Looks like Socialist Alternative is going to try to make DSA form a workers party by having some of it's members join DSA.
Current DSA by-laws allow for chapters to expel members for being in Democratic Centralist organizations but its not automatic. It also seems like SAlt isn't telling their members to join en-masse, just a few to push for a new workers party at meetings.
My DSA chapter isn't happy about this but it seems like most apprehension seems to be from their experience with individual SAlt members, first and the rudeness of the tactic, second. But there seems to be little consideration of their goals.
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dem cent doesnt mean any one specific thing. Even in the dem party in the progressive caucus they now will bring members up for an expulsion vote if they do not vote with the democratically agreed upon caucus line 3 times. Chicago DSA censured Vasquez for his vote on the budget and going against the political line of the chapter.
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i dont understand what you mean by "doing the same with the general membership". dem centralism doesnt mean "everyone has to believe this or they're expelled", there's nothing baring any member from ideological diversity in a dem centralist org. just means you accept that if a certain majority decides on something in terms of a political or strategic line we all accept that as a point of unity. we already have certain points of unity that we broadly apply to everyone in DSA. and no i dont think that a broad application of a democratic centralist organizational structure would make any sense with how dsa is structured, but it can obviously be used for certain things like elected officials, national campaigns, certain basic ideologies, etc.
But that bylaw is just needlessly antagonistic to specific other socialists in other orgs including trots, marxist, mls, maoists, communists, whatever they want to call themselves and use dem centralism. This isnt conducive in a catch all socialist org if we actually want to grow a significant national socialist movement where we dont ban tendencies and differing ideologies and allow for democratic debate on how we should run and do things.
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But you dont get the boot if you disagree with something, its just that the time for debate is over and you can't go back and say lets actually do something else instead unless there's a vote held of changing strategies or something in that regards. The reason this isnt needed in DSA is because so many people are doing so many different things all on their own from chapter to chapter and from caucus to caucus and from working group to working group. This can be good, in that for example DSA sucked ass even 4-6 years ago, and people were able to do their own thing and organize and push for things they thought were more important than what the more predominant thinking might have been, which has grown different tendencies within the org. But this also creates a ton of problems too, such as 20 different chapters each undertaking creating its own resources and education content instead of relying directly on certain basic things through national.
We now have everyone spending hours in zoom meetings and running around doing small actions and working on small campaigns and honestly its just not a great strategy after a certain point. A few handful of people working simultaneously in one chapter on 20 different things is not going to result in much, and it might be better to consolidate and focus on few but more serious campaigns. I can see how a more centralized strategy can help in that regard. For example the membership drive was very successful because it was a national campaign. It would have been a disaster if every chapter was told to just do whatever and figure it out. In fact it would have been much more successful if it was even more centrally planned in terms of providing resources and materials for local chapters and organizing local direct actions and planning community engagement events to get more members, instead of just hoping chapters figure out how to do it all themselves.
This is exactly not what DSA should do and shows a pathetic understanding of how a mass volunteer organization works. If the chapter told everyone in the labor working group to work on electoralism they'd just not work because that's not what they want to do. You can't tell the environmentalists to work on tenants rights and expect them all to actually do it.
This scattered method of "do whatever" has its draw backs for sure but its the reason why DSA keeps growing and demcents don't.
ugh thats not what i mean 🙄
Rereading and you make a little more sense. I don't know how you actually have 20 different campaigns going on in your chapter though. It makes more sense to have as many working groups as you need but have those groups focus on a specific thing. Like you shouldn't have multiple tenants groups attempting different strategies.
Chapters already decide all the time on priority campaigns and how to focus funding to actually have things be successful. Im not saying prohibit people from doing whatever, but prioritizing things makes those important campaigns more successful, its about not stretching chapters too thin by not having any sort of cohesive planning or general cooperation. Sometimes it just makes sense to consolidate working groups and committees if they could be working together under a more broad campaign if theres only a couple people doing somewhat similar or related work. Its a problem that shows up sometimes imo in larger chapters, and it can overwork people and not lead to anything if the campaigns split up the membership too much. Not to even mention our inability to even organize state wide or nationally, both things that need to be actually undertaken if we ever want to be relevant in this country.
True internal pluralism is opposed to expelling people who belong to democratic centrist orgs though. DSA isn't a party. It should act as a big tent and nothing more. If you start expelling members because they adhere to the line of some dem cent organisation, that basically just says "we accept diverse viewpoints and praxis but only if they are your personal, individual viewpoints" which isn't really a big tent any more.
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It says that you can be expelled for being in a dem cent org. That's a bad rule because that's more or less every communist (who is a communist in practice).
the tolerance paradox but for forming an effective party