Special Convention Issue, August 10th
Featuring Connell H, Donald P, Jean A, and Taylor F
See the newspaper here
Pictured: the room where we printed Light and Air issues on Sunday morning
Why Did We Do This?
This is a pretty odd document to hold in your hands, right? This daily bulletin took a tremendous amount of work and has a ton of articles, and it’s so odd for that to exist alongside so many other kinds of literature which are so much more direct. Vote for this resolution, vote for that slate, support us with this motion--these are the normal forms of campaign literature you’ll see at convention. It’s tempting to see this newspaper as just a more abstract version of these other pieces of paper. And yet the bulletin team has gone every convention night sleepless getting this together, editing, printing, reformatting, having printer problems, etc, pulling herculean work to make sure that every day you are reading these very articles. We could have just printed our best pieces alongside our palmcards and called it a day. So why did we do this?
At MUG we really believe in the power of writing. That sounds like nerdy nonsense, but what that really means is generalizing our arguments and making them apply to as broad a context as possible. Convention often narrows our thinking down to a single point--we want our motions to win, our enemies to lose, and to elect the people we like. The writing around convention shrinks itself to fit that narrow purpose. It’s understandable why we do this, but it also limits us and makes us mean. Democracy is more than a battle of wills, and writing should be more than trying to overwhelm our enemies.The most beautiful part about DSA is that many of us would never otherwise meet each other, and yet because of this organization we are forced to engage with each other as equals. That process is annoying, and it’s very easy to close ourselves off to that, to replace persuasion with browbeating, rank-pulling, and credentials checking. That might win you an argument, but it doesn’t advance our knowledge, doesn’t help us understand our condition, does not do much more than say “I’m right”. As editor in chief, I’ve spent untold hours making sure Light and Air’s articles advance not just the resolutions MUG members have written and not just our NPC slate, but the knowledge of the organization as a whole. That’s MUG’s strength; that’s all of our strength.
MUG are a bunch of weird nerds, and as a faction we are both a newcomer and an odd ball out. But I hope that in the next term our comrades understand that the reason this group of spastic weirdos is doing so well is because for years we have worked on turning our experiences into a consistent and general set of ideas. I think that if everyone took this to heart, we would return to Chicago in 2027 with an immeasurably stronger organization. Until then, I’ll see you in the battle of ideas.
In loving solidarity,
Jean RD Allen
Principles of Independence
Connell H
(republished from here)
Almost everyone in DSA says they want a party, but disagreement on what that means - and on what timeline - makes that statement almost meaningless. MUG wrote R07: Principles of Party-Building to allow convention to clarify what building a party means and how we should work towards that goal. The resolution commits DSA to the goal of becoming an independent, mass socialist party, then provides a set of principles which define a party and how we should build it. In this piece, we will explore what a party is and how we should approach the ballot line.
What is a party?
The very first principle of the resolution gives the definition of “party” that we think DSA should use:
1. The fundamental purpose of a socialist party is to be a mass association of the working class formed for collective political action. The party will be united around a democratically created program that outlines goals that, enacted together, will allow the working class to rule and end capitalism.
The conversation about “the party” in DSA is muddy because we collectively refer to several different matters with the same word. “Party” can refer to all manner of items: the ballot line that candidates run on, the kind of legal structure DSA is registered as, or the character of the organization’s operation in a broad sense. Most often, when people say, “DSA is not a party!”, they are referring to the type of nonprofit DSA is registered as, as well as the fact that we do not have a ballot line of our own. However, a party in the Marxist sense is a mass association of the working class for collective political action, which works to carry out a program that has been democratically set by members. MUG believes that DSA already functions as a political party in the Marxist sense. The fact that we lack official recognition from the state and an independent ballot line does not have to prevent us from acting as a party. The questions of ballot line and legal form matter, but are less important than organizing for our own program, having a distinct public identity based on that program, and refusing to take direction from the capitalist class.
