Shades of Collective Power
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Shades of Collective Power
Articles

Shades of Collective Power

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Sam DiBella covers the recent controversy over the election of convention delegates in Metro DC DSA and assesses the role played by the remains of the DC-based Collective Power Network (CPN) caucus.  

Still from Esfir Shub’s 1932 documentary ‘Komsomol, Patron of Electrification’

Introduction

Imagine stars, burning, and the shadows they cast. This spring, a slate of 40 candidates was elected to all the delegate seats of the Metro DC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for this summer’s national convention.1 The leaders of this slate claimed this as a local triumph, proof of their organizing strategy. The slate then went on to provide two swing votes on but failed to pass the “Democratize DSA” resolution that would have turned the governing National Political Committee (NPC) into an unwieldy 51-member body ruled by a new steering committee layer.2 I believe DC’s internal election was produced through shadow, not flame, and it yielded a lesson for what a left party in the US should and shouldn’t look like. 

Getting organizers into factories was one of the commonplace aims of 20th-century socialists, in both the US New Left and Italian operaismo. Focusing on the shop floor as a site of struggle, they believed, would create a militant working class able to contest capitalism. The results were mixed at best. Now that interest in labor organizing is on the rise (even as US unionization rates are not), leftists have to face the same dilemma: what is the right relation between union of workers and party of socialists? 

Natalia Tylim pointed out this summer that the DSA’s surge has cooled off, and its national has settled into “an organizational form that is more related to an NGO than a left membership organization.”3 The new, varied NPC provides some hope, but for the DSA to continue to grow, I believe, it must learn something from labor organizers. Not door-knocking, not electoral accountability, not mobilizing. No. Instead of finding yet another policy issue to tweak or mass email to write, DSA members need to focus on the kind of basic conversations used in labor organizing to build consensus across political differences. 

A preoccupation with ideological conflict that burns members out needs to be replaced by principles and processes that allow members to disagree, to resolve that disagreement productively, and to continue together on the other side. To members who focus on infrastructure and want to avoid conflict entirely, I want to say: You cannot. If you do not contest the aims and culture of your chapter, they will be decided for you. Both of these seem obvious but, in practice, they are not.

To explain, I need to talk about caucuses and networks (forgive me my dry tools). I’ll start with something that is both. 

An Anti-Caucus Caucus

In 2018, several Metro DC DSA members used the chapter’s yearly convention to cohere a local vision for how DSA could form a mass political party. One proposal suggested that members create a “formal caucus at a local level” along with a publication to become “a political center” for the chapter, as well as an Action Network email list of supporters to send voting instructions. The core concept was that a working-class party would form through “participating in Democratic Party primaries” that would create visible contradictions between desiccated Democrats and working-class socialists. A healthy call for internal democracy and criticism of unaccountable “decentralized leadership” was mixed with faith in bureaucracy and pragmatism.4 

The DSA Collective Power Network (CPN) caucus formed in February 2019 through a merger of this Metro DC tendency and aligned groups in other chapters. CPN first articulated its views through a manifesto called “Towards Power.”5 To combat capitalism, CPN argued, the DSA needed to build up its central infrastructure, connect its decentralized network of chapters, and end personality-centric conflict. They aimed their first efforts at the 2019 national convention: 

We believe the political goal of democratic socialists should be to build real power for and with the billions of workers and oppressed people the world over. Mass organizing models are absolutely necessary to achieve that. But those politics are secondary to our main goal, which is to present positive proposals for how the organization can become more democratic and effective on a national level.

This focus on process and infrastructure created an alliance between policy-wonk yuppies, on the one hand, and members committed to a praxis of social infrastructure through media, art, and education. We will see, however, how this priority has hollowed out over time. 

In DC, CPN became both increasingly electoral and against a break with the Democratic party. Writing for CPN organ The Organizer, DC-member Brad C. argued that striving for an independent party of workers is naive in the United States, at best.6 His belief that the DSA should co-opt the Democratic party from within and turn its power toward socialist ends has become a CPN truism. This idea ignored the historical hostility the Democratic party has had towards its left factions.7 CPN’s strategy insisted on electoral accountability, without actually proposing any means through which it could be achieved.8

Moving into the 2021 convention, building power was again CPN’s focus. In DC, CPN had backed out on early promises to publish caucus writing in chapter venues; new members had to be tapped to join, which prevented most from understanding the reach and mechanisms of the caucus. Their stance on national issues in a nutshell: supporting a mass labor movement, building electoral power within the Democratic party, and creating support campaigns for member recruitment and technology.9 To maintain consistency with their anti-conflict stance, the CPN helped create the cross-caucus Cardinal slate for the 2021 convention only to implode, ironically, in a spate of internecine conflicts.10

