Introducing Light and Air
Light & Air, Amanda L
the MUG Editorial Board
We welcome you to Light and Air, the official publication of Marxist Unity Group (MUG), a faction within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). This publication draws its name from Karl Kautsky’s book-length explanation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany’s Erfurt Program, published in 1891:
Where the working class bestirs itself, where it makes the first attempts to elevate its economic position, it puts political demands next to purely economic ones—namely, demands for freedom of association, of assembly, of the press. These freedoms have the greatest significance for the working class: they are among the conditions that make its life possible and to which it unconditionally owes its development. They are light and air for the proletariat; he who lets them wither or withholds them—he who keeps the proletariat from the struggle to win these freedoms and to extend them that person is one of the proletariat's worst enemies.
This passage, derived from Friedrich Engels’ similar prescriptions around political freedoms, places a centrality on the struggle for political democracy that has largely been lost among Marxists today. This political devolution is also related to a downgrade of importance for democracy internal to the political organs of the working class and its most consistent advocates, the socialists.
Connected to the necessity of a struggle for democracy—a struggle over the class character of the state—is the necessity of the workers movement to unite under the banner of a communist party. This party is necessary because the working class as individuals cannot compete with the free time or money of the petty bourgeois and capitalist class—the latter of which relies on its privileged position in the state to mediate capitalist interests while purposefully dividing workers.
Generalized political struggle is the only way to achieve the formation of the working class into a class-for-itself—economic struggles will always remain partial and disunified unless brought together under a common organization. The basis of this higher organizational unity lies in a program that builds universalist politics out of the tasks of the working class, weaving in both universal and particular interests. Last, we need a party because only a party organized on a democratic basis can hold its operatives—organizers, journalists, and elected representatives—to the will of the rank-and-file instead of working towards their own ends.
Other communists, similarly in favor of the idea of a party in the abstract, see the project as something secondary, pending a spontaneous upsurge in worker organization. Marxist Unity Group believes that the party already exists, in partial form, within DSA—the largest US socialist organization in generations, within which various currents of the movement have re-grouped. But the party we need, a mass socialist party of millions, will ultimately require the conscious unification of a weak and divided socialist left. We believe that the party is necessary for spontaneous struggles to become more than the sum of their parts.
Light and Air will be a theoretical journal of that party-building project, necessary because conscious unification requires that we do aside with the polite conflict avoidance the left has practiced previously. A strategy of unification, opposed to the usual communist strategy of avoiding the existing left by ‘going to the people’, requires that we seriously engage with the content of each other’s ideas. In that project we are a part of a constellation of comradely publications struggling towards a mass socialist press. Our orientation as a journal is to spur debates about strategy and bring those debates to the highest level possible.
But what is strategy? In our tasks & perspectives, we note that the party as a whole must unify around tasks, around a program of clear goals necessary for the working class to rule in this country. But these tasks will always confront different material conditions, different perspectives, different political visions. These differing strategies are the beating heart of factions, and as a faction, we agree with Mike Macnair’s argument in Revolutionary Strategy that the “essence” of a strategy is its “long-term character.” Strategy is “the frame within which we think about how to achieve our goals over the course of a series of activities or struggles, each of which has its own tactics.” We strive to commit DSA to the strategy of consistent democracy .
Workers need political freedoms if they are to express themselves on a higher level than this or that workplace, this or that apartment building, this or that street. For that reason, socialists must support democratic struggles “to the hilt”, and for that reason the democratic struggle contains within it the seeds of revolution. The freedoms won by this struggle are then the basis for a mass party-movement that democratizes our day-to-day institutions, with the horizon of revolutionizing the state so that it can be wielded by workers for socialist transition. This is why Lenin referred to the task of revolutionary socialists as “consistent democracy”—while every other political force will falter or turn back, we push forward to the end.
All of these factors combine to reveal a strategy of patient growth and unity, rooted in the mass organization of the working class that revolves around the core of a workers’ political party. While the socialist left and the right both seek to dissolve our socialist program into a wider, more diffuse movement under different pretenses, we seek the strategy of the center, bringing that diffuse movement together into one democratically organized socialist party. As part of the struggle for working class self-government in all spheres of life, we argue that any tactic should be grounded in clearly expounding our party program and patiently building up the organized workers’ movement through the political leadership of the party. This remains true until support for our program reaches a critical mass of society—a majority mandate for revolution.
As a faction of DSA, we aim to convince comrades of our strategy. But we don’t seek rubber stamps. We seek to make cases for our strategy through the concrete decisions around our labor and our organizational resources that follow from it. We are well aware that most of these positions—no less our program—will likely represent a minority of DSA. We wish to use Light andAir to make arguments about strategy, tactics, and the tasks that we fight for in connection with current debates and events within and without DSA.
Questions such as how to build programmatic unity as a practical project, our relationship to the Democratic Party, how socialists can win over organized labor, how we must orient ourselves to international developments and social movements of other nations, and how we will overcome the oppression that is facing us down the barrel— these questions must be explored in frank, sharp, and honest terms. Our hope is that this publication can offer such discussions to the American socialist movement at a critical moment in our history.
We would like to thank comrade Amanda L for her tremendous work helping us with design elements throughout the caucus. Without her you would not have this amazing banner. We would also like to thank comrade Duncan H, without whom we would not have Light and Air.
