The Importance of the Democratic Socialists of America (‘DSA’)

I’m no spokesperson. In fact, I doubt there are as many as a dozen DSA members that agree with me on the fundamental questions, even among the old-timers. (If you’re out there, pull my coat!) The prevailing misconception is that there is an important difference between social-democracy and democratic socialism. There is not.

The need for a distinction is more emotional than rational. Nobody wants to be associated with the ‘social democrat’ label. It reminds people of the old “Social-Democrats USA,” that anti-Communist Cold War relic, supporter of the Vietnam War, and auxiliary of the AFL-CIO in its worst years. But those dudes are all dead or gone, so ‘social-democrat’ should be inoffensive. The other emotional need is for a radical departure from old-time liberalism, but that liberalism has given us great things as well as awful ones: Social Security along with the Bay of Pigs.

The conceptual distinction between social-democrat and democratic socialist is also murky. Fans of the latter like to speak of workers control, but models for such control vary. Some would have each plant or facility run by its employees. More onsite democracy could not be bad, but it pales besides our greater needs, and it begs the question of economic planning. It is not enough upon which to base an entire ideology. Most of the other objectives of ‘democratic socialists’ can be achieved alongside regulated privately-owned firms operating in markets under an expansive welfare state.

The old-timers mentioned above are the people who came out of the student movement of the 1960s and gathered towards democratic socialism at the end of the 1970s, many inspired by Michael Harrington, culminating in the formation of the organization in 1982. Though I’m now an old-timer, I was not one, coming from an immature Marxist-Leninist perspective. I actively disliked Harrington as a ‘State Department socialist.’ I still reject his thought, but now I think I have better reasons. I wouldn’t fault his intentions.

Back then, the label ‘democratic socialist’ sounded defensive, an effort to proclaim one was not one of those obnoxious communists. Now there are no obnoxious communists of any consequence from which to distinguish oneself, so there is nothing wrong with emphasizing the democratic aspect of socialism, and there is nothing wrong with the label of ‘democratic socialism.’

I’m provoked by a back and forth in The American Prospect by Harold Meyerson and David Duhalde. Meyerson is a tireless socialist journalist, Duhalde is an active leader in DSA. Both are acquaintances.

Meyerson asks why DSA only has 120,000 members, when in the U.S. it ought to have many more. He ascribes this to an insular ‘cocoon culture’ that pays inadequate attention to what non-members think. That to me is just the beginning of an explanation. A good question is why other groups without that burden are not properly enormous.’

What else is out there? There are basically a handful of outfits. One is “Our Revolution,” set up and since abandoned by Bernie Sanders. In my neck of the woods, it doesn’t do anything; once in a while there is a meeting. It has an allied Facebook group which is basically one lady. Then there is Justice Democrats, which has done a fabulous job helping to elect progressives, but it does not seem to be a membership organization that meets; it is mostly a donor list.

Finally there is the Working Families Party (WFP), which plays a big role in states, especially New York, where ‘fusion’ voting is legal. (Fusion means a party with sufficient support can run candidates from either of the two major parties on its own separate ballot line, effectively signalling the extent of support for its agenda.) Where fusion ballots are illegal, there is not much rationale for the WFP.

I’ve also investigated Progressive Democrats of America, started years ago by Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean, but there isn’t much there. I should also mention Indivisible, very active in my county, but it is not built to run its own candidates.

None of these organizations stand explicitly for socialism. I think that’s important.

Duhalde offers a sociological explanation, suggests DSA is a little choosey about whom it welcomes as an official member, and claims its ideas are much more popular than indicated by its surging membership rolls. I would agree with the last bit.

“Cocoon culture” has pros and cons. The pro is that it offers a cozy place in which people can commune. The con is that its insularity simultaneously attracts and repels. The repel side is stronger and tends to be associated with a few of DSA’s outlandish positions.

I do not believe DSA’s off-kilter stances, such as abolishing prisons, are what limits its popularity. The MAGA movement is replete with absurd views yet it still commands the allegiance of at least 25 percent of the population. If the Left ever won those folks, many would still have batty ideas, if new and different ones. God help us.

In U.S. politics, cocooning on the left is faced with a vast and complex network of traditions with which to grapple. A compelling one is founded on what I would call basically fallacious logic:

1. Our problems are vast, horrible, and demand a radical response.

2. That radical response is respect for persons of all faiths, ethnicities, genders, gender-identities, and philosophies, plus immediate socialization of the economy.

