Breaking the Impasse: Electoral Politics, Mass Action, and the New Socialist Movement in the United States

by Kim Moody

In his latest book, veteran socialist writer Kim Moody masterfully analyzes the political impasse which has shaped the rise of a new socialist movement in the United recurring economic and political crises, sharp inequality, state violence, and climate catastrophe proceed apace as the right ascends across the world. Moody situates the historic electoral campaigns of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other self-described “democratic socialists” and the growth of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America in this context, and incisively assesses the revived movement's focus on electoral strategies.

Offering an important account of left attempts to intervene in the American two-party electoral system, Moody provides both a corrective and an alternative orientation, arguing that the socialist movement should turn its attention toward a politics of mass action, anti-racism, and independent, working-class activity.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History

343 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 26, 2022

Reviews

[Nathaniel Flakin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just about everyone agrees that the United States is hopelessly polarized — the political regime is broken. The country is at an impasse. In this new book (released in April), one of the leading intellectuals of the socialist Left in the United States argues that the working class will need to step onto the political stage if this impasse is ever to be broken.

This is a book-length polemic against the "New Social Democratic Nostalgia" represented by Jacobin magazine and the leadership of the DSA. These self-described "democratic socialists" argue that there is only one venue in the U.S. where socialists can be successful: in Democratic Party primaries. Moody counters with several chapters full of data showing that primary elections are deliberately undemocratic and serve to make candidates dependent on wealthy donors, so they can be independent of their voters. While some say that campaigns outside the Democratic Party are impossible, Moody points out that independent socialist candidates actually would not have to worry about a spoiler effect (helping the Right), because most electoral districts in the United States today effectively only have one party.

The New Social Democrats try to ignore questions of racism, sexism, and special oppression, claiming that the way to end racism is via "color-blind," "class-wide demands." Moody points out what a misnomer this is: it is actually a call to join a "cross-class social construction: the Democratic Party." All of history, from the origins of capitalism to the uprisings of 2020, have shown that anti-racism doesn't distract from the class struggle, but instead inspires it.

The record of socialists on opposing bourgeois parties is clear. Karl Marx, for example, said: “Considering that against this collective power of the propertied classes, the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to all old parties formed by the propertied classes.”

Today's pointedly unambitious "democratic socialists" do not believe in revolutionary change. Instead they hope to elect a "transformational" president along the lines of FDR. But FDR's policies were nothing but a ruling-class response to fears of revolution. As FDR himself said in 1938, his motivation “was my desire to obviate revolution… I wanted to save capital.”

Moody's continues with polemics against other reformist thinkers, such as Jane McAlevey, the organic intellectual of the left-wing trade union bureaucracy, or Cedric Johnson, a theorist of anti-anti-racism. Johnson holds up Bayard Rustin as a role model, a civil rights campaigner and opportunist socialist who joined the Democratic Party hoping to win mass influence — and ended up aligning with segregationist Dixiecrats against civil rights activists. Rustin's trajectory is actually a good warning about what will happen to socialists who make a similar attempt today. As one critic said, “it seems the party moved [Rustin] considerably more than he moved it.”

There is much to like about Moody's book. But his conclusions are limited. He argues forcefully for an independent workers' party. But the goals of the working class — a workers' government, the expropriation of the expropriators, a planned economy, socialism — are barely mentioned. He presents workers' political action as a means to win political and economic reforms to make the United States a less awful place for working people. Moody limits any talk of revolution to a very short "postscript," and even here it is reduced to a "rupture of historic proportions." We get no idea if he believes this means the working class creating its own organs of self-organization to smash the capitalist state, or if a couple of good constitutional amendments might actually be enough.

Here we see the current tragedy of the socialist Left in the United States: the renegades (like Eric Blanc) are bold to the point of shamelessness, happily distorting historical facts in search of arguments to justify their support for a capitalist party. Their revolutionary critics, in contrast, seem deferential and hesitant to spook anyone out with talk of revolution. Moody's book is a great opening salvo against the New Social Democratic Nostalgia, but a socialist program needs to go much further. The fact that the recent Labor Notes conference, which Moody founded, banned socialist groups from handing out leaflets while inviting a Democratic Party politician like Bernie Sanders to give a keynote speech, shows that the fight for the political independence of the U.S. working class will not be short or easy.

[Ana Gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breaking the Impasse outlines the political landscape post-Bernie and offers a potential path forward in the self-liberation of the working class.

Moody unfairly downplays Sanders presidential runs’ impact on the left, but his critique of socialist electoral strategy is a good one. Newly elected socialists in the Dem Party face huge pressure to conservatize, both to maintain their position and win reforms. And absent strong labor and social movements to exert political pressure externally, any reforms are more symbolic than transformative.

