Rebuttal to Andrew T and Ian H’s brief against California DSA’s Prop 50 support
Andrew T and Ian H’s argument (“Against the California DSA Endorsement of Prop 50”) showcases their disdain for our bedfellows in the campaign, particularly Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democratic Party: “To lend our endorsement to a measure designed in their party’s interest, not ours, is to sacrifice our independence and organizing efforts without gaining any leverage.” I don’t know about you, but I’m not fond of Gavin Newsom or the neoliberal wing of the DP. In this way we’re all on the same page. But understanding where and why we disagree requires a much bigger picture than T & H draw for us.
Let’s talk about bedfellows. In making their arguments against Prop 50 they line up with right wing billionaire Charlie Munger—who has spent tens of millions of dollars in California elections opposing progressive tax measures while supporting union-busting initiatives. Munger, in a New York Times op ed, acknowledges the Texas redistricting measure that gives five more Congressional seats to the Republicans is wrong. But his weak argument is that two wrongs don’t make a right, ignoring the likely outcome: Republicans will stay in control of the House of Representatives. Of course he ignores that: it’s his desired outcome—a far right billionaire who wants to keep other far right billionaires in charge. Also on the anti-50 side: the California Republican Party and former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who makes a similarly limp argument that gerrymandering is wrong anywhere and everywhere.
No abstract morality, please
In other words, Munger, Schwarzenegger and Republican leadership make an abstract moral argument against Prop 50, masking their real motivations: their support for the consequences of Prop 50 going down to defeat, which are concrete and political and just fine with them.
T & H tell us that California DSA is mistaken in its support for a measure that aims to offset Trump’s dangerous gerrymandering chess move in Texas. As socialists of course they offer different reasons for their position than the billionaires do. But the level of abstraction that they offer here is pretty much on the same plane. I’ll address three problems with their opposition to Prop 50.
The problem is fascism
Nowhere in the article’s 1400 words do the authors utter the word “fascism”. This is its central flaw. All the rhetoric about building socialism by winning over the broad working class, and polemicizing against working with the class-betraying Democratic Party, etc., misses a key concept: fascism is far worse for the working class—day to day, and in the long run—than a society that retains basic democratic rights. It’s the slide into fascism that’s at stake here. On this the authors have nothing to say.
T & H want to
…be clear on what we’re advocating for: if the DSA wants to credibly demand an expanded democracy, our demand cannot be for “fair” electoral maps under capitalism, an idea which itself is based on liberal assumptions of political rights. It must be for a new kind of political system entirely—one in which workers control their workplaces, communities, and governments directly, not one in which capitalists shuffle district lines to their advantage.
Well, OK, comrades, we’re with you there. We just fail to understand how greasing the skids to fascism now accomplishes anything on the road to socialism in the future. Please spare us the obvious: yes, it’s a capitalist society, and the Republicans and Democrats are the twin parties of capital. The Democrats are no friend of the working class, etc. We are well aware of all that. That’s not what this is about.
These arguments read like a Maoist screed from the 1970s. In that unfortunate decade, competing left grouplets promoted slight variants on a rigid belief in their party line combined with hallucinatory expectations for revolution around the corner. This deadly combination delivered irrelevance for this section of the left in regard to actual working class struggles and ultimately brought about the implosion of the Maoist left. (If you are unaware of these events and the parallel danger now, read Max Elbaum’s Revolution in the Air.) Making this mistake today—arguing for revolution in the abstract, while stepping aside from the opportunity to block fascism and build alliances with progressive forces (and no, I’m not talking about Newsom or neoliberal Dems) is inexcusable, given that the history is available for anyone to know, should they care to.
Hidden accelerationism?
Perhaps there’s a hidden accelerationist view at work here—the belief that the worse things get, the better for the revolution. Since presumably we’re all historical materialists, let’s look at the evidence in history. In no advanced capitalist country has this ever worked out. The closest the argument comes to such a picture in the United States is the Great Depression, which eventuated in the rise of the industrial unions and the social democratic gains for the working class of the New Deal—not revolution. This occurred on the back of the strongest labor movement the country has seen.
At the moment we simply don’t have a labor movement like that, or anything like the balance of forces to bring about a contemporary equivalent of even this important but relatively modest advance for the working class. And no clear way to get there—unless it’s the anti-fascist movement that is cohering slowly around us. Prop 50, which may well carry all the neoliberal baggage T & H claim, is nonetheless one of the tools in that movement.
Andrew T and Ian H say, “The confusion of the author’s politics illustrates the contradictions in our endorsement, and those contradictions will not be lost on the working class of California.”
Contrary to the authors assertions, it’s improbable that “the working class” will put DSA under a microscope and stand in judgment of our actions anytime soon. That class conscious, for-itself working class has yet to construct itself, and steps in that direction are more likely to be earned by an anti-fascist movement utilizing every reasonable tool at its disposal, including Prop 50, than by proclaiming moral purity and standing off to the side of the battle.
Where’s the labor movement?
That’s because there is another word missing from their argument: labor. It is DSA policy, and a categorical belief of most DSA members, that we stand shoulder to shoulder with unions in their struggles. We don’t do so uncritically. We enter into coalition work with eyes wide open, understanding the often rightward drag of labor leadership as well as the passivity of the rank and file in too many unions. Nonetheless organized labor remains the central tool at the disposal of the working class. Like any tool it may be used well, badly or not at all. For Ian H and Andrew T apparently the favored choice is “not at all”.
The California labor movement is all in on Prop 50. It knows that with a Congress rubberstamping Trump’s anti-labor agenda (destruction of federal workers’ collective bargaining rights, stacking the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union administrators and staff, etc.) conditions for the working class will only grow more dire. Prop 50 is a unifying campaign for labor action between now and November. That provides socialists the opportunity to work together and engage in constructive dialog with union activists as the campaign unfolds; to build mutual respect between union activists and DSA members; and ultimately, between unions and DSA—an opportunity unavailable to those abstaining from the struggle.
What is the alternative to Prop 50 offered by Andrew T and Ian H? Their example is the organizing work done in the central valley by one of our chapters in 2024, which they describe as conducted by “dozens” of comrades during the ARCH campaign for housing propositions 33 and 5. The comrades canvassed working class voters and learned that a) they have big problems, caused by capitalism and b) they don’t like the Democrats. The chapter has grown, they say, because working class Californians “reject partisan divides in favor of class war”. With all due respect to the hard work of canvassing in working class neighborhoods, California’s central valley contains seven million people, and the growth of a local DSA chapter by “dozens” doesn’t quite get to the scale of what we are facing, nor does it allow for generalizations about what “the working class” wants or doesn’t want. Again, our analysis should be concrete, not abstract.
The outcome of Prop 50, if it prevails in November, will be to possibly prevent the Republicans from stealing the 2026 congressional elections by redrawing districts in Texas. There’s no guarantee that that will end the matter; other factors will be in play. But without Prop 50 the fascist Republican Party will more than likely stay in control of Congress. Don’t like neoliberal Dems? Neither do I. Don’t like progressive tax-averse Governor Newsom? Neither do I. Don’t like gerrymandering? Me neither. I’m voting and working for Prop 50 because I like fascism even less.
Finally, T & H are factually wrong about Prop 50’s content, which, they assert, is “self-evidently aimed at creating enduring structural Democrat electoral supremacy in California”. Well, no, it expires in 2030. It is a temporary tactic (not a “strategy” as T & H would have it) to forestall a manipulated outcome on behalf of fascism while Trump is in power. T & H’s arguments are wrong on fact, wrong on the way forward. Please follow the lead of California DSA’s State Council and support Prop 50.
