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.
Counterpoints:
It never ceases to amaze me how American leftists will critically support the Soviet Union or China on the grounds that in tough situations real-world socialists have to make hard compromises, but then left-ish American politicians have to be perfect avatars of pure theory. Look at how Bernie was raked over the coals for the simple factual statement that Cubans have good healthcare and education. If you won't even critically support the closest thing to a socialist since Debs, who had a far, far better chance to win than Debs, you're not really serious about winning.
Asking for people to support an actual socialist (which, again, Bernie is not), even a revisionist, isn't asking that much. I supported and voted for Hawkins, himself probably far from perfect, but at least he's an actual socialist and the program he ran on this year is implicitly anti-imperialist. Hawkins is probably the bare minimum to be honest, a mere starting point. I'm not asking for the second coming of Lenin here, but we can do much better than to settle for an FDR-style liberal imperialist who used to be a Eugene Debs fanboy 40+ years ago, who still thinks the left should work in a popular front led by Joe Biden. We can do better than continue to entertain this dead-end strategy of trying either to take over the Dems from the inside or attempting some sort of dirty break from the Dems from the inside.
Even the CTH hosts, some of Bernie's biggest supporters, now know better than to continue with this strategy, because they were always sincere enemies of the neoliberal clique who actually control the Democratic Party, unlike Bernie himself who considers Biden a friend. Winning a general election is hard enough by itself; allowing the Democrats to decide the fate of your campaign, handicapping yourself by playing primary Calvinball with them and giving the Dems extra opportunities to ruin it before the general election even starts is a completely avoidable mistake, a tempting false alternative to doing the difficult work needed to establish an independent socialist party capable of externally challenging the Democrats.
Either of those strategies is far more promising than supporting the likes of Howie Hawkins. Sanders actually had a real shot. No tiny, independent leftist third party ever has. Tons of ordinary people supported Bernie -- not just terminally-online leftists, not just the same cadre of local leftists who've been hopping from splinter group to splinter group since the 60s. We need numbers to win, and one approach has actually put something approaching the required numbers together.
Bernie had "the numbers" but he didn't have anything even remotely approaching a revolutionary program, nor did he even attempt to sustain momentum between elections until he announced he was running again in 2019, leaving the in-between non-electoral work to the DSA. Even if Bernie somehow won, what would that accomplish? He would still support regime change overseas, and he would have maybe used his executive powers to make life marginally better for working-class Americans, enjoying almost no support from congress. Some elements of the working class who just wanted free healthcare and education might go back to being complete libs content with Bernie's FDR-style "social imperialism", instead of seeing past their immediate concerns and taking a broader internationalist perspective, not unlike the spoiled-rotten Scandinavian libs who've been bought off and still enjoy even higher living standards off the backs of the global proletariat than Anglos do, even as they've begun to feel the inevitable gravitational pull of neoliberal austerity.
Hawkins obviously had no shot at winning; that ridiculous expectation isn't why I supported him. Hawkins ran not on the basis of some delusion that he'd win the electoral college or the popular vote, but because Greens have to run a presidential candidate to stay on the ballot; it was an opportunity for Hawkins to put forth something closer to a revolutionary political program and actually attempt to start the long, difficult process of building an independent working-class coalition as the basis for an eventual independent socialist party, even if it means starting almost from scratch with "splinter groups" with mostly-correct politics. Reaching out to chronic non-voters, almost 40% of the eligible voting-age population, without having to conform to the artificial limitations imposed by Democratic leadership, in addition to attracting the left-most 3rd party and Dem voters just waiting for an excuse to vote for a candidate who actually gives a shit about them, means an independent workers' party has the potential to eventually have the numbers advantage, while still building and organizing around an actual socialist banner.
Because he's not Lenin, he's a Senator in his 70s. You want to talk about ridiculous expectations? If you write off anyone who isn't a revolutionary, you're not getting anything done, at least not anytime soon.
This is far too pessimistic. For every aspect of imperialism you can point to and say he supported, you can also point to something like his opposition to the Iraq War or his praise of Cuba.
Marginally better for you is life-changing for someone else.
The Sanders campaign did far more to push socialism into mainstream political consciousness than countless efforts like this. It's much easier to turn people on to leftist ideas and get them to join leftist organizations when capitalist realism has been challenged at the highest level.