As one former caucus member wrote, “This was to be a network rather than a caucus because we came together only around structural reforms to DSA rather than broad political and ideological agreement.” The result was far more brittle than faith in infrastructure had promised. A CPN commission formed to survey the wreckage noted that almost none of the 150 members of the caucus knew of the personal conflicts behind the break and that the pressure of coordinating an enormous slate had burned out key caucus contributors.11 The combined reliance on and under-support of internal grievance processes meant that disagreements immediately bled into conflict. 

There is no public presence for CPN anymore. The Organizer is now only available through the Internet Archive and Mass, a blog some former CPN member must have spun up once their servers went down. The CPN Twitter hasn’t posted in two years; its password is probably lost forever. But former members of CPN now make up a significant, yet secretive, power bloc within the DC DSA chapter. The lack of caucuses in the chapter (we’re beyond those, we’re told) mean that their informal organization maintains internal control. Elements of efficient mobilization still circulate,12 but also their conflict-averse ideals: “beware the wreckers,” they say.13 “Wreckers,” here, are concerned chapter members reinterpreted as ungrateful “asshole” “supervisors” who only come to leftist politics for a hobby. Let’s see how that chestnut of un-comradely pathology has worked out. 

The DC Network

Washington, DC, lacks significant industry independent from the federal government. As a result, the city is overfull with professionals skilled in policy and politics. This demographic, in turn, shapes the makeup of the Metro DC chapter: government employees, think-tank wonks, influencers, and office workers are all over-represented. I do not want to re-hash the many debates about the professional-managerial class and their role within socialist organizing. I do want to point out that the organizing used by this class formation depends on the forms of power they are comfortable exerting and having exerted upon them. 

The Metro DC DSA chapter recreates imperial DC’s relation to the rest of the US: a central government, a star around which a constellation of working groups and branches strive to maintain their orbit. (Even now, our Northern Virginia branch is contemplating a split.) Our chapter also has an open secret: a single, coordinated group controls our steering committee, and through it, our chapter. They are a shadow caucus inspired by our local history with CPN. 

As an organizer, my focus is my workplace, so it took me a long time to understand the chapter’s power dynamics. Even then, I delayed acting for fear that I misunderstood them. Over the past two years, I watched from afar as vocal members and contingents of the chapter were forced out for disagreeing with post-CPN members (I didn’t even know what they were then). A full slate ran and seized power of our steering committee in an uncompetitive election—only one unaligned candidate ran. This was heralded as a chapter success, a blaze marking our unified vision, when it was in reality a shadow of CPN. 

When a payment processor temporarily froze chapter funds due to a mistake made by our internationalism working group, this became a tool to browbeat the working group into submission. Not only had they harmed the chapter, they had put their selfish political vision over chapter consensus. This could never be forgiven, it was implied. An honest mistake was shaped, through posts made to large social-media followings, into a deliberate act of sabotage. Resolutions advanced by the group were voted down; a subset of steering committee members maintained a united front by always agreeing in public comment periods. When the working group voted to dissolve itself, chapter leaders contested the vote and almost denied it its last moment of autonomy. 

A similar series of tactics was used to vote down a resolution in solidarity with railroad workers, to push out ideas about member engagement that extended beyond door-knocking and canvassing, to sideline the concerns of branch steering committees. In each case, post-CPN members represented other active members as misunderstanding chapter consensus while marshaling a captive audience of inactive members to maintain that facade.

Unsurprisingly, our chapter has atrophied. DSA membership has declined nationally since its recent peak in 2021; in DC, around 15% of members lapsed dues or left in a little over a single year.14 The organization is in a kind of crisis, which is how post-CPN members justified the forming of a 40-person slate to run for the chapter’s 38 slots at this year’s national convention. Leading up to the election, opportunities for internal organizing were suppressed.15 After the resulting landslide, other members were hurt and reduced their commitment to the chapter. They simply hadn’t organized well, post-CPN members said.

I and a friend saw this happening, and we were fed up. We ran into one of the post-CPN members at a bar, and we grilled him on the election. Rather than try to organize and connect to our concerns, he lashed out at us. He told us that if we really cared about the chapter, we should either get elected to steering or keep quiet. He did this, of course, without any intention of helping us do the former. Because he wanted the latter. 

