Books: Fabian Holt, Organize or Burn: How New York Socialists Fight for Climate Survival.

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Fabian Holt, Organize or Burn: How New York Socialists Fight for Climate Survival. 

New York University Press: 2025.  229 pages.

Marian Swerdlow 

NYC

Fabian Holt, a Norwegian professor of the sociology of music, came to Brooklyn, New York in late 2019, to write about its music scene.  The pandemic disrupted his plans, and, instead, he ended up becoming active in NYC Democratic Socialists of America (NYC - DSA).  Fight or Burn is about the group and his experiences with it.

 

“I stumbled on volunteers petitioning to get a person named David Alexis on the upcoming [primary for the Democratic Party nomination for the] State Senate race, and they talked about democratic socialism and climate change    . . . The participants were different from the image I had of socialists.  They were not sectarian or intellectualizing.”(p. 22 - 3: All citations are from Holt: 2025)

 

Holt admits, if rather late in his book, “I do not think of myself as a socialist or call for the end of capitalism.  I have not participated in US electoral work before.  I am not a native English speaker and do not have local knowledge,” of Brooklyn (p. 115) “ . . . I became politicized and attached to NYC - DSA.”(p. 120) 

 

So, he’s not writing from a revolutionary socialist point of view, and he may not always know much about what he’s writing about.  For example, he apparently doesn’t know there was an important Socialist Party in the US around the beginning of the 20th century (pp. 8 - 9). 

 

Despite this, his experiences and the interviews he conducted with other NYC - DSA members are a revealing look into NYC - DSA, especially how its electorialism influenced its orientation toward the ecosocialist movement.  His book has important lessons about electorialism, regardless of which group, or where, it is adopted.  

 

Holt’s book is limited to only NYC - DSA: the reader should not assume it describes DSA in other cities or locations. Although Holt himself makes a case for why a book about DSA in NYC is especially relevant, calling NYC an “epicenter of the international democratic socialist movement” (p. 2) and Central Brooklyn “the epicenter of the ‘new NYC DSA,’” (p. 24) I believe it is most useful as a case study of what happens when a socialist group adopts a strategy that priorizes winning elections and passing legislation over all other tactics.

 

The history Holt relates involves two NYC - DSA “working groups,” and how their tactics, strategies and goals interacted.  The first was the Electoral Working Group (EWG). One of its members recalls how it began: a few of them who had been active with a campaign to elect a housing activist for State Senate in 2016 decided, “we can recruit, endorse, and win local socialist campaigns and build the political movement that Bernie Sanders started.” (p. 11)  

 

This group made a key strategic decision: “We want to change the political terrain in NY and we want to do that on the level of the state legislature, which controls the levers of so many people’s lives.  Basic material conditions are truly controlled by this group of people in Albany.”  (p. 164). 

 

The “Proposal for a Brooklyn Branch DSA Electoral Committee” was passed by the branch in December 2016.   It said in part, “  . . . we can use our victories to challenge the billionaire class directly, build the confidence of working class voters  . . . Recruiting socialist candidates to run in local elections  . . . voters can be mapped and mobilized  . . .   Learning and teaching organizing skills like canvassing and campaign planning.” (p. 184)  

 

The working class is conceived as a voting bloc, rather than producers of commodities let alone surplus value, with its power lying in voting, not in withholding its labor. “Organizing skills” are narrowly defined as those involved in an election campaign, not the broader range involved in workplace, community or grassroots organizing.  

