We are to proud to reprint the founding statement of Socialist Refoundation – a new Marxist organization in the United States – on the website of Internationalist Standpoint. This document was first published on our website refoundation.us on September 26th 2026.
This announcement is the culmination of several years of political travels and shared learning. We came to this road as a set of long standing members of Socialist Alternative and the Committee for a Workers International (CWI). The tragic implosion of the CWI in 2018 unleashed years of splits and disorientation. The successor organization, International Socialist Alternative (ISA), immediately became consumed with a never-ending crisis. Its leadership came to grasp for sectarianism to steady itself. After some years of factional opposition, we departed in early 2025.
We have spent the last years, both as a faction and as a socialist network, thinking about how revolutionaries can best participate in the new labor and socialist movements. We have tried to grapple with political difficulties by prioritizing participating in living struggles – being good class-struggle organizers in our unions and cities, helping build the fight back against Trump. It is real life that can teach us the way forward.
One aspect of our activity is to organize as a “caucus” of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The many different caucuses politically lead DSA. Reflecting DSA’s broad character, caucuses do not operate under any formal status or set of rules; except to participate in DSA’s common structures. We are proud to be a part of a new socialist movement in the United States. We are committed to internationalism and democratic, revolutionary socialist change.
For a socialist future and a socialist world.
Onward! Solidarity!
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A Marxist caucus in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
Introduction – Global Context
Global capitalism is staggering through a decades-long crisis, one that has planted hopeful seeds of revival for the organized Left and working class. The international working class is the only force that can act to create a future of peace, equality, and prosperity for all the world’s people. Can a new mass, internationalist socialist movement be built in the 21st century?
Yet workers face a profound challenge: the socialist Left and the organized working class remain marginal as a concrete force in society. With small exceptions the working class is essentially without political representation. As long as this persists, imperialist barbarity and the grotesque power of a tiny minority of ultra-wealthy capitalists will be the living nightmare of billions of people.
The onslaught of crises and upheavals is a frequent topic of discussion in the workplace. Left movements must prepare for an increasingly chaotic world. Global pandemic, war, genocide, and economic instability – the list goes on. The relative decline of U.S. imperialism has led to increasing military and great-power conflict: Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine; Israel’s genocide of Palestine; horrific imperialist-fueled conflicts across Africa; the U.S. attack on Venuezuela, its war on Iran and Lebanon, and its starvation of Cuba. China’s rise has led to a scramble for markets, resources, and spheres of influence. The world faces simultaneous falling rates of GDP growth, inflation, and growing social inequality, all fueling polarization which has emboldened the global far Right. Climate change and environmental breakdown accelerate unabated. Debt crises, speculative tech bubbles, AI mania, and another “great” recession hang like swords over the head of the global system. This is the soil in which global political developments will grow; and more instability, war, and major social convulsions are on the way.
Democratic, revolutionary socialist change is the only alternative. Since the Great Recession of 2008 we have seen some of the largest mass movements in human history – some that have toppled dictators and governments – along with profound left challenges to the existing order. In many countries there has been the growth of new organizations, new-left parties, and the reemergence of socialist ideas – the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in the United States is an example of this process. In this international context, we are announcing Socialist Refoundation, a new U.S. Marxist group, organized as a caucus in DSA.
Socialist Refoundation
Socialist Refoundation is a revolutionary Marxist organization committed to the rebuilding of the workers’ movement’s fighting capacity and to the formation of a powerful mass socialist movement with a revolutionary program. We support a class-struggle, member-led labor movement and the political independence of the working class to challenge the bosses in elections. We are internationalists, who stand against racism, sexism, LGBTQIA and gender oppression, and oppression in all its forms. We stand against war and imperialism, and in solidarity with Palestine against genocide, and with the oppressed peoples of all countries.
We are in political solidarity with Internationalist Standpoint (ISp), an international initiative of Marxists worldwide. ISp is fighting to overcome the sectarian deficiencies of the Marxist Left and to build a sizable international, revolutionary organization rooted in the working class and youth, and at the same time assist in the rebuilding of mass organizations.
We have chosen the name Socialist Refoundation because in our view the working-class movement is emerging from profound, historic setbacks, and requires rebuilding and reinvention. Marxists are confronted by a deep-rooted, interrelated crisis of consciousness, organization, and leadership of the working class. Meanwhile the revolutionary Left itself is in complete disarray – its worst crisis ever. These are essential starting points, but there are no simple answers to the dilemmas they raise.
To start, Marxists need to break with the dead-end and sectarian routines of the past. The revolutionary Left needs an open, democratic culture capable of re-examining our tactics and organizational ideas. This must be done so we can create programs and strategies to suit our actual historical moment. Practically speaking, we believe Marxists need to get involved now in helping rebuild the basic fighting organizations of the working class while, at the same time, rebuilding an international revolutionary Left.
