Socialists Need to Plant a Flag

What right-wing Democrats — and Lenin — can teach the left about party building.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Al From was the scourge of progressives working inside the Democratic Party. From was the CEO (his actual title) of the Democratic Leadership Council, an influential, right-wing party faction. The DLC united Democrats around a pro-business economic program, succeeded in jettisoning the party’s New Deal heritage, and refocused Democrats’ attention on winning over middle-class voters.

From was an important player in this process of party reinvention. So I was eager — in a “know your enemies” way — to read the Guardian’s interview with From about what the Democrats should do after last year’s defeat.

Most of his responses were what you’d expect from a conservative Democrat. But From made two points about how parties are built and changed that I think have wider relevance. They’re especially relevant to those of us on the left who want to build a left-wing political party rooted in the working class.

First, From stressed the need for sudden and dramatic change. Molecular change of a party is not possible, a point I strongly agree with. “If you’re going to change the definition of a party, the change has to be big enough that people recognize it, and that’s why you can’t do it incrementally. . . . I don’t think you can change the definition of a party . . . by sitting around the table and trying to negotiate it out.”

Neither the right of the party who think that the Democrats pivoted too far left under Joe Biden,¹ nor the left of the party who think Democrats have not changed enough, will get very far through the slow, methodical work of tweaking the party’s platform, altering the bylaws of the Democratic National Committee, and/or primarying Democrats they disagree with one by one. For the right of the party to succeed, it’ll need to make dramatic, high-profile changes to the Democratic Party. Ditto for the left. Otherwise, as From argues, the people you’re trying to win over to your cause won’t recognize or care about the change.

If I was going to place a bet on who is better positioned to do that I think the choice of who to bet on is a no brainer. The right wing of the party has the blessing of big donors who pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the party’s coffers every year. It also has the blessing of the major corporations who hire most of the party’s operative and consultant class when the party is periodically out of power. The right wingers are also the spokespeople for the voters and places that are actually gravitating toward the Democrats — high-income professionals and affluent suburbs. The left has none of that.

Now back to From. His second major point is no less important. It gets to the question of how people will be mobilized and organized: “You’ve got to have a flag, you’ve got plant it and you’ve got to rally people around that.”

People respond when there is a very big, high-profile force of attraction for them to organize around. In 2016 and 2020, Bernie’s presidential campaigns served that function. But since then the left has clearly lacked such a high-profile, independent flag to march under. Our periodic electoral campaigns for city councils and state legislatures are important, but they are not high profile enough. Moreover, relying on individual candidates and campaigns to do this work for us has major downsides — dependence on individual personalities and the loss of the rallying point when the campaign ends, to name just two.

Only a real, independent party with a very public profile which exists and is building a reputation for itself year in and year out can have that kind of staying power and make that kind of impact. And by “real, independent party” I do not mean a “surrogate party” — as many in the Democratic Socialists of America still hope DSA can become. These comrades believe we need to build a surrogate or substitute for a real party: an organization with its own cadre, financial resources and donor bases, organized elected officials, and infrastructure. These are all important assets. You can’t have a real party without them. But so long as that kind of organization is submerged into the Democratic Party, and regular people only ever see the campaigns of individual candidates supported by it, it will not have an independent, public character and a year-in-and-year-out “rally-round-the-flag” effect — both of which are needed to hold masses of people together. (The fact that Democrats are now pivoting back to a (phony) populism, as I wrote about recently for Jacobin, makes the need for publicly distancing ourselves from them all the more urgent.)

From is right about this. You can’t lead a movement without a public, “can’t miss” collective identity. That’s something only a real independent party can provide.

The funny thing is there’s an interesting historical comparison to make to From’s plant-your-flag metaphor. Throughout his career, Lenin came back again and again to the need for a banner around which the socialist movement and the working class could rally. Here’s one of the most insightful Lenin scholars summarizing the role of flag metaphors in Lenin’s writing and thinking:

The banners that were unfurled in the street demonstrations by Social Democratic workers both in Russia and Europe became a central icon of the socialist movement. To appear in public under a banner with a revolutionary slogan was the essential militant act. The image of the banner was an extremely important one for Lenin himself. It was more than just a figure of speech found littered throughout his writings — it was a metaphor that focused his conception of revolutionary politics. The banner announced to the world who you were and what you were fighting for. The implied narrative summarized in the slogans on the banner inspired your own fighters and rallied others to the cause. The banner signified the moral unity of the fighters that made possible their effective organization. Like the flag for a patriotic citizen, the waving banner with its militant message summed up all the emotional warmth that gave life to the dry bones of Marxist theory.

This post must be the first and only time that the CEO of the DLC has been compared to the first “CEO” of the Bolshevik Party. But I think both From and Lenin are right about a very public, very bright, and very big banner being the sine qua non for organizing a mass movement. Banners of course can be used for many different purposes. From would like to raise a banner (a refashioned Democratic Party) to defend the status quo again. Lenin raised a banner (the Bolshevik Party) for world revolution. Likewise, the left today needs a banner (a new labor party?) to move forward. Until we have one, we’ll be left with the “dry bones” of theory and the (necessary but insufficient) daily organizing grind.

1. It might be galling for those of us on the left who think that right-wing Democrats have long dominated the party, even under Biden, to hear that they think they lost control under Biden. But that’s how they’re spinning it now. According to the right of the party, the left’s ideas are losing propositions, the right’s are winning propositions, Biden lost, therefore Biden must have lost because he embraced the left. Here’s From on what needs to be done: “It’s important the critical mass in the Democratic party show that it’s the party of opportunity, responsibility and community but not the party of the left.”