DSA’s Electoral Strategy Works: A Response to Left Voice & DSA’s Left-Wing Critics

My article in Left Voice

Back in November, Left Voice wrote an editorial criticizing the strategy and character of the Democratic Socialists of America. Like many ultra-leftists, the editors accused DSA of being too close to the Democratic Party, urging us to break with the Democrats and pursue a strategy of complete political independence.

I accepted Left Voice’s offer to respond. You can read my rebuttal in the original form on Left Voice, or below, where I have copied it in full. Whether you’re concerned with the debate or not, this essay gives a good view of my political theories on the relationship between socialism and electoral politics, and why I think the ultra-left fantasies of simply “doing a revolution” are silly.

I should also note that the editors of Left Voice clearly felt I made good points that disproved their claims (a few of them were just blatantly false). I turned this essay in back in early February, but they held it until they could write a response to my response. They published my essay yesterday, and immediately published their counterargument. I feel like their rebuttal to my rebuttal didn’t really address my points. As you’ll read, I point out the ineffectiveness of non-DSA left-wing American parties as proof that DSA’s strategy is the best path to socialism. The author of Left Voice’s response, James Dennis Hoff, counters this by pointing out the effectiveness of South American independent socialist parties (which misses my argument that the American political context is unique) and highlights Kshama Sawant as an example of independent American socialist politics. Like Left Voice, Sawant is a frequent critic of DSA. But the same day these articles were published, Sawant began begging for DSA’s help in her fledgling congressional race. I believe you see my point.

Enjoy.

In Solidarity — Joe

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In critiquing the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the predominant socialist organization in the United States, of which I am a proud member, the editors of Left Voice have made several mistakes and miscalculations that are common among DSA’s left-wing critics. Before I address them, I’d like to thank the Left Voice editorial team for allowing me the opportunity to counter-argue against them in the spirit of comradely debate. While maintaining that any socialist is a comrade of mine, I must sternly correct their errors, which, more often than not, arise from a misunderstanding of the strategy, tactics, and character of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The main critique of Left Voice’s editorial concerns our relationship to the Democratic Party, specifically in our electoral strategy. The editors write:

Bernie Sanders’ 2015-2016 primary campaign and Trump’s subsequent victory in the presidential election fueled [DSA’s] rise even further, and the ranks of DSA swelled to over 90,000 members. Many of those members organized to fight for immigrants’ rights, environmental justice, housing justice, reproductive rights, and against the attacks of the first and now the second Trump administrations under the banner of socialism. In this context, the organization has become a household name for socialism in the United States. Unfortunately, DSA leadership has opted time and again to anchor the organization to the capitalist and imperialist Democratic Party — a choice that betrays the expectations of the tens of thousands of people who entered DSA precisely because they wanted a real break from the political order that has failed them and other young people and workers around the world. Despite important nuances, DSA’s main political organizations still cling to this strategy. This is a serious mistake.The bipartisan regime — and therefore the political power of our class enemies — won’t be seriously challenged if DSA continues this course. (emphasis added)

This statement is incorrect on multiple fronts. First, DSA’s electoral strategy is not to “anchor” ourselves to the Democratic Party. We encourage socialists to maximize their chances of victory, whether that’s running as Democrats, as independents, on the Working Families Party ballot, or however else they see fit. When candidates apply for a DSA endorsement, either with the national body or a local chapter, their chosen political party affiliation is considered by the voting membership, but it is not grounds for exclusion. DSA does not “anchor” itself to the Democratic Party anymore than it “anchors” itself to the Working Families Party. Of the twenty-three DSA-endorsed candidates that stood for election in November of 2025, only five appeared on the ballot as Democrats: Omar Fateh, Hanna Shvets, Jorge DeFendini, Daniel Atonna, and Zohran Mamdani. (Shvets is a CPUSA member, indicating America’s oldest communist party is adapting DSA’s electoral strategy.) These five also ran on the Working Families Party (WFP) ballot line. When America’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, voted for himself, he did so on the WFP line, not the Democratic one. It is demonstrably false to say DSA has “anchored” itself to the Democratic Party when 78% of our candidates don’t run as Democrats, and those who do seek the nominations of another party.