Our efforts will focus on participation in real struggles, united-front work, and Marxist regroupment. We will put forward our own initiatives and participate in the building of DSA as a broad, socialist force. We advocate that socialists join DSA as a useful step to better organize the Left and to build the wider working-class movement, and so they may better intervene in the development of a new broad socialist movement.
We believe the revolutionary Left needs to be open to discussion and collaboration with groups that come from different backgrounds and with differences in analysis and method. Future mass revolutionary organisations will be built through the collaboration and amalgamation of different political currents, not through the linear growth of any one of the present revolutionary groups.
In this document, we will give a brief overview of the crisis in the international Left. Then, we’ll discuss some of Socialist Refoundation’s strategic conceptions: the dual tasks, the united-front method, transitional demands, and Marxist regroupment. We’ll conclude on some tactical considerations: our involvement in the labor movement, in DSA, in electoral campaigns, and in international Marxist organization.
We don’t aim here to provide a full analysis of every important political issue. We will write on many more topics on our website. We also direct readers to the important material on the ISp website. Our main aim with this document is to open a discussion on how the revolutionary Left can rectify a political trajectory that has failed recent social movements and has largely been unable to respond to an era of capitalist crisis.
The Left and Socialist Ideas Reemerge After Neoliberal Defeat
The current period of upheaval opened with the 2008 world financial crisis. Since then the neoliberal framework of the past fifty years has persisted in a state of exhaustion, as the global economic and geopolitical order passes through a chaotic, violent transformation.
In these two decades, young people have grown up under conditions of permanent crisis. The movements that have emerged to confront it have been loose, but explosive. From the eruption of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011; through the Hong Kong democratic rights rebellions and the global Black Lives Matter movements; to the numerous fights against gender oppression, the global struggle against the genocide in Gaza, “Gen Z” protests, and struggle against ICE in the United States – two generations of youth have challenged the existing order with mass struggles, and have experienced the backlashes.
The post-2008 crisis confirmed the validity of socialist ideas, which were pronounced dead and buried during the heyday of neoliberal globalization. However, generally, Marxists underestimated the damage these decades did to our class. In most cases, the threads of continuity to powerful movements and organizations of the 20th century have been severed. In the past two decades, many Marxists’ perspectives – of a rapid, crisis-detonated redevelopment of class struggle – have been complicated or invalidated by the experience of a messy and protracted process, full of false starts and dead ends.
Though recent movements have been brave, they have lacked a political and organizational backbone. Their potential power has not been adequately demonstrated on the political front. New-left parties and formations have not been up to the task. The most striking example remains SYRIZA, which, during Greece’s 2015 debt crisis, implemented austerity against the will of the mass movement that conducted dozens of general strikes.
We have seen other trends fail to advance in various ways. Corbyn was beaten by the Labour establishment, and has since debilitated the initially promising Your Party. Bernie Sanders – though still relevant and inspiring many to become socialists – refused to build anything of his own and backed Clinton and Biden, who each paved the road for Trump. In Brazil, the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSoL), a promising left force, is facing a major crisis, as its right wing is splitting off to join President Lula’s governing party. In France, Melanchon’s La France Insoumise has made important electoral strides but remains limited as a mostly electoral formation built around a single leader.
Despite various setbacks, betrayals and misdirections, the ebb and flow of movements has not been marked by profound, historic defeats. In the United States, there have been many ups and downs for the Left in the last decade. Now under Trump’s second presidency there is a renewed advance, including for DSA, while the problems and limitations of the past remain.
The wider U.S. situation is complex and fluid. There is a mass and volatile left-populist consciousness, marked by boiling anger at the political establishment, and the popularity of Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other left-progressive candidates. Many are positive toward a socialist (or “communist”, even) alternative to capitalism in a broad and inchoate manner. Recent polling indicates that around 40% of adults have a positive view of socialism, plus 60% of young people. This has allowed for the election of a small, but growing “democratic socialist” wing in the capitalist Democratic party. This was most recently seen in the electric rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the wave of successful DSA-endorsed midterms candidates for national and state office. Finally, there is a new generation of anti-capitalist, radical, and social-movement activists who are engaged in labor organizing and a wide range of other activism. They are the core consumers of a popular new world of radical or socialist media. The boundaries and consciousness of these different sections of the Left are amorphous.
DSA is the clearest expression of the rising U.S. Left. It is reaching a new level of prominence in the context of the 2026 Democratic Party primaries. On July 4th DSA surpassed 120,000 members, making it numerically the largest socialist organization in U.S. history. It surpassed the Socialist Party of America of Eugene Debs, which peaked in dues-paying members in 1912.
