Say the Magic Words: DSA’s Purity Problem Risks Missing the Moment

“Everyday links between the masses and the Party”, “drawing the masses into discussion of our agitation slogans"—these are the real topics of the day.[...]This is the ideological strengthening of socialism, the organisational strengthening of the illegal workers’ party with leaders from among the workers themselves, the development of many-sided Social-Democratic agitation among the masses. This work, when tackled more and more energetically, will unite us all. It will pull together, discipline, correct our Duma group better than dozens of mere ultimatums. It will vitalise our work. It will resurrect the atmosphere of vigorous revolutionary activity. It will teach us to gauge exactly the rise of the tide and to determine its symptoms. It will scatter like the dust all the dead, thought-up, “invented” slogans of otzovism!”

Lenin, Two Letters

​Geese has kicked the proverbial hornet's nest again, stirring up a swarm of controversy with our calls for socialists (and the DSA specifically) to endorse Nithya Raman for mayor of Los Angeles and Angie Nixon for Senate in Florida.

​Various factions of America's largest socialist organization have made a great effort to defend their line against Geese "leading" the organization into adopting tactics that will ensure liquidationist outcomes in the name of short-term victories. Whether we serve our role as pied piper due to unexamined contradictions in our strategy, a lack of knowledge about what a DSA endorsement requires, or the scandalously liberal cowardice lurking behind our every word, depends on the critic.

​Such debate has the side effect of providing a splendid opportunity to take a stab at clarifying “our line" and responding to the good faith disagreements swirling around at the moment. We are in the midst of the greatest political crisis this country has faced in fifty years or more. Our movement has more relevance than it has had in twice as long; the capitalist press hurls lies and invective every single day for fear of our growing strength, where once they contented themselves to leave us writhing in our irrelevance. The opportunity for dramatic, ruptural change is palpable, as is the slowly falling boot of Trumpist despotism and nationalist dictatorship. We must work this all out, and so Geese will continue its mad honking.

​It seems as though, stumbling out of our movement's period of marginality—blind, deaf, and confused—we find ourselves asking the most fundamental questions. What is a Socialist? How should such a person engage with our current political moment? What should they, as an individual, do? What should socialist organizations like DSA do? How should they relate to the current wave of left-populist electeds? So many questions! Enough to make you dizzy. Nonetheless, today I shall endeavor to answer them without losing my balance and tumbling down the stairs.

​Two Paths to Nowhere

Geese's position is that the socialist left is held back by a debate between two sides locked into a false dichotomy. On one side are the ultraleft sectarians, on the other, the “technocratic” deliverists. The former demand recitations of insular rituals for the purposes of in-group signaling. They do so to make sure the candidate is part of the subculture, loyal to the organization above all else, a good and faithful "party" soldier. The latter reduce socialism to winning government power to enact progressive policies on behalf of the working class, and their modern theory is that the task is to prove their "competence" to the people. They are desperate to display before the whole world how well they've studied the details, that they can manage capitalism far more efficiently than the capitalists can—and they even have the policy papers chock full of charts and data to prove it.

​The root of both errors is organizational chauvinism. The DSA is not the Democratic Revolutionary movement. It has no right to subordinate it, and any attempt to do so will simply alienate the DSA from that movement. The organization has three choices: join the movement and tail it, shun the movement and oppose it as insufficient, or lead the movement on the terms of the masses that make it up. This requires a permanent campaign with one eye unrelentingly fixed on the questions of our particular political moment.

​In practice, this means we must be electorally maximalist; we must embrace the full scope of the current left-populist electoral insurgency. We must be honest about DSA's current ability to actually influence electeds in practice, whether the proposed solution of withholding endorsements actually leads to more discipline over the electeds by the organization, and whether our notion of “discipline” even does justice to the demands of the insurgency. Further, a true political revolution requires mass movement militancy and a plan for political insurrection, such that the Democratic Revolution gains meaning beyond one organization’s platform and slogans.

​DSA seems to believe that there are "magic words" that make one a member of the socialist movement worthy enough to be gifted an endorsement. These requirements often include declaring oneself a Socialist, although this is not enough if there is a refusal to demonstrate fealty to DSA. The candidates must get the liturgy "just right." 

