this web of hegemony concept is extremely sound and helps me wrap my head around what an “actual” dsa party can/ will look like. it will be formed through more than just electeds, though that is important. it is winning over aspects of civil society, from labor and tenant unions, to student groups, to winning endorsements from non-dsa groups. it’s a palpable and powerful strategy, but does little to address my glaring concern about the direction of our organization.
i’ve become disenchanted with the political strategy. the ghost of the second international has haunted me for a while now. i feel that even in the best of circumstances, when power is won and DSA socialists can enter office from the lowest levels up, the bones of this cursed nation will stay in tact. i believe that this strategy will put us in the halls of power, but it does nothing to address the rot in the dna of those spaces. this is yet another reason that dsa struggles to get support in minority communities.
in this piece, black people are resigned to the position of followers, supporting whoever has the power and says they will fight for us. my people’s agency deserves more recognition than that. it is true that we have historically voted for the democrats en masse, but that incremental progress has led to our continued mass incarceration, police killing, labor exploitation, and so many other horrors. it is not enough anymore. and DSA feels to me, especially with this program so beautiful explained here, like a similar fox to the democratic party.
and i say fox because, like malcom x said, it slyly fights for our needs while serving an entirely different project. our agency is taken for granted and used to fuel a project that throws us crumbs while cementing power around the party apparatus and the police and themselves.
i speak from the heart here, as a 3-year dsa member. you will see success with this project, but you will, and i mean this with certainty, leave millions of people behind and reflect the institutions we claim to be against. you are inheriting a cursed crown. we don’t need princes, we need a new system with us truly in the drivers seat, not a better version of the system that has oppressed us, a new coat of paint on the same death machine.
so… yeah i guess that’s my take. dsa has lost a lot of members from others coming to this same realization. i don’t see any change coming to this state of affairs. we need a revolution.
if i might be a bit blunt, it seems you may have missed the entire point of the article.
the author of this article is not at all a reformist, and is in fact a revolutionary socialist. he directly calls out electoral blanquism and great-manism, and your hinging on the terminology of "prince" seems to suggest you didn't read much further than the first couple of paragraphs.
the argument of the article the grounding and deliberate establishment of DSA as a party - and there's a reason for this. the existence of a party, a solid and influential political body to guide and cohere the struggle of the working class around a concrete ideology of socialism, is one of lenin's conditions for a revolutionary situation. without an influential political body to direct mass discontent at the ruling class into a sustained revolution, then the revolutionary situation fizzles out in a series of spontaneous mass uprisings, protests, and other disparate and disconnected actions, which effectively act as pressure valves - giving the people the idea that they did something, letting them work out a bit of frustration, and then back to business as usual.
these things can be seen in protests and actions that lacked demands, like the 'no kings' protests, and spontaneous protests and riots such as the later phases of the 2020 BLM protests, the rodney king and freddie gray riots, the 2016 ferguson riots - all spontaneous instances of rage that COULD have been directed towards real revolutionary effort, had there been a revolutionary socialist party to guide that emotional desire for change.
you cite objection to the resignation of black people "to the position of follower", yet it's important to understand that your objection is flawed in that it opposes this program on the grounds of it supposedly and simply replacing the democratic party in the duopoly of liberal democracy. this is not the case for DSA, nor is it the case of sylus' argument. the role of DSA as a party - an actual party, not a liberal democratic party - is not to simply take part in elections, but to directly guide the frustrations of the people towards a socialist revolution, rather than to let it burn out like a match tossed into an already-lit campfire.
malcolm x knew the need for this level of coordination and direction - he knew the demands of dr. king would never be met if he himself did not pose the graver and more serious threat to the ruling class, thereby making MLK's comparably smaller demands seem a reasonable compromise. this same coordination and direction is exactly what sylus is arguing for in this article.
so let me ask you this: do you just want an uprising, spontaneous and aimless, or do you want a revolution? because this is how you get a revolution - your way will amount to just another burnt out uprising, drying up in the august heat as so many others have in the years and decades before us.
Kaya Malik didn't miss the point of the article but you missed the substance of his comment which is less a critique and more of a mood or an emotion (e.g., "disenchanted," "i feel that...," "resigned," "glaring concern," "taken for granted") and you build your entire response around an irrelevant bifurcation between spontaneity and organization as if he had argued against organization as such. He's not an anarchist.