Post Bernie, using the Dem line to build an independent party seemed promising: run socialists as Dems to heighten contradictions between Dem promises/actions, build power through highly visible public offices connected to democratic orgs like DSA, eventually split off to form a worker's party. But the project is, at least for now, indistinguishable from realignment of the Dem party. Maybe worse in the long run is a confused approach with no coherence—DSA’s disjointed electoral project today.

Through the trajectory of two civil rights/labor figures—Randolph & Rustin—from radical to a top-down, “cross-class coalition” politics, Moody warns against mediating popular demands through labor bureaucracy and an “insider” legislative strategy. “The Left” and DSA should be wary of lowering our horizon from the fight for socialism to a fight for reforms within capitalism.

What really led to the New Deal & Civil Rights Act, mass action, instructs us that socialists shouldn’t be afraid to take positions like anti-police violence or antimilitarism. Which doesn’t mean we adopt a liberal, advocacy type identity politics, but by synthesizing material struggles, politicize people around a broader vision through confrontation on issues that (Moody quotes Rustin) "one-tenth of the population cannot accomplish,” similar to the population active in labor at the time.

Finally he examines the limits of McAlevey's organizing model, saying labor militancy has to come from the rank and file, not union staff directing worker leaders. I struggled through what waiting for the next political awakening looks like and find Moody's points on how social movements will play a part a bit vague. But it got me thinking about what could move us closer to socialism and anchor a national (global?) fight for a better world.

[Mrtfalls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction
Written in 2022 Kim Moody argues in Breaking the Impasse that American politics is in a political cul de sac. This “impasse” is characterised by the Republican Party lurching further right and the Democratic Party taking a more centrist political and neoliberal economic position. He argues against left-wing and socialist ventures into the Democratic Party and instead for building a mass working-class based party which “should seek to be a central piece in building the organized power of the working class” independent of positions this party may hold or seek to hold in the American state or legislative bodies.

US politics condemned to a two-party system?
Moody challenges the idea that US electoral politics is condemned to a two-party system. More specifically, he asserts that while the First Past the Post voting system (FPTP) does act as an obstacle to multi-party politics, it does not mean that US electoral politics is doomed to a two-party system. The UK and Canada also use FPTP but have (or at least have had) active and influential third parties. In fact, third parties in the US used to be more active and voter turnout higher. The significant obstacles, in Moody's opinion, were created long ago – between the 1890s and 1920s – by the introduction of state and local primaries (preliminary elections where voters choose the candidates that will contest a later election), gerrymandering, and voter disenfranchisement (e.g. through literacy tests, voter registration, length of stay requirements and citizenship requirements). These factors led to a drop in voter turnout from highs of 79% in the 1890s to lows of 49% by the 1920s. Since the 1930s voter turnout has stayed between 50% and 62%, with the most recent election in 2020 having the highest voter turnout of the 21st century.

Moody rails against the idea that direct primaries are a good form of democracy. He writes “the primary election for congressional, state, and local candidates was presented as a form of direct democracy for the public, when the reality was meant to be the opposite. It is rather the perfect capitalist marketplace of candidates in which passive consumption (voting for your choice) is substituted for the participation in the messy reality of party organization, debate and conflict” (pg 20). Moody takes particular issue with primaries, since socialists (particularly those in the DSA) argue that successful challenges and in-roads into the Democratic Party can be made via them. While primaries raise important issues and mobilise voters and activists, it is done in a short time and leaves little or no organised base behind afterwards. Moreover, much of the Democratic Party funding for congressional elections (via the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) goes to incumbents. And there is measurable tendency for the DCCC to fund centrist candidates: “of the thirty-seven House Democrats who received substantial coordination funds from the DCCC in the 2020 election cycle, twenty were members of the centrist New Democratic Coalition, five of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, while only two were members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and on of those was also a centrist New Democrat” (pg 33).



Democratic Party a Political Dead-End
In Moody's opinion, socialists underestimate the effects of direct primaries, the orientation of the Democratic Party towards an increasingly wealthy voter-base, the influence of wealthy donors within the party, and the lack of democratic structures and culture within the party.

Moody explains how socialist involvement through the Democratic Party tends to end up capturing the candidate (or political movement), co-opting them and turning them into someone more centrist and less confrontational. While this is true of even left-wing parties in other countries it is particularly poignant within the Democratic Party. Whether socialists advocate out-and-out alignment or argue for a “dirty break”, they are faced with a range of obstacles trying to obtain positions within the Democrats and even once they get into those positions they face further pressure to align to the political centre of the party.

