Breaking the Impasse: Electoral Politics, Mass Action, and the New Socialist Movement in the United States

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In his latest book, veteran socialist writerKim Moody provides a masterful analysis of the political impasse which has shaped the rise of a new socialist movement in the United States: recurring economic and political crises, sharp inequality, state violence, and climate catastrophe proceed apace as the right ascends across the world, while the US political scene remains defined and dominated by two capitalist political parties. Moody situates the historic electoral campaigns of Democratic Socialists such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as the growth of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, in this context, and incisively assesses the revived movement's focus on electoral strategies.

Offering an important account of left attempts to intervene in the American two-party electoral system, Moody provides both a sobering historical corrective and an alternative orientation for the future, arguing that the socialist movement should turn its attention toward a politics of mass action, anti-racism, and independent, working-class organizing.

Reviews

Kim Moodys latest book promises to be a major contribution to the renewed debates on socialist strategy in the US. Moody expertly demolishes the analytic and historical arguments for strategies to either transform the Democratic Party into a social-democratic party or use its ballot-line to prepare for an independent working class party in an undefined future. He demonstrates that it has always been mass, disruptive working class movements, in workplaces and in the streets, that are the source of popular power and radicalismthe key to winning concessions from capital and the state and creating the conditions for working class political independence and power. Charles Post, editor,Spectre
Kim Moody breaks new ground in his brilliant, readable, breathtakingly comprehensive analysis that upends conventional thinking about this fraught moment in history. He draws on encyclopedic knowledge of labor, movements for social justice, politics, electoral activity, and debates about the Democratic Party, making an inspiring, persuasive case about how to build a mass social upsurge to break the stranglehold of billionaires over our daily existence. Lois Weiner, author ofThe Future of Our Schools: Teachers Unions and Social Justice

Essential reading for those interested in understanding and joining the mass upsurge of workers and others oppressed by the predatory, global, capitalist system. In addition to his usual detailed, empirically rich, and wide-ranging documentation of labor struggles and the changing structure of capitalist employment, Kim Moody's analysis of the constraining structure of the Democratic Party, and its role as a graveyard for democratic and radical politics, is nuanced, detailed, and breaks new ground. Michael Goldfield, author ofThe Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s

Author Bio

Kim Moody is a founder of Labor Notes in the US and is the author of several books on labor and politics, including Tramps and Trade Union Travelers: Internal Migration and Organized Labor in Gilded Age America, 1870-1900 and On New Terrain: How Capital Is Reshaping The Battleground Of Class War. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Westminster in London, and a member of the University and College Union and the National Union of Journalists.