The American left organization Socialist Alternative, which in the past supported “independent” socialist US Senator Bernie Sanders as the ”left wing of the possible” in 2016 and 2020, is now moving to back the presidential campaign of leftist gadfly academic Cornel West in the 2024 elections.
Most recently, in an article published last month on its website headlined, “The Two-Party System Is Killing Us—Can We Build An Alternative?” Socialist Alternative points to West’s recently formed “Justice for All” party as a potential “mass working-class left party.” In reality, the Justice for All party is devoid of any clear political program and was established primarily as a vehicle for West to obtain ballot status.
Socialist Alternative first declared its support for West last year, when the former Democrat and former member of the Democratic Socialists of America was seeking the presidential nomination of the Green Party—after initially announcing he would seek the nomination of the Peoples Party, a political operation set up by former Sanders supporters. West later bowed out of the Green Party contest and said he was running as an independent. None of these political gyrations have given pause to Socialist Alternative.
On June 16, 2023, the Socialist Alternative Executive Committee hailed West’s campaign, declaring that his “candidacy has the potential to offer a sorely needed left alternative for working people and the oppressed.” In that statement, there were no less than 15 separate references to Bernie Sanders. The Executive Committee lamented:
The loyalty of Sanders and the “Squad” to the Democratic Party has been used in service of vicious attacks on workers, including the blocking of the railroad workers strike, and it has profoundly undercut the ability to organize movements of working people, squandering the momentum Bernie generated with his campaign’s “political revolution” against the billionaire class.
In August, Socialist Alternative announced a “Students for Cornel West” campaign, writing, “We need systemic change, and Cornel West’s campaign offers us an opportunity to fight back. … To be effective, we need Cornel West’s campaign to have a mass grassroots character. Young people have a central role to play in building the initial grassroots momentum that can draw in larger and larger layers of people hungry for change.” Socialist Alternative has since campaigned for West on every campus where it has been active. Some see the activity as a way to connect with the public through a name they may recognize and then sway them over to their own point of view simply using Cornel West’s campaign for their own ends.
In an article from November, Socialist Alternative raised concerns about “left and progressive voters who are sick and tired of the Democrats’ false promises” and called for West to “step into the void” caused by the likely upcoming election between two widely despised candidates, Trump and “genocide Joe.”
The organization’s support of the West campaign as a “left-wing, pro-worker” opposition to the Democrats and Republicans is a kind of wishful thinking. West is a left flavored performer.
The political record of Cornel West
The Democratic Party is currently waging an “all-out war” on third parties and independent candidates, including the West campaign, in an effort to keep them from getting ballot status. This does not, however, mean that West represents a genuine challenge to the two-party system.
Any serious review of West’s record would both undercut the ability of his campaign to keep this immense anger tied to the dead-end of capitalist politics and show Socialist Alternative as an empty political organization that simply latches onto the leftwing of the leftwing of the Democrats.
West has spent decades promoting and endorsing Democratic politicians. He joined the radical liberal Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in the 1980s and served as its honorary chair. He campaigned for Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, and endorsed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign before raising criticisms following the election.
West has made limited criticism of the Democratic Party, calling Obama “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs.” West, as well as Socialist Alternative, participated in the political circus known as the People’s Party, formed in 2017 on the basis of pressuring Sanders to launch a new party. Both West and Socialist Alternative also backed Sanders’ presidential campaigns.
In 2016 West and Socialist Alternative switched to supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein after Sanders endorsed Clinton. In 2020, they went separate ways, with West calling for a vote for Biden in the general election. Socialist Alternative backed Green Party co-founder and 2020 presidential candidate Howie Hawkins.
The Green Party operates as a pressure group oriented toward the latest fads of a segment of the political and academic class with bizarre anti-science solutions to many problems. Greens also exhibit an emotional trigger that propels them to vicious warmongering.
If there is any consistent thread in West’s transition from one political alliance to another, it is his vague house broken reformism. In his book The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, West explicitly outlines a pedestrian laundry list of minor changes to bring about a ‘better world.’ West’s philosophy belongs to the school of American pragmatism as it was developed in particular by Richard Rorty, with whom West studied while at Princeton in the early 1970s. Pragmatism has different varieties, all revolving around a denial of the possibility of objective truth, and, bound up with this, a rejection of history as a law-governed process where patterns can be observed and changed. In its modern forms and especially in the writings of Rorty, pragmatism is directed explicitly against intervention into social life to change the course of events for the better for most people.
Cornel West’s pragmatic approach to politics and theory entails an eclectic mixture of Black nationalist, racial and identity politics, which he combines with openly religious and irrationalist conceptions.
xenagoguevicene 