AIPAC’s war on Thomas Massie has created new hope for the third party movement, hope that had seemed unrealistic until quite recently. And if communists properly navigate this moment, we’ll be able to give the American people the third party that they desperately need.
Even if we don’t get a third party that’s formed by Massie himself, communists are now in position to provide such a party ourselves. It would look different from a Massie-created party, but it would still fulfill the role of an anti-duopoly force that brings in those who share Massie’s politics. When I talk about such a communist-created alternative for MAGA, I don’t just mean the American Communist Party; the ACP is essential to this project, as it’s the only Bolshevik-type U.S. party that was born out of a desire to build upon MAGA’s proto-revolutionary momentum. But it would represent the nucleus of this mass effort, rather than the org that most of these disillusioned conservatives get directly involved in.
The party has already recruited the bulk of the people who, at this stage, will be willing to become part of actual cadres. The way that we can go into the masses at this point is by building an anti-Epstein popular coalition, one which brings in the Massie sympathizers who’ve just been burned by his defeat against the Zionist lobby. Such a coalition cannot be formed on the basis of top-down communist control, and can only exist in the form of a popular front. A front that the communists are instrumental in constructing, but that’s compatible with all of the mass elements which share an interest in its goals. This was how William Z. Foster said we would need to build a mass labor party: as something that’s an entity unto itself, distinct from the communist party and therefore able to include the non-communist majority.
Foster said this in 1935, at a moment when the American people were increasingly unified in opposition to the capitalist order but the global working class was facing a fascist offensive. Foster pointed out the obstacles that the communists would need to overcome in order to build such an alternative mass organization:
In the building of an American labor party, the growing Communist Party confronts a huge task. It will have to do the bulk of the work. Upon it rests the chief responsibility of convincing the masses of the need to build a mass labor party, exploding the fascist demagogy and of overcoming the opposition to a labor party among the reactionary trade-union leadership, of building up the necessary united front among the various labor organizations, etc. And, even more important, especially will it fall to the Communist Party to prevent the new labor party itself from falling under reactionary leadership and thus becoming an instrument of fascist reaction; and to make of it a force that will lead the workers along the road to revolutionary struggle. Hard tasks are these, and they will test all the Bolshevik strength and leadership of our Party.
The third party movement’s obstacles today are much like the ones it faced in 1935, but they’re also different in important ways. Chiefly in how the project that the communist party was tasked with then, where the imperative was to build a labor party specifically, isn’t the same as the third party that we’re tasked with building now. We don’t yet know whether this party will take the form of an organization that’s started by Massie, in which case the communists will have the role of making an alliance with it; or if the ACP itself will need to effectively become the third party that Massie’s base increasingly desires.
The possibilities for what this third party will look like are so open because right now, the U.S. labor movement is far from being sufficiently rebuilt, and therefore the main avenues for mass movements exist outside of organized labor. The proper definition of class consciousness is when the workers have become directly involved within the class struggle; but in the absence of strong organized labor, you need to look for “class consciousness” in the ideas that the masses hold. The American masses already hold revolutionary ideas, Massie’s popularity is proof of this. All that stands in the way of these Americans asserting their interests is how we haven’t yet created a means for collective mass organization.
There is a difference between mass organization and electoral campaigns, and more of the people are coming to understand this. The consistent ruling class electoral sabotage of dissident leaders could push Americans to build a popular force outside the duopoly. This depends on whether the trained cadre members provide them with the tools to do this.
The first major steps in this project will have to be an anti-Epstein coalition, assistance to anti-Zionist MAGA’s third party efforts, and the other political projects that the masses can engage with in the present stage. The masses would also love to organize against their employers, but it will take longer for us to provide them with the infrastructure for doing so on a giant scale; putting together an anti-Epstein coalition or a third party are both easier than reconstructing American labor’s institutional power, which will require skills that U.S. communists are only beginning to re-learn. The constraints we have don’t come from the American masses not being advanced enough; they’re far more advanced than Marxists have typically given them credit for. The constraints come from how we haven’t yet done nearly enough of the revolutionary work that should have been done decades ago. In the present phase, our main task is to correct this problem.
This moment, where the anti-Zionists in the MAGA base have been confronted with electoralism’s limitations, represents a potentially massive opportunity for us to expand the revolutionary struggle. This doesn’t mean the party’s membership will multiply, at least not for the time being. But it does mean the party will be able to gain allies among libertarians, independents, disillusioned MAGA, and alienated Democrat voters—that is, if we seize this opportunity. The conditions have made our task abundantly clear, and we must fulfill history’s demands.
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