by DSA’s draft platform is a good starting point to unite our broad, multi-tendency, democratic socialist organization in the fight for socialism. It would be stronger if it outlined how the working class can build the power to get there.
DSA’s Platform Subcommittee is asking for feedback on their initial platform draft. However, that link takes you to a page with a form that asks you to rate the individual sections of the first draft. You can score each section between zero – “needs work” – and ten – “support as written.” In my view, the discussion needs to be a bit wider, beginning with a discussion about the role of a socialist program today. In this critique, I try to contribute in a constructive way to this discussion. I very much appreciate all the hard work that comrades put into drafting this platform, and my heartfelt thanks goes out to all comrades who have been involved in the process so far.
convention2021.dsausa.org/platform-development/
A Platform for a Big-Tent Organization
DSA is a democratic, membership-run, big-tent organization fighting for democratic socialism. It is sometimes chaotic, not always efficient, often lacking a unified focus, with different forces pulling in different directions. Yet, it is also the best tool we have to bring a wide array of activists together, to impact the class struggle in the US and internationally, to test out our ideas in practice, to have meaningful debates on how to change the world, and to attract even more people to the socialist cause.
It would be a mistake for any one tendency within DSA to approach this platform discussion, culminating at the DSA national convention in early August 2021, with the aim of “winning” this competition of ideas, once and for all. Any platform has to preserve the fundamental character of DSA as a broad umbrella socialist organization for a process of organizing and political clarification that will play out in the future. Fortunately, the first draft published by the DSA Platform Subcommittee is clearly written with that intention.
A Program of Actionable Demands
In contrast, a program like The Communist Manifesto from 1848 set out to explain the world in a cohesive way as the basis for a distinct revolutionary strategy to change it. The current first draft of the platform subcommittee does not. Is this a weakness? Not if we accept that a multi-tendency socialist organization has a different role than the Communist League that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were writing for when they penned the Manifesto.
In fact, Marx and Engels themselves proposed a different approach than the one they applied in the Manifesto during the discussion about a unifying program for a multi-tendency organization in 1875 in Germany after a merger between two trends of the German workers movement–the Social Democratics Workers’ Party, heavily influenced by Marx and Engels’ ideas, and the “Lassalians,” a workers’ party led by a more opportunist trend. Rather than attempting to impose a worked out “Marxist” program, they proposed a more limited “action program” for this broader socialist party, which was still in the process of clarifying its views and bringing activists together.
When they saw the first draft of the Gotha Program, heavily influenced by Lassalle’s theoretical confusion, both Marx and Engels criticized its political weaknesses, while seeking an approach that would preserve the unity of the new party. Engels wrote to August Bebel in March 1875: “Generally speaking, less importance attaches to the official programme of a party than to what it does. But a new programme is after all a banner planted in public, and the outside world judges the party by it.”
Marx stressed when writing to Wilhelm Bracke, referring to the unification: “Every step of the real movement is more important than a dozen programmes.” Nonetheless, he went on to argue that if it wasn’t possible to have a clearer rounded out revolutionary program, “one should simply have concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy. But by drawing up a programme of principles (instead of postponing this until it has been prepared for by a considerable period of common activity) one sets up before the whole world landmarks by which it measures the level of the Party movement.”
From this point of view, the DSA national platform subcommittee made the right choice in drafting a platform of actionable demands rather than a program of fundamental principles.
The draft of DSA’s platform does not read as clearly as The Communist Manifesto, and lacks its sharpness of analysis and historical perspective. It might not end up in the hall of fame of socialist literature like the Manifesto definitely has. Nonetheless, it is well suited for its purpose: to offer a unifying program of demands for democratic socialists from different political tendencies to move forward together in discussion and united action.
Recent campaigns by the National Political Committee (NPC)—for example, the 100k recruitment drive and the PRO Act campaign—point in a great direction. They helped overcome some of the chaotic appearance of DSA, though not through top-down dictates by the leadership that artificially constrain which activities members and chapters are officially supposed to take part in. Instead, these campaigns provided a lead as an offer to engage, to use the organization’s resources, and to discover what we can achieve together if comrades voluntarily take part in joint campaigns that the national leadership puts forward. If the platform points even further in this direction, giving campaigns more of an edge and putting up sharper demands, then that’s great.
Transitional Approach?
Each section of the draft platform is separated into three subsections: immediate, medium-term, and long-term demands. Unfortunately, this points in a direction of separating today’s concrete struggles from the need to fundamentally transform society. There is a danger that our engagement in the real struggles of the working class and oppressed people will not be linked simultaneously to striving to raise people’s level of consciousness and pushing the struggle forward to the need to abolish capitalism.
It would be good to explicitly clarify within the platform the interaction between short-term and long-term goals. This brings up the relationship between reforms and revolution, a question which has long been debated inside the socialist and workers’ movements. As Leon Trotsky argued in the Transitional Program (1938):
Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimum program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum program which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum program no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no need for such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying. (Emphasis in original)
DSA’s platform subcommittee might well take a cue from how this is phrased in The Communist Manifesto. Given the way in which DSA supports movement work, it would be worth it on this question to mirror the bold language from the Manifesto, so that we are not only “against the existing social and political order of things” but we combine our immediate working-class struggles with an outlook that represents the future, one where we can directly challenge the ruling capitalist class’ position in society. The Manifesto, in its essence, builds that bridge between today’s demands and a socialist future.
