DSA’s Electoral Program Belongs to its Membership
How should socialists respond to the growing pains of our budding electoral project?
Sid C.W.
The Socialist Meeting, by Peggy Bacon
This is an article in favor of Convention Resolution 08: Democratic Discipline: A Uniform Process for Electoral Censure Across DSA.
DSA is growing. I can see it each week at our canvasses for Zohran Mamdani, and around the country as chapters experience a surge in membership after the 2024 elections. Our growth will not be limited to our membership numbers. As you read this, a new wave of socialist candidates for office is forming in cities and towns across the United States. Perhaps you have heard of some of the big names, like Mamdani in New York, but there are plenty of others, and many, many more who are gearing up for new challenges in 2026.
This is an exciting moment for an electoral program that has served as an important public face of our political work for the past seven years. But it also means that as a national organization we need to understand why we run candidates for office, and how they relate to the democratic organizational structures of DSA. More specifically, how our organization responds when an elected makes a decision that the membership disagrees with. Our elected officials are only as powerful as their ability to present socialism (that is, DSA as an organization with a concrete program, not merely a bloc of legislators) as the alternative to our capitalist and undemocratic society.
This question is part of the broader debate around “electoral discipline,” or the science of getting the party’s representatives to abide by its democratically decided positions. Marxists and other socialist formations have been debating how to do this for over a century, and DSA is no exception. I argue that in order to create an institutional culture of accountability in DSA, we need a uniform process by which members can bring concerns about an elected’s actions to a general meeting to be discussed openly and democratically. This also allows electeds to respond in an official and coherent fashion, not behind closed doors.
I will begin by articulating Marxist Unity Group’s vision for electoral discipline, and then discuss why R08 is the most effective path to building a culture of accountability in our chapters. In doing so, I hope to articulate a vision for how chapters across the country should think about building their electoral programs in a period of political upheaval and uncertainty.
A.Discipline
Debates around electoral discipline aren't new—Marxists across history, including touchpoints for DSA like the German Social Democrats and the Russian Bolsheviks, grappled with similar issues. The problem flows from the inherent nature of electoral politics: If having socialists in bourgeois legislatures is worthwhile, we must believe that these legislators’ positions in office offer our movement some amount of power that would be otherwise inaccessible. This is the case regardless of what form you believe this power takes. Lenin, for example, writing in 1907, believed that the Bolsheviks should use the bourgeois legislature for a “simple and modest purpose:” propaganda, criticism, and revealing the contradictions of society to the masses. Legislators, he believed, had a specific power vested in their individual authority as officeholders to agitate and inspire.
If a speech in a legislature is a source of power for a socialist party, it stands to reason that the individual legislator might end up with the lion’s share of that political authority, over the people who sent them there. This is especially the case within the American political system, which tends to value individual politicians over parties and movements. As a result, electeds have access to media and communications resources generally not afforded to the party as a whole, in addition to a loose grasp on the actual levers of political power.
It will inevitably be the case that by virtue of electing someone to a public office, that person will be elevated to a position of power relative to the membership of the chapter that ran their campaign. Because of our individualistic, candidate-rather-than-party political system, DSA electeds often serve as a public face and voice of the chapter at the same time that their actions in a legislative body do not align with the will of the chapter’s democracy. In an ideal socialist party with a rigorous political program, our elected representatives should rarely be out of step with the will of the party’s majority. But what happens when that is not the case?
Because of incumbency advantages, electeds are difficult to dislodge from their seats, even if DSA chooses not to offer its support in their re-election campaigns. Threatening candidates with a vote to revoke their endorsement after every bad decision is unlikely to be a sizable enough threat to move them on any particular issue. Issuing an empty ultimatum also signals that we don’t believe we have the ability to move them in the first place. Nor is DSA powerful enough to invest organizing energy into primary challenges to electeds who break with the party line.
Typically, DSA has responded to this power imbalance in two ways. The first is surrender. Because we cannot hope to unseat a disagreeable elected, some suggest, the hope of disciplining them to the positions of the party is entirely illusory. Since we have nothing to offer them once they are elected, we are, in this view, essentially stuck with them until we choose to unendorse. That is, if an unendorsement is even desired—if one believes that our elected representatives are inherently uncontrollable, why not continue the relationship in hopes that the next time an unpalatable budget comes up for a vote, they might have a change of heart and vote with us instead of with the establishment Dems?
The second response is bartering. Because electoral challenges are so difficult, some have argued that DSA should attempt to “earn” the discipline of our legislators by supporting them outside of the campaign season. This can take many forms, but it often revolves around finding ways to support individual legislators’ policy priorities or constituent services efforts. By being a core piece of our electeds’ political work, they argue, these leaders will be encouraged to respect us as a political force or source of intellectual authority.
