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The papers are full of opinion pieces by liberals and conservatives warning us of the dangers of socialism. We are told that socialists want the government to run everything, take away your freedom and stifle individual initiative. Yet, there is a strange disconnect between these descriptions and the views of self-described Democratic Socialists in current and past U.S. history like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Dr. Martin Luther King, Helen Keller and others.

Actual Democratic Socialists support policies like Medicare for all, tuition-free college, an increased minimum wage, strong unions, an end to big money controlling our political system, protecting voting rights for all, ending continuous wars to protect corporate profits abroad, etc. These have no relationship with the caricature presented in many mainstream media depictions.

Democratic Socialists believe in democracy. An unfettered capitalist economic system undermines democracy because it creates massive inequality. The wealthy then buy their preferred political outcomes; inevitably they have way more influence than ordinary working people.

But what does socialism mean? In simplest terms, it means reversing our unbalanced power relations in both our economy and our political system: political and economic power would be transferred from the few (the 1 percent) to the many (the working class). Both our economy and our politics would be brought under democratic control.

We can measure how socialist a society is by the degree to which it has transferred political and economic power from a small group of capitalists (the 1 percent and its surrounding highly paid functionaries) to the working class, a large majority of the population. The more a society has achieved that transfer, the more socialist it is.

A modern conception of Democratic Socialism must transcend the old view of socialism as strictly government ownership and a 100 percent planned economy. Modern socialism will have a use for markets as well as planning but those markets must be shaped and controlled democratically and not rigged for the benefit of the capitalists and their henchmen. By democratizing the economy, modern socialism will do a better job of rewarding people who do useful, beneficial work rather than those who take advantage of the system.

Democratic Socialists strongly combat all forms of discrimination against any segment of the working class. We oppose racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, religious bigotry, xenophobic nationalism and the like. All these discriminatory prejudices undermine democracy.

Modern countries closest to Democratic Socialism are the Scandinavian social democracies. Of course, they are not entirely socialist but they have come closer than any other countries in the world. They consistently rank among the worlds most democratic, most egalitarian, healthiest, most prosperous, most environmentally responsible, most highly educated, most crime-free countries in the world.

Are they unsurpassable utopias? No. But they are more socialist than other countries, and various metrics prove that their socialist policies deliver a better life than is available under a strictly capitalist society.

It is time Democratic Socialism was depicted accurately. What we have written here is what we Democratic Socialists actually believe.

Bruce Nissen, Carol McNamee and Sean Armil are members of the Pinellas County chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

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We are actual Democratic Socialists, and here is what we believe | Column - Tampa Bay Times

Three years after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs shock victory over Joe Crowley, a year after gaining seats and influence in Congress and in the New York State Legislature, the Democratic Socialists of America are now aiming to gain a foothold in the New York City Council. In that effort, Brooklyn is their home base.

In 2020, every candidate for State Legislature representing districts across NYC who received a DSA endorsement won their race, including now-Senator Jabari Brisport and now-Assemblymembers Phara Souffrant Forrest and Marcela Mitaynes, all representing Brooklyn. Brisport won an open seat, while Souffrant Forrest and Mitaynes ousted long-time incumbents. Additionally, DSA member Emily Gallagher defeated incumbent Assemblymember Joe Lentol, in office since 1973, in north Brooklyn, though she had not been formally endorsed by the organization.

They joined State Senator Julia Salazar, who was elected in 2018 after defeating incumbent Martin Dilan, forming DSAs delegation to Albany from Brooklyn. Of the seven current state legislators who are DSA members, five represent districts in Brooklyn.

DSA, founded in 1982 with the merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement, isnt a political party, but also isnt exactly an advocacy organization either, falling somewhere in the middle. The group organizes protests, rallies, and the like, and runs issue-based pressure campaigns, but it also fields and runs candidates for office from its own membership roster. Candidate endorsements are voted on democratically by members of the branch covering the area the candidate runs in.

The groups ultimate goal, as the name suggests, is to overthrow capitalism, but DSA works within the system to the extent that they run candidates for office. Short of toppling the world economic regime, the group sees toppling systems of concentrated power and distributing both resources and power to working-class people as a goal of both electoral and street-level organizing. That includes decommodifying housing, ending private control of utilities, and democratizing land-use policy.

My work in DSA is a framing around what I think needs to be done, which is an alternative to capitalism and systems that bring power to working-class people, said Brandon West, who is running for City Council in District 39 with DSAs support.

The group has grown in size considerably since Bernie Sanders first presidential run in 2016, a galvanizing event for many young leftists, enabling the group to scale up its organizing activity and increase its political influence. DSA now counts dozens of federal, state, and local elected officials across the country as members. In addition to its presence in Albany, there are also two members representing the city in Congress: Ocasio-Cortez, representing Queens and the Bronx, and Jamaal Bowman, representing the Bronx and Westchester.

To receive an endorsement, candidates must be members of DSA and must be approved through a majority vote by committees and branch member constituencies. Once a candidate is endorsed, however, the organization mobilizes its forces to get that candidate elected.

NYC DSA co-chair Sumathy Kumar explained that the group chooses to devote its resources to a sort of scorched earth ground game approach for its chosen candidates, rather than spreading its resources more thinly in an effort to win more seats.