We must have standards after all! There must be a line somewhere! What else is to stop a descent into liquidation? What else is to stop the DSA proto-party from being devoured by the sirens luring us onto the cliffs?

​The truth is, there are "magic words," and the success of DSA and the socialist movement does depend somewhat on their location and recitation. But these words are not "I am a cadre candidate." Nor are they, as much as it pains me, "I am a communist" or even "I am a socialist" (although the latter is highly contestable for reasons laid out further below). They are instead: "We are going to end this rotten, corrupt, alienating system. We will be the vessels of the people in their struggle to seize power." 

They are: abolish police, abolish prisons, abolish borders. To quote Editor-in-Chief of Cosmonaut Donald Parkinson, they are: Abolish the Police-State. They are about tearing down data centers and ripping up Flock cameras. They implicate the blood on the hands of ICE and CBP. 

​They are, put simply: "We will drive these pedophilic, far-right, billionaire, Zionist demons from power; we will defend you in seizing that power for yourselves; we will aid you, we will lead you, if you allow us."

​The Yearning for a Party

​But what does this really mean? Sarah Milner, DSA caucus Reform and Revolution's representative on the DSA's National Political Committee, expresses a common fear thusly:

​"My challenge to the Geese comrades is this: where, precisely, do the comrades disagree with left populism? Where do they think DSA should break, not merely to offer criticism, but to cease all support for candidates?"

​She goes on to succinctly and correctly define the Geese articulation of Populism as a historical terrain and phase of mass political development:

​"Populism is not intrinsically a boon to our growth and a neutral or positive force within which we can easily impose, or even fight for our ideas. It serves as a particular expression of mass popular energy in the absence of coherent organizations."

​She begins her turn towards the problematic elements of the Geese program, understood as "endorse the left-most candidate capable of winning":

​"The problem, of course, is that short-term gains which come at the cost of our long-term interests are not coherent gains at all. If a win comes by making political retreats which undermine our long-term ability to pursue socialism, have we won? Such would be the case if electing Zohran or campaigning for AOC leads to DSA dropping our opposition to the police. We have only achieved a real gain if we advance and do not fatally undermine our strategy and principles in the process….

​That is to say, if we are seduced by the siren song of short-term populist victories which can be achieved by throwing off our political values—we won’t actually end up in power. We will end up, as populist leaders and their movements often do, caught in between with our principles left behind and power still far off.

​We need, therefore, to have some carefully chosen red lines: candidates must support BDS, they must call themselves socialists, and they must be DSA members, for example. These are not guarantees of perfect politics. Rather, they are attempts to guarantee against abysmally bad ones."

​Milner's opinion seems to run parallel with that of DSA caucuses like the Marxist Unity Group (MUG). In their statement "Towards a Mandated, Nationalized, and Disloyalist Congressional Endorsement Strategy," MUG asserts:

​"...it is time for DSA to move beyond endorsements that put charismatic leadership over political principles... There can be no national endorsement for anyone unless there is a guarantee that they will not vote in direct contradiction to our commitment to Palestinian solidarity..."

​Members of the LA branch of another DSA Caucus, Groundwork, had similar opinions, albeit emphasizing DSA loyalism rather than uncompromising anti-Zionism, over the issue of whether DSA should endorse mayoral candidate Nithya Raman:

​"Endorsement is an expression of leverage, not leverage itself... Hers are the politics of wonky professionals, not working-class leaders... If our endorsement can be secured without building a political relationship with us, what is our endorsement actually worth?"

​What indeed? That is the primary contradiction at work here. All of the above authors are working from the same hard fact: DSA has been unable to "discipline" its electeds. They are not able to force them to vote against Israel nor pressure them into going against that coward collaborator, Hakeem Jeffries.

​Instead, the electeds use DSA as an organizing power base and signifier to demonstrate that they oppose the centrist establishment, before discarding any concrete commitments to building the organization as a political party that might displace the Democratic-Republican duopoly. Reform and Revolution, Marxist Unity Group, and Groundwork yearn for a party with real power. But this is the interesting move: the solution to the myriad of problems—of ‘cadre candidates’ like Zohran blowing off DSA pressure or Nithya Raman being insufficiently subordinate to DSA members in LA—is universally the restriction of endorsement. 