There are two problems with this approach: The first is that it is wholly unpredictable. There is no reason to believe that any particular quid pro quo will result in a more disciplined legislative group, in no small part because it is not something the electeds themselves have vocalized or demanded. Greater collaboration with our electeds’ day-to-day work (appearances at community events, keeping membership informed of the things they are doing, etc) is certainly warranted, but it strikes me as unclear how greater engagement with our legislators’ priorities would bring about this type of change.
Secondly, this type of collaboration is not always possible. On the Organizing Committee of Central Brooklyn DSA, we have often met with legislators’ staff, who will outline a specific area of work in detail. Sometimes, after listening carefully to their plans, we had to respond with an admission that membership does not have organizational capacity for that area of work. That’s fine! Legislators can have immediate priorities that, while important, don’t necessarily fit into the work of our mass organization. But we cannot exist in a party where the legislators are able to use their authority to orient the work of a chapter or branch—the tail cannot wag the dog, nor should we want it to.
B.Censure
Discipline does not flow from the threat of a primary challenge, nor can we enforce or encourage discipline merely through “good works.” Instead, discipline comes from a willingness on the part of electeds to be disciplined, which implies a degree of fundamental alignment with our political project, and a democratic structure for members to voice disagreement with their choices.
As DSA matures into a functional party, we must continue to build electoral programs that require that potential endorsees recognize that they will be expected to take our program and goals seriously as legislators and executives. In some cases, this has happened already: earlier this year, three Brooklyn DSA branches were asked to consider the endorsement of a city council candidate. Though members voiced many concerns with her campaign plan and the lateness of her request for endorsement, members across NYC-DSA’s ideological spectrum were not impressed by her unwillingness to vote as a bloc when requested by the chapter—one of our state-level electeds went as far as to tweet “Bloc voting is not a choice!” during the endorsement forum.
Needless to say, the request for the endorsement was rejected—and I believe our chapter is stronger for it. It should be remembered that many of those who rejected the city council candidate’s endorsement were some of the same members who previously opposed the “1-2-3-4” plan at the 2023 citywide convention, which would have required that our candidates more clearly identify themselves as socialists and with DSA. This signals a maturation of our organization towards partyism in our largest chapter.
But DSA’s electoral program isn’t merely about campaigns and endorsements. It’s also about actually holding office as legislators. Legislators, especially those in a minority faction like DSA, are constantly subject to a wide range of pressures from forces to our right to take certain votes, support certain campaign strategies, or endorse certain coalitions. The sway held by these power players should be taken seriously—but it is by no means insurmountable.
Our legislators were elected to their bodies having expressed varying levels of support for DSA’s project. Many of them were elected by a DSA that was far less interested in the idea of discipline than the one we have now. All of them take direction and advice from a wide range of sources. As such, we need a process for responding to situations when electeds are out of step with chapter positions, as well as a way for our rank-and-file to voice their concerns when these expectations are not met.
R08 aims to accomplish the second goal. Imagine, for example, a state legislator refuses to vote against a state budget that vastly expands police funding and cuts critical programs fought for by DSA. Or if a high-profile elected fails to cross-endorse other socialist candidates in key races. This resolution will allow members to articulate dismay or disapproval to electeds in a formal and collective manner, and allow for the formation of chapter spaces to discuss how DSA should proceed with our relationship.
Providing these structures will solve an important problem related to communication and accountability. Right now, if I as a member want to inquire about the conduct of a DSA elected, I can do one of two things: First, I could scream into the void on Twitter in hopes that somehow something productive will come out of it; Or I could take my concern to the forums, where there is no guarantee that the people who need to hear it will engage.
The second option is to tap personal connections in chapter leadership and hope that concerns are eventually grapevined to the appropriate place. Take, for example, members’ collective disappointment with Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s insistence on employing the phrase “Israel has a right to exist” in response to unrelated questions about antisemitism. The only way for me to find out whether this issue was being raised with the campaign was to first ask an Electoral Working Group member I have closely collaborated with, who pointed me to a Steering Committee member who was able to inform me that the co-chairs of the chapter may or may not ask about the issue in their upcoming standing meeting. There are no formal channels for disseminating the business of that meeting with membership, which means the only way that I could discover the results of this conversation is essentially the same way I found out about it in the first place!