When we endorse someone, it means were going all-in on their race. We dont do paper endorsements, Kumar told Bklyner, referring to endorsements that only appear in campaign literature and dont reflect actual work being done to get the candidate elected. We work really, really hard to get our candidates elected. Each endorsement is hours and hours of work, hundreds, thousands of volunteers who go out to canvas, phonebank, get petition signatures.

NYC DSA now boasts about 7,000 members, an increase from 5,800 members in August of last year, just after the organization swept its state legislative races. That includes 4,300 members in Brooklyn. Nationwide, DSA has about 85,000 members, up from just 6,000 in 2015.

DSA has chosen to support candidates in three races in Brooklyn this election cycle Michael Hollingsworth, running to replace Laurie Cumbo in Council District 35; Alexa Avils, running to replace Carlos Menchaca in CD38; and Brandon West, running to replace Brad Lander in CD39. The small slate, said DSA electoral organizer Grace Mausser, allows the organization to maintain close ties with member elected officials once they are in office.

Brooklyn candidates represent half of the DSA citywide slate, which also includes Tiffany Cabn in western Queens District 22, Jaslin Kaur in eastern Queens District 23, and Adolfo Abreu in the 14th District in the western Bronx.

The organization consults with its electeds in Albany on a weekly basis to discuss priorities and strategy, and would do the same with its members in City Hall, Mausser said. To that end, member elected officials are representing DSA and its priorities as well as themselves and their constituents, but the group views itself as operating in a partnership with its members, rather than controlling them like corporations or unions are often seen as doing.

Our electeds are part of the org, and thats something we look for, a candidate who will become an elected official who likes DSA, who wants to be part of DSA, who likes our priorities, and who will work with us once were in office, Mausser said. We want to collaborate with electeds to push our policy agenda, thats how we ultimately think well create a better state and city for working-class New Yorkers.

The candidates are running in the Democratic primary, which in most Brooklyn districts is tantamount to winning the seat; like their state and federal counterparts, DSA members on the Council would still be part of the Democratic caucus. Nonetheless, they are closely aligned with the larger organization, and because the group doesnt work only in electoral politics, the candidates are to an extent avatars of the larger political movement.

The candidates agree that they, to some degree, are representing DSA and democratic socialism as a concept in their roles as candidates and potentially as elected officials, and they plan on forming a socialist caucus on the council similar to the partnership between socialist electeds in Albany. They also plan on remaining involved in DSAs other organizing venues, like movement politics, with several of those who spoke to Bklyner highlighting the Invest in Our New York campaign, where DSA is a coalition member; that campaign is calling on Albany to increase taxes on the rich.

Being in DSA and being a socialist, everywhere I go I bring that identity with me, along with being a Latina and being a mom, said Avils, who is one of the six candidates DSA is running citywide for Council this year. We are all on this slate because we share values, we share a vision of a socialist future. We all bring different strengths and different backgrounds, but I think theres a lot of shared values and beliefs, a lot of collaboration with each other.

In Brooklyn, the DSA candidates are running to represent Council District 35 [Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights], District 38 [Sunset Park, Red Hook, Windsor Terrace] and District 39 [Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Windsor Terrace, Kensington].

Hollingsworth (CD35) and Avils (CD38) districts, centered in Brownstone Brooklyn and Sunset Park respectively, are somewhat coterminous with those of Souffrant Forrest (AD57) and Mitaynes (AD51), respectively. Wests (CD39) district somewhat overlaps with Brisports (SD25), but the Park Slope section, where the district is centered, is largely new territory for the group.

Wide swaths of the borough have undergone gentrification over the past two decades, both from the force of the market and through neighborhood rezonings.

Average rents in Brooklyn have risen substantially over the last decade, from $2,322 in 2011 to a peak of $2,948 in March of 2020, at the dawn of the pandemic. While rents have gone since the pandemic, the economic uncertainty of the pandemic era keeps the cost of housing near the top of candidates and voters lists of concerns. Housing and land use are some of the areas where City Council members have the greatest amount of sway.

At the same time, many neighborhoods DSA has competed in and are competing in have seen an influx of young, white professionals of a left-wing persuasion, as many long-term residents are displaced by the high cost of living.

I think its kind of a combination of forces coming together, Mausser said. I think there are some, Id characterize, downwardly mobile millennials, who saw the success of their parents generation, or felt that what they expected from our economic system is not happening, and have become angry about it and politically active about it. And I think that pairs very well with working-class people of color who live in these areas who have long been left behind by our economic system, through racist and classist policies. I think those two forces coming together is really potent and visible, in Brooklyn and Queens and other parts of the city.

Hollingsworth, Avils, and West are all first-time candidates who joined DSA in recent years after working in organizing. All of them told Bklyner that they got more involved after seeing the apparatus of city government being used to keep people down.

Hollingsworth told Bklyner that he became involved in housing politics after his landlord began converting vacant units in his rent-stabilized building to condos.

I was just a regular person so I had no idea how to combat something like that, he said; this precipitated his joining DSA and other advocacy groups to work on the issue.

