A comrade in our Telegram discussion group asked about the Cornel West Presidential run so here are a few of my thoughts on this so far.

Firstly, the question of whether communists should enter into either support of or direct participation in a social democratic campaign or party is a tactical one. At certain points it may be useful to do so but this judgement is a difficult one and we must assess the concrete situation facing the working class. So what is the level of class consciousness at the moment, are there powerful movements of the working class taking place, what is the industrial action picture like? Then we must ask ourselves about our own strength as communists, do we have a vanguard party that (however small) has a certain working class base, do we have a solid core of cadre who understand the political situation and a clear understanding of reformism and its limits? We must examine the status of the objective political situation facing the bourgeoisie. Is their system failing are they unable to continue to rule in the old way?

In the case of the United States it is my understanding that the level of class consciousness is still very low after years of ruling class offensives, trade union capitulation and left movement failure. So, is another social democratic camapign going to improve this situation?

Firstly the positive arguments. West himself is running 3rd party, with the Peoples Party, and thus that does represent something of a change in that at least its not just another attempt to funnel people back into the democratic party (so far). Secondly, West does have a degree of name recognition so that will enable even the very basic elements of class politics he does espouse to gain greater traction and potentially draw some workers in who might be open to drawing communist conclusions when the politics of West prove inadequate to the task, which they will.

The other question here relates to how communists will operate within such a campaign. We must not compromise on our ability to express our views, or agree to conceal them in the name of “unity”. We must be absolutely honest with workers that although we support such a campaign we are clear about its limitations. We must also be prepared to walk away from such a campaign if the socdems try to force us to surrender on these points.

As to West himself its clear that he’s a social democrat, more rhetorically radical than Sanders but how he’ll react when/if the bourgeoisie seriously bring the hammer down is already clear to me, he’ll panic and denounce who he’s told to denounce to the point where his campaign eats itself and implodes. That’s why any association with such a campaign has to be carefully thought out before proceeding. It could be that Eddie from Midwestern Marx is right when he says that communists can grow from supporting this campaign but we would have to be very careful in our approach over this to avoid falling into opportunism and reformism creeping in. I’ll be writing more about this in the coming days.