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.

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

    he didn’t have anything even remotely approaching a revolutionary program

    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.

    Even if Bernie somehow won, what would that accomplish? He would still support regime change overseas

    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.

    he would have maybe used his executive powers to make life marginally better for working-class Americans

    Marginally better for you is life-changing for someone else.

    actually attempt to start the long, difficult process of building an independent working-class coalition as the basis for an eventual independent socialist party

    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.