1-2-3-4 Steps of Accountability

By Ty Moore

DSA’s Debate Over Building a “Party-like Structure” in New York City Needs to Happen Nationally

How to keep our elected leaders accountable and whether DSA should fight for political independence from the Democratic Party are likely to remain the most explosive issues in the run-up to our 2023 National Convention. The effort in DSA’s largest chapter to pass “The 1-2-3-4 Plan to Build a Party-like Structure” offers a model of Marxists and DSA’s left joining together to offer an alternative vision for DSA’s electoral organizing. 

A wave of anger is sweeping through DSA’s ranks following the vote by three of the four DSA members in Congress to deny rail workers the right to strike. Unfortunately, this was only the latest example of DSA’s elected representatives caving into pressure by Democratic Party leaders. Jamaal Bowman’s vote to fund the Israeli military remains an open wound in the organization, as does the bungled response by DSA’s National Political Committee. 

After years of big-picture strategy debates in DSA over if and how to break with the Democratic Party, the practical and concrete character of the “1-2-3-4 Plan” was refreshing. Unsurprisingly, the proposal failed to win a majority at the October bi-annual Convention of New York City DSA. Yet it succeeded in uniting much of the chapter’s left-wing and won support from over a third of the convention delegates. It was the central debate at the convention, laying down a clear marker that will shape future debates in NYC-DSA and nationally. 

The proposal galvanized sharp opposition and national attention because it was correctly seen by all sides as an achievable step moving New York City DSA toward greater political independence from the Democratic Party. 

“Visibility, Consciousness, and Base Building”

In substance, the 1-2-3-4 Plan was relatively modest and limited to state legislative candidates. The most important elements of the proposal were that NYC-DSA endorsed candidates should all run as a slate, all cross-endorsing each other and coordinating their messaging; that they should identify common issues to run on together, while being free to also emphasize district-specific issues; they should all clearly identify as “democratic socialists” to build DSA’s profile and should downplay affiliation with the Democratic Party (despite using the Democratic ballot line); and that, if elected, DSA-endorsed candidates should commit to join the Socialists In Office group and consistently vote as a bloc together.

According to Neal Meyer, the primary author of the 1-2-3-4 Plan and a leader of the Bread & Roses Caucus in DSA, the proposal outlines initial steps to “build a party-like structure” and “is designed to address two major problems: the problem of visibility, consciousness, and base building and the problem of pushing back against our enemies’ new strategy” (SocialistCall.com, 10/20/22).

To take the last point first, the enemies Meyer highlights are the New York Democratic Party establishment and NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who famously told funders he was “at war” with DSA during his 2021 campaign. The “new strategy” of the NY Democratic Party leaders, on full display during the 2022 election cycle, was to more aggressively red-bait and smear DSA and democratic socialism. In response, Neal Meyer alongside co-author Alex Pellittari, argued that:

In the coming elections, it is urgent that NYC-DSA defines itself in the public consciousness as a positive force fighting for people’s interests and asking them to join us in this struggle. The consequences of hiding our identity, of running from the democratic socialist label and implying that we’re ashamed of it, could be catastrophic. By clearly identifying as a slate and as DSA, we also distinguish ourselves from progressive Democrats…

The problem for democratic socialists is that – denied the use of our own ballot line by the US’s two-party system – we do not factor into this conflict as a third clear alternative. Instead of a struggle between the working class and an owning class, politics is framed as a competition between Republicans and Democrats […]. It’s crucial that we figure out a way to heighten the visibility of DSA and our status as a party-like organization in all our electoral work. We can’t have our own ballot line, yet. But we can take clear steps to present ourselves to the people as a distinct political force.

For these exact reasons, my caucus in DSA, Reform & Revolution, argues that socialist candidates should avoid using the Democratic ballot line wherever possible. But in NYC and other places where the only real elections are the Democratic Party primaries, we agree that it makes sense, for now, for DSA to use the Democrats’ ballot line – though with one important condition: that DSA candidates should make absolutely clear that they are politically independent from the corporate-dominated Democratic Party, that they will remain accountable to DSA and other movement organizations who elect them, and that they are fighting to build a working-class political alternative.

