BLOCK, BROADEN, BUILD
The 2024 Elections and the Threefold Tasks of the Left
Para la versión en español, haga clic “BLOQUEAR, AMPLIAR, CONSTRUIR: Las Elecciones de 2024 y la Triple Tarea de la Izquierda.”
Preface
This document is written as a contribution to struggle over the position of US socialists in the difficult circumstances of the 2024 elections. A formal position paper of Liberation Road, it aims to challenge us to appreciate the seriousness of the political moment, to unite around an inside/outside orientation with strategic and tactical clarity about the need to defeat the right, while being clear about our profound contradictions with other forces within a united front in which backward elements largely lead.
This document’s priorities and preoccupations are thus shaped and limited by that task. While we have attempted to be broad and speak to the many dimensions of the dynamic challenges we face, we have not and could not be total in scope or depth. As Marxists we understand the need for materialist analysis to understand the underlying dynamics that shape our politics and society. For a more detailed elaboration of our positions, see our Strategic Orientation, Main Political Report, and Unity Documents.
In Solidarity,
The National Executive Committee
Liberation Road
Introduction
There is a cold uncivil war brewing in the United States. On one side, the forces of white supremacy, right-wing billionaire domination, and patriarchal oppression are plotting to seize power and implement a reactionary program that may well replace our flawed democracy with an authoritarian regime. On the other side stand a wide array of forces opposed to this fascist agenda, many of whom are aligned with our values and vision or can be won over to it, but who are in need of leadership, coherence, discipline, and strategy.
In this moment, our threefold task is to “Block, Broaden, Build.”1 We need to:
Block the Fascists - It is imperative that we do our utmost to prevent fascist forces from seizing power electorally in 2024.
Broaden the Front - To do so, we must unite with the broadest possible anti-fascist majority to decisively defeat fascist forces within and beyond the election.
Build a Left Trend - Simultaneously, we must work to strengthen the power, position, and initiative of progressive forces within the broader pro-democracy front.
1. BLOCK THE FASCISTS
Today’s MAGA movement is a fascist force that is real, dangerous, and qualitatively different from anything we have experienced in our lifetimes.
While neo-fascist currents have long existed on the fringes of the US right, the threat they pose today is unprecedented in our lifetimes. Neo-fascists dominate today’s Republican party and the broader conservative movement, rendering it qualitatively different from 20th-century conservatism and from the “neoliberal consensus” that was hegemonic on the right (and much of the center and center-left) for the past half century.
Today, neoliberalism is breaking down under the pressure of climate change, economic stagnation, and escalating conflicts; a new social, political, and economic order will have to emerge, and with it a new ideological consensus. We are in the midst of a bitter struggle over what that future will be.
The right is fighting to replace neoliberalism with a political, economic, and social order that is both fundamentally different and qualitatively worse. Where neoliberalism covertly undermined the gains made by Black and Brown, women’s, workers’, and social movements, the right now seeks to overtly repress and suppress them, smashing the remaining vestiges of multiracial pluralist democracy in order to build a white Christian nationalist republic.
The MAGA right thus cannot be characterized as a conservative movement, for it does not seek to conserve the existing social order, political institutions, and economic relations, but rather to fundamentally transform them. In this sense theirs is now a dynamic and revolutionary right-wing project.
The components of this revolutionary right-wing project bear the key characteristics of fascism, including centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, and suppression of individual interests to a perceived notion of the national good.
MAGA: an old alliance of interests in a dangerous new fascist form.
The MAGA movement is itself a composite of various social forces. We have previously talked about the role of the New Confederacy–a political force utilizing a states-rights strategy to move a far right, racist, misogynistic program. This includes white Christian nationalist church networks and organizations, as well as sectors of local and regional capital and the petit-bourgeoisie that are most directly in conflict with progressive industrial policy and federal regulatory regimes (e.g. car dealerships, home contracting businesses, dentists, etc.)
