Here we present the founding statement of the Marxist Unity Group: its Points of Unity and Immediate Tasks. We print this here not only because of the involvement of several Cosmonaut contributors but also to invite our readers to engage in an open critical dialogue about the document. If you have any comments, please email them to us in the form of a letter to Cosmonaut.Magazine@gmail.com.
About Us
The Marxist Unity Group is an organization committed to political struggle within the Democratic Socialists of America. This makes us a DSA faction, and we aim to be a constructive one. Our words ‘Marxist Unity’ are aspirational: we hope to rally the thousands of Marxists in DSA around a shared vision for our movement’s future. Our faction is based on seven points of unity that we hope DSA will eventually embrace. These principles of struggle are far-reaching, and they all serve one fundamental goal—one unspoken dream that we will wear on our chest. It is a dream now quietly shared by millions of people in this country: the dream of a socialist revolution in the United States.
Seven Points of Unity
1. Political independence. We want DSA to free itself from the Democratic Party and all other capitalist influences.
Marxist Unity Group strives to transform DSA into an independent socialist party. Independence means establishing a distinct public profile for DSA with our own platform, branding, and rhetoric. It also means building our own institutions and our own party discipline in the halls of power. We would stand with unwavering confidence in our cause, never watering down our socialist vision or subordinating our interests to those of a capitalist party.
Together, we would cultivate a popular mandate for revolution by running militant socialist candidates for public office—while simultaneously organizing grassroots institutions of working class power. We would create party-affiliated media, community services, mutual aid and defensive organizations. Within the labor movement, we would fight the existing labor bureaucracy, build militant and democratic unions, and strive to win these unions to socialist politics. As we nurture a vast ecosystem of socialist-allied institutions, our socialist party will simultaneously become a mass movement: a party-movement.
Marxist Unity Group calls for immediate steps towards political independence. We become a party by acting like one. For us, the ‘break’ with the Democratic Party is a continuous process that must begin in earnest right now. This will require courage and faith in our ability to succeed as an independent movement, but we believe that the socialist movement is worthy of that faith. We support a transition towards independent campaigns wherever ballot access laws make this readily achievable—even if this causes a temporary decrease in our number of electoral victories. Building a distinct socialist constituency is the paramount task of our political era, and independent campaigns help us cultivate loyalty that is completely disconnected from loyalty to the Democratic Party.
2. Programmatic unity. We want DSA’s platform to guide its political work.
To achieve political independence, we must learn to act with greater unity and determination. We want a disciplined, self-reliant organization that is run democratically by its rank and file members. Members will be free to publicly voice disagreement with any majority decision, as long as they can accept the decision as legitimate and assist with its implementation. This is the true meaning of democratic centralism.
Now that DSA has an official platform, we want to give it legs to stand on. Ultimately, we would like to make ‘platform acceptance’ the basis of DSA membership. Acceptance does not mean agreeing with everything in the platform. It simply means being willing to fight for the platform as an expression of the movement’s democratically-elaborated aims. Members would have the right to organize for specific changes to the platform at conventions. This approach is called programmatic unity: unity based on common struggle for essential political goals, rather than on dogmatic purity or vague slogans that obscure our true objectives.
We view the distinction between a ‘minimum’ and ‘maximum’ program as essential. The minimum program refers to the party’s comprehensive platform: the policies that it will immediately implement upon taking power to cement working-class political rule and place society on the path of a socialist transition out of capitalism. The maximum program refers to the results of this process: a world free of the market, borders, classes, and all other oppressive structures that exist under capitalism—in a word, communism. We want DSA to arm itself with both elements of a minimum-maximum program. Centering programmatic politics will restore the sense of unity and purpose that socialists enjoyed during the Sanders campaigns. However, our program will have much more ambitious aims, and instead of belonging to a single candidate, it will be developed democratically by the entire socialist movement.
3. Electoral discipline. We want socialist electoral candidates to represent the socialist movement.
Discipline and cohesion are another foundation of our political independence. If DSA candidates are truly dedicated to socialist politics, they should run together on a common DSA platform. Even if some are elected on a Democratic ballot line, they should form their own legislative caucuses, vote as a bloc, and refuse to join the Democratic Party caucus. They should also campaign for other socialists, refuse to endorse non-socialists, and only take the wage of a typical union worker. With these assertive political tactics, our candidates will rise as ‘tribunes of the people’: organized representatives of the socialist movement. DSA members have already implemented some elements of this approach in the New York state legislature, but we would like to formalize and universalize it.
Horse-trading and spineless compromise have failed to truly advance socialist politics. We will always embrace the struggle for reforms, but we want socialists to conduct that struggle out in the open and win concessions by acting as an intransigent opposition. Instead of cutting backroom deals as a junior coalition partner, socialist electeds can use their platform to raise the expectations of the working class and mobilize it to force concessions from the capitalists.
