First Published: Frontline, Vol. 3, No. 11, November 25, 1985.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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DSA is stuck.
Assembled at the University of California at Berkeley November 9-11, the 250 delegates to the second national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America did all the things convention delegates should do. They held plenaries, passed resolutions, caucused in the halls and called each other “comrade.” But one thing the convention did not do was resolve the political and organizational problems which have blunted the momentum initially enjoyed by the major organized expression of social democratic politics in the U.S.
Since the heady days just following the merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement into DSA three years ago, the organization has suffered a measurable decline in membership (down from 7,000 to 6,000), active chapters, frequency of its publications and the recruitment and participation of minority and women members. This erosion of muscle and influence has come, significantly enough, at a time of renewed stirrings in the mass movements, energy DSA has largely failed to capture. As a broad ideological stance, “democratic socialism” retains wide appeal on the U.S. left, but DSA seems stalled in translating that appeal into an organization with vitality and clout.
DSA’s current organizational stagnation is intertwined with an underlying political dilemma built into it from its inception. At the heart of DSA’s outlook is an attempt to straddle two often divergent agendas: that of the people’s movements – the source of progressive sentiment and new recruits – and that of the Democratic Party, DSA’s chosen strategic vehicle. As the Democrats march to the right, the job gets harder and harder, threatening DSA with the choice of losing its base or abandoning its fundamental strategic assumption.
To its credit, the DSA convention did not simply ignore the problems. But despite a series of gestures toward the hot issues and key constituencies of the activist left, neither did it solve them.
The orthodox DSA perspective was vigorously reasserted by Co-Chair Michael Harrington, urging in his keynote address that “The convention should look toward and prepare for a ’New American Left’ ... getting out of the trenches and moving forward again.” Recognizing the current political balance of forces and DSA’s own limitations, Harrington went on to qualify the vision: “Not that DSA will lead America, but should prepare to play a catalytic role to form a ’New American Left’ that will fall far short of socialism, but will be well beyond traditional liberalism.”
Harrington pinned his hopes for rebuilding progressive initiative in U.S. politics on the conviction that “Reagan’s Keynesianism-by-mistake will come unstuck – next week, next year, two years from now, but it will come unstuck.” At that point, DSA’s ability to offer a program of democratic economic growth – the transformation of work, tax hikes for the rich, full employment and an enlarged public sector – would position it to articulate popular demands for change and to influence a Democratic Party badly in need of ideas.
With the Mondale debacle and the Democrats’ subsequent lurch to the right, the orthodox DSA strategy took quite a beating in the past year. As DSA Organizational Secretary Guy Molyneux acknowledged in a report on the state of the organization, “The best you can say about the Democrats right now is that they are confused ... the political equivalent of the insanity plea.”
But it was left to David Plotke, an ex-editor of the social democratic journal Socialist Review, now teaching political science at Yale, to draw out the spectre that is haunting DSA – the spectre of neo-liberalism. At an opening plenary on “Rebuilding a Progressive Political Majority,” Plotke argued that, distasteful as it may seem, DSA needs to work out an accommodation with the neo-liberals in the Democratic Party – the Gary Harts, Bill Bradleys and Jerry Browns – who have the best chance of vaulting the Democrats back into national presidential and congressional power. If DSA is serious about blocking the consolidation of Reaganism – and not just grooming a minority opposition – then it must, Plotke insisted, ally itself in some form with a force that supports economic growth, can avoid the “special interests” tag and can muster electoral demographics.
Other delegates were quick to denounce neo-liberalism as “Reaganism with a human face” and distance themselves from Plotke’s scenario. His remarks did, however, illustrate the dead end DSA could find itself in if the orthodox line were ever carried to its logical extreme.
DSA Political Director Jim Shoch, speaking at a Sunday plenary on “Strategy for DSA,” offered a concise summation of DSA’s present attempt to avoid the neo-liberal nightmare. While maintaining that the advancement of an economic program through Democratic Party electoral activity should remain the core of DSA strategy, Shoch urged the organization to “walk on two legs,” the second being a “tactical” emphasis on work within mass social movements, particularly those around Central America and South Africa. Through DSA’s dual character, Shoch argued, the vitality of the “movements of moral outrage” could register their impact in the electoral arena and in the determination of public policy.
