Our Tasks & Perspectives
Conjuncture
If we want to transform social relations in the United States and internationally, building a just and truly democratic world, the working class must be organized into a powerful force for change.
But under our current conditions, the working class in the United States is largely disorganized and fighting to retain the dignity it won during Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the Civil Rights Era.
Our tasks come from analyzing the current balance of class forces. Our analysis of the current conjuncture is that socialists must contend with five key interlocking crises in capitalism.
First, the existential threat to human civilization posed by the climate crisis.
Second, the advancing threat posed by the far right to multiracial democracy.
Third, the continuing threat of US imperialism to world peace and the global South’s laboring classes.
Fourth, standards of living in the US are in precipitous decline, causing social and economic instability and the possibility of real political realignment.
Fifth, attacks on women’s bodily autonomy and the rights of gender and sexual minorities have continued globally--and increasingly come home to plague the US.
Capitalists and their bought-and-paid-for politicians have answers: climate apartheid, white supremacy, and endless wars to expand US foreign policy interests abroad.
The US Left must develop a strategy to face the moment. Labor institutions, progressive non-profits, community groups, and small leftist organizations currently compose the Left Bloc in the United States. While the Left has cohered since 2016, thanks to the Sanders presidential campaigns, the Black Lives Matter Movement, increased union organizing, and now Palestinian Solidarity campaigns, forming a coalition of young, largely white, downwardly mobile middle class workers and Black, Latine, Asian, young, and immigrant workers largely employed in reproductive industries, distribution, and logistics, it has nevertheless experienced losses and internal tensions from attacks by both the neoliberal establishment and the growing far-right.
In response to these attacks and the aforementioned crises of capitalism, DSA must expand class formation by cohering workers engaged in various forms of social upheaval and developing mass party infrastructure that runs through US shop floors, ballot boxes, bargaining tables, and streets.
Theory of Change
Despite differences within DSA, we are able to come together around a basic principle of all socialist movements: we must organize the working class to win. Yet across US history, class consciousness has proven uniquely difficult to build, as workers must cross myriad divisions to find solidarity, including religion, geography, industry, skill level, ethnicity, immigration status, culture, gender, sexuality, and above all, race. While we are now seeing promising stirrings of renewed organization through labor struggles, we remain nowhere near the level of worker organization necessary to directly implement a socialist program, whether through revolution, concerted labor actions such as general strikes, or a workers party.
Based on our analysis of the broader historical context as well as the current conjuncture, we believe the most vital goal of the Left in the near to medium term is class formation—politicizing the working class to support and fight for our socialist program as a unified, self-conscious force.
How do we go about this profoundly challenging project? History shows that organizing workers into class-based institutions such as labor unions builds both worker power and class consciousness. We must continue to follow this path, building working class power to the greatest extent possible. Yet because the US working class is uniquely heterogeneous and divided, even well-organized working class institutions cannot easily cohere into a single workers’ movement.
In order to develop class-wide solidarity and struggle, we must combine direct organizing of workers—on shop floors, in apartment buildings, and across neighborhoods—with the struggle to win and effectively wield state power. We must embrace the struggle for state power for three reasons: (1) if we do not gain a significant share of state power, worker organizing will always be vulnerable to state repression, whether through legal or extralegal means; (2) responding to the climate crisis demands a scale of social and economic coordination that can only be achieved at the level of the state; (3) the shared political vision of a party is necessary to cohere the fragmented US working class. We do not have a future as socialists, or as a species, that does not run through the path of state power.
So, how do the projects of class organizing and seeking state power fit together?
We can use working class organization to seize enough state power to implement transformative reforms: state policies and programs that materially shift the balance of power toward the working class, whether by increasing share of social goods or expanding ability to organize. Successful reforms will help to build a unified working class political constituency, which in turn will open the way for more powerful working class organization. For example, with state power we can pass reforms making it easier for workers to organize unions. Those unions can then use their power to elect more socialists, who can pass even larger reforms, opening further space for working class organization. The goal is to continue this cycle to the point where whole elements of the economy can be fully decommodified—moving us toward our ultimate goal of socialism.