Hes been involved in legal and advocacy efforts to halt controversial developments like the Bedford Union Armory, 960 Franklin Avenue, and a city effort to rezone part of Franklin Avenue. He says that housing issues are his primary focus as a candidate, calling for a comprehensive citywide plan crafted by local communities, and for an end to neighborhood rezonings long thought to spur gentrification.

West arguably has the most political background of the Brooklyn slate: he served as president of New Kings Democrats, a reform-minded Democratic club, and has unsuccessfully run for county committee and for county party chair. He described his background as that of a voting rights organizer before working for the city, specifically for the Office of Management and Budget, and that seeing how the city budget gets made was a radicalizing moment for him.

Avils, a 20-year resident of Sunset Park, has worked in various roles in the nonprofit sphere. She currently heads the Scherman Foundation, which describes itself as a funder of organizations devoted to community building, environment, reproductive justice, human rights, the arts, and governmental accountability.

What were seeing now is people who actually have the lived experience, people who understand what that struggle is like, Avils said. What it is to be evicted from your home, what it is to be hungry.

The candidates have all qualified for public matching funds, and have each received about $160,000 in matching funds thus far, according to the NYC Campaign Finance Board. Hollingsworth has the most cash on hand in the District 35 race, with $183,000, but has raised fewer private funds than another top contender, Crystal Hudson, a former aide to incumbent Council Member Laurie Cumbo; Hudson has also outspent him. In District 38, Avils is also about even with the other top contender, Sunset Park activist Rodrigo Camarena; there, Avils has raised more than Camarena but has also outspent him.

The District 39 race is wide open: five candidates besides West have received matching funds, and West trails four of them in cash on hand. West has also outspent all other candidates in the race, including Shahana Hanif, a former aide to incumbent Council Member Brad Lander; Mamnum Haq, a cab driver and co-founder of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance; organizer and writer Justin Krebs; and civil rights attorney Doug Schneider. West has raised about $66,000, spent $86,000, and has about $140,000 cash on hand.

While Hollingsworth and Avils are running in neighborhoods where DSA won in 2020, most of Wests district is untested ground for the group, and it remains unclear whether Park Slope liberals will be as amenable to democratic socialism as the hybrid of gentrifiers and long-term residents of color where the group has seen success, and where Hollingsworth and Avils are hoping to be successful.

Despite running on the DSA slate, they say that they are faithful not to the organization necessarily, but to the ideas that power it.

What they arent realizing yet is its not about the name DSA, its about what we stand for, Hollingsworth said. People are out there articulating what we stand for, and thats resonating with people.

You can talk about big words you learned in college, but if you literally explain to people, should housing be available to people regardless [of affordability], yes or no. Should we be over-policing, West said. These really basic things and they resonate with people.

The groups number one policy priority at the city level is to defund the police by $3 billion, which they say would dovetail into increased funding for social services that have been on the chopping block throughout the pandemic. Other priorities include reforming the citys land-use process and desegregating the citys public schools.

Many of the groups policy priorities listed on its website are state-level policies, and the organization plans to release a more detailed city council platform before the election, Kumar said. Nonetheless, the group does have a large number of policy priorities that can be acted upon at the city level, on topics like housing, education, and criminal justice, and its candidates are expected to both embrace DSA positions and actively work to implement them.

Titled Housing is a Human Right, DSA housing platform opposes attempts to privatize NYCHA such as through the Rental Assistance Demonstration program or through infill development; supports seizing property from negligent landlords through existing city programs to develop affordable, resident-owned housing; supports taking immediate actions to house all homeless New Yorkers and ending the policy of neighborhood rezonings, which have often been criticized as bringing about gentrification.

Were in a situation where neighborhoods of color are always on the defensive, Hollingsworth said, noting he is in favor of a comprehensive citywide plan. With that in place, Hollingsworth says, Brooklyn communities, particularly communities of color, would be less likely to get sidestepped by developers in the land use process.

Asked for further detail on their land use platform, Bklyner was directed to DSA member Andrew Hiller, who helped draft the groups land use platform. Hiller said that comprehensive planning would not only limit the influence of developers, but also of community boards in predominantly white, upper-income areas which often stop affordable housing projects in their tracks.

In order to really address that, its crucial that we put a serious citywide equity framework in place that sets requirements for social housing at each community level, and secure the resources needed to implement it in a way thats just, Hiller said in an email.

On education, the group wants to kick police officers out of public schools, mostly end the use of out-of-school suspensions, guarantee access to counselors and nurses in schools, and establish a maximum class size of 20. At the state level, the group wants to see the end of mayoral control of schools and return decision-making power back to elected school boards.

And on criminal justice, the group advocates the decriminalization of drugs, sex work, and quality-of-life crimes like turnstile jumping, switching to an elected Civilian Complaint Review Board with prosecutorial power, and abolishing arrest quotas and qualified immunity.

The Democratic primary, which will occur on June 22, will be the citys first using its newly implemented ranked-choice voting system. Whether this will be good or bad for DSA remains to be seen, but the group does see a reason to suspect its performances in Brooklyn have not been flukes.

DSA is often portrayed as being made up of gentrifiers, and some of its top performances have been in gentrifying neighborhoods across the city.

Conversely, electoral maps for Ocasio-Cortez and Bowmans primary victories over long-established incumbents show strong support in their districts coming from non-white areas. Bowman, in particular, trounced his primary opponent, Eliot Engel, in the non-white areas of his district but lost in whiter Riverdale.

