tl;dr Should a committed Marxist run for a local political office in the US, especially in this climate?
I’m strongly considering running for a state legislative seat in a suburban area in the U.S. Obvious throwaway is obvious because I’d like to NOT be doxxed. If you figure out my main account please don’t share it around.
What’s happening in this country has me scared. There are jackbooted thugs marching through our streets in cities all over the country, people are being chucked into unmarked vans and disappearing, and that’s on top of the usual backdrop of daily mass shootings in schools, clubs, churches, etc. It feels like everyone around is angry all the time and ready to burst.
But I’m also hopeful. At our local Socialist org we just had a social with the highest attendance ever for our group! Normally 20-ish people show up to the socials and last week there were around 50 people there. Lots of new faces are showing up at meetings and getting involved in mutual aid type projects. Not going into details because doxxing but I’m happy to say good things are being done.
BUT, providing aid for people on the ground is just one piece of the puzzle. A lot of what we want to do is blocked by “pre-emption” laws. These are basically laws that make it so the state legislature can overrule whatever we can get passed at the city level. So no non-discrimination ordinance, no protections for trans people, no transit funds, no defunding police, no rent control, and on and on.
Why run for office
I believe running will be a great way to agitate people towards Socialism, or at least anti-Capitalism.
In this political climate, candidates are the people with the largest megaphones. Activists outside of electoral politics aren’t heard. If we have any hope of reaching the working class we have to go where they are, and for now most of them only pay attention to politics when there’s an election coming up.
I want to use the mail discounts that are provided to candidates, use the infrastructure around ads, and other benefits of running (op-eds typically get published by candidates, not always by activists) to spread a message disarming anti-Socialist sentiment and pointing out what’s going on.
Even if I lose, the point of the campaign would be to gain the public’s attention and start building some class consciousness. I would consider the campaign a win if people I reach join some Socialist orgs or do mutual aid or do some agitation themselves. Winning the election itself would be nice but reality is I would be just one vote in a room full of Capitalists. I would be a protest vote most of the time. The real win here is the opportunity to spread Socialism using the Capitalists’ favorite means of control (their so-called “Democracy.”)
I want to prove to people, especially fellow leftists, that we should follow what Lenin said and get out there and run. We should have Socialists on every ballot line and give the people a real choice. Not every campaign has to be full bore with yard signs and ads and all the other stuff, but just being on the ballot gives us so many benefits that’s its worth doing. You get access to forums and debates and media that activism doesn’t. We should take advantage of this to push our talking points and dunk of the Capitalists in person.
Why NOT run for office
I’m NGL. I’m scared of being sent to some prison or rounded up and put in a camp. They’re going to call me a “terrorist” but then again that’s what the Trump government is doing now. It feels like a damned if I do, damned if I don’t kind of moment.
But running will put a massive target on my back. I just don’t want to regret NOT doing something. You know that question “what would you have done if you lived in Nazi Germany in the 1930s?” I’d rather try and fail than not try at all and regret it later.
IDK… without sharing my identity I could blend in and probably survive. But I would die a different way. Could I live with myself with a dead soul? What use is life if you don’t try to live it to the fullest?
Strategy
I’m not going to be talking about Marx or Lenin all the time. I’ll probably quote them, but my focus is going to be: Here’s a part of Capitalism that is hurting our community, here’s how we can make it better, and BTW this Socialism thing isn’t a bad thing at all.
I plan to focus on jobs. Particularly how the job search process is completely fucked up for job seekers. I’ve been jobless for a while so I can speak personally to this. There’s ghost jobs, jobs where AI tools are prescreening qualified people out before a human even sees their resumes, endless hoops and interview rounds, ghosting, and opaque processes so you never know if you weren’t the “most qualified” or if the boss’s cousin just needed the job. I’m certain discrimination is happening especially where I live especially towards people of color and just hidden behind this job search process. Its too easy to just say everyone with some melanin “isn’t a good cultural fit” or other BS, or only hire those folks for the entry level jobs and keep the cushy office gigs for your white friends.
