How Should Socialist Legislators Spend Their Time?

by Jane Slaughter

I appreciate Landis’s Detroit Socialist article and agree with some of his points. In particular, I agree that we haven’t yet figured out how to make an election campaign — except for Bernie’s — feel like and be a movement, rather than a lot of hard work by a dedicated group of canvassers doing GOTV. To my knowledge, DSA hasn’t run any election campaigns (besides Bernie’s) that rise to the level of getting a lot of new people involved and pumped up and politically educated and dedicated — becoming leaders. It’s not theoretically impossible, but we haven’t seen it yet.

A lesson Landis draws from this is that DSA’s job is to get socialists into office even absent a movement, where they can enact legislation that will change conditions in a way that will support building movements.

I agree that this is a long-term goal. The problem is that we are not anywhere near electing enough socialists, or even progressives, to pass really life-changing legislation. Count our numbers. I admire very much our member Dylan Wegela’s lone vote against handouts of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to corporations — but his was the only vote in the Michigan House for that position. Even DSA paper members voted for the handout. Forget the other Democrats, and the Republicans.

So if we are not close to passing significant legislation anytime soon, what should socialist legislators be doing in the meantime? They can use their office to help foment movements: people organizing on their own behalf can get a welcome boost from a person with resources and a voice, and the prestige of office. They can encourage union campaigns — both new organizing and contract campaigns/strikes. They can sponsor training for new organizers, call conferences of constituents who are active in building movements, so they know each other and can work together. They can use their office as a bully pulpit to encourage organizing of all kinds, from anti-Line 5 to pro-abortion rights to banning water shut-offs (while also, of course, voting the right way). Elected officials have staffs who can be put to use in these ways.

Bernie Sanders, for example, used his clout to ask for donations for the workers on strike at John Deere in 2021 (working with the reform movement in the UAW; the UAW International at that time refused the donations). Recently, he met with the new reform leaders of the UAW and praised their new direction. He’s used his lists to urge people to come out to workers’ picket lines. In 2016 he came to New York while the telephone workers were on strike and put them at the head of his rally. These are uses of the office that help build movements.

THE MOVEMENT IN THE UAW

Landis made an analogy between Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD, the reform movement) and an election campaign for public office. Leaving aside the fact that a union is very different from a legislature, Landis argues that UAWD’s campaign to elect Shawn Fain president was not a movement but just a campaign for office — a worthy one that would change conditions if Fain won.

I was part of that campaign, and it was a movement. Not as big as we would have liked, true, but hundreds of workers around the country were ordering flyers, leafleting at plant gates, posting on their local’s social media, talking to their co-workers — people who hadn’t been involved before were stepping up to become leaders, learning as they went, taking on new responsibilities, always trying to grow their numbers, feeling the camaraderie — that’s what a movement feels like.

It’s as if when we were campaigning for Denzel McCampbell for Detroit CIty Clerk, we had hundreds of newly energized non-DSA volunteers inviting their neighbors to house parties, pounding the pavement, learning the politics. Landis is right that it’s hard to make that happen in electoral politics — but it was possible in 2022–23 in the UAW.

That’s why UAWD was able to win. Just as important, unlike an electoral campaign, UAWD did not close up shop when its candidates won, simply relying on them to do the equivalent of passing legislation. UAWD is pushing ahead with teaching members how to demand more in their contract (Big 3 contracts expire September 14). It’s holding workshops — a couple on Zoom so far, and three in-person ones here in our area this month. These workshops ask members what they want to see prioritized in the contract (like COLA, ending tiers, bringing EV workers under master agreements), educate them about how rich the companies are (they can afford it), and talk about what members can do to convince the employers that they are willing to strike for as long as it takes to get what they want.

UAWD has never had the idea that its job was just to get Shawn Fain elected so he could “change UAW policy to facilitate” workers organizing themselves. That’s not the relationship. It is a huge, huge difference for auto workers, to have reformers as a majority on the executive board, but those reformers can’t wrest big concessions from the Big 3 by themselves, or by changing policies. They will need something that looks like…a movement.

So if we want to argue that it’s fine for electoral campaigns not to resemble movements, we’ll need a different analogy than UAWD. It’s the opposite model.

We need to run candidates who see themselves not primarily as bill-passers (we don’t have the numbers yet) but as movement-builders alongside us and alongside the movements. That’s how we build the oomph to force legislatures to do the right thing.

This article is part of a series that shares different perspectives about electoral work within our Metro Detroit DSA chapter.

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