​This is a premise we must challenge. To be clear, Geese magazine is very interested in the emergence of that elusive modern prince, the white horse just beyond the hill, the hegemonic socialist party. Our disagreement is not with the end goal, with which we agree wholeheartedly, but, instead, whether the path advocated for in the quotes above would actually lead to such a party taking shape. The problem is real, but endorsement—or lack thereof—does not solve it, and the focus on endorsement as a solution is largely the attempt to latch onto something in a period where there is no clear answer on what our relation to electeds should be otherwise.

​Mass Militancy and the Struggle for Power

​Despite this disagreement, the kernel of truth within anti-electoralist arguments remains: we will not vote our way out of capitalism, nor out of the nationalist death-vice coming to kill us all. As much as this article focuses on the debates surrounding electoralism, non-electoral tactics remain utterly essential, and electoral tactics themselves will surely mean nothing without them.

​Trump's coup is ongoing, and his movement will not leave power peacefully. It is very possible he will not leave power peacefully. They have declared a new Red Scare, and they want us all dead and gone. We are in a death-struggle. Now is the time for militancy. Now is the time to develop our plans for protecting crowds of millions, for armed community self-defense, for mass intimidation. 

We must not hesitate to realize that there is no way out of this crisis without illegalist tactics, no path forward for socialism without a capital-R Revolution, a Democratic Revolution like 1789 or 1905. Such a thing is not some distant whim. It will not come like a thief in the night. It will likely be triggered by a succession crisis we can see coming right now, and, to avoid evisceration, we require funds, training, and mass politics. Only the people can throttle the logistics of the fascist state, only they have the numbers, history only moves through them. But we must be waiting at the ready with a handy list of choke points to occupy. 

​It is these methods that will demonstrate our leadership in this time of crisis. No one else is, or is perhaps even capable of, laying or executing such plans. The moment of truth is coming. When a bloody struggle over the transition of power, the reality of cancelled elections, and of escalating DHS and cop terrorism becomes the one and only order of the day, we must be ready to win a democratic revolution for the people! They will demand it, as they demanded it in the uprising of 2020, despite being unable to achieve it.

​We must stitch together a unity of forces all opposed to Trumpist despotism, oligarchic exploitation, and reactionary nationalism. The movement against Flock cameras and the utter loss of privacy to tech companies and the national security state. The movement against AI data centers and social media companies and the deranged capitalists who own them. The movement against DHS terrorism and ethnic cleansing. The movement against the racist occupation of American communities by police, and those same police's unapologetic militancy and murderous behavior. The movement for Black liberation in the face of attacks on Black voting power and the resurgence of lynching. The movement for indigenous liberation in the midst of land theft, exploitation, and poverty. The movement for environmental action to mitigate the coming climate catastrophe. The movement against the predatory patriarchal violence of untouchable tycoons like Jeffrey Epstein. The movement for LGBTQ liberation against a tidal wave of contemporary hatred and discrimination. The movement for free speech, free expression, and freedom of and from religion. The movement against the Zionist genocide in Palestine and American imperialism broadly.

​All of these and more must be brought together and given a concrete, political goal: throw the bastards out—renovate the American state! The tactical purpose of mass protest is to intimidate the government—to back them into a corner, forcing them to abandon power and cave to the leaders of the protest movement out of fear of the crowds. Any talk of electoralism must be a component of this larger project, of maximizing both the individual actors who might aid or at least bend to the pressure of such a movement, as well as avoiding the placement of individuals likely to order the mass incarceration and/or deaths of us all. In fact, the priority of electoralism only consists in the fact that it is currently the most effective means to organize and reach people politically en masse.

And further, such mass movements, despite their salience among the millions, can only truly be united through a mass electoral campaign within the short period we are working, responding to the terrain on which we are maneuvering. It is almost a certainty that mass protest will spontaneously break out against the crimes of the current regime and the deprivations of our society. Look only to the 2020 uprisings, the mass resistance against ICE killings in Minneapolis, or the protests that engulfed Wisconsin after the murder of Corey Ruiz by police. 