DSA group touts stemming gentrification as a policy goal. Still, at the same time, they see gentrifiers as victims of the same system pushing down low-income communities and communities of color.

I think we have stronger showings in certain neighborhoods because of the real estate and economic forces that have caused gentrification, Mausser said. People are angry about being displaced, and the gentrifiers are living in those areas because thats where they can afford the rent. Its not really a good or fair system for anyone.

Their political strategy, she said, points out the real villain. Its not your neighbor. The villain is the policy and the forces that are making it happen.

The candidates say they have every intention of keeping their word on what they campaign on. While that in itself might not sound remarkable, as no politician would say they dont intend to keep their promises, the DSA slate says that their affiliation with the organization helps keep them accountable to those who vote for them.

People are only going to vote for things that they support and want, West said. De Blasio ran his campaign, running after Bloomberg, picking up those talking points and doing nothing. Now we have a completely different infrastructure, were running a grassroots campaign and were only accountable to the people who put us in office.

This story was possible thanks to the funding by the Center for Community Medias 2021 City Elections Initiative.

Read the rest here:
Brooklyn's Democratic Socialists: Who Are They And What Do They Want? - BKLYNER

Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, has commented that he was enjoying the irony of [Sen. Bernie] Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of socialism and what it really means ... In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself.

The soul-sapping nature of socialism was my subject last week, so I wont go through the same stuff again, much though it bears repeating. Nevertheless, Kasparovs comment led to further discussion of socialism after I reposted it on social media, and one respondent, a highly civilized left-wing friend Ive known for about 20 years, said interestingly that without the socialist impulse, there would be no free education and healthcare and no pensions for the elderly.

I wont quibble over the word free, for my interlocutor didnt mean these benisons of modern society cost nothing but that the cost isnt borne by the user in the form of fees. He knows full well that we pay for them with taxes and borrowing. And it can be conceded that theyd provide strong if not necessarily compelling grounds to support socialism if it deserved credit for them.

But does it? Does our impulse to help others start with a socialist impulse or any ideology? Or is the truth entirely different? Is socialism, which I think of as a set of arrangements by which central government delivers goods and services (of varying quality) to the public, actually an outgrowth or distortion of the deeper instinct of compassion? I dont suggest that socialists are more compassionate than others, much though they often think of themselves that way. They obviously arent. But theres a link between the political ideology and the human instinct, no matter how misshapen the connection has become.

In 1985, singer Bob Geldof was interviewed backstage at Londons Wembley Stadium about the massive Live Aid rock concert hed organized with fellow musician Midge Ure both there and simultaneously at John. F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. They were raising money for famine relief in Ethiopia and did so on a stunningly huge scale. Copycat concerts took place all over the world, linked by satellite, and the combined events were watched in 150 countries by nearly 2 billion people.

At this moment, the greatest triumph in his already successful career, Geldof remarked with a note of bitter irony that Live Aid involved the privatization of compassion. He didnt mean it as a compliment. Privatization had become a dirty word in the left-wing lexicon, as industries previously taken over by socialist governments were released from central control and sold to the public as businesses quoted on stock exchanges.

Geldofs comment struck me forcefully at the time, for it was the precise opposite of what I took then and still take to be the gem-like truth stated by columnist T.E. Utley that one of the cruelest aspects of socialism is that it delegates compassion to the state. Socialism encourages individuals to think caring for their neighbor is not their responsibility but is, instead, a function of government.

Socialists often suggest that private provision of help for the needy is a failure of the state. Sanders has spoken disdainfully of charity, as have many unappealing politicians elsewhere. They regard the care of others through individual acts of kindness as demeaning the recipient because they believe or at least declare that goods and services received should be taken as a right rather than accepted as a gift. One also suspects that socialists dislike charity because it places a claim on them as individuals, which theyd rather shrug off.

It is here that Kasparov hits the bull's-eye. Socialism, the sloughing off of personal responsibility, corrodes our humanity. Churches and other charities provided education, health services, and care for the elderly, admittedly somewhat patchily, long before the socialist impulse became entrenched in government. It was motivated by the finest instincts the word charity is interchangeable with love in Christian social teaching but that instinct and the community effort it produces are now denigrated as an insult to its beneficiaries.

When helping others is distanced or detached from our finer impulses, it is ungoverned, untempered by humane reasoning. It becomes a limitless and constantly lengthening list of rights. Not rights such as the right to say what one thinks, or worship as one chooses, but the duty of others to supply us with free college, free child care, automatic pay raises, free abortions, free housing, and reparations for past wrongs paid by those who didnt inflict them to those who werent their victims.

Continued here:
The selfishness at the heart of socialism - Washington Examiner

Steve Ellner is a retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela and currently an associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives. He is the editor of Latin Americas Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings (2020) and Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspective (2021). He is a regular contributor to NACLA: Report on the Americas.

Victor Wallis, Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 252 pages, $59.99, paperback.