4. Nationwide struggle. We want socialists to treat U.S. politics as a nationwide struggle for power.
As socialists in the United States, we live in a reactionary political culture that encourages us to think small. Americans are taught to believe that all problems should be solved locally, and socialists often accept this logic by confining themselves to isolated local campaigns, assuming that this is where ‘real change happens.’ Yet despite our backwards federal system, the United States is not an alliance of city-states or a network of 20,000 police departments. It is a colossal empire propped up by the most powerful military on Earth. Even local police are armed, trained, and integrated by the federal government. If we ignore national politics, we will become blind to the true nature of our oppressors. We will obscure their nationwide abuse of the working class, not to mention their imperialist crimes in every corner of the world. Local organizing is an indispensable foundation of our movement, but it will be infinitely more effective when it is connected to a nationwide, pan-American, and global vision for working class revolution.
Marxist Unity Group supports efforts to lift DSA chapters out of parochialism by hiring more staff and integrating locals into larger state-level organizations. It is also why we want DSA to run an organized slate of socialist candidates to contest the House of Representatives. By conducting principled agitation in the halls of Congress, socialists can deliver a common message to every corner of the country. While we use the federal government as a bully pulpit, our candidates could also use their public profiles to support state and municipal organizing efforts. Federal, state, and local struggles—strikes, electoral campaigns, and mass demonstrations—will all be fused together in one grand movement that demands nothing less than a working-class, socialist revolution.
5. Fight the Imperial Police State. We want socialists to challenge the repressive structures of the capitalist state.
U.S. socialists have a duty to stand firmly against militarism and police tyranny. With every tool available to us, we must erode the political, cultural, and physical hegemony of the U.S. police state. It is not enough for socialist legislators to rhetorically criticize excessive military spending. They should force a genuine public confrontation over the matter by refusing to vote for the military budget. Police, national security, and intelligence budgets must receive the same unrelenting opposition. As socialist legislators denounce the violence of the Pentagon and CIA, they could also expose the connections between police and military brutality.
To credibly challenge repressive capitalist institutions, socialists will need to develop and champion an alternative model of public safety. Marxist Unity Group believes that a people’s army will be essential for the defense of working class interests. The precursors of this institution will emerge under capitalism as the working class develops organs of self-defense. After the socialist revolution, it will consolidate into a permanent institution that embodies working-class sovereignty and the population’s right to bear arms. The capitalist armed forces will be abolished in their current form, and their defense capacity will be integrated into the people’s army through a sovereign democratic process. Service and training will be universal, with diligent control of weapons and rigorous accountability for all members. Members will have strong democratic rights and union representation. Conscientious objectors will be offered alternative service options. Working under the direct control of the elected legislature, the people’s army will carry out public projects and provide genuine public safety.
6. Fight the Constitution. We want socialists to fight to overthrow the Constitution.
Marxist Unity opposes a constitution that was written by a ‘holy alliance’ of capitalists and slavers to make the United States a perpetual oligarchy. There can be no question of submitting to a political order that exists to divide and conquer the working class, that slices up the government and divorces it from the will of the people—that is set in stone and almost impossible to amend. Black people cannot be free under a constitution written by slaveholders; indigenous people cannot win sovereignty under a constitution designed to facilitate their elimination; women cannot be free under a constitution written before they had the right to vote, and working people cannot be free under a constitution that enshrines private property. No one can be truly free if they are forced to bow to a reactionary constitution written by the dead. We want socialist leaders to erode the popular legitimacy of the U.S. Constitution through combative political agitation: never bowing to the old order, and always acknowledging the need for a working class revolution in the United States.
The socialist revolution will not base its legitimacy on the laws of the slaveholder constitution. We will base it on a democratic majority mandate for socialism. This majority may be expressed by the popular vote of an election, but it does not have to take that form if the state represses our ability to contest elections. We stand for the right of the working class to take power by any means necessary. To win a socialist republic, millions of working people must be mobilized in their workplaces, at the ballot box, and in the street. We recognize that the capitalist class relies on the minoritarian rule of the U.S. Constitution, and they will not give it up peacefully. The working class will need armed self-defense to protect itself from the inevitable violence of reaction. We also recognize that we must fight for the democratic rights of enlisted U.S. soldiers. To complete a successful revolution, we must win a decisive section of the military rank and file over to our side.
7. Demand a New Republic. We want to win a democratic socialist republic in North America.
We fight the Constitution to win a democratic socialist republic in North America. Forged in revolution, this continental republic will strive for the global liberation of all working and oppressed people. We desire the widest possible geographic scope for such a state so that it can most effectively carry out this mission, but we also recognize the principle of national self-determination. All indigenous and colonized peoples must win sovereignty, including those living within the current borders of the United States. No oppressed nation will be incorporated into the socialist republic against its will.