We call this strategy, which reshapes the political terrain in order to unite the diverse elements of the working class, Class Alignment.
To align the US working class around a shared political project we must meet people where they are. That means continuously engaging with other vectors of oppression that exist in US society alongside class-based exploitation: white supremacy, patriarchy and transmisogyny, xenophobia and ethnonationalism, homophobia and transphobia, and ableism, among others.
Stuart Hall famously posited that “race is the modality through which class is lived”; taking up the spirit of his statement and expanding beyond the category of race, we can say that one’s objective position in relation to production—i.e., one’s class—is frequently mediated by and experienced through other categories of identity. For example, in a society so profoundly structured around white supremacy it should not be surprising that a Black person may experience Blackness as the primary cause and marker of their oppression. The same is true of patriarchy—for many women, particularly those whose work and circumstances leave them vulnerable to rape, femicide and/or transmisogynistic violence, it is unsurprising that they may experience these as the primary cause and marker of their oppression as a class. And in the case of racialized women, modalities may be blended into specific intensified forms, such as transmisogynoir. One may say that the fundamental tool of Marxist analysis is class, and in the final analysis our goal may be a classless society, but if our organizing does not meet people where they are—in their own experience of their oppression, which includes factors beyond class per se—we can hardly hope to unite the class. To put it simply: we cannot win the class struggle without winning all of our other struggles.
From a concrete organizing perspective, this principle means that in all of our organizing we must acknowledge the multiple structures of oppression people face and seek to overcome not only class exploitation but the entire suite of oppressions that structure US society.
Labor
Our strategy relies on the interdependent goals of working class organization and state power. Along with many in DSA, we believe the best path forward for worker organization is building and ultimately helping to lead the US labor movement. As with the working class itself, the US labor movement is profoundly heterogeneous; as such we cannot approach it with a one-size-fits-all strategy—we must use a diversity of tactics. Our approach to labor should include all of the following elements:
Continue to build union democracy and militancy from below. DSA members should organize their workplaces, jump-start their unions, enter sectors that are hotbeds of union activity, and build mass workplace militancy across the economy.
Scale up new organizing. As recent organizing drives have shown, workers are particularly receptive to the idea of unionization at this moment. We must capitalize on this momentum by both supporting and leading new organizing both to build the relative power of the labor movement against capital and to create new opportunities for politicization and class formation.
Popularize labor. To develop labor power, we should collaborate with unions on efforts to popularize the labor movement. In particular, we should seek to support union campaigns that have national reach and visibility and can open the opportunity for large-scale politicization of the public toward labor consciousness (e.g., Starbucks workers, Teamsters, and UAW contract fights).
Embrace working with union leadership when it advances the socialist project. Union leadership, like the labor movement more generally, is deeply heterogeneous—with some leaders closely aligned with our goals, others fiercely opposed, and still others in between. We should consider collaborating with leadership where we believe working together will help build longer-term class alignment and achieve our short-to-medium-term goals.
Politicize workers. Our engagement with labor cannot stop with supporting the strengthening and expansion of unions. To build the power we need, we must also draw workers and their institutions into self-conscious political struggle that extends beyond the shop floor. A more aggressively politicized labor movement could be crucial in winning reforms that in turn remove barriers to even more widespread worker organization and politicization.
Electoral
Over the past few years, DSA has largely reached a consensus that electoral work is a crucial element of our strategy for building socialism. However, we have not come to an agreement on the goals of our electoral work or its relationship to our broader strategy. The electoral debate has been polarized around two opposing propositions:
We run candidates as “tribunes of the working class,” with the goal of propaganda and agitation rather than winning and wielding power. Candidates and socialists in office should be held to party-like discipline, voting a strict DSA-determined line. They should be publicly reprimanded for deviating from the will of DSA.