The left has long debated whether socialism will be achieved in advanced capitalist nations on one big day, la storming of the Winter Palace, or through a series of advances and small revolutionary breaks over time leading at some point to systemic change. Leftists differ along similar lines in their view of how socialism will come about at the global level. After the triumph of the Russian Revolution and in the wake of the disaster of the First World War, V. I. Lenin and the other Bolsheviks assumed that revolution would instantly spread throughout Europe, the result being world revolution. This fast-moving chain of events contrasted with Europes transformation from feudalism to capitalism over a period of centuries during which time the antifeudal cause faced numerous reverses and setbacks.

Similarly, in Socialist Practice, a collection of essays on leftist theory and experiences, Victor Wallis adheres to the view that the achievement of socialism is a drawn out, nonlinear process consisting of episodes that in many cases have a mixed impact on the revolutionary cause. Wallis analyzes several, ranging from the seven decades of Soviet rule to the New Left of the 1960s. His main thesis is that over the last century pure socialism has never existed and that on all fronts socialist movements and governments have contained elements of the oldnamely, capitalism. He notes that up until 1917, Karl Marx and his followers never contemplated this coexistence and interpenetration of capitalism and socialism on a world scale. The coexistence, according to Wallis, not only persists between nations but also within nations, consisting of different modes of thinking and variations in the relations of production. Given the complexity and extraordinary difficulty of any genuinely revolutionary transformation, one may assume that the achievement of socialism will resemble the protracted transition from feudalism to capitalism more than a war of maneuverAntonio Gramscis term to describe the Soviet revolution of 1917.1

The centerpiece of Walliss analysis of the transition from capitalism to socialism is the theory of dialectics according to Marx and Frederick Engels. Indeed, Marxist dialectics lends itself to a recognition of the richness and variety of human experience and contains elements that run counter to the linear view of history devoid of ambiguities and complexities.2 In the first place, in Marxs words, the new society will be stamped with the birth-marks of the old since the antithesis does not fall from the sky but rather emerges from the thesis. Referring to dialectics, Wallis writes: Individuals who comprise the new leadership [of the revolutionary movement] will inescapably embody, to varying degrees, perceived aspirations as well as ways of dealing with peoplethat reflect pre-revolutionary habit. Elsewhere, he states that material ambitions derived from the culture of capitalism pervades the entire society under socialism and not just the leadership. In the second place, the antithesis itself is subject to internal contradictions and is eventually transformed (the negation of the negation).3

In Walliss critique of market socialism, he points to the need to recognize that the socialist road is bumpy and that many of its features resemble the old system, which socialists are supposedly attempting to liquidate. Wallis agrees with Bertell Ollman in opposing market socialism while acknowledging that post-revolutionary society will contain de facto market elements. This view fits in with Walliss overall vision of the transition to socialism impregnated with contradictions and tensions. Wallis concludes that among Marxists who write on market socialism the real debate is over different ways of approaching and navigating a universally recognized conflict as opposed to what he considers to be the erroneous contention (the promarket socialism view) that the principles of market and socialism do not clash.4

Walliss interpretation of Marxist dialectics guides his analysis of Soviet rule. His objective is to demonstrate those ways in which the new society is both generated and conditioned by the old. Wallis points out that from the very outset, remnants of the old system were ever present, tolerated, and even promoted not only in the form of the New Economic Policy but also industry managers who Lenin insisted be allowed to run enterprises. As a result, draconian capitalist methods as well as aspects of Taylorism prevailed at the workplace. In the process, workers self-management a topic to which Wallis devotes a chapter in order to demonstrate the systems feasibility and viability throughout the twentieth century was sacrificed and even considered by Lenin as premature and counterproductive. In addition, technology in its capitalist guise created material expectations that induced Soviet leaders and those of other socialist countries to modify their priorities and increased their willingness to give private foreign capital a major role in their economies. As eco-Marxists would be the first to point out, the need to transcend the logic of infinite growth inherent in capitalism has been made urgent as a result of environmental imperatives. In the case of the USSR, according to Wallis, the contradictions continued until the last years of Soviet rule with the liberalization strategy referred to as glasnost.5

Wallis presents a mixed assessment of the Soviet experience. He rejects the notion that socialism would be better off now had 1917 never occurred. Wallis maintains that the USSR as a counterweight created the space necessary for healthier revolutionary processes in other parts of the world. Most important, he argues that the downsides of Soviet rule, including the atrocities committed during the Joseph Stalin period and the widespread institutionalized corruption after his death in 1953, were not defects of socialism but rather were attributable to capitalist beachheads and influences within the Soviet economy and society. This thesis is a far cry from that of some Maoist and Trotskyist parties, among others, that posit that the USSR at some point ceased to be socialist. Wallis concludes that the willingness to look at the negative aspects of the Soviet regime in the context of the larger process of transition at the world level and to attribute those defects to capitalism, not socialism, helps avoid the type of disillusionment brought on by the collapse of the USSR.6

Wallis applies his broad focus influenced by dialectics, with its emphasis on directionality and long-term impacts, to his chapter The US Left of the 1960s and its Legacy. In doing so, he sets out to refute the thesis that the radicalism of the 1960s had an impact which on balance constituted a setback for the Left and that it was a movement of the privileged. Wallis notes that the political environment of the previous decade marked by McCarthyism set the parameters for subsequent Left activity. In countering those who belittle the New Lefts accomplishments, Wallis argues that as a result of the chilling setting within which to contemplate any form of progressive activity, members of the new generation of activists were starting largely from scratch. Indeed, the Students for a Democratic Society must be given credit for breaking with the anticommunist fervor of the previous decade by flatly rejecting the insistence of its parent organization, the League for Industrial Democracy, to explicitly disassociate itself from the Communist Party.7

