r/dsa • u/traanquil • 1d ago
Discussion DSA Should Defend Our Program: Red Star Statement on Workers Deserve More
https://redstarcaucus.org/dsa-should-defend-our-program/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAdGRleAUC3pBwZG9mAmZkaWQWUNj0WX2UUqEeq1-Rr9jpc4LZTvxXN2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDzEyNDAyNDU3NDI4NzQxNAABp2gBHiMfprkXtVxpZFW-BLonoFrekC1viZTzmeo8Nm51o7YWgchhMN3W9aZX_aem_9Zr-WssYovzIY59TFZF2qA7
u/GB10031 1d ago
It seems that the electoral side of DSA are basically just liberal Democrats with extra steps, while the Red Star side of DSA seem to actually be serious about fighting for their vision of a socialist America.
That seems like a pretty big difference between two groups of people in the same organization.
Also, if Red Star are serious about fighting for DSA's program, is it really possible to do that while being what amounts to a caucus within the oldest pro capitalist political party in the world?
Red Star wants to abolish the police, meanwhile Mayor Mamdani is the commander-in-chief of the largest municipal police department in the United States.
That's a pretty big gap
Maybe its time to follow in Eugene Debs' footsteps and become an actual socialist party that's 100% independent of the two parties of Wall Street?
There are 39 congressional districts in the US where the Democrats run unopposed. There's another 60 districts where the Republicans only run token candidates who always lose by at least three to one.
Why not run open socialist candidates, on a socialist ballot line, in those 99 districts?
•
u/traanquil 23h ago
Absolutely, anyone who is an actual socialist has to organize to keep DSA socialist. There are a lot of forces out there trying to turn it into a liberal organization. 100% agree we need our own party.
•
u/_b3rtooo_ 23h ago
Engaging in the local politics is a good way to bypass whatever right-wing skew the national politics has. Your city council seats probably only have 600 votes total last cycle. Let's organize locally with our chapters and sneak in our socialists
•
u/Bright-Insect9697 22h ago
Those forces being anyone who wants to achieve anything at all!
•
u/traanquil 21h ago
you want DSA to be a liberal org?
•
u/Bright-Insect9697 21h ago
Liberalism and Socialism can only be exist alongside each other. Both are doomed on their own.
•
u/traanquil 20h ago
liberalism is capitalism, so no
•
u/Bright-Insect9697 20h ago
Look man, you can keep fetishizing your dead ideologies that have never achieved anything beyond creating capitalism again, and killing millions of leftists, or you can realize that Socialism that doesn’t include democracy and political autonomy isn’t going anywhere.
•
u/traanquil 20h ago
what dead ideology are you talking about?
•
u/Bright-Insect9697 20h ago
Authoritarian socialism
•
u/traanquil 20h ago
Socialism is by definition democratic
Liberalism is a capitalist ideology
→ More replies (0)•
u/Longjumping_Future92 20h ago
Democracy and political autonomy are not exclusive to liberalism, nor are they its only defining characteristics.
•
u/Ellie-Bright 3h ago
Liberalism is mutually exclusive to socialism. This makes no sense.
•
u/Bright-Insect9697 2h ago
Wrong!
•
u/Ellie-Bright 2h ago
No not "wrong!". What are you even basing this on? Vibes?
•
u/Bright-Insect9697 2h ago
Yes, wrong!
•
u/Ellie-Bright 1h ago
You just like the negative attention being antagonistic brings you lol. Whatever. I fell for it.
→ More replies (0)•
u/crunrun 20h ago
I don't get it. It's 'democratic' socialism. As soon as it gets democratic and you have a disagreement with other members you're out? Sounds like you're the one that doesn't agree with the platform.
•
u/Longjumping_Future92 19h ago
"This is not to say that our program is perfect, nor that we have solved the problem of how we translate these principles into a unified strategy for political action. But as we apply our program in the day-to-day of our organizing, instead of retreating from it, we will learn how best to further our politics and achieve the liberation of the working class alongside each other. When we refuse to defend and execute upon the program we have passed, we make this process of scientific socialism impossible – all in order to placate people who would never support it in the first place."
This isn't about purging members or silencing criticism - it's calling for people to rally behind, and defend, the product of democratic decision-making rather than attempting to defang ourselves for the comfort of our political adversaries.
•
u/crunrun 19h ago
By that logic then you shouldn't support Mamdani or AOC's strategy of placating to their constituency to secure populism by abandoning parts of the socialist program. And I think that's a major misstep, they've actually unearthed the key to fixing socialism's popularity problem, by looking at their constituency and asking 'how far can I push my platform left without upsetting the constituency too much and still make socialism look good' by enacting populist socialist policies that are practical within a capitalist system. They're making the difference in changing minds that way, and I think we're already seeing people being more accepting of the word socialism because of it. In my chapter we discussed how can we most practically make the US government/economy socialist? This is the way, show people it's not bad or scary but very logical and humane. The 50 year plan stuff (abolish prisons/abolish police) is too out there for most people to understand now, but in 10 years?
