147
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
147 points (98.7% liked)
news
24380 readers
1025 users here now
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today/ . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is chapter by chapter. My local chapter voted against running candidates on the Dem ticket. And are critical of using limited DSA resources for candidates they know would ultimately be unaccountable to them once elected. I think some members of the chapter might be on here.
How can an organization function as a working class party when half of the chapters are liberals and social fascists?
Half the chapters aren't. Currently the left is in the majority albeit an uneasy one.
NYC has a large electoralist contingent, and there are problems sometimes reigning them in. There is no working apparatus to discipline electeds. Breaking from the democrats is hotly contested, active debate.
I think you will not find many liberals and "social fascists" (lmfao) in DSA. there is a large, organized, moderate tendency but they aren't liberals. Def some people are social democrats but that's different and they aren't in the majority nationwide. Though there are many in NYC DSA, they would be left progressive social democrats, and their influence is waning due to radicalization pressures everywhere.
But to answer directly, its an experiment
Since the vast majority of “leftists” in the US actually are social fascists I seriously doubt this is true.
Anybody who A) Supports arming and funding Ukraine or B) Cheered when Syria was destroyed or C) Wants a two-state solution or D) supports any American or NATO military action are Social Fascists. Social Fascism, also known as Social Chauvinism, is the tendency within the social-democratic left to be pro-war and to shirk revolutionary defeatism as a duty and concept.
It's not just an epithet, this is the primary contradiction in the western left and has historically caused it to implode. Almost every collapse and schism of the international left is due to this contradiction. Revolution is literally impossible until this contradiction is resolved in favor of the anti-imperialists.
DSA is absolutely filled with these types
I'm aware of the definition, but i think it is categorical and alienating from material conditions. I'm aware of the contradictions but I don't shy away from them. That is exactly where we need to be working, forcing the issues politically, representing our principles, building our mass base, and developing the party.
I think this kind of categorical understanding, which Marxism is an advancement over old materialism, is another critical contradiction for the left. it leads to sectarianism, prefiguration, and all kinds of idealism. We aren't puritans, we don't avoid contradiction, that is rationalism. We seek out the contradictions because that is where the class struggle lives.
There are plenty of clean breakers and ultraleftists in DSA as well. The reformists need to be confronted and split off from the real movement. But because the political conditions haven't been developed, they hide within it, maybe even hide from themselves. They need to be exposed to themselves so they can change, or exposed to the movement so it can change, but that isnt going to ever happen without direct, principled struggle.
I'm actually quite averse to the kind of categorizing you are doing here, but also we all have a long way to go. Reformists are still capable of developing certain aspects of the struggle, but we have to take care not to hand the movements to them when the conditions ripen for revolution. Our job is to make sure the people have the power, through a party capable of continuing the struggle.
I believe what your perspective lacks is a coherent theory of change, although to be fair, you can be a good practical organizer and still have some wrongheadedness to work through, I know I do. That is what I see in DSA. There are def some very toxic reformist elements in the org, but you should see how they make utter fools of themselves, how isolated and sectarian they are becoming. I'm more worried about the opportunistic center than the social democratic "party surrogates" at this moment. But there is nothing to be accomplished standing outside of the struggle and trying to define it by putting things into categories. It is un-marxist, and doesn't meet the moment with a practical analysis to take action.
Why would the struggle take place in a social reformist organization and not in a communist party with Democratic centralism as an organizing principle as it has always been done historically? Where is there even a single example of a successful revolution that emerged from a social reformist non-party and not from a communist party?
This is just the logic of revisionism. Every Western leftist generation thinks they need to reinvent socialism and reinvent Marx and Lenin. Oh isn’t it convenient how we always have to “modernize” to the right, back to the same dead end social reformism that existed for hundreds of years without even a single success to its name. Why is this “modernization” never to the left? Or along a new axis? It’s always just back to Berniecrat shit over and over.
Again, categorizing. Every communist party had to break from its reformism, through a process of struggle. There are communists within DSA, in fact I'd say the majority of active members are Marxists. Where have communist parties come from? Do they emerge fully formed? Do you think that by knowing things you can change the conditions automatically? I promise you, any active DSA member would probably agree with you some, if not totally. The difference is that is where the struggle is for us. If that's not where it is for you, that's fine. I work with other tendencies all the time. But it is an experiment, and you can't see the future. If you think myself and my comrades are social chauvinists, you are out of touch. Look up Springs of Revolution, and call them social chauvinists. If the rest of the org was, then SoR wouldn't have been able to affect it, but they did, their influence and lives experience in decolonizing struggle has changed the org dramatically in a short time.
