It kind of sucks that we have this lockdown going on, and meetings can't happen. I don't think people are as receptive to "Hey want to join a zoom call w/ me?" compared to just asking if they want to come to a meeting with you.
Probably majorly hampered the recruitment efforts.
Probably majorly hampered the recruitment efforts.
I"m not going to get a bus for 30 minutes just to listen to some dorks, this is perfect for my level of apathetic engagement
I actually love it because I can still cook dinner and have a normal weeknight without having to shlep out to some library 45 minutes away from me.
I do miss going to the bar with comrades after though
I'm really disappointed to see DSA do this campaign when they already have very low membership engagement. Of the 500 members my local chapter claims maybe 80 of them are active. That is being generous.
Trying to get more people to join without first addressing their large, disengaged membership leaves a bad taste in my mouth. They are not effectively utilizing their base, already. They do not need to grow.
Feels more like an MLM scam than an attempt to build political power, especially with that "Recruit three people with this code, and get a free DSA hat!" promotional lol
Wait but who the fuck has a political group where most of the people are going to meetings?
Wait but who the fuck has a political group where most of the people are going to meetings?
I'm talking about any type of activity. If 80 people were showing up to meetings, that would be one thing.
The bulk of the membership are people who switched their monthly Bernie donation to DSA dues. I have not seen a campaign in DSA to address this problem, and yet they are trying to expand their membership.
Also, every party I have been in (besides DSA) has had membership expectations.
The bulk of the membership are people who switched their monthly Bernie donation to DSA dues.
So they have a bunch of money to do things. I can't see anything wrong with that..
I would not call collecting donations "membership." There is not much socialists can do with $5 a month. We need labor.
The cheapest you can pay is $20 a year, $27 if not a student. Or you can completely waive it.
There is not much socialists can do with $5 a month.
Not with an individual donation of $5 a month. Obviously.
We need labor.
People need their labor, to sell, to survive. I get that you want more people helping with work, but getting more members who will mostly pay their dues, does not hinder this goal.
These are two separate issues and i hate that i have to explain to people how growing the largest socialist movement in decades is not a bad thing.
These are two separate issues
Organizations have a limited capacity. An organization is where they focus their labor, and nothing more.
I'm disappointed to see DSA move closer towards the UK Labor Party strategy: more focus on mass-membership, less focus on base-building. It is a fragile organizing strategy that has a bad history of success.
You can't have a "base" in an organization with 5 digit membership in a country of 325 million. The CPUSA had almost 75,000 official members at its peak in a country of 125 million. And the risks of being a CPUSA member in the 30s were much higher than being a DSA member.
I don't understand what you are saying here. You cannot have an engaged base of members with five digit membership?
The DSA isn't supposed to be a hobby club or a volunteer organization. An "engaged base" of 50,000 people isn't going to do jack shit in a country of over 300 million when the goal is a political project. Especially when you keep it 100 and consider who is actually in the DSA - they aren't threatening anyone in power anytime soon.
Can't part of an organization focus their effort to growing, and another part on building a base?
Sure. That is not happening. That is why I have these criticisms.
If DSA first has a campaign to build internal organs for membership engagement, then had this recruitment drive, I would not have this criticism.
This is literally the first time the org has had any sort of membership recruitment drive.
Yes. They decided to move in the direction mass-membership, low participation in a time where their engagement is already low. That is my criticism.
Its a larger participation than all the other orgs combined. I think dsa can benefit from internal upkeep and education for sure, though idk how thats impended by a membership drive. In fact the best time to do such a campaign is after a larger batch of new members joins. I think one of the bigger lacking things in dsa is effective communication systems, which a lack thereof creates a hard barrier for entry, participation, and engagement. This is an ongoing thing the org is working on and its not impended in any way by a membership recruitment campaign.
Its a larger participation than all the other orgs combined.
I have had much different experiences.
In fact the best time to do such a campaign is after a larger batch of new members joins.
