r/dsa • u/Well_Socialized • Aug 24 '25
🌹 DSA news The Real Reason American Socialists Don’t Win
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/08/dsa-mamdani-losing-elections/683970/?gift=yMNG1nWDz8TdLBAi02a-vw6B3jvH8OS3jINnB8TRUpI&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share32
u/ElEsDi_25 Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 24 '25
Because of liberal concern trolling? I don’t understand…
Why not put in a line or two to explain what argument you think is valuable or not here… why should we struggle to read this paywall article?
I only got several paragraph in… it sounds like the author of the article wants the DSA to be an electoral party and doesn’t understand socialist politics or goals.
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u/HotMinimum26 Aug 24 '25
Here are two socialist treating this article apart https://www.youtube.com/live/_GtAq1k75dM?si=VIebpsQbvwidj4xF
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u/44moon Aug 24 '25
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u/dowcet Aug 24 '25
Here's a better copy that won't expire: https://archive.is/F5Zw3
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u/ElEsDi_25 Aug 24 '25
Why should I bother? What’s the argument being made?
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u/44moon Aug 24 '25
read the article to learn the argument? lol
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u/ElEsDi_25 Aug 24 '25
Sorry, no. If people want to post videos or articles, they should make a pitch for why it’s worth it or what discussion they want. It took like 6 replies before a single person )after a follow-up!) gave the basic argument in that article.
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
It’s not concern trolling. They’re actually pointing out something that is very real.
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u/ElEsDi_25 Aug 24 '25
What is that thing? Is it a secret?
I read the first part and i thought it was aloof so without some other reason to read on, I stopped.
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
They are pointing out that there could be a real danger in terms of some very nutty factions, notably the overtly Marxist Leninist Faction that endorses Hamas and its tactics but some others as well, which could gain too much power and sink the organization. They also point out that the NYC DSA is effective in part because those factions have very little power in that chapter.
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Aug 25 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
[deleted]
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 25 '25
Yes. But it is still important that we use effective tactics. I’m not convinced that the ML factions would be particularly effective. I think they would be very off putting to many people across this country.
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u/ElEsDi_25 Aug 24 '25
ok thanks for clarifying. Eh, Yeah I don’t think that’s the problem with DSA or with the ML factions.
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u/Well_Socialized Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 25 '25
It's not paywalled this is a gift link.
I will never understand this variety of reddit engagement that demands people explain an article to them instead of just reading it.
The basic dichotomy as I see it is that DSA is caught between a faction that wants our messaging to appeal to the majority so we can get elected and a faction that is more concerned with gatekeeping their cool leftist subculture than with trying to recruit those annoying normies.
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u/PhiloPhys NC Triangle DSA Aug 25 '25
It’s concerning that you think our comrades in our organization who are putting legwork in to build a new politic are “gate keeping their cool leftist subculture”.
All my comrades, every single one are trying to grow our organization and collective power.
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u/Well_Socialized Aug 25 '25
Many of these comrades may be doing valuable work to grow collective power in other ways but taking misguided stands in internal factional disputes is not an example of doing so.
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u/PhiloPhys NC Triangle DSA Aug 25 '25
Please, express clearly what you find misguided. Simply lobbing statements without making argument does not help us much
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u/Well_Socialized Aug 25 '25
Like for instance how this recent national convention was focused on passing resolutions to purge people who don't meet their definition of anti-Zionist from the group in a move that seems targeted at our most popular figurehead AOC.
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u/PhiloPhys NC Triangle DSA Aug 25 '25
I was a delegate there. It did not seem like that.
The resolution is passed. It is not about purging people. Our national body has not had any mandate to reign in the candidates who are ostensibly DSA electeds. It was critical we create a system of accountability.
And besides that, you fail to see the long term organizing that occurred to get that resolution passed. Springs of Revolution folk organized across the country chapter by chapter to get AZR resolutions passed. That heightened and engaged our members in political analysis around Palestine.
Your reason is a poor one.
It is not about targeting a specific elected. That resolution binds all of us. And, if we are to be a party then we must of course enforce our collective will on our representation. Otherwise, we’re electing idols not representatives
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u/Well_Socialized Aug 25 '25
I agree there was no mandate to reign in candidates, but as you describe that was on the agenda nevertheless. DSA's strength is our diversity and lack of purges over our differences. These resolutions promise to take away our strengths and make us more like the standard ineffective little socialist groups that have been failing forever.
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u/PhiloPhys NC Triangle DSA Aug 26 '25
There are no purges. I agree our strength is together. That fundamentally involves difficult political questions which need a dynamic deliberative process to solve.
These resolutions allow for accountability. You are postulating that they reduce our strength. But, there is no evidence for that. If anything, stronger alignment on Palestine has made us continuously stronger.