DSA is becoming a party, we just aren't there yet. If it fails to become one at the critical time, it will likely trigger a crisis in the org. The party question and party discipline is on the tip of every active member's tongue. Local party committees are being formed all over the country.
DSA is far from perfect and we would love it if they had some of the same internal structures as more radical communist parties. DemCent is no longer banned (it was always a joke and a trick played by the Harringtonites) so that is changing internal democracy dramatically. Also its not like other american left parties aren't complete fucking basket cases. PSL has a ton of problems, cpusa tails the democrats too. SAlt is imploding under its own traditions, the Kshama faction that split to form WDM are arguably the more sectarian faction. But you gotta respect the audaciousness, which DSA seriously lacks. Meanwhile, Our numbers are growing and progressives are being radicalized in DSA, educated and organized. All of these groups have problems but that's just the USamerican left! We are a baby that has been aborted over and over and over.
I'm in DSA to change it. I'm a deep entryist. Maybe that's wrong but that's what got me here, in the struggle. It changed me an I try to change it. We need to stop putting abstract things in abstract boxes like some bourgeois, and center human experience, like Marx instructed. Study Theses on Feuerbach, Friere, Fanon.
Like you're right about certain things, in a very narrow way, but I can tell you aren't basing your analysis on an unfiltered assessment of material relationships. You aren't defining things by their relationships, but by their parameters. This is static thinking, we need to be dynamic and practical, always. Any thinking that prevents our acting is counter revolutionary, and therefore bourgeois.
If you want me to listen to you, you are going to have to demonstrate a better understanding of actual conditions. Or better yet, share your own experiences so we can come together and take something new back into our own organizing.
Well a recent resolution is now supposed to be a way to reign in electeds and requires candidates be anti-Zionist as an endorsement requirement. Yet to be enforced and unsure if it is retroactive but it did pass
I know, I voted for it!
The trend has been candidates are real buddy buddy with their local volunteers but whenever the org tries to enforce discipline they go dark, or pull some backroom shenanigans.
If AOC runs for president it will be an interesting test, she will have to come out against Israel (she won't) and DSA will have to not endorse. But since the org was historically, from the Mike Harrington days, a pro-zionist org, it was a dramatic step toward something coherent and meaningful. We lost a lot of good pro-palestine organizers after 2023 when we didn't pass the anti Zionist resolution.
The 2025 res was much better, but also the stakes are more urgently real also. Its disappointing we couldn't meet the moment back then, but I'm glad the org can respond in a meaningful way to those stakes, rather than retreat into Utopian idealism which runs rampant in our movements
If AOC gets the nod from DSA it’s a severe indictment of the DSA, not that there isn’t plenty of ammunition there already since the DSA is a white supremacist project in the first place.
Ironically enough, I think AOC coming out as anti-Israel openly in a presidential run would HELP a campaign and be the first steps towards actually harnessing the left populism Bernie was so afraid of.
And I’m just talking about right now. If trends indicate anything, by the time campaigning season comes around the issue will be even more pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. But we NEED that anti-Zionism commitment to work, desperately.
Totally agree, on all points. It would be amazing to see AOC come out as anti-Zionist in a presidential campaign, but I'm really just too used to electeds being a big disappointment. Doesn't keep me from helping with campaigns, but we need to be able to build strong cadre candidates, and enforce discipline.
Getting there will be a process, and there are small pockets and opportunities appearing everywhere, more and more. And that's what makes this work so interesting and meaningful.
Ok but consider this: what if we tried nothing in the electoral field and just got angry that all of the candidates were pro-Israel?
Jokes aside, anybody who has done anything in electoralism knows being pro-Palestine used to be a poison pill. I don’t want to say it was all electoralism, but having a handful of politicians ready to call out the Zionist entity on its genocide in Palestine was probably not insignificant in helping public opinion shift. Rallying even liberals behind anti-Zionist candidates undoubtedly helped galvanize the opinions of them and those around them
Conditions are developing rapidly. I have hope from seeing it come together, but it is still extremely fucked up and scary. Def need more people to step up and get serious.