You think so? I would imagine having a plan in place to engage & educate members before bringing more people on would make the most sense. That process takes a lot of work in my experience. It won't be successful executed on-the-fly.
This is an ongoing thing the org is working on and its not impended in any way by a membership recruitment campaign.
Membership engagement is impeded by holding your largest recruitment drive ever before addressing these issues. The best time to engage people is when they are being brought on board. That process was horribly lacking in my experiences with DSA. I saw more people disengage from DSA after joining than I've seen in any other organization.
Why is DSA choosing to bring on a shit-ton of members before addressing these issues? I do not understand that.
Its a different base building. Getting your relatives and friends to join DSA to get engaged with the movement and their local community and also call themselves socialist is a good thing. These people would have otherwise never gotten engaged in any way, so now they have the opportunity to. DSA does tons of things to educate people and teach them how to get engaged, idk what u even mean they should do that they arent already tbh. Chapters also vary a lot from place to place, but i would agree that engagement could be better, but thats an actual matter of communication systems imo. If there were a dsa slack or something for each chapter it would be easier to stay engaged for example. These things are all being worked on though.
Feels more like an MLM scam
What did the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists ever do to you? 😤
It's hinging on the hope of action being catalytic, I think.
The more people show up, the more people think "oh shit this is really happening" and so it goes. Realistically, membership engagement is always going to be low with stuff like this--work, kids, and so on. Can't say this is the best way forward, though.
Yeah I hope this is it. I basically never go to meetings because nothing happens....
It's not lol
Engagement only goes up when members have clear expectations & the organization provides meaningful obligations. DSA is not interested in that, they are trying to become a mass-member party a la UK Labour.
Yeah they may not be communists but they have a place in shifting the overall perception of socialism to the point where we can introduce communism.
Idk where people get the idea that DSA is going to push me towards communism. Basically every single DSA person I've ever met is wholly subsumed by liberal hegemony and will drop everything to try and get a social fascist elected dogcatcher. Like they're still just trying to elect """"""""socialists"""""""" to city council here in Baltimore as if that's going to do a fucking thing. I know different chapters have different characteristics but honestly the class character of DSA as a whole is petit bourgeois. Isn't it like 30% of their members make over $100k/yr?
Alienating folks because they make a high wage is silly. If they work for a living then they likely identify more with you than their multi-millionaire CEO. Also, a post-revolution society will need individuals who are currently paid well under our capitalist system. Shunning potential class traitors moves them right.
If they work for a living then they likely identify more with you than their multi-millionaire CEO.
The CEO also "works for a living."
It's not about shunning people, but recognizing how the class composition of an organization affects it's politics
If you're making over $100k a year, you're either a professional, in tech, or in management
Lol. Don't be so dense. I didn't say the PMC are "the enemy." Just that they have distinct class characteristics that affect their politics.
Nothing is "leftist" because there is no such thing as "leftism". It's a bullshit meaningless term like "progressive".
If you don't understand how the petit bourgeois and PMC classes have different class interests than the actual Proletariat than honestly you should do some more reading. There is a very breadtube sentiment among the western left that "anyone who works for a wage/salary is a worker" or whatever and they're right but they're wrong to think that their interests align with those at the bottom. Even blue collar skilled workers who grew up poor but make $85k/yr now as a plumber or electrician have very few interests in common with the Proletariat and are usually the most reactionary segment of society. The reactionary nature of the Labor Aristocracy and Petit Bourgeoisie manifests as overt Fascism, while the "progressive" conservative nature of the PMC manifests as Social Fascism.
Having your organization be 30% petit bourgeois/PMC is going to effect the class character of its politics. If they're a small fraction that must be subordinate to a Proletarian majority that is fine but 30% is enough to pull any org in a certain direction.
Way more than 30% of DSA have a "PMC consciousness." Aspiring graphic designers working service "but it's just temporary" is a serious cohort in the org.
In their defense, a large portion of the college-educated proletariat thinks this way right now.
Subsistence living fetishization isn’t fucking leftist.