DSA and other socialists struggle to root themselves in the (very disorganized) working class, making it much weaker than its numbers might suggest. Furthermore, coming out of a long period of defeats, these new movements and activists are not strongly connected to the past. Ideologically they reflect a mixture of reformist, pragmatic, and utopian ideas. This very new generation of socialists are hesitant to truly lead movements, reinforcing DSA’s conciliatory approach to the conservative union leadership and the organization’s current imprisonment as the Democratic Party’s left electoral wing. Nonetheless, these are significant advances in relation to the left vacuum created by the era of neoliberal defeats.
Socialist Refoundation activists are encouraged by the numerous positive developments over the past twenty years, with all their nuance. We have a proud record of participating in the movements of the last decades: strike solidarity, Gaza solidarity, Black Lives Matter, Anti-ICE action, the $15 minimum-wage struggle, the Bernie upsurge, and important socialist electoral campaigns. Yet, we are also forming Socialist Refoundation in an attempt to grapple with the failures and difficulties that the Left has experienced over the same span: counterrevolutions; Trump and the rise of a global far Right; the collapse, stalling out, or outright betrayal of once-promising left parties; and mass mobilizations that produce little lasting organization or legacy. For revolutionary socialists, the central task is to help link developing struggles into a conscious movement aiming at challenging capitalism.
The Revolutionary Left’s Deepest Crisis Ever
The building of mass revolutionary left parties and a new mass workers’ international organization are an indispensable condition to lay the basis for workers’ power and a democratic, socialist world. Yet the revolutionary Left, despite the massive crisis of the capitalist system, has so far failed its critical test: to be the movement’s best leaders and servants, while maintaining its own principled, revolutionary unity. This is the revolutionary Left’s deepest crisis ever, on all fronts: political, tactical, and organizational.
No doubt, our time presents enormous objective difficulties to Marxists. The state of consciousness and organization of the working class has been thrown back to a time comparable to the late 19th century, before the rise of Social Democratic parties. But the issue is not simply one of difficult terrain. There is a profound subjective weakness – political rot, even – on the side of the existing revolutionary Left.
Most Marxist groups today are content with their own idealist schemes, isolated on the edge of the movement. The global Marxist Left exists in disarray, suffering from sectarianism, abstentionism, continuous fracturing, isolation and destructive splits. While there are some promising developments showing the potential for the anti-capitalist and Marxist Left to gain social and electoral influence (for example in Greece, Ireland, and Argentina), the overall picture remains negative. All this is occurring at a time when the global proletariat numbers in the billions and the material basis for a socialist transformation is well in hand. In the face of threats to the broad movement from the Right and from liberal co-optation, Marxists need to learn lessons and make corrections.
The starting point for Socialist Refoundation: there is no shortcut or clever schema that can skip over the patient rebuilding of a class-conscious, socialist, activist layer in the working class. The existence of such a layer was taken as a given in the time of Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg. In the United States of the 1930s, the existence of sizable, advanced political formations (such as the SP, CPUSA, SWP, AWP, etc.) demonstrated both the rising level of consciousness among large sections of the working class, and predicated the triumphs of that era. Marxists must confront the fact that currently there is no substantive advanced, activist worker layer fighting for a socialist world. This is the central contradiction that determines today’s long-term strategy to overturn Earth’s vampiric capitalist rulers.
Our Strategy – Dual Tasks, United-Front Methods, Regroupment, Internationalism, Transitional Demands, and Democratic Reinvention
The Dual Tasks of Rebuilding the Workers’ Movement & Marxist Organization
Around the world today, there are no mass, left parties comparable to the periods from which Marxists draw our strongest lessons. In the past, socialists could speak of “merging,” “entering,” or “boring within” powerful working-class movements to win over majorities of workers. This history still has lessons and applications for socialist work in the labor movement today. Yet, these notions fail to measure up to today’s challenges of weak working-class organization and consciousness.
Unlike in the 1930s, ’60s or ’70s, the most critical contribution a socialist organization can make today is to assist in the rebuilding of a new, organized working-class vanguard of hundreds of thousands, inspired by the ideals of class struggle and a democratic, socialist alternative to capitalism.
In our past in Socialist Alternative (SAlt) and the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) we called the strategy to simultaneously build the broader working-class movement and Marxist organization our dual tasks. Both of these tasks necessarily require the other, and therefore operate theoretically as a unitary whole. This is a mobile balance, never an even 50/50 split. Of course, to undertake these tasks simultaneously is easier said than done. In a given situation, there must be a balance of appropriate, concrete tactics and efforts to advance forward on both fronts.
In the current period, Marxists should be central advocates of fighting unity and be active participants in movements – comrades of those who are fighting, not just critics. We must get moving on the critical task of being directly involved in rebuilding the infrastructure that can nurture working-class self-mobilization and self-empowerment. Socialists have a lot of work ahead to develop roots in the working class and actual links with organizations that – despite whatever weaknesses – are doing real work in the class and against oppression. We must be the best builders of the working class movement. In a phrase, we must get our hands dirty.
