Ocasio-Cortez’s defense of the right wing of the Democratic Party against socialist opposition reveals her role in preempting the development of a movement of the working class independent of the two-party system. She is the latest iteration of a strategy, developed by the Democratic Party over 200 years of political experience, to present a “left” face in order to trap social opposition, prop up the capitalist order and carry out ruthless attacks on the working class in the US and internationally. Fundamental lessons must be drawn from this experience.
The historical role of the Democratic Party
The origins of Ocasio-Cortez and her attacks against the socialist left must be understood in the political and historical context of the historical role of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party has a vast experience in diverting social opposition by trapping social discontent within its reach, where it is crushed. It has at its disposal billions of dollars, mass media channels and thousands of people whose singular responsibility is to stop social opposition from breaking out of its control.
This has been its political role since its inception in 1828, when Andrew Jackson trapped the embryonic anti-capitalism of “workingmen” in the northern cities behind a reactionary alliance with the southern slave-owning class. The emergence of the working class in the post-Civil War period inaugurated decades of violent class struggle, which the Democratic Party attempted to control through subsuming strains of populist, agrarian politics, culminating in the elevation of the demagogue William Jennings Bryan as repeated Democratic presidential candidate at the turn of the 20th century. Despite the insurrectionary character of the class struggle, the Democratic Party fought to prevent these struggles from developing to a point of a political break and the formation of an independent political party in the European model of labor or social democratic parties. This, alongside the extraordinary wealth of American capitalism, explains why there has never been a labor party in the United States.
This reached a new stage in the period following the Great Depression, when a wave of semi-insurrectionary strikes and social struggles broke out under the leadership of socialists. The administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, aware of the example of the Russian Revolution of 1917, introduced New Deal social reforms to prevent the workers’ movement from developing in opposition to the capitalist system. This was critical for preparing American imperialism’s entry into World War II, opening up a period of imperialist domination worldwide. John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society portrayed the Democratic Party as “left” in order to temper social discontent at home and facilitate a massive expansion of imperialist plunder abroad.
The financial crisis of 2008-09 produced a new wave of social radicalization, leading the Democratic Party to present Barack Obama as the candidate of “hope and change,” a former “community organizer” whose race supposedly made him a natural ally of the oppressed.
As opposition to the right-wing character of Obama’s presidency grew, Bernie Sanders then emerged from 30 years on the Democratic congressional backbench as a “socialist” candidate in the party primary who promised “political revolution.” In 2016, he became a lightning rod for social discontent, winning over 10 million votes, mostly from workers and youth. His sudden rise to popularity shocked the Democratic Party and served as a warning that the population was moving rapidly to the left and was attracted to socialism. Sanders, who had criticized Hillary Clinton as the stooge of Wall Street, endorsed her campaign, leading to the disillusionment of many of his supporters.
-- Eric London, "The Democratic Party and the political origins of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez" (WSWS).