The editors also contradict themselves by claiming the bipartisan ruling class “won’t seriously be challenged” by DSA’s electoral strategy. A paragraph before claiming DSA cannot “seriously challenge” the political establishment, they write:

Even pro-Democrat pundits must admit what is obvious to all: Mamdani’s win is a challenge to the status quo. (emphasis added)

The most head-scratching accusation from Left Voice is that DSA has “betrayed” our membership by continuing the strategy that led them to join our organization. The editors correctly identify Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns and Trump’s presidencies as driving tens of thousands of Americans into the ranks of DSA, as did the campaigns of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and countless other DSA-endorsed politicians across the country. At the time of Trump’s second inauguration, DSA had approximately 55,000 members. DSA just crossed 100,000 members, meaning we’ve nearly doubled our size in a little over a year.

Are the editors to have us believe that these 45,000 new DSA members, who joined because they saw DSA electeds challenging the Democratic and Republican establishment, are “betrayed” by the strategy that captured their attention and brought them into our ranks? Please find me one DSA member who was inspired to become a card-carrying socialist through Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, who feels “betrayed” by Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty? The editors cannot find such a person, for the same reason cryptozoologists have yet to prove Bigfoot’s existence. The only evidence they offer for this claim of “betrayal” is a false accusation of censorship. They write:

A few weeks ago, NYC-DSA endorsed a resolution that discouraged members from openly criticizing the Mamdani administration… This was the first of what will likely be many restrictions on free criticism imposed by NYC-DSA. (emphasis added)

This is not true. You can read the NYC-DSA resolution for yourself here. You will see it states the New York City chapter’s goals — Orient to an affordability agenda, Protect our neighbors and our work, Build the chapter, and Organize a strong and collaborative Left — without a word dictating speech or silencing criticism.

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The editors’ incorrect accusation that DSA is betraying our membership is indicative of the long-standing ultra-left, Trotskyist tendency to mistake their criticism of a socialist organization (in this case, DSA) as widely shared throughout that organization, despite all evidence to the contrary. This tendency stems from an infantilization of the working class that portrays them as incapable of making their own decisions. For the editors to accuse DSA leadership of betrayal on behalf of DSA membership, when the leadership is democratically elected, and the members have not voiced the criticisms the editors claim, is to imply that the working class lacks the intellect to make the decisions that are in their best interest. If NYC-DSA members felt censored, they would say it and leave the chapter. If “tens of thousands” of DSA members felt betrayed, they would say it and leave the organization. They have not because they do not believe these things. Tell me, how can one be a socialist and desire the working class to democratically control their workplaces and society, but believe that the same working class is so easily duped? This is the same disrespect that causes some Leftists to claim DSA is “hindering” the creation of a “pure” socialist party, or that DSA “channels” our supporters into the Democratic Party, as if American socialists are mindless cattle led to slaughter. If you believe the working class is too naive to realize they’ve been tricked and “betrayed,” how do you expect that same working class to democratically control their workplaces and the nation?

DSA’s membership and supporters are not being foolishly misled. They are joining and bolstering DSA because they recognize our organization is the best path to build a better world. Skepticism is the greatest enemy of socialists. Americans are overworked, underpaid, and exhausted by the “nothing-ever-changes” nature of American politics. DSA’s success is downstream of our ability to deliver tangible results that shatter this skepticism. The greatest divide between DSA and our left-wing critics is not ideology, but practicality. DSA recognizes the state of American politics and meets the working class where they are. Much like the editors misassume that their critique of DSA is shared throughout our organization, they misassume that their eagerness for a fully independent socialist party is shared by the American working class. Their insistence that DSA commit political suicide by abandoning any association with the Democrats reminds me of how Lenin chastized the German and Dutch left communists for refusing parliamentary participation, which they considered “obsolete.” Lenin wrote:

It is obvious that parliamentarianism in Germany is not yet politically obsolete. It is obvious that the ‘Lefts’ in Germany have mistaken their desire, their politico-ideological attitude, for objective reality. That is the most dangerous mistake for revolutionaries to make.

