A Draft Program for DSA
El Lissitzky, About Two Squares
A History of Programmatic Unity in DSA
Marxist Unity Group (MUG) views the struggle for unity around a revolutionary program as the cornerstone of the project to build a mass socialist party in the United States. In the Marxist sense, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) already meets many of the key requirements for existence as a political party—it's an operationally independent single-membership organization with tens of thousands of members, with democratically-elected leadership and member-led institutions, and endorsed elected officials across all levels of government.
What is missing, however, is programmatic unity—unity around acceptance of a common, democratically-decided program which can unite the various factions of the movement and the diverse tactical struggles socialists engage in around a broad historical narrative and strategy.
The modern DSA emerged out of the mass popularization of socialism during the two Bernie Sanders campaigns. Between 2015 and 2020, DSA informally and unevenly adopted the “Bernie Program,” a broadly reformist set of social-democratic demands such as medicare for all and the green new deal. This program, obviously limited by its informality and lack of democratic adoption, gave relative political coherence to a growing organization. We now live during the programmatic impasse—both of DSA and the broader socialist Left—in the aftermath of the failure of the Bernie campaigns and the George Floyd uprisings of 2020, which both ultimately dissolved back into the mainstream Democratic Party coalition.
The struggle for real programmatic unity in DSA began at the 2021 National Convention, where DSA voted to approve a Political Platform. This platform, however, was unwieldy. Despite positive elements, the collaborative process that developed it produced a long laundry list of reform policies that socialists would find to some degree desirable, with no clear articulated strategy or theory of change. Despite its flaws, however, Marxist Unity Slate, the predecessor to MUG, sought to ‘give the platform legs to stand.’ These delegates introduced an amendment to the Constitution/Bylaws to condition membership on acceptance of the platform. Though it failed 2-to-1, it was the first time programmatic unity had been seriously considered by the organization—the opening salvo by the consistently partyist wing to realize DSA’s promise as a programmatically unified mass Party.
The Platform was unfortunately relegated to the dustbin of the organization; it did not play an active role in the political life of DSA after it was passed at Convention. An unexpected opportunity arose, however, after 2023’s Convention passed a mandate to produce an action program ahead of the 2024 elections. The resulting document was DSA’s nationally-developed 2024 Program: Workers Deserve More (WDM). While still missing key Marxist tenets around revolutionary democracy and national self-determination, WDM proudly proclaimed, following the Manifesto of the Communist Party, that “DSA’s mission is to unite workers into a powerful political movement to win the battle for democracy and change the world.”
With a more developed plan for implementation, chapters across the country received the 2024 Program with widespread enthusiasm, even among the more tepidly partyist sections of the organization. Despite its flaws, WDM demonstrated in practice the vitality of a program, and tapped into an unrealized desire for programmatic unity. And in DSA’s youth-wing, YDSA, the struggle for programmatic unity has already been won, approved by a majority of delegates at its 2023 Convention.
Introduction to the Draft Program
At MUG’s National Congress in November 2023, we voted to charter a program committee, who’s mandate would be to deeply investigate the history of the Marxist political program, and to produce the Draft Program found below. In the words of our Tasks and Perspectives also published in this edition of Light and Air, the purpose of this Draft Program is “to serve as a model for what we hope DSA will adopt.” And regardless of the course of developments, “we will fight for its drafting principles at 2025 Convention and beyond,” welcoming any victory on the terrain of struggle for a common program.
On the point of principles, we consider the pillars of this Draft Program to be it’s expression of the minimum-maximum format (elaborated below) and its radical democratic demands—the revolutionary reorganization of the state, consummated in a democratic constitution, along the lines which will allow for the rule of the working class over society. This consistent democracy expands to the international sphere, where we believe DSA must programmatically embrace the principles of decolonization and national self-determination, conceiving of the liberation of the working class as an international, and not a national, process.
Our Draft Program takes the format of a minimum-maximum program, the form of program developed by Marx and Engels and elaborated on by the parties of the Second International. The minimum program is the set of radical democratic and economic demands which, while individually achievable under capitalism, taken together form the basis for a revolutionary rupture with current society and the establishment of a democratic worker’s republic. In the long run, they also represent the minimum basis for our Party’s taking responsibility for government. The maximum program, on the other hand, elaborates the history of capitalist development and the role of the working class within it. It demonstrates our commitment to the long-term struggle for a fully liberated, classless society—in a word, communism.
This design—pointing towards the real institutional blocks to establishing working class mastery over the state, while also orienting the movement towards the horizon of wage and class abolition—gives minimum-maximum programs an urgent revolutionary clarity.