The same thing happened when my reporting to chapter was posted, in an effort to spark conversation: I was an ungrateful constituent “screaming” at our poor steering committee. Flyering outside our general meeting several days later, I met one post-CPN member. He did not know me and he did not ask my politics or positions, but he quickly told me that we were on opposite sides. Of what, I wonder. Remember the wreckers.

Party Organizers

Among the accusations I received for writing on this issue, I think “antidemocratic” is the most interesting. I was accused of being antidemocratic for trying to reveal the harmful effects of a hollow election. But I did not challenge the results. I did not say different delegates should go to the election. I simply pointed out that this slate was made up of people, that those representatives should care what other members in the chapter want, and that any harm caused should be healed. 

Figuring out the right relationship between organizing and democracy has felt, to me, difficult but necessary. Often, in the interest of organizing, you cannot at first consult the entire body of people you are organizing. That is actually the problem you are organizing to solve: the building of space and community where there is none, so that collective desires become collective power. In doing so, you have to assume that your hunches of shared opinion are correct: yes, everyone at this workplace is oppressed by their employer. Yes, everyone here wants to receive healthcare. Yes, everyone in this chapter is being subjugated by this faction. 

Those hunches might not be right; they should seem obvious to you, but they also have to be constantly tested and reshaped through conversation and inquiry. In doing so, you are not trying to build the kind of shallow consensus of compromise that defines most of our electoral politics. You are not arguing to prove rhetorical victory (for that is all it will be). You are building a radical vision that actually—you might be surprised—you all share.

In US cities, that vision can only form when you come into contact with people who are different than yourself. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Samuel Delany develops a theory of “contact,” accidental cross-class communication. “[G]iven the mode of capitalism under which we live, life is at its most rewarding, productive, and pleasant when large numbers of people understand, appreciate, and seek out interclass contact and communication conducted in a mode of good will,” he says.16 

This is why the destruction of public spaces, liminal spaces, uncontrolled spaces in our cities is so harmful—they prevent the formation of solidarity. In some cases, contact is actually necessary for social life; Delaney uses “contact” to discuss his ambivalent nostalgia for a particular kind of queer cruising that was destroyed when the Times Square porn theaters were demolished to make way for gentrification. Contrary to “contact,” Delaney poses networking—a winner-takes-all interaction that reinforces the positions of those who hold power and prevent those who don’t from meeting anyone. It shouldn’t be a surprise which form of social life CPN members favored.

So, against messy but robust organizing, we can contrast the ultimate 21st-century expression of power: the network. There once was a joke floating around an early internet—Usenet—that was used to both welcome and warn newcomers about how things worked there. Anyone who went hunting for the leaders of this social space would hear the same refrain: There Is No Cabal! The thing is, there was. For nearly two decades, server administrators coordinated via a secret “backbone cabal” to shape the infrastructure of Usenet communities. The cabal was so hidden that when it dissolved due to infighting, it took Usenet users years to uncover the truth.17 Network power often looks like this, and there is nothing democratic about it. These networks are brittle and emphasize the easy connections made by technical tools.

The voting margin that post-CPN members secured for this year’s delegate election were actually razor thin in a chapter of over 2,500 members. Mere tens of votes ensured the sweep. Post-CPN members said their victory was simply the result of good organizing, that their collection of member names and contacts was good practice. I believe the aggressive tactics those members relied on actually reflect a weakness in their organizing. Computer scientist Zeynep Tufecki argues in Twitter and Teargas that social media has weakened all of our organizing abilities—the contact lists that, for example, the civil rights movement built up were not the sole source of that movement’s power.18 Those lists were a signal, an artifact, of organizing and not its true end. 

For organizers, I think the question is: how do we think of this kind of shallow, secretive mobilizing? It does not build power, it only preserves it (barely). The result is a political machine for the New Gilded Age—a mass desire for enfranchisement that actually centralizes power into shadowy figures.19 CPN was created with the aim of surpassing ideological conflict through praxis, but when that collective project fell apart, what was left? I do not actually think the harms I described above were made maliciously. A forum devolves into group chats. The sinews, the nerves of collective power fire aimlessly as they unravel.

Unlike a dying star, however, social formations are not fated to dwindle into embers and ash. They can reignite, with the right spark.