•
u/Longjumping_Future92 19h ago
And I think that's a major misstep, they've actually unearthed the key to fixing socialism's popularity problem, by looking at their constituency and asking 'how far can I push my platform left without upsetting the constituency too much and still make socialism look good' by enacting populist socialist policies that are practical within a capitalist system.
This isn't a new strategy they've "unearthed." It's been the main course of action for every single left-of-center party in the Imperial Core. "Socialist" reforms within the capitalist system are impossible. You can ameliorate the suffering of people, and in fact such reformist struggles are essential for the incubation of class consciousness amongst the working class.
However, if you're talking about tailism - that is by only supporting policies after they have gained popular support - then we will be constantly retreating from the goal: the seizure of power and the replacing of the capitalist mode of production with the socialist one. Eventually, we will be exactly where we have been for decades: a cynical electorate that views the socialist movement as nothing more than another defender of the "establishment" which they innately know is screwing them.
how can we most practically make the US government/economy socialist?
We can't. The US State is based on a capitalist mode of production. It will be forever capitalist. The only way to create a socialist government will be to replace the capitalist mode of production. If we don't do that, we will have abandoned the socialist struggle. We will become merely another release valve for capitalism, only lessening the oppression of the workers to such an extent to keep them productive, and not an inch more.
Again, that "reform for reform's sake" mindset is what got us here in the first place.
The 50 year plan stuff (abolish prisons/abolish police) is too out there for most people to understand now, but in 10 years?
Then it is our job to educate them, to agitate, and to show why such policies are necessary for liberation. If we retreat from these positions, and disavow them as "too extreme," then how on Earth do we come back in 10 years and say "circumstances have changed" without confusing people or causing them to become suspicious of our motives or workings.
•
u/Ellie-Bright 3h ago
We've been doing this forever and it goes nowhere. It's a dead end and we have the historical evidence to show it.
Socialism isn't "policies", it's a mode of production where the commodity form is eliminated and workers collectively run the state and means of production to meet needs rather than for market demand driven allocation of resources and produced commodities, while the proletariat state protects the interests of the workers by removing remnants of capitalism and keeping it from returning.
It's a transitional state between capitalism and a communist society, which should be the end goal of any socialist.
•
u/Bright-Insect9697 22h ago
Literally every other socialist party has tried what you’re suggesting and it’s stupid, never worked.
If leftists can’t even engage honestly with the world as it exists, how do you expect to change it for the better?
•
u/wade3690 23h ago
Do you think it's currently possible to run that many candidates across the country? Especially when a decent swath of people in DSA don't even subscribe to electoral politics? I think we're forgetting that we're only a decade into our resurgence. Building power takes time. Eventually I can definitely see us forming a party but its not feasible right now.
•
u/RedditsDeadlySin DSA 10h ago
I mean just compare our movement to the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party. It’s our first year on electoral attack, we have double the candidates they had and our policies have majority support. If we keep up the pressure and just making the Dems become us. The Dems have a 30% approval, even in the field with the Fascists lol. I think this is going to be the next few years where decades happen.
•
u/wade3690 10h ago
Hope so! Alot of DSA members are going to have to get on board with electoral politics (even with their limitations)
•
u/RedBait95 1h ago
Elected members don't want to be in DSA unless it benefits them for an election
DSA adjacent people are straight up disavowing association with even nominally socialist influencers
Every time one of these people get on camera they scream loudly how much they love capitalism (totally 4D chess guys not just opportunists)
This association may have socialist or even communist members but they ain't the ones controlling the narrative right now and it's pretty embarrassing for a "socialist party" to have members that don't want to be called socialist.
•
u/HalfOk8561 23h ago edited 18h ago
what you (red star) folks prescribe here is what fundamentalists and cults do. That’s a no from me.
•
u/traanquil 22h ago
?
•
u/HalfOk8561 10h ago
Have you ever seen the ultras react to a mild criticism of the ML cochair megan romer on the DSA forums?
Very culty.
Not surprised red star wants to defend that monstrosity of a platform.
•
u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS ML + syndicalism + corporatism 23h ago edited 22h ago
edit tl;dr: You say fundamentalist or cult-like, we call it being honest and having integrity (big reasons as to why the democratic party has been unpopular to much of the public the past few years).
Isn't that kinda ignoring how the labor movement died in the US though?