The “second leg” of Shoch’s approach, in fact, seems already to be in place. The convention was preceded by a major public outreach event on Friday night, pulling an audience of 2,500 people into the Berkeley Community Theater for an evening of “Voices of Freedom.” In addition to Harrington and DSA Co-Chair Barbara Ehrenreich, the program included Rep. Ron Dellums (a DSA vice-chair), Mpho Tutu, a daughter of Bishop Desmond Tutu who is studying in the U.S., and Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto, the featured speaker. In keeping with DSA’s version of socialism, a Polish emigre supporter of Solidarity, Marta Petrusewicz, contributed some comments on “Soviet imperialism.”
What was striking about the event was its almost exclusive concern with questions of foreign policy and U.S. intervention, not the bread-and-butter DSA issues of the labor movement, electoral politics or economic democracy. But as a means of introducing DSA to a larger audience – heavily drawn from the anti-intervention and solidarity movements – the choice was clearly a wise one.
Likewise at the convention itself, the plenary panels were weighted toward speakers representing the organization’s strong socialist feminist current and its much smaller anti-racist and minority community wing. The convention was preceded by a one-day “Feminist Mini-Conference,” and Sunday’s proceedings featured a panel on “Combatting Racism,” but nowhere on the agenda was there a formal discussion of the labor movement or trade union issues. And in the convention setting, the forces within DSA more oriented toward mass movement activism held the initiative on a number of contested questions.
The clearest example of this came on what had once been billed as the center-piece of the convention: the adoption of an official DSA economic analysis and program. A draft by Harrington had been circulating for over a year, generating considerable discussion. At the plenary on the economic program, Harrington’s document came under considerable criticism from Duane Campbell, a co-chair of the Anti-Racism Commission, for its failure to address the role of racism in the structure of the U.S. economy. Parallel criticisms were raised by the socialist feminists. Without any substantial debate, the delegates voted to publish Harrington’s document as a working paper under his name, and referred the question of an economic statement to anew writer and the National Executive Committee.
The ability to win a convention vote is one thing; the ability to reorient DSA is something else again. The uphill battle of DSA’s relative handful of minority members to shape the organization’s perspective provides the most illuminating – and the most politically sobering – example.
DSA’s minority membership started small and has stayed that way; over 90% of the delegates at the convention were white. Prospects for further racial integration were dealt a serious blow last year when DSA refused to endorse the Jesse Jackson campaign – clearly the candidacy closest to DSA’s own program – for fear of rupturing its ties with organized labor. Manning Marable, the most prominent Black figure within DSA, has recently pulled back from active participation, revealing the extent to which his individual contributions and influence had filled a vacuum in the organization.
The minority speakers on the weekend’s panels were uniformly to the left of DSA orthodoxy, from Paulette Pierce’s advocacy of a “left nationalist” perspective to Cornell West’s argument that DSA should emphasize an “anti-imperialist, anti-racist strategy” in all its work. Yet the convention itself was a confirmation of West’s commentary on “the gap between the ideals we ascribe to and the constituencies we don’t have”; and when elections were held for the six seats reserved for minorities on the 24-member National Executive Committee, only four candidates were available to run.
Trying to navigate itself through the slump in the Democratic Party to its right and the resurgence of the mass movements largely to its left, the DSA convention adopted two major initiatives for the coming year. In the first nationally coordinated campaign for the entire organization, DSA chapters will all take up work around U.S. intervention in Central America. DSA’s Youth Section, one of the few growing parts of the organization in the recent period, has already established some presence in this movement.
But the centerpiece of upcoming activity is the “New Directions” conference slated for next May. DSA has put on a number of conferences in the past aimed at pulling together its connections in the Democratic Party, organized labor, universities and the broader movement, and “New Directions” promises to be the most ambitious. Conference planners reported that interest was being expressed from unexpected sources in the trade union movement who had previously shied away from anything “socialist,” and that promising discussions were underway with Jesse Jackson.
“New Directions” represents the continuation of mainstream DSA strategy, which is unlikely to be overturned in the foreseeable’ future. While the organization has begun to give a boost to its activist side – which is all to the good – there is every indication DSA intends to continue straddling the political dilemma it faces, rather than resolving it.