A similar dynamic appears in 21st-century America. Much like the German and Dutch Leftists, the editors of Left Voice and many of DSA’s critics have mistaken their belief that the Democratic Party is obsolete for the masses’ belief that it is obsolete. Socialists know neither of these parties can deliver the transition to socialism that civilization needs; we also know that America’s political structure is anti-democratic and that capitalism cannot create an equitable existence or ensure humanity’s existence. But the American people, whom socialists claim to represent, still believe these institutions and systems can. Currently, the duopoly is the prism through which Americans understand politics. If you ask any of our countrypeople about politics, they will talk about Democrats and Republicans. Not because they’re stupid, but because that’s the only political reality they know. The editors are wrong to claim there are “hundreds of thousands” of socialist workers waiting to join an independent socialist party as soon as DSA severs all ties with the Democrats. Of the three major political identities in the United States — Republicans, Independents, and Democrats — only the last prefers socialism over capitalism. Potential socialists are not waiting for socialism outside the Democratic Party — they are waiting for socialism within the Democratic Party. Unless we give them a practical alternative, they will return to the false hope of the Democratic establishment. Despite socialists’ reluctance, Americans still vote for the Democrats and Republicans en masse and turn a blind eye to independent parties. The Green Party’s Jill Stein made a bold push for 5% of the vote in the 2024 presidential election, but received only 0.56% — half of what she did in 2016. Meanwhile, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) ticket received about 168,000 votes — a quarter of what the Libertarian ticket received. The lesson of failed independent parties is clear. If we try to court the American working class without meeting them where they are, then socialism will remain irrelevant. We cannot expect Americans to come to socialism. We must bring socialism to Americans.

The great Irish revolutionary James Conolly once wrote, “The seat of progress and source of revolution is not in the brain, but in the stomach.” DSA is relevant and successful because we have shown American workers that our organization is committed to a realistic path to improve their material conditions. We speak to the needs of their stomachs, not the theories of the brain. Our organizing arm, EWOC, helps workers unionize. Our international committee forms relationships with and learns from international socialist parties. And, most importantly, our politicians win elections on platforms that improve the lives of working-class Americans. That’s why Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani are frequently ranked as the top five most popular politicians in the country.

Alternatively, like many of DSA’s left-wing critics, the editors misunderstand the state of American politics. This is evident in their claim that DSA breaking from the Democrats would usher in a new age of socialism.

Without ties to the Democratic Party, a socialist party would be far more appealing to the hundreds of thousands of workers who believe in socialism and the millions more who are fed up with the capitalist system…There already are tens of thousands of activists willing to put their energy into a party completely independent from the Democrats. (emphasis added)

There’s a hole in the editors’ logic big enough to drive a truck through. If there are “hundreds of thousands of workers who believe in socialism” and “tens of thousands of activists” eager for a socialist party with no association with bourgeois parties, why have they not joined PSL, Socialist Alternative, or Labor Notes, which the editors point to as a more valid socialist organization? Why didn’t these “millions” vote for either the Green Party or the PSL candidates in 2024, leaving both far below 1% of the 2024 vote share? In what world is there a secret army of socialists who have refused to organize with any socialist organization or start their own, because less than 25% of DSA-endorsed politicians run as Democrats? Shouldn’t these “millions” who are holding back from joining DSA swell into the ranks of these parties, which the editors view as untainted by collaboration with the Democrats? If the editors’ theory of a reservist contingent of American socialists is true, then we should have seen them deploy their efforts to any of the other socialist parties active in the United States. The undeniable fact that DSA dwarfs all other socialist parties in membership, political power, and relevance disproves the editors’ claim.