This could also be more clearly expressed if the platform makes our demands more concrete. For instance, part of what makes Bernie Sanders’ housing program sharp is that it gives numbers, such as 10 million new homes; the draft platform could use more of this type of radical concreteness.
Separating demands into the “long term” can rob us of the opportunity to inspire people to fight for them in the here and now. For example, today we are talking about the fight for $15 in down-to-earth practical terms of how to win. But when that fight started, it was a very bold, even startling, demand. That boldness helped to raise people’s sights and imaginations, inspiring visions of a life where work has real dignity and security. That inspiration moved mountains and led to the wholesale transformation of the political situation, which is what now allows us to talk in practical terms about winning a federal $15 minimum wage.
How do we fundamentally change society?
The platform omits a lot of questions or refers to them only implicitly. This may stem potentially from a desire not to overreach or go beyond what DSA can legitimately declare in its platform at this point in time (given the current status of discussions and debates and its status as a multi-tendency organization).
Reading between the lines of the draft platform, one can surmise that DSA regards the global multiracial working class as the decisive agent for the fundamental, democratic socialist change, which is positive. But it’s not until you reach page 5 of the 16-page document that it is spelled out explicitly, buried under a subpoint about the carceral state: “The power to create a truly democratic society is found in the organization and self-activity of the working class.” This is an essential point; we should find a way to emphasize this.
One can also infer from the draft that DSA promotes and bases its activism on organizing working-class and oppressed people in movements to build the power needed for social change. There are references to the power of movements and the central place of demands around labor, but, again, we should make that plain.
One critical point is that the platform is deeply unbalanced on the question of how to change society. It starts with a set of democratic demands, which in themselves are good and absolutely needed. It’s true that the working class and the socialist movement have been, and continue to be, unconditional fighters for democratic rights, to win the best possible conditions in which to carry future struggles forward (union rights, free speech, voting rights, etc.) However, to frame the way forward entirely in terms of such demands comes off sounding essentially electoralist and, in effect, means accepting the official institutions of bourgeois politics as the only “legitimate” arena in which to advance our causes. Within those demands, the language is quite legalistic and the proposals are very much oriented to what appears “doable” in a legalistic setting (for example: short term, DC statehood; long term, a new constitutional convention).
The platform would benefit from a clear statement about the fundamental class character of the capitalist state. DSA could explain that the institutions of this state cannot just be taken over and wielded in the interest of the working class and the oppressed.
And this leads to a significant shortcoming of the draft platform — it does not deal enough with the question of power and where it comes from. Working-class power develops as day-to-day struggles and social movements train the class collectively and inspire individuals to evolve into effective fighters for socialism. This is key.
Progressive change is not something that is voluntarily handed down by the capitalist state. Democratic reforms are granted as concessions or attempts by the ruling class to pacify social movements. We do not (and cannot) depend or rely upon the capitalist state. The platform should make clear that substantial progressive change results only when working-class people organize and build our own independent mass movements.
Listing the different issues under different subchapters of the draft without a framework of building working-class power siloes each issue. The draft neglects to explain how all these issues and demands are interconnected under capitalism and how a socialist fight for them requires a broad, united working-class movement on these issues at the same time. Adding a clear preamble or a conclusion to the draft could help overcome this weakness and put the demands into a better framework.
Fight the Power
The power of the ruling class is mentioned as a description of the status quo, rather than a challenge to overcome. But how can we discuss a full implementation of the Green New Deal without any idea of how to take hold of that power, which would require taking the big energy companies into democratic public ownership? How can we convert the most powerful parts of the economy over the last decades — the fossil fuel industry, the automobile industry, and the military-industrial complex — without openly addressing the need to take these corporations into public ownership?
At the moment, these corporations hold “their workers” hostage as entire communities depend on them for their livelihoods. How can we guarantee good, plentiful jobs and a decent future for workers that depend on these industries for employment if not by taking over the material wealth in those industries, the means of production, and converting that infrastructure to clean energy? Some may argue that we do not want to own these corporations since they are inherently unfit to play a role in any environmentally sustainable future. But without dealing with their power, without dealing with the jobs they control and the wealth they privately own, we will not develop a system of production that is fit for the future.
There is no need for a debate on the best terms to describe how exactly the working class should own the means of production. The draft platform speaks about “worker ownership of every workplace,” demands to “nationalize and socialize (through worker and community ownership and control) institutions of monetary policy, insurance, real estate, and finance” and more. So far, so good. But the question of taking the top 500 corporations into democratic, public ownership is not just an economic question of reorganizing society to meet the needs of the masses and a sustainable environment. It is also a political question. We must break the centralized power of the capitalist ruling class to make it possible for the overwhelming majority of people to democratically implement the fundamental changes our society needs. This needs to be spelled out.
A Little Bit More Fire, Please
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, said:
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. The inspirational dignity of working-class struggle, of socialist internationalism, of solidarity without borders, is a political issue. The DSA platform needs to focus more clearly on the global multiracial working class joining together to build a new society based on economic, gender, and racial justice. The social force for change—social movements and working-class organizations, from labor unions to tenants unions and a future independent party of the working class—needs to be strengthened. The platform can still be a short and action-focused outline, but it should also be something that serves to inspire people to join us in the struggle to change the world.