 

The other working group was the Ecosocialist Working Group (ESWG) which started the following year, and “became a small and focused space, somewhat removed from the more mass-public spaces in NYC-DSA  . . . Over time, the group developed into a semi-professional entity . . .  ” (p. 203)  

 

In 2019, it reached a defining moment when one of its members pitched the idea of passing laws to expand the powers of a relatively small state agency, the NY Power Authority (NYPA) to give it the ability to build and operate renewable energy and make it “the decarbonization engine for NYS.”   NYPA provides electricity only to public entities, not residential customers or private businesses.  (p. 211) 

 

The book fails to discuss implications for this plan of the special nature of NYS  “authorities” such as the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and the Port Authority.  Unlike other state departments or agencies, they have various levels of autonomy from the State, based on the powers and constraints built into their legislative mandate. Each is governed by a separate board of directors appointed by elected officials for varying terms of office. 

 

The ESWG got to work on a series of bills to change the NYPA for this purpose.  One of them would become the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA). The ESWG conceived of it as the centerpiece of the first stage of “Public Power NY” (PPNY), a broader movement vision of the state’s ecological transformation, and launched a pressure campaign to pass it (p. 194), developing a coalition of community-based climate justice organizations.  The PPNY campaign was elevated to a NYC-DSA priority campaign, and “a lot of effort coalesced around it.” (p. 212)

 

When the first attempt to pass BPRA in 2021 failed, ESWG felt betrayed by politicians who had seemed ready to support it and initially responded with a blockade outside legislators’ offices in NYC and exposing their donations from fossil fuel interests.  But the ESWG grew concerned about these activist tactics, by alienating politicians whose support was needed to pass BPRA.(pp. 219 - 220) 

 

As its way out of this dilemma, the ESWG decided to “electoralize” the PPNY, (p. 218) and that “. . . primary elections are probably the most important tactic that we have . . .” (p. 206). Coalition building, mobilization of community members to lobby legislators, and direct action, were all abandoned as ineffective.  According to the ESWG’s co-chair of strategy, “We couldn’t get past a certain point without having our own people in the legislature.”  (pp. 221- 222.)  The ESWG influenced the decision to run all the 2021 election campaigns on an ecosocialist platform. (p. 219)    

 

Professor Holt, roaming the streets of Brooklyn, came across NYC - DSA canvassers for one of those campaigns. The incumbent, State Senator Kevin Parker, was targeted because, as the head of the Senate Energy Committee, he had been delaying climate legislation for years. (p. 99) DSA lost this particular primary, but it was close enough to make Parker get behind NYC-DSA BPRA and it passed in 2023. (p. 107) 

 

Holt describes the passage of BPRA as “a significant event in the history of climate legislation  . . . [because it] directs the state-owned NY Power Authority to build enough renewables to meet the state’s 2019 landmark targets for reducing carbon emissions, the most ambitious targets in the country.  Also, this is the first law in the country to introduce democratic socialist Green New Deal principles of labor rights, climate justice for indigenous and vulnerable communities.” (p. 192 -3) 

 

Relying on the passage of a law, in and of itself, to achieve all this depends upon an assumption that the state is a neutral body without any class character, and that laws, once passed, are implemented effectively and in the way the bill’s writers intended them to be. Insofar as NYC - DSA accepts these assumption, they do not agree with the traditional Marxist concept of the capitalist state.  

 

Traditional Marxists would expect that in a capitalist country where the working class is disorganized and demobilized, as in the United States today, the government - to put rather crudely -  acts in accordance with the interests of the ruling class, and that if that class had wanted the NYPA to achieve significant reductions in carbon emissions, it wouldn’t have required a battle by NYC - DSA.  Furthermore, they would be skeptical that the NYPA’s Board of Directors would respond to the new law by drawing up a plan for how it could hit those targets.

 

Three years after the passage of BPRA, leading members of the ESWG are frustrated that the NYPA has done so little in response to the law.  A PPNY email in July 2026 celebrates,  “NYPA Considers 6.2GW More Public Power!” but goes on to say “it still falls short of the 15GW we need to be on track in New York State to reduce our emissions, take pressure off our struggling grid, and lower our unaffordable utility bills.” 