DSA nor any other organization can conjure such mass actions out of thin air, as much as we might wish to believe in sorcery. But an electoral campaign, especially a presidential campaign like AOC's, can serve as a center of gravity to unite those spontaneous mass movements of the people. The immediate goal of all of those movements becomes simple: direct, political revolution. Shut down the country until they give up. Whether or not AOC is a true socialist is as moot a point as asking whether Lincoln was a genuine abolitionist (he wasn’t). But these figures crystallize what is, objectively, a confused and mixed section of class interests and political consciousness that requires coherence and radicalization.

Trump, in his very person, like the Tsar before him, becomes a signifier for everything in the way of each movement getting what it wants. His removal becomes a sacred task, the best way to demonstrate where the true power in the country lies. Does it lie with the nationalists and oligarchs? Can they kill us and cancel elections and doom the earth to extinction with total impunity? Or does history still belong to the living, to the people and their general will? 

AOC, in her very person, in contrast, becomes a central rallying point. The theft or denial of her election to executive office in 2028 gives casus belli to those liberals concerned with the illegal nature of a mass political revolution a grievance to latch onto unashamedly. It gives military men permission to throw their lot in with the mass movement in the name of “order.” It provides a ready-made national infrastructure made up of millions of activist volunteers. And it establishes a quite literal government-in-exile dependent on mass protest movements capable of compelling the campaign into capitulating to radical demands. We can push to radicalize and defend the Democratic Revolution into our 1917 or 1959, against the likely inevitable attempts to snuff out the people's January 6th with Nationalist butchery. 

​But in the immediate, electoralism simply remains where much of the struggle is currently located; to lead in this field is to lead the people in their struggle, to mobilize the masses, to demonstrate that we are on their team, not that they must be on our team. That our organization can serve as a vessel for the movement. Not that the movement must be subordinated to the vessel. 

This is a step that cannot be skipped. There will be no Revolution without preparation, without organization, without mass buy-in. We must get the people used to us, used to radicalism, used to radical solutions to their problems. But we must demonstrate first and foremost a radical and monomaniacal focus on destroying the people's enemies. Right now, that means supporting the mass left-populist wave in its totality, and indeed seeking to lead it, against the bleating sheep in sheep's clothing who refuse to loosen their iron grip over the “Democratic” Party. 

​The Cadre Trap

​To address Milner and the liquidationist charge directly: our strategy must be dictated by the dire particularities of this moment. Perhaps Trump’s heart will grow ten sizes, or his brain will begin leaking fluid, and he will suddenly develop a profound respect for legality and constitutional governance. Perhaps the Nationalist movement will willingly lay down its arms and allow everything they hold dear to perish, despite the genocidal propaganda they consume every day. If that happens, I will certainly look foolish. 

If and when, in three years, American politics takes a radically distinct shape—if the left-populist wave collapses into co-option by the Democrats, or if the Democrats go the way of the Whigs and Cliff Connolly becomes our new August Bebel, or if a meteor simply destroys us all—I will happily reconsider my contemporary prescriptions of electoral maximalism and political insurrection.

​But I can only propose action based on the here and now. I do not wish for the socialist movement to liquidate itself into the liberal establishment; I wish for it to assert itself on the mass stage. By all means, run for office as open communists, be unapologetically aggressive, and be active, militant members of the DSA. But when we look at the broader electoral landscape, the choice we are currently offered is not between a flawed left-populist candidate and a perfect cadre socialist. The choice is between a flawed candidate and none at all. To abstain from the left-insurgency out of a fear of "liquidation" is to guarantee our own irrelevance.

"We shall never be able to pry the masses loose from the liberal parties so long as the latter are not given an opportunity of discrediting themselves in practice, of getting at the helm of state and showing that they cannot do a thing. We are still, as we were in 1848, the opposition of the future, and it is therefore necessary that the most extreme of the present parties shall be at the helm before we can become a present opposition in relation to it. Political stagnation, that is, aimless and purposeless struggle among the official parties, as now, cannot be of service to us in the long run. But a progressive struggle of these parties with a gradual shifting of the centre of gravity to the left can be so.”

—Friedrich Engels to August Bebel in Leipzig, June 6th, 1884.

Supporting the big tent of left populism now in its bid for hegemony is the only path that will allow us to create an organic and principled opposition to it. Only by offering them sufficient rope to hang themselves can we hope to articulate a Communist alternative that means something to the masses in the real world, in the same way Democratic Socialism now means something to the masses in distinction from liberalism. 

