On Marxist Work in the DSA

8 February 2025
To the editor:

Just Break Already, the only true clean-break-now caucus in the Democratic Socialists of America, characterizes the DSA as “part of the Democratic Party.” This isn’t a matter of stray loose language: The caucus reaffirmed that view in response to pushback.

An individual opponent persists in hammering this point online. He insists it’s a smoking gun proving that JBA, with the Spartacist League’s support, is operating within the bourgeois Democratic Party.

The objection looks formalistic. And it points toward cutting Marxists off from the compelling opportunity to fight from inside the largest U.S. socialist organization by far to win over substantial numbers of subjective revolutionaries. (At the same time, it seems more than odd that left organizations which regularly seize chances to find fault with the SL—notably those that spun out of it, plus WSWS/SEP—wouldn’t make much more hay of this argument.)

Still, the stubborn criticism involves a matter of principle, and I’m not clear that it has been addressed directly, let alone effectively. I’d greatly appreciate your taking it up in some detail.

Some educated discussion on Facebook centered on the idea that Communist entry into the Chinese Kuomintang in the 1920s was not unprincipled, after all. That concept and its relevance definitely seems worthy of elaboration. Comparison and contrast with critical support by your South African affiliate for electoral candidates of the Economic Freedom Fighters could also illuminate matters in a bit broader context.

Last, I’d note my nagging concern that the characterization of the DSA as part of the Democratic Party represents an unforced error. It isn’t true in a formal organizational sense; and in my view, it inaccurately and unnecessarily paints a social-democratic organization—not different in kind politically from the Communist Party or Socialist Party in times that they had policies supporting the Democrats—as simply bourgeois.

L.

WV replies:

Thank you for your email, and many apologies for our very late response. Your question about why it is principled for the Just Break Already (JBA) caucus to intervene in the DSA comes up a lot. The question is: Does a fight within the DSA for a clean break from the Democratic Party have the potential to advance the cause of class independence or not? The obvious answer is “yes.” The DSA is easily, by orders of magnitude, the largest socialist organization in the U.S. But it suffers from a massive contradiction: It is attached to a major imperialist party. A successful fight to break this link—convincing revolutionary-minded DSAers to stand up for class independence and those more comfortable among the Democrats to fully reveal themselves—would be a real step forward for the American socialist movement.

All of the JBA’s activity is geared toward waging this very fight (see its recent statements “Dirty Break Serves Only the Dems—DSA: For a Clean Break Now!” and “How to Avoid Another AOC Situationship”). To renounce all work inside the DSA, as propounded by some sectarian critics of the JBA like the Internationalist Group, is counterproductive. Doing so confines revolutionaries to yelling sterile denunciations from the sidelines, while giving reformist elements the run of the field in the DSA’s internal debate over the best strategy for cohering an independent workers party. The charade of the dirty break—the notion that socialist forces can be brought forth within the bosom of the Democratic Party—would continue indefinitely because any consistent clean-breaker would be on the outside looking in.

Although you correctly want to defend the JBA’s work, your argumentation is confused. You say that our “characterization of the DSA as part of the Democratic Party represents an unforced error.” But the DSA is part of the Dems. Everyone inside the DSA recognizes as much. The organization was founded to realign the Democratic Party and measures its success by the size of its stable of Democratic electeds. The sectarians, of course, are quick to point out this connection. But you do not have to deny reality to defend doing work inside the DSA.

What matters is not whether the DSA’s organizational relationship to the Democrats is similar to the Communist Party’s. Rather, what matters is one’s purpose on the inside. If the purpose is to build or even tolerate support for “progressive” Democrats like AOC and Zohran Mamdani, then one’s work is unprincipled. That is what the DSA leadership as well as DSA Left caucuses like Reform and Revolution do. But if one fights to split the DSA from the Democratic Party, as the JBA does, that is principled. The JBA’s purpose is to break the “big tent” politics that chain the subjective socialists in the DSA to those who want a realigned Democratic Party. Most recently, JBA caucus members fought to get a clean break resolution onto the floor of last weekend’s DSA National Convention; while failing at that, they attended the convention in order to expose Zohran’s attempt to breathe fresh life into the Democratic Party as damaging to the socialist movement.

You referenced the entry of the Communist Party of China (CPC) into the bourgeois nationalist Guomindang in the early 1920s. It is indeed useful to look at how Trotsky viewed this question. In a letter to one of his U.S. supporters, he wrote:

In 1925, a revolutionary wave surged over China. Fearing that their rule was threatened, the Guomindang leaders unleashed a wave of persecutions directed against the workers and peasants, and the CPC itself. In this situation, it was necessary for the CPC to split with the Guomindang and openly step to the fore as the leadership of the mass struggles in China. This the CPC, taking the advice of the Stalin-Bukharin leadership of the Comintern, refused to do. Instead, it capitulated down the line to the Guomindang, leading to a horrific defeat.

The betrayal was not setting foot inside the Guomindang. The betrayal was the CPC’s abandonment of an independent proletarian perspective and its political subordination to the national bourgeoisie.

JBA should be judged according to the same criteria. Notably, while sectarian leftists condemn JBA as opportunist for simply having set foot inside the DSA, opportunists in that organization denounce JBA as sectarian for drawing a hard line against subordination to the Democrats. These responses, together with a review of JBA’s track record, confirm that the caucus is doing what it should be doing where it might actually have a positive impact.