Alongside ecological and economic crises, the minoritarian and sclerotic constitutional order will contribute to massive political crises in the coming decades. This period of crisis will provide our class with an opportunity to topple the old order and convene a revolutionary Popular Assembly: a majoritarian constitutional convention elected by all the people. Under the democratic leadership of a victorious socialist party, the Popular Assembly will proceed to construct the socialist order. It will dismantle the slaveholder constitution and write the founding documents of the new republic.
Immediately upon taking power, socialists will implement a sweeping minimum program to cement working class political rule. We will need to destroy every institution that denies the people an authentic popular democracy, abolishing the Senate, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and the independent presidency. We will implement direct, universal, and equal suffrage. Supreme power will rest in the hands of a popular, unicameral assembly elected by proportional representation. Delegates will be recallable at any time and will receive no more than a skilled worker’s wage. All parties that accept the laws of the new revolutionary order will be free to operate. Local organs of government will have a wide degree of autonomy. Unrestricted freedom of speech will be guaranteed to all. To make good on the unfulfilled promise of Reconstruction, our republic will launch social programs of targeted wealth redistribution, striving to eliminate all racial inequalities. The socialist republic will put political power and economic resources into the hands of all racially oppressed and colonized people.
Our broader economic program will include unimpeded labor and union rights, a massive reduction in working hours, and a truly universal welfare state that provides for all citizens from cradle to grave. We will create programs to reduce the power of bureaucrats and teach administrative skills to all workers. Worker self-management will be encouraged to the greatest extent achievable in every industry. Large industry will be placed under collective ownership early on, and we will progressively socialize the rest of the economy as we build our capacity for democratic economic planning. We will pursue crash course programs to address the ecological crisis and establish resilient forms of production, distribution and habitation. Climate refugees will be welcomed into our republic as we embrace open borders and universal citizenship for all long-term residents.
With the shackles of the old order broken, the working class will finally have the power to remake society on egalitarian lines. In cooperation with the global socialist movement, we will move closer with every passing year to a fully liberated classless society: communism. Communism abolishes money, class distinctions, racial discrimination, patriarchy, national boundaries, oppressive gender roles, the mental/manual division of labor, and all other forms of social oppression. It is a society truly based on the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” where humanity collectively plans its economic activities through a free association of labor. Communism brings freedom to both society and the individual and will be the true beginning of human history.
Our Immediate Tasks
We want Marxist Unity Group to be outward-facing and inclusive. Our application process is open to any DSA member who broadly supports our vision and is ready to work with us in a disciplined manner. We also seek close communication with other DSA caucuses so that we can collaborate on common objectives. Marxist Unity Group will back any initiative that builds the strength and confidence of the socialist movement, no matter who proposes it. Our members are organizing to achieve several immediate aims:
First, we want to build a coalition of all DSA factions that are ready to actively fight for independence from the Democratic Party and pursue a socialist party-movement. These tasks have received empty lip service for far too long. It is time to make them real.
We will also pursue a new model of electoral politics that takes electoral discipline seriously—forging socialist representatives into disciplined blocs that are accountable to DSA and its democratically-adopted platform. Working across the country, we will help locals develop this model and promote resolutions based on it. We will support efforts to increase coordination between locals, building up the strong party structures that can make socialist electoral work infinitely more ambitious and nationally integrated. Our motto will always be quality over quantity in electoral work, and Marxist clarity over empty opportunism.
In our chapters’ economic, social, and community organizing, we will strive to make an effective contribution. We will also strive to infuse these activities with a socialist spirit, pursuing the merger of socialist politics with the day-to-day struggles of the working class. We do not have dogmatic attachments to any singular model of organizing, and we are eager to learn and grow alongside our comrades.
Finally, Marxist Unity Group will pursue a rigorous political education, for both our members and DSA as a whole. We must seriously investigate US and global capitalist society, the history of the workers’ movement, and what it would take to achieve a socialist revolution in the United States. Marxist theory is vital for the success of any socialist movement. It provides the movement with a scientific understanding of society and the political principles needed to transform it. We hope to promote the importance of Marxist theory by expanding educational infrastructure and member engagement, creating a rich and nondogmatic intellectual culture.
Our faction is influenced by the best historical lessons of the entire global socialist movement, from the Communards in Paris to the experience of Allende’s Popular Unity government in Chile. We are particularly inspired by the Marxism of the Second International, and above all by those that kept its revolutionary spirit alive in the face of political capitulation: Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The Marxists of the Second International grappled with historical tasks not unlike the ones we face today. After a long era of historical defeat for the socialist movement, they confronted antiquated political regimes and worked to merge socialism with the workers’ movement. Despite countless obstacles, they built mass worker parties from the ground up and challenged the power of the capitalist class. It was only on this foundation that working class parties were able to pose the question of taking state power in the subsequent period. Marxist Unity Group seeks to creatively apply Marxist politics to the contemporary United States—never trying to reenact the past, but always learning from it.
If you would like to learn and fight with us, please apply here to join the Marxist Unity Group.
