The proletariat must be educated to the position of affirming what is true in scientific knowledge and seeing what it points to as being the case and why. Materialism is the best defense of the science we need. It is the best because it is true and because politically it provides the simplest defense of science.
NGL some of the philosophical talk in here is way over my head (or more accurately over my head without seriously sitting down and deep-reading the text) BUT i think this final point resonates quite deeply with me.
If scientists wish to be heard, they must organize themselves, and they must make clear that they are not enemies of the people. To make clear they are conscientious seekers after the truth, they must make clear they are responsible members of society, and even better, champions of the working class. Otherwise, do not expect trust; do not expect people to respect your authority; earn it.
Once abolition is framed as an abstract proposition that all coercion must vanish forever, it becomes easy to dismiss as unrealistic. Instead of being seen as a strategy for dismantling institutions that reproduce capitalism and racial domination it’s framed as either the fantastical idealism of anarchism or the limited purview of policy reform.
Good piece.
It’s important to acknowledge that this retreat from abolition emerges from a real contradiction facing the socialist movement. The George Floyd uprising was the largest mass rebellion against policing in a generation, and yet it produced few lasting structural victories. It’s reasonable to ask whether the movement’s politics, including the rallying cry to abolish the police, contributed to that outcome. But this mistakes the primary lessons of 2020. The principal failure was not that abolition proved to be bad politics or messaging, but that the socialist movement lacked the durable organization, institutions, mass base, and independent politics necessary to adequately absorb the energy of the uprising and carry it forward once the streets emptied.
Strong organizations are always taking calculated risks, and to do so, occasionally march into the unknown; they must, if they’re to innovate, succeed, and excel. But we're not calculating the risks.
I am skeptical of the DSA's focus on electoralism, here is another good critique of it.
We can no longer place ourselves in a position of passivity where our endorsed elected officials are permitted to govern exclusive of our involvement after we’ve attached our name to them.
New York City may be part of a dying empire, but the USA is the dying empire. [..] The only reason DSA has gotten this far in the first place is that we are in an era of imperial decline, meaning the status quo will no longer be good enough. Normal methods of governance no longer suffice, not even from the standpoint of the elite.
The contemporary DSA is rife with arguments for and against supporting a hypothetical AOC run for president in 2028. The "inevitability" of AOC is often bandied about and I cannot say I am a fan -- we are many legislative sessions from that point and AOC has not had a flawless record on those. I consider it viable to run candidates that are outwardly identifying as Socialist/Communist, assuming that the goal is not victory for the candidate but victory for the party, and the party remaining the spearpoint of the people.
I do not believe that AOC, or the current incarnation of the DSA, fits that bill. The DSA is not (yet, perhaps) an electoral Communist organization. Even if it was, I would have some concerns about an electoral-first strategy (an extremely Kautskyist angle, if I may say so!).
In summary, to meet the minimum standard of "good governance," AOC would need to go well beyond liberal progressivism and embrace a radical socialism that she has thus far avoided.
I found this piece a good dismantling of some of the assumptions surrounding the electoralist, Kautskyist approach that favors Just Winning The Presidency as the be-all-end-all of American socialism. The goal is not the presidency, the goal is the world.
My argument, as laid out in both of the two relevant articles, is that a President AOC with DSA’s endorsement but no accountability to its program will not be willing or able to do what it takes to have a "successful" socialist Presidency, thus fatally discrediting the movement when she flounders. Hopefully the evidence already provided makes it clear which of the two futures is more likely.
The endorsements by Hernandez, Jurado and Soto-Martínez are aimed at denting left-wing support for Nithya Raman, who polls show is battling Spencer Pratt for a runoff spot against Mayor Bass.
Archive here.
Really odd moves here from some local candidates running on a DSA-LA slate. It's things like this that make me skeptical of electoral strategies by Left organizations like the DSA -- there's a worrying lack of discipline around these individuals.
I don't think that there is any guarantee of individual actions hewing to the Party line unless the Party is sufficiently fierce about discipline and political education. I'm not even a Nithya fan by any means, but this just looks sloppy and disappointing.
The committee's own data shows that DSA's growth derives not from its sect-like internal processes but from its moments of class-like political action. The organization grows when it acts as a political force in the world, and withers when it retreats into self-administration.
I consider myself electorally-critical at best and thus I would argue with many of the points brought forth in this story, but I do think there's value in it overall. The nature of the DSA is that it tends to spike in population when it has something to rally around, and it withers when it does not. In this, at least, myself and the author are aligned. You must be a shark, always moving, never staying still. Grow the tendency, guide the tendency, shape it into a party, take control.
The CPUSA, FRSO, PSL, and DSA are not identical, but all suffer from a palpable stagnancy.
The Party will form the vanguard of the revolution only when the masses of the most oppressed internationally recognize it as their representative and their weapon in the class struggle, wielded by and in the interests of the international proletariat.
The following article is the result of a visit to the People’s Republic of China to participate in celebrating China’s 80th Anniversary of its victory over Japanese fascism. Dee Knight and DSA China Working Group coordinator Anlin Wang were part of a five-person self-organized delegation of DSA members.
[T]he working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.
- Marx
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), darling DSA Socialist in Office (SIO), has received her fifth consecutive endorsement from NYC-DSA. She is sailing towards what is almost assuredly a safe re-election and will start her fifth term as a representative in Congress in 2027. NYC-DSA’s endorsement has opened the door to yet
Abolitionists waged war on the two party oligarchy. Jenna Grove suggests we can learn from their forgotten triumph.
Review and analysis of DSA internal politics.