Besides jobs I want to focus hard on what I call “paycheck issues”. Capitalism is the ultimate cause of all our budget problems, and I’m going to focus on pointing that out. Your groceries cost too much thanks to tariffs and food being controlled by a handful of giant corporations. Your power bill keeps going up because the utility company is publicly traded and the CEO needs more money to snort coke on his mega yacht. Your car payments and registration fees and taxes are a tax on the poor and especially commuters. Return to office hurts our families just to prop up real estate values. The state realtors’ association pays off politicians like my opponent to keep your home prices high.
The right wants us to spend all of their time demonizing trans people, poor people, Muslims, basically everyone who isn’t a lily white straight Christian drone. I’m not going to let them.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m going to defend our Trans comrades and will call my opponents fascists to their faces. The angle I’m taking is to “get government out of our personal lives.” Our government shouldn’t be involved in what we say, or what we believe, or who we want to marry, or what we want to do with our own bodies. Conservatives are the control freaks, a party full of Karens that can’t mind their own damn business! Leave people alone… how hard is that?
It’s pathetic. These people spend all their lives angry at what other people, who aren’t hurting anyone, are doing differently. I don’t like NASCAR. Do you see me wanting to ban NASCAR? No, I just don’t watch it. Why this is so hard so these people to get… I mean I know its part of their ideology to “spread the gospel” but I have to think the majority is sick of these people shitting on everything and trying to police every book and movie and game. These conservatives are the fun police, and of course ACAB.
Last but not least, I’m not going to focus on my opponent. This is something I think most politicians get wrong. They attack the candidate they’re running against instead of the system that props that candidate up, or the people who fund those candidates. My opponent is simply one of a long line of corporate pawns. This makes elections more like a never-ending soap opera, where there’s a villain of the year, then another one the next year, and then the libs go “if we just get rid of X everything will be alright.” You and I know that’s not the case. So I’m going to run attack ads against the funders. The realtor’s group that donates to Republicans. The energy company. The CEOs of the banks that these finance freaks all come from. Those are the people who I am really running against, and I want the public to start thinking in these terms as well.
The short answer is: yes!
The long answer is: Lenin believed in electoralism as part of the larger strategy. He talks about this in “What is to be done?” And “leftwing communism: an infantile disorder.”
The goal is to agitate the masses and to count your numbers.
However, this needs to be paired with a dual power that can rival the establishment structures (the Soviets). So the other task I feel is to identify the unions in your state and attempt to unify them under the common cause of replacing Capitalism.
Not a task to take lightly. Since it’s absolutely the most difficult task.
But we need more socialists and more socialist parties before we are going to many any progress.
also iirc lenin said “our own parties” not getting in bed with liberals. I think some non-entryism on local politics is probably not a waste of time or resources but it depends on the local situation.
I fully agree. Local city and town councils are a good place to start. We have local chuds trying to push out moderate Republicans in my state and my state has a 2/3 majority rule for all city, town, and boe councils. This means that in Democratic strongholds there are always 3 Republicans in the seats. In my state we could be organizing along side the Democrats to take up those three seats or even more. Running as independents a group of dedicated communists could run Republicans out of municipal control.
A way I explain this logic to folks sometimes is that the ideal socialist party (imo) will contend for power on all fronts, both inside and outside of bourgeois government. To me the question of electoralism is always answered with “Yes, and”. It’s insufficient as a sole strategy.
You’re thinking about this backwards, you’ve got to ground your campaign in mass movements. Ask local unions, socialist groups, mutual aid groups “what kind of policies would make your organizing easier?”