Breakthroughs Lead to Challenges in New York

The process of capitulation to and co-optation into the Democratic Party is far more advanced among DSA’s congressional representatives than NYC-DSA’s state legislative representatives. But there is a clear and present danger of similar pressures creating similar results. The 1-2-3-4 Plan offered NYC-DSA an opportunity to push back against those ruling-class pressures, which are an inevitable byproduct of NYC-DSA’s historic electoral breakthrough since AOC’s stunning victory four years ago. 

In socialist electoral politics, the central challenge is how to combat the immense pressures the capitalist class brings down on working-class representatives.

One impressive feature of NYC-DSA’s state legislative delegation is how they are organized together with the chapter leadership in the “Socialists In Office” committee (SIO). Established in 2020, the SIO brings together the NYC-DSA Steering Committee and working group leaders with DSA’s elected state Senators and Assembly members. The eight state representatives on the ISO are expected to vote and act as a unified block whenever the group takes a collective decision. The SIO meets most weeks and, according to Zohran Mamdani in an interview with City & State (7/5/22): 

“We have created a decision-making process by which we could air out a question – whether it be legislation or whatever else, or endorsements – and then have a structure to a debate and then a vote, internally, to figure out: Where do we lie on this as a committee, and how do we ensure that we move as a collective even amidst individual dissent?”

In many respects, the SIO is a model for how DSA can keep its representatives accountable and maintain their political independence from the Democratic Party. 

Yet even the best organizational structures will not prevent the Democratic Party and the ruling class more generally from bringing acute political pressures down on socialists in office. Over the last year, this pressure has resulted in several controversial split decisions by NYC-DSA state legislators that provoked outcry from DSA members.

Accountability Requires More Than Structures

After NYC-DSA endorsed David Alexis for State Senate against the powerful Democratic incumbent Kevin Parker, DSA members rightfully expected their sitting state legislators to also endorse Alexis, and use their public profile to help get him elected. The four DSA state assembly members all endorsed Alexis, as did AOC. But NYC-DSA’s two State Senators, Julia Salazar and Jabarri Brisport, refused to endorse Alexis, clearly concerned that Democratic Party leaders would punish them for backing a socialist challenger to their senate colleague.

Another controversy erupted when Julia Salazar surprised many housing justice organizers and DSA members by sponsoring a controversial bill to reorganize the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) that many feared was a step toward privatization. Apart from sharp debate over the merits of the bill – Salazar defended inviting private financing into NYCHA as the only politically viable option to address chronic underfunding – what especially alarmed many DSA members and housing justice advocates was Salazar’s apparent decision to prioritize insider deal-making over open dialogue with movement representatives to develop a joint strategy and to amplify their voices in the halls of power.

At internal NYC-DSA meetings where Salazar and other legislators were confronted with concerns over political horse-trading, many members were stunned to hear some electeds describe their role as “organizing their colleagues” in the legislature. But the role of socialists organizing fellow workers on the shopfloor or in their community is fundamentally different from the role of socialists elected into hostile institutions of the capitalist state. (For more on this debate see the article by Nick French and Neal Meyer in The Call, April 13, 2022, “Socialists Need a Clear Confrontational Strategy to Win.”) 

These split decisions and others were not taken in violation of collective SIO decisions (though many felt Salazar’s sponsorship of the NYCHA bill violated a resolution agreed by the NY Citywide Leadership Committee). Instead, as Julia Salazar explained to City & State (7/5/22): “There have been a lot of occasions where we [in the SIO] didn’t make any decision at all and then as a result we just ended up voting in different ways.” 

This underscores that the central problem facing DSA electoral strategy is not the lack of accountability structures, important as these are. The central challenge is building political clarity among DSA members and leadership around the need to root socialist electoral tactics within a fighting, class-struggle strategy and to build toward a socialist political alternative to the Democratic Party. 

The main significance of the fight to pass the 1-2-3-4 Plan at NYC-DSA’s bi-annual convention last October was that it brought together a coalition of the Marxist left within the chapter to campaign for this vision. And the same needs to be done nationally.

