degree and the typical household income is $52,000 a year. Avila Chevalier swept white voters — 61% to Espaillat’s 39%…”

It was far more a class question than a racial one. Like many inner city districts (including the one in Oakland in which I’ve lived for 55 years), inner city districts which once were almost entirely working class, which in these cases were largely black and Latino, have seen a wave of largey white and almost entirely middle class “immigrants” one might call them. That’s who elected Avila Chevalier.

DSA played the key role in these elections. They were the ones who mobilized their base to campaign for their candidates.

DSA and the sectarian left are also the ideological core, the resting place, for the candidates themselves, and Avila Chevalier is a perfect example. Her entire political background lies in that home.

DSA itself has an interesting development. Prior to 2016 it was a tiny group living in the outer margins of the Democratic Party. Even middle of the road former mayor of NYC, David Dinkins, was a DSA member. Following the loss of Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries and then following her loss to Trump in the election, thousands of young Sanders supporters swept into DSA. After a time, the “revolutionary” left lost its scruples against DSA, especially as one of the tiny ultra left sects after another collapsed. So they joined DSA. Socialist Alternative and its Seattle leader Phillip Locker were prime examples. Once inside DSA, they formed various “caucuses”, through which to organize. Partly because the majority of DSA members are inactive, they have been able to assert their politics in DSA. In addition, many DSA members outside these caucuses hold similar attitudes on many issues. There is the common simplistic view that if US imperialism is the enemy then anybody who opposes US imperialism must be at least a partial ally. First and foremost that means Putin. It also means Maduro. Never mind that Putin is a central nexus for the world’s ethno nationalist and fascist forces, and never mind that Maduro was totally corrupt and hated by the majority of Venezuelans; they are opposed by US imperialism so there must be something good about them.

At the time of his election, it seemed that Zohran Mamdani might break from the millstone of this ideological left. He still might, but his endorsement and active support for Avila Chevalier is not a good sign. In fact, one must ask to what extent is their influence spreading beyond DSA itself. We have the example of the courageous

Ilhan Omar
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has been a long time supporter of Ukraine. Recently she voted against a Ukraine aid bill on the grounds that the sanction provision would hurt “ordinary Russians”. It is impossible that she have opposed sanctions against Israel on similar ground. What really motivated that vote? Did the role of the Putinized left, DSA especially, affect her decision? We will probably never know.

The “revolutionary” left inside DSA is opposed, to a degree, by the more pragmatic wing. However, there is one issue upon which they both fully agree – and upon which the entire Democratic Party agrees: That is support for the bureaucracy that controls the unions. That bureaucracy rests on the alienation that the great majority of the membership feels towards their organizations – the unions – themselves. The key question is when, where and through what dynamics will an independent movement of the working class develop? At this point, it seems most likely that such a movement will develop largely outside the unions, but it is impossible for it not to sweep into its ranks a large layer of union members. (That, incidentally, is what started to happen with Occupy Oakland 15 years ago. In that case, it was short circuited by the efforts of the union bureaucracy plus the “socialist left”, who acted as the missionaries for the bureaucracy. )

So as always that is the key question: How will the impasse, the crisis in the US working class be broken? Meanwhile, as far as November’s elections and the chances of the racist, ethno-nationalist and even fascist-infiltrated Republicans losing control of one or both houses of congress, it’s very possible, but don’t count your chickens before they hatch.