What would be the effect of withholding an endorsement from candidates like Nithya Raman, Angie Nixon, or Troy Jackson in Maine? From where I'm standing, it would cost much. Thousands of socialists would spend their time campaigning for them anyway without any backing or support from DSA. Millions of progressives would as well, viewing DSA as a parochial, elitist clique that seems to hold itself above the political struggle into which they pour their time, energy, and talents (or simply ignoring us as effective political leadership). The candidates would feel comfortable knowing they can take what they want from the DSA (the social signifier) without needing to ever interface with what is meant to be a political party—because we have turned ourselves into an interest group within a larger constellation, not the driving leadership of the overall movement.. 

What would be gained? A sense of smug satisfaction? Plenty of free time? A degree of certainty among possible candidates that there is nothing to be gained from us without total submission? Alienation from the mass political movement sweeping the country? A more self-consciously reactionary government? At least we'll have our faith that we're marching in the right direction. Building the party. How, mechanically, is this substantively connected to the act of endorsement and not, say, cadre development, political articulation, and the extension of the organizing and political work of our formal organization? No one seems to know. But we can rest comfortably knowing we hold the truth in the palm of our hand, purity in the depth of our conscience, and all the time in the world—and that we have expressed that through something called an ‘endorsement’ which we, more than liberals themselves, have invested with metaphysical significance.  

And further, I ask another question in response to our interlocutors:

​What exactly would be the difference, in practice, between the governance of Zohran Mamdani or Nithya Raman? Between Chris Rabb or Angie Nixon? Between Abdul El-Sayed or Darializa Avila-Chevalier? 

​There are differences between these politicians, of course. Some are far better communicators than others. They come from different backgrounds, believe in different faiths, and exist in wildly distinct sections of the country. But the brutal truth is that nothing fundamental truly distinguishes them.

​Zohran Mamdani has spent his term repeatedly and unapologetically supporting the NYPD to the hilt. He has refused to remove Jessica Tisch and has openly stated his disagreement with the DSA platform regarding defunding the police. He recently announced his support for the leader of the Vichy Democrats in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, in his bid to become Speaker.

​Zohran is as "cadre" as it gets. He made his name in the DSA, and spent most of his early political life as a DSA spokesperson and organizer. He demonstrated nothing but loyalty to the organization, and attended meetings to argue for tactical decisions following his election to the mayor's office. And yet, the fact remains, he did and is doing all of these things—things that seemingly should, according to the sectarians, only be the product of sewer socialists like Nithya Raman or Black populists like Angie Nixon. Those types are supposed to be the ones to sell us out! And yet, we remain "betrayed", again and again. This should cause us to revise our model and approach to electeds, not stubbornly cling to the idea that we are right and reality remains stubbornly wrong.

​For those struggling with these contradictions, the abstentionist flank has made much of these errors in reality. The independence of electeds is an easily acceptable fact, and the underlying assumption of those in the DSA seeking more stringent standards. This kind of thing has to stop! We have to require more assurances from our candidates, require them to demonstrate unshakable loyalty not just to Socialism or Anti-Zionism or even Communism, but to the Democratic Socialists of America specifically.

​The reason the electeds will not do this, no matter how cadre they are, is because of the role of the DSA. Democratic socialism has taken on meaning as a social signifier. It has a mass character beyond the control of the committees, and it is precisely this mass character that discomforts DSA leadership. It is out of their control, thus impure, and perceived as prone to reactionary backsliding.

The electeds hold fealty to that signifier, the mass understanding of “Democratic Socialism,” and not the organization itself. That is because it is the signifier the masses are loyal to, as a symbol of resistance. The progressive masses are not DSA members, but they have become increasingly comfortable identifying themselves as democratic socialists. They are energized by “DSA candidates” in the colloquial sense, not candidates literally endorsed by DSA.

The two are not disconnected. In 2016, millions first became Democratic Socialists due to the Bernie Sanders campaign before seizing control of the organization that bore the name “Democratic Socialists of America.” It should always be reiterated that all of DSA’s periods of rapid growth have perfectly corresponded to aggressive “Democratic Socialists” challenging Vichy Democrats in electoral campaigns. The worst retractions are identical with periods in which we were unable or unwilling to do so.