New Class-Struggle Organization
The dual tasks require that Marxists assist in crystallizing new working-class organizations, and participate in the rebuilding of existing ones. Mass, spontaneous movements will continue to break out, as they have since 2008. Anger at the corrupt U.S. two-party system runs hot. New layers are tentatively emerging in the existing labor movement. However, to change the world, mass, class-struggle organizations must be rebuilt on a vast scale to educate workers and give a lead.
In the United States, new working-class and anti-oppression organizations have to deal with the relative limits of historic class struggles. The experience of the 1960s and 1970s is fading from collective memory. And in the entire history of the United States, the working class has never even experienced having its own mass party, let alone one with a socialist program.
The existing unions remain very important working-class organizations, and possess enormous reserves of funds and resources. Reviving activism and reform work within unions is vital. This is complicated by the hollowing out of the activist layer and business unionism’s adaptation to capitalism. Socialists need to imagine a future where many millions of new workers are organized – an achievement that presupposes a titanic political revolution against the current leadership and the creation of many new unions and worker organizations.
With few exceptions, existing unions are under the grip of a timid and conservative leadership – a bureaucracy that by training, experience, and sensibility is, in many ways, a mirror image of the consultant class in the Democratic party. Under Trump II, it’s as if union leaders are taking direction from the Democratic establishment and playing dead – that is, of course, if they are not angling to bloc with Trump in a reactionary class-collaborationist strategy, in the despicable manner of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. Union activists struggle every day against the failures of the past, and the misleadership of the present. We have falling strike numbers, a weak internal life, and the loss of historical continuity of struggle. Union density levels have not been this low for over 100 years.
The challenge in front of the Left is to create new mass, class-struggle organizations that will act as determined political representation for the working class as a whole. We must do this in the teeth of a deeply entrenched, Democrat-aligned, bureaucratic leadership defending their perks and privileges in the unions. A similar process is playing out in various social movement organizations that have developed roots since the Civil Rights and Second Wave Feminist movement.
This uphill battle underlines the need for a mass socialist movement and also the necessity of rebuilding organized, revolutionary Marxism – the latter being the other component of the dual tasks. As they did in the past, Marxist forces will play a key role in helping the class movement overcome barriers in its path. As Marxists involve themselves in various initiatives and campaigns of the working class, we bring a clear lesson from recent experience: we must take care so that agreements and arrangements do not liquidate or de facto debilitate our independent organizational life. The creation of Marxist cadre requires this independent organization, just as cadre development must be interwoven with the march forward of the wider movement.
Marxist Organization: Against Sectarianism & the Micro-Party Delusion
Socialist Refoundation includes many comrades that came together after leaving Socialist Alternative. That organization, over time, had effectively abandoned a commitment to the dual tasks. No doubt this is the easier road. The enormous complexities involved necessitate tactical flexibility, and also a democratic and open atmosphere of experimentation. Mistakes and imbalances are inevitable, even necessary, in order to learn. A robust democratic culture (including, but not only consisting of, corresponding written rules of order) must be in place, so when issues inevitably emerge, unnecessary splits can be avoided. In other words, application of the dual tasks requires an anti-sectarian approach and democratic culture.
Paul Le Blanc, a leading scholar of Leninism, writes in Lenin and Marxism:
“the ideas and activities of socialists must make sense to — and win the active support of — broad layers of the working-class majority and avoid turning socialist theory into a rigid dogma rather than a guide to action. This [dogma] can prevent the kind of creative and critical thinking needed for dealing with complex realities. Free expression and democratic openness within the group are seen as threats to such purity, leading to a bullying and heresy-hunting attitude toward those who don’t conform.”
The current array of left-progressive, reformist, identitarian, and utopian ideas among sections of the population requires Marxists to develop new conceptions and tactics. Socialist Alternative once did this to very good effect, with its groundbreaking elections of Kshama Sawant in Seattle and through its flexible, critical-support campaigning for Bernie Sanders’ Presidential campaigns. But once a broader socialist mainstream emerged, Socialist Alternative flinched and couldn’t make the tactical adjustments to regain initiative. It gradually nestled into an insular niche of routine recruitment and propaganda work. It withdrew from difficult labor work, and suffered repeated splits.
These are symptoms of the micro-party perspective that overcame Socialist Alternative, but are not unique to that organization. This conception imagines that building a small revolutionary group is, with this or that qualification, the same thing as constructing a revolutionary party. Starting with the generally correct notion that there cannot be a successful socialist revolution without a revolutionary party, a micro-party extrapolates that one’s own particular organization or tradition holds the “red thread of authentic Marxism.” Therefore, building the organization through steady recruitment, and even defending the prestige of its leadership, becomes the key to constructing a future mass revolutionary party. A messianic self-image takes hold, which raises the particular Marxist group above the rest of the movement.
