Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the presidency has come to an end. Between the dramatic impact of the party establishment’s post–South Carolina unification around Joe Biden and the coronavirus pandemic’s effective suspension of democracy, Sanders was left with no path forward and suspended his campaign.

Naturally, the new socialist left in the United States is now starting to think about what is to be done after Bernie. In this moment of uncertainty and reconsideration, there is going to be a strong temptation to retreat to the politics that were hegemonic on the Left before Sanders’s first run: anti-electoral movementism and the embrace of left politics as a subculture.

We need to resist this temptation. Even with Sanders out of the race, his defeat has the potential to be one of the most productive defeats the Left has endured in decades, if we learn the right lessons from it.