The real trouble with what he's saying is that it's a non-strategy and he concedes as much in his subsequent response to you. He treats the corruption and rot of socialists taking office after winning elections as an automatic, inevitable (and maybe even instantaneous?) process when in reality it's more like the 'elevation of contested terrain'—the higher one ascends, the less oxygen there is to breath, the greater the hostile wind gusts, and the colder the temperature that the 'climber' and the climber's team face. But climbers do not scale Mt. Everest successfully alone, they require a team and a lot of support to make it up the summit without succumbing to adverse conditions. Class struggle doesn't end after a socialist is sworn into office anymore than it ends after a new contract is signed with an employer despite both involving compromises of one sort or another with capital. It continues under new conditions with new, more complicated challenges.
Properly and persuasively addressing what he's saying about the dangers of winning elections would involve fleshing out how proponents of what I guess amounts to "revolutionary electoralism"(?) intend to combat creeping corruption and the "rot in the DNA of those spaces." Which is a topic and a task several steps beyond elementary arguments about whether to be organized or not.
i appreciate your thoughtful response and yes, i did read the essay. come on now.
you explain your points well but my core critique feels unchallenged. it’s in the nature of the institutions DSA is attempting to shift and co-opt. this process will undeniably bring success and power to DSA, but it also may force concessions and alliances that can dilute the apparent revolutionary socialist nature of the project. i don’t want to see our revolution fizzle out like so many of the past and i dont want to see our revolution take a form similar to the bolsheviks. i truly do not trust a party that is built through the institutions of american civil society to accurately “guide the frustrations of the people” like you eloquently stated, towards revolution. the nation is cursed and the rot i see in the powerful that run this empire i also see in the powerful in my own chapter of dsa. i’ve had my feet both inside and outside dsa for years. i know plenty of people that could write bar for bar this same argument, though definitely not as articulately as you have, and i know plenty of people that would be shocked by the concept that malcom x would endorse this program at all (ik you didn’t explicitly say that but you use him to defend your argument). ig all im saying is that im not convinced that the revolutionary nature of this movement will keep the interests of my people at heart. i do not trust this nation’s institutions and leaders- twisted to revolutionary socialist ideals or not. i recognize that i wrote my comment thinking about liberal democracy and you’re right to acknowledge that this DSA party is far more than that. i also recognize that in my pessimism, i don’t really have an answer to what our successful revolution will look while you do. freedom is a constant struggle and i want to hope that a revolutionary dsa future is better than this. and so, i say good luck. please prove me wrong through doing the work. i will continue to build in a way i feel is more connected to the world we deserve.
just laying down some of my thoughts here.
this web of hegemony concept is extremely sound and helps me wrap my head around what an “actual” dsa party can/ will look like. it will be formed through more than just electeds, though that is important. it is winning over aspects of civil society, from labor and tenant unions, to student groups, to winning endorsements from non-dsa groups. it’s a palpable and powerful strategy, but does little to address my glaring concern about the direction of our organization.
i’ve become disenchanted with the political strategy. the ghost of the second international has haunted me for a while now. i feel that even in the best of circumstances, when power is won and DSA socialists can enter office from the lowest levels up, the bones of this cursed nation will stay in tact. i believe that this strategy will put us in the halls of power, but it does nothing to address the rot in the dna of those spaces. this is yet another reason that dsa struggles to get support in minority communities.
in this piece, black people are resigned to the position of followers, supporting whoever has the power and says they will fight for us. my people’s agency deserves more recognition than that. it is true that we have historically voted for the democrats en masse, but that incremental progress has led to our continued mass incarceration, police killing, labor exploitation, and so many other horrors. it is not enough anymore. and DSA feels to me, especially with this program so beautiful explained here, like a similar fox to the democratic party.
and i say fox because, like malcom x said, it slyly fights for our needs while serving an entirely different project. our agency is taken for granted and used to fuel a project that throws us crumbs while cementing power around the party apparatus and the police and themselves.
i speak from the heart here, as a 3-year dsa member. you will see success with this project, but you will, and i mean this with certainty, leave millions of people behind and reflect the institutions we claim to be against. you are inheriting a cursed crown. we don’t need princes, we need a new system with us truly in the drivers seat, not a better version of the system that has oppressed us, a new coat of paint on the same death machine.
so… yeah i guess that’s my take. dsa has lost a lot of members from others coming to this same realization. i don’t see any change coming to this state of affairs. we need a revolution.
if i might be a bit blunt, it seems you may have missed the entire point of the article.
the author of this article is not at all a reformist, and is in fact a revolutionary socialist. he directly calls out electoral blanquism and great-manism, and your hinging on the terminology of "prince" seems to suggest you didn't read much further than the first couple of paragraphs.