While most DSAers and socialists don't hold illusions about the current political position of the Democratic Party, it is seen by many as the best hope for the working class or at least the lesser of two evils. However, as Moody points out “for years now the Democrats’ strategy for winning presidential, state, and congressional elections has been to take its urban districts for granted and focus on winning suburban middle-class and wealthy moderates”. The Democrats increasingly rely on a wealthier and whiter voter base. He goes on to note that “voters with family incomes of $150,000 or more voted Democratic [as opposed to Republican] by 59 to 39 percent in 2018, up from a result of 51 to 44 percent in 2016” meanwhile “those making under $30,000 who voted heavily Democratic fell from 28 percent of voters in 2016 to 17 percent in 2018 and 15 percent in 2020”. Overall voter turnout from black voters, union households and working class households have all fallen significantly in the 2000s, mainly impacting the Democrats who saw these groups as a reliable base. The Democratic voter base has become whiter and wealthier and this trend persists.

The turn towards wealthier voters correlates with a marked increase in the role of money in election cycles and the Democratic Party taking more donations from wealthy sources. In the 2020 election cycle the Democratic National Committee (DNC) raised $410.9 million. Half of this money came from businesses involved in finance, investment and real estate. Unions and other labour organisations contributed a lonely 1 percent of this (roughly $3.5 million). Furthermore the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has seen an increase in the number of large individual donations since 2000 with 58 of the richest 100 individual donors giving to the Democrats. Moody goes into more detail on how this shift took place and the amount of money poured into elections and their corresponding primaries.

Even if you successfully elect a socialist through the Democrats, you still face further barriers. The main one being the Democratic Party bureaucracy couple with a lack of clear avenues in which to democratically fight for and win policies within the Democratic Party. While there are a lack of groups holding candidates to account, it would be impossible for them to do this if they were to try. The result is that left-wingers get dispirited and absorbed into the party machine. Moody describes how Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez (a member of the House of Representatives) has replaced radicals with more liberal advisors, reduced support for incoming left-wingers, become integrated into the Biden campaign, and made peace with Nancy Pelosi. This does not mean that AOC has stopped talking left or nominally supporting progressive policies such as free education, the Green New Deal, or raising the minimum wage. As Moody observes “Pelosi and other leaders have not attempted to silence or suppress AOC… what is required of AOC and other dissidents is not a surrender of ideas or left identity, but conformity to the norms, protocols and discipline of the Democratic Caucus” (pg 42).

Moody also opposes the idea of a “dirty break” (the proposed strategy of being active within the Democrats only to later break off, create your own socialist party and take parts of the Democrats with you in the process). He argues that there are a number of issues with this: the difficulty of raising money to run successful candidates particularly if you are challenging incumbents; the potential of being absorbed into the party apparatus if you are successful; and a lack of clarity of when this break should take place and in what way. He disagrees with Eric Blanc’s portrayal of the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party (MFLP) as an example in favour of the “dirty break” strategy. In the early 20th century the MFLP had (ultimately unsuccessful) endeavors in the Democrats and Republicans operating as the Working People’s Nonpartisan League. Blanc argues that these forays of WPLN into both major parties laid the ground for the later success of the MFLP. Moody disagrees, arguing that Blanc misunderstands the political context of the time. It was not the MFLP´s attempts to intervene and break from the two major parties that produced successful candidates in 1922 and 1923 when the MFLP ran its own candidates, but rather the labour upsurge from 1918 to 1922 that was the major factor. Moody spells out his criticisms of the dirty break in more detail here.

Potential for an Active Socialist Movement and Mass Working Class Party
Finally Moody makes the case in favour of building a working class party independently of the Democrats. He notes a couple of factors in favour of attempts to do so: the DSA, starting with a few thousand members, grew significantly during the Sanders campaign and later in 2021 peaked at 95,000 members (it currently has around 85,000); polling suggests a large portion of the population (particularly young people) are (nominally) in favour of left-wing and socialist ideas - however this has declined somewhat since the book was published; the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 demonstrated an appetite and potential success of a socialist movement in US electoral politics; and, a working class party would have many electorally safe places from which to springboard as well as the potential to be active in urban areas where there are large logistics hubs and significant industrial activity.

While work has certainly sped up, become more precarious, and more heavily surveilled and monitored, these changes in the pace and form of capitalist production also open up new vulnerabilities that can be exploited - for example a slow down in logistics can cause the industry a lot of money, likewise the system is more vulnerable to IT issues. Another thing that Moody notes is that over the last few decades the working class is now different in composition. It is more multi-racial and diverse than it has been in the past – his analysis is solely on the US but is likely similar in other countries.

A further factor in favour of a working class socialist party is the emergence, and in many cases victories, of rank-and-file caucuses in US unions. Talking about the Teamsters and TDU Moody argues “the sorts of critical rank-and-file victories we´ve seen in major teachers´, transit, postal and health care unions in the last several years could now come to a broad variety of industrial workers as this huge union sweeps away decades of conservative rule and prepares to take on the giants of transportation” (pg 167). He notes a similar possibility for the United Automobile Workers (UAW).

