USA: How can we build a workers’ party to take on Trump?

The November 2024 US election results rattled the status quo of capitalist politics, despite a billionaire being elected President and the two corporate parties retaining their duopoly over the electoral system for the time being. However, an unintended consequence of the election is new and serious interest in the need to organize a mass, left, working-class political party that would be independent of the two corporate parties and their millionaire and billionaire backers.

Calls for organizing a labor party are resurfacing from within the labor movement. The day after the election, the United Electrical Workers union (UE) said in a statement: “This election has demonstrated, once again, that the current two-party system is incapable of uniting working people around a vision for progress… Working people need an independent political organization to fight for our interests against the corrupt two-party system, and we call upon our locals and members, the rest of the labor movement, and our allies in other social movements to get serious about building a true political alternative, a labor party that can unite and speak for the working class.”

Chris Smalls, union organizer and founding member of the Amazon Labor Union who led the successful organizing of an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, posted messages on Instagram in December about organizing a labor party: “The 2 party system has failed us for far too long. I’m Re-Launching the US Labor Party… looking forward to building a New Labor Party to give us some more choices for 28! …the entrenched establishment, represented by figures like Trump and Elon Musk,… symbolize the unchecked power of corporations and the ultra-wealthy. This is more than a campaign-it’s a movement for real change. We are calling on all workers, activists, and supporters of economic justice to unite. Join up NOW!”

Some progressive and left groups, including Greens, Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP), Workers Strike Back, and others are raising the need for a new political party. The Independent Socialist Group (ISG) and other revolutionary socialist groups and activists are calling for organizing a workers or labor party. ISG voted at our recent national conference to run an independent socialist candidate in a city council election in 2026 and to use our campaign to help build the foundation of a mass workers’ party with a socialist program.

Sanders Feints Left

Bernie Sanders, sensing the anger against the Democratic Party by some of its most loyal followers, included this question in an email to supporters on November 23rd: “Should we be supporting Independent candidates who are prepared to take on both parties?” The rest of the message was geared towards reforming the Democratic Party, but his brief question about “independent candidates” raised hopes that Sanders was finally interested in starting a third party of some sort. Within a few days, Sanders quickly retreated, again, from anything to do with organizing a third party. In an interview in the liberal, pro-Democratic Party publication, “The Nation,” Sanders was asked: “In your post-election email… You’re not talking about creating a third party, or creating a new political grouping, are you? Sanders: “Not right now, no.” 

Sanders talked about candidates running in Democratic Party primaries but also answered “absolutely” when asked if he would be “comfortable with challenges that take on both parties?” Since the interview, it seems that Sanders has grown uncomfortable with that and dropped any reference to independent candidates, and has rapidly moved away from his post-election criticism of the Democratic Party. 

Sanders Is Not An “Independent”

“Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Sunday called Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to moderate her views on fracking and “Medicare for All” “pragmatic,” saying that Harris is “doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election” and that he still considers her to be “progressive.” (NBC interview 09/08/2024)

Sanders, like AOC, backed Biden all the way up to the moment of his resignation. He then went all in for Harris when she replaced Biden, including speaking at rallies for her. Sanders has a clear track record of supporting and actively campaigning for Democratic Party candidates, beginning with Mondale in 1984 and ever since. Every time an independent progressive or left third-party candidate or organizing effort has emerged since Sanders threw in with the Dems, he has either ignored or attacked it. Some examples: he refused to support a serious effort by important unions and progressive and left activists to start a Labor Party in the 1990s. He attacked Ralph Nader when Nader ran for President. He ignored eco-socialist, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins. Sanders called Jill Stein to pressure Stein to drop her Green Party campaign in 2016 to help Hillary Clinton. Sanders’ most familiar attacks on independent left candidates are to use “lesser evil” scare tactics or simply say, like recently, that it’s not the right time. 

Of course, in 40 years, it’s never been the right time for Sanders to break with the corporate Democratic Party.

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