Democracy can be a frustrating thing. In accepting the equality of all participants in the democratic process, we must accept many with whom we have strong disagreement or believe to be ill-informed. I am not sure which category Jon Hochschartner’s recent letter falls into, therefore I will try to engage with it as a sincere concern from a fellow new member to the DSA, despite its appearance as bait better suited to the murky depths of /pol/. In his letter, Jon not only demonstrates profound ignorance of socialist history and party democracy, but a lack of sincere commitment to democratic principles as a whole. This letter should not drive us to fury, but rather serve as motivation to expand and improve our efforts to provide political education to new members-a task of perhaps paramount importance as our big-tent party continues to grow.

Though it is the second of the letter’s glaring errors, perhaps the most concerning is the complete slander of our party members in the Red Star caucus and Marxist-Leninists in the DSA more broadly. Despite clearly recognizing it as at least a separate label from Stalinism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, all MLs are tarred with the brush of authoritarianism. Such nonsense would be far more suited to the liars at Fox; for this to come from a fellow party member is painfully absurd. The fact that Jon seemingly did not bother to look at the Points of Unity for Red Star is either lazy incuriousity or gross uncharitability. To claim MLs are somehow antithetical to democracy is to deny Lenin his place as one of the most prominent theorists of social democracy and the actual political beliefs of party comrades.

Then there is his clear misrepresentation of the mechanics of democracy within the DSA. I have unfortunately seen several comrades within my own chapter distort the facts around the “non-binding” AOC poll that the NPC voted against earlier this year; I will save myself some ink and the reader some time in moving past the specifics of that particular dust-up. Jon is correct in pointing out that, numerically, caucused members are a fractional minority; where he is wrong is in assuming that any member not in a caucus is a monolithic mass of New Deal Democrats. Having participated in a number of reading groups and discussion forums within the DC chapter, I can say with some confidence our tent is quite large indeed, with a healthy variety of views. While many of these members may not be formal members, these caucuses are a natural formation of many of the most politically active members, helping to mark the tent poles which hold up our diverse politics. This is the whole point of a democratic socialist party-to unite multiple tendencies of the left and democratically deliberate on the direction we want to go in.

Ultimately, this letter wraps itself up in one obvious contradiction: to save the big-tent social democratic party, Jon believes we must disenfranchise certain social democrats for ill-defined and largely optical reasons. Such ignorant self-assurance is perhaps the biggest threat to the DSA from within. For the sake of our party’s democracy, we must reach such new members who have only the mythologies of capitalist education systems and media, and help them develop their consciousness towards democratic socialism.