Party Surrogate
One of the key debates about party building is how we choose to contest elections. Our resolution states that:
5. Because of an undemocratic and uneven electoral system designed to maintain capitalist rule, DSA fights on unfavorable terrain and is pulled between the necessity of independent political action and using the ballot line of the Democratic Party. DSA’s approach is the party surrogate, acting as a party but without a dedicated ballot line.
We do not lack a ballot line out of preference. The US electoral system is designed to keep power out of the hands of the people and protect the two dominant parties of capital. In most of the world, political parties are membership organizations that control who is a member and who runs in elections. Political parties like this simply do not exist in the US, which has a state-run registration and primary system. Restrictive ballot access requirements are not an impossible barrier, but they are a drain on member capacity and financial resources. They can also create perverse incentives that commit you to running for certain offices or endorsing less preferred candidates to maintain the threshold of votes needed to maintain your ballot line.
Unfavorable electoral terrain is nothing new for socialists, who have been navigating barriers placed by the state all along. Some ballot line restrictions were put in place to suppress socialist and communist electoral efforts, and we should expect more as our successes grow. DSA’s approach to elections is most heavily influenced by Seth Ackerman’s 2016 essay “A Blueprint for a New Party.” Ackerman proposed a plan to contest elections on different ballot lines while building up the strength to succeed in a system designed for two parties. This has become known as the “party surrogate” approach. It is easy to remember the insight of Ackerman’s piece crudely as “ballot line flexibility,” but it is worth rereading to see how much of the piece discusses membership and the need for a program:
“In a genuinely democratic party, the organization’s membership, program, and leadership are bound together tightly by a powerful, mutually reinforcing connection. The party’s members are its sovereign power; they come together through a sense of shared interest or principle. Through deliberation, the members establish a program to advance those interests. The party educates the public around the program, and it serves, in effect, as the lodestar by which the party is guided. Finally, the members choose a party leadership — including electoral candidates — who are accountable to the membership and bound by the program.”
Ackerman’s piece goes far beyond mere ballot line choices and outlines how to operate as a membership-based party despite the legal barriers in the US. Without membership control and a unifying program, the party surrogate model falls apart. If you have ballot line flexibility without the other elements of the party surrogate, you are just running as Democrats.
Dirty Stay and Clean Break
Another disagreement about DSA’s electoral approach is timeline on when to leave the Democratic Party ballot line, if at all. The party surrogate approach recognizes we need to be able to maintain control of our project and move away from the Democratic Party line over time:
6. While DSA must move away from use of the Democratic Party ballot line and primaries, a ballot line is not the primary goal or indication of political independence. What matters most is bringing our independent organization and program to races whether on a Democratic, independent, or third-party ballot line.
7. When considering whether to create a ballot line of our own, losing control of our candidates to an open state-run process is a non-negotiable red line. Our ability to take independent political action is essential to preserve above all other considerations.
Most electoral positions in DSA fall somewhere on a spectrum of the party surrogate model. The two exceptions are the SMC-promoted “dirty stay”, in which we “stop pretending we are building a third party [and admit] we are fostering a left wing faction of the Democratic party”, and the Clean Break, which calls for immediately dropping use of the Democratic ballot line. The dirty stay sets our horizon too low, the clean break overweights the importance of the ballot line and emphasizes it over our program and identity.
It is possible to run as an independent and prop up the Democratic establishment. It is equally possible to run as a Democrat and be fiercely oppositional, use the ballot line for our own purposes, and promote DSA and its program. Nothing about the label next to the checkbox guarantees this, it depends on the campaigns DSA members choose to run. Decisions about our electoral work are not only who to run and with what message, but where and with what prioritization. With an open primary system, anyone could run as a “DSA candidate” with or without our endorsement. Unless the election laws in a given area are changed so that we can maintain control of our candidates, we should not seek a ballot line at the cost of losing our ability to control our project.