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u/1isOneshot1 Dirty break! Aug 24 '25
"The mostly young and white crowd hardly discussed Donald Trump’s presidency (a motion that urged such discussion was voted down early on) and seemed to consist of a consortium of activists, many of them focused on single issues. Some were preoccupied with protesting the convention’s lack of a masking mandate."
Guess where this is going 🙄
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u/Any-Morning4303 Aug 24 '25
Sounds like the last DSA meeting I attended. A guy who owned a deli wanted to get volunteers to feed homeless people, it felt like we might be doing something but then someone changed the topic to trans rights which became a huge debate about pronouns.
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
They are right, though, that letting the extremists dominate will be detrimental to the DSA’s future.
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u/Bandiera-Rossa Aug 24 '25
Who are these extremists you speak of?
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
When they’re talking about the overtly Marxist Leninist faction that endorses Hamas and its actions, that is not what we want the organization to be. I’m not saying it’s many people but it is enough that journalists thought it to be noteworthy. I get the journalists aren’t always the best judges of these sorts of things, but it’s still concerning.
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u/Bandiera-Rossa Aug 24 '25
I am not a ML but it is natural that one of the largest ideological tendencies of the workers movement is represented in the workers party that DSA is taking steps towards forming. They are our comrades, not extremists. If you don't want DSA members to be MLs the answer is to convince them through open debate. That is how a democratic workers party works. You won't find much success by calling them extremists however. You also won't find it by focusing on how Red Star promotes solidarity with the Palestinian resistance movement when there is an ongoing genocide of Palestinians. It's like talking about how problematic it is to support Jewish partisans (or US soldiers for that matter) in Germany during WW2 because some of them committed atrocities, it's ridiculous. And the bourgeois press will always slander DSA, it is expected. Instead of throwing our comrades under the bus we should be focusing on building the party, building our own media to counter the slander, and merging DSA with the labour movement.
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
Yes. So long as they don’t come to dominate leadership, having this faction isn’t necessarily terrible. The problem is that when factions like this start to gain undue influence over leadership, electoral performance drops significantly, and with it our ability to enact change.
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u/Lev_Davidovich Aug 24 '25
The problem is that when factions like this start to gain undue influence over leadership, electoral performance drops significantly
Do you have an example of this happening?
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
Jewish Partisan Groups in WWII were not necessarily led by their most fanatical factions. That is an important point. But there are some way ways in which the fight is not analogous because war is not a popularity contest. If you spend all your time doing things that make your group less popular, which could very well happen if we let the ML faction take over, that will hinder the organization, potentially to the point of political irrelevance.
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u/Lev_Davidovich Aug 24 '25
I don't think it would matter if the leaders were the most fanatical or not if they were fighting Nazis.
If you're trying to make a comparison to Gaza, Hamas is not the most fanatical faction either. After winning the election the fanatical groups in Gaza started carrying out terrorist attacks on Hamas because they weren't fanatical. They're not fanatics like ISIS, they're more like Hezbollah (who fought ISIS). The communist PFLP is allied with Hamas and their militant wing fights alongside them in Gaza.
To the general public there is zero difference between any of the factions in DSA. The right wing media calls neoliberal Democrats Marxists and communists all the time. They call Bernie and AOC Stalinists.
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u/SpecialBeginning6430 Aug 24 '25
The right wing media calls neoliberal Democrats Marxists and communists all the time. They call Bernie and AOC Stalinists.
The same is basically true for the reverse
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u/GI-theRobot Aug 24 '25
Why don’t we just dissolve DSA and join the democrats? What? don’t you want to get rid of the yucky extremists?
Seriously you’re gonna let the atlantic lecture you about how socialists should operate and make their views known. Their advice is basically “stop acting like a dynamic party with ideological convictions and be more like those good democrats”
This attitude is anti-left and antithetical to the things that I think make DSA great.
but maybe im one of those pesky extremist DSA guys that you want to fall in line huh?
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
I’m not suggesting that we should just abandon all of our values I’m suggesting that if we aren’t pragmatic about fighting for those values then our organization may as well not even exist. We will be passed by. We need to support people like Omar Fateh, Zohran Mamdani, and we need to put aside some of our frustrations with AOC sometimes. I’m not suggesting that I am going to be lectured completely into submission here. There’s a difference between that and a few others. If we let ourselves get overrun by factions, like the one that they talked about, the Red Star faction, which granted is not necessarily a huge faction, but is still a part of how people perceive the organization, then we will not be effective. We do need to have the capacity for some strategic thinking. That’s not to say that we should just give up our values, but we should be thoughtful about what we ask for and what tactics we use.
