At the end of the city’s 2025 budget process, Portland city councilor Dan Ryan asked the progressive members of the body: “What is your north star? … Is Portland the testing site to eliminate capitalism in favor of socialism?”¹ As the city’s DSA chapter gears up for election season, I have asked myself Ryan’s question many times. How can these obscure, municipal fights move us towards a world after capitalism?

I stumbled across one possible answer in a surprising place: the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920. A section of the “Theses on the Communist Parties and Parliamentarism,” which were approved by the delegates, lists what communists should do if they “have the majority in local government institutions.” While some moves seem out of reach, such as establishing a workers’ militia and replacing the government with a workers’ council, the others remain relevant today. The elected officials should do as much as they can for the “poorer population,” show what they can’t do because of the institutional power of the rich, and build the socialist movement while they’re at it.² Without even having a majority,³ DSA-endorsed councilors Koyama Lane, Morillo, and Green have worked towards these goals, though there is plenty of space to improve.

However, Moscow in 1920 is a drastically different context than Portland in 2026. An example of socialists in local government from closer to home is the Sewer Socialists.⁴ This term originally referred to the Socialist Party in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which controlled the mayor’s office and other citywide positions from 1910 to 1960 (with a few brief interruptions). Their power waxed and waned along with the party’s national clout, as well as the local strength of the American Federation of Labor (before the rise of the CIO) and the city’s broader culture of “unions and cultural, activist, social, and religious organizations” (in the later period).

For most of these five decades, the Sewer Socialists did not control a majority on city council, so perhaps they cannot be measured against the Comintern’s instructions. However, they significantly benefited the poor and the working class through “innovations in basic services[, such as] sewage treatment[,] public health, housing, education, libraries, fire protection, and parks—along with systematic efforts to reduce corruption.” It is hard to say how effectively they demonstrated the limits of their power due to bourgeois influence without a more detailed study. And finally, as we see from their eventual demise, they did not succeed in building a lasting socialist movement, locally or nationally.⁵

Based on a glance at this history, I would conclude that the key aspect of socialist electoral activities in the local arena is to build a movement with other forms of power as well. Pannekoek makes this point in a piece from 1950: the working class is capable of enormous power, far beyond just checking a box on a ballot, and to unleash this power we must do more than just vote.⁶ So, this year, as we campaign for our local socialist candidates and against people like Dan Ryan, I will be thinking of how these activities can prepare us for bigger things. ◧

Note: This post has been on the backburner as I’ve had to focus on other responsibilities during the last few weeks. However, I have plenty of material for upcoming posts, including some topics which I originally intended to include in this one but chose to develop more fully on their own, as well as others which have arisen from things I’ve read and experienced recently. I’m looking forward to getting back in the flow of writing.

1. You can see this moment here. The link includes a timestamp. This took way too long to find. ↩︎
2. Find the “Theses” here. While reading about the Second Congress, I learned that a soccer team of Comintern delegates (including John Reed) played a match against the Moscow team. The delegates lost badly. ↩︎
3. The Portland City Council has 12 members. Six of them belong to the progressive caucus, or p-cauc, of whom four are endorsed by DSA. ↩︎
4. This term was originally negative, although it seems to have been reclaimed since. As Aims McGuinness argues, it may also minimize the scope of their socialist ambitions. ↩︎
5. My information on the Sewer Socialists comes from articles in Dissent and The Socialist. ↩︎
6. Find the piece on the Marxist Internet Archive. ↩︎