What Is DSA?
You may have some particularly active friends who continue to write about America’s Democratic Socialists. You may have noticed more and more people on your Twitter feed with the rose emoji in their profile name, or you may have noticed protesters with DSA signage opposing white supremacist rallies in recent weeks. With a new organization appearing in the news every week (and this nonsensical jargon like “alternative left” is used ), it is more important than ever to distinguish the bad guys from the good guys and the sick from the sane. So to this effort: what is DSA? Here’s a quick course.
DSA is a socialist organization.
It was formed in 1982 by the merger (rarely in politics) of two socialist movements, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM), in part as a reaction to an ominous, assertive shift to the right in politics – to Margaret Thatcher. Ronald Reagan, deregulation and trickle down economies.
The DSOC and NAM themselves were also formed in response to the drift towards neoliberalism that has gripped the Democratic Party as a whole. DSOC split from the Socialist Party of America during the 1972 convention, and the NAM was formed following the breakup of Students for a Democratic Society to build a cohesive left-wing organization that crossed racial, class, and gender boundaries. Following the founding of DSA, writers and activists Michael Harrington and Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickel and Diemed ) were elected co-chairs of the organization.
The DSA is also growing in 2017, and growing rapidly: they recently held their biennial convention in Chicago and reached their highest membership ever, with over 27,000 official members, four times the number of last year , making them the third largest socialist organization in US history. There are branches in almost every state.
What does “democratic socialism” mean?
In some quarters, the term “socialism” has become almost derogatory. This is the term that your crazy right uncle describes, for example, anyone who supports universal health care. This is Stalin or the cause of the chaos in Venezuela. “The right has convinced the majority of the population that strong trade unions and overstretched government support were the causes of economic stagnation,” writes Joseph M. Schwartz in his History of America’s Democratic Socialists.
By adding this little D word before it, democratic socialism tries to distance itself from these negative connotations. Socialist Democrats see capitalism as a problem, but are pushing for more realistic incremental change, as a major overhaul of our entire economic system is unlikely to be in the near future. They imply a social order based on some form of public ownership of public resources, as well as on full racial and gender equality. They spend a lot of time discussing and planning exactly how this transformation should take place.
No, this is not the same as communism
Democratic socialists opposed to capitalism see communism (or at least its authoritarian examples) as an equally unfortunate alternative. Writer and activist Michael Harrington, one of the founders and main thinkers of the DSA, briefly explained this in 1988 at a fundraiser for The Next America Foundation to fight poverty: “Democratic socialists envision a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, fair distribution, feminism and racial equality. ” And Donald F. Buskey defined it as such in Democratic Socialism: A Global Overview : Democratic Socialism is a wing of the socialist movement that combines a belief in a social economy with a belief in political democracy. In practice, modern communism is considered extremely undemocratic and totalitarian. “Democratic socialists want to emphasize with their name that they strongly disagree with the Marxist-Leninist variety of socialism,” explains Buski.
However, you will likely hear DSA members use terms such as “late capitalism.” Once used by Marx, this phrase has become a symbol of our current socio-economic climate, in which everything, including art, has become a commodity and a commodity. It also means extreme income inequality. That’s the term you use to describe a $ 18 glass of wine or a studio in Dogpatch, San Francisco that sold for $ 1.5 million.
What platform does DSA have?
Let’s put it this way: if there is a spectrum, Betsy DeVos is at the opposite end. The first sentence of the DSA Constitution summarizes this: “We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, enormous inequalities in wealth and power, discrimination based on race and gender, and brutality and violence in defense of human rights. status quo. “
Essentially, the DSA is opposed to neoliberalism (privatization, deregulation, free trade) and capitalism and our dedication to it as the answer to all questions. Countering austerity, labor solidarity, reducing the influence of money in politics, empowering ordinary people in the workplace and in the economy, restructuring gender and cultural relations towards fairer ones are all flags on the SDA agenda.
Currently, after Trump, the DSA is focusing on state-level candidates and initiatives. For example, DSA considers the election of DSA member Khalid Kamau to the South Fulton, Georgia City Council, a recent success. They backed him and he is one of the first Black Lives Matter organizers to be elected to government positions in the country. Future DSA-backed candidates include John Grant, who is running for Seattle City Council in November, and two Brooklyn City Council candidates, Lutheran Pastor Rev. Hader El-Yatim and Jabari Brisport. “I was part of several activist organizations and the DSA was the best in local battles,” Brisport told The Gothamist .