"workers of the world, unite with bourgeois college kids!"
I'd be fine with uniting with them, just not being subordinate to them lol.
Sure but their CEO controls mass amounts of capital.
Yeah the DSA probably doesn't have great foreign policy, but it's one of the best places in the US to find politically active individuals who are going to be more open to leftward leaning ideologies.
This mentality is inherently liberal. You're putting the superstructure ahead of the base by assuming that people will become revolutionary by pure ideology alone rather than their material and class interests. Honestly it seems to me like most "leftists" would just rather talk to college educated peers than poor black and brown folks who make up the actual Proletariat in this country.
First off, thank you for the compliment.
I think people can be radicalized by ideology or material conditions, mostly a combination thereof.
"Honestly it seems to me like most “leftists” would just rather talk to college educated peers than poor black and brown folks who make up the actual Proletariat in this country."
^I don't see what this has to do with my opinion that the DSA could help move people down a path of radicalization. Seems pretty ad hominem at that, you don't know anything about me dude.
I think people can be radicalized by ideology or material conditions, mostly a combination thereof.
Yes, this is the divide between the intelligentsia consciousness & the proletariat consciousness in communist parties.
Revolutions do not succeed when led by the intelligentsia, because they are not materially driven.
And yet pretty much all successful socialist revolutions up till now were led by the intelligencia 🤔
Remember when the Soviets of Students' and Academics' Deputies became the base of the USSR? lmao
The only members of the intelligentsia that have contributed to revolution made themselves subservient to the proletariat & peasants.
You said "led", not "became the base". No need to move the goalposts. There's a good reason for this too, seeing as how the capitalist system actively discourages the proletariat from thinking about possible alternatives by denying education, propagating lowest common denominator culture and, above all, burdening proles with work and struggle for survival to the point they're too exhausted. All of this besides the point if we're talking about the DSA, because it's explicitly not a revolutionary organisation.
You said “led”, not “became the base”
Yes, I did. If you pretend "the revolution" is led solely by the one figurehead that gets credit (Mao, Lenin, etc.), then you are misunderstanding history.
How many of the uprisings in 1905 and summer 1917 do you think were led by the intelligentsia? Very few.
Not everything is about you personally lol. The only thing I said about you personally I'd that your analysis is wrong.
Sorry man, I don't really get your point then in context to what I was trying to tell the original comment I replied to.
The point is that it's worth considering how the class composition affects the DSA as an organization
I think that's a fair point.
All I was trying to say to the original comment was that just because people get paid doesn't mean they can't also be comrades.
Totally, also pharmacists, dentists, doctors. All kinds of folks.
This is definitely true in terms of electoralism but I can't really be entirely against them given how much their organising efforts are genuinely helping. They've got some good organisers that do good work and even if it's helping them grow I think it's helping all the left grow, particularly when libs show up to protests and get shot at by cops for doing nothing at all.
and will drop everything to try and get a social fascist elected dogcatcher.
I don't think we'll ever get to "vote" for socialism so in that sense I'm anti-electoralism... but how is this a bad thing? Someone like Lee Carter is able to get into the system and at least try and make things better for the working class. So it has the two-pronged effect of maybe improving people's lives a little and definitely showing the public that we care about the working class and want to fight for them.
I mean, DSA = electoralism. And while electoralism is limited, if you think it's a worthwhile endeavor then I dunno, DSA seems pretty alright to me.
Isn’t it like 30% of their members make over $100k/yr?
Who else is gonna shell out $50 annually to join a political party?
I make less than half that and I spent $50 on Uber eats this week
shifting the overall perception of socialism
the Overton Window is idealism not materialism
Maybe if we just change the ideas in everyone's heads the material reality will change :liberalism:
It's not incorrect that the residue of McCarthyism and American culture has put up an obstacle between the working class and socialism.
People aren't going to have their material conditions deteriorate to an arbitrary point then suddenly say "hm, yes, time for Communism" if they've been primed to hate anything to do with socialism since birth.
