Appendix A: Problems National and International
The dysfunctions endemic to the U.S. Left have made an impact on NYC-DSA. Part 3 of a 4-part series.
In view of the last two years, we may be forced to accept the idea that the entire socialist movement in the United States, inside DSA or outside, has its fortunes tied to those of the Democratic Party. Of the millions irritated into action by the Republican shift towards open fascism, a substantial minority will always recognize that the Democrats are bad too. However, when the Republicans lose power, even this more politically aware fraction ends up feeling safer and drifting into complacency. It would certainly help to have a way to separate DSA from the political establishment, and a proper platform with concrete demands would contribute to that, but it will not motivate the masses the way Trump did. Most people only fight back when they feel threatened.
Unfortunately, we aren’t likely to have this problem for very much longer. The overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court warns us that a reactionary tidal wave is on its way. Emboldened right-wing state legislatures and federal judges already leave us facing an unprecedented national onslaught targeting civil liberties and democracy even before Trump’s third run for President provokes otherwise docile liberals into furious mobilization. Essentially, we are facing a re-do of 2015, without Bernie, but with the advantage of an infrastructure we built in his wake.
It will be imperative to integrate NYC-DSA into the new waves of enthusiasm for abortion rights, voting rights, and LGBTQ rights. We should discuss radical courses of action that people in blue states like New York can take, and how to direct newly politicized activists towards these efforts rather than fundraising for large NGOs enmeshed with the national Democratic Party. Perhaps, if we develop peer-to-peer communications with chapters in red states, the national DSA organization can even become useful for the first time. We certainly cannot rely on them to create these connections themselves, however. National has only ever succeeded in humiliating its constituent chapters, and 2022 has seen the first incident so profoundly embarrassing that it may prove fatal.
These are the facts: DSA-endorsed Congressman Jamaal Bowman has repeatedly violated what many in the organization believe to be core principles of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He has voted to fund the Israeli military and went on a lobbyist-funded diplomatic junket to meet with then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. A dispute emerged between DSA’s central leadership, known as the National Political Committee (NPC) and the BDS Working Group (BDS WG), the latter of which was chartered by a resolution of the 2017 DSA National Convention, BDS WG repeatedly took to social media to demand Bowman’s expulsion from the organization. After several warnings to the BDS WG not to usurp the NPC’s authority, the NPC usurped the authority of the Convention and declared the BDS WG disbanded and its Organizing Committee barred from other leadership roles. This triggered a massive outcry, and the decision, which had no constitutional legitimacy to begin with, was quickly reversed. But the damage had already been done.
That infantile temper tantrum by the NPC has drawn the negative attention of every pro-Palestine activist to the left of liberal Zionism, and DSA is now considered to be a tool of Democratic Party imperialists even by those not previously inclined to believe so. Reversing the harm to our repuation and reaffirming our support for Palestinian freedom will be a slow and time-consuming process. It will likely involve embedding with Arab-American organizations and starting “boycott Israel” campaigns with local retailers. We must recognize the harm that was done by the NPC and make amends one person at a time through community organizing methods DSA members are dismissive of or unfamiliar with.
A key aspect of acknowledging that harm is rejecting the pro-Bowman arguments that remain extant in certain circles of the organization. A pre-emptive petition was circulated by these groups in the immediate aftermath of the NPC’s irrational decision, chastising the BDS WG and its sympathizers for their impudence and arguing that it would be more beneficial for the organization to meet Bowman where he was. This is a fantasy. NYC-DSA does not yet have a functional model of organizing with elected officials at the local level, and certainly not in the North Bronx, where membership is sparse. Those who expressed concern that we would miss out on opportunities to do so with Bowman, or who argued that the hypothetical charge of anti-Black racism for rejecting him took precendence over the very real and present charge of betraying the Palestinian cause, should not be taken seriously.
The whole situation was utterly pointless. Bowman is a good man who is sometimes too cowardly to buck the Israel lobby, which is a moot point because his promotion of the idea that Palestinians are human beings is sufficient to make him AIPAC’s target regardless. Due to this over-caution, he was already unlikely to receive DSA re-endorsement. With members vocally resigning left and right, and angry discussions in every branch, even the petition signers probably understand by now that the NPC decision was a mistake. Long before the disbanding of BDS WG, the controversy surrounding Bowman reflected a profound failure of democracy, as no one in the NPC was willing to let the membership formally decide one way or the other.
Other DSA national organs are far less democratic still. The self-selected International Committee (IC), an officially-endorsed body that we are perennially called to make excuses for, seemingly functions only to issue tendentious and specious declarations that do not reflect the beliefs of the average DSA member. Their statements blaming NATO for the Ukraine war, like most everything else they publish about the Eastern Hemisphere, are cases in point. When did we decide as an organization that it could ever be justified for a country with nuclear weapons to be scared enough of other countries with nuclear weapons to invade a country without nuclear weapons? The IC would respond that only an imperialist dupe could ask such a question.
Some people, upon realizing that the news media is lying to them and that the U.S. is actually the deadliest and most despotic actor on the world stage, desperately seek out a narrative that allows for other nations to be the good guys. Once you believe it is possible for twenty-first century capitalist countries to wage just regime change war, you’re back to square one.
Beyond proving the ad-hoc dysfunction of the national organization, the continued existence of the IC has demonstrated DSA members’ lack of curiosity in foreign affairs. It is true that the broader international Left have also found themselves stymied by this situation. No one is able to thread the needle between the commonsense principles that NATO should not exist, and that Russia is chiefly responsible for its own military attacking towns and cities previously untouched by war for nearly eighty years. Both Russian aggression and NATO expansion are being justified by the premises of geopolitical realism, and each is arguably valid from a realist standpoint, which is why socialists would do well to avoid realpolitik altogether. Contrary to what some believe, DSA has no more control over the American Empire than it does Russia, and neither nation’s decisions should be judged as even theoretically legitimate. No party is going to back down because we ask them to. If they did, the Iraq War simply would not have happened.
An alternative to the IC, or at least a different path for it, would involve forging links with social movements rather than governments, a relationship of relative equals. This does not foreclose visits to other countries or communications with their states - so long as we understand that high diplomacy is always suspect. The real purpose of a DSA IC is not to wave flags, but to acquaint our members and supporters with popular struggles everywhere else. As it stands, though, our IC basically acts as a counter-hegemonic cheer squad for whoever the State Department doesn’t like. False internationalism of this kind represents a failure of imagination and a rejection of our goal to unite the working people of all nations.
This is Part 3 of a 4-part series. Part 1 can be found here.