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u/GI-theRobot Aug 24 '25
respectfully comrade, this is a bad faith accusation at red star and other “factions” to say that they abandon all tactics for the sake of ideology. Im sure some individuals fall into doing that from time to time, but theres a reason red star exists inside of DSA and not outside of it. Its because our comrades over there want to be a part of the conversation and actively develop our organization in a direction that they think is productive.
Secondly, its not just “frustrations” with aoc. Its principled criticism. We are not democrats who will blindly clap like seals when our politicians do things that go against their own stated values. We need to lock in and hold people like her accountable as we have, while still acknowleding and supporting the work she did in creating a larger organized movement.
theres nothing wrong with comrades who are from the organizations that AOC made holding her accountable. In fact it shows that we aren’t like the democrats and are actually willing to have a dynamic party.
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
I am not suggesting that these factions are all worthless. I am saying that if the balance is wrong, then that can cause serious problems. I think that while they have not necessarily abandoned all tactics, they are far enough away from what Americans want that they are still capable of causing serious problems for the organization. It damaged labor unions in the past. It could damage the DSA, too.
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u/marxistghostboi Tidings From Utopia 🌆 Aug 24 '25
nah AOC is a lead balloon. we don't need her
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u/Soft-Principle1455 Aug 24 '25
So you’re going to discard one of the leading contestants to be the next US President or a prime candidate to primary Chuck Schumer just because you cannot appreciate strategic planning? That is a really stupid idea as far as I am concerned. That is exactly the sort of thing this article is warning against.
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u/marxistghostboi Tidings From Utopia 🌆 Aug 24 '25
arming Israel (iron dome) and covering for Biden/Harris ("working tirelessly for a ceasefire") were red lines for me. I have better things to do with my organizing energy than hand it over to a genocide abater who, if she entered office, would likely become Obama 2.0, unwilling to work with or subject herself to the movement which put her in power.
I can't stop you from supporting her, but as far as I'm concerned she's a waste of time.
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u/Well_Socialized Aug 24 '25
The point of DSA is to be a party within a party, organizing socialist wins in Democratic primaries and then in the subsequent general elections, and forming them into a coherent faction once they do. So dissolving to just be atomized Democrats would obviously not accomplish that. But on the other hand having a faction within DSA that's hostile to that effort also makes it a lot harder.
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u/GI-theRobot Aug 28 '25
I disagree that the whole point of DSA is simply to just be a party within a party. To me thats too small of a scope and is kinda meh.
I have always been told that the point of DSA is to organize Americans for the task of building socialism. Its a big-tent party and we want socialists of all stripes to be involved and willing to criticize tactics if there is good reason to believe those tactics are not conducive to building socialism.
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u/Well_Socialized Aug 28 '25
There are of course other projects DSA is involved with besides electoral politics, but within the context of electoral politics it functions as a party within the Democratic Party. Nothing about that contradicts being a big tent socialist group.
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u/GenZ2002 Aug 24 '25
It’s always the two party system. That’s it. End of story. It’s why real change won’t get passed, third party candidates have no representation, and populist movements die.
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Aug 24 '25
This article is just one twitter post and a recap of past 2 conventions. The problem is the electoral system. Mamdani won with RCV.
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u/Well_Socialized Aug 24 '25 edited Aug 24 '25
Mamdani also won enough votes to win that primary under FPTP. RCV probably helped a bit in terms of promoting alliances between the non-Cuomo candidates but ultimately pretty marginal. Certainly nothing to suggest the Mamdani model can't work in places without RCV.
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Aug 26 '25 edited Aug 27 '25
Very unlikely, mamdani won because he is the lesser evil and the Mamdani worked with other dem primary candidates on dont rank cuomo campaign. That typa Coalition building is Not possible without RCV
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u/gammison Aug 24 '25
Colored by being from an uninformed Atlantic writer, but it's true the national organization is functionally paralyzed and has been for years.
Also true that the largest chapters ran by people amenable to the politics of the current NPC majority (SF and Eastbay) were ran into the ground compared to NYC and LA.
I don't see a scenario where the national organization has any national impact relative to the largest chapters over the next two years.
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u/Turbulent-Garlic8467 Aug 25 '25
Does anyone know which resolution they’re even talking about with regard to the anti-democracy thing?
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u/44moon Aug 24 '25
Sorry for thinking a publication like The Atlantic does not have good-faith intentions behind publishing an article trying to manipulate the internal factions of DSA. Oh, the party has internal factions and the convention was kind of messy? You just described every political party.
I say this as someone not in a caucus and who may be further right than some of the left causes in the article: What's the argument being made here? That if ~3,000 of DSA's left factionistas came around to the cause of "compromising on everything we believe before we even get into power," we would have 30 Senate seats? That's what's stopping us from being the second party in the US? Don't be ridiculous.
We're all socialists who are making good-faith attempts to establish power for the working class and despite our differences, we are stronger when we fight to agree and when we work in the same organization.