DSA: Building Roots in the Working Class is Key to Success

Sean O’Torain (John Throne)

I apologize for my timing but it is important I comment on the report from the DSA conference in Atlanta. It is very good that our conference went so well though due to health and age I was unable to attend. I have been a member of various left parties during my life. In my home country, Ireland, I was an elected member of the executive committee – known as the Administrative Council - of the Irish Labor party before that party moved to the right and lost its base. I was also a member of the Militant caucus in that party. I am presently active in helping produce the blog Facts For Working People.  I have also been a member of various trade unions and among other experiences in the unions I was for a time the elected representative of construction workers on a large construction site. 

Our Blog has recently produced an article titled Struggles rising worldwide: Self Styled Revolutionary organizations in crisis

The DSA experience is the opposite with growth exploding from around 5,000 to around 60,000. I have heard many of the self styled revolutionary groups speak of the DSA and how they wish to “help” DSA. My suggestion to these groups is to first look at their own work and see what mistakes they are making that is leading to their dissolving, splitting or stagnating. Rather than thinking they can help – they really mean teach- the DSA, they should first ask why the DSA has grown while they are in one kind of crisis of another.  That is, rather than “teach” the DSA they should seek to learn from the growth of the DSA. 

I believe the main reason the DSA has grown is because increasing numbers of working people and youth are questioning capitalism. Climate change, rising inequality, racism, sexism and violence, are worsening crises in society and more and more people are looking for an alternative. I believe that there are several reasons why this changing mood has been reflected in the rise of the DSA on the one hand and also in the increasing problems for the self styled revolutionary groups on the other.  I will not deal more with these groups.

I believe that the DSA has been turned to by so many young people for a number of reasons. DSA has been around for a long time and has some tradition. Having the word democratic in our name is also important here in the US where the capitalist class makes so much of this word, even though they believe in the dictatorship of the corporations and their own class. There are strong expectations amongst the US working class for things to be democratic.

DSA also looks to, and promotes, many of the ideas of Eugene Debs the most principled and courageous of any socialist leader in the history of the US. DSA also does not demand agreement on every issue down to the most minute detail from its members. And very importantly, DSA sees that various caucuses existing in its membership are not only inevitable but also are essential for serious and democratic discussion which in turn is necessary if the policies of DSA are to be clarified and developed and secure a base in the working class. 

It is in this regard that I would like to raise a question for consideration. I see where the election of the NPC has been distributed. In this I see the names of the elected members, the pronouns with which they refer to themselves and the caucus to which they belong. The number of caucuses is very impressive and positive. Perhaps being from an older generation and having first become involved in socialist politics through my participation in the Bogside Uprising in Derry Northern Ireland and having spent my life from then on either as a blue collar worker or organizer, I am not sure of the level of importance what pronoun a person refers to themselves is in working class struggles. 

For example, the most important union struggles of the past years have been the teachers and educators movements and strikes which pushed aside the existing union leaderships and in most cases made gains. Pronoun identification was not an issue that was ever raised in these struggles as far as I can see. It seems to me that the emphasis on this comes from the academic world and is assisted by the liberal capitalist media as a way to prevent the movements against sexism etc. from developing a class analysis, to prevent these struggles from developing as part of a united working class movement to fight all special oppressions as part of the fight of  all working class people. 

But I will leave this here and will appreciate any thoughts comrades have to offer on it.

The main comment I would like to make about the report from the conference and this information about the NPC, is that while it shares what pronoun the new leadership wants to be used in relation to themselves, it does not share the trade union people belong to or where people work or what workers' struggles they have been involved in.  I believe this is a serious omission. I worry that it reflects that the DSA does not have an orientation to the working class. That DSA does not see that the only force that can overthrow capitalism is the collective power and the collective brain of the international working class.

I believe that if this is not corrected it can prove fatal to the DSA. What do I mean about an orientation to the working class?  Practically what would it mean in our work?

Firstly I think that we should take a survey of where members work and in what unions DSA has members. On this basis then make plans to raise our policies in the unions and workplaces. I understand that DSA has some labor committees. But from what I see DSA has contracted out guidance of this work to groups such as Labor Notes that refuse to explain the role of the pro capitalist union leadership and build a democratic fighting opposition to that leadership. We have a couple of articles about why we feel this is a fatal mistake. This is one example here

What I am suggesting is a different kind of union work. To do so I would like to take as an example the city where I live, Chicago. According to union records there are 320 union locals in the Chicagoland area and half a million union members affiliated through their unions to the Chicago Federation of Labor. This is potentially the most powerful body in the city as its members work in transport, the utilities, electric, water, gas, in health, in the government services etc. Just think about it; the city could not work without these workers. Let us see the Board of Trade or the Chicago Stock market operate without electricity, water, communications. The first question I would have for DSA’s labor organizing committee in Chicago, in all areas would be to carry out a survey to see how many members of DSA are members in these unions or have contacts or close friends or relatives in these unions.  

This survey should also find out where every DSA member works.  Then in every DSA campaign we would organize to have that campaign and support for that campaign raised in every union local where we have members or contacts, in every workplace where we have members and ask support for our campaigns and work. Our labor committee would meet regularly and organize and follow up on our campaigns. I can see it now. Regular organizing meetings with our chart on the wall of all the union locals and bodies in Chicagoland and every meeting we check our progress, in how many union locals and workplaces we have had our campaigns and ideas raised and in which supported or otherwise. This is the minimum if we are to have an orientation to the working class, if we see the working class as the force that can end capitalism. 

In case DSA Comrades think I am making too much of union work and organizing I would ask this to be considered.  Eugene Debs came to socialism through his organizing work in the workplace, in the railways, through union work. 

It is my impression that the majority of DSA members are not members of unions. In the survey we would be able to see in what non-union workplaces we had members. We could then select the one or ones where we had the most members and set about trying to organize these workplaces into unions. For example if we had a number of members working in WalMart, in MacDonalds in other fast food chains, or members working in places like Starbucks or other coffee shop chains, then we could target one or more of these for organizing depending on our resources. All these workplaces have extremely diverse workforces. 

I see on occasion that the idea has been raised that DSA members should go to strikes and “volunteer” as picket “captains”. This not a good idea. First of all, picket captains should be elected by the striking workers whose jobs and livelihoods are on the line.

The idea that DSA members should volunteer as picket captains comes from people whose idea of supporting strikes is to go along with the policies of the union leaders and help the union leaders get the members to accept their orders. If DSA members volunteer as picket captains they would be volunteering to tell the strikers what to do which amounts to them ensuring the trade union leaderships concessionary strategies are carried out. DSA members will be the enforcers of the policies of the union leadership. The link below includes an example of picket line rules the IUOE bureaucracy demanded its striking members stick to in a recent strike of crane operators in Western Washington State. This strike and the importance of these crane operators in the US economy could have been, like many before them, a springboard for a generalized resistance to the capitalist offensive. We handed out this flier at a DSA panel on union work in Oakland California but no response was forthcoming.

This approach of the IUOE is common to all union leaderships. In their desperation for cooperation with the bosses they do not organize strikes that would be effective; that would stop production. This is why the last decades have seen one strike after another which have been under the direction of the union leadership fail. It would be fatal to DSA if our work with the union membership and in the workplaces and the working class were to be part of this.   14 million Union Members: Why Their Leadership Won't Fight.

Those of us that produce this blog see our work as helping in the struggle against the capitalist class for the consciousness of the working class. To be more precise, in helping get support for the idea that capitalism and the capitalist class is destroying life on earth as we know it and if capitalism, which is addicted to profit, continues, it will wipe out the human species either through climate change or nuclear war. 

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