No, but when people's material reality conflicts with the prevailing narrative they question it.
Right... but leftward, or rightward?
One has the path of the least resistance.
But that's not how shit works though. It's not an either or, people with a certain class position will never go left. Pepe that radicalize to the right tend to be people who had major privilege but lost it to the liberal world order. This is why militias are so big in the rust belt states.
I see what you mean. So people who never had said material status would then radicalize to the left--unless they had been consumed by Horatio Alger propaganda or other American exceptionalist thinking.
I suppose the question is not only how to support and militarize the working class where they are, but how to toss stones into the turbine of the rightward radicalization pipeline... if it can be done in the imperial core.
There's also a big controversy in PSL about this same thing too. Whats up with creeps doing this shit?
Might be some lib shit, but most people who want power probably shouldn't have it. Most of them are in it only for themselves.
I'm in the seattle DSA and I think I heard about this. Are you too or is it just that prevalent?
Holy shit, I was in that chapter. We've probably met.
I left in May (yay graduation!), and I've still not decided what was up with that chapter. I'm like 65% sure that whole incident was an op by some folks who had decided to go Red Guard and smash the social fash.
As in, they'd literally been praising the KC Red Guard after that infamous photo of dweebs waiting for their turn on the Xbox, and then beating up a geriatric. Then a couple months later they tried to stay in leadership and wanted to purge the chapter.
But, some of the chapter leadership were definitely sus. I did some poking around after it all blew up, and decided just to quietly slide on to another state come graduation.
talking to the people who've been in DSA longer than me, it comes across as extremely "boys club" even if a lot of them are women or nonbinary. It seems to be self serving first and about membership action second.
i am still paying a monthly membership because this was basically just conjecture and i don't know for sure.
Let's pump up those rookie numbers. Join DSA here and then join one of the revolutionary caucuses in it so we can agitate for revolution amongst the advanced layers of the working class.
I'm just going to try and drift across multiple orgs and try and at least help them become more revolutionary. Even if only a few people get recruited, it still helps as numbers need to be boosted and those people could be better at organizing and radicalizing than I am.
Question. Do you honestly believe the MF DSA is the advanced working class?
Parts of it are, yeah. I mean it's not a high level of consciousness, but it's where most working class energy is and probably the most conscious of the US working class. We have to agitate among the members to raise class consciousness higher.
Why, you think a PSL book club is where all the activism is? Please.
Wait are you on American working class only? Cause I'm thinking international
Well of course other countries are more conscious internationally, but I'm doing my best here where I live. Should've clarified.
Sign up at the link I posted. I believe there's dues waivers, but I pay my dues because the working class needs to support their own organizations instead of relying on the donations of a few sympathetic donors.
Did they actually form an independent political party yet or are they still DNC whipping dogs?
Theres been concrete gains made from this strategy though. If Bernie didn't run as a socialist or if DSA didnt get affiliated with these people like aoc or Tlaib we wouldnt have gotten such a large resurgence on the left. How was PSLs membership in 2015 compared to today? This pays off for the entire socialist movement, not just DSA. Getting people like Jabari, Phara, Marcella, and Julia in is important for building legitimacy, propagating socialist ideas, and creating mainstream discourse. These people would never have been elected as 3rd party, Jabari even tried before. Whether these people will all one day secede to join a newly formed central socialist party is a matter of more things than people like to actually admit to, and if our aim isnt to drive real change through electoral means but rather use it strategically than how is running 3rd party candidates that probably wont win better than getting actual socialists in? On the national level 3rd party is entirely irrelevant. On the state level it depends from state to state, very few have ranked choice and non partisan primaries, and most have huge impediments to 3rd parties getting on the ballot, plus it takes way more energy and resources to campaign as 3rd party.
i have no friends and am in no orgs and me and my partner are baby socialists for the most part. i've thought about joining our local DSA as sort of a "starter org" to get to know actual, living human leftists and finding the less lib ones. good idea or no?
