Steve Bloom asks a number of serious and important questions about the strategy of the DSA pro-party wing in his May 31 Letter to Cosmonaut. Although centered on a proposal put forward by Shuvu Bhattarai in Cosmonaut on March 3, Bloom is also interested in a response from anyone else who might be involved with this issue in DSA. Like Bhattarai, I am also a member of the Marxist Unity Group, but my views on strategy differ from Bhattarai’s. It should also be pointed out that Bhattarai’s views also differ from MUG’s own stated position in its Points of Unity. These differences will be explained in the course of this response.
Bloom begins by asking what accounts for the tenacity of the anti-party wing’s political hold on DSA and what will be needed for the pro-party wing not only to win a majority on resolutions adopted at a convention but also to transform DSA’s political practice. His assessment of this problem is that if the pro-party wing hasn’t been successful already, it probably won’t be successful in the future unless some radical change takes place in the general level of political struggle in the US that causes either an influx of new members or a change in political attitudes of current members, or both. In the absence of a new upsurge of political struggle, Bloom sees nothing but continuing deadlock in DSA. Assuming deadlock, Bloom then suggests that the pro-party wing will have to leave DSA in order to establish even a minimal level of socialist cohesion and discipline. Bloom buttresses his case by pointing to Bhattarai’s similar reasoning that the “pro-partyists must prepare a Plan B [of building a “party within a party” to act both within and outside DSA] if the pro-partyists fail to win a majority.
My initial response is that Bloom’s (and Bhattarai’s) framing of the problem is too short term, too one dimensional, and too alarmist. It should be obvious to everyone that the current state of DSA is just a simple consequence of its explosive growth following Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign. That growth originated in and was premised on participation in Democratic Party electoral politics. With some ups and downs, the momentum that began in 2016 carried through until the final crushing of Sanders’ and the Squad’s hopes for Build Back Better in mid-2022. The current predominance of an electoral strategy favoring cooperation with progressives in the Democratic Party is due less to any particular tenacity on the part of the anti-party wing than to the weight of political and ideological inertia. Things have not looked so good for the Democratic Party electoral strategy more recently, but it takes time to adjust to new political realities.
Bloom’s questions are one dimensional and alarmist because they pose the choice facing the pro-party forces as one of establishing an independent socialist organization immediately or nothing. Unfortunately, Bloom finds some support for this framing in Bhattarai’s own formulation. But this is a false framing. To use Bhattarai’s own metaphor of a “party within a party,” MUG and other factions within DSA already engage in activity both within DSA proper and independently by association with publications such as Jacobin and Cosmonaut and in discussions and activities with other groups and movements outside DSA. There is no need to invoke the scare word “split” if the pro-party wing doesn’t quickly achieve majority support in DSA because the current rules and structure of DSA already allow for independent activity. This political reality is reflected in MUG’s characterization of itself in its Points of Unity as “a DSA faction, and we aim to be a constructive one.” Bhattarai’s views on the perilous state of the US socialist movement and an immediate do-or-die choice facing the pro-party forces is not the majority view in MUG. MUG has every intention of carrying on as a faction within DSA regardless of the outcome of the 2023 convention. MUG’s commitment to DSA is long-term and it does not feel its independent activity or the socialist movement as a whole is being held back by this commitment. Bloom’s and Bhattarai’s assumption that the biggest obstacle to building the socialist movement is organizational gridlock in DSA and lack of independent initiative is misplaced. The pro-party’s arguments are gaining ground and will eventually win majority support within DSA. The most important question isn’t whether the pro-party forces will eventually win a majority or not but why and how that majority will be built.
Bloom himself identifies why the pro-party forces will eventually succeed when he says it will take a “change in the actual levels of struggle in the USA that will make the idea of DSA as an independent party formation…make sense.” Does anyone think those new levels of struggle won’t happen? In fact, they are already happening and will continue to happen. The big question facing MUG and DSA is how to participate in and contribute to this new level of struggle. It is here that my own views differ somewhat from the MUG majority. Currently, in preparing for the upcoming 2023 convention, MUG has joined with other pro-party forces to pass resolutions declaring DSA’s independence from the Democratic Party. At the same time, MUG has also proposed its own “Winning the Battle for Democracy” resolution declaring that DSA’s central task is to fight against the existing US Constitution in order to “establish a genuinely democratic republic;” but MUG’s goal of establishing a democratic republic is not generally shared by the other pro-party forces and is not included in the joint resolutions of the pro-party wing. For that reason, I think the pro-party wing and its resolutions are misnamed. They are anti-Democratic Party, but that by itself doesn’t form an adequate ideological and strategic foundation on which to build a party. Only the goal of a new democratic constitution and the establishment of a genuine democratic republic can do that.
Gil Schaeffer