In addition to misanalyzing the state of America’s political reality and the ideology of the working class, the editors also misunderstand DSA’s rationale and strategy. They write:

It is impossible to take the fight [for socialism] to the end trapped within a bourgeois party.

Correct! But we are not at the end of the fight for socialism. We have barely begun. DSA has no illusion that a socialist society can be achieved through a bourgeois party. If DSA ever built a critical mass of the Democratic Party, the capitalists that comprise the Democrats wouldn’t just leave — they’d burn it down. Then they’d join the Republicans and block socialist policy through the courts. This is well known within DSA, which is why we operate knowing there will be a time to shed the Democrats entirely and transform DSA from its current state as a political organization into a true political party. But, as evidenced by the fact that the socialist parties that reject any association with the Democrats hold little relevance in American politics, it’s clear that the time has yet to come. This is what separates DSA from most of our left-wing critics. We recognize the limits of American political reality and respond accordingly by meeting people where they are and providing political solutions to their needs. Socialists should be a step in front of the working class, leading them toward a more equitable and democratic society. But we should only be a single step in front of them, so as not to lose sight of them. It appears many socialists in the United States have leapt too far ahead, leaving them unmoored to the everyday problems of American workers and unable to provide immediate solutions. As expected, the more progressive-minded elements of the working class see these distant socialists as unable to help them and return to the Democratic establishment, which at least pays lip service to their concerns, while the more reactionary elements cast their lot with the Republicans.

That is the unfortunate reality that American socialists must grapple with. Attracted by liberalism’s false promise of peace and equality, progressive-minded Americans have watched in horror as the Democratic establishment enables fascists, enriches oligarchs, and slaughters Palestinians. But because the Democrat-Republican binary is all they know, and because electoral abstention will only further Republican fascism, they put their effort into what they see as the lesser of the evils. We can criticize that decision all we want, but we cannot blame the Americans who prefer Democrats to Republicans. Let’s be honest, comrades. Occupy failed. The 2020 Black Lives Matter protests didn’t translate into the policy we wanted. Two administrations have genocided the Palestinians. ICE is occupying cities and renditioning Americans, citizens included. These are political problems that demand political answers. Americans are looking for political solutions, and, for the first time in decades, the solutions they seek can only be provided by the socialist Left. But if we refuse to give the American people what they want out of ideological stubbornness, socialism will remain a subculture, not a movement. If given a choice between a Republican who will lower the minimum wage, an establishment Democrat who promises to raise it (*wink* *wink*), and an ultra-leftist who tells them the minimum wage is a bourgeois notion that will be irrelevant in the proletarian dictatorship, they will rationally choose the only one that has given them a realistic option to a better life: the Democrats.

The Democratic Socialists of America understand the need for political power. That’s why our political campaigns, labor organizing, and mutual aid give people a visible pathway to improving the nation, and by extension, their lives. It is why our numbers have swelled while other socialist organizations’ have dwindled, why a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America was the first to accuse Israel of genocide from the White House, and why a majority of Americans agree with AOC’s long-standing call to abolish ICE. It is also why, as the editors admit, DSA is a household name. That is the irreconcilable fact that left critics of DSA must reckon with: if our strategy of implementing socialism is so flawed, then why are we the only socialist organization that is a contending force in American politics?

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The editors close their essay by encouraging DSA to hold assemblies for anti-fascist groups to debate and decide tactics “with complete freedom to criticize any administration.” My friends, you are describing a DSA meeting. Pop into any chapter’s general meeting, and you will participate in the limitless debate you are asking for. But if the editors insist that DSA transform itself into an organization that fits their designed strategy and tactics, we will not do that.

DSA does not agree with the editors that we need a “new movement.” DSA believes we are the movement. If the editors want to start this new group, they are more than welcome to do so. The repeated claim that DSA “hinders” the creation of a new independent party is nonsense. It’s an excuse made by socialists less effective than DSA to cope with the fact that we are larger, more influential, win elections, and are the torch-bearers of socialism in the United States. I can’t help but feel this accusation that DSA is “hindering” a burst of American socialism comes from a place of jealousy.