We run candidates to put socialists into office and pass reforms. The purpose of electoral races is fundamentally to win, and this goal comes before movement-building goals like recruitment and politicization. Once DSA candidates are in office they should be given leeway to operate independently of coordinated DSA strategy, and sometimes even excused for taking stands that run counter to the will of the organization.
We contend that both of these approaches to electoral work get something right and something wrong, and that the best path forward entails a productive synthesis of these positions. Our strategy for building socialism entails winning and wielding state power to pass transformative reforms; as such, we reject the idea of running candidates to agitate and politicize rather than to win. At the same time, we believe that candidates and socialists in office should work within a coordinated strategy set democratically by DSA members at the local, regional, and national level, and that our races should popularize socialism and build the organization.
DSA’s ultimate goal in electoral work should be to build a mass socialist party that can govern at the local, state, and eventually federal levels. This goal entails:
Running campaigns to win power and pass transformative reforms that facilitate class formation
Continuing to divide the Democratic Party base between its managerial and working class wings, exposing class struggle in the electoral realm
Building power in the short term via a party infrastructure at the local and state levels
Developing and refining our socialists in office program in order to govern and function as a party
Ecosocialism
The climate and ecological crisis are the fundamental terrain of the 21st century, the context in which all of our struggles will unfold. The pressures of deepening ecological strain and associated unrest will force a major transformation of the global economic, political, and social order. The questions facing us are: What kind of transformation will this be? And who will drive it?
The struggle over our energy transition is not one fight among many, but rather a contest over our entire mode of production, which will influence every area of human life. The environmental justice movement, for example, rightly centers the health and safety of the majority Black and Brown communities who currently bear the brunt of industrial pollution. But this orientation often stops short of recognizing the collective power of these Black and Brown workers as part of the organized working class. As socialists committed to remaking our world, we must embrace this struggle as a revolutionary opportunity to engage the multiracial working class in the fight for our futures as workers, not only as victims of pollution. To take advantage, DSA must embrace ecosocialism as a guiding principle not only in climate and energy campaigns but across all areas, following a few key principles:
Combine struggles to build class consciousness. Rather than ceding environmental justice demands to nonprofits, progressive Democrats, or technocratic managers, DSA should engage in environmental justice work as an opportunity to build solidarity among the multiracial working class, strengthen partnerships with electeds and coalition partners in the Climate Left, and win transformational policy victories at all levels of government that improve material conditions for workers.
Build with labor. As the climate and ecological crisis intensifies, workers will play a pivotal role in shaping our new world. Unlike the owning class, they will be subject to the worst effects of the crisis both at home and at work. At the same time, they will carry out the actual work of transforming our economy, and will have major opportunities to disrupt, guide, and eventually lead that process. To build ecosocialism, DSA must embrace labor’s struggle for a just transition by supporting:
New and ongoing labor organizing in strategic sectors such as construction, trades, transportation, and education
Bringing workers and their unions directly into the fight for transformative reforms within contract fights
Transition away from fossil fuels with transformative reforms at the local, state, and federal levels. The energy transition offers revolutionary possibilities in the medium to long term, but we do not have the luxury of waiting for a revolutionary moment to take the necessary action. DSA must fight for reforms that will lay the groundwork for ecosocialist transformation by synergistically building public sector capacity and the labor movement—like expanded mass transit, democratized and decarbonized public energy, green social housing, and green public spaces and facilities.
Internationalism & Immigration
Groundwork believes that DSA’s commitment and approach to internationalism should reflect our approach to domestic organizing: it should be based on clear goals and strategies that seek to change the material conditions of working class people, further working class politics, and contribute tangibly to system change. We see internationalism as one of the key pathways to ending the oppression of the working class both inside and outside the US.
