What is “Doing MUG”?
Aliyah VP
To do MUG is to look at disillusionment and say, “We have a tool for that.”
Robert Minor, cover of the February 1925 issue of The Worker’s Monthly
To do MUG means many things, and my conviction is that there are many “right ways” to do MUG. One of the best things about MUG is that we can interpolate even deep schisms on strategy and tactics; MUG is productively at their best when various tendencies are arguing about “most worthwhile” strategy, and productively at their worst when we attempt to rigidly constrain our diverse tactics beyond limits mandated by the whole body. We know that capital is a hydra - you slice off one head, and two more grow back. We must plunge our sword into the heart to kill it. But do we remember that we are just a group of mammals? We each have a few limbs, and when we amputate them, they do not grow back. So rather than being overly prescriptive on the “best way” to do MUG, I’d rather emphasize that to do MUG means so many different things. Doing MUG [i.e. building a mass independent communist party, in the full sense of the word, which is capable of enacting proletarian revolution - abolishing wage slavery and unequal suffrage by smashing the existing constitutional order and ratifying a truly democratic constitution which realizes working-class control of production/society] is a whole-body exercise. What doing MUG should not mean is to chop off our left arm believing that it will make the right stronger, or to stop using our legs in the hopes of gaining upper body strength.
To do MUG is to demystify Marxism; for us, it is not a vague signifier that represents leftish or anti-capitalist sentiments, but a scientific methodology that produces calculable data toward the political re-enfranchisement and ultimate victory of the proletariat over capitalism, exploitation, oppression, and undemocracy. To do MUG is to look at disillusionment and say, “We have a tool for that.”
To do MUG is to redirect the gains of false consciousness back into proletarianization (or protagonization); to cultivate “unity in diversity” which transcends the limitations of neoliberal identity politics while sublating its insights, capable of unifying the working class into a party of-and-for-itself. To do MUG is to look at the alienated and fractured masses and say, “We have the most important thing in common.”
To do MUG is to cohere the disparate and disorganized demands of the working class into an actionable minimum program they can unite in struggle toward today. It is to fight for DSA to embrace that program in America, for other American organizers to embrace DSA for it, and for the working class to inform its continued development, both within DSA and everywhere outside that programmatic demands arise. It is to work to cohere an internationalist movement around a universal Marxist program, still determined by and for the working class. To do MUG is to say, “It’s possible now if we work together.”
To do MUG is to maintain a maximum program: the insistence on the ultimate insufficiency of anything short of communism, of Absolute Freedom, of the realization of The Idea. It is to be a ruthless critic of undemocracy and alienation; it is to never be satisfied with our gains. It is to know that the minimum program could never be enough. To do MUG is to say, “We can do anything. Let’s not stop there.”
To do MUG is to recognize every worker as a protagonist - a pivotal actor whose will can (and must) fuel the locomotion of history. To do MUG is to look at every person and say, “You do have a purpose in this world, and get this - it’s getting everything you could ever dream of.”
To do MUG is to utilize a variety of tactics and strategies to achieve our aims. To do MUG is to write literature for internal circulation among the caucus, for party newspapers, for other party papers, for blogs and for zines and for pamphlets. To do MUG is to advance political education in one’s chapter or community, to facilitate cadre training or national reading groups, and to share digestible podcast links or accessible articles with friends who are curious early on in their political development. It is to talk about history at the bar, to talk about politics at the dinner table, and to talk about Kautsky at church. To do MUG is to do mutual aid, sure, but not without sitting and hearing every story, and connecting each one to a broader struggle which connects and clarifies every struggle in relation to another. To do MUG is to build out the centralizing arms of our party media, and also to appear in external forums outside of the party in order to spread our ideas to new audiences. To do MUG is to criticize and condemn anti-revolutionary tendencies within DSA, and to criticize and condemn the institutional undemocracy of the bureaucratic centralist sects which pose as alternatives to DSA. To do MUG is to be honest about why those sects succeed in organizing where we fail, but also to be boldly honest in the public sphere about their structural flaws, showing why DSA is still where Marxists need to make their political home. To do MUG is to continually and always be democratizing your union or workplace, your DSA chapter, your spontaneous demonstration, and every other instance where decisions are made which impact the many. To do MUG is to encourage others to develop the political content of their thought in every instance.
To do MUG is to look at your neighbor’s toolbox and say, “Great selection! Let me know if there’s anything I can lend you to help you get the job done.” To do MUG is to look at our own toolbox and say, “Yes, yes, and yes. This is our biggest project yet, and I may need all of these to accomplish it.”
