by Across the country, DSA members fight against capitalism, but we lack a clear, shared, positive vision. A revolutionary socialist program is the unifying banner we need.
Why We Need A Program
The task of DSA in this period of increasing radicalization and right-wing attack is to become a mass workers’ party. To us, a party isn’t just a ballot line, but a democratically run organization of the working class with millions of members, with its own positions, and with the goal of taking power for the working class from the capitalists. To succeed, a party of the working class would have to engage in all spheres of life: elections, labor movements, social movements, neighborhoods, schools, even recreational and social activities from childcare to roller-skating.
We aren’t there yet. Right now, DSA is a proto-party. We have a sizable, but not mass, membership. We have internal democracy, with some real kinks to work out. We run candidates, participate in the labor movement actively, and are a part of the social movements and upheavals in this country. However we are a long way from clearly expressing our politics through these avenues.
Reform & Revolution is working to transform DSA into a party with a mass base in the working class. We have proposed resolutions that increase membership’s involvement in our growth and development internally, clarify our international positions, and set out a clear timeline for running a slate of cadre DSA candidates and establishing ourselves as a bona fide party.
No amount of party-building can bring about socialism unless we have a clear answer to the pivotal question: what does it mean to take power? DSA lacks a standard, unified program that clearly and concisely lays out both our short-term demands and long-term goals. In 2021, the DSA Convention adopted a Political Platform, but it was seriously flawed. Rather than a clear thesis on society and the class struggle, this program was a grab bag of demands. Most of the demands were strong, but there was no prioritization, coherent ordering, or distinction between immediate reforms and the vital necessities of a socialist state. On one hand, it calls for a new constitution and political order, and just a few lines later it calls for passing the “John Lewis Voting Rights Act”. Predictably, it hasn’t been used much publicly or even internally.
In 2023, the Convention assigned a committee to draft an action program for the 2024 elections, the “Workers Deserve More” program. While this was a big improvement and actually got some usage by chapters, it too doesn’t fit the mold of a socialist party’s political program. It’s temporary, generally has the same feeling of being a collection of demands, and most importantly does not clearly lay out what our goals are and how we plan to enact them – how we plan to conquer political power for the working class.
DSA lacks programmatic unity, which means that our politics aren’t being communicated to others effectively, and we don’t actually agree on what we are fighting for. Most active DSA members have an idea of what that might be, but without having the debate on the floor of Convention and across chapters, it will remain muddled and ad-hoc. That is why R&R is proposing a revolutionary socialist program for DSA at the 2025 Convention. It clearly expresses the class nature of society, the need to fight oppression and imperialism, and most importantly, the need for the working class to defeat the capitalists and establish a new political order: a workers state. In addition, it explains this with simple language and a combination of immediate demands that connect to the consciousness of broad layers of working people alongside demands which show what it means for the working class to take power, and what a workers state would have as its goals and tasks.
We encourage anyone who believes in programmatic unity to sign onto our resolution, even if they disagree with it on this or that point. We hope that by debating it at Convention, more members and caucuses will have to grapple with the political questions we’re posing.
The Program is our Banner
A program isn’t just an arbitrary thing we need to fill out a Marxist check-list. The point of a program is to cohere our organization on what we agree on and to equip us to explain that to the broader working class. You can think of a program like a banner we take into battle against the ruling class, keeping our “forces” together and focused on our goals.
Imagine we’re running candidates in an election. How should DSA members approach the campaign’s talking points? How should the candidate link themselves back to DSA beyond just mentioning our name? A program would let that candidate tie every local issue and question to the bigger ones. When Democratic politicians applaud cops attacking people for jumping a subway turnstile, we need to be able to answer what’s happening and why. A socialist program would let that candidate talk about how politicians, working for the capitalists, are oppressing poor people, mainly people of color, to keep them on the brink of poverty or in jail. It equips us to explain that politicians don’t want to resolve poverty and the root cause of crime, they want to enrich their donors.
Then, our candidate would be able to point to what DSA is fighting for in the here and now: good jobs, an end to oppressive laws, and policies that would actually address people’s immediate needs.
Finally, our socialist candidate would be able to talk about how a government truly of working people would be able to solve poverty and oppression by using our incredible resources for the benefit of everyone. The program not only would have those points in its text, but would let that candidate tie their campaign to the broader movement DSA is building, to tell a narrative about why we’re doing all of this political work in the first place. That is what it means to see the program as our banner.
The same principle applies when we’re working within unions. In social movements where DSA is a constituent member of a larger coalition, the program can be the basis for our efforts to unify the movement around clear, democratically decided demands.
A well written, short and concise program could be turned into an inexpensive pamphlet that we hand out to people who come to our table at a rally or at meetings. Political education could begin with the program, explaining each of its points in detail and linking it to the work being done locally and nationally to advance its aims.
This is the point of a program, to give voice to the needs and desires of the working class, to give clarity to those suffering under capitalism, and to give direction to those diving in to join the class war against it.
Sarah Milner
Sarah Milner, she/her, is a rank and file union organizer and member of Portland DSA and Portland State University YDSA. She co-chairs the Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Campaign. She has previously been the co-chair of PSU YDSA and of Portland DSA’s Electoral Working Group. She spent two terms on the chapter Steering Committee. She is a member of the Steering Committee of Reform & Revolution caucus.
Ruy Martinez
Ruy Martinez, he/him, helped found Harvard YDSA in 2020 and has been in DSA since 2016. He is on the Steering Committee of Reform & Revolution.
