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u/kayamari

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Destiny's Guests are Confused about DSA
▲ 111 r/SocialDemocracy+1 crossposts

Destiny's Guests are Confused about DSA

Some of destiny's guests have repeatedly insisted or implied that DSA is an organization with an influential contingent of "Actual democratic socialists" while the rest are "Social Democrats who don't know the difference between Social Democracy and Socialism". The truth is that nearly every single major Caucus in DSA is explicitly Marxist and explicitly NOT Social Democrat. It's true that some members of DSA may not be aware of this, however almost all heavily involved DSA members should be aware, as Caucuses are generally transparent about this and very influential in both the National Political Committee (NPC), as well as in local DSA chapters. I am coming to you all as a DSA member with no qualms about my membership, because I just really appreciate discourse with accurate information. GIGO.

In this post I will provide:

  1. A Brief Overview of DSA Caucuses and the Left-Right spectrum
  2. A description of the ideologies of each Caucus using Explicit messaging from either their websites or their associated publications, as direct evidence

The DSA Political Spectrum

There is a political spectrum within DSA that we refer to as "Left" vs. "Right", but this should not be taken to clearly map onto typical notions of "Left" and "Right" in politics. The spectrum is better characterized in terms of differences in political strategy, or differences in how one thinks socialism can be built. The "Left—Right" spectrum could also be called the "Revolutionary—Reformist" spectrum. "Revolution" entails organizing the working class to leverage their collective labor power and physical power, to give the capitalist class no choice but to give up their ownership and control over the economy and government. "Reform" entails the use of policy reforms to create socialism.

It is important to keep in mind firstly that no major Caucuses within the DSA are strictly Revolutionary or strictly Reform, and secondly that differences in emphasis on Reform vs. Revolution do not imply differences in vision regarding what socialism means or looks like.

DSA's Major Caucuses are commonly ordered along the spectrum roughly like so:

(#NPC seats in parentheses)

DSA-Right (Reform-Leaning)

DSA-Center

DSA-Left (Revolution-Leaning)

Now that we are familiar with the view from ten-thousand feet, let's zoom in on each Caucus starting with the DSA-Right. Every Caucus website has "Points of Unity" that aid in understanding their orientations. Additionally, many Caucuses have insightful Reading lists, and some even have Blogs/Publications that further clarify their thought. I will show you that Marxism is the rule, not the exception (and that's good)

Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC)

This will be my weakest case by a large margin. SMC is the easiest to interpret as "Not real socialists". They are very heavily focused on reform, they have very little interest in holding candidates to ideological purity tests, and they don't use a lot of "Larpy" language. On the NPC Wikipedia page (which I was involved in developing) their ideologies are listed as "Mass Politics", "Popular Front" and "Structural Reform".

We can catch a glimpse of Marxist Socialism by looking at their Points of Unity. Their 2nd point is

>"We are socialists because we practice Materialist politics, not socialist identitarianism."

They go into further detail, and unfortunately the detail they add potentially undermines the Marxist interpretation. "Materialist" in the context of politics and especially socialist politics, is attributable entirely to the Marxian strand of socialism. Marx & Engels distinguished themselves from their "utopian socialist" contemporaries by clarifying that their own socialism was "Materialism" and relied on a "Materialist conception of history". Unfortunately, SMCs usage suggests they perhaps did not properly understand what Marx's "Materialism" refers to. But it is also a very common misinterpretation

Another 12th Point of Unity states

>"Capitalism is a global system*—one that we seek to replace with an international, ecologically sustainable, socialist society, in which goods are produced and distributed democratically based on need and where security is determined collectively.**"*

Emphasis on "goods produced and distributed democratically". I point to this because I don't think a Social Democrat who fundamentally believes in capitalism with a strong social safety net believes goods in generally should be produced and distributed democratically, rather than based on market mechanisms. Rather, this is a common description of socialism.

Finally, something fun I just noticed is that Cea Weaver, Zohran's Director of Tenant Protections who the media has lambasted for hit tweets such as "Elect more communists", is a member of SMC as evidenced by this recording of an SMC-Only Panel. This is the YouTube channel for The Agitator which is SMCs official Caucus publication. My hope is that this information gives you the (correct) impression that SMC is not best understood as ideologically moderate, rather they are methodologically moderate. They are an anti-sectarian group single-mindedly focused on building "real" power now for future change. Their recent NPC candidate Grace Mausser explains it best in this video

Groundwork (GW)

Groundwork splintered off from Socialist Majority just a few years ago. GW has written about their differences with SMC in their official publication Building Up. There, they describe themselves as "more aggressive and experimental**"**. They are also known for being more "eco-socialist" than SMC, which seems to be the driving urgency behind their more aggressive posture. SMC has a "Socialism, one day, eventually" posture, while GW has a "Socialism in our time" posture. However, most important to us is that GW differs from SMC in being more willing to communicate explicit communist ideology.

GW makes the evaluation very easy for us. Two of the main pages on their website are dedicated to explicating, respectively, the Electoral and Labor pillars of their flagship strategy called "Class Alignment. The electoral page says, "Class Alignment... [is] a holistic approach rooted in a Marxist analysis..." Very straightforward. Further, the page for their Labor strategy references Vladimir Lenin's book What is to Be Done as a major influence on the strategy. In this book Lenin argues against reformist socialism (then termed "social democracy"), and also against "economism" as a trend in socialist politics. "economism" is kind of like the early 20th century version of "Slopulism", referring to political programs focused more on winning treats for the working class rather than building a truly Marxist movement with revolutionary potential.

