Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
In a review of the 2020 Thomas Frank book, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, Erik Baker lays out a basic progressive theory of the electorate. I’ll set aside, for the moment, the tension between that and the title of this post. Many leftists, after all, still identify as progressives.
It so happens I recently wrote a post that touched on this idea, in part. Here I’ll briefly sketch out Baker’s critique of Frank and why it’s so important for leftist electoral projects.
Not long ago, I read a book on the writing and ratification of the U.S. constitution. I found it useful, and after I read it I wanted to move along to primary sources. It doesn’t get more primary than the The Federalist Papers, a collection of essays many Americans know. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s a set of essays in favor of the constitution from three of its key defenders (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay).
So, the thing about these essays is that historians, political scientists, and others have written a ton about them. I’m not repeating all that, nor am I really citing it. I’m doing something much less formal. As I read The Federalist Papers, I found a couple of the essays especially useful. That’s all.
Let’s take a look.
The online version of the DSA Convention, as one might expect, didn’t have the kinds of large crowds, side debates, and raucous noise one might expect at a leftist convention with more than 1,000 delegates. But it wasn’t too far off. I’ll collect here a few thoughts about my experience as a delegate from Iowa City.
The first thing I’ll say is that the DSA Convention was still huge and a bit overwhelming. Delegates received tons of emails and discussion options. We had dozens (hundreds?) of pages of material to read on resolutions, bylaws changes, NPC candidates, and so on. Yes, it was pretty chaotic. But DSA staff did an excellent job putting materials into shape and organizing the online experience.
In both 2016 and 2020, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) went all-in on Bernie Sanders. It did so for strategic reasons. In particular, a theory drives these decisions: endorse Sanders, identify with the Bernie brand, and then gain new members from Bernie association. Maybe it doesn’t announce such things that explicitly (though it kinda does), but anyone familiar with DSA knows this was the basic idea.
Sanders lost in both 2016 and 2020. But in each case, the DSA grew enormously.
And so, in one sense, the DSA wildly succeeded. It started as a marginal organization of a few thousand mostly older leftists. It emerged as the largest U.S. socialist organization in a century, boasting around 100,000 members. Along the way, it transformed itself from a minor, largely irrelevant discussion group to a (arguably even the) major player in US leftist politics. Furthermore, the DSA grew not only in membership, but also in ideology. It grew not by tacking to the center, but rather by moving to the left. At both its 2017 and 2019 conventions, its new, younger member base pushed the org to the left.
What if, though, Sanders had won in either 2016 or 2020? What if he were president right now? In that scenario, what would the DSA look like?
Let’s take a look. I think this exercise reveals both opportunities and weaknesses in the DSA’s political model.
Leftists spend a lot of time talking about building an organization. More recently, we see this with discussion around the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). But, in fact, it’s an ancient set of debates. From the struggles of Marx and Bakunin around the First International to division and upheaval in the Socialist Party of America in the 1920s and 1960s, we love arguing about what the “party” should look like.
I’m not sure how much new I have to say about an old debate like this one. But I did recently read an article in Current Affairs by Matt Hartman on his experience as a DSA chair in North Carolina. I thought that article raised some issues worth thinking about.
© 2025 Base and Superstructure
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
