The political and media establishments may claim otherwise, but by any reasonably democratic standard Bernie Sanders won the Iowa caucuses. He won roughly six thousand more votes than runner-up Pete Buttigieg, and it was working-class people of all backgrounds who put him over the top.

While some on the Left are still apprehensive about all-out participation in the Sanders campaign, there is little evidence that this will somehow inhibit extra-electoral mobilization and base-building in the working class. In an environment of profound social fragmentation, it should not be surprising that popular discontent has found expression through the Sanders campaign and the “political revolution” it spearheads. The decline of organized labor and the social disintegration of many working-class communities means that only a relatively small fraction of workers are positioned to pursue effective forms of collective action in their workplaces or communities.

Election campaigns are therefore one of the few channels currently available to engage and politicize a mass working-class audience, reconstitute the working class as a political subject, and create a more favorable environment for workers to organize both inside and outside the electoral arena. The Sanders campaign is priming working people to think of themselves as members of a class with an interest in political revolution. How could this be anything but a boon to the Left and the prospects for labor movement revitalization?