The Ballot Box or Popular Power: Which Way Forward?

Analysis from the Black Rose Anarchist Federation about the terrain in the US surrounding the upcoming election.

This article by Black Rose / Rosa Negra members Frank Ascaso and Patrick Berkman takes stock of the present conjuncture around the 2024 presidential election. The “choice” before us, is no choice at all: between a program of unadorned reaction and that of friendly faced genocide. But despair and retreat aren’t adequate in the case of either outcome. As the authors argue, we must get organized to confront whatever political forces take control of the state. This article contains perspectives of individual members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra and does not necessarily reflect the view of the entire Federation.

By Frank Ascaso and Patrick Berkman

With the surprise entrance of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, the character, but not the nature, of the 2024 election cycle dramatically changed. Progressive activists immediately started volunteering for her campaign, spurred not by any substantive shift in policy — Harris has pledged to carry on Biden’s pro-Israel and anti-immigrant agenda — but by the simple fact that the candidate wasn’t Biden. As well, Harris has broken all previous fundraising records for amounts raised in a single quarter, a success owed largely to business interests and Silicon Valley. However, the months since her ascension have shown a steady re-consolidation of support for Trump in key states. The outcome of the election remains too close to predict.

The dead heat of this race is, in part, due to this election cycle offering the choice between the party of genocide and the party of fascism. This is no choice at all. It is part of the formula that has led to our worsening social crisis. For decades we have faced exactly this same calculus at the ballot box: choose the lesser evil candidate to stave off much worse outcomes for working and oppressed peoples. And yet, conditions continue to worsen each cycle. This is a process that has been slowly moving all of us toward fascism, climate crisis, and genocide. Working within these options does not change that trajectory. Only by working outside and against them can we alter our course.

To break free from this cycle rather than focus on elections, we suggest using an ecosystem model to better understand political struggle and organizing. In election years, progressive groups urgently call for activists to work for Democratic candidates. However, it’s important to remember that groups engaging in political work are not a monolith: we are part of an ecosystem of different social actors with different orientations. While liberals, progressives, and allied forces work to elect and influence politicians, those of us on the anticapitalist left should build popular power. By building independent, disruptive organizations of the working class, popular power can not only force concessions from the ruling class in the present, but also carry the potential to overthrow capitalism and the state in its entirety. Key to its revolutionary potential is its operation outside and against the existing structures of social and political domination. Understanding our place within the larger ecosystem refocuses our efforts on class struggle outside of the electoral arena, while progressive formations will continue to work for politicians. They have a candidate to elect. We have popular power to build.

To be clear, socialism isn’t measured by how far to the left our politicians are; nor is our proximity to fascism measured by how far to the right they are. Fascism has taken over nations after both left-wing and right-wing elections: what matters most is the people’s ability to organize themsleves and fight for something better. Whoever wins the election in November, our focus should remain on the forms of popular organization we build together.

Amid Compounding Crises, a Political Impasse

The ruling classes in the United States and other western powers continue to face an acute crisis of legitimacy, with major social institutions failing to meet the most basic needs of working people, be it housing, climate, labor, health, cost of living, or a slew of other issues. More importantly, the horror of the US-backed genocide in Gaza and now Lebanon, as well as the blatant criminality of the Supreme Court and other major governing institutions, have intensified this crisis of legitimacy.

In this election, different sectors of the ruling class are fighting among themselves over how to best manage and navigate the crisis. The Democrats are further solidifying their role as the party of status quo capital, with major corporate and billionaire donors from tech, finance, Hollywood, and manufacturing supporting the Harris candidacy. Those of a more social-democratic leaning are boxed out by the party bureaucracy on one side and a hostile donor base on the other. Meanwhile, on the right, there is another set of ruling class interests, particularly in fossil fuels, tech, and finance, who are comfortable with the Trump movement’s use of political violence, criminality, graft, and continued tax and regulatory gifts to big business. The profits made during his administration have convinced them that whatever kind of threat he poses, it’s not a threat to their interests. Many of Trump’s financial backers — and hard core volunteer supporters — come from small-time capitalists, members of the petty bourgeoisie like car dealers and internet based commercial retailers.