Do Chavez style town halls where you ask people about issues in their lives and base policy on that
Have a committee of well read socialists holding you accountable and giving you advice
Don’t try to cowboy this shit
I hear you and meeting with the community is a big part of running a campaign. I’m in an org and work with other orgs so will definitely be doing this. It helps to be running for something because its easier to get people to come to a town hall for a “candidate” vs. “some activist organizer”
Yes,
a committed Marxist should run for a local political office in the US, especially in this climate.
sorry nothing constructive to add but no matter how useless electoralism may be as a strategy to seize power, doing this to spread class consciousness and build mutual aid is serious praxis and that is undeniable.
Yeah it’s a big sacrifice for sure
A bit more BG on the race: I’m planning to run as a Democrat “in name only”. I don’t want that ballot line, but I feel its a necessary evil for a few reasons:
In the US no one takes third parties seriously.
Independent candidates typically don’t win AND they have a much harder time getting on the ballot in the first place. I would have to gather thousands of signatures to get on the ballot at all if I took this route.
I would be accused of “ballot splitting” if I ran on a separate ballot line and would get 0 attention as a result. The point is to get attention, not be written off as some sort of crank!
I want to “block” this ballot line from a moderate Democrat.
There’s another person who is thinking of running, and she would be the Moderate Dem. She’s a model Capitalist, in her 50s with kids and a respectable job, POC, member of the Chamber of Commerce, and doing a tiny house thing to help with housing. Tiny homes are a band-aid on a terminal wound. We need Socialism, not capitalist solutions that push us into smaller and smaller spaces or try to “public-private partnership” our way to solve these problems. I believe she’s nice person with her heart in the right place, but her policy comes from the Capitalist world and will always be limited. This is the fundamental problem with Democrats: They can’t even think of a solution to our problems outside of Capitalism! I’m convincing myself if she runs I should Primary her to at the very least challenge these solutions and maybe pull her left.
My Republican opponent would be a African-American Christian conservative. He comes from the finance industry. In a past campaign one of his opponents ran ads attacking the fact he wrote a bad check in his 20s. This is the kind of weak-sauce attack I expect from Democrats. No one cares about that kind of petty crap. What I am worried about is this guy, being a person of color, will have some protection against me. He will probably call me racist even though I have 0 interest in attacking him directly. He’s just a pawn of his corporate donors, but I’d like some advice on how to handle a local Candace Owens type without sticking my foot in my mouth.
Running as a Dem
The US has some weird rules about primaries and political parties which make it hard for any political party to actually enforce their party line, but which IMO also make it viable to treat the “party” totally cynically. What could the Dems do if a Dem candidate simply refused to caucus with them on genocide or austerity? Pretty much their only option is to try to out-primary that person, which is definitely a problem because they have a lot of money and organizational power, but it’s the same problem you started with.
He’s just a pawn of his corporate donors, but I’d like some advice on how to handle a local Candace Owens type without sticking my foot in my mouth.
I think the way to go is to talk past him. Americans respond to economic populist ideas, so focus on those - if he keeps trying to make the campaign about personal issues and you keep focusing elsewhere, the only acknowledgement of your opponent that you’ll need to do is pointing out how unserious he is because he keeps talking about you instead of the issues. I think at the local level that’s the way to go moreso than in national or state level politics because local politics is more heavily influenced by people who are dialed in to the issues.
from your post, i am only opposed to you running as a dem. i think building the organisational capacity that can actually challenge democrats is way more important than winning elections as an individual candidate.
Have you been on a campaign before? There’s a lot of technical stuff to manage that is really easy to miss e.g. verifying signatures, making sure you’re following campaign finance law, etc. I’d also check with your comrades if you haven’t already; good fellow socialists will be real with you about what they can do to help and what they think your chances are. I’d also really recommend tying your campaign directly to whatever local org you’re a part of - failed campaigns can still drive recruitment.
I really don’t want to downplay your fears of reprisals - we live in dangerous times - but in my experience the greatest threats to your campaign are much more likely to be overambition and lack of planning.
To not doxx myself I’ll just say I know what I’m getting into.
It certainly can’t make things worse, and you might make something better.
