Learning More About The DSA
Friends, I’ve put together this page because many of you have said you would like to learn more about the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). So I will be sharing things here that I have found helpful in my efforts to come to a deeper understanding of this new emerging force in US politics.
First, here’s their website - https://www.dsausa.org/.
Next, this article from DSA member Nathan Newman remains the single best thing I’ve read about the current DSA so far:
I thought this was the most important passage in Nathan’s thoughtful essay:
The national DSA office opposed military aid to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion and called for the United States to pull out of NATO. Its platform has in the past called for abolishing USAID, which lands it, awkwardly, on the same side as Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s wrecking ball. And back when Maduro still ran Venezuela, the national organization sent a delegation to Caracas that handed the regime exactly the legitimacy it was looking for- and then in 2024 condemned the Venezuelan opposition and the media for criticizing the validity of the elections.
When Russia was getting ready to invade Ukraine in January 2022, the national DSA International Committee blamed NATO and the US in a statement titled “DSA IC opposes US militarization and interventionism in Ukraine and Eastern Europe and calls for an end to NATO expansionism.” After the Russian invasion, I detailed in this piece why defending Ukraine should be a core commitment of the global left and in a followup piece on why Ukraine was a class war against Putin’s white oligarchic petrocapitalism- issues that national DSA largely ignored. What is striking about the DSA national analysis is how locked into Cold War nostrums on Russia as an opponent of US imperialism, almost as if Putin still embodied some kind of socialist alternative to US hegemony.
Gaza was of course the issue where sectarian politics burst out in national headlines, as a faction of the far left, primarily led by what is known as the ANSWER coalition - itself a front group for the Party of Socialism & Liberation (PSL), would regularly praise Hamas and embarrass the rest of the pro-Palestinian movement. Yet national DSA would continue to cosponsor national marches and national actions with ANSWER (see here and here).
Next, here’s DSA national Co-Chair Megan Romer on Fox News on July 26th:
Here’s a transcript of this clip:
Fox News Host:
So we’re gonna put up on the screen a few of the things that are part of your platform, and I want to ask you, just give me sort of a true or false on these.
Host:
Abolish the Senate.
Megan Romer:
True.
Host:
Okay. Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them.
Romer:
Yep.
Host:
Abolish ICE.
Romer:
Absolutely.
Host:
Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the US illegally.
Romer:
As a long-term plan, yep.
Host:
Defund the Pentagon.
Romer:
Absolutely.
Host:
Abolish prisons, at least in large part?
Romer:
Yeah, again, as part of a long-term program, yeah.
Host:
Okay, so no prisons. Government or public ownership of most large corporations?
Romer:
Yeah, absolutely.
Megan Romer is a leader of the Red Star Caucus, which describes itself as a “Marxist-Leninist Caucus” inside the DSA. Here is more on Red Star from their website:
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.
Red Star conceives of itself as an ideological center in DSA. As a center, we work from a practical and coherent position to push DSA toward our shared vision through organizing, through developing ourselves and other DSA members, through polemics, and by engaging with DSA’s internal democratic processes.
Red Star seeks to cohere a vanguard party. We do not specify exactly how this party will emerge, but we believe DSA can foster its creation — DSA’s resources, broad membership, organizing ethic, and robust democratic processes make it, out of all existing US socialist organizations, the best incubator for such a party.
So my working take on the DSA is that I agree with the main thrust of Nathan’s article - that the “sane” DSA should consider splitting off from the national DSA to create a new progressive-left org/movement without all the DSA baggage, which is substantial. While DSA members may be able to win elections in deep blue parts of the country I am very skeptical that candidates who openly embrace an organization with these views can win in battleground parts of the county in a competitive race against a Republican. I also worry the presence of a DSA member on the ticket could spill over and effect more traditional Democrats running in competitive races in critical battleground states.
Given the DSA’s historic support for some of the most repressive governments in the world - Russia, Iran/Hamas, Venezuela - I also question whether we can consider DSA to be part of the broader pro-democracy movement.
I intend to keep sharing helpful materials here as I come across them so we can all continue to learn, together - Simon
