The victory of Joe Biden in the US presidential election and Keir Starmer’s decision to suspend Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party represented the end point of the Sanders and Corbyn “moments” respectively. In the United States, the Left is fighting against corporate Democrats who are seeking to blame them for Joe Biden’s down-ballot failures. In the UK, socialists are fighting for the right to simply exist within the Labour Party.

The movements that emerged over the course of these moments, however, live on. The challenge socialists on both sides of the Atlantic face today is how to build movement power into something more long-lasting — to develop an institutional base for socialism in their respective national contexts. Socialists must be under no illusions that liberal sections of these center-left political parties would like to destroy them. On a post-election conference call in the United States, former CIA agent and current congresswoman Abigail Spanberger even demanded that the Democrats never say the word “socialism” ever again.

This is a blatant attempt to rewrite history. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out recently in a scathing interview, progressives were central to Biden’s victory. Their grassroots organizing efforts helped to produce record turnouts across the country. This was particularly the case in swing states like Minnesota — where the Washington Post covered Rep. Ilhan Omar’s efforts in the weeks leading up to election day. According to Ken Martin, the chairman of Minnesota’s Democratic Farmer-Labor Party,