Archive of Documents from the 2023 Convention
DSA Convention Bulletin
MUG is publishing a print edition bulletin each day during DSA’s 2023 convention. The bulletin contains articles written by members discussing the most pressing issues facing DSA and the entire socialist movement. Check back daily for a link to the PDF version.
Sunday edition (CORRECTED) (8/6)
Support Marxist Unity Group at the 2023 DSA Convention!
DSA’s 2023 convention is coming this summer, August 4-6, and MUG members have been working on a number of excited convention-related activities (this list will be updated periodically with new information):
1. Now announcing: MUG’s candidates for National Political Committee!
Amy is a trans, Seattle-based Marxist with a base building and tenant organizing background. They serve as Seattle DSA’s co-chair, one of the largest chapters in the country.
Rashad is a Black Marxist born and raised in Northeast Illinois. He serves as Lakefront DSA’s Co-Chair, on the Steering Committee of the Growth and Development Committee, and as the Poli-Ed Working Group Chair of the AfroSocialist and Socialist of Color Caucus.
Amy and Rashad are running on a three point platform:
Follow DSA’s anti-imperialist platform consistently and unapologetically.
Center DSA’s platform commitment to winning the battle for democracy.
Transform DSA into an independent mass socialist party.
Read more about Amy and Rashad’s candidacy here.
2. Beyond the Left Wing of the Possible: DSA and the Road to Socialism (5/20, 5PM eastern): In the run up to the DSA Convention, we want to focus on the bigger picture: Where can DSA be by 2028? Will we dirty break from the Democrats, or will we continue our dirty stay? How will we build towards socialist revolution, and if so, what does that revolution even look like? How will we build roots in the worker’s movement, through labor, tenant and community struggles? How will we defeat the ascendant right-wing reaction and win the battle for democracy? To discuss all this and more, MUG and Reform & Revolution (R&R) have invited folks from tendencies across DSA for a panel discussion. Join us! Click here to RSVP.
Archive of Documents from the 2021 Convention
Marxist Unity Group was formed originally as Marxist Unity Slate - a slate that represented a series of proposals (rather than a leadership slate) for the 2021 DSA convention. Below are the 2021 Marxist Unity Slate documents:
About Us
Most of the participants in Marxist Unity Slate are associated with Cosmonaut Magazine, either as contributors or board members. However, this should not be seen as an effort by Cosmonaut itself, but rather an attempt by like-minded comrades active in DSA to advocate for a specific direction. Cosmonaut hosts a diversity of views and Marxist Unity Slate is one of a number of personal initiatives of individuals associated with Cosmonaut.
Why “Marxist Unity Slate”?
The term ‘Marxist unity’ is aspirational. Thousands of DSA members are inspired by Marxist politics, and we want to unite them around a credible vision for an independent socialist movement in the United States. ‘Slate’ refers not to a slate of leadership candidates, but to our three-point lineup of (1) Constitutional amendment and (2) Resolutions. We believe our three-point slate will help DSA develop a strong ‘programmatic unity’: unity based not on theoretical dogma, but on common struggle and a shared political vision. We have collected the needed signatures to get our proposals submitted, however we still need to collect 250 signatures on our platform amendment. With your support and votes in the delegate polls we can begin to build an ecumenical mass socialist party based on Marxist principles.
Mission Statement
State of the Left
While it’s hard to envision the working class coming to power any time soon, the state of the US Left is relatively strong today and there is reason for optimism. The US Left prior to the growth of DSA was a constellation of dogmatic microsects organized under militarized bureaucratic centralism, based on an ahistoric caricature of early Bolshevik history. Its replacement by DSA is a positive development. Recently blooming to over 90,000 members, DSA has made an historic achievement for socialists in the United States. While we should be hesitant to overstate our victories (90,000 people is only a small minority of the 330 million or so US residents), there have been relatively few points in our history where the organized socialist movement was as influential as it is today.
However, there is a significant gap between a force strong enough to influence the culture in a general way, and the ability of that force to win a majority of the population, i.e. the working class, to its program. Beyond that, the organized socialist movement must implement that program by seizing political power and abolishing the old order. We must not only match the accomplishments of our comrade predecessors in the Knights of Labor, Socialist Party, IWW, Communist Party, SDS, etc., but surpass them and succeed where they failed: build a mass working class party capable of casting off the shackles of the juridical rule of the capitalist class, overturn its slaver Constitution, and institute the complete sovereignty of the only class capable of delivering true democracy: the proletariat. Simply put, we have a long way to go.