 

Furthermore, “so far, they have not broken ground on the Somers Solar project, slated to be the first public renewable project to begin construction,” and “Governor Kathy Hochul is giving discounted power to multibillion dollar corporations,” not to residential customers.  Although the email asks people to speak at public hearings, and donate money, NYC - DSA’s main strategy is to elect more DSA candidates to the NYS legislature. (p. 166)

 

This also reflects the idea that the capitalist state is a neutral instrument, where decisions are made by majorities and then carried out by class-neutral bureaucrats.  But there are visible mechanisms through which this illusory democratic decision-making is thwarted, and the wealthy and powerful play a disproportionate role.  Holt notes,  “The [state] legislative process has been described as ‘broken’”(p. 113).  It’s not broken: it’s fulfilling the role of the capitalist state.  Three people decide almost all of which NYS legislation will be passed in NYS, the governor, the assembly speaker, and the senate president.  The latter two are elected by a majority in the body they lead.  

 

So, for its electoral success to translate into making state law, DSA must get a majority in at least one legislative house, or win the governorship. In January, if all its candidates win, there will be eleven DSA-supported members in the 150-member Assembly, and four DSA-supported Senators among the 63 Senators.  The math is obvious.  This, along with the nature of NYS authorities, cast doubt on how realistic electing more state legislators is as a way to make the NYPA into the engine for progress toward more renewables and less use of fossil fuels in NYS.  

 

However, NYC - DSA remains firmly committed to electoralism. Holt quotes one member, “Electoralism is attractive because it’s clear what power is in the context.  It’s limited but at least it’s concrete.”  (p. 70 - 71) This begs the question of whether it’s part of a strategy that can have any impact on climate change.  Marxists from the tradition that supports independent social movements should be asking whether NYC-DSA’s electoralist orientation will build the kind of broad and powerful ecosocialist movement that will be needed to achieve that progress.

 

Holt observes: “NYC - DSA’s strategy in elections is to win them.” (p. 14) So when canvassers in the largely Afro-Caribbean Flatbush community in Brooklyn found that “[some] people say ‘ . . . what I really care about is my rent and my health care,’” (p.127) and Holt himself found “climate change was not the main grievance of the constituents I canvassed in Flatbush  . . .  their main grievances were crime and health care,”  (p. 223) that would be taken into account in how the campaign was run.  

 

If talking about climate change didn’t resonate with voters, they would pivot to other talking points.  Thus, Holt finds “‘Public Power’ was barely, if ever, mentioned in the canvassing introductions I attended,” (p. 222) and that “ESWG members did not make [PPNY] front and center of campaign communications.” (p. 223) By so completely “electoralizing” the cause of transition to green power, not even the volunteers, let alone the voters, were given a chance to learn about climate change and why it must be stopped.  As a result, the election campaign did far less than it might have to make the volunteers better climate activists, or to spread public awareness of the crisis of global warming.  In sum, it missed opportunities for building a social movement for renewable energy.

 

NYC - DSA’s electoral victories of the past two years have clear benefits for working people.  NYC has the most progressive, reform-minded Mayor since at least 1950, and Congress is about to seat two new members who will speak up for workers and the oppressed.  But the down side is, these victories reinforce NYC - DSA’s electoralism, and even encourage it among other DSA chapters, potentially taking time, energy and focus away from building social movements.  The “organizing” techniques in running to win - hitting on a popular message that will, in a short period of time, motivate the maximum number of people to do one thing: vote - is not the same as the process of building a social movement.  

        

Before the pandemic, in New York and across the country, large demonstrations were organized to raise awareness of the danger of climate change, and pressure government and business to switch to renewable energy.  The pandemic ebbed, but the movement did not resurge, possibly because there was a Democratic administration.  Now, with climate change deniers running the federal government, and terrible heat waves and wildfires affecting millions of people, there is desperate need for such mass actions.  NYC - DSA, as the largest left group in the city, is the force most capable of initiating a coalition for such actions.  However, this is clearly not on their agenda.