In the same way that sure, yes, ML analysis might have some short-comings that require a more recent review on what has worked/hasn't worked, reformism and electoralists in the DSA should probably also understand why the social democratic reforms we had under the New Deal ended up failing, and the blame isn't 100% on the right. In the same way that IMO the USSR "failed" in some sense because it no longer exists as a state, the moderate/reformist approach towards a pro-worker society in the US has also "failed".
That history also has significant failures on the part of US labor and unions. Most American workers and unions weren't all that radical a century ago, or socialists for that matter, and many were content with the reforms the New Deal brought and decided that was the end of their struggle (also encouraged by rightwing/opposition shitfuckery, sure).
One big example of this is the AFL-CIO merger in the 1950s that radically changed the trajectory of some of the biggest labor organizations in US history at the time into a lame duck institution for the decades to come--which, mind you, was also because they actively kicked out socialists, communists, anarchists, and the left-leaning unions and members from the AFL-CIO. And from then on these powerful pro-worker organizations went from making demands of capitalists and the state, to begging for crumbs and then after 1970 begging to keep its crumbs in the wake of austerity and anti-labor policy.
ML's approach towards power very clearly deals with this issue though, and I've yet to hear a good approach from the rightwing DSA / reformists / social democrats when it comes to dealing with the fact that workers are human too (meaning folks are susceptible to taking the easy option), and most folks don't want to rock the boat yet they also want to get the most benefits from the boat being rocked. Not rocking the boat and playing the nice and clean electoral route is why we're here starting from scratch instead of taking off where the left was in the middle of the FDR administration.
Not saying that you need to be an ML for this approach--anarchists and other pro-state socialists have their own methods--but acting like being stubborn about our values is "cult-like" means that you're going to have a wishy-washy movement that will fold easily and not achieve anything. Worse, you might put off other moderates who think this is the true extent of what we can do against capitalism after whatever half-measures you end up pushing end up failing.
There's a lot to be learned about the pre-USSR period of Russia here, too, where the liberals and Tsarists figured it would be better to collaborate with each other, carry out bad half-measure reforms to appease the public, and then act surprised when the stubborn communists whose message never really changed over the years has the public support over the Tsarists and the liberals.
•
u/oraclebill 22h ago
The USSR didn’t “fail” because it’s no longer a state - it’s no longer a state because it failed. That’s an important distinction, and it’s important to understand that it didn’t just fail economically, it failed to provide the kind of material conditions for its citizens that we all want - equitable distribution of wealth, freedom of expression and democratic governance for example.
•
u/coldhamsandwiches 21h ago
People don't start trying to tare away from successful nations. I don't understand how so many misread the end of the USSR
•
u/Syndicalist_Vegan 11h ago
Yes they do. The Americans revolted against the british; the most powerful and successful empire of its era.
Look up the concept of a color revolution. Not all revolutions are equal. Not all are based on actual causes.
•
u/Syndicalist_Vegan 11h ago edited 7h ago
This is american propaganda. Life in the soviet union was objectively better then life in post ussr russia, and the quality of life jumped astronomically in the ussr compared to its imperialist russia origin. The ussr had equal rights for minorities and women before the west, they had nationalized education and healthcare, objectively, life got better under soviet rule.
The ussr collapsed because the economic pressures of the surrounding world destabilized it, it over invested in its military to keep up with the us, and many of its portions fell victim to color revolutions. The ussr did not fail in a vacuum, to say so is to dismiss its mountains of success.
•
u/Mx_Madds_Green 5h ago
Having standards doesn’t make you a cult. It’s just keeping our mission on track. We should show a united front but that united front needs to be consistent.
As far as Megan Romer, I think people were way too hard on her, saying she needs media training when she clearly has media training etc etc. I think she comes off confident, doesn’t make gaffes and tries to explain as much as the interviewers will allow her to.
Solidarity and giving criticism constructively are not cult tactics and I think that’s all Red Star and other DSA members are calling for,
•
u/Ellie-Bright 2h ago
Explain how it's fundamentalist and cult like.
•
u/HalfOk8561 2h ago
•
u/Ellie-Bright 1h ago
Explain what you mean, I'm not going to try to mind read your thought process by looking at a thread that doesn't have an explanation for what you mean either
•
u/RedditsDeadlySin DSA 10h ago
I mean tell me if I am wrong, but we do defend our more left brothers and sisters. We all agree that capitalism facilitates exploitation of the working class. We can be a large socialist tent, everyone a part of the org is critical to capitalism in my experience.
What’s really happening is anti-electoral leftists being mad at politicians using politician speak, and not outright condoning and supporting their actions.
It’s kind of boring. Just have solidarity and contribute to coalition building.