DSA being coopted by the Dems is the main reason I looked to alternatives and found the PSL. Maybe they can work together more if the DSA is ready to break from them completely and i can look at them again. They do have way more members it seems.
Internally active DSA membership ranges from communist to anarchist, but there is still a small faction of entrenched Social Democrats in the “Socialist Majority Caucus”. But everyone hates them. Who knows about paper members. Discussion on the national forum ranges from “how can we explicitly break from the democrats”, to “why are we bothering with electoral politics?”
The current plan is to run “Tribune of the Plebs” style candidates wherever we can until we build enough infrastructure to run our own party. IE building replacements ActBlue and NGP Van. The latter being the hardest. Please keep that in mind when you talk about needing a workers party and who’s actually trying to make that happen.
Please keep that in mind when you talk about needing a workers party and who’s actually trying to make that happen.
Are you saying the PSL is not doing that?
They’re not trying to win any elections or hold any offices. Whatever workers party the DSA is trying to build is. The PSLs concept of a workers party is a militant movement primarily engaged in direct action. This is something I’ve heard from an actual PSL member on this site, any others are free to clarify, but as I understand their position is that electoralism is futile. Which I sympathize with and probably most actual DSA organizers do to. But you do the Mao thing and go to the people and they really want to vote socialist and see change.
Be sure to check out your local DSA chapter. It’s very decentralized and a given chapter can be totally fine or totally shit.
When DSA flanks CPUSA’s left side.
They’ve been doing it with relative consistency the last few years.
That response implies the naive, outdated assumption that the Democratic party is a civic organization that is governed by its members, rather than what it actually is: An organization that sells its “members” an aesthetic of moral high ground while doing what its real masters want, which is Capital.
Power is when you subordinate yourself to liberals.
Liberals who (according to themselves) have no power right now. True power is being the controlled opposition within the controlled opposition.
Yeah, power is when you lose the election by promising to be just like the last current president and being extremely unpopular. 😌
What power is there in being ignored by the Democratic Party?
If we don’t kiss the ass of the unpopular scumbags who smugly tell people that they should be grateful that their lives are turning to shit, we’ll never get popular with the masses!
You guys were cooperating with liberals?
I mean, who wouldn’t want to work with the party that keeps eating historical amounts of shit while betraying it’s voters? Madness!
honestly anyone who self describes as a leftist to do anything other than hide their communism in certain situations is p sus atp
like pick a political philosophy and stop vagueposting
like pick a political philosophy and stop vagueposting
my brain is mush and i can’t read books anymore. I’ll join whoever liberates me if i’m cursed to survive that long but ideology is idealism when praxis is impossible.
The “y’all” is infuriating for reasons that I can’t articulate, but that I’m sure others can empathize with.
I doubt they mean “Y’all” as a gender-neutral term or that they’re from the American south. They’re trying to appropriate AAVE to make themselves sound like they’re “down with the struggle.” Your brain subconsciously knows this when you see someone doing it. Digital blackface is extremely common among white liberals.
Y’all is often associated with more poor people in common American culture (at least this is how it is perceived in the southern US) so their idea might have been to “sound more working class”
generally if they bother to type the ’ I’d say it’s forced but who knows if it’s auto-correct. I’d say Brayden can fuck himself without risking insult to southern comrades.
It’s because the 2nd person plural of the proletariat is yinz
PREACH
I get it, because the alternative to engaging solely in the parliamentary struggle means actually putting yourself on the line. Because America will kill you for organizing, they’ve killed better for less.
So it’s easy to rest in the safety of “eh, we’ll get em next time and its not even our fault we didn’t win its actually a million other things and even better I get to blame the people on my general side”
OK Brayden
Two-line struggle!
DSA has nationally decided on the dirty break strategy regarding them Dems. It is an explicit goal of the DSA to form a workers party.
Why are you pretending some twitter poster speaks for the DSA when we have explicit evidence of the DSA breaking with the Dems.
This is frankly trot behavior.
They basically say this every convention and then do fuck all to further the goal. Even in this past year the “left wing” NPC was prepared to endorse AOC after everything and only unendorsed because of some fuckery that was almost certainly in violation of the bylaws.
I’ve always wanted the DSA to do well but the organization is thoroughly strangled by its opportunistic social democratic right wing. Even if they manage to reach a better stance on any issue from Palestine to domestic labor disputes actual agitation and organizing is sabotaged and will be until the left of the DSA either splits or purges the right.
I’ve always wanted the DSA to do well but the organization is thoroughly strangled by its opportunistic social democratic right wing.
Same. Frankly, I still firmly believe that this subgroup is infiltrated.
Socialist Majority Caucus is the remnants of the pre 2017 guard. Its likely they have feds but its also true that they are just libs.
I was actually thinking of Bread and Roses when I said that.
But I guess it could be said of both.
Really? From what I’ve gathered SMC is the old guard democratic loyalists and B&R are (at-worst) labor aristocrats. I got the vibe that they’re more loyal to their unions and are ensuring that DSA serves union interests more than anything else.
I’m mostly judging from their website though which otherwise seemed center of the road. Communist Caucus and Red Star impressed me the most of the caucus websites I audited.
B&R are definitely labor aristocrats but, in my experience, are also gatekeepers and redirect a lot of young revolutionary energy into pointless committees and discussions and proposals, and so on, until it just gets murdered in bureaucracy. And the ones I know talk a big game about unions but when it comes time to actually holding solidarity with them they basically tell the unions to go fuck themselves because they’re doing their own thing. It’s not a sexy tale of political intrigue. But it sounds and felt to me like how feds try to prevent an increasingly radicalizing segment of the population from thinking that socialist parties or socialism in general are worth pursuing.