 

 

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  1. Sam D. 2023. “Onward Slate Moves to National Convention at Local Cost.” Washington Socialist, July 6, 2023. https://washingtonsocialist.mdcdsa.org/ws-articles/23-07-dc-delegate-elections.
  2. The Red Star caucus analyzed the likely effects of this “MegaNPC” resolution: “If we implement this specific proposal right now, we’ll give the current dysfunctional system that has led to sterile, unproductive, personalized conflict instead of robust internal democracy a chance to reestablish itself in a new organizational form, rather than receding from leadership.” Red Star. 2023. “Red Star Opposition to Constitution/Bylaws Change #1: ‘Democratize DSA,’” July 28, 2023. https://redstarcaucus.org/against-meganpc/.
  3. Tylim, Natalia. 2023. “The Blush Is Off the Rose.” Tempest. July 6, 2023. https://www.tempestmag.org/2023/07/the-blush-is-off-the-rose/.
  4. “Towards a Mass Organization: What We Want and How We Get It.” 2018. Google Docs. November 14, 2018. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QlQ-Aa1r73JtbY-rrdn-YKCdAZjt2y1y76JTFNRO1-k/edit?usp=embed_facebook.
  5. Note the contrast in mission with “Towards a Mass Organization.” CPN. 2019. “Towards Power: Draft Program of the Collective Power Network.” The Organizer. February 22, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20211021092245/https://dsaorganizer.org/2019/02/22/towards-power-draft-program-of-the-collective-power-network/.
  6. Brad C. 2022. “Breaking Bad: How Obsession with an Independent Workers’ Party Hurts the Socialist Electoral Project.” Mass. April 8, 2022. https://dsamass.org/2022/04/08/breaking-bad/.
  7. Grove denounces CPN’s particular flavor of cynical pragmatism that still succumbs to the idea that the Democratic Party will look favorably on, or even tolerate, leftist collaborators. Grove, Ben. 2021. “Why Run Independents? A Response to Collective Power Network.” Cosmonaut, May. https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/05/why-run-independents-a-response-to-collective-power-network/.
  8. Franklin Roberts. 2020. “On Electoral Strategy.” Washington Socialist, July 2020. https://washingtonsocialist.mdcdsa.org/ws-articles/20-07-electoral-strategy.
  9. CPN Steering. 2021. “Voter Guide: 2021 DSA National Convention.” The Organizer. July 26, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20211021074145/https://dsaorganizer.org/2021/07/26/collective-power-network-voter-guide-2021-dsa-national-convention/. For slightly more detail on CPN’s politics, see Dreyer, Jesse, and Philip Locker. 2021. “Who’s Who in DSA: A Guide to DSA Caucuses.” Reform & Revolution. September 8, 2021. https://reformandrevolution.org/2021/09/08/whos-who-in-dsa-a-guide-to-dsa-caucuses/.
  10. “Cardinal Going Their Own Way.” 2021. Accessed July 12, 2023. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jWTx3KUJdjgxFzYoPpcARq4yawbLRFJMfAipnOFKJds/edit?usp=sharing.
  11. “CPN Resignation Commission.” 2021. https://imgur.com/a/e0YRhI3.
  12. Shane K. and Ryan Musgrove. 2021. “The Metro DC Socialist Mobilization Model.” Washington Socialist, May 2021. https://washingtonsocialist.mdcdsa.org/ws-articles/21-05-metro-dc-mobilization.
  13. This article is totally toxic. Its pretense of sociological analysis disguises the excuse it provides to purge anyone exhibiting “wrecker” behavior. If any writing on organizing offers this kind of certainty about the motivations of strangers, beware. The article linked was circulating again on social media as delegates prepared for their national convention this summer. A. Robert Miller. 2022. “Beware the Wreckers.” Mass. June 27, 2022. https://dsamass.org/2022/06/27/beware-the-wreckers/.
  14. MDC DSA Steering Committee. 2023. “Metro DC DSA Annual Report: 2022.” Washington Socialist, January 2023. https://washingtonsocialist.mdcdsa.org/ws-articles/23-01-annual-report.
  15. Sam D. 2023. “Onward Slate Moves to National Convention at Local Cost.” Washington Socialist, July 6, 2023. https://washingtonsocialist.mdcdsa.org/ws-articles/23-07-dc-delegate-elections.
  16. Delany, Samuel R. 2019. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue: 20th Anniversary Edition. Sexual Cultures. NYU Press.
  17. Coleman, E. Gabriella. 2013. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  18. Tufekci, Zeynep. 2017. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press.
  19. For a more detailed critique of “party within a party” strategies, see Sernatinger, Andy and Emma Wilde Botta. 2021. “Strange Alchemy.” Tempest. June 5, 2021. https://www.tempestmag.org/2021/06/strange-alchemy/.