Stay Focused on the Class Enemies

By the Socialist Majority Steering Committee

As socialists, as opponents of the capitalist system and champions of the liberation of the working class, our job is to be principled allies to workers and relentless critics of capitalists. We must offer to the working class solidarity in struggle, a vision of a better world, and, most importantly, a strategy that can achieve that better world while addressing workers’ immediate needs.

The recent imposition by President Biden and the U.S. Congress of a contract on rail workers which fails to meet their key demand—the right to take paid time off when they or their loved ones are sick—raises important questions about socialist strategy, especially as relates to labor and electoral politics.

Rail workers are governed under the Railway Labor Act, a legal framework which, unlike the National Labor Relations Act, gives the federal government the authority to impose a contract on both parties in order to prevent strikes. Knowing this, the railroads have not seriously bargained with the rail unions for years.

Rather than making plans for how to win an illegal strike, or developing a serious and broad-based political action program to convince Congress to impose a contract which met workers’ demands, the leadership of the rail unions chose to put their faith in electing a Democratic president. After President Biden made it clear that he was willing to impose a substandard contract, the rail unions and progressive members of Congress, including Bernie Sanders and members of the “Squad,” put together a last-ditch attempt to add paid sick time to the contract through legislative action.

That political struggle was waged in good faith, as supporters of the amendment, including Bernie Sanders, believed they would be able to turn the ten Republican Senators needed to win the sick time. While the effort fell short, it was successful in getting votes from six Republicans, something few progressive legislative efforts in the past several decades have been able to accomplish. Reasonable people can disagree on whether this was ever enough of a possibility to warrant the deal that was struck, but criticism of those Squad members who voted to impose the contract should recognize this was a difficult choice between two bad options, one supported by rank-and-file rail workers.

As a result, rail workers have now had a substandard contract imposed upon them by the actions of a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president. By all accounts, most rank-and-file workers are unhappy with the contract and feel betrayed by Biden and the Democrats. There is significant anecdotal evidence that this will result in many workers turning to Trump and the Republicans as a way to punish the Democrats, and many others to leave the industry.

How should we as socialists and DSA members respond?

Several voices in DSA have recently called for DSA to censure or expel members of the “Squad” who voted for the Congressional measure to impose the rail contract. While we do not endorse their strategy of trading support for the TA that revokes rail workers’ right to strike for a vote on the sick days, we believe that directing DSA’s organizing energy in this moment only toward attacking closely-allied electeds is both a distraction from and counterproductive to the urgent tasks at hand. 

If our task is to be principled allies to workers and relentless critics of capitalists, we must first keep our anger, and those of our allies, focused as much as possible on the capitalists in this story: the railroad companies.

The railroad companies are not only exploiters of labor, they are massive polluters of the working-class communities adjacent to rail yards, which tend to be communities of color. They are also among the most vociferous opponents of addressing climate change—a 2019 study found that they gave more money to fund climate denial than Big Oil.

In fact, Railroad Workers United, a network of rank-and-file railroad workers across crafts and unions that has consistently stood up for workers’ rights in the industry, has recently called for public ownership of the railroads in order to create “a modern publicly owned rail system, one that serves the nation’s passengers, shippers, communities, and citizens.” DSA, and all socialists, should do everything we can to support, publicize and promote this call, along with other working-class struggles against the railroads, and seek to draw connections between those struggles.

In the political realm, the willingness of the Democratic leadership to impose a contract on one of the most heavily unionized industries in the country, and one in which workers have the most leverage, underscores the fact that the capitalist class has firm control over the leadership of both major political parties—and the importance of developing a socialist strategy to build enough political power to contest that control.

Our contribution to developing such a strategy, outlined in our recent statement, “Against the Right and Center,” is that “DSA should take the lead in driving class conflict within the Democratic coalition, especially through Democratic primary challenges.” We recognize that there are others within DSA who have other perspectives on this issue. We believe that the imposition of the rail contract only underscores the importance of resolving our differences on this question—both within DSA and in the wider left—through comradely debate, based on analysis of actually existing conditions, so that we can work in a united fashion to overcome the capitalist stranglehold on our political system.

While we, as socialists, may have—and should express—criticisms of unions’ choice of strategy, we should make that criticism in the spirit of moving the struggle forward, not second-guessing past actions. In “Against the Right and Center” we noted that “[b]uilding and transforming the labor movement is a key task for DSA members,” and that “in our labor work we must remain focused on doing the work of uniting the membership to take on the boss.” The imposition of the rail contract has only strengthened our belief in this.

All of these efforts—challenging the power of the railroads and bringing them under public ownership, breaking capitalist control of our political system, and building a militant, democratic and politically-independent labor movement—are long-term projects which will require dedication, unity, comradely debate, and, if we are to be successful, numerous difficult choices and compromises along the way with other working-class and progressive forces who are not (yet) fully aligned with our vision.

Instead of training our fire on friends and comrades with whom we have strategic disagreements, we should be preparing ourselves for the battles ahead, always seeking to build power through the maximum possible unity of the working class.