However, a truly mass revolutionary party and International will emerge from explosive movements of the working class. This central idea steers Marxists away from sectarian self-declarations that Lenin characterized correctly as “phrasemongering and clowning.” Socialism will not be brought to the masses by enlightened messiahs nor the socialist intellectuals. We emphasize instead Marx and Lenin’s central theme: it is the task of ordinary workers as a class to fight for their self-emancipation.
Le Blanc summarizes in a recent article:
“….In 1920, Lenin was explaining in Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder that the Bolshevik experience showed that a disciplined revolutionary vanguard party required three qualities. The first exists independently — a class-conscious layer of the working class, which must be the base of a would-be vanguard party. The second quality is an intimate connection of this organized vanguard layer to the broader working class. The third quality is a leadership able to advance a correct political strategy and tactics — but this could not be proclaimed but must be the conclusion drawn by “the broad masses” based on their own experience.
“Lenin went on to describe the consequences if a party sought to short-circuit this process. “Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved…these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience.” His stress on the need for what he called “a correct revolutionary theory” implied that not every “revolutionary theory” is necessarily correct. Such theory, he emphasized, “is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.”
The problem of having many groups of subdivided Marxists on the Left is not the mere existence of several small organizations with distinct analyses and tactics – we are one ourselves. Instead it is the sectarian inability to work together, or with others, to accomplish anything productive, and the hostility that micro-party delusions inject into the working-class movement. To move forward, Marxists need to confront this legacy of sectarianism and isolation.
United-Front Methods
The united-front tradition is the key reference point for how to fight and build broader unity, while also advancing socialist politics. The tactic was initially developed to deal with a situation where different mass parties of the working class existed, which in today’s world is no longer valid. However, the fact that working people need every ounce of unity that can be mustered to win against the vast power of capitalists and their states remains every bit as valid today.
The tradition urges socialists and radicals to apply themselves to achieving working unity and collaboration in specific struggles, across the divides of the working class, including its organizations and leaderships. Trotsky explains:
“The problem of the united front — despite the fact that a split is inevitable in this epoch between the various political organizations basing themselves on the working class — grows out of the urgent need to secure for the working class the possibility of a united front in the struggle against capitalism. For those who do not understand this task, the party is only a propaganda society and not an organization for mass action.”
Past historical experience of the united front needs to be adapted to the disorganization and confusion of the U.S. working-class movement today. We live in a world where working-class activists (let alone the common worker) are not typically in an organization or are only loosely committed. The united front in its classical, historical sense – of negotiations between the leaderships of mass, workers’ parties – no longer exists. Instead, we are faced with a situation in which loose threads of the movement are tied to the capitalist Democratic Party, be it through the bureaucratic union leaderships or the NGOs. Working-class or socialist elements are currently mixed in and we are faced continuously with the basic struggle for the existence of an independent class position. This is the complex terrain in which revolutionary socialists must fight for unity in action and makes it necessary to speak of the method or spirit of the united front.
In applying the united-front method we retain the core concept of creating specific fighting unity, or “marching with separate banners but striking together.” However, Marxists’ position of weakness and limitation means we need to emphasize patience, with both individuals and other political trends. We need a creative approach that involves patiently explaining and genuinely convincing others to build alongside us in specific and constructive ways. This will necessarily involve exploratory political discussions of various kinds, but proposals should concretize our Marxist politics into action. In the past, Socialist Alternative’s engagement with the $15 minimum wage struggle in Seattle, and the critical support for Bernie’s electoral campaigns, set an example of how to use the methods of the united front to win. Action-oriented collaboration functions as a sorting mechanism for those that don’t have genuine desire to build productively and avoids a focus on abstract discussions that can lead to posturing, inertia and demoralization. Concrete actions can start small, but should be connected to an orientation towards real, living class struggle and moving toward a more organized character, on a clearer political basis. Working people will learn through struggle. Marxists must learn by working alongside radicalizing workers and socialists of disparate tendencies.
Transitional Demands Today
Formulating transitional programmatic demands is a correct tactic of posing proposals and concrete reforms that can act as a basis for united-front campaigns or other meaningful organizing. Full agreement is not a prerequisite to fighting together. As explained by Trotsky, they are about joining the fight for all reforms today, raising popular demands that also push the movement forward beyond its current capacity (e.g., Free Healthcare for All; No More Wars; Nationalization of the top 500 corporations; etc.) and linking them to the need for socialist transformation of society. The ultimate point is that, when connected to a Marxist analysis, the working class educates itself on the limits of reformism through the active struggle for reforms.