​If we are going to endorse anyone, if we are going to meet the masses at the ballot box as well as in the streets, we must do so with aggression, not caution. No one is asking to turn the leadership council over to a gaggle of reformist social democrats. Further, let us be affirmative: we should not change the program to fit a narrow vision of electoral work, and instead should work to further expand and systematize the program’s principles. We should not surrender the independent organization, but expand its scope over society and expand the work we do in cadre development. We should not surrender our edge with an endorsement—the endorsement, instead, becomes the most effective means of transmitting our criticism to the public. Ultimately however, the fact remains that the victory of the left insurgency over the Democratic establishment represents an objective triumph of socialism far greater than the victory of some illusory perfect cadre candidate.

​Seeking something other than perpetual Fascist terror and suffocating technocracy by morons, the great masses of America strike out in populist anger, seeking any vehicle through which to take back power over their lives and government. The people are aware that the undemocratic nature of the electoral system and the pressing timetable in which we are working precludes an immediate third-party run, socialist or otherwise.

​The left-insurgency represents a clear attempt by the masses to break from our current trajectory using all available means. They are unsure of who to trust with this task, or what exactly is the best way to proceed. Candidates like Angie Nixon ask permission from no one, run in races no one believes they have a shot in—and win nonetheless.

​DSA cannot stop that from happening. They can only run as many candidates as they are able to capture this wave. Putting aside that even cadre candidates with seemingly spotless records sink into moderation, collaboration, or vacillation, if DSA leadership wants such cadre candidates, then they should run them—only let's not be surprised when such a candidate, beholden to DSA's internal (and often flighty) discourse, falls short of what the masses themselves expect from their leaders in this critical moment. Let’s not be surprised when these candidates perform well on social media and are circulated as organizational representatives fail to substantively advance the position of socialism because their focus on DSA is not a sufficient substitute for mass support and development of the national pole. 

​If DSA wanted a candidate for Senate who openly declares themselves a Socialist in Michigan or Florida, then they should have run them. Perhaps the people would have voted for them! The people are in a pugilistic mood; the Democratic base knows the danger it is in. It never forgets the terrifying political crisis, unlike many in the socialist movement.

​I would love it if every left-populist candidate promised to utterly destroy Israel, declared themselves Communists, and attended every DSA social event. It is my personal opinion, in fact, that strident aggression is the political language of the day, and that vicious populist rhetoric is essential to demonstrating to the people you are on their side in their goal to seize power.

Unfortunately, there are no magic words that will make this come true. When my hypothetical anti-Zionist, communist, DSA regular starts showing up to Congress, they will eventually start to compromise with white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. They will bend and bend and bend and soon become indistinguishable from poor Elizabeth Warren, speaking of saving the Democratic Party from itself, of recapturing the lost New Deal Coalition. Oh wait, that was Zohran, too.

Yes, even Zohran will (and did) not escape this fate—that is, without the people at his back, forcing the fascist and establishment structures to scatter and resettle; even our favorite cadre candidates will have their frailty utterly exposed the moment the masses lose the initiative.

That is okay. The deepest error of our electoral skeptics, ironically, is their fastidious belief in the importance and values of the American electoral system. If the electoral representative is not an embodiment of our values, or not sufficiently loyal, then the movement is compromised. But for the Marxists, the necessary incompleteness of democracy under capitalism isn’t an unfortunate deviation, but a structural fact. All electeds under capitalism do not purely represent the people because capitalist government is not a representative institution—it is a plane of class struggle. To move beyond electoralist delusions, we must relate to elections as a type of class struggle, and our tactics defined by what advances this struggle, not by seeking crude representation within electoralist structures.

