— By Tamir Smith

March 13th, 2024

The Left, in partnership with the well-meaning liberals of the day, have been on the forefront of black liberation and proactively participating in protests and organizational efforts going back to the Civil Rights Movement. The storied history of this humanitarian crisis has seen healthy gains over the span of 80 years, despite all of the continued opposition in public forums and government positions. This aforementioned progress has been co-opted by the Republican Party as a way to show off black faces in their advertising and media to signal to the public a false image of inclusivity as a way to give a certain level of validity to the warmongering, anti-immigration and neoliberal policies that is often espoused by the Republicans. To any person of color who has experienced tokenism, you can easily see through this rhetorical shielding for what it is: the political form of saying, “I have black friends who agree with me.” It goes without saying that black people can be wrong about political outlooks and thus, peddling out the opinions of black people as if it were a checkmate in a game of chess further highlights the racialized context under which these conversations take place and the objective to create a particular narrative about how “racism is over!” and “there is equal opportunity for everyone!” when that could not be further from the truth.

This brings us to the Democratic Party. The party that has been widely endorsed by black people since the party switch of 1948. The party that your black family members tell you to vote for when you get to the polls. It is fair to say that the Democratic Party’s contributions to increasing the civil liberties of black people in America outweighs the contributions from the Republican Party, which in turn, rallies black people into unwavering support for the democrats. However, for those activists interested in black liberation, they have largely remained independent or affiliated with the labor or socialist parties. One must ask: why would an already oppressed group of people align themselves with parties facing oppression in a society cracking down on socialists and union laborers? From the Black Panthers to Kwame Ture to Martin Luther King Jr. to Angela Davis to Charlene Mitchell to Assata Shakur, they all carried forth the socialist ideas and tradition because they knew true liberation hailed not just from entering a socialist mode of production but freeing their black brothers and sisters from the exploitation faced under the system of capitalism and the power structure working to keep this oppression in place, even to this day. This is merely the first front where the democrats lose credibility: the people who marched, rallied, were imprisoned, beaten and fought tooth and nail to reach basic concessions from the ruling class achieved what they did because of the political pressure applied to the democratic party from the constant struggle of black people to reach liberation, and not necessarily from the absolute altruistic values of the democratic party.

Then people will say, “well, why not become a politician yourself or endorse a candidate and change the party from within?” To simply go with a modern example, Bernie Sanders is a long-standing independent through his time as mayor, representative and currently senator. With his title as a leader of the progressive movement, he has stood in the face of the establishment time and time again fighting for amenities in healthcare and education that are so basic at this point, even many capitalist countries around the world are pulling it off with no problem. If you take a look at his attempts at the presidency, you quickly find layers of shenanigans dropped on his presidential run and eventual usurpation by establishment friendly candidates like Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden, to which he has to lick his wounds and shamefully yet enthusiastically endorse their democratic nominations against Donald Trump, trapping the American people in a dissatisfying “lesser evils” paradigm yet again. Despite Bernie’s attempts to appeal to people of color, it was still hard to shake the fact that he was yet another old white man running for office and it became hard for black people to get behind that, especially when Americans in general are not ready to actively engage with revolutionary politics on the left. Red Scare propaganda about genocides, starvation and supposed authoritarianism has tainted socialism with this idea that it “only works in theory but not in practice” and led many people to adopt a soft power, reformist mindset, believing that through electoralism and playing pragmatic politics, there is a way to slowly but surely guide the America people to a more equitable and fair society. It does not take being a black person to understand that the system does not work for you, no matter what kind of lip service is being paid towards your plight, no matter if it is coming from Joe Biden or Donald Trump, it is all a bid at populist tactics to secure your vote and keep it moving. Regardless of the existence of “The Squad” in congress who make up the most left-wing and POC portion of the democrats and have identified as democratic socialist in the past and/or the present, their positions on things do not rise above modern day common sense policy and the opposition they face in congress is far more extreme on the other end, meaning their effect has been effectively neutralized, regardless of how progressive they may be on their own.

The fact of the matter is that our capitalistic system and our separation of government powers work in tandem to create a feedback loop of influence and policy that maintains the status quo with extremely minor progressive changes occurring over long periods of time, and usually at the loss of other essential policy that creates a never ending tit-for-tat. This is the next front where democrats lose credibility: their lack of commitment to radical community building leads to a tendency within democrats where they can not be trusted to uphold progressive political positions in times of push back and as they maneuver through the political machine, the eventual assimilation into the democratic party softens their attitudes and “working within the system” turns into “becoming one with the system.”

So when it comes to liberation of all people, the democratic party is not much to rely on, much less for black liberation. Any hopes of pushing them further left are met with strife, demonization, and ostracization, much like what Bernie Sanders dealt with for the majority of his career until more recent public awareness of what he stands for came to light. Liberation movements ultimately have to be powered by the people, not something that comes from liberal democratic organizations. The most revolutionary liberation forces have their roots in socialism and it is because of their principals in horizontal leadership, the dismantling of patriarchy, sexism, and racism because of the perceptible presence of women, queer folks and POCs, direct action and mutual aid, community building and organizing that changes the real life material conditions of these oppressed peoples, and commitment to the class struggle, which involves the recognition of severe income inequality and the existence of working class people who are all united in their struggle against soul sucking bourgeois capital owners. These are but a few of the principles that guide the ground level movement of unionizing the workplace and raising the class consciousness to understand that we are all owed a piece of the pie to which our labor contributes.

As it relates to black liberation, America would not be where it is if it were not for the labor of African slaves and their descendants getting nothing but hell on earth since then. It is only through the resilience of black culture in response to whiteness that has allowed black people to persist as long as they have. This goes beyond reparations because capital is the problem in the first place. It is the current day exploitation that goes on in the workplace and the oppression inflicted by private institutions, which further reinforces these prejudiced attitudes in our culture, leading to a cycle of treating workers poorly and thus treating your neighbor poorly. You don’t need money, you need housing you can afford, healthcare that does not bankrupt you when you get sick, schooling that does not accrue so much debt that your children will have to pay it off. You deserve a system beyond capitalism that does not rely on prejudice to keep you oppressed. If the people want to get anywhere, they need to join existing socialist parties or create their own. Study Marxist theory. Study black history. Only then will you have black liberation. Only then will you liberate all people.