Transitional demands can be used in a variety of ways, more propagandistically or concretely, and were effectively used by the Bolsheviks and other socialists, although not under that name. When Trotsky wrote his important Transitional Program in 1938, there was a mass advanced layer of workers and socialists in society consciously striving for an alternative to capitalism and fascism. The idea Trotsky discussed of “building a bridge” to the need for socialism through interrelated demands was not an abstract exercise.
It is the role of a Marxist organization to defend a revolutionary program in the midst of fighting campaigns. However, as used by various micro-party Trotskyist trends today, transitional demands can become a cynical, sectarian exercise used to recruit or “expose” other forces in the movement. The good initiative to “build a movement” or “fight for working class demands” devolves into a small recruitment campaign that leaves no lasting gain for the wider, working-class movement.
In this period, advancing a revolutionary program requires patiently listening to and learning from real workers’ struggles (in the United States and internationally) to understand what issues to raise and when, and how to advance them based on workers’ concrete, lived experience. In many cases, Marxists experienced at developing well-tuned, transitional demands can use them to help spur the movement forward and assist it to overcome various barriers, but it depends upon the concrete manner in which it is done.
Marxist Regroupment & Internationalism
The context of united-front work is also the place to consider regroupment efforts with other Marxist trends. We of course don’t seek to conduct united-front activity with only Marxist activists or groups. Such an approach would, in fact, equal the rejection of the fundamental ideas behind the united front. But it is our hope that through common activities, space can be made for Marxists that have learned important lessons to discuss deeper collaborations, and even fusions.
It’s crucial for us that agreements must be tested in the crucible of actually rebuilding the wider movement. Abstract, programmatic unity is simply not sufficient, considering that democratic culture and an organization’s actual practice in the wider movement are determinant of whether programs will be more than pieces of paper. Overly hasty combinations are recipes for setbacks. Trust over time, common political frameworks, and an understanding of best democratic practices can best be built through common experiences in the movement.
The process of regroupment must also proceed on the international plane. Internationalism is a principle for Marxist organizations. It requires we make real contributions to rebuilding international Marxist organizations in the here-and-now. Socialist Refoundation stands in political solidarity with Internationalist Standpoint which, originally emerging from the CWI and then a disappointing experience in Internationalist Socialist Alternative, has managed to unite with groups from different traditions.
Socialists everywhere and always will suffer from blind spots as a result of their specific national context. The working class is an international class whose members have more in common with each other than with any “national” rulers. The need for international working-class unity is a concrete struggle that determines our ability to confront imperialist wars and capitalists’ globally-integrated production. We are one movement: “Workers of the World Unite!” as was famously proclaimed by The Communist Manifesto. Only a globally united working-class, socialist movement can clear away capitalism’s irresolvable contradictions and problems. Our movement aims to speak for the future of all humanity and the Earth. A future International worthy of this task begins with consistent exploratory efforts towards international collaboration, dialogue, mutual learning, and fusions where possible.
A Democratic Culture is Necessary to Build & Develop Marxist Ideas
Socialist Refoundation insists on the need for a democratic culture in a Marxist organization. We see this in contrast to a micro-party, where the leadership typically become top-down “experts” in stifling debates and in sectarian distortion, under the pretext of defending “principles.”
The monumental task of assisting in rebuilding the labor and socialist movement, developing mass revolutionary parties, and establishing a socialist society cannot be fulfilled by organizations which are accustomed to top-down structures or repeating formulas. Without a democratic culture, there will be no way to convince the emerging, fresh, militant forces of mass movements to join a socialist political formation – especially young people wary of bureaucratic and abusive methods. The footsoldiers for the battle for socialism need to be independent thinkers, innovative, and politically confident. They should have the training to exercise true democracy and link this to providing leadership to mass movements.
The quality of a group’s socialist cadre is the only true guarantor against bureaucratic or political degeneration. “Cadre” refers to the activists holding the movement together; and, to be qualitatively strong, cadre need to have actual roots and experience in building and leading in the workers’ movement. Of course, to develop a Marxist understanding, reading, study, and democratic debates are indispensable. However, cadre in the true sense of independent leaders will ultimately be created through experience in the class struggle where ideas are applied.
Today, it is through discussing, debating, and defining concrete united-front efforts that a Marxist group’s internal life is made vibrant. The work will present political dangers that will only be consistently overcome or avoided through genuinely democratic collective assessments.
We believe in the use of democratic centralism, but we see many typical practices on the U.S. Left as a distortion of this concept. The current historical period, as a rule, requires more democracy in the balance of democracy and centralism. There are bookshelves full of research – Le Blanc, Bryan D. Palmer, Lars Lih, Pierre Broue, etc. – that shames the conduct of the micro-parties and sects by detailing the actual practices of the Bolsheviks; for instance, the mistaken idea that differing opinions cannot and should not be published openly.