Speaking in regards to the Otzovist faction of the Bolsheviks, which sought the “recall” of Party deputies from the Duma because they believed their work was deforming the party, Lenin writes: “The otzovist comrade has transformed the parliamentary group from a subsidiary Party organisation into the “fulfilment” of the Party in order, by exaggerating the significance of the group, to attribute an entirely wrong character to the activity of the contingent which we have sent into the bourgeois-Black-Hundred Duma.” What is fascinating here is that Lenin agrees with the criticisms levied by the Otzovists against the electeds, but fastidiously rejects their conclusion. He writes: 

“Of course our Duma group [i.e., the electeds] itself is mostly to blame for this, because it is precisely by its serious mistakes, and by those mistakes alone, that it drives those who are resentful of it into otzovism. But we will not allow this justified resentment to lead us into a wrong policy. No. We must and shall work hard and persistently to bring the Party and the Duma group closer together, to improve the group itself. We shall not forget that in the experience of international Social-Democracy there were examples of much more prolonged and much more acute struggle between the group and the Party than we have had during the Third Duma.” [My emphasis]

Although there are of course many differences between the two situations, there are clearly many similarities as well. And just as we must ensure that we criticize and maintain our independence from electeds, we must also avoid making the mistake of believing the liberal illusion that the elected representatives of a people “represent” those people in a significant sense. We must criticize the electeds, but it is simultaneously necessary “to make use of every act by the Duma group. Only the combination of the two forms of work is activity really worthy of consistent revolutionary Social-Democrats, and only this combination will help us to overcome “the moment of stagnation” and hasten the arrival of a new upsurge.”

​Someone must defeat the sclerotic Democratic establishment. They are teetering, guns out, taking wild shots at anyone daring to displace them, because they know they are in danger of being displaced. There is no requirement that DSA be the ones to seize this generational moment to conquer the Democratic establishment. This would not be the first time the Democratic establishment has entered crisis and been saved by the energy of its progressive activist wing. In fact, there are many non-socialist left-populists eager to take up that mantle, and just as many DSA members eager to let those non-socialist left-populists have it.

​We must resist this impulse. We must support these candidates with full knowledge that they are going to be subject to the pressures of a political system that will alienate them from our goals. And we must seize the political initiative to create an environment of such overwhelming intimidation that the great door of political revolution, of illegalism, of old-fashioned mass politics, swings wide open. We must lead and help the masses carry out a Democratic Revolution, and we have two years to do so.

​This is fundamentally a question of the political development of the masses. We can do nothing without them. We cannot shame them into compliance. We cannot exclude them from our clique. We are lost without them.

​The Mass Line and the Democratic Revolution

​There's a lot of talk of DSA reaching this stage of development, or that stage of development. That the internal discourse of DSA activists has "progressed" beyond the need to endorse "the left-most candidate that can win." That calls like those in this article represent a step back from the hard-won dogma developed in the “Socialist Winter” (as streamer MikefromPA puts it) of 2021-2024.

​There remains precious little talk, however, about socialism being constituted as a mass political pole and its objective breakthrough among the people as an ideological weapon to conquer their enemies. This is the terrain of populism, and a socialist partisan must be one who is living with both feet on the ground. They must understand the political ideas or goals driving the people, yes, but they must go further.

​They must craft slogans, draft strategies. They must analyze the world, make people feel things. This is the heart of the permanent campaign. It is not a question of moderation. In fact, moderation is death. We must agitate, agitate, agitate. We are in a war for attention; all of our enemies understand this. Communists and socialists must put forward their ideas bravely and without compromise, certainly. We must not capitulate to the Deliverism that has a seemingly unbreakable hold over our electeds.

​Abolish the racist police-state! Fight the constitution! Nationalize the heights of industry! Dismantle the American empire! We must popularize these slogans, or come up with better ones. We must hold these positions without fear, without hesitation. We must present them as the only solution to the problems that repress a nation, and a world.

​All of this is essential and good. But as to electoralism, the DSA must understand that there is no middle ground. Either the Socialist movement can establish itself as a pole in mass American political life, the primary force of resistance and the center of power for all those opposed to Reactionary Despotism, or it will not.

​And further, the individual candidates simply cannot be picked up, looked at, and replaced like parts of a machine. They are part of a wave, they are responding to mass political conditions to which they can only relate. They are the collective product of a particular moment. They are homoousian, of the same stuff. Marx said, "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please." Same as it ever was. Either the current left-populist electoral wave can aid us in this project, and we should go whole hog in favor, or the left-populist electoral wave will hinder our project, and we should abandon it whole cloth.

​There are no magic words that will purify members seeking electoral power in the heart of darkness. They are what they are, even if they are as cadre as it gets. Even if they can personally recite the phone numbers of every DSA NPC member, or flawlessly explain the necessity of world communism, or sing the International in perfectly accented French.

