Earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America’s top leadership met for an in-person meeting of their National Political Committee (NPC), the DSA’s governing authority. The result of the meeting was “Workers Deserve More!”, a rebooted platform for the organization featuring a host of radical proposals. The document commits DSA to scrapping the U.S. Senate, “abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state,” defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and “replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
As more and more members seek election to local and national positions, the platform represents a clear statement of the DSA’s views. Its radicalism, therefore, gives a glimpse into how the equivalent of the DSA’s board of directors—some of whom have appeared to moderate—actually think about politics.
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“Workers Deserve More!” emerged from another DSA committee that spent two months grappling with and debating its language. When the NPC took up the document, its presenter urged the DSA to pass it unamended after it cleared the committee unanimously.
Instead, DSA leadership added four amendments: one on “real democracy”—calling for the replacement of “the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress”—another on police and prison abolition, a provision explicitly naming Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, and a ranked-choice voting section. The NPC passed two of these four amendments unanimously, while the “real democracy” provision prevailed by a razor-thin margin.
“Workers Deserve More!” has revolutionary aspirations. It aims to “win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.” The document makes clear that achieving this vision would require “building a new society from the ground up,” accompanied by sweeping structural changes.
To accomplish that goal, the DSA calls for sweeping political and economic changes, including full public financing for campaigns and the abolition of the Electoral College, alongside the establishment of public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability, and strict regulations on investment properties.
It would also defund the Department of War, close overseas bases, and end all economic sanctions—which would include those in states like Iran, Cuba, and Russia. The platform further endorses universal amnesty for illegal immigrants, and ending “restrictions on . . . marriage,” which would presumably entail the legalization of polygamy.
The more radical amendments to “Workers Deserve More!” were a product of DSA’s big-tent structure, which makes room for multiple political tendencies. This is what has allowed Bernie Sanders devotees and more reform-minded socialists to work alongside self-described Maoists and Communists—the latter of which have tended to push for radicalism within the organization.
The big-tent structure has proved a double-edged sword. It allows the DSA to draw on the political know-how of experienced progressive organizers, as well as the skills of more militant activists at applying political pressure on the streets. Yet that same structure creates real gaps in representation and consensus. NPC member Cliff Connolly noted that “this committee was not multi-tendency. There were several tendencies in DSA that were not represented there,” underscoring ongoing