Let’s reiterate: centralism is foremost for fighting the boss. It is not a self-serving vehicle for a leadership to stifle debates, micro-manage, and impose top-down control. Respecting the right of individual initiative, within shared action in the movement, is actually the basis for principled discipline.
Socialist Refoundation is a new, small organization. We do not have the final word on democratic reinvention. But we see the need for Marxist organization as a principle and seek to discuss with other socialists who are learning lessons from past experiences. It is only through collective reflection, alongside involvement in the wider movement, that we can dramatically change practices and develop organizations with strong democratic cultures.
Some Tactical Issues – Class Struggle, Unions, DSA, and Elections
The Importance of the Labor Movement
Socialist Refoundation members are involved as rank-and-file activists and elected leaders in the labor movement, engaging our co-workers on workplace and political issues, and winning support for unions, strikes, or other initiatives. This is important, grounding experience. A genuine Marxist organization must always work to maintain activity in workplaces and unions. One flashing red light in the degeneration of Socialist Alternative was how experienced worker members were consistently hounded out of the organization, in essence because they had to contend with complicated and difficult situations in their workplaces which inevitably conflicted with the self-serving, sectarian priorities of the leadership.
Activities in unions and unorganized workplaces are an essential training ground for Marxist cadre. We encourage our members to get jobs and make an effort to sink roots. How revolutionaries orient to workplaces makes all the difference. It’s challenging work that should be undertaken with care, and in no haste, acknowledging the pressures towards sectarianism or opportunist adaptation. These pressures only increase in intensity if one is elected as a steward, or to a union office. There are no simple solutions here, but also no hiding from the task. Marxists taking on leadership roles, despite the pressures and adverse conditions, is a critical part of rebuilding the working-class movement.
The role of Marxist organization is to support its worker activists in being effective class-struggle leaders. There should be a dialectic where the organization integrates and analyzes the concrete experience of the workers, and the worker activists turn to the organization for support and assistance under the political pressure of those concrete circumstances. This is a delicate dynamic, requiring first and foremost sensitivity, patience, and nuanced awareness on the side of the Marxist organization of the specific conditions and challenges faced by the worker. A micro-party cannot tolerate that its “correct ideas” do not function as a magic wand in the real-existing workplaces.
In our collective efforts, Socialist Refoundation aims to build up a wider, class-struggle trend in the labor movement that sees the need to challenge the capitalist system itself and aims to overturn the unions’ existing bureaucratic leadership. Marxists should be involved in local and international labor solidarity work, community campaigns and organizations, class-struggle networks, union reform caucuses, new workplace organizing, and labor journalism.
The socialist Left has often not been able to conduct this work while also maintaining a clear socialist profile. This is particularly dangerous inside reform caucuses, which often struggle against pressures that degenerate them into the leaderships they replace. Socialists that give up an independent existence and a socialist program have little defense against getting sucked into these reversals and outright capitulations.
Why Socialist Refoundation is Joining DSA & Why We Think All Marxists Should
The rise of DSA is a complex phenomenon that cannot be described adequately in brief. It has some similarities to other new-left formations that emerged in a number of countries since 2008 and even led governments. Internationalist Standpoint has published on the recent past of new-left formations, which holds lessons for the U.S. Left.
To summarize: (1) they have been tested, fail, and degenerate very quickly, unlike traditional leftists parties that decayed over long periods; (2) they do not have roots in the working class as the social democratic, or communist parties had; (3) they mainly exist as electoral apparatuses, with with the middle classes dominating the composition and leadership; (4) they often do not have local branches that meaningfully take part in local movements. Finally, these weaknesses leave space for the far Right to gain momentum.
For DSA, these international comparisons are relevant, but also have limits – it’s quite peculiar to the United States. It’s a very loose formation, heterogeneous in ideology and class position. DSA activities are decentralized and there are regional differences – sometimes large ones. Its procedure-heavy democratic practices are often a topic of complaint and undoubtedly have weaknesses. Yet paradoxically, for an organization that runs electoral campaigns largely within the Democratic Party, DSA’s “chapter” structures are more robust, fair-minded, and democratic than many independent European new-left parties. In the chapters, important initiatives can develop and be joined, including in the labor movement. There are now around 250 chapters in most states and Washington DC, each with their own, semi-autonomous internal life.
We agree with many on the left wing of DSA that would like to transform DSA into a real, mass Socialist Party based on the working class, immigrants and the oppressed. Indeed, this would be a critical step forward. But DSA is simply not currently a party, and it is not poised to become one soon. Though it is now quantitatively the largest socialist organization in U.S. history, it lacks important qualitative aspects of the old Socialist or Communist parties: particularly their roots in the working class. Nevertheless, it is a substantial broad socialist, democratic formation that exists independently as a member-funded organization. Left-wing Socialists and Marxists can and should join it.