Party Surrogate in Form, Clean Break in Content
MUG’s electoral orientation can be described as “party surrogate in form, clean break in content.” Party surrogate means our priority should be our program and organizing operations, rather than the secondary tactical question of ballot line. “Clean break in content” means that we will not take direction from the capitalist class through the structures of the Democratic Party. While the party establishment does not have direct control, they are able to exert pressure in many ways. We should use the Democratic Party infrastructure without submerging ourselves into its ecosystem once in office. Socialists in office can refuse to join Democratic Party caucuses, even at the cost of committee assignments. They do not have to prop up the Democratic establishment, by paying party dues or otherwise.
Building the Party
As the resolution says, “Our ability to take independent political action is essential to preserve above all other considerations.” Political independence is a fundamental value shared across the organization. Every time someone makes a recruitment ask or gives a dues drive presentation at a chapter meeting, we are reinforcing the importance of political independence. We are funded by member dues because this means we are not bound to the whims of wealthy patrons or foundations. Nobody can buy influence in DSA; you have to persuade the members who both make up our collective activity - “doing the work” - and participate in our internal democracy. DSA’s electoral program needs to be determined by our membership, or else we are no different than the hollow capitalist parties that only serve their donors. Our independence is a matter both of resolutions at convention and the collective choices we make in our organizing in the two years in between. We hope that Principles of Party Building may be a useful guide.
Let Your Red Flag Fly
Donald Parkinson
DSA has arrived at the point where practically the entire organization is willing to say that its goal is to build a Socialist Party that can contend for political power. Whether we are for the “dirty stay”, the “clean break in content, party surrogate in form”, or the plain old “dirty break”, the notion of the party as a horizon seems to have a consensus among our ranks.
Yet while we approach a consensus on this issue, the question “What kind of party do we aspire to be?” becomes even more important and divisive. This question was the center of gravity for today’s debates around recruiting candidates to run for office from the Labor Movement, particularly in response to amendments and R20-A01: Democratic Socialists and the Labor Movement Need Each Other, as well as CR10-A01: A Partyist Labor Strategy, which was put forward collaboratively by members of Reform & Revolution and Marxist Unity Group. As always, we emphasized leading with open socialist politics: fighting for class independence, naming the problems with both sectarian and economistic approaches to the labor movement, and laying out a strategy to both build and politicize the labor movement in collaboration with the partyist project. As Comrade Lavender Ciao put it in her article All Together Now that motivated Partyist Labor Strategy,
“Socialists will only be able to win a majority to our politics if we work across the entire labor movement to unite the class into an independent democratic organization. The reverse side of this is that socialists will forever remain a minority in the labor movement unless we coordinate our interventions in a party.”
What was truly revealing was the opposition to these amendments. As one of the most important strategic areas of our politics as well as a source of careers and livelihoods for many of our members, relations with the labor movement are always controversial in DSA. Yet arguments made in opposition to these labor strategy amendments, particularly those made by members of the Socialist Majority Caucus, tended to take the most issue with the notion of an emphasis on socialist identity - in other words “Socialist Identitarianism”.
Arguments against “Socialist Identitarianism” tended to be as substantial as simply saying that it is more important that a given candidate win a race than they identify as a socialist, or as part of a collective socialist project. Dan Osbourne, an independent populist from Nebraska who was able to have electoral success in MAGA country, was even appealed to as a potential example of a “non-socialist identitarian” - without any mention of the fact that the Omaha Nebraska DSA chapter neglected to endorse Osborn because of his conservative position on the border. Another potential candidate who was apparently under threat of exclusion due to the resolution was Shawn Fain, whose lackluster record regarding the Gaza genocide was not forgotten by another chapter delegate. Even a questionable quotation of the Communist Manifesto was brought forth, claiming that a forthright socialist strategy was violating Marx’s creed to “not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties” - as if there is already a working class party in the US that we are forming a sect in opposition to!