At MUG’s Annual Congress last month in Florence, Massachusetts, we passed this Draft Program nearly unanimously, but not without spirited debate. This debate revolved around the purpose of the program, and how we should communicate the story of our movement to the broader working class. It clued in on the importance of widespread deliberation, both across the spectrum of DSA and throughout the broader organized Left and workers movement, to achieving a truly unifying program.
Debates will continue to rage around the history, purpose, and structure of the political program as a constituent part of the struggle to build a mass socialist Party in the United States. This Draft Program is our contribution to these debates, and we make it in the spirit of democratic collaboration. We open the Letters column of Light and Air to all those who wish to join the conversation, which we hope will spill over into many other forums, including the halls of the upcoming 2025 DSA National Convention.
“The Florence Program,” Adopted January 2025
Capitalism is a failed system. The capitalist class has unleashed misery on the workers of the world, turning to environmental devastation, militarized policing, mass incarceration, wars of genocide and conquest, and radicalization of existing forms of social domination, all in the pursuit of profits. To defeat the ruling class in the United States, the working class must organize itself into an independent political party with the aim of conquering political power, replacing the slaver-capitalist Constitution with a radically democratic political system, and introducing socialism. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the political home for this struggle.
Capitalism transforms or abolishes all existing social structures to serve the production of surplus-value, the root of the ruling classes’ incomes of profit, interest, and rent. It is made possible only by the exploitation of a global class of dispossessed laborers. In its tireless drive to surpass every limit to this exploitation, capitalism concentrates increasing capital in fewer hands, crosses every national border, subsumes every aspect of society into one vast market, and renders obsolete every small-scale and individual means of economic production, like land-ownership and small enterprise. It gathers the majority of the world’s population together into an increasingly desperate working class that labors collectively to set increasingly concentrated means of production into motion.
Because capitalism enriches a small few at the expense of the many, it must be maintained by undemocratic means. In the era of liberalism, this has most often taken the form of a state which counterposes limited enfranchisement for the working classes with unequal suffrage, unproportional legislatures, unelected judiciaries, unlimited power in the hands of executives and the civil-military bureaucracy, alongside the direct rule of money through legal bribery, bought-and-sold elections, and business-owned media, allowing the capitalist class to keep the working-class majority out of political power. The U.S. Constitution, originally created to cement the power of capitalists and slaveowners, is one of the clearest examples of this form of rule.
The history of U.S. capitalism is inseparable from the history of colonial genocide and chattel slavery. The murder, displacement, and enclosure of Indigenous nations made way for white settlement and slave plantations in the South, which fed northern industry. Slavery was eventually abolished—and Black America emancipated—due to decades of political, economic, and military struggle by the enslaved, free Black people, and abolitionist whites against the slave owners, culminating in the revolutionary battle for a multiracial democratic republic during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The temporary class alliance between northern capitalists and the abolitionists’ democratic revolution broke apart after the military defeat of the slaveholders. The abomination of sharecropping, imposed on freed slaves by the landlords’ and capitalists’ counterrevolution, was eventually supplanted by the mechanization of agriculture, which, combined with Jim Crow apartheid and racist white terror, displaced millions of Black Americans to industrial slums across the country. Decades of continued struggle under these new conditions ended legal apartheid in the South, but the failure to fully achieve racial equality and finish Reconstruction has necessitated continuing mass movements by the urban Black and brown working class for a decent standard of living and against police violence.
The spoils of this bloody process of national development were not enough to sate the hunger of American capital, which looked to other lands and peoples to exploit through imperialism. Forged in the hells of colonialism, slavery, and counterrevolution, the modern United States leads the capitalists of imperialist nations in economic and military blocs that have crushed the global working class’s political goals for decades. The United States and its bloc of rich nations, constituting the forces of global imperialism and the bulwark of global reaction, would much prefer to keep poorer, formerly colonized nations in a constant state of economic and political dependence to be exploited as a massive reserve of low-wage labor.
Within the borders of the United States, the working class forms the vast majority of the population. Its ranks having been formed from Indigenous laborers, dispossessed small producers and farmers, descendants of Black slavery, and migrants from Europe and across the Third World, it is one of the most diverse working classes in the world. The long, multi-faceted history of violence, subjugation, and exclusion that has accompanied this diversity has made some workers more instinctually aware than others of the injustices that permeate capitalist society, but the working class as a whole lacks a systematic understanding of how those injustices can be overcome.