It’s Party Time
The primary obstacle facing the working class in accomplishing this goal is the absence of a political party. Ideally, we need a democratic member-based organization with a coherent political platform that can field candidates in legislative elections, exert discipline over these candidates, and act as a coherent, independent opposition. We believe that DSA can and must become this party. Kicking the can down the road on this will only see us squander the current historical conjuncture where class struggle and awareness are sharply on the rise. DSA members across the country are steeped in activism, whether on the streets, in their unions, or otherwise, yet there is no agreed-upon political vision that can serve as a united basis for action. Without an agreed upon end-goal and strategy for accomplishing it, our efforts can at best result in a few diffuse oases in the desert of capitalism. If the working class is to win the class war, we must gather our forces and devise a plan before going into battle. There is significant debate within DSA on the party question, and most recognize the need for, at some point, some sort of workers party. But what kind of party would this be and when and how will it come about? These questions are more ambiguous.
A party is nothing more than an organized political movement. And DSA can become an organized, independent political movement—right now. No other force will step up to do it. We can’t wait for organized labor. For the most part, unions are under the political control of the Democrats. To revive the labor movement and win rank and file union members to our cause, socialists must champion a visible political alternative to the leadership of bourgeois parties. That is a socialist party.
Rather than a Labor Party built by a future merger with Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Movement for a Peoples Party, or other left-progressive groups, we believe the party must emerge from an explicitly socialist organization. Many of these left-progressives can and likely will join this party, but it must be under the condition of accepting our socialist aims, rather than us accepting a ‘kinder, gentler’ capitalism as the limits of our political vision. There are two fundamental actions DSA can take to become this party.
Program
First, DSA should adopt a Marxist minimum-maximum program. The maximum section would be a short elaboration of the free society we envision for humanity, a future without exploitation, oppression and all other nasty and brutish cornerstones of the prehistory of the human race: in a word, communism. The minimum section would include our immediate demands. Taken one-by-one, some of these may be achievable reforms under the current Constitutional regime (for example, Medicare for All, cancellation of personal debt, etc.). Winning one or the other of these would build the confidence and experience of the working class, while giving us a foothold to grow our strength further. But taken all together, the implementation of our minimum program would spark a qualitative rupture with the current order and require the convening of a constituent assembly to replace the US Constitution, as well as the dissolution of the standing army and national security state. It would institute the democratic republic of the working class, or what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Being able to carry out this full minimum program must be our basic condition for taking any responsibility for government, even at the level of a single department, in order to ensure that when we come to power the proletariat comes to power along with us. Until DSA’s platform is accepted by a majority of the population, our electoral efforts should be focused on gaining a foothold within legislatures as a principled opposition to the liberal-constitutional order: this means no horse-trading for committee appointments, joining coalitions as junior partners, or accepting the whip or discipline of the capitalist parties. These are things candidates could do even if they ran under the ballot line of a capitalist party, although we believe the time to prioritize independent campaigns has come.
Luckily, DSA is currently working on a National Platform that might resemble a Marxist minimum-maximum program to be adopted at the 2021 convention: this would be a massive step forward for DSA, and the US Left as a whole. We will enthusiastically participate in the platform drafting process, advocating for a solid minimum program to the best of our ability. But no matter what platform reaches the convention floor, we want it to have teeth. Our three convention proposals are an effort to infuse DSA’s new platform with power and meaning—even when the text includes things we disagree with.
Democratic Discipline
Secondly, elected DSA leadership must have political influence, and even disciplinary mechanisms, over the politicians we elect. One of these mechanisms is the platform itself. The other mechanism would be the representatives’ political responsibility to DSA. In the past, mass socialist parties have kept their elected representatives on the ball in a number of ways. They would be openly critiqued in the party media, and party leaders would write their speeches. More than anything, once elected socialist politicians would form a subset of the party usually called a “parliamentary fraction” (or in our case, a legislative fraction). They would regularly meet with party leadership to discuss how to best carry out the program, act as a unified bloc, and in the best of circumstances produce a radical opposition to the rule of the capitalist class. Any representatives we get elected must constitute themselves as radical oppositionists and tribunes of the people in the legislature, constantly agitating for the platform.
The term ‘democratic centralism’ rightly makes many socialists squeamish, its use over the course of the 20th century came to describe the organizational model of dogmatic bureaucratic sects with insulated leaderships, where openly organizing factions and communication between branches was banned. All centralism, no democracy. Prior to the Russian Civil War however, the principle was consistent with genuine internal party democracy. A massive working class alternative culture erupted in Europe prior to World War I, partly due to the success of radical oppositionists in legislatures. The proximity of elected socialists to the bourgeois halls of power can certainly be a compromising influence, as is well known in the case of World War I, where deputies chose patriotism in hopes of winning elections over a principled working class internationalism. But this is not the inherent outcome of a socialist legislative fraction- we shouldn’t forget that August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknicht, members of the same German socialist party infamous for backing World War I, had decades prior risked everything, even against the advice of Marx and Engels, to oppose the Franco-Prussian War.