The fallacy is that even if #1 is true (I would say it is), that does not mean #2 is possible in the foreseeable future. A favorite line from the distant past was the response to the urge to “make a revolution.” Nobody “makes” a revolution. It’s a rare event.

The proper ‘radical’ response begs the question of how to operate. In a democracy, there is still public opinion to consider on the respect point (I say ‘consider,’ not indulge, but here is me on the ‘woke’ thing), and on the latter there are practical considerations as well.

In left politics of any sort, there will always be people who gravitate to a stance they understand as Marxist-Leninist. Now Marx is a monumental figure in world intellectual history. Lenin was no slouch as a thinker, but his intellectual legacy has been squeezed into his leadership in a unique historical time and place, never to be duplicated since. Bolshevism and the Bolshevik revolution, whatever their unfortunate subsequent evolution, was a one-off and no guide to future politics anywhere.

Nevertheless, it is inevitable that some will seize upon Lenin’s legacy and blunder into trying to apply it to utterly different circumstances, such as the contemporary U.S. Groups will form on this basis, and when they see larger groups with less-rigid doctrines, they will naturally try to infiltrate and colonize them, with a view towards taking them over eventually. This is not a moral judgement. It’s what I would do! You could say it’s what I’m doing myself, in my own tiny way. The bigger the general trend to the left, the more of these sorts of developments will proceed. It’s as natural as April showers bringing May flowers.

The problem in DSA is that naive, aspiring Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries have wedged themselves into leadership positions. When the aspiring Leninists in DSA open their mouths, they certainly do no good. But from where I sit, it looks like they have decided to ride DSA’s growth and try to make their move for political dominance later. Milk the cow after it fattens up.

A big membership means lots more dues paid in and the chance to employ their own cronies. The pressure for a separate party I think is being held in check. How they think their ascendance inside the organization could happen is probably as incoherent as their basic political outlook.

So we have DSA proper, beset with a crew that is wired into the leadershp and has the power to broadcast silly thoughts, and a surge to the left in the U.S. by progressives more generally, punctuated by dramatic electoral victories, visible to anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave. The elections take actual U.S. socialism two steps forward, the pronunciamentos of certain DSA leaders take it back a half-step or two.

Whatever the inadequacies of the DSA platform, its ‘brand’ of “democratic socialism” is important because it upholds two key principles, one of which is exclusive to DSA. The one it shares with progressives more generally is advocacy of an ample, peaceable welfare state. DSA is more serious about this than most, whereas others are held back by spurious concerns about the public debt or, in foreign policy, the boogie-man of the month. The more novel one which is worth elevating, though of course the specifics matter, is for socialization of the economy, in old-time parlance “nationalization of the means of production.”

For me, the priority is not immediate, full-spectrum “nationalization,” but to attack specific sectors of the sacred market. I would start with health care. Contrary to naive revolutionism, if it happens at all it will come in pieces, not all at once. Some areas are not worth the trouble. I don’t want to see the U.S. Congress running Nvidia, but I would like to see ‘Meta’ (Facebook) cut down to size. (My friend Dean Baker thinks that technically, it could be done easily.)

I do not think the Right’s attempt to stop DSA with ‘red-baiting’ will work. It could even impress people that DSA is serious about Change, unlike the two major parties’ establishments. Whatever you think of “Medicare For All,” it signals more determination than efforts to tinker with ObamaCare. People may think Bernie is unrealistic, but they know he is for real. At some point, whatever the difficulties in implementation, “Medicare For All” could become a new litmus test. DSA electoral triumphs demonstrate the sort of language a socialist needs to use to advance in politics. Whether anybody is an actual member becomes a secondary consideration. Any candidate worth their salt accused of being subservient to DSA ideologues will be able to brush that off.

DSA imposes little in the way of discipline on its members. There is some bitching when an elected member is viewed by the less-grounded as failing to measure up. In my view, the most radical components, Marxist-Leninist or otherwise, are too smart to fall for that. They saw what happened with the Jamaal Bowman debacle.

A juicier question, in light of the large number of African-American socialists, is why don’t we see more of them in the membership and leadership of DSA? The door to them is wide open. Perhaps the electoral victories of progressive African-Americans, such as the incoming mayor of Washington, D.C., an actual DSA member, will bring real diversity to the organization.

A point made by the Combahee River Collective (which included Bill DiBlasio’s wife, LOL), decades ago, was that the most oppressed, how I would classify the African-American section of the working class, and especially its LGBTQI component, are logically the most fit to lead the Movement.