Sure, I definitely agree, as long as it doesn't lead to cutting off from members of the working class engaged in principled electoralism. Something interesting that happened in our chapter recently, is one of my comrades cochaired a campaign to change the way our city votes for city council. Currently they have 9 at large seats, we wanted the city districts to vote for their own reps. Currently city council is bought and paid for by developers who are destroying the public schools in order to get tax abatements for their gentrifying. This had real connections with existing social movement in our city, the launch discussion we had was one of the best experiences I've had in our chapter, as it brought in so many different perspectives, not just DSA people.

The start up to the campaign was long, and really difficult. It required building a coalition with much more liberal progressive groups, a painful and unstable process all the way through. Once it picked up steam and it was obvious that we were gonna get the sigs to make it on the ballot, city council starts trying to coopt, creates their own version that has 9 elected seats and 8 at large. They even name their initiative after our campaign. Obvs people don't go for it and eventually, city council gets it down to 9 and 4 at large.

We take this for a vote at a DSA general meeting. Keep in mind, we have many new and electorally minded members. Our chapter voted to accept city council's recommendation. We (that is the left which included one of the co chairs of the campaign) opposed it strongly, but many newer realignment minded members felt it was a good enough compromise.

So then, the campaign takes it to the progressive coalition. DSA members have already recommended to accept City Council's proposal. Against all expectations, the coalition voted against city councils plan, to continue to the ballot with the plan to change all city council seats to district vote rather than allow any at large seats. We were floored.

My point is, that the left's engagement in leadership from the beginning allowed us to shape the coalition, and keep the campaign on track. A lot of these people are individualistic in the way they conceive of politics, but their experiences inform them. If we can demonstrate another way, then the leaders of the existing working class, reformist and realignmentist that it may be, might decide to side with the people over the establishment, granted a principled left is capable of engaging the base and turning them out.

The problem with electoralism is that winning elections is the theory of change. However winning elections can still he an avenue toward change, given that it is contextualized within a Marxist revolutionary ToC. In that way, elections and campaigns are a quantitative measure, they are a means rather than an end. In the instance of our local campaign, we were able to like discipline the electoralists in DSA by making them face the reality that they had voted to the right of the politically active working class. None of that would have been possible by dealing with electoralism in the abstract.