​The magic words that explain our moment are simple, and they can only be spoken in the context of mass action: Democratic Revolution, Permanent Campaign. Agitate to seize power from the fools and the traitors and the exploiters. Offer a path that the people can buy. Many seem to mistake speaking the language of the masses, marching in front of them so as to lead them, as the same as limply following behind, offering verbose explanations of why our actions were justified all along. At first glance, the two are heading in the same direction, but they should not be mistaken for the same action.

​This is the core of the Mass Line. We must act in such a way that has the practical effect, the immediate consequence, of advancing socialist hegemony. We should not race towards what we perceive to be the "correct" answer in a vacuum. A tactic only makes sense within the context in which it is used. It would be foolish to drive from Miami to Seattle "as the crow flies" without regard for mountains or cliffs or forests that might block the way, even if such a path is the most straightforward answer to "how do we get across the country?"

​Angie Nixon has organized the progressive masses of Florida. Abdul El-Sayed has organized the progressive masses of Michigan. DSA has done the same in many places, but it holds no royal monopoly. If it wants to lead, it must lead the real movement.

​In the same vein, we must transcend Deliverism. We must not bend on Abolition, on radical, structural change, but most crucially: on naming enemies. Of telling people who we hate, the same people they hate, and that we will destroy them, crush them underfoot. We must have a plan to do so. It must be believable.

​People do not want a weakling. Just look at Francesca Hong's razor-thin defeat in Wisconsin. They do not want someone who demonstrates a lack of confidence in themselves or their beliefs. If you are part of the left-insurgency, they will call you a socialist. Be one. If you claimed you supported abolishing the police-state, or that you hate Thanksgiving, backing away from these positions does not make you more electable. You will be branded with these statements anyway. You will only demonstrate that you are a weak-willed loser who cannot stand up for your own thoughts, let alone the people.

​Look no further than the ever-changing platform of our current President. His supporters do not care what he says, what policies he promotes, so long as he continues to fight for them against the degenerates and immigrants, the liberals and communists. He can break his promises, change course, contradict himself constantly. None of it matters. He hates all the right people. 

​To the electeds, I offer this: do not back away from our movement. The masses are growing more knowledgeable about the depths of depravity that form the foundation of our system. They become more aware of how the bloody wheels keep turning every day. The bones they crush under their spokes have grown so numerous as to begin to clog the machinery.

​The right wing sees this opportunity just as we do. They wish to capture the frustration of the masses and offer the balm of Nazism, a sweeping away of the clumsy constitutional order that has made even mild reform an impossibility, that has so frustrated every Democratic President who took office in the last 40 years. This might too be perceived as a solution to the people’s problems.

​If you are reading this, it is likely the Nationalist movement wants to murder you, deport you, or imprison you. This is the posture from which we must act. The 2028 Presidential primary grows ever closer. The contradictions of the regime grow ever more obvious. The movement to crown AOC the representative of the left-populist insurgency for the presidential primary grows ever more unstoppable.

​In fact, the 2029 horizon—the inevitable constitutional crisis over the transfer of power—seems to be the culmination of many of our struggles. We must throw our weight fully behind AOC, while maintaining our own independent militancy. She has already demonstrated she cannot save bourgeois democracy. She is too weak; she leans this way while tilting that way.

​Our militancy must be uncompromising and directed squarely towards questions of power, of force, of mass action. Insurrectionary crowd tactics and trips to the gun range. We must organize for our lives, in unions and workplaces and apartment buildings, and we must do so with an unashamedly political character. We must find as many candidates as possible, as radical as possible, and run them for every office they still let us vote for. Find enemies, point at them, be loud, get in good trouble. Now is the time.

​The socialist press has an indispensable role in this task. We cannot expect the electeds to serve as the vanguard. They will buckle and be pressured into performing reformist deliverism by the sheer gravity of capitalist governance. Geese, Democratic Left, Cosmonaut, Jacobin, People’s World. All have their problems. We need more. More, more, more. We need politics to drown in a cacophony of our voices. We need more Hasan Pikers, and we need more radical Hasan Pikers. We need more DSA members, we need to radicalize those DSA members. We need to gain the country's attention before we can do anything.

​Barbarism is here. It is Revolution or bust.