Marxist Unity Group and Reform and Revolution recently released their list of resolutions for the upcoming 2023 National DSA convention. One of these resolutions is on the war in Ukraine and building an anti-war movement. I have several disagreements with the analysis and strategy laid out in this resolution, but it makes several important points. Among these is the call to build ties with anti-war forces abroad. Building ties with countries in that region is a vital step for building an international mass anti-war movement. However, this is not the first time something of this sort has been proposed. In this letter, I am going to describe a trend of anti-solidaristic behavior I have seen as part of DSA’s International Committee leadership. As we discuss DSA’s position on Ukraine and other issues at this year’s convention, I believe this context will be helpful in developing a more well rounded international policy based on both democratic and socialist values.
Last year, DSA’s International Committee’s (IC) Labor Subcommittee led an effort to begin making one of these relationships. Through an IC labor member based in Europe, our subcommittee became aware of a campaign by a UK based union non-profit called LabourStart in support of persecuted union leaders and workers in Belarus. Belarus is a close Russian ally that played a role in the opening days of the war in Ukraine. In recent years, there have been mass working class uprisings in the country against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, the longtime dictator of the country. From these protests, a small but militant independent union movement developed to oppose the state-run unions. These unions were also against the war, so in mid-2022, the Lukashenko regime began shutting down these unions and prosecuting both the leadership and the rank and file.
IC Labor and Europe each voted to endorse and submitted a proposal to the steering committee to publish a tweet linking to this campaign. As per IC procedure, it went to the IC steering committee. After a week, only 3 of the 11 members of IC steering committee had voted on the asynchronous slack vote. In a steering committee meeting, IC Labor’s liaisons were told that the reason it hadn’t passed was because it had gone through the incorrect process for steering committee endorsement. It was put in the correct slack channel and again in another 2 weeks only 3 members of the steering committee had voted. Finally, the steering committee held a political discussion about this issue. The next day the vote to endorse failed by a 5-5 tie. It was only after more than a month and 4 votes in 3 different committees that we got the result of signing what amounts to a petition. IC Labor had taken this time, assuming this vote would pass, to begin developing plans to work with diaspora organizations and run a campaign in support of these unionists. That work ended when the vote failed.
The reason the subcommittee received for the motion failing was that it is “not [IC’s] place” to critique countries like Belarus. There is a faction in IC that believes that, in nearly all cases, the US’s enemies are the working class’s allies. Most often this takes the form of blocking or minimizing any sort of critique of regimes opposed to US imperial interests. This was not the first time this faction has blocked a statement critical of a US enemy. This faction also blocked a statement in solidarity with Independent Trade Unions in Hong Kong. The statement they wrote supporting the protests in Iran minimizes the crimes of the Iranian regime by focusing on US sanctions. Only a month ago IC narrowly failed to sign on to a statement in blanket and uncritical support of the Ortega regime of Nicaragua, a regime well known to crush working class organization and political freedoms. IC rejecting any sort of solidarity with workers in Belarus is not an isolated event. There is a trend of IC minimizing critique of regimes deemed to be part of the “anti-imperialist bloc.”
I understand where this form of anti-imperialism comes from. The United States is an incredibly powerful and evil state that has caused unimaginable damage across the world. Working people are the ones that take the brunt of this damage. However, a perspective that flattens the class struggle to simply a geopolitical game against the United States unrecognizably distorts the struggle for socialism. This has seen DSA IC make questionable alliances with organizations such as Code Pink. Not only are these alliances with these anti-war NGOs generally ineffective, they can give DSA some strange bedfellows and could even become a threat to DSA’s internal democracy.
IC’s near monopoly on DSA’s international policy not only alienates international partners, it alienates much of the organization as a whole. I believe closer ties to DSA’s labor and electoral work would help integrate DSA’s internationalism with the work chapters are deeply involved in. We should be striving to make internationalism a part of the normal experience of being in DSA through organizing on the ground projects like those seen in Detroit. Alongside this, DSA should focus on making international relationships around common struggles, for example around stopping factories from moving overseas. Building an international organization for both democratic and socialist struggles ought to be our objective with this work. I hope this context of DSA IC’s previous reluctance to support workers abroad will help develop an international policy that works alongside, not against, the rest of DSA’s political project.
C.S. Willis