Without political or economic power as individuals, the working class must organize collectively. The experience of uniting with fellow workers in the class struggle forces the working class to confront differences imposed by race, gender, nationality, labor specialization, and other forms of stratification, or suffer from disunity and mutual destruction for the sake of special privileges for a fortunate few. The working class needs democracy, both in its own organizations and in society at large, to effectively fight back against the ruling class. No part of the working class can win freedom from capitalist rule unless every worker enjoys total political and social equality and the equal right to participate in determining the fate of the society as a whole.
The workers’ movement has arisen from the struggle of workers to improve their conditions against the interests of their bosses, landlords, and rulers through demands that only partially address their domination under capitalism. These struggles and the collective organizations that wage them—trade-unions, cooperatives, mutual aid societies, and at the highest level, the political party—hold the secret to reconstructing a world without a ruling class and an exploited class: the democratic control of society by the people whose labor creates it. In producing the conditions that give rise to working class organization through the process of capitalist development, the capitalist class creates the possibility for its own overthrow. The capitalists understand this and seek to disarm the working class by opposing democracy everywhere, from the realm of trade-union struggle to the form of government. Under the political rule of the capitalist class, organized worker power is under constant attack, exhausting working-class struggles and incentivizing compromises in leadership and organization. A disorganized and disunited working class is the capitalists’ best asset.
Only socialism, the project of universal human emancipation led by the working class, can overcome such adversity. As socialists we must lead the fight for the highest possible degree of organization and unity within the working class, universalize its many particular struggles through agitation, education, and organization, and develop the most militant layers of these movements into dedicated socialists, bringing these socialist workers into our ranks. In short, we must merge socialism with the workers’ movement. As this merger develops, so too will the farsightedness, confidence, and organization of the working class that enables their emergence as the hegemonic class of society. Working class victory in this struggle—the conquest of political power—is propelled by the formation and practice of the socialist party.
The framework established by the Constitution, the surrounding legal order, the dominating influence of wealth on political power, and the repressive arm of the state—the police, military, and prisons—constitute the dictatorship of the capitalist class, strangling the working class in even its most basic struggles against bosses and landlords—let alone its conquest of political power. The working class must lead the battle to sweep away this political order and establish a truly democratic republic, freeing the workers of the world from the chains of American imperialism, and setting the stage for the working class to lead a socialist transformation of our society.
The development of socialism under working class rule gradually extends the principle of democratic planning to the whole economy and undermines the basis of inequality in the social division of labor - whether between intellectual and manual workers, racial groups, or by gender. This society will combine the common labor of the many with a democracy that empowers and involves the many, struggling day by day for a collective life that enables the flourishing of the collective individual, rather than their atomization and subordination to the powerful few. Through this process, the special role of the state standing above society withers away and, as the revolution expands internationally, national divisions and inequalities between peoples are eliminated.
Proceeding from these principles, the Democratic Socialists of America unites around a strategy of class independence from the capitalist Democratic and Republican Parties, the development of independent working class organizations to a critical mass, and struggling for consistent democracy throughout all spheres of society. In so doing, we first demand a people’s constitutional convention elected by universal, equal, and direct suffrage to establish a democratic republic that allows for the political rule of the working class. Leading up to and within this convention, the Democratic Socialists of America will fight for the following demands as the foundation for the democratic constitution of a new republic:
Universal, equal, and direct suffrage for every citizen 16 years of age or older. Universal citizenship for long term residents within the boundaries of the state.
Abolition of the Presidency and the Electoral College, to be replaced by an Executive Council elected and overseen by Congress; abolition of the Senate. All power to be vested in the people’s House of Representatives and its number of members uncapped.
Governing supremacy of legislatures at all levels of government, to be elected under a nationwide electoral standard with proportional representation. Elections to be entirely publicly funded. Elected delegates to be subject to recall and paid the wage of the average skilled worker.
Freedom of association and assembly and unrestricted rights of free speech and publication. Associations may participate in the political system as parties on the condition that they accept the laws of the new revolutionary order as binding.
The right to freedom of information. Release state secrets and the open and transparent operation of government. Elimination of advertising in news media. Media to be publicly funded and democratically accessible. Abolition of copyright laws. The right of the public to appropriate intellectual property.
Abolition of the rights and powers reserved to States; formation of regional and municipal governments to be a guaranteed right for all peoples within the boundaries of the state.
Self-determination for all nations within the boundaries of the state, including but not limited to the right of separation, the right of return for Indigenous nations, and the right to choose to participate in the political system of the republic on a plurinational basis. The right of all peoples to receive services of the state in their preferred language. Enforcement of Indigenous treaties following the democratic will of Indigenous nations, including their right to reclaim land under sovereign control.