The New Confederacy is the core of MAGA, but it is not the only force within it. Other forces include tech/crypto libertarians (Musk, Thiel, and other tech capitalists who push for more extensive deregulation but increased domination of labor and repression of oppositional political movements); fossil capital (oil, gas, coal, and other extractive industries); firearms manufacturers and their political organizations; organized state violence workers like police and border patrol agents; far right political and vigilantism organizations; and right-wing foreign policy organizations and PACs, including AIPAC but also anti-Cuba, anti-Venezuela, and anti-Iran groups.
The MAGA front contains within itself—as any front will—contradictions, but its components have forged unity in order to consolidate their position and win and exercise power. The fundamental basis of their unity is the deregulation of private capital, the privatization of social reproduction, and the domination and control of workers, racialized populations, and oppressed gender people. Not all components of the front prioritize all aspects of this program, but all find sufficient motivation in one or more aspects of it to unite and fight for power.
While many elements of this program are not new, the front’s comfort with violence, its mobilization of dehumanizing sentiment against its perceived enemies and populations it seeks to both discipline and purge from the body politic—including people of color, particularly immigrants, but also trans and gender oppressed people—and its stated antagonism toward democracy represent a dangerous new fascist mode of politics.
This fascist front is plotting a slow-motion coup to overthrow the US government.
These fascist forces are preparing a “slow motion coup” to cement America as a right-wing authoritarian state dominated by a patriarchal white Christian nationalist movement and the most reactionary and nativist sectors of the US capitalist class.
The 2016-2020 Trump administration was a dress rehearsal for this authoritarian takeover. Since then, MAGA forces have strengthened their position at the state and federal level, formulated a concrete plan of action to take over the federal government, and developed the leadership, skills, and resources to carry it out. They have also consolidated power in the judiciary, arrogating powers to far right judges and dismantling the ability of the state to enforce regulations and protect the already limited rights of the people.
Led by the Heritage Foundation, a coalition of over 100 right-wing organizations have written a concrete outline of this right-wing authoritarian project, “Project 2025.” It includes a 900-page policy agenda, a plan to fire virtually all federal workers and replace them with 50,000 right-wing authoritarian cadre recruited from a pre-vetted database, and a plan of how to use Trump’s first 180 days in office to stage this coup.
This is a fascist plot to create a patriarchal white Christian nationalist ethno-state.
Fascist forces are now confident enough in their project to proclaim it openly. We should take them at their word. Here, in their own words, are the four pillars around which Project 2025 seeks to restructure US politics, economy, and society:
Restore the heterosexual nuclear family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely.
Clearly stated, explicit components of these pillars include to:
Attack abortion access and birth control, strip women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, and criminalize trans existence in order to enforce a “natural” family hierarchy based on compulsive heterosexuality and patriarchal authority.
Abolish the Department of Education; eliminate or incapacitate the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior, and many other federal departments and agencies; and fundamentally dismantle all aspects of the modern administrative state that promote equality, provide social services, or protect civil rights.
Simultaneously expand and weaponize the military-industrial apparatus and the police state in order to persecute America’s “enemies,” including a concerted domestic attack on immigrants, the left, and anyone who resists this patriarchal white Christian nationalist agenda.
Give corporations free reign to dismantle worker power and remove taxes and regulation so they can pursue unfettered profit, eliminate the separation of church and state, and subordinate civil liberties to a right authoritarian vision of the “pursuit of blessedness” rooted in a white Christian nationalist prosperity theology.
Together, the elements of this proposed plan of action present a concerted attempt to create a patriarchal white Christian nationalist ethno-state that enforces the interests of the white, male, and wealthy few and forcibly suppresses the rights and freedoms of the oppressed nationalities, women and oppressed gender people, and the multiracial working class. Preventing this slow-motion coup and holding back the fascist tide is a critical task for all socialist forces within and beyond this election.
2. BROADEN THE FRONT
We can defeat the fascist threat, but it will take all of our concerted efforts.
There is a latent anti-fascist majority in the U.S. The “we” here is very broad—from Noam Chomsky to Liz Cheney, a wide-ranging set of social and political forces overtly or latently oppose the fascist project. However, this anti-fascist front is disorganized, internally divided, and insufficiently aware of the extent and urgency of the fascist threat.