A look at the facts substantiates Walliss statement that although the New Left originated in elite universities, it grew far broader over time. In the first place, in the latter part of the decade, Students for a Democratic Society expanded to a large number of working-class colleges. Second, the debate within the antiwar movement pitted the old left, and specifically the Socialist Workers Party, which played a major role in organizing protests and which favored a single-issue approach, against the New Left, which generally defended a multi-issue approach including issues of gender and race. Finally, Wallis points to the impact of the New Left on social movements, such as the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which he calls an authentic outgrowth of the 1960s Left. Similarly, the New Left and the civil rights movement were intricately connected: It was precisely the experience of working closely with black civil rights activists that energized and inspired some of the most creative leaders of[the] white-led Left and antiwar movements.8

Wallis broaches, but fails to fully explore, the issue of agency with regard to peoples power and the achievement of authentic change. In arguing for the more radical, bottom-up policies that the left in power should have pursued in the Soviet Union of Lenin and Salvador Allendes Chile, Wallis acknowledges that it is unclear whether such a strategy was even feasible. Thus, in his discussion of Lenins capitulations to the logic of capitalism and other concessions (such as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), Wallis recognizes the Soviet leaders success in meeting the number one priority of defeating the counterrevolution, but adds that whether his approach was the only one possible is something that we may never know. He reaches a similar conclusion regarding the uncertainty of agency in his discussion of Allendes presidency. Wallis expresses sympathy for the workplace occupations and rank-and-file politicization within the Armed Forces promoted by the Movement of the Revolutionary Left and the left-wing of the Socialist Party, but adds that the available alternatives to the Allende governments more cautious approach will never be fully known. Elsewhere, Wallis states that not so much theory but practice will show revolutionary governments the way for developing a synthesis between plant takeovers based on rank-and-file resistance to the bourgeoisie and a political strategy exercised from above.9

Of course, the availability of realistic options for radicalization depends on circumstances. Elsewhere, I have pointed to missed opportunities in situations in which the left in power has had the upper hand (to deepen the process of change, promote bottom-up input in decision-making, wage an all-out war on corruption, deliver blows to an opposition engaged in illegal activity, and implement unpopular but necessary economic measures). Conversely, in moments when the left in power is on the defensive due, in the case of Venezuela, to U.S.-imposed sanctions and military threats options are limited.10 While it may be easy to determine those situations in which the left is on the defensive, identifying propitious situations conducive to a leftist offensive is more problematic. There is a second issue regarding how leftist governments act on the basis of their reading of favorable and unfavorable factors. At what point have contextual factors (such as military threats or economic warfare), which Wallis correctly places at the center of his analysis, served as justifications for excesses by leftists in power, errors they committed, or antidemocratic behavior?

Wallis is correct in pointing out that no scientific method can determine with precision when the moment is right to act decisively. In my opinion, Wallis is on the right track in pointing to factors that favor a bolder approach at the same time that he eschews sectarianism, not to say arrogance, by acknowledging that there are no definitive blueprints nor guarantees for success (some Bolshevik leaders in 1917 thought that Lenins plan to seize power was premature and irresponsible). The left needs to guard against utopianism in the form of a wish list of changes that the revolution will allegedly bring. Some suggest that dialectics in its idealistic form encourages this tendency when the focus is on extrapolating into the future rather than analyzing the present.11 Wallis avoids such wishful thinking in this fascinating study of leftist theory and practice from Marx to the present.

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Socialist Practice and Transition - Monthly Review

The remarkable growth of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) over the past four years, from agroup with afew thousand members to one with fifteen times that number, has made it the most significant U.S. socialist organization in nearly acentury. Successful campaigns to elect open democratic socialists to public office have given the DSA real, if still embryonic, political influence. Four membersJamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaibnow sit in the House of Representatives. Together with Bernie Sanders in the Senate, this is the largest number of self-avowed democratic socialists ever to hold Congressional office simultaneously, to say nothing of the scores of DSA members who have been elected to state legislatures, county boards and city councils in recentyears.

As DSA has grown in size and political influence, so too has the interest it has attracted from small political groups to its left. These sects, short for sectarian organizations, see opportunities for themselves in the large numbers of young people new to politics who have joined DSA, viewing them as potential recruits for their emaciatedranks.

The recent announcement of the Trotskyist organization Socialist Alternative (SAlt) that its members were coming aboard, followed by asimilar declaration from its leading member, Kshama Sawant, has simply made public aprocess that has been underway for some timethat various marginal Trotskyist organizations have infiltrated the DSA in apractice known as entryism.

What is entryism and what kind of impact could it have onDSA?

Lets start with this disingenuous passage in the SAltannouncement:

We realize that DSA has anational ban on members of democratic centralist organizations joining. However, many DSA members weve talked to oppose this Cold War holdover and are excited about Socialist Alternative members joining. While this rule was originally created to prevent Marxists from joining DSA, in recent years, anew generation of DSA activists have changed the organizations politics for the better, many of them identifying as Marxist. We think DSA should remove this exclusionary rule as another useful step towards transforming the socialist left into an important component for the emerging classstruggles.

