Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)’s upset victory in her first primary in 2018 was a major moment for leftist politics. The newly revitalized Democratic Socialists of America had defeated an establishment Democrat and replaced him with one of their own. Here was proof that the longtime strategy of much of social democracy - or “democratic socialism”, as they prefer to call themselves - of working within the Democratic Party might work. After all, she had won a victory on a platform that included abolishing ICE, Medicare for All, and other extremely progressive policy positions. This was a new moment, a new warrior who could pave the way for the Left. 

　　Now, six years later, AOC stood at the Democratic National Convention - while protesters faced off with police outside - and began her speech by thanking Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for their “vision” and Joe Biden for his “leadership.” She then strongly endorsed the Harris campaign and harshly attacked Donald Trump. Her speech was in her typical fiery style and certainly got the crowd going. But this was a far cry from the disruptor that she came into Congress as. The Great Hope of Social Democracy stood and championed the funders of a genocide with nary a word of criticism - indeed, she even defended Harris on the question of the genocide, saying she is “working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home.” AOC has gone from an outsider to standing shoulder to shoulder with the Democratic Party establishment. 

　　With this speech, AOC solidified once and for all which side she is on the struggle to end the genocide in Palestine - the side of the establishment, the side that wants a temporary cease-fire and the continuation of the occupation and oppression of Palestine. She doesn’t want to end the apartheid system of Israeli domination; she stands with the Zionist oppressors and strongly endorses some of their strongest backers. AOC has betrayed the movement for Palestine; she is an enemy of that movement. We cannot continue to support politicians who may propose progressive domestic programs but support imperialism abroad. 

　　The picture of AOC on the DNC stage is certainly a striking one, but this is a moment long in the making. Over her time in Congress, AOC’s semi-radicalism has been watered down, becoming barely recognizable. She went from staging a sit-in outside Nancy Pelosi’s office to calling her a “mama bear.” She endorsed Biden even after the Democratic establishment maneuvered to defeat her close ally Bernie Sanders. AOC was swept to Congress on promises to push through reforms and to stand for the working class, but in Congress she has refused to oppose Iron Dome funding and even voted to break the rail strike. She then cynically defends these decisions while attempting to hang on to her leftist credibility - in the case of the rail strike, she claimed that breaking it was somehow in workers’ interests and that she’d allegedly spoken to the union. In this sense, she not only sides with the establishment but gives them left cover for their reactionary policies. 

　　So what does this mean for the strategy that the DSA felt so confident in after AOC’s election? Whither the social democratic dream of amassing power inside the Democratic Party in order to make a “dirty break” with the party? 

　　The incorporation of AOC into the establishment is a natural consequence of working within a capitalist party. There are huge political and financial pressures on members of Congress and even greater pressures on members of capitalist parties whose goal is to uphold capitalism and imperialism. Given that she entered Congress as a member of one such party, it was only natural that AOC would cave to those pressures. Making compromises on core demands, playing nice with party leadership, and, of course, backing the party’s candidate - no matter who - are all part of what it means to be a good Democrat. The party’s needs come before the personal convictions of any elected representative, and the party has a huge apparatus with which to pursue its agenda. In the face of that, it is no wonder that AOC has become the figure she is today. The Democratic Party represents capital and, thus, has a vested interest in ensuring that imperialist ambitions are achieved and that capitalist interests are protected. Even small reforms to this system like Medicare for All are untenable because they go against the profit motive of health insurance companies. 

　　Perhaps the most striking place where we can see the “evolution” of AOC is on the question of immigration. She won her primary with the demand of abolishing ICE, and she correctly called the migrant concentration camps, but in Congress she voted for ICE funding. She backed Biden even as he promised to get tougher and tougher on the border, and now she’s backing Harris, who is also running to the right on immigration. The dream of abolishing ICE isn’t even on the table as AOC adapts further and further to the mainstream of the Democratic Party. 

　　AOC has made herself into one of the biggest champions of lesser evilism, spreading the idea that the way to stop Trump and the rise of the Right is to vote for Harris. This is a dangerous and irresponsible line that ignores how the Right has been strengthened under Biden. Voting doesn’t stop the Right. Rather than spending her energy and significant influence campaigning for genocide backers as the so-called lesser evil, AOC could be calling on unions and social movement organizations to mobilize their members against the Right. But she isn’t doing that because her strategy isn’t focused on actually defeating the Right, it’s about strengthening the Democratic Party. 