Our overarching aim should be to dismantle the highly destructive global economic and political order that currently prevails and to propose the politics and structures that would be required for a new system. We see that other international problems are not isolated but are expressions of this larger system that must be dismantled. This includes the majority of US foreign policy, which is ultimately focused on ensuring that economic, social, and political benefits of the current system continue to flow to a minority of capitalist interests. This fact underpins US military, economic, trade, climate, and multilateral policy.
We believe DSA’s internationalist work should be grounded in decolonial politics toward the overarching goals of (1) dismantling the current colonial neoliberal order; (2) building global politics and institutions guided by democratic and socialist principles that defend against hegemony, and allowing for full local, national, and regional economic, social, and political sovereignty.
DSA needs to build a clear understanding of the way the global, neoliberal capitalist system works and reproduces itself in order to intervene effectively in dismantling it. To do this work, the organization must be in dialogue with the International Left and other radical global movements to understand what alternative approaches and systems must be actively promoted to create a new, just world order. This would include identifying key patterns and levers of power through which to force change and developing partnerships in order to identify pathways to affect change. DSA’s work will be to match these organizing priorities to national and local organizing pathways within the US to move us closer to our goals.
Specific areas of focus for DSA’s internationalist work may include:
Breaking the power of the financialized economic system and globalized production in order to weaken the grip of the neoliberal system on the global working class
Creating a new vision and strategies to shift global patterns of property rights to transfer ownership and control of the global economy to the working class
Contesting militarization and war: a key tool of hegemony
Understanding how democratically governed nation states and other sovereign entities can be supported to manage the ownership and organization of their economies in their territories
Working toward the fair and sustainable international stewardship of the earth’s system to benefit the working class everywhere
Building mass democratic politics built on popular sovereignty led by and for the working class to support the above, predicated by revitalized and new democratic structures and institutions, including multilateral systems
Understanding what moments of global systemic rupture (e.g., financial crashes, pandemics, conflicts) offer in terms of opportunities and challenges in order to push our strategy forward
Trans Rights, Feminism, and Bodily Autonomy
Groundwork is proud to stand within the socialist feminist movement and sees DSA’s work on behalf of abortion rights, women’s liberation, and trans people’s bodily autonomy as a natural extension of our commitment to class struggle and popular organization. We view attacks on women, trans people and sexual minorities as attacks on the working class and recognize the patriarchal organization of the traditional family and the economy as the foundation of reactionary notions of social order, which must be challenged in order to overcome working class division and achieve universal liberation. DSA should recognize the global, violent, and ancient oppression that is transmisogyny and commit to fighting it as an internationalist and feminist imperative.
Attacks on abortion rights and the rights of women and trans people to bodily autonomy are sweeping across America right now, and Groundwork believes DSA should continue to play a leadership role in the fight back against genocidal attacks on trans lives. We look forward to participating in the creation of a vibrant, powerful, and deeply rooted socialist transfeminist cultural and social movement that stands in solidarity with all victims of misogyny, transphobia, and any intersections thereof. Toward this end, Groundwork believes DSA should:
Support legislative and ballot initiative campaigns to protect and advance trans rights and bodily autonomy across the country, overturn trans care and abortion bans, shield those traveling for care from states where they are illegal, and prioritize recruitment of trans electoral candidates in districts where they have a good chance of success.
Develop and publicize model legislation to protect trans people’s rights to equality and recognition in education, housing, employment, healthcare, justice, and all other aspects of government, and seek to have such legislation introduced and prioritized by DSA elected officials.
Support establishing trans children’s right to determine their own medical, social and legal transitions, whether or not their parents approve.
Conduct intentional outreach to trans women as a social and cultural group, promote trans women’s leadership development, encourage transfeminist political education within chapters and national DSA, seek to have DSA become a leader in standing up for transfeminism as a social movement, and fight against transmisogyny in society and within our movements.