The Debate in the New York City Chapter

In this context, the 1-2-3-4 Plan was a bold initiative despite its limited scope. Proposed by comrades in Bread & Roses, Marxist Unity Group, Emerge, and others on NYC-DSA’s left-wing, the backers of the 1-2-3-4 Plan included long-time chapter leaders and comrades who played important roles in the NYC-DSA’s electoral breakthroughs. 

Yet virtually all of NYC-DSA’s elected representatives signed the main opposition statement to The 1-2-3-4 Plan, with the exception being State Assembly representative Zohran Mamdani who signed on in support. Most of NYC-DSA’s chapter leadership around Socialist Majority Caucus and the newly formed “We Win Together” slate – which included many leaders of the chapters’ electoral work – also campaigned against the 1-2-3-4 Plan.

For those who believe in “realigning” the Democratic Party, or who see gradualist reforms within capitalism as the only viable road to progress, a narrow focus on electoral victories and insider horse-trading makes sense.

Consequently, no one was surprised that the proposal lost at NYC-DSA’s Convention. Given the powerful opposition, it’s impressive that 35 percent of Convention delegates, organized through a de facto alliance of the three self-described Marxist caucuses in the chapter, stood up against pressure from their elected leaders and were successful in shaping the central debate at the Convention.

The main opposition statement to 1-2-3-4 was a widely circulated sign-on letter titled “Against 1-2-3-4, a resolution solution to an organizing problem.” Alongside pretty egregious distortions of the actual arguments in favor of the 1-2-3-4 Plan, the statement makes no serious attempt to answer (or even fully acknowledge) the core concerns motivating their left critics. Instead, it offers vague truisms spiked with vague barbs, like this concluding paragraph:

“It is only through sustained organizing that we can build a positive association with socialism and turn people against Democratic elites. The expectation of political purity cannot be a precursor to real organizing in an arena where we need to win majorities of working class voters.”

The suggestion that asking DSA candidates to endorse one another, to publicly identify as democratic socialists, and to work out a few common issues to run on together amounts to an “expectation of political purity” speaks volumes about the dim political horizons of 1-2-3-4’s opponents. In most countries and political parties, especially for parties aiming to empower working-class people, such obligations are completely normal. 

For Marxists, elections are first and foremost a tool to fight for working-class consciousness, organization, and political independence from both capitalist parties.

At root, the debate in DSA is over the purpose of running in elections and the role of socialists in office. For those in DSA who believe that “realigning” the Democratic Party to serve working-class people is possible, or who see gradualist reforms within capitalism as the only viable road to progress, a narrow focus on electoral victories and insider horse-trading remains a persistent political conclusion (though we’d dispute this approach is more effective even at winning reforms). For Marxists and those who believe a rupture with capitalism is both possible and the only way forward for humanity, elections are first and foremost a tool to fight for working-class consciousness, organization, and political independence from both capitalist parties. 

The opposition took issue with the idea that DSA’s elected representatives should be expected to vote as a united block: 

“The expectation that every Socialist in Office always vote the same ignores that DSA, the working class of New York City, and the constituencies in their districts do not have unified positions on every issue. Expecting or holding ourselves to the expectation of political purity as a precursor to organizing is backwards and ineffective – it only works to further isolate DSA as an organization.”

This line of argument completely obscures the nature of the problem, as if the political calculations facing elected socialists can simply be chalked up as disagreements among comrades. Throughout the entire history of socialist electoral politics, including the short history of NYC-DSA’s electoral successes, the central challenge is how to combat the immense pressures the capitalist class brings down on working-class representatives in the halls of power. Through  promises of political favors and threats of retaliation, corporate Democrats have more often than not succeeded at transforming working-class leaders initially elected as genuine fighters into a loyal and harmless left flank of their party.

It is not an “expectation of political purity” to ask socialists legislators to act as a unified block within a hostile institution of the capitalist state, or to fight for policies and strategic priorities democratically decided by DSA members and other movement organizations who got them elected. Debates arising among electeds, or within and between DSA and allied organizations, is inevitable. But leaving critical decisions up to individual electeds is setting ourselves up for an endless train of betrayals. Instead, the goal should be to recruit candidates who agree that debates will be settled through democratic processes within DSA, like the SIO committee, and through negotiations with our allies.