Our Slate
Our slate hopes to build support for these two ideas within DSA: first that the political platform is what unites us in our long-term vision for socialism, and second that we use our platform as a way to hold elected DSA members accountable to the socialist movement first and foremost. Our amendment to the DSA constitution, Defining the Role of DSA’s National Political Platform makes acceptance of the national political platform the basis for membership in DSA. Our first resolution, Tribunes of the People and Democratic Discipline would make DSA’s national endorsement of candidates contingent on a series of conditions to make the candidate accountable to DSA. Our last resolution, A Socialist Slate for the House offers an executable strategy for a coordinated DSA campaign to build a principled socialist fraction in the House of Representatives. We hope to receive your support for this slate at this year’s Convention.
If we want the working class to rule society, we should focus on quality over quantity in electoral victories. We can go further than building a broad Labor Party: instead, we should forge a mass Socialist Party with a Marxist program. We must elect members to Congress to agitate for our program, and struggle to gain a foothold as a principled opposition—an organized beachhead from where we can build a true majority of support and take real power. Marxist Unity believes our slate is a small step to help DSA achieve that goal.
Platform Amendment: Winning the Battle for Democracy
Reasoning: We are impressed by the ambition of the second platform draft—from abolishing the Senate to convening a second constitutional convention. But we also know that ours is not a mission to “deepen and strengthen democracy,” as the draft currently proclaims. We reject that the United States is any kind of democracy at all. It is a vicious oligarchy propped up by warlord cops and a backwards constitution that stomps on the needs of the people. There will be no real democracy in America until working people destroy the shackles of the Old Order.
That is why our revision does not mince its words. It demands “the overthrow of the antiquated slaveholder Constitution, to be replaced by a truly democratic republic of the working class.” It calls for an expanded Bill of Rights providing economic guarantees for all and unrestricted freedom of speech. It calls for party-list proportional representation, the end of judicial review, abolition of the presidency in favor of an accountable executive, and perhaps most importantly, the dismantling of the U.S. Armed Forces as they currently exist. We demand a mass popular army, controlled directly by the people’s legislature, to build public infrastructure and provide genuine defense against invasion—with universal training and service, alternative options for conscientious objectors, and democratic rights for all of its members.
We recognize that these demands may seem utopian from today’s vantage point. But we believe that they are in fact both pragmatic and indispensable. Working people will never be able to manage the economy if they do not have democratic sovereignty over the political system they live under. The Old Order’s constitution denies them that sovereignty. DSA should prepare itself for many years of struggle against the decaying police state, and describe that struggle in the plainest of terms. We have self-consciously inserted demands for winning the battle of democracy as conceived by the early socialist movement in the US: not because we fetishize the Socialist Party or believe they had all the answers. However, their programmatic views on democracy represented an advanced understanding of the undemocratic Constitution of the US and a viable starting point for a real socialist democracy.
Thank you for considering our proposal. We need 250 signatures so please sign and share. Your support, both today and at the coming convention, is deeply appreciated.
Constitutional Amendment: Defining the Role of DSA’s National Political Platform
Reasoning: DSA is considering the adoption of a national political platform for the first time in recent history. Platforms and programs have historically played a very important role in defining the political principles and practice of socialist organizations. Defining this platform’s role clearly will give it greater meaning and practical relevance as the great goal of our work. Political unity based on a definite program is more durable than unity based on rigid dogma, so the political criterion for membership should be acceptance of the national political platform. If a national political platform is adopted at this convention, the DSA constitution ought to be amended in the following way.
Old language: Article III, Section 1
Membership shall be open to every person who subscribes to the principles of the organization.
New language: Article III, Section 1
Membership shall be open to every person who accepts the national political platform of the organization. Acceptance does not mean agreement with every point of the platform, and members are free to organize within DSA to make specific changes to the platform. Rather, it means committing to fight for the platform as the overall expression of the movement’s aims.
First resolution: Tribunes of the People and Democratic Discipline
Whereas, DSA has been successful in campaigning for socialists to enter legislatures at all levels; and
Whereas, these elected socialists have had varying degrees of accountability in promoting and fighting for democratic socialism due to an inherent lack of internal discipline, and;
Whereas, socialists have historically utilized legislatures successfully to produce ‘tribunes of the people’, who can raise and rally expectations of the working class and form principled oppositions to the established capitalist parties, that are directly accountable to the elected leadership of the the socialist organization;
Be it therefore resolved, to receive the endorsement of DSA’s National Political Committee, a campaign must make a formal pledge to fulfill the following requirements towards DSA:
The candidate must be a member of DSA.