DSA has the potential to act as a hub around which Marxists can get involved in meaningful, class-struggle work and connect with other revolutionaries to do joint work or to explore regroupment. Socialist Refoundation members are DSA members participating in DSA-wide political campaigns and initiatives, or initiating our own.
The main contradiction of DSA is the continuing existence of its elected officials as a left-progressive pressure group of the Democratic Party, which has led to its various representatives covering for the Democrats’ reactionary, pro-capitalist policies, including wars and the Gaza genocide. Nevertheless, the future of DSA remains an open question – not to be dismissed by Marxists as if it is simply a finalized process of well-worn reformist betrayal. Contradictory and complex developments of the past years have falsified the sectarian, idealist view that Marxists can wait around for reality to catch up to them – no abstract replay is coming of the lessons of The Second International around reformism vs revolution, or the lessons of the Third International about a revolutionary party and world revolution.
Marxists should learn these historic lessons, but we need to adopt an open-ended conception for the future development of the socialist movement that can only be tested out by events. Reality must teach us. See, for example, Lenin’s evolving conception of the Russian Revolution prior to 1917. There is no roadmap for how class and socialist consciousness (or DSA) will develop. Revolutionary socialists need to be organized and able to act inside DSA, supplemented with independent initiatives. This brings us into vitalizing contact with the new, broad socialist movement, while placing us in a requisite position to counter the Democrat-accommodating, opportunist trends in DSA.
Marxist activists who are DSA members retain a wide latitude over their regular organizing and independence. DSA’s ban on democratic-centralist organizations has been lifted. Therefore, is it defensible for revolutionary socialists to maintain a separate existence outside DSA?
We advocate that revolutionary socialists should join DSA as just one initiative in a wider effort to rebuild the power and fighting unity of the working class. Over the medium and longer term, Socialist Refoundation will seek to learn from the positive and negative experiences of DSA, and to assist the working-class and socialist movements towards meaningful political independence and a socialist program.
For Independent Socialist Candidates & Other Electoral Tactics
In Socialist Refoundation we see the emergence of broad, left-reformist and populist formations, including new working-class parties as necessary, inescapable stages of the process of reemergence of the working class as a conscious force for socialism. However, with the threat of Trump in office, a vitally-needed, new working-class party is not soon in the cards. While the Democrats are widely and rightly hated in society, they are poised to make gains against Trump and the Republicans in the midterms and possibly the 2028 presidential elections.
Considering the political opportunities that Sanders and others had in the eight years before Trump’s recent reelection, these are tragic circumstances. Sanders passed on the opportunity to upend the U.S. political system and cut into Trump’s base. It was possible to build something new and run a campaign against the whole of the capitalist political establishment, Democrat and Republican. Instead, Sanders chose a strategy of accommodation to the establishment and Biden. Trump was reelected in 2024, something this “unity” was supposed to prevent.
In coming elections, Socialist Refoundation will advocate and campaign for independent socialist candidates. There is also the potential for other important worthwhile independent working-class candidates to come forward as well.
However the tactic of critically, and independently, supporting certain democratic-socialist or other radical candidates running in the Democratic Party retains its validity – this was known as the “Bernie tactic” in Socialist Alternative. Socialist Refoundation recently critically supported and joined the tens of thousands of volunteers for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election in this fashion.
There are no general rules that apply universally for the “Bernie tactic.” Truth is concrete. We do not think the capitalist Democratic Party is capable of reform. Therefore, it is a limited tactic aimed at overcoming the Democrats’ dominating role. The tactic is imposed by circumstances beyond our control that must be examined concretely at each stage. Opponents claim it compromises Marxists through involvement in the Democratic Party. This debate has been occurring on the Left for over a decade and it will go on. However, with our experience of over ten years with this tactic, we think its inherent dangers can be navigated successfully.
Despite limitations and setbacks (and even outright breaches of socialist principles), it must be conceded that Sanders and DSA candidates running in the Democratic Party have done a great deal to popularize socialist ideas and develop a broad, left-wing consciousness among wide sections of the younger generation and working people. While mired in a cycle of opposition followed by opportunistic capitulation to the Democratic establishment, these are workers and young people who should be consistently engaged by the Marxist Left.
Sectarians prefer isolation and purity over grappling with the concrete reality. Socialist Refoundation wants to develop a Marxists politics that takes on these complex challenges as they are. To us, the task resembles the way Marx and Engels approached the First International when they collaborated with reformist, trade unionist, anarchist, and radical nationalist trends while defending the ideas of scientific socialism. We go forward with a pioneering spirit and a steadfast commitment to a socialist future and a socialist world.
Solidarity!