The US-supported genocide in Gaza and its spread to Lebanon has intensified this crisis of legitimacy and political impasse. As the death toll rises and public anger increases, Gaza will continue to put politicians in a bind. Republican politicians are opting for a quick and decisive military victory, with Trump calling for Israel to “get it over with” and promising to clamp down on protests. Many Democrats in office would prefer a return to low level conflict that would move off the front pages of the newspaper but allow Israel to continue its process of ethnic cleansing and occupation. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have clearly signaled that aside from a few wagged fingers over humanitarian aid, they are firmly with Israel’s ever-expanding war to the bitter end. Zionist groups and defense industry interests fund campaigns to oust pro-Palestinian politicians such as Cori Bush, who lost her primary race thanks to tens of millions of dollars spent by the pro-Israel group AIPAC. Neither party can let go of Israel because it is the centerpiece of US military and foreign policy in the region.

Another major issue this cycle is, once again, immigration, where the Democrats have lurched to the right, adopting much of the Republican platform as their own. Dropping their opposition to Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant border policies, in June 2024 the Biden administration issued an executive order that can shut down the border, suspended asylum protections, and allowed for immediate deportations. A panicked center will adopt the policies of the right if they think it will help them stay in power. But as Democrats and their counterparts in Europe have found out over the past decade, moving rightward on immigration will not end the electoral threat of the far right.

Democrats are trying to make protecting abortion rights their centerpiece campaign issue.  The 2022 Dobbs decision ended what few abortion rights remained in Roe v. Wade and consigned reproductive rights to a patchwork of wildly different state laws. For many in conservative-governed states, striking down Roe only codified what was already for all practical purposes a total abortion ban. Attacks on bodily autonomy, like abortion and trans healthcare, are joint endeavors of heteropatriarchy and capitalism as they demand harsher control of social reproduction. However, abortion bans are wildly unpopular with the general public. Harris has, true to form, embraced the bare minimum promises needed to attempt to keep the rallying cry potent. Trump, after initially crowing over Dobbs and state-level abortion bans, has tried to downplay them as the general election approaches: the Republican National Committee even removed a federal abortion ban from its platform for the first time in forty years. Regardless of the election’s outcome, neither party will have the kind of Congressional majority to actually settle the issue even if they wanted to. And democrats, when they held the majority in Congress, took no action on abortion. Like the pre-Dobbs dynamic, most politicians are in practice happy to keep the controversy alive, all the better for fundraising and mobilizing their base while the rest of us pay the price.

These crises are not going away anytime soon. They are part of a cascade of social crises. US ruling interests cannot address them within the current frameworks of capitalist democracy and imperial interests that they represent. These crises will continue to afflict us until we can radically break out of this dynamic.

What Can Be Done: Outside and Against

Given present circumstances, we see debate on whether or not one should vote as a distraction, generating much heat but very little light. Those on the anti-capitalist left should not provide time, energy, or money to electoral candidates. Popular power lies outside the state, and it includes the power to impact and influence the state. We should work to develop and build that power by organizing and acting collectively. Beyond the importance of organizing at your workplace, apartment building, and neighborhood, here are five avenues of action for the present moment that are much more worthy of our time than canvassing for candidates.