Aim, within our anti-racist recruitment and organizing, to address transmisogynoir and the massively elevated rates of police and other murders of trans women of color—particularly Black trans women.
Campaign against the use of police, jails and prisons as a method for attempting to deter the sex trade, which disproportionately leads to incarceration and violence against trans women.
Support the removal of all medical gatekeeping requirements on abortion rights, the provision of hormones and surgeries for gender-affirming care, and insist on the inclusion of free and universally accessible transgender healthcare within Medicare for All.
Fight for our labor unions to prioritize demands for coverage of trans healthcare and anti-discrimination provisions within contracts, and support the self-organization of trans workers within the labor movement.
Recruitment & Multiracial Organizing
As a fully member-funded organization, DSA is able to maintain an unusual level of political independence within the US Left. Whereas nonprofits that depend on large donors and philanthropic foundations must remain within political boundaries that they themselves do not draw, we are free to take whatever measures we see as necessary to build socialism in our lifetime. It is no exaggeration to say that our entire project depends on our capacity to build a durable and continuously expanding membership base.
For too long, DSA has taken our membership numbers for granted, relying on external events to drive signups and avoiding the responsibility of intentional recruitment with clear goals and metrics. Yet successful membership drives at the national and local level show that we can substantially build our base through structured recruitment campaigns with sound strategies, defined timelines, and ambitious goals.
We cannot become a mass political movement without massively scaling up our membership base. We can do so by embracing the following principles for recruitment:
Present DSA to a mass audience as a viable, large-scale alternative to existing parties. Over the last three decades, the Democratic Party has moved its program almost completely away from the interests of working people. This rightward shift opens up the opportunity for a united, organized Left that can capture the allegiance of those left behind by the two-party system. We can take advantage of this opportunity only if we present DSA as a welcoming political home for the broad working class, as opposed to a vanguard formation that sees existing left organizations as its main audience.
Conduct intentional outreach to marginalized groups that are receptive to socialist politics and are increasingly at odds with the Democratic Party. Key groups include Latines, Black Americans, Muslims, and immigrants.
Ramp up recruitment during periods of intense polarization and politicization. While we should not rely exclusively on the external political context to drive recruitment, to achieve our full potential, we must be prepared to maximize outreach during dramatic national events and crises that draw less engaged people into the world of politics.
Organizational Model
Much debate about the organization and activity of DSA has centered around the party question: should we form an independent party, seek to realign the Democratic Party, or establish a party-like formation somewhere in between? We deemphasize this formal question—which often serves as more of an ideological test than a strategic debate—and instead concentrate on a practical one: how do we build durable political power in the context of the chaotic, highly uncoordinated party system of the US? We believe that DSA should build a party infrastructure, which can carry out the functions of a political party, whether it legally constitutes one or not. We should focus on developing the following functions:
Cohere the socialist movement. The DSA party infrastructure can and should become the political home of individuals who identify with socialist values. Meanwhile, DSA should seek to form a connective tissue linking and coordinating all forms of left activity, from electoral politics and labor organizing to issue based campaigning and direct local struggles against landlords and energy companies.
Develop a program. The party infrastructure should develop and popularize a political program that clearly outlines socialist values and policy goals for the near to middle term. By a program we mean not just a list of leftist policies, but a group of reforms that, taken together, offer a coherent vision of social democratic transformation of the US, and ultimately a springboard for full socialization of our economy.
Build a mass messaging and communications infrastructure. To cohere a mass party base, we need to build and control a disciplined mass communications infrastructure that clearly identifies the struggles of working class Americans, diagnoses their root cause in our exploitative capitalist system, and clearly explains a socialist theory of change.
Create a social and cultural infrastructure. To bind together masses of people for the long fight ahead, we will need more than solidarity—we will need shared culture and community. In the near term we can build social and recreational activities into as many organizing projects as possible; in the longer term we should work toward establishing socialist institutions where our members can build and nourish their bonds.