To speak plainly, apart from DSA, there is little serious political activity on the American Left. Too many American socialists prioritize proving their version of socialism is superior to the rest rather than proving to the American working class that socialism is superior to capitalism. Left Voice derides PSL as ‘the anti-imperialism of fools”, PSL and the Green Party both claim to have the only socialist in the CA governor’s race, and the manifesto of The Revolutionary Communists of America spends more time criticizing CPUSA than it does telling readers how the party will improve their lives. Of course, all of these parties relentlessly criticize DSA — often while riding our coattails. To be blunt, comrades, this is why non-DSA Leftists are largely irrelevant on the national political scene. You have become the “Not Like That Left,” scolding other socialists for attempting to build a movement in a way you disagree with, but seldom putting your own theories into practice. Too many are focused on “the brain,” engaged in endless, tiresome debates about how your particular form of socialism is better than the rest. There is too much time spent on social media sites owned by billionaires, arguing that each party is the true version of socialism, and those who differ are social fascists, reformists, tankies, campists, or any other insult meant to invoke a similarity with revered socialists of yestercentury. This is strikingly similar to how the Democratic establishment views politics. When socialists claim the reason for their low party membership or lack of influence is the fault of the American people for not realizing how great they are, such as the excuse that the working-class are gullible dupes misled or “hindered” by DSA, it sounds a lot like the Democratic establishment bemoaning American voters for not realizing how “great” Kamala Harris was.

This is, of course, not to say that DSA or our elected politicians are above reproach. DSA does not believe our methods are perfect, nor do we believe our elected politicians are above critique. For example, former congressman Jamal Bowman voted to fund the Iron Dome, and AOC repeated Harris’s campaign lie that she was “tirelessly working for a ceasefire.” Like others, DSA has condemned these breaches in our values. Our position is not to shield our representatives from criticism, but to reiterate that it is better to fight for socialism in the spotlight of the political arena, where our mistakes and flaws are revealed in pursuit of a greater victory, rather than haggle from the safety of the bleachers, where neither our limitations are exposed nor our goals achieved. There is no theoretical way to struggle for socialism. You’re going to have to jump into the fight, getting bruised, dirtied, and bloodied. I fear many American socialists are frequently more concerned with preserving their image as perfect ideologues than working to end capitalism. Such perfection does not exist. There is neither a perfect socialist nor a perfect political party, simply because we are all human. Mistakes, errors, and misbeliefs are inevitable — in DSA and elsewhere.

To close, I strongly encourage a disarmament in this pointless infighting. By now, the ideological differences among Left Voice, DSA, PSL, CPUSA, and the countless other alphabet-soup organizations that make up the relatively small American Left are well known. We will likely never reach an agreement on the endless theories, but we can settle our differences by uniting around proven methods for enacting socialism. Again, I return to the great James Conolly, who tried to end this same infighting over a century ago.

My position is that this union, or rapprochement, cannot be arrived at by discussing our differences. Let us rather find out and unite upon the things upon which we agree. Once we get together, we will find that our differences are not so insuperable as they appear whilst we are separated. What is necessary first is a simple platform around which to gather, with the understanding that as much as possible shall be left to future conditions to dictate and as little as possible settled now by rules or theories. As each section has complete confidence in their own doctrines, let them show their confidence by entering an organisation with those who differ from them in methods, and depend upon the development of events to prove the correctness of their position. (emphasis added)

So come, comrades. Join the Democratic Socialists of America. Let results, not words, prove that your theory is the best way to achieve the socialist mode of production. Or, you can remain external and validate your claims by surpassing DSA in relevance or power. But at some point, you’re going to have to admit that the results speak for themselves. The Democratic Socialists of America are proud to stand by our body of work, warts and all. Our successes greatly outnumber our missteps, and we are confident that our cultural relevance, political power, and growing influence validate our theory of change.

Can you say the same?

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