With the membership approaching 100k, and with the structure of the organization being democratic and up for revision given a strong enough push from the internal caucuses, why are there still unaffiliated american socialists?
 I think the predominate view on this website is that DSA is a monolithic organization that is simply full of radlibs and social democrats or democratic socialists, however the richness of the caucuses and the amount of local marxist caucuses which are attempting to reform the DSA is in my opinion largely ignored here.
 The Democratic Socialists of America is *our* organization as socialists of america and if you critique it without affiliating yourself and without acting to change it, than what are you truly doing? It is definitely one of the twelve types of liberalism for you criticize in private but not to the collective itself. Problems you have with the DSA from your critical perspective should be brought up every month at your local general meeting. Critique from outside the organization, as if you were not a socialist, is not going to affect change.

tl;dr: as a chapo who didn’t join DSA for years bc of the stigma here calling them radlibs, i ask of you, why are you seriously not in the DSA. for if you don’t like it, then join and act in the oppositional caucuses; and if you do like it but just haven’t joined, then come on comrade follow suit.

edit: This struggle session has been quite bountiful I will say. We have learned that there are three instances in the DSA's constitution that allow for (1) the expulsion of members that are under the discipline of democratic-centralist organizations (2) local charters will be revoked if the majority of members become under the discipline of democratic-centralism and that (3) local youth charters will be revoked if majority of members become. dem-cent.

  • PaulWall [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It is in the bylaws of the DSA constitution, Article 1 Section 3. However it might just be some old shit that hasn't been changed yet. I would like to see a challenge to that when the constitution is amended next.

    • BASED_BALL [none/use name]
      1·
      4 years ago

      technically it means you can explain yourself out of it when you disclose

      the PSL is trustworthy enough for people not to care, unless you start doing a hecking entryism

    • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
      1·
      4 years ago

      Article 1 Section 3

      It looks like you're referring to this:

      Members can be expelled if they are found to be in substantial disagreement with the principles or policies of the organization or if they consistently engage in undemocratic, disruptive behavior or if they are under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization. Members facing expulsion must receive written notice of charges against them and must be given the opportunity to be heard before the NPC or a subcommittee thereof, appointed for the purpose of considering expulsion.

      This reads different from a strict prohibition. For instance:

      • "Members can be expelled if" -- this doesn't say "you can't join if," and it doesn't say "members must be expelled if." It looks like if you're in a ML organization you can join the DSA, and you're not going to be automatically shown the door if someone finds out about your ML membership.
      • "If they are under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization" -- this doesn't say "if they're a member of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization." This looks designed to prevent an organized takeover of a DSA chapter by ML organizations, but not to prohibit cross-membership altogether. If a local ML organization decides to have all of its members join the local DSA chapter to turn it into a clone of the ML organization, this would check that. But if a bunch of members of that ML organization independently decide to join the DSA chapter, that sounds fine.
      • "Members facing expulsion must receive written notice of charges against them and must be given the opportunity to be heard" -- pretty self-explanatory here. You're not just hauled out of there if you're found to be a card-carrying communist; you get due process.

      This tracks with other comments about how the rule is actually enforced.

        • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          How so? It's clearly geared towards stopping planned takeovers of DSA chapters by other organizations, which is legitimate. And there needs to be some process for expelling members -- look at what recently happened with the DSA representative who broke ranks on defunding the police in Chicago. If you can't penalize that sort of behavior, you don't have much of a party.

            • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Probably because they're just about the only other game in town in terms of the organized American left. Elsewhere in the thread at least one other person mentioned that they thought there was concern over Trostskyist shenanigans in the early days of the DSA, too. There are also comments about how no one has an example of it ever being enforced, and how there's discussion over scrapping that part entirely.

      • mrbigcheese [he/him]
        1·
        4 years ago

        as ive heard it described it mostly had to do with trot groups trying to do entryism into other orgs, tho its never actually been enforced as far as i know