America’s anti-fascist majority can successfully contain the fascist threat, but doing so will require uniting the widest possible anti-fascist front, including not only progressive forces but also establishment forces that detest the left almost as much as they hate the right, and even those conservatives willing to stand against MAGA.
We cannot be picky about who we would like to be a part of the wide common project against the New Confederacy. No one makes revolution by fighting all their enemies at once. We must be clear that at this moment our primary enemy is the fascist far right, and that the urgency of the threat compels us to tactically coordinate with all forces willing to unite to defeat them, including strange and uneasy bedfellows who will ultimately become our antagonists if we are successful in our shared objective of defeating the fascist right.
We can’t rely on centrist Democrats to fight fascism for us.
We can’t rely on establishment Democrats to fight fascism for us. Precisely because we disagree with their ideology, politics, and strategy, we know they will be incapable of defeating the fascist threat without our efforts. But neither is the left strong enough to win this struggle on our own.
Left forces who argue for electoral abstentionism in the critical contests of 2024 both over- and underestimate our strength. Arguments for a “clean” or “dirty” break with centrist Democrats overestimate the size of the left’s social base and discount the structural barriers to a fully independent electoral left. Conversely, arguments that left forces can contribute little or nothing to the defeat of MAGA (and thus need not support centrist Democrats) underestimate the critical contributions we can and must make.
The reality is that the left has key resources needed to defeat fascist forces electorally, including our mass power know-how, the moral power of our ideas, and the volunteer and staff capacity to fuel electoral outreach. Meanwhile, centrist forces have funding, infrastructure, and the various resources of the Democratic Party apparatus. All of this will be required to defeat the fascist threat.
Even as we spar with the center, we must unite with them to defeat the right.
In the fight to defeat the fascist threat, all anti-fascist forces are our temporary and tactical allies. This does not mean we have to like them, any more than Great Britain and the Soviet Union liked each other when they allied against Nazi Germany. It means we need to work together to defeat a common enemy.
As temporary tactical allies, we will continue to have many serious disagreements with, and covert and open struggles against, centrist forces. Indeed, the intensity with which centrist Democrats have opposed the campaigns of Sanders, the Squad, and other progressive challengers shows both the fierceness of these struggles and the extent to which the centrist establishment correctly identifies the increasing sophistication of left electoral efforts as a threat to their power.
At the same time, we must pick the time and place to engage in such secondary fights, and the time to put them aside for larger goals. The primary system allows us to contest against the center, and if we win, to force much if not all of the center to unite behind us in a head-to-head match against the right. The flip side is also true: when centrist candidates out-compete us, we must support them in the head-to-head struggle against the right.
We must mobilize for a popular anti-fascist majority in the election, which means fighting them everywhere. This includes working to get out the vote for the candidate who is opposed to Trump, mobilizing for the House and Senate, contesting against fascist candidates in critical but often under-prioritized state legislative and gubernatorial races, and defeating fascist candidates up and down the ballot.
This is not just a task for a handful of swing states. As tightening presidential polls in supposedly “safe” states like New Jersey demonstrate, the center’s weakness has created a scenario in which the right is able to broaden its offensive. Meanwhile, both “blue” states like California and “red” states like Texas contain competitive House districts that will be decisive to the control of Congress, while down-ballot races form the testing grounds and building blocks through which fascists attempt to build power. The left must contest against fascist forces in all these races and places while laying the foundations to build our own independent left political power.
3. BUILD A LEFT TREND
Building independent political organization and infrastructure allows us to both unite with the center and strengthen the left.
Working within a broad front does not mean we evacuate our commitment to radical change, nor cede initiative to the center. To the contrary, it is possible to maintain a general level of unity of action across the anti-fascist front, while working to strengthen the independent position of the left within it.
To do so, it is essential that we engage in electoral work by building our own independent political organizations (IPOs) that develop core electoral skills and competencies, durable infrastructure, and a mass base among people of color and the multiracial working class. Too often, electoral mobilization operates on a “boom-and-bust” cycle that builds leadership, momentum, and infrastructure across a campaign only to watch it dissolve the day after elections. By running electoral work through permanent organizations with structural independence from the Democratic Party apparatus, we use short-term electoral campaigns to build long-term strategic capacity while strengthening the position of the left.