Ultimately what these arguments illustrate is DSA’s lack of confidence - both in our ideas, and in our ability to lead rather than follow the labor movement’s existing leadership. For example, an SMC comrade said that “running candidates from labor is how we align with labor”; yet, the existing labor movement is categorically not socialist - it is stuck in the conformist and often chauvinist politics of the two-party system (when it isn’t simply depoliticized). Our goal is different: we seek to merge the fight for socialism with the labor movement, a process that will necessitate DSA members overcoming misunderstandings on both sides of the aisle. This challenge calls us to stop hiding our “socialist identity” and hoping that “wins” uncoupled to advances in widespread political education can magically conjure a mass proletarian political subjectivity.
While the theorists of SMC see their disdain for “socialist identitarianism” as an adherence to a hard-nosed materialism, too busy with “action” to be distracted by flighty abstractions, the reality is that “materialism” in no way necessitates underplaying the role of symbolic communication and rhetoric in the socialist movement. Language mediates, determines, and is determined by the material worlds - it isn’t a separate dimension of physical life. If we wish to build a socialist party, we must achieve a socialist intersubjectivity, which can only arise through open and honest communication with the masses on a symbolic level. In other words, “socialist identitarianism.” This will not be easy, but it is the only way. We must fly our red flags proudly.
Why I Joined MUG
Taylor F
To start, a moment of transparency: In the five and a half years I’ve been a DSA member, I’ve had public doubts about both the necessity of caucus politics and whether DSA could be the foundation of a principled, mass party. Perhaps not my strongest opener to a piece on why I joined MUG, but I promise, I’ll land this plane without turbulence.
As a fledgling DSA member in late 2020, one orthodox Marxist caucus dominated the political thought and direction of my chapter. Being immature in my own politics, I was under the impression that the caucus in question – and, unfairly, all caucuses – were intent to undermine the “big tent” of DSA and alienate anyone who didn’t align with them precisely. After becoming a chapter leader, however, I actually found myself agreeing with many of those comrades; it was through dedicated organizing with members I thought I disagreed with that I learned we had fewer political differences than I imagined. Though those members and I still have areas of disagreement, I realized that caucus politics help DSA members articulate their positions and theories of change, rather than expressly acting as antagonists to the larger organization.
After reconciling my imagined differences with caucus politics and concurrently straining against growing reformist tendencies in our chapter, there came DSA’s budget crisis. This prompted larger questions of how the organization would survive under increased financial scrutiny, in addition to rapid political and economic decline across the world. Would this organization even exist in a few years? Have I spent years organizing in an org failing to complete its political project?
In retrospect, this existentialism resulted from lacking deeper ties to comrades nationally and from having a limited vision of the organization’s potential. Through 2024 and now this year, DSA is stronger than it has been. Still, though, I’d felt that something was missing in my “DSA life” to keep me feeling anchored in the organization.
It was around the time of this realization that I contacted Siobhan, whom I’d briefly known through Buffalo DSA, about MUG. From what I read and saw online, if I were to join a caucus, this one made the most sense. It had a set of principles and vision that are clear enough to apply to both DSA’s internal organizing and to our larger task of organizing the working class. Armed with those principles, members across the country are now translating their radically democratic, Marxist politics to struggles across the country. Galvanized by our vision, we are nurturing an underlying hope for the organization-as-party.
The reading group affirmed my decision to apply. I felt grounded in theory, but not overwhelmed by it, and I now feel more able to articulate my politics and positions both within and outside of DSA spaces. I have a fuller vision of our tasks ahead and an optimism that we can harness the latent energy of our class into a lasting political revolution. MUG’s vision, to me, balances the urgency of our struggle with the patience and discipline needed to build a movement that will stick.
In short, a great deal of political self-exploration and maturation of my political philosophy over five years brought me from caucus-and-DSA-skeptic to the most dedicated I’ve ever been to DSA. Discovering and joining MUG has been an integral part of that process, and I’m not sure if other caucuses could have convinced me with the same fervor.