To do MUG is to mediate between revolutionary and reformist interests without capitulating to opportunism. To do MUG is to identify political differences within the various elements and strata of the proletariat, our party, our caucus, or any other differentiated bodies within the class, and to channel their expression into generative discourses, and the products of discourses into actionable strategy. Marxists aim to transform conflict and difference in practice such that they produce strength and clarity rather than disorganization. Marxists look at the “culture war” and its disoriented subjects and say, “Hey, we can do so much better than this.”
To do MUG is to reclaim universal virtues from their perverse inversions under capitalism, and to substantiate them as products of our concrete practice. Marxists understand ourselves as the true guardians of equality, liberty, and justice for all. Marxists understand we have the most comprehensive and universal vision of democracy on offer, and we are glad to contrast it at every opportunity against the empty rhetoric spouted by regime figureheads and the forces of reaction. To do MUG is to consider the concept of freedom and say, “This is for the working class to realize.”
To do MUG is to use the undemocratic Constitution not as a convenient “card” to play in lieu of concrete economic or geopolitical analysis, but as a universally-recognizable point-of-reference with a nearly singular ability to extrapolate the “why and how” of American despotism. To do MUG is to never let a conversation about Zionist government policy to start and end with antisemitism; to never let a conversation about free speech begin and end with culture war; to never let a conversation about police brutality begin and end with abusive personalities; to never let a conversation about geopolitical turmoil begin and end with Trump or any other demagogue. To do MUG is not just to show what is happening, but why it is allowed to happen; to not just say that it should not be happening, but to describe what political conditions would be required to stop or keep it from happening, and to demonstrate how those conditions could be achieved.
To do MUG, now looking into the abyssal face of world war, is to remember that only the most resolute internationalism can keep us on course to avoid the political degenerations of so many previous Marxist parties and their regime constructions. We must remember always that the party we are building would seek to represent not solely the communizers and true-believers in their purely-studied ideals, but the whole working class as a force of democracy of-and-for-itself. We must remember, too, that we are building our party not as one island, singular and adrift, but rather as one node in a whole intercontinental apparatus of proletarian parties. We cannot see our subject as only the American working class - especially when other prominent so-called “party formations” would reduce their subject to Fordist aesthetics and transatlantic bigotries - but as the working class of the whole world. We stop not at equal exchange within our borders, but to end unequal exchange globally. We stop not at suffrage for all American citizens, but for fair and equal access to democratic self-management for all citizens of the world. This vision will be tested, hotly and sharply. To do MUG for the next few years will most likely mean handling the heat and staying the fuck in the kitchen.
What it means to do MUG expands each year. In fact, I think that to do MUG means to develop a politics of expansion. To do MUG is to struggle to expand politicization, historicization, and democratization in every sphere of life. and what expands must contract; to do MUG is to nurture a politic that breathes. MUG has necessarily been in a contractive period: turning inward either into priority projects, campaigns, committees, etc. or into the fine-tuning of our internal structures. To do MUG lately has been to ask, “How can we do MUG more fruitfully?”
All of this is just right, and we have so much to be proud of. We must also recognize that MUG is preparing to fill its lungs again, to enter another expansive period. The stakes are much higher this time than the last, and the expectation on us is much higher. To do MUG at this moment is to ask ourselves, “What is our responsibility as the Marxist vanguard of the DSA?”
To do MUG right now is to recognize the limitations of DSA currently as we put forward our transformative vision for it. It means recognizing that we’ve gained the recognition and power we have now for the character of our politics and not in spite of it. Our gains in DSA have been won by forwarding a political vision that is scientific, Marxist, abolitionist, internationalist, universalist, and revolutionary. We have seen more steps forward than steps back, but a few pivotal moments have already arisen where we’ve been forced to choose: do we dilute or concede our political vision for short-term political gains within the DSA, with the vague promise of potential future payoffs, or do we hold firm in our principles even when it costs us immediate bargaining power? To do MUG right now is to look at ourselves and ask, “Will DSA determine the transformation of our Marxism, or will our Marxism determine the transformation of the DSA?” Both are inevitable, but which side of the scale will ultimately tip?
To me, doing MUG still means that our work is for our Marxism to determine the transformation of the DSA.
History will speak of us. I believe that this key orientational difference will make the difference: Will history speak of our work in the context of the rise and fall of DSA, or will history speak of DSA in the context of the fall and resurrection of international Marxism? To me, doing MUG is actively creating that latter reality.
Individual essays are not official caucus positions.