We should also work to increase tactical and strategic coordination among and between IPO projects and other aligned organizations with a mass base who oppose the fascist threat, such as progressive sectors of organized labor; Black and Brown civic, educational and social organizations; LGBTQ+, women’s and immigrant organizations; progressive faith-based groups; and other institutions of civil society.
The more decisive our contribution to the fascist right’s defeat, the stronger our position relative to the center.
Leftists who oppose electoral engagement often argue that it detracts from base building and subordinates the left to the center. To the contrary, as left political organizations increase our electoral competency and prove that our contributions are vital to defeat the right, we increase our ability to build a durable, broad base and strengthen our position against the center.
Presidential elections are the primary means through which the largest number of our core constituencies engage with politics. Sitting out elections isolates us from our people; engaging in elections offers us opportunities to reach them. Demonstrating to our constituencies that we are the most consistent, compelling, and successful organizers in the fight against fascism will help us win their trust and support.
Demonstrating that our movements are more effective at mobilizing voters and winning elections compared to centrist forces in turn diminishes the center’s power and influence within the pro-democracy front and increases that of the left—attracting voters, volunteers, donors, dollars, and resources, all of which allow us to further build our power within and beyond elections.
Against the right’s plot for a white Christian nationalist republic, the left must articulate a clear, compelling plan to complete the reconstruction of these United States.
While the right has developed a coherent, reactionary alternative to the faltering neoliberal project, anti-fascist forces have not yet cohered around a shared program. Centrist establishment forces have shown themselves willing to reconsider neoliberal orthodoxies but don’t have a clear alternative. This creates an opportunity for the left.
As we saw with Biden’s post-2020 adoption of many of the policies and frameworks of the “Green New Deal,” the left is able to exert influence when we develop clear policy frameworks and find a language to articulate them that resonates with masses of people. Demonstrating that our ideas and messaging are more persuasive to voters than those of the centrist establishment in turn causes more people to give greater credence to our ideas.
We should develop a shared agenda rooted in a clear vision of a new progressive path forward for the United States—what we have elsewhere termed a Third Reconstruction. We envision this as a political period during which a very broad front of popular forces has gained sufficient strength to institute a wide range of transformative reforms that shift the balance of power away from the white, male, and wealthy few toward a broad united front led by left forces rooted in an organized social base of people of color and the multiracial working class as one stage in a longer-term struggle toward socialism.
We need to defeat the fascist threat and break the political power of the New Confederacy at the state and federal levels in order to be able to implement this transformative agenda. But in order to mobilize our people for this fight, we need to organize them to believe in and fight for the possibility of a transformation of our government, economy, and society based on a platform of multiracial democracy, shared prosperity, a healthy planet, and a peaceful, democratic foreign policy.
Electoral organizing offers the left an opportunity to test our messaging and share our vision with masses of people. Decisively defeating fascist forces in November creates a more favorable terrain on which to fight for it.
Defeating fascism and building a consolidated, coherent left is bigger than any one election and requires more than electoral organizing.
Because this analysis is focused on the 2024 elections, and because electoral organizing has been a topic of much debate, division, and confusion on the left, we have focused this document on electoral organizing as a key means of 1) fighting fascism while 2) strengthening the social base needed to implement a transformative agenda in order to 3) advance the longer-term struggle toward socialism.
We believe that the most decisive and primary struggle needed to advance these goals right now is to defeat fascist forces electorally this year.
We recognize that all three of these tasks are broader than any single election, involve many terrains of contestation beyond the electoral, and necessitate engaging in many forms of struggle—issue campaigns, long-term labor and community organizing, protest and mobilization, etc. We do not view these efforts as in contradiction with left electoral organizing, but rather as complementary components of a shared political project.
We recognize that many left forces who are deeply skeptical of elections are making important contributions to shared objectives through other tactics and on other terrains. We seek to operate in solidarity and build unity with all left forces who share our aims of defeating fascism, fighting for and winning transformative reforms that fundamentally shift the balance of power, and advancing the long-term struggle for socialism.
