This is a reprint of the mission statement of Marxist Unity Slate, a set of proposals for the 2021 DSA convention with the aim of fostering democratic discipline and principled election campaigns, as well as uniting Marxists in DSA around a vision of a mass socialist party. The proposals can be read and signed here. Reading: Matt Strupp.
State of the Left
While itâs hard to envision the working class coming to power any time soon, the state of the US Left is relatively strong today and there is reason for optimism. The US Left prior to the growth of DSA was a constellation of dogmatic microsects organized under militarized bureaucratic centralism, based on an ahistoric caricature of early Bolshevik history. Its replacement by DSA is a positive development. Recently blooming to over 90,000 members, DSA has made an historic achievement for socialists in the United States. While we should be hesitant to overstate our victories (90,000 people is only a small minority of the 330 million or so US residents), there have been relatively few points in our history where the organized socialist movement was as influential as it is today.
However, there is a significant gap between a force strong enough to influence the culture in a general way, and the ability of that force to win a majority of the population, i.e. the working class, to its program. Beyond that, the organized socialist movement must implement that program by seizing political power and abolishing the old order. We must not only match the accomplishments of our comrade predecessors in the Knights of Labor, Socialist Party, IWW, Communist Party, SDS, etc., but surpass them and succeed where they failed: build a mass working-class party capable of casting off the shackles of the juridical rule of the capitalist class, overturn its slaver Constitution, and institute the complete sovereignty of the only class capable of delivering true democracy: the proletariat. Simply put, we have a long way to go.
Itâs Party Time
The primary obstacle facing the working class in accomplishing this goal is the absence of a political party. Ideally, we need a democratic member-based organization with a coherent political platform that can field candidates in legislative elections, exert discipline over these candidates, and act as a coherent, independent opposition. We believe that DSA can and must become this party. Kicking the can down the road on this will only see us squander the current historical conjuncture where class struggle and awareness are sharply on the rise. DSA members across the country are steeped in activism, whether on the streets, in their unions, or otherwise, yet there is no agreed-upon political vision that can serve as a united basis for action. Without an agreed-upon end-goal and strategy for accomplishing it, our efforts can at best result in a few diffuse oases in the desert of capitalism. If the working class is to win the class war, we must gather our forces and devise a plan before going into battle. There is significant debate within DSA on the party question, and most recognize the need for, at some point, some sort of workersâ party. But what kind of party would this be and when and how will it come about? These questions are more ambiguous.
A party is nothing more than an organized political movement. And DSA can become an organized, independent political movementâright now. No other force will step up to do it. We canât wait for organized labor. For the most part, unions are under the political control of the Democrats. To revive the labor movement and win rank and file union members to our cause, socialists must champion a visible political alternative to the leadership of bourgeois parties. That is a socialist party.
Rather than a Labor Party built by a future merger with Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Movement for a Peoples Party, or other left-progressive groups, we believe the party must emerge from an explicitly socialist organization. Many of these left-progressives can and likely will join this party, but it must be under the condition of accepting our socialist aims, rather than us accepting a âkinder, gentlerâ capitalism as the limits of our political vision. There are two fundamental actions DSA can take to become this party.
Program
First, DSA should adopt a Marxist minimum-maximum program. The maximum section would be a short elaboration of the free society we envision for humanity, a future without exploitation, oppression, and all other nasty and brutish cornerstones of the prehistory of the human race: in a word, communism. The minimum section would include our immediate demands. Taken one-by-one, some of these may be achievable reforms under the current Constitutional regime (for example, Medicare for All, cancellation of personal debt, etc.). Winning one or the other of these would build the confidence and experience of the working class while giving us a foothold to grow our strength further. But taken all together, the implementation of our minimum program would spark a qualitative rupture with the current order and require the convening of a constituent assembly to replace the US Constitution, as well as the dissolution of the standing army and national security state. It would institute the democratic republic of the working class, or what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Being able to carry out this full minimum program must be our basic condition for taking any responsibility for government, even at the level of a single department, in order to ensure that when we come to power the proletariat comes to power along with us. Until DSAâs platform is accepted by a majority of the population, our electoral efforts should be focused on gaining a foothold within legislatures as principled opposition to the liberal-constitutional order: this means no horse-trading for committee appointments, joining coalitions as junior partners, or accepting the whip or discipline of the capitalist parties. These are things candidates could do even if they ran under the ballot line of a capitalist party, although we believe the time to prioritize independent campaigns has come.
Luckily, DSA is currently working on a National Platform that might resemble a Marxist minimum-maximum program to be adopted at the 2021 convention: this would be a massive step forward for DSA, and the US Left as a whole. We will enthusiastically participate in the platform drafting process, advocating for a solid minimum program to the best of our ability. But no matter what platform reaches the convention floor, we want it to have teeth. Our three convention proposals are an effort to infuse DSAâs new platform with power and meaningâeven when the text includes things we disagree with.
Democratic Discipline
Secondly, elected DSA leadership must have political influence, and even disciplinary mechanisms, over the politicians we elect. One of these mechanisms is the platform itself. The other mechanism would be the representativesâ political responsibility to DSA. In the past, mass socialist parties have kept their elected representatives on the ball in a number of ways. They would be openly critiqued in the party media, and party leaders would write their speeches. More than anything, once elected socialist politicians would form a subset of the party usually called a âparliamentary fractionâ (or in our case, a legislative fraction). They would regularly meet with party leadership to discuss how to best carry out the program, act as a unified bloc, and in the best of circumstances produce a radical opposition to the rule of the capitalist class. Any representatives we get elected must constitute themselves as radical oppositionists and tribunes of the people in the legislature, constantly agitating for the platform.
The term âdemocratic centralismâ rightly makes many socialists squeamish, its use over the course of the 20th century came to describe the organizational model of dogmatic bureaucratic sects with insulated leaderships, where openly organizing factions and communication between branches was banned. All centralism, no democracy. Prior to the Russian Civil War, however, the principle was consistent with genuine internal party democracy. A massive working-class alternative culture erupted in Europe prior to World War I, partly due to the success of radical oppositionists in legislatures. The proximity of elected socialists to the bourgeois halls of power can certainly be a compromising influence, as is well known in the case of World War I, where deputies chose patriotism in hopes of winning elections over a principled working-class internationalism. But this is not the inherent outcome of a socialist legislative fraction- we shouldnât forget that August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknicht, members of the same German socialist party infamous for backing World War I, had decades prior risked everything, even against the advice of Marx and Engels, to oppose the Franco-Prussian War.
Our Slate
Our slate hopes to build support for these two ideas within DSA: first that the political platform is what unites us in our long-term vision for socialism, and second that we use our platform as a way to hold elected DSA members accountable to the socialist movement first and foremost. Our amendment to the DSA constitution, Defining the Role of DSAâs National Political Platform makes acceptance of the national political platform the basis for membership in DSA. Our first resolution, Tribunes of the People and Democratic Discipline would make DSAâs national endorsement of candidates contingent on a series of conditions to make the candidate accountable to DSA. Our last resolution, A Socialist Slate for the House offers an executable strategy for a coordinated DSA campaign to build a principled socialist fraction in the House of Representatives. We hope to receive your support for this slate at this yearâs Convention.
If we want the working class to rule society, we should focus on quality over quantity in electoral victories. We can go further than building a broad Labor Party: instead, we should forge a mass Socialist Party with a Marxist program. We must elect members to Congress to agitate for our program, and struggle to gain a foothold as a principled oppositionâan organized beachhead from where we can build a true majority of support and take real power. Marxist Unity believes our slate is a small step to help DSA achieve that goal.