US politics has also been marked by the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement and an upsurge in feminist politics. These are things a new working class party should engage with: “The point is to be on the ground, in the class, in the workplace, in the tenants´ organization, in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, union reforms movements, strikes, and organizing drives. That is, the party should be active in today's struggles and efforts to build durable democratic participatory organizations of these movements” (pg 170).

What the book could have done better
While Moody lays out some neat blueprints of what this party would do, he does not give any proposal of how to get there, nor is it clear that he himself is particularly organising such an initiative. He says little about the need for face-to-face and week-to-week organising. He does not comment on the extent to which a lot of campaigning and activism has moved online, the effect of this trend and how to move away from it.

Moreover, when it comes to criticisms of the Democratic Party, Moody should have brought the lack of internal democracy into sharper focus.

Much of the criticism made by Moody of the Democratic Party comes down to how wealthy donors increasingly influence the party, the turn of the Democrats to a wealthier voter base, how socialists who have won positions in the party have become absorbed by the machinery and their politics blunted, and how the Democrats have shifted the working class and black people (particularly under Clinton). These facts are important but these are true also left wing parties that exist nowadays (e.g. the Labour Party under Blair or Starmer) but where there is still a case to be made for socialist activity within them. The major difference, in my opinion, between the Labour Party and the Democrats is that there (a) structural links to the labour movement in the Labour Party, and (b) while it is not good, there are at least some democratic structures within the Labour Party that there are not in the Democrats. You cannot become a member of the Democratic Party – this means that even those who politically align, campaign locally and nationally over many years do not have any democratic say in how the party is run. There are also no systems or checks for accountability by party supporters. The Democratic Party, as other critics have pointed out, is more like a network of think tanks, party hacks, lawyers, and lobbyists. Moody makes these criticisms in passing rather than giving it the sharp focus that it requires. In the end many parties and unions can be horrible, corrupt, and lack any respectable culture, but that is not necessarily the measure by which you choose to intervene in them or not. You choose to intervene if they have democratic structures and a tangible connection to the working class. The Democrats have neither of these and have never had them.

What the book does well
Despite this issue, this is an excellent book. Moody does many things very well and provides an important up to date analysis (written in 2022 and still worth reading now). He argues convincingly about the damaging effects of primaries. He deals systematically and clearly with the arguments in favour of socialist activism via the Democrats and responds to them well. He gives insightful historical examples to highlight his points, particularly with regards to earlier forays by socialists into the Democrats. Furthermore, he has an interesting discussion on various myths parried about rural and urban divide in the US (he shows actually that “rural” America is quite small and a lot of what could be considered so is actually quite working class with a lot of industry). Similarly he shows that despite culture war issues being used the right, progressive attitudes are actually quite widespread in the US and that this is because of the impact of previous social movements around women’s issues, anti-racism, and LGBT+ rights.

Besides this there are two essays that are worth reading on their own. Firstly, Moody’s essay criticising Jane McAlevey’s approach to building unions, her historical analysis of the US labour movement and how socialists and activists ought to engage with union activity (I have copy as a pdf if anyone wants to read it). Finally, at the back there is a very good appendix on the history of racist policing in the US.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a good primer as well as an in-depth analysis of the current state of socialist organising in the US and the debates around it.

[Zack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book. I'm not sure I agree with all the details but overall I mostly do and it is useful.

Two good reviews by other people: https://workersliberty.org/story/2023...
https://workersliberty.org/story/2022...

Bits I'm not sure about are pretty minor but include 1) a definition he uses at some point for "rural", 2) he I think fails to acknowledge the difference between very recent waves of protests such as climate strikes and BLM from previous ones, and I think the recent ones have done less to build organisation, organising capacity, 3) I think too dismissive of LRC in passing, 4) I think his view of the way forwards maybe doesn't acknowledge enough the necessity of struggling for a class struggle approach within wider organisations, whether current trade unions or a future third party. But generally the independent working-class politics perspective is valuable.

[Benjamin Solidarity · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a good read overall that lays out a useful political thesis, it had two main issues. Firstly it read too much like a collection of essays as opposed to a single text. Secondly it relied too much on the reader have a deep knowledge of current debates within the US left and DSA. If you're not familiar with terms like "dirty break" and the debates around it, you'll get lost. Still a good read.

[Michael Sasson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-argued, well-researched and very readable. The arguments in this book are those that the liberals and the lefts arguing for a Biden vote should be asked to engage with as strategy is developed. (Power Concedes Nothing probably being the book those on the anti-electoralist or third party left similarly need to engage with.)

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Makes good points but reading it was at times tedious.

[ronnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best book you can read to understand how, exactly, the democratic party is a capitalist party that's unreformable, and why socialists running as democrats is a misguided tactic