We recognize that socialist solidarity can include deep strategic and tactical disagreement and welcome debate among comrades, but we differentiate this from efforts that actively oppose or subvert efforts to defeat MAGA at the ballot box and beyond. We call on left forces in the anti-fascist front to work in solidarity toward the defeat of MAGA with all available tools, and to maintain public unity against the forces of fascism
4. THE ELECTIONS, THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA, AND ANTI-IMPERIALISM
We must continue to organize for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza is morally unconscionable, a human catastrophe, and must be stopped immediately. Its continuation with US complicity represents one of the single greatest threats to democracy here and abroad. By disorganizing and splitting the fragile pro-democracy united front in this country, aligning with authoritarian forces in Israel and strengthening authoritarian forces in this country, the Biden commitment to the continued perpetration of genocide in Gaza risks everything for an utterly grotesque cause. Stopping the genocide in Gaza is an urgent task in its own right, and takes on additional strategic importance in the struggle to stop fascism.
The ceasefire movement has successfully drawn attention to the hypocrisy of US foreign policy, radicalized a new generation of activists, and reestablished internationalism and opposition to US militarism as key components of the US progressive agenda.
Ceasefire organizing and activism have exposed critical fault lines between the centrist and progressive wings of our pro-democracy front, and have successfully shifted sentiment, sympathy, and solidarity toward the Palestinian cause among key social sectors of our front (including young people, people of color, and organized labor).
These efforts have already impacted Biden’s foreign policy decisions and we must continue to organize against US military and financial support for Netanyahu’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza in favor of an immediate, permanent ceasefire.
We must be clear that a second Trump administration would be even more devastating for Palestine.
At the same time, we must be clear that a fascist takeover of the United States would be qualitatively and quantitatively worse for the Palestinian people, for US-based solidarity efforts, and for the broader anti-imperialist cause.
While Biden’s support of Netanyahu’s genocidal assault on Gaza is unconscionable, fissures in the Democratic base and leadership create openings for sustained organizing to put pressure on his administration and shift policy.
In contrast, fascist forces are united in their uncritical support of Israel and their total animosity toward the Palestinian cause.
As President, Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, halted all development aid to Palestine, and proposed a “peace plan” that would have legitimized illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and given Palestine only 15 percent of its historic territory.
We should expect Trump to give total support for all-out Israeli war, including the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza in favor of Israeli annexation and resettlement. Trump has repeatedly called for Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza and Palestine generally.
Trump also threatens an escalation and extension of the already emerging, fascist-like climate of repression against anti-genocide protests on campus and elsewhere, in alliance with New Confederate forces empowered at the state level. This would continue a far right-led campaign of repression of speech and expression, and a likely intensification of arrests, as well as collaboration with far right vigilante forces.
Decisively defeating US fascist forces is critical to advancing the anti-imperialist struggle domestically and internationally.
A victory of the New Confederacy and MAGA would consolidate and embolden a growing international movement of far right, ethno-nationalist authoritarianism which includes not just the Israeli far right, but others as well, such as Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party in India.
There is no denying the absolute horrific nature of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and we must be clear that forces with which we can align to transform US foreign policy and stop intervention are only contained in the anti-fascist united front, even while it also contains forces whom we oppose on those same grounds.
Indeed some advances have been made on this front, from the end of the war in Afghanistan and the almost total halt in the US-led covert drone war, to the US commitment to protect the outcome of elections in Brazil. Those advances are in part the result of the momentum of progressive forces inside the anti-fascist united front. Yet there have also been significant and terrible defeats—namely the genocide in Gaza, but also a continued militarized policy toward the border.
A foreign policy based in commitment to democracy, solidarity, peace, and an end to the deadly militarism of this country will be the result of the triumph of democratic and progressive forces in this country, which begins with the defeat of the principal enemy of those forces: the New Confederacy.
We owe the term “Block and Build” to our friends at Convergence—see here for their helpful syllabus on this strategic orientation. The term has since been adopted by Working Families Party, Seed the Vote and other key forces with whom many of our ideas here and elsewhere are in dialogue.
