SYC Nails DSA, SAlt

We print below remarks made by a comrade of the Bay Area Spartacus Youth Club during the discussion period of a September 16 meeting organized by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist Alternative (SAlt). Billed as a gathering for left unity to “Trump-Proof the Bay Area!” the meeting featured a panel of three speakers: former Green Party mayor of Richmond, California, Gayle McLaughlin, Bay Area DSA leader Jeremy Gong and SAlt’s Seattle city councillor Kshama Sawant.

Hello, I’m from the Spartacus Youth Club. I have several comments on the DSA and SAlt’s positions on recent events regarding fascism and fascists. First, the desire of SAlt in this time period to “draft Bernie Sanders into a people’s party” is absolutely reprehensible, and worse, a betrayal of the working class. A so-called people’s party with members like Bernie Sanders and the reformist politics of SAlt would essentially have Democratic Party politics without the Democratic Party name. Support to the Democrats betrays the working class and its ability to defeat the fascists. Reformists like SAlt and the DSA pressure the Democrats and by extension the capitalist state to take action such as legally banning the fascists, which would fail to stop them and only be used against leftists. We call for mass labor/black mobilizations, the only way to crush the fascists in the egg.

Second, regarding Kshama Sawant, a member of SAlt and the Seattle City Council who is here today, she thinks that the cops would be a “public service policing in alliance with the communities,” when their whole purpose is to defend capitalist oppression and exploitation. History has shown that cops will always protect the fascists, and any attempts to pressure them to suppress fascists will only result in them suppressing leftists. What’s more, promoting coalitions with capitalist parties paves the way for fascism to exist, preventing the working class from gaining political independence from the class enemy. By contrast, the Spartacus Youth Club’s program is to call for massive mobilizations of the working class and black people to crush the fascists in the egg. For a multiracial vanguard party that will lead the working class to socialist revolution!