the argument of the article the grounding and deliberate establishment of DSA as a party - and there's a reason for this. the existence of a party, a solid and influential political body to guide and cohere the struggle of the working class around a concrete ideology of socialism, is one of lenin's conditions for a revolutionary situation. without an influential political body to direct mass discontent at the ruling class into a sustained revolution, then the revolutionary situation fizzles out in a series of spontaneous mass uprisings, protests, and other disparate and disconnected actions, which effectively act as pressure valves - giving the people the idea that they did something, letting them work out a bit of frustration, and then back to business as usual.
these things can be seen in protests and actions that lacked demands, like the 'no kings' protests, and spontaneous protests and riots such as the later phases of the 2020 BLM protests, the rodney king and freddie gray riots, the 2016 ferguson riots - all spontaneous instances of rage that COULD have been directed towards real revolutionary effort, had there been a revolutionary socialist party to guide that emotional desire for change.
you cite objection to the resignation of black people "to the position of follower", yet it's important to understand that your objection is flawed in that it opposes this program on the grounds of it supposedly and simply replacing the democratic party in the duopoly of liberal democracy. this is not the case for DSA, nor is it the case of sylus' argument. the role of DSA as a party - an actual party, not a liberal democratic party - is not to simply take part in elections, but to directly guide the frustrations of the people towards a socialist revolution, rather than to let it burn out like a match tossed into an already-lit campfire.
malcolm x knew the need for this level of coordination and direction - he knew the demands of dr. king would never be met if he himself did not pose the graver and more serious threat to the ruling class, thereby making MLK's comparably smaller demands seem a reasonable compromise. this same coordination and direction is exactly what sylus is arguing for in this article.
so let me ask you this: do you just want an uprising, spontaneous and aimless, or do you want a revolution? because this is how you get a revolution - your way will amount to just another burnt out uprising, drying up in the august heat as so many others have in the years and decades before us.
Kaya Malik didn't miss the point of the article but you missed the substance of his comment which is less a critique and more of a mood or an emotion (e.g., "disenchanted," "i feel that...," "resigned," "glaring concern," "taken for granted") and you build your entire response around an irrelevant bifurcation between spontaneity and organization as if he had argued against organization as such. He's not an anarchist.
The real trouble with what he's saying is that it's a non-strategy and he concedes as much in his subsequent response to you. He treats the corruption and rot of socialists taking office after winning elections as an automatic, inevitable (and maybe even instantaneous?) process when in reality it's more like the 'elevation of contested terrain'—the higher one ascends, the less oxygen there is to breath, the greater the hostile wind gusts, and the colder the temperature that the 'climber' and the climber's team face. But climbers do not scale Mt. Everest successfully alone, they require a team and a lot of support to make it up the summit without succumbing to adverse conditions. Class struggle doesn't end after a socialist is sworn into office anymore than it ends after a new contract is signed with an employer despite both involving compromises of one sort or another with capital. It continues under new conditions with new, more complicated challenges.
Properly and persuasively addressing what he's saying about the dangers of winning elections would involve fleshing out how proponents of what I guess amounts to "revolutionary electoralism"(?) intend to combat creeping corruption and the "rot in the DNA of those spaces." Which is a topic and a task several steps beyond elementary arguments about whether to be organized or not.
i appreciate your thoughtful response and yes, i did read the essay. come on now.
you explain your points well but my core critique feels unchallenged. it’s in the nature of the institutions DSA is attempting to shift and co-opt. this process will undeniably bring success and power to DSA, but it also may force concessions and alliances that can dilute the apparent revolutionary socialist nature of the project. i don’t want to see our revolution fizzle out like so many of the past and i dont want to see our revolution take a form similar to the bolsheviks. i truly do not trust a party that is built through the institutions of american civil society to accurately “guide the frustrations of the people” like you eloquently stated, towards revolution. the nation is cursed and the rot i see in the powerful that run this empire i also see in the powerful in my own chapter of dsa. i’ve had my feet both inside and outside dsa for years. i know plenty of people that could write bar for bar this same argument, though definitely not as articulately as you have, and i know plenty of people that would be shocked by the concept that malcom x would endorse this program at all (ik you didn’t explicitly say that but you use him to defend your argument). ig all im saying is that im not convinced that the revolutionary nature of this movement will keep the interests of my people at heart. i do not trust this nation’s institutions and leaders- twisted to revolutionary socialist ideals or not. i recognize that i wrote my comment thinking about liberal democracy and you’re right to acknowledge that this DSA party is far more than that. i also recognize that in my pessimism, i don’t really have an answer to what our successful revolution will look while you do. freedom is a constant struggle and i want to hope that a revolutionary dsa future is better than this. and so, i say good luck. please prove me wrong through doing the work. i will continue to build in a way i feel is more connected to the world we deserve.