Recently, a debate opened up between two DSA caucuses – Socialist Majority and Bread & Roses – over a few strategic questions. Among other things, it shows an emerging split within the national org’s majority coalition. I don’t want to review the entire debate, especially since I’ve looked at parts of it in other posts. Rather, I want to look at a new part of the debate: the issue of who the DSA should target in its recruiting efforts. Should the DSA try to be a youth movement?
As a start, I’ll note that in some ways, the DSA is already a youth movement. It grew from 2015 to 2020, often rapidly. And it did so in large part on the strength of new members under the age of 30. Nearly everyone who joined was under the age of 40. But is all this the goal of a good recruiting effort? Should DSA keep focusing its efforts on finding new members among young people?
I think the answer is more complicated than the simple “yes” given by the Bread & Roses faction.
Recruiting and Youth
In the Bread & Roses article, Luca P. advocates, among other things, that DSA focus its recruiting efforts on working-class people under the age of 40.
In a general sense, this is good advice. I’ve given similar advice before to political parties looking to work their way out of a bad situation. Implemented carefully, this advice can help an org plan for its future. These recruiting efforts can build new, long-term members. And those members can help grow the org over a period of years and decades.
But it’s very difficult to implement Luca P.’s advice carefully. When people translate it into practice, they usually go astray. For example, often they end up turning “working-class people under the age of 40” into “college students.” The ISO took this route for years, putting its recruiting efforts into a largely failed push to win over students.
Bread & Roses itself has tried out the advice, generally in a ham-handed way that produced poor results. The caucus proposed a Resolution at the 2021 DSA Convention that would have diverted DSA funds to a special group focused on recruiting often wealthy, usually PMC (see note at bottom) college activists under the banner of issues like the Green New Deal. These kinds of activist centered shortcut politics aren’t good ways to organize “working-class people under the age of 40.”
And so, there’s nothing wrong with organizing people under 40. But it’s very difficult to do so in a deep way that builds members among the right groups. Rather than, say, diverting attention toward the kinds of people under 40 who are easiest to organize – namely, already engaged college student activists who aren’t working class.
A Better Translation
So, much of the issue comes down to how to translate good general advice into practice. How should DSA do so? In short, it should build a coalition of working-class people and other marginalized people. And it should do so in a way that prepares for the future of the org and the socialist movement.
Of course, that’s also generic advice. Translating it into practice means focusing on people under 40. After all, the pre-2016 DSA ‘Old Guard‘ had a member base averaging about 60 years old, which clearly didn’t work. But DSA shouldn’t focus exclusively on people under 40. And in some cases, not even primarily on people under 40. And it certainly shouldn’t focus mainly on college students. Rather, DSA should focus on working-class young people who haven’t attended college. It should also build a multi-generational base.
The org already does a decent job recruiting young activists from age 18 to 30. But it doesn’t do a good job recruiting basically anyone else. As a result, the org checks in with an overall profile of members that’s too young and too activist-y. At only age 39, I’m already sort of an elder statesman in DSA.
That’s a problem.
A Balanced Movement
And so, DSA should pursue young members. But it should do so in a way less tilted toward college students, PMC youth, and activists. It should focus more on class-based organizing and less on issue-based organizing. And it should make sure to include high school students and people over 18 not in college.
DSA also needs generational balance. Young people could learn a lot from older members of working-class communities. Young people bring lots of energy. They’re often the most engaged and excited members. But they often form unhealthy cliques and factions. They can be impulsive and foolish. They can be too online. Many repeat the mistakes of earlier activists. And many are Pied Pipers or ultra-progressives.
Finally, DSA chapters need to create a comfortable and accessible environment for a broad, multi-racial and multi-generational working-class coalition. Among other things, this means making meetings and events accessible to all people. It means providing child care options for attendees, not exclusively using obscure platforms that only young people and/or subcultures use, announcing meetings well in advance so that older working-class people can make plans to attend, getting out into working-class communities to chat with people, and so on.
Every chapter that I’ve seen has struggled with these issues.
And so, yes, the socialist movement should have a solid base among young people. But it also needs balance.
A Note on ‘PMC’
‘PMC’ is an abbreviation for ‘professional managerial class.’ In its original usage by Barbara Ehrenreich, the term refers to a highly educated and trained group of people who tend to take salaried, professional jobs. And so, they’re neither members of the bourgeoisie nor members of the ‘traditional working class.’
The actual class position of people in the PMC varies quite a bit. Some are quite powerful and well off, while others are workers whose position is precarious and subject to deskilling and other tools of class warfare by the elite. PMC youth who join orgs like DSA or Sunrise can end up at either end of the PMC divide.