The right to expropriate property for the public good without compensation for the private owner, and the right to collective, democratic ownership and management of all public goods.
The right of the people to convocate a constituent assembly to reform the constitution of the republic elected by the people through their right to universal, equal, and direct suffrage.
Abolition of the police, professional military, special forces, and the security state. Establishment of a people's militia with democratic and constitutional rights reserved for service members. Universal service and training. Reorientation towards public infrastructure projects, disaster relief, and safety. The right of conscientious objectors to alternative service options.
The right to transformative justice and rehabilitation. Full constitutional rights retained for persons under trial and rehabilitation. Freedom for all incarcerated people, their enfranchisement as citizens, and the closure of prisons.
Elimination of judicial review. Appointment of all judges by the appropriate legislatures, except local judges, who are to be elected directly by the people.
Replacement of common law with an easily understandable code of laws. Elimination of private legal counsel for hire, to be replaced with public legal counsel with equalized pay.
The right to organize labor unions, collectively bargain in the workplace, and strike.
The right to move freely within and without the borders of the state.
The Democratic Socialists of America will further fight for the realization of the following immediate measures, to improve the condition of the working class and consolidate its political and economic emancipation:
Provision of quality housing, medical care, food and water, family care, and other fundamental necessities of life to all residents.
Expropriation, without compensation, of the resources and industries most immediately necessary for the survival of the working class and cohesive functioning of the state, including railways, telecommunications, seaports, airports, energy infrastructure, medical infrastructure, and high finance. Nationalization of land, air, and waterways.
A legal limit of a 32-hour workweek, with compensation for lost overtime and no reduction in overall pay.
Universal, public, and mandatory education until the age of majority. Elimination of college tuition and residency fees. Provide ongoing literacy, technical, and vocational training for adults as a publicly accessible service.
A living wage for all workers regardless of age, employment, or status, regularly adjusted to account for changes in purchasing power. No discrimination in pay based on race, gender, or nationality. Elimination of separate tipped wages.
Reparations to formerly oppressed peoples through targeted investment in public infrastructure and commons, and unconditional cash transfers in underdeveloped communities.
Creation of a state fund for public creation of and participation in artistic and cultural works.
Periodic suppression of public and private debts owed by workers.
Democratic control over the home, housing, and the land on which these exist.
Replace all indirect taxes with a single progressive income tax.
Socialized healthcare, free at the point of service. Increase the concentration of health professionals per capita. Free access to treatment and testing for infections like HIV/AIDS and COVID-19.
Universal access to reproductive and trans healthcare, including contraception, birth control, fertility treatment, hormone-replacement therapy, gender-affirming surgeries and abortion on demand.
End state recognition of the gender binary and nuclear family, protecting the right to form families not based on marriage or blood relation, prohibiting discrimination based on sexuality, gender or age, and affirming the rights of children, the elderly and the disabled to live with safety and dignity and to decide where and with whom they will live.
The Democratic Socialists of America, seeking to unite the U.S. working class under the banner of international socialism, put forward the following demands to share in the struggles of workers of all nations, end unequal exchange, and ensure the survival of the Earth over which we struggle to take stewardship:
Withdraw from NATO. Termination of all outstanding military treaties with imperialist states and withdrawal or surrender of all troops stationed abroad. Cessation of all arms transfers to imperialist states and their proxies.
End all current sanctions, asset seizures, and tariffs.
War reparations to nations subjected to US conspiracies and military aggression, and climate reparations to the Third World.
Withdraw from existing trade agreements. New trade arrangements based on equality of labor-time between workers of all nations and guaranteed free passage of essential resources, technologies, and supplies.
Enact emergency measures to curb U.S. industries with high waste in material throughput, emissions, and energy demand. Ensure that goods and waste produced in necessary industries are reused, recycled, refurbished, or otherwise restored to natural earth processes. Subsidize municipal and regional efforts to restore local ecology.
Abolition of the United Nations Security Council. United Nations General Assembly seats to be allocated proportionally to the population of each nation, with the representatives to these seats to be elected through proportional representation. No veto exceptions for any nation in the General Assembly.
Subordination of the World Bank and the IMF to the United Nations. Cancellation of national debts for countries burdened by loans from international capitalist institutions such as the World Bank and IMF.
Provision of unconditional funding by the United Nations for life essentials, climate refugee travel, return of displaced indigenous peoples, preventative vaccine measures, construction of utilities.