We, the undersigned, were involved in the crafting and adoption of the DSA Constitution that the SAlt communiqu alluded to. We have been apart of DSAs first generation of national leadership, and we have served in its two predecessor organizations, the New American Movement and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. SAlts claim that Marxists have been banned from joining DSA is aself-serving fiction, and they knowit.

Many in the original leadership of DSA identified as Marxists. Michael Harrington, one of our two national co-chairs and our most prominent leader at the time of DSAs founding, wrote anumber of widely read books in which he made acase for Marxs vision of socialism as democratic. Others of us who did not call ourselves Marxists never considered that they should be excluded fromDSA.

Even if DSAs founders had not included many self-avowed Marxists, simple logic dictates that if we did not want them in our ranks, our Constitution would have explicitly prohibited them from joining. It did not. Contrary to the fables of SAlt, there are no political or ideological tests for joining DSA, no bans on who can join, and no approval process for new members. Dont take our word for it: Read the document as its written. Ask yourself how any member of SAlt, past and present, could have joinedDSA.

DSAs founders believed that we should assume the good faith of those who wanted to join our ranks, but we were not nave. We were experienced and battle-hardened democratic socialists who had come from every part of the U.S. Left: women and men who had been leaders of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and various Trotskyist organizations, who were part of the Old Left of the 1930s and the New Left of the 1960s, and who came out of trade unions and civil rights, feminist and LGBTQgroups.

Assumptions notwithstanding, our rich collective memory told us that there would be small numbers of people who joined DSA in bad faith, that these people would behave in ways that were injurious to the mission and work of DSA, and that this behavior would need to be addressed. We knew from our history that the more successful DSA became, the more people would enter it for reasons other than advancing its mission. In the most extreme of these cases, DSA could well find that it needed to use the most serious penalty ademocratic organization can levy against amemberexpulsion. And given the gravity of such astep, we wanted to make sure that the Constitution specified its conditions so it would not be employed capriciously. Moreover, we wanted to ensure that there was due process for the member beingexpelled.

With this in mind, we wrote thefollowing:

Members can be expelled if they are found to be in substantial disagreement with the principles or policies of the organization or if they consistently engage in undemocratic, disruptive behavior or if they are under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization. Members facing expulsion must receive written notice of charges against them and must be given the opportunity to be heard before the NPC or asubcommittee thereof, appointed for the purpose of consideringexpulsion.

The first two grounds for expulsion are self-explanatory. The last groundthat aperson was under the discipline of any self-defined democratic centralist organizationrequires some historicalbackground.

Entryism in the1930s

In 1928, the U.S. Communist Party banished asmall group of individuals from its ranks on the grounds that they were associates of Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik leader who had been purged from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during afactional struggle that had broken out after Lenins death. For years, these renegades were spurned by the rest of the U.S. Left while they sought readmission to the CP in vain. By the mid-1930s and the start of the Moscow Trials in the Soviet Union, it was clear that their expulsion would not be reversed, and the Trotskyists began to look for ways out of the political wilderness in which they foundthemselves.

In the American Workers Party (AWP), organized by labor educator A. J. Muste, they saw apath back to relevance. The AWP was an attempt to form auniquely American revolutionary Marxist party that broke with aU.S. Left whose politics were beholden to different strains of European socialism and communism. In its very brief existence, the AWP had done impressive labor organizing, highlighted by its leadership of the Toledo Auto-Lite strikeone of the epic work stoppages of the1930s.

Muste was initially skeptical of Trotskyist appeals to combine forces. The AWP was amore substantial organization with deeper roots in the labor movement, and he found the Trotskyist leaders to be dogmatic and uncreative in their politics. Nonetheless, New York intellectuals Sidney Hook and James Burnham convinced him that amerger was agood idea. But Muste did place one condition on agreeing to the merger: that the Workers Party (WP) would not enter the SocialistParty.

This was akey point for Muste because the French Trotskyists, acting under the direction of Trotsky himself, had just allied with the French Socialists in amaneuver that came to be known as the French turn. After ashort stay in the French Socialists, during which they garnered recruits and promoted their politics, the Trotskyists split its ranks, denounced the Socialists, and reorganized as apurely Trotskyist party. Muste was promised that this would not happen in the UnitedStates.

Almost immediately, the Trotskyists went back on their word, forcing the question of entry into the U.S. Socialist Party. Weakened by the loss of long-term political associates who were unwilling to join forces with the Trotskyists, Muste lost the vote and the Workers Party, now firmly under Trotskyist control, entered the SocialistParty.

Once inside, the Trotskyists acted as a party within aparty, maintaining their own leadership structure (which regularly plotted factional moves within the Socialists) and publishing their own newspaper (which criticized the policies of the Socialist Party and promoted such Trotskyist projects as the founding of aFourth International). Most important, all of the Trotskyists in the Socialist Party acted as one, under asingle organizational discipline: they followed apre-established political line Trotskyist leadership had laid down in all debates and votes inside the SocialistParty.