You’re saying a minority of the DSA are “democratic socialists”?
No a minority are social democrats, who identify as democratic socialists. And most of them are strong, active, reliable organizers
My impression of DSAers has been genuine people who want a better future, but most of them are not online and don't have strong views on socialist sects and tendencies. Those of us who are nerds that are more versed in theory often talk about how socialism is a mass movement and we can't gatekeep the revolution.
Because DSA folks don't read the theory you see some boneheaded moves (less and less as the left actually gets a foothold), and due to the political climate in American occupied territories, the left in general has a labor aristocratic class character (to be very polite about it).
It's not like there's an alternative anyway.
Accurate assessment. Look at the members, organizing work, and statements of the various committees and caucuses and you’ll see the more “radical” and ideologically driven organizers do most of the heavy lifting in the org.
I mean...yes. But there is no lack of effort to counter all these tendencies. Even moderates point out these problems within the org. Internal struggle is working, even prominent moderate electoralist caucuses are leading Marxist reading groups.
Theory heads like us have our own problems, we easily become sectarian, we often are not self critical enough of our own ideas, we subscribe to all sorts of idealism, usually via intellectualism, we use "Marxism" or "dialectical materialism" in a way that actually alienates us from the real struggle.
But yeah compared to like the Russian rsdlp, we are like at 1895, maybe? Probably not even that far since the ambient narodnikism in the country at least made revolutionaries really fucking serious. We are all just volunteers, but for a few exceptions.
I read this article by J Cannon this week, has a lot of really prescient points. https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1925/sitdiff.htm
We advanced beyond this by 1935, but 10 or so years later we regressed basically all the way back, and now, even further behind.
They do other stuff besides endorse democrats.
Post that stuff to this comm and you will find a much different response.
Interesting how the post about DSA Democrat electoralism is the one where we criticize democrat electoralist tendencies in the DSA
Nobody thinks of the DSA as a working class party
The people who want it to be are working on reforms to purge/marginalize the liberals but that hasn't happened across the org yet.
But it is very clearly happening over time. Despite not making up a majority of DSA membership, most committees are run by ideologically driven caucus members, which despite their difference between caucuses, all fall much farther to the left than the rank and file DSA member.
Most internal DSA elections are dominated by the left caucuses, which is a good thing for base building while simultaneously using the dues and manpower of otherwise more liberal membership to take more left leaning public action and positions.
This is just a lie. The DSA is liberal, it’s always been liberal, and there’s no reason to think it ever won’t be liberal.
It’s not a highly centralized organization at this point in time because the most important task in the imperial core is deprogramming decades of antisocialist propaganda. Keeping the org decentralized in this way at this point in time allows each chapter to have a unique local approach that brings more people on board with the left in general and opens the door for further base building, which has undeniably taken off in the past ten years as DSA’s numbers (and thus dues) have risen dramatically. The demographics of the org have also dramatically changed from older white people to a more diverse crowd of younger people who are increasing the visibility of socialism to the next generation
One can ask the same about the Mensheviks before their split
So is the goal to heighten the contradictions in the DSA and cause a split when they pick a social chauvinist line in a moment of crisis so their membership can radicalize and join a better org?
I don't agree with Trot-esque entryism with the intention of splitting, but that doesn't sound like what the pro-DSA people here are arguing for. Is the comparison to the Mensheviks supposed to be flattering to the DSA? Do we have unironic menshevik stans here?
I mean, probably a split between the DSA right and the DSA left rather than joining any existing org. Like, this multi-tendency left coalition emerged last convention: https://sordsa.org/ which points to the politics such an org might have
I think the big thing is going to be when the democrats finally kick out DSA affiliated folks and the question is going to be "leave the party?" Vs "stay in, move right, and keep the campaigning apparatus"
DSA is makes the distinction to not call themselves a party
Then remove that word, how can an organization fight for the working class when half of the chapters are liberals and social fascists?
De-liberalizing political education is available at every DSA branch I've encountered
Remove what word from where?
the word party from my post
I'm trying but I haven't figured out how to edit it
Equally as easy as removing the Zionists from this website
Chapter by chapter approach is probably for the best right now as base building grows. Some have far more organization and resources at their disposal to engage in projects like electoralism, like NYC-DSA.