Groundwork also provides a reading list. They preempt it by saying

>"This collection is aimed at giving a new Groundwork member an understanding of how Marx analyzed contemporary political situations and how later thinkers like Lenin, Gramsci, Camejo, Poluntazas, and Hall oriented.... Essential works such as Capital are not included on the assumption that they would be part of regular, rather than caucus, DSA political education."

The first four books on the list are:

One of the two DSA NPC Co-Chairs, Ashik Siddique, is a member of Groundwork

Bread & Roses (B&R)

Bread & Roses is the prototypical DSA-Center Caucus. Word on the street is that Zohran once referred to himself as "The bastard child" of B&R and SMC. Just like Groundwork, B&R is very upfront. The first sentence of their landing page is

>"Bread & Roses is a national caucus of Marxist organizers in the Democratic Socialists of America."

shrimple as

Their platform describes a very classical Marxist conception of class conflict, and they say outright that their goal is to intensify it in order to force capitalists out of power

>"We need to bring people into open conflict with capitalists and their politicians around immediate grievances, while making connections between each specific issue and the underlying problem: capitalism."

Their reading list includes hit classics like:

Springs of Revolution (SoR)

This is the one major Caucus I will not make the case for, simply because SoR is organized primarily around anti-Zionism, and like that's basically it. There is little else to say about any shared ideology they may or may not have

Marxist Unity Group (MUG)

Should I even bother? MUG has Marxist in the name. I won't fish for evidence where it clearly isn't needed but we can talk about their specific ideology. Members of MUG tend to identify the Caucus as Neo-Kautskyite. tl;dr Neo-Kautskyism is basically just a niche and very nerdy version of Leninism.

"Kautskyism" refers to the thought of Karl Kautsky. The immediate sort of "successor" to Marx & Engels. He is often thought of as the prototypical "Orthodox Marxist" which is a current based primarily on adherence to Dialectical & Historical Materialism as a sort of methodology for a science of political economy. Leninism is traditionally understood as a revolutionist break from Orthodoxy, but Neo-Kautskyists turn this on its head, insisting that Lenin continued the Orthodoxy while Orthodox Marxists like Kautsky gradually became "reformists" and "opportunists". If you are really interested, Cosmonaut Magazine's YouTube channel has a reading of the book that sparked the Neo-Kautskyist micro-movement. Cosmonaut is an independent publication for internal leftist theory discourse, very closely tied to MUG. This reading is performed by Cliff Connoly, a current NPC member representing MUG.

MUG is very big on things like Democratic Centralism and the Min-Max program. All that stuff you heard about like "The DSA wants to abolish the Senate!" comes from MUGs Minimum Program, the Maximum program being (from their Points of Unity):

"The maximum program refers to the results of this process: a world free of the market, borders, classes, and all other oppressive structures that exist under capitalism—in a word, communism."

Red Star

Again, Red Star is very obvious. This is the one some of your guests keep referring to as "The actually socialist" Caucus. Which as I have very clearly shown is silly, because they are ALL "actually socialist", and in fact communist.

What does make Red Star unique is that they are the only major Caucus specifically identifying as Marxist-Leninist, as per their first point of unity.

>"Red Star is a Marxist-Leninist caucus in DSA. Our primary goal, the goal which informs all of our organizing work, is to abolish capitalism and, ultimately, to achieve communism. We do not believe that capitalism can be reformed into socialism – it must be overthrown and replaced."

Marxism-Leninism is generally understood as more than just Marxism + Leninism. It is understood as a particular interpretation of both Marx & Lenin popularized by Joseph Stalin. It also tends to come with some of Stalin's own theoretical contributions, which many would describe as "Nationalistic" or "Paranoid" or "Self-Justifying". And many would say it takes Dialectical Materialism as a methodology for analyzing society and turns it into a religious dogmatic quasi-logic that can prove/justify anything and nothing at the same time. Self-Avowed MLs are also generally "campist" and will ride for any regime with a hammer and sickle on their flag.

Supporting this interpretation of Red Star, we can see that their educational podcast series Red Start features readings on Josef Stalin and other more spooky-scary communist figures who have not appeared on any of the other reading lists, such as:

One of the two DSA NPC Co-Chairs, Megan Romer, is a member of Red Star.

Reform & Revolution (R&R)

I am sleepy. R&R is a self-avowed Trotskyist Caucus. They say so in their Points of Unity.

>"Our strategy emerges from the lessons of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, in which the working class seized state power and used it to transform society in its own interests and the interests of humanity. Our caucus continues to build upon that tradition and its subsequent development through the Left Opposition and Trotskyism."

Trotskyism is another type of Leninism. It differs in that it places greater emphasis on robust democratic structures and on "permanent revolution" which is just this idea that in order to achieve communism you have to support and foment revolution in foreign countries all over the world. It's like reverse imperialism. And of course, Trotsky is most famous for being the USSR's biggest hater. like reverse campists.

Libertarian Socialist Caucus (LSC)

They are obviously anarchists. anarcho-communists even. I don't know what else to say. They call for a stateless society in their Points of Unity, and they say DSA's political reforms should be anti-state reforms. Whatever. I don't find anarchists interesting.

u/kayamari — 23 hours ago