　　What this reveals is the central fallacy of the “inside/outside” strategy of social democracy in the U.S., according to which groups like the DSA tried to both work inside the Democratic Party and outside it to push forward their political goals. The dream was to accumulate enough democratic socialist members of Congress within the Democratic Party and then split off to form a new party - the so-called dirty break strategy.  

　　Indeed, even the DSA has had to essentially admit that the jig is up. Earlier this year, they withdrew their endorsement - years after she’d already refused to oppose Iron Dome funding and distanced herself from the DSA - over her stance on Palestine. Any plans that hinge on working within the Democratic Party severely underestimate the power and interests of the party and the comparative weakness of leftist organizations. It also confuses what our ultimate goal is as it shrinks our perspective from winning actual liberation for the working class and oppressed to just securing crumbs of reforms in the here-and-now,and it doesn’t even do a particularly good job of winning those either. As another example of this strategy’s failure, we can look to the campaign to make India Walton the mayor of Buffalo, New York. The DSA rallied its forces and successfully won Walton the Democratic nomination to be governor. But the party establishment refused to back her, and she was defeated by her opponent for the Democratic nomination running a red-baiting write-in campaign. More examples of this can be seen in the AIPAC-backed defeats of Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush this year. The Democratic Party and its allies will bring their electeds to heel or throw them out on their ear if they show even slight deviations. 

　　This is a losing strategy, one the Left can’t afford to keep trying. Rather, we need to fight to form a party of our own - a working-class party that explicitly fights for socialism and against oppression. With such party, we can run our own candidates and hold them accountable to us based on a program for socialism that seeks to transform all elements of our lives from the economy to culture. Some may look at the AOC experiment and conclude that this is how it will always be with electeds and abandon electoral politics all together. But election provide us an invaluable opportunity to speak to a large swath of the masses. Socialists can and should contest elections, not as a way of seizing power but as a method for raising class consciousness. If socialists can win elections, they must be held accountable to the working-class party that got them there and fight to keep them independent of all the pressures the Democrats will lay on them. 

　　The role that AOC and other progressives like Bernie Sanders are playing in this moment is the same role they played under Biden: providing left cover for the establishment. AOC’s defense of Harris around the question of a cease-fire has extra weight because it is coming from a figure who is still trusted by many on the Left. The presence of AOC and Sanders at the DNC is meant to signal that Harris is listening to the progressive wing, that she is building coalitions within the party. She then adopts some progressive proposals on national issues while running to the right on immigration and policing. That the so-called democratic socialist electeds are giving cover to a candidate who is trying to strengthen the war on migrants shows the issue of divorcing domestic politics from international politics, the problem of supporting politicians who will continue to support imperialism like AOC and Sanders. But our fight has to be international, to recognize that migrants from Latin America are our class siblings and that we need to support them with the same vehemence that we fight for the native working class with. Imperialism is totally incompatible with a true vision of socialism. 

　　The story of AOC is a tragic one for the Left, but a huge part of its tragedy is how predictable it was. Even in 2018, we could see that this would end with AOC onstage at the DNC while protesters were outside. It was always going to end with her lining up behind imperialist war criminals - she voted for Trump’s military budget, after all. Some, like Kareem Elrefai, writing in the Nation, correctly recognize the betrayal of AOC but still foster some illusions in an “inside/outside” strategy. Many on social media are angry about AOC’s betrayal. But we must understand that AOC’s story is not just the story of one politician falling to the pressures inside a capitalist party; it’s the story of what the Democratic Party is built to do co-opt radicals, strip movements for parts, and use it all to fuel their capitalist ambitions. This is where this strategy ends. Let AOC’s speech be its death knell. 

　　Editor: Zhong Yao  Wei Xiaoxue 

　　From:https://www.leftvoice.org/aoc-from-the-great-hope-of-democratic-socialism-to-just-another-shill-for-the-democratic-party/(2024-8-22)