I don't think the most significant division in the socialist movement is over whether to put time into GOTV efforts ("electoralism"), or even over whether to do that for Dems. I think the important division rn is between those who are/n't attempting to organize the unorganized.

Because I don't think the urgent question we have is "should we keep vying for a taste of state power or not", it's "do we think it's an overriding problem that the left is not meaningfully connected to the wider working class?" This puts me at odds w/many in my own org (PS).

There are some "electoralists" who DO believe that this is the overriding issue, and there are a lot of so-called "communists" who don't. If you think we just need to be a well-read vanguard with the right and most intersectional line, why actively organize the unorganized?

Or on the flip side, if we can get closer to socialism by electing a lot of socialist identifying pols, why build institutions when you could just run campaign after campaign, with occasional "support" for foundation-funded NGOs and their policy fights for good measure?

I wrote last year about how I felt like there weren't blocs within DSA dead set on organizing the class as a class. Not so much the case now-- there's Red Star in SF, CPN, maybe others I don't know about. https://regenerationmag.org/dsas-left-and-right-both-miss-the-point-we-need-to-build-the-left-and-the-working-class-together/

But the division is there in small groups too. It was 100% there at last year's Marxist Ctr convention, where people engaged with serious tenant or worker organizing projects (Palm Beach Tenants Union, Silk City Socialists) butted heads with ppl who didn't.

What's shared by socialists who want to connect the left to the working class is a recognition that the *left itself* needs to be transformed (made less awful), and that means changing who actually constitutes the left. The working class will save the left before vice versa.

It's not an organizer vs non organizer divide. Say what you will about Chapo et al, but it is an at least somewhat successful attempt to make an entertainment commodity with broad appeal-- it's enjoyable for the uninitiated. The same can't be said for, say, RevLeftRadio.

I have a lot more hope that those kinds of Bernie people can be won over to an "organize the unorganized" tactical line than I have hope that ultras will, along with Mao, Oppose Book Worship and spend time uniting with not-politicized people for common goals.

Participating in an election is a tactic. We've given it a hard look in Philly Socialists. My cousin, a former Dem consultant, drew up a lengthy report for us right after Trump got elected on what PS would need to do to pull off what the WFP and Kendra Brooks ended up doing.

It was an opportunity. But it would have meant effectively shutting down the PTU, which had just started to get on its own feet, and probably all our other projects too. No one was happy about it, but we decided we couldn't pull it off for 2019. We hadn't built the capacity.

I dont think anyone could look at the current moment and not think it's good for organizing the class in itself that Philadelphia has a tenants union, probably much better than a failed Socialist campaign for city council would have been.

The PTU concretely and demonstratably links an organized left to an organized working class constituency. How a successful electoral campaign achieves this, let alone a failed one, has never been convincingly explained to me.

For ppl who think we gotta connect the left to the working class, we need to really step it up and work harder than ever. But I do think this is our moment.