They must accept and pledge to promote and fight for the DSA national political platform if one is passed.
If the campaign is successful, any staffers hired by the legislator will also be subject to the first two requirements.
Legislators must agree to at least quarterly meetings with DSA leadership of the appropriate designation: for example congresspeople would meet with the National Political Committee, state legislators would hold meetings with leadership of all state chapter leaders (or leadership of a state/regional body if one were created), city councilors would have meetings with local chapter or branch leadership, etc.
All DSA members in legislatures must form a caucus that votes as a block and rejects de facto discipline from any other party caucuses, regardless of which ballot line they were elected on.
Failure to uphold these requirements would result in the suspension of the candidate’s DSA membership and a revocation of the endorsement by the NPC.
Second resolution: A Socialist Slate for the House
Whereas, Democratic Socialists of America is the organized face of the Socialist Movement in the United States,
Whereas, the Socialist Movement is striving to become a visible, independent force in American national politics,
Whereas, the defeat of the Bernie Sanders campaign has sparked a crisis of leadership on the U.S. Left; DSA has experience running unified slates of candidates at the state level, and local organizing efforts will benefit if DSA cultivates disciplined national spokespersons,
Whereas, the U.S. House of the Representatives is a crucial platform for socialist agitation because it is elected simultaneously across the country in small districts that are relatively easy to contest—and is the only federal institution theoretically based on direct and equal suffrage,
Therefore be it resolved, that DSA shall run a Socialist Slate for the House: an organized team of candidates recruited by locals across the country to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, beginning in 2022.
Be it further resolved, that the National Political Committee, in consultation with staff, chapter membership, and the National Electoral Committee, will have the following responsibilities:
Developing a common set of campaign priorities.
Approving a training program that all recruited Slate members will attend to promote camaraderie, professionalism, and unified messaging.
Equipping Slate campaigns with high-cost campaign resources, such as technology infrastructure.
After the completion of Slate recruitment, identifying two or more High Priority Races: candidates with unique potential for success who shall receive extra resources to help the Slate secure at least one high-profile victory.
Identifying two or more Potential Independent Races: districts with unique potential for competitive independent campaigns, where candidates could be encouraged and provided additional resources to run outside the two-party system.
Be it further resolved, that the National Political Committee and National Electoral Committee shall encourage DSA locals to work together, running Slate campaigns as collaborative multi-chapter efforts. They shall assist locals in forming regional organizations, based on the state level wherever this is practicable, to provide a permanent structure for these efforts.
Be it further resolved, that all Slate candidates shall be recruited through a two-step process roughly analogous to DSA’s existing National Endorsement policy:
With assistance from the National Electoral Committee, locals shall be asked to identify highly-committed DSA members who are active in their chapters, nominating them by a process of their own choosing.
The National Political Committee shall vet nominated candidates for final approval to join the Slate.
Be it further resolved, that all recruited Slate candidates will make a formal Pledge to meet the following expectations:
Accept and run on DSA's National Platform
Collaborate, cross-endorse one other, and appear together at joint campaign events.
Promote down-ballot DSA campaigns at the state and local level
Upon election to the House, form an independent Socialist caucus, rejecting any other party discipline and voting as one cohesive bloc. Any staffers hired by the Slate legislator must also join or be DSA members and accept the national platform.
After being elected, hold quarterly meetings with DSA’s National Political Committee to foster coordination and accountability to the broader Socialist Movement.
Be it further resolved, that elected Slate candidates will be encouraged to only accept the salary of the average union worker in their city of residence, with adjustments for personal circumstances and living expenses in the Capitol. The rest of their congressional salary will be donated to a fund for additional DSA campaigns.
Be it further resolved, that NPC approval shall be based on the potential candidate’s ability to fulfill their Pledge and run a professional campaign that builds the movement. The NPC may cap the number of recruits as necessary to avoid overburdening the national organization. Elected Slate candidates shall be subject to discipline by their comrades in the Socialist House bloc, who may remove them from the caucus and bar them from future Slate participation if they break their commitments to the movement. The NPC has final authority to determine Slate and caucus membership, and may also revoke DSA membership in accordance with the DSA Constitution for egregious violation of socialist principles.
Be it finally resolved, that the National Political Committee shall adopt a full implementation plan for this proposal, modifying it as necessary for 2022 and to ensure legal compliance.