In short order, the Trotskyists forced asplit in the Socialists and left with athousand new members for their Socialist Workers Party (SWP), including much of the Socialists youth section. After this stratagem was complete, Trotskyist leader James Patrick Cannon boasted not only of the Trotskyists success in growing their numbers, but also of the fact that they had left the Socialist Party inshambles.

Cannon took pride in having engineered amajor setback for the U.S. Left: By the 1930s, the ranks of the Socialist Party had grown dramatically, making it into apotentially significant force in U.S. politics. But after aseries of misjudgments and internal crises, cresting with its disastrous co-habitation with the Trotskyists, the Socialist Party ended the decade as ashadow of its former self. For U.S. socialists of the 1930s, anumber of whom would co-found the DSA decades later, this was asearing political ordeal they would not forget. Muste himself was deeply shaken by these events, which he would describe as aviolation of working class ethics, and he left theTrotskyists.

The Trotskyists entry into the Socialist Party, organized as adisciplined party within aparty to garner recruits and split its ranks, established the template for what we now call entryism on the U.S.Left.

Entryism in the1960s

Entryism is not apractice limited to Trotskyist sects, as the experience of Students for aDemocratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s shows. The 1960s were aperiod of mass upsurge, much like the 1930s and our current time. The civil rights movement and the opposition to the war in Vietnam generated unprecedented levels of political activism among young people, and SDS grew mightily among white students, approaching an estimated 100,000 members at its peak. Much like DSA and the earlier Socialist Party youth section, the vast bulk of the SDS recruits were new to politics, making it arich hunting grounds for small, disciplined ultra-leftgroups.

One of these was the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Founded in 1962 after splitting from the Communist Party, PLP was initially supportive of Maoist China but would soon decide that even Mao was insufficiently communist for their tastes. It would then position itself as the most dogmatically Stalinist sect on the U.S.Left.

By 1966, PLP was recruiting inside the SDS, where it urged members to adopt its ultra-Stalinist politics and seize control of the SDS organizational infrastructure. PLPs efforts at taking over SDS set off adestructive cycle, producing counter-factions that included agroup that later became the Weathermen. Within adecade, the SDS would bedestroyed.

Herein lie the dual dangers of entryism. On the one hand, it poses athreat to the organizational integrity of an open and democratic organization. Entryism is the sectarian equivalent to ahostile corporate takeover designed to split or seize control of its target organization. At aminimum, it seeks to poach members new to politics who may not be aware of the stratagem being employed. On the other hand, it disrupts the internal democratic processes of that organization, which depend on members engaging in honest debate and deliberation over policies and politicalstrategies.

Entryists enter all debates and votes not with an open mind and awillingness to be persuaded, but with the express intent of advancing apolitical line that has already been decided in advance. Such tactics can quickly poison democratic political cultures, especially when opponents resort to the kinds of tactics they did inSDS.

To be politically effective, democratic socialist organizations need to develop methods of unity in action. These include open and full discussions of issues, democratic decision-making processes, and acommitment by all not to impede or undercut decisions once they have been democratically made. When entryist sects function as adisciplined party within aparty, they undermine that unity inaction.

Just as DSAs founders remembered what the Trotskyists did to the Socialist Party in the 1930s, its first generation of members saw what Progressive Labor did to SDS in the 1960s. Two organizations that gave the Left its best chance to exercise real political power in the U.S. had ended disastrously, in large measure because of sectarian entryism. (These techniques similarly sabotaged apromising national movement of socialist-feminists in the1970s.)

DSAs Constitution singles out members under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organizations for possible expulsion to prevent these very outcomes. The drafters chose their words carefully: they do not specify apolitical belief or even membership in an organization, instead targeting those who aim to form a party within aparty like the Trotskyists and the Stalinist PLP before them. This language has everything to do with ensuring the survival of an open, democratic institutions and absolutely nothing to do with Cold Warpolitics.

The Socialist Alternative understands this, despite its claims to the contrary. After all, SAlt is the progeny of one of the best-known entryist projects in international socialist history, the Militant Tendency of the British Labour Party. From their founding in 1964 to their expulsion in the 1980s, these Trotskyists operated as adisciplined party within aparty inside of Labour, using the entryist tactics describedabove.

SAlt was founded as Labor Militant in 1986 by members of the British Militant Tendency who had moved to the United States as part of an organized effort to create aTrotskyist international. (It adopted its current name in the late 1990s.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, the organization has splintered into several smaller factions since its founding amid personality conflicts, and there now exist competing internationals, although SAlt remains the largest group in the UnitedStates.

Why, then, is it trying to join DSA? SAlts own statement indicates that it opposes the very strategy that has allowed DSA to grow over the last four yearscampaigns to elect democratic socialists to office, using the Democratic Party ballot lineso it would be hard to make acase for apolitical convergence. In this light, SAlts call to eliminate any barriers to entryism in DSA constitution istelling.

Openings for socialists dont come along often in United States: only three times in the last 100years has the Left had achange to make amajor political breakthrough. DSA, with its rapid growth and electoral victories, could be central to such abreakthrough. Which is why we must acknowledge the deleterious role entryism played in the radical movements of the 1930s and 1960s. If we are to succeed where past generations have failed, it is vital that we not repeat theirmistakes.

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The Dangers of Factionalism in DSA - In These Times