Neal Meyer is a member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America. He cowrites the Left Notes newsletter, which covers politics, the labor movement, and philosophy from a democratic socialist perspective.
An essential part of ringing in the New Year will be preparing for the major political struggles of 2026. Here’s a month-by-month roundup of the key union fights, elections, and other events of note for the Left.
What would it take to go from reforms within the capitalist system to a democratic socialist society?
In the 1990s, Democrats adopted a neoliberal program to suit the needs of capital, driving many workers out. The party then adopted a political strategy meant to replace working-class voters with professionals — with disastrous consequences.
The neoliberal economic program embraced by the Clinton-era Democratic Party alienated many working-class voters. Democrats responded by reorienting their electoral strategy toward professional-class voters, accelerating workers’ departure from the party.
Like clockwork, when Democrats get desperate, they trot out disingenuous populist rhetoric to try to save themselves.
When it comes to the economy, Democrats are now the party of the status quo, while Donald Trump’s GOP is making a misleading but radical-sounding pitch to upend the existing order in workers’ favor. It’s a fundamental role reversal in US politics.
As he campaigns for Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders is laying out a progressive agenda for 2025. It’s a program that a Harris administration could conceivably get behind, but Sanders and his allies need a way to force it to do so.
Socialists considering how to break with capitalism are confronted with a dilemma: support a gradual move to social ownership, so workers can build up the know-how to run those firms, or support a rapid transition so capitalists can’t sabotage the economy.
By fighting Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become the next Speaker of the House, the right wing of the Republican Party won significant concessions that will make it a powerful player in Congress. The Left should learn to replicate its tactics for egalitarian ends.
The Left’s beachhead in Congress has grown in the last few years. But at the current rate of expansion, the Left will remain a minority in the Democratic Party’s congressional caucus until 2091. We can’t wait that long for change.
The Democratic Party establishment, backed by the rich, hit back hard against democratic socialists in New York on Tuesday. But the Democratic Socialists of America beat back the attacks on incumbents and successfully expanded its bench in Albany.
That workers must liberate themselves rather than rely on top-down liberation is one of the few rules for socialist organizing that Marx and Engels ever laid down. It’s nonnegotiable: socialists believe in workers freeing themselves through class struggle.
Bernie Sanders is sounding the alarm: working-class people are fed up with Democrats’ failed strategy of behind-the-scenes negotiations. But the party won’t listen. So Sanders and the Squad should take a more aggressive approach against the Democrats.
There’s no natural law that says the Democrats have to lose next year’s midterm elections. But if Democrats can’t fundamentally improve the quality of life for working-class voters, there’s good reason to think they will lose.
Despite continued proclamations that Joe Biden is a transformative president, his agenda has been much more about placating business interests than shifting power to workers.
Support for a multiparty system is widespread in the United States. Such a system is crucial to ridding this country of the two-party trap and building a real democratic system. That’s why socialists should support proportional representation in our electoral system.
Socialism is back on the agenda in the United States, thank God. And today’s newly minted socialists shouldn’t be afraid to embrace Marxism.
In a story released yesterday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she and Joe Biden “would not be in the same party” in a different country. Centrists freaked out. But she’s right — fighters for the working class like AOC and Bernie Sanders aren’t on the same team as defenders of Wall Street and war like Biden.
Everybody’s talking about democratic socialism these days. Here’s what you need to know about it.