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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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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.