1. Organize with migrant workers and disrupt anti-immigrant repression

We can defend migrant workers and disrupt repression. We can build unions and union-like formations in sectors with a high proportion of immigrant and undocumented workers (e.g. farms, light manufacturing, food service, gig work). These organizations, and solidarity networks, workers groups, labor centers and others should be formed and strengthened. For immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, ICE watch and rapid response groups should be built, with members undergoing regular operational and information security trainings to prepare them. These groups are necessary now and will remain so under either Harris or Trump. The social and physical infrastructure of border enforcement, detention, and deportation are obvious and everywhere, even far from the border. Direct actions during the first Trump term provide numerous examples of how to slow their gears

2. Heighten the cost of the genocide in Gaza

In the case of Gaza, we can raise the cost of inaction on the part of institutions at all levels by organizing and radicalizing alongside the people within them. This way we can fracture the Zionist consensus within the political class. We can organize for the campus occupations, the BDS campaign, Palestinian resistance groups like Workers in Palestine, and other immediate efforts. Importantly, we can continue to shift the rhetorical climate from the minimum demand (“ceasefire now”) to opposing Israeli apartheid and Zionism more generally.

Taking the struggle for justice in Palestine directly to the institutions that support the genocide is exactly what we mean by an “outside and against” strategy. Frequent marches and rallies are good entry points for the newly politicized, but their exclusive use diverts energy and resources from more difficult but effective tactics. Blocking arms shipments, disrupting weapons manufacturing, and halting the machinery of genocide will have immediate impacts. New conditions demand new tactics, and we need to continually re-examine them on this shifting terrain.

3. Erode the bedrock of fascism

The sharpest edges of fascist movements are aimed at Black, Latine, Indigenous, and Asian people, along with immigrants and those of oppressed genders and sexualities. Successful organizing efforts will be rooted in the lived experiences and communities they belong to. Through popular education we can channel public disaffection away from scapegoats and to the real villains: the ruling class of capitalists and the state. Anarchists are uniquely well-positioned to speak to popular disaffection in a way that liberals and conservatives cannot. We need to engage with potential supporters of the right by speaking plainly and convincingly of the necessity of liberatory struggle.

The lifeblood of fascism is the petty bourgeoisie: small and medium-sized business owners (landlords, restaurants, franchises, car dealerships, retail, general contractors, etc.). Just as we must organize our own class, we should seize opportunities to disorganize theirs, particularly individuals and companies most politically active. Deny them their profits and prestige: engage in coordinated opposition, making them toxic to clients, customers, business partners, and local politicians. Encourage worker unionization of their workplaces, and tenant unionization of their rental holdings. Undermine and disrupt local and state chambers of commerce through public opposition campaigns.

If the petty bourgeoisie are fascism’s lifeblood, the police are its muscle, and we should strengthen popular anti-police sentiment. The last four years shows that our capacity to demoralize them is potent. Revitalize cop watch efforts linked to and under the umbrella of larger mass-level organizations, like tenant or worker unions or neighborhood assemblies. Research and organize to oppose the many Cop City-like projects and new prison construction that may be springing up near you. Even failed opposition campaigns, when done well, grow anti-police sentiment in a long-lasting way. Build a steady drumbeat of anti-police outreach, including: exposing police officers’ extremist views, highlighting abusive officer conduct, holding film screenings, town halls, and other public events on police violence, and disrupting police recruitment and training events.

Their Dilemmas, Our Opportunities

While US political culture and corporate media is focused on national-level politics, we shouldn’t miss the trees for the forest. Organizers should tailor their activity to capitalize on the context around them. To that end, in addition to the nationwide conjunctural analysis and strategy that Black Rose members create, each chapter creates its own versions that examine the local political, economic, and social circumstances in which it operates to determine where organizing efforts should be focused.

As the adage goes, generals always prepare to fight the previous war. Revolutionaries, too, often prepare to fight the previous revolution. We must not fall into that trap. We need to better understand the strengths and flaws of the ruling class — and of our own — not as they were, but as they are.

We can use the problems of the present to create offensive campaigns that both win lasting change and empower us, rather than being constantly stuck on the back foot. Whether it is Trump or Harris in the White House, the horizon we walk toward remains the same, even if the path may change with the terrain.

Imagine the next moment of rupture, revolt, and possibility that will come in the months and years ahead. What will you think back and wish you were doing right now with your coworkers, neighbors, and friends to prepare? What’s stopping you?

Let’s build a new way forward, and a better future together in struggle.