There will, of course, be moments when DSA decides to endorse candidates who are not members, or whose primary political home is another movement organization, but who are nonetheless advancing working-class politics. Bernie Sanders’ two runs for the presidency are the prime examples. Making room for these situations should not get in the way of moving DSA toward more party-like structures and fighting to build a clear culture of democratic accountability at the heart of our electoral work.

We in R&R are urging chapters across the country to discuss electoral resolutions along the lines of 1-2-3-4, and for DSA’s left trends to come together nationally to coordinate for a similar effort. Through this process, it will be vital to build a strong Marxist wing within DSA to offer proposals and tools to overcome the general malaise in the socialist and workers’ movement. This is our central job in the months ahead, leading up DSA’s Summer 2023 National Convention.

Bringing Together a Left Coalition

The 1-2-3-4 Plan was carefully developed to unite a coalition of Marxist and left trends within DSA. As Neal Meyer of Bread & Roses wrote: 

DSA has debated for years what kind of electoral machine we’re building. There are some in the organization who insist that we should make a clean break from the Democratic Party today and start our own formal party. We don’t agree with that perspective. There are others who believe that we should build a “party surrogate,” a party in all but name, without a formal ballot line. And there are those, including us, who believe we should be building the structures of a proto-party with the objective of making a “dirty break” from the Democratic Party in the years to come. Regardless of where you fall in these debates, however, we believe that the 1-2-3-4 Plan deserves your support.

We in R&R see this coalition effort as a model of what needs to be done nationally in the run-up to DSA’s National Convention in 2023 if we hope to avoid the risk of DSA collapsing back into just another left pressure group within the Democratic Party’s corporate-controlled coalition.

The votes of three DSA members of Congress to break the rail strike, and the weak response of DSA’s National Political Committee, have stirred up fresh energy to fight for greater accountability. At the same time, some on DSA’s left feel further demoralized, painting efforts like the 1-2-3-4 Plan as “too little, too late.” 

Even if that perspective proves accurate, and DSA’s old-guard “realignment” wing succeeds at dragging the organization further rightward to provide political cover as DSA’s elected representatives are further integrated into the Democrats’ toothless progressive caucus, that only sharpens the need for DSA’s left-wing to get organized and fight for political independence. 

If DSA collapses back into the Democratic Party – something we believe is not inevitable and will be decided by struggle – the need for a new attempt to build a mass, independent, non-sectarian socialist organization will be clearly posed. Who else, other than the thousands of workers and youth on DSA’s left wing, are in a serious position to begin this work? The new generation of socialists that have surged into DSA over the last five years will need to learn, one way or another, to develop tools to hold elected leaders accountable. They will need to learn how to use the positions we win through complicated tactics (like using the Democratic ballot line) in a principled way to build toward a mass working-class party in the US.

The problems of accountability, of leaders moving to the right under opportunist pressures, are not limited to DSA or the electoral field. Every socialist labor activist faces the same problem when confronting the dominance of business unionism or labor liberalism. Every feminist activist grapples with the dominance of large and powerful non-profits like NOW or NARAL, and their failed liberal strategies and Democratic Party alignments.

DSA is in crisis on many levels. Many chapters have seen a decline in activity compared to the period of growth up through the 2019 and 2021 National Conventions. The stagnant growth since 2021 has contributed to a shift to the right and, in many areas, a narrower focus on electoral strategies. In part, DSA’s stagnation reflects a wider objective process, a downward swing in the overall rhythm of the class struggle. But a crucial ingredient to overcoming DSA’s internal crises and preparing the new generation for the battles to come will be organizing debates like the 1-2-3-4 debate in NYC-DSA. It is through these necessary debates, alongside organizing working people into struggle, that the socialist cadres of the future will be formed.

Through this process, it will be vital to build a strong Marxist wing within DSA to offer proposals and tools to overcome the general malaise in the socialist and workers’ movement. This is our central job in the months ahead, leading up DSA’s Summer 2023 National Convention.