But they have an international agenda. At a recent convention, the organization voted to withdraw from the Socialist International (a collective of international socialist organizations) to support the boycott, alienation and sanctions movement against Israel.
What is their target demographic?
At the recent convention, according to various sources, the crowd was predominantly under the age of 35 . Not only were the crowd young, many of the newly elected delegates had been members for less than 6 months. “There are plenty of young, scruffy and often bearded men who fit the Bernie Bro stereotype,” Slate author Osita Nwanevu said. “But according to DSA figures for delegates present, 40 percent of the public in Chicago are women and 20 percent are colored.”
In the recent past, DSA has experienced growth during the Great Recession (and the Occupy Wall Street movement that followed), and interest in the organization has certainly surged since the election of Donald Trump. Many members also acknowledge the organization’s recent growth as a result of Bernie Sanders’ populist campaign. However, one of the convention attendees (who chose to remain anonymous) noted that while quite a few of Bernie’s T-shirts and mementos were adorned with some of the delegates at this month’s convention, there is almost nothing about him or his possible 2020 campaign from the stage or in conversation. said. …
At the same time, there is a clear connection between the candidate and democratic socialist ideas. The DSA is clearly not affiliated with Bernie, but they did support him strongly and see his successful presidential campaign as a sign of their widespread support. As for Sanders, during the Democratic presidential debate (for how long it seems) he defended the movement and has joined the DSA in the past. For example, Bernie turned to the movement in 1991 .
The movement strives to be democracy, warts and everything else.
The Socialist Democrats are trying to keep order. The convention followed theDSA Guidelines for Respectful Discussion . Most DSA members strive to remain pragmatic and realistic, not anarchist, and believe in the ability to work for privileged Democrats, while of course opposing most Republicans.
The basic structure of the DSA can be found on their website: “The main political leadership of the DSA is the National Political Committee (NPC), a sixteen-member body that functions as the DSA’s board of directors and is elected every two years by delegates. to the DSA National Convention. Each branch of DSA has the right to send a certain number of delegates to the National Convention, depending on the size of the branch. There are also delegates “at large” who represent regions where there are no active branches. “
But, as with all democracies, it is not easy. At the convention, according to one participant who chose to remain anonymous, the contingent tried to pass a resolution that would prohibit the DSA from supporting or working with any organization that accepts corporate donations for elections. It was then stated that this would include …. Planned paternity. Ouch.
DSA is not a political party (yet)
While the DSA has backed Democratic candidates in elections such as Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders, DSA members tend to keep a fierce and ideological distance from the political establishment and mainstream Democrats. (For example, they don’t really like Hillary). They also continued to criticize these politicians, even after offering support – when Obama showed leniency on Wall Street after a big bailout in 2008, the DSA took note. “Simply put, if it’s too big to fail, it’s too big to be in private hands,” wrote Frank Llewellyn and Joseph Schwartz (DDSA National Director and Chairman of the DSA Steering Committee) in the 2009 Chicago Tribune . “If the government only nationalized one of the insolvent banks (Citicorp or Bank of America), the state bank could provide a real test of the behavior of others.”
And two years ago, at a previous convention, some DSA members called on Bernie to run as an independent and have since considered him the neoliberal demser’s shepherd.
Ultimately, the DSA is a large tent organization encompassing a wide range of views, and the main ideological divisions mainly arise between members who believe in working with the Democratic Party and those who completely dislike the Democratic Party and do not think it can. help achieve goals. socialist goals. This means that there are many different voices, and along with members who believe in working with Democrats, there are anarchists and others who want to destroy the system. For example, according to their website, the DSA’s ” libertarian socialist assembly ” includes “syndicalists, communists, anarchists, cooperativists, and municipalists, among many others.” They believe that the road to socialism will not go through the efforts of a political party, “but rather through the creation of independent institutions in civil society that give the working class and ordinary people direct control over their lives.”
And, as discussed above, there are contingents in the DSA that don’t even consider becoming a political party a worthwhile goal. But that doesn’t mean they generally want anarchy. It’s more about thinking outside the box. DSA seeks solutions that go beyond electoral politics alone, which means they engage in many forms of political activity besides campaigning. However, after decades of observing the impact of income inequality, racism, and the rise in popularity of the $ 12 avocado toast, DSAs are not naive – they know they need to implement change slowly, locally.