Fight in DSA to Break with Dems

Dear comrades,

It is no secret that the DSA has grown by leaps and bounds thanks to Zohran’s victory or that it is by far the largest declared socialist organization in the country. Clearly, what happens inside the DSA will influence, either positively or negatively, the trajectory of the socialist movement here. That’s why we read with interest the recent Left Voice article, “It’s Time for a Decisive Step Toward a Socialist, Working-Class Party: DSA Must Break with the Democratic Party.” We in the DSA’s Just Break Already caucus say: Hallelujah to that! We especially appreciated the observation:

The JBA has spent two years fighting for an immediate clean break. Left groups routinely condemn the Dems and say that workers need their own party. But to make a real difference requires engaging in actual struggle to bring about such a break. We propose that members of Left Voice, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Socialist Alternative and everybody else who wants to build an independent socialist movement join together with us to form a united front of clean break forces in the DSA.

As we are all aware, groups on the left have differences on a wide range of issues. But these differences should not stand in the way of joint pursuit of this crucial task. There is much to be gained by those who are serious about a clean break working together. Doing so would give a huge boost to the small and scattered voices for a clean break, greatly amplifying our potential impact. In particular, we would have greater weight to counter the “vote blue no matter who” Right and move the dirty break Left in our direction.

This will not be easy. Earlier this year, we worked with others to put up a clean break resolution for the DSA National Convention. It didn’t even get enough signatures for consideration. Most of the dirty break Left stopped talking about a break altogether—making clear that when they argue to use the Dems for socialist purposes until the time is right to split and found a workers party, that time is never. The “clean break” advocates all but disappeared. Zohran has been the inescapable magnetic force pulling the DSA Left toward the Democrats.

How then to advance the fight for a clean break? By fighting to expose, not fawning over, Zohran. Mamdani is the poster child for the grand dirty break experiment. He is viewed as a socialist fighter who has successfully harnessed the Democratic Party electoral machinery to get into office, where he is supposedly positioned to build socialism. The illusions in him among the DSA Left cannot be overstated.

To get anywhere, clean breakers will have to find concrete ways to puncture these illusions. We need to demonstrate that his betrayals are not the result of simple miscalculations, but flow from his role as a representative of the capitalist Democratic Party. To remain useful to this mainstay of U.S. imperialism and move up its ranks, Mamdani must sacrifice what made him popular in the first place. The examples of AOC and Rashida Tlaib are instructive—AOC went from calling to abolish ICE to helping spike a rail strike and giving a primetime endorsement of Kamala Harris at the DNC. Tlaib helped funnel the pro-Palestine movement into the “uncommitted” campaign, and through it, to Harris.

Currently, the JBA in NYC-DSA is advocating motions to demand that Zohran fire Tisch and appoint a police commissioner who will open all the police archives to expose their crimes, jail the killer cops and refuse to enforce the Taylor Law. Tisch has been a hard pill for the Left to swallow. Most Left caucuses signed Within Our Lifetime’s petition protesting Zohran’s decision on Tisch, but they are dragging their feet on waging a real struggle in the DSA. Our purpose is to force the issue and chip away at the notion that Zohran can be held accountable to socialist principle while in the Democratic Party. It is also a means of putting the fight against black oppression front and center, beginning with the struggle against racist cop terror. This is necessary to show how Zohran’s economism is incapable of overcoming the racial and other divisions that hold back the working class. The JBA motion is part of the struggle to prepare a clean break in the DSA right now.

We all want to build a workers party. But to do that, we need the workers, and there is a huge gulf between the working class and socialists. Association with the Dems has discredited the left. To the extent workers know about socialism, it’s the DSA they know—and they see the DSA as little better than the hated liberals. Unless we actively fight to sever the link between the DSA and the Dems, we won’t win the workers. When the Marxist left portrays the Democrat Mamdani’s victory as a leap in mass socialist consciousness, they are not only totally misreading where workers are at, but also undermining their own arguments that the Democratic Party is the graveyard of all social movements.

The time for a clean break has never been more urgent or necessary as Trump puts the screws to workers and the oppressed. Let’s put our money where our mouth is. Join us in a united front of clean breakers in the DSA!