There are many approaches to communist organizing. We want to call out two in particular: base building and mass movements. These approaches are geared toward two moments in which we may find ourselves. Base building focuses on building capacity in periods of calm, when mass movements like Occupy or Black Lives Matter aren’t happening. When mass movements arise, it becomes necessary for us to set aside our usual base building work so that we can participate, bolster, and agitate within the movement.

1. Base Building

Base building projects will likely take one of two forms: community organizations and labor unions.

Community Organizations

We must build capacity to fight the contradictions that rule over our lives. We do this by building mass, democratic associations that organize working class people into aggregations that allow them to fight. Building these organizations from scratch is difficult and takes time. But this is a strategy that, in the long-term, will help bolster the impact of future movements and protect against liberal recuperation. Examples include forming tenant unions, transit rider unions, anti-police groups, parent-teacher-student solidarity organizations, etc.

Key Elements:

• Contradictions: Powerful organizations will speak to the everyday problems and contradictions that make life miserable for the working class in your area.
• Organizational infrastructure: We must build democratic infrastructure that doubles as a site of organizing the unorganized and for fighting back.
• Militancy above mutual aid: Our organizations must be weapons. While mutual aid is important for building trust and finding organizing projects, it cannot be our main objective.

Labor Unions

We must support labor militancy and help it grow. Building new unions and organizing within already-existing unions are both necessary for rebuilding working class power. But these efforts must always privilege a third element: supporting militant union workers who are trying to make their unions more militant. There is no neutrality in the class struggle. We must always support dissident workers in confronting conservative forces within the union. This does not mean we can engage in substitutionism, but that if and when dissident workers find their own actions held back, we should try to strategically support them.

Key Elements:

• Supporting strikes & militant workers: We must materially support strikes and assist rank-and-file workers pursue more militant actions or strike demands. This could mean fostering community support, raising strike funds, assisting workers with picket lines or blockades. It’s our job to support the most militant rank-and-file factions in unions. If a significant segment of workers are trying to pursue more militant actions or demands—for example campaigning against a tentative agreement—we must find ways to support them.
• Organizing the unorganized: Union density is at an all-time low. We need to build new labor unions. Depending on the situation, this might require us to explore with different organizational methods—like solidarity unions, regional unions, workers centers, etc.
• Working in already-existing unions: In certain places with higher-density unionization, working within unions is preferable. In such cases, building internal workers caucuses and promoting workplace democracy is best. Some call this the rank-and-file strategy.

Features of Base Building

We also want to call attention to two features of all base building organizations: anti-racism and a strategic approach toward elections.

Anti-Racism

Marxist intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that, “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” The stumbling block of race still remains with us. The problem of white supremacy cannot be addressed through mere rhetoric because the demolition of class solidarity by racism is a distinctively material issue. The problem of race represents a strategic blockage in our mission to build working class power. If we are unable to cohere material solidarities because of racism, then there is no possibility of building the power necessary to overthrow capitalism. No matter the content of our organizing, we must always build anti-racist structures into it. Practically speaking, this means intentionally organizing real material solidarites between racial groups that might otherwise not interact. Bridging segregated fractions of the working class through base building is the way. Failure on this front is catastrophic. The ascendency of today’s far-right did not fall from the sky. It has been nourished by the racism that capitalism perpetuates. History must move in the opposite direction.

Take Aways:

• Building anti-racism into our organizations: All of our base building organizing projects must have mechanisms that organize across the color line. Be they community or labor organizations, they must have an intentional focus on organizing across the segregated class landscape.
• Anti-racism is strategic: The long-term project of communism will fail if we cannot begin to build real links between different racialized parts of the working class. Rhetoric is never enough, we have to tackle racism as materially as possible.

Leveraging Elections

The left turn in electoral politics can’t be ignored. But it also cannot come to define our political ends. The ability for social democratic candidates to find space in the electoral arena reflects a deterioration in liberal hegemony. Rather than substitute the class struggle with elections, we must find ways to use the election to build working class associational capacity. We take seriously the slogan of the Sanders campaign–not me, us–and agree that change cannot happen through the electoral process. Change will happen when millions of people are able and willing to hit the streets for a new world. We must relate to the unprecedented electoral atmosphere of today as strategically as possible. To put it succinctly, when possible we must use elections to build class power without becoming reducible to it. Here’s what that might look like:

• Using election donation information to organize: Millions of working class people have donated small amounts to the Bernie Sanders campaign. We should use this public information to connect with those who are drawn to his left-wing discourse.
• Strategically using leftward discourses: Today’s political field has helped to popularize certain ideas, policies, and general demands. This new left language can be adapted to serve the needs for our organizing.
• Political education: Most people drawn to leftist candidates discourse are not part of the left in any meaningful way. This means that their understanding of basic concepts or ideas—socialism, capitalism, communism, workers’ power, class struggle, and even their membership of a class—may not exist. Our organizing must provide some education for those interested, be it through our base building projects or through our local DSA chapters.

2. Mass Movements

We live in an age of intense and unpredictable struggle that cannot be taken for granted. Most of today’s struggles are not politically coherent. Take, for example, the Yellow Vests. The Yellow Vest movement was touched off by a distinctively material working class issue—regressive taxation. Yet as soon as the movement began, the political meaning of this complaint was contested. French fascists attempted to bend this issue and the movement towards ethno-nationalism. Leftists of various stripes countered this attempt by battling fascists in the streets. In the end, the fascists were routed and the movement took on a deeply progressive arc. There are two important considerations when we take part in social movements. First, to intervene against reactionary and racist elements within them, as the leftists engaged in with the Yellow Vests did; second, to push struggles forward by supporting them and attempting to widen them as much as possible.

Key Elements:

• Become part of the movement: We want movements to be successful. We do not want to take over movements. This means that we must always participate in good faith within them. No movement can succeed without millions of participants, we will always be a small part of the total whole.
• Guard against reactionary infiltration: With a new radical right emergent, we always have to ensure that movements aren’t taken by ideas or concepts that bend towards reaction. This includes, for example, nationalism, collaboration with the repressive arms of the state and racism, to name a few.
• Agitate & connect: Mass social movements always have the potential to become even larger and more powerful. Moving into new phases of militancy requires participants who are willing to agitate for next steps, like collaboration with workers to shutdown a local port, factory, etc. Often, agitation for new phases of militancy implies making inroads with parts of the working class that may not be activated within the movement yet.