Whether they are feds or just assholes doesn’t even matter, the effect is the same. They push everyone out in their attempt to hold onto power and then the people who leave are bitter about organizing or socialism in general. It’s really sad actually.
I was already radicalized and organizing before most of those idiots so it didn’t jade me generally but it hits people trying to get organized for the first time very differently. And I think that’s the point.
pointless committees and discussions and proposals, and so on, until it just gets murdered in bureaucracy
This honestly sounds like the white collar idea of organizing which, without theory, is defaulting to your own workplace. I kind of struggle with that as a developer but at least kanban boards prioritize doing actual work.
They basically say this every convention and then do fuck all to further the goal.
This is the correct take to be honest. DSA doesn’t have strict marching orders but that’s simultaneously why its so big and has any potential in the first place. Everything is vote with your feet and the vast majority of organizers lean anarchist/left-comm. They however dont have much reaso to participate in national discussions so labor interests win out.
DSA has nationally decided on the dirty break strategy regarding them Dems
do you have the inside track on this or something? i admit im not in contact with anyone from dsa anymore but i had been hearing rumors that national will finally stop being sheepdogs and do this for years starting when i first got involved in ydsa (and of course that never materialized), and frankly after national did jackshit to stop the liberal zionists infesting the org that pressured the palestine working group into leaving, after that whole fiasco i give 0 benefit of the doubt to national.
I lurk the national forums and engage in my local chapter. The dirty break strategy has been declared at the convention repeatedly.
From what I gathered, the backlash from the PSWG leaving really scared all the remaining Zionists off. It was made clear that basically all of the general membership was pro palestine. It didn’t bring back the comrades we lost but solidarity with Palestine is now as solid as can be. National did not endorse AOC over it.
It’s trot to make fun of the DSA now?
The trots at WSWS do this regularly, when they’re not calling other socialists Stalinists or defending Harvey Weinstein.
The worst was SAlt who - in their announcement that they were attempting entryism to the DSA - said we had a “ban on Marxists” which wasn’t enforced. The fucking gall to say you’re coming at us in good faith and then not even bother to read our by-laws was absolutely elevating.
Slandering other socialists orgs when they are explicitly doing the thing you’re calling on them to do is 100% trot behavior.
How is it anti-socialist slander to make fun of the section of DSA that doesn’t want to break with the Democratic Party?
Anyway, I’m happy to hear national DSA is finally moving away from the Dems but, in my years of interacting with DSA, most people I met were libs like Brayden. Most joined or got started with ‘radical politics’ through the Democratic Party via Bernie. I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking the same, maybe this has changed within DSA since Kamala’s abysmal failure and recognizing that Bernie will never win and if he did he would just be a Zionist ghoul anyway. Of course, there were always some Communists and anarchists in the DSA but they didn’t have institutional power. So, if DSA is changing, that’s great but given its history I don’t think it’s slander to assume that DSA is still precisely what it was not that long ago.
How is it anti-socialist slander to make fun of the section of DSA that doesn’t want to break with the Democratic Party?
Because your referring to that minority as though they are in control when they’re complaining about not being in control. You can make fun of SMC all you want.
The Braydens were very real pre 2020 but since Biden and Gaza they’ve been replaced by mostly anarchists and labor. Bread & Roses is the largest caucus iirc and they are labor™
With all due respect, Comrade, and I genuinely wish you and DSA success in everything, but the B&R people I met have been some of the absolute worst people I’ve encountered in organizations. That makes me feel even more skeptical. I hope I’m wrong and the types are completely different now. Could also just be the branches I’ve worked with.
Idk about B&R particularly. I just lurk the national forums. I’ve never gone to a convention or anything.
@anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 2nding that B&R sucks, every member of my ydsa chapter (which i will admit were either all ML or sympathetic to ML ideas) who went to the YDSA conventions while i was a part of the org said that B&R was by far the worst caucus, and if they suck in YDSA which might as well be the 2nd coming of the bolsheviks when compared to DSA i shudder to imagine what they’re like in national.
Socialist orgs don’t tend to oppose socialism…
Is that line of reasoning that leads to support for the DSA?
Please be serious and constructive and not engage in meaningless sectarianism. Otherwise, No research no right to speak!
Please, you are the one supporting a sectarian and anti-Cuba organization that is pro-genocide party by endorsing Bernie Sanders for president. I’m not the one that’s supporting a fascist party
But why form a new party when the PSL exists?
Because the DSA trying to actually trying to hold offices which the PSL is explicitly not trying to do. Last I heard from a PSL member here the line was engaging in american democracy is futile and building a mass movement to react to the eventual collapse. Which might be true, but people keep saying they want a labor party so let’s try to do that.
Also please don’t insult our PSL comrades by saying Claudia was a real electoral strategy and not a big publicity campaign. I refuse to believe they are that stupid.
I completely agree that this is PSL’s greatest weakness, by the way.
I think it’s ultimately a useless party if they maintain that strategy.
As effective as the DemCents historically are, the “internal democracy” seems to be in theory only. I wouldn’t mind that if I thought the org was already on the right path (which I don’t really know what that is). AFAIK PSL just shows up with posters at any vaguely left rally. I haven’t encountered them naturally in the wild doing direct action. Maybe I don’t get out enough. Maybe the local chapter is weak. I at least encountered SAlt doing some abolitionist work. But then their national spewed some bullshit that DSA had “a ban on marxists” which reminded me what Troskyism was.
I truly want to love them but this is also my experience of PSL, sadly. I’ve known about PSL since right around the time they formed and it hasn’t really changed. Back then people said it was just new so you had to give it time and now they say they are only just growing, but the organizing is simply not there for a Party of that size and knowledge.
Just a Party that reads good theory and likes to protest, not much else.
