DSA is an org that professes to organize the ‘multiracial working class.’ It presents itself as a site for the building of working-class power across lines of race, gender, sexuality, and other identity categories. Indeed, these things allegedly set DSA apart both from the sectarian left and the progressive NGO space.
The trouble is that just about everyone to the left of Joe Biden tells some version of that story. It seems like they all love the ‘multiracial working class’ now. This complicates how DSA uses this story to set itself apart.
At the end of the day, I think we can separate DSA from the sectarian left. I’ll say a bit more about that in a future post. For this one, I’ll point out that DSA’s use of the magic phrase looks the same to me as the one we find in the progressive NGO space.
Read on to find out why.
Anti-Zionist Resolution
Not long ago, I took part in a (few) long and far-ranging thread(s) on the DSA forums about a potential Anti-Zionist Resolution (AZR) (see pages 139-141 of the linked material).
To avoid boring the reader too much, I’ll skip the play by play. The gist of it is that AZR supporters wanted the org to pass it as written, with no modifications. AZR skeptics wanted to modify it in several ways. They wanted to remove a section that provided for the expulsion of rank and file DSA members who oppose the BDS movement. They also wanted to rewrite various other sections that would, in the judgment of AZR supporters, water it down.
I took a position between the two sides, arguing in favor of an AZR intact except for the expulsion section. Indeed, I had my reasons for opposing that section, which I’ll mention below.
Activists and Enthusiasts
So much for the intro.
A key problem stands out to me – one that cuts through the entire DSA org. All sides framed the debate in terms of a struggle between various activist groups. The pro-AZR side framed it in terms of improving relations with Palestinian groups, while AZR skeptics framed it in terms of alienating progressive electoral groups.
(Some AZR skeptics also cited it as an example of an alleged ‘purge’ against certain factions, but I’m setting that aside as implausible).
The shared frame doesn’t work. For one, it leaves out the impact of the debate on DSA’s alleged target group of working-class people across lines of race, gender, et al.
I argued that expelling people for political disagreement on a single issue would make it more difficult to recruit and retain working-class people. Why? Many working-class people of all identities hold bad opinions, or just opinions that aren’t grounded in good leftist theory or practice. We all started somewhere.
I’ll say more about that in the next section. But most of all, I think all sides in the debate saw DSA as an org by and for activists and enthusiasts, not working-class people.
And that’s the heart of the problem.
Recruiting and Retaining Working-Class People
Let’s unpack all this a bit. Here’s what I find missing from DSA: a focus on how to attract our alleged target base of working-class people across lines of identity.
When reaching out to a target base, it’s important to focus on how that base actually works. You reach out to people by using terms they can understand, bringing them in, and working them in to the org.
DSA is quite bad at all this. Instead, DSA operates through existing activist networks, especially white progressive networks and trans activist networks. As I put it in a recent post, DSA looks and feels like a counterculture space, not a working-class space. DSA creates spaces that are alienating to people not already educated into activist norms and activist communities.
When a person who’s not an activist walks into a DSA meeting, it feels off. Everything from thick social justice terms to masks to pronoun intros to meetings that are either too rigid (i.e., excessive use of Roberts Rules) or too open-ended (i.e., no agenda, lots of open-ended discussion) are all measures to appeal to activists and enthusiasts, but not to the target base.
And so, DSA creates a space that’s accessible and comfortable…for activists. It doesn’t create a space that’s comfortable for its target base.
Application to AZR
The AZR debate didn’t create these problems. But it added to them.
Leftist meetings are already weird or intimidating for many working people, even without the threat of expulsion tossed on top. Now people who might already feel out of place for not knowing the Big Book of Leftist Jargon will also feel the need to hide their politics. More realistically, they’ll probably just not show up to meetings.
This kind of expulsion threat thereby creates yet another hindrance to efforts to recruit more broadly. It creates an environment of fear rather than one conducive to political discussion and debate.
The AZR presents a lot of good ideas. It helpfully clarifies DSA’s stance as an anti-Zionist org. It also sets clearer expectations for DSA politicians. But the expulsion clause doesn’t help with any of that, and it piles on to existing problems with the org. Indeed, it seems like it’s in there for no reason other than pleasing other activist orgs rather than attracting DSA’s target base.
To bring working-class people together, DSA has to figure out how to get people into the room and how to get people to think of themselves as a class with common interests. It’s not doing enough of that.
What is DSA?
DSA says it’s an org built around the ‘multiracial working class,’ but that view isn’t well supported.
Rather, the org is built around a coalition of activists and enthusiasts. We see this in the org’s structure – where, nationally, people are invited to “choose your own adventure” by joining one of the various issue based priority campaigns.
We also see it in the AZR debate. Some Palestinian activists – with good reason – felt left out of the activist coalition. Other activist groups push them to the margins. And so, they responded with a resolution aimed at broadening the activist coalition.
When we kick the tires on DSA, we find a lot of this. We find struggles over which activist groups and concerns to prioritize. Should we put Medicare for All first? How about elections? Should we prioritize the concerns of minority identity groups, like our black or trans members? Or should we prioritize Palestine, or something else?
None of these positions meshes well with focusing on the interests and concerns of working-class people across identities. To do that requires DSA to put its main focus on classes rather than issues.
That’s where things have really gone off the rails for DSA. DSA has lots of working-class members, but it’s not a working-class org. It builds its spaces and politics around counterculture and affinity groups in tension with one another. Even my own chapter – run by good, well meaning people – seems more interested these days in counterculture than in building a working-class base.
As for me, I’m just not interested in counterculture at this point in my life. I still want to help organize workers and/or tenants.
Postscript: A Podcast Recommendation
Finally, I think Aziz Rana articulates many of the issues in this post quite well in an interview with the podcast American Prestige.
Rana ties together a historical narrative in which American suburbanization divided the U.S. working class by race and geography. In theory, DSA wanted to put them back together. In practice, it hasn’t. But that’s still the project of the left.