Theoretically, there is a third option. I could use New York’s bizarre petition process to bring an issue to the Socialists in Office committee, but there is no mechanism in place to guarantee the committee will hear the petition or that petitioners will be made aware of deliberations surrounding it. To do so, however, I would have to act on behalf of a chapter formation (branch, working group, or campaign), all while being careful that my efforts to even circulate the petition itself do not run afoul of the “public reproach” subclause of the local bylaw barring public criticism of electeds. Finally, I would have to hope that the committee considers the petition germane, circulated through legal means, and actionable—though no process for doing so is outlined in the bylaw. And remember, this is all to ensure a conversation that I would hope is happening in the appropriate bodies in the first place. As a member there’s just no way to find out.
Undemocratic backchanneling is no basis on which to run a socialist organization. While committees and standing meetings with leadership may be perfectly acceptable for the regular, day-to-day business of being a legislator in a socialist legislative group (or campaigning to become part of one), membership needs a process through which major concerns can be discussed. In the current set-up, issues will be handled through byzantine whisper networks as petitions are circulated without a proper forum to discuss them. Frustrations are aired on Twitter, political fights are transformed into matters of character, and most devastatingly, most importantly, members leave.
By offering a forum for concerns about electeds’ actions, members will no longer have to rely on the time, energy, and goodwill of SIO committee members or leadership bodies in ensuring issues are addressed. At the same time, electeds themselves will better be able to understand which of members’ (varied, occasionally inconsequential) areas of disagreement should be taken seriously, and which ones do not merit as complete a response.
By passing R08, members of DSA will affirm that we expect our representatives in office, the most powerful members of our organization, to take on the responsibility of responding to members’ concerns if a vote on censure is held. This is a huge ask, and I do not believe that members should underestimate its gravity. But it is an important step that we must take if we want to be able to define ourselves programmatically in the coming years and decades. It’s not enough to be an electoral movement; it’s not enough to be a hub for interconnected struggles. The working class needs a party, and we need to begin to build the deliberative and democratic structures required for maintaining this party’s independence and power.
C. But what if—
In discussing this resolution with members across DSA’s broad ideological spectrum, one specific concern has emerged: “If we are too open or democratic about our ability to critique electeds,” some might ask, “will they not leave the organization?”
This concern should be taken seriously. Members have invested thousands of hours (and plenty of money) into building our legislative blocs across the country. The possibility that a legislator who is censured—or even threatened with a censure—might choose to unaffiliate with DSA is a real one. Even so, we should not let this concern get in the way of open discussion around what chapters expect from our elected officials as we advance into a new era of DSA’s politics.
There are a few reasons for this. The first is that DSA is inherently an organization in flux. It is a robust and constantly-shifting democracy that has a broad formal platform but with (for now) few tools for enforcing adherence. All members of DSA, including our electeds, will have shifting degrees of unity with the organization’s political zeitgeist. Many will leave on their own, and many others will join up. This is a natural and inevitable consequence of both organizational growth and the vicissitudes of American politics, which will make new and unexpected demands of politicians and organizers as we continue to fight for socialism.
While collaboration with our electeds will always be important, we cannot expect that our relationship with each and every one will be permanent. R08 will provide members a space to clarify disagreements in a public forum, and come to an agreement about whether or not an elected has significantly broken with the principles of DSA. After doing so, the official can reflect, respond, or, recognizing serious disagreement with the democratic will of the organization, simply leave. The resolution, in this case, merely takes the complicated and messy process of disagreement and moves it out of committees (or, in more egregious cases, out of the shadows of groupchats) and to membership as a whole.
Others might argue that the very threat of censure might cause electeds to distance themselves from DSA. This, too, I find strange. Why should DSA choose to trust politicians who are not willing to be criticized in the first place? Many members of our organization believe in protecting electeds from criticism at all costs, which is why NYC-DSA’s 2022 Convention passed a resolution to prohibit it. This is a tremendously infantilizing way to handle our legislative group. If an elected is unable to handle critique from their own movement, can we trust them to stand up to the forces of capital which will take up much firmer opposition against our project? I am skeptical.
If one opposes a censure, or even debate over a censure, they should have to work to organize the members of their chapter to vote no on the resolution or proposal rather than appealing to the authority (or the capriciousness) of the electeds. After all, they are members too, and should have an equal stake in our democratic process.
Neither carrots (allowing electeds to dictate our organizational work or smoothing over conflicts) nor sticks (threatening to unendorse or primary them) will successfully enforce discipline. No amount of defending every boneheaded or disorganizing decision made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will bring her in line with the programmatic goals of DSA. That is her decision alone. What we can do, however, is to clarify to the world what we stand for, and the importance of democracy in making our decisions. The resolution on democratic censure is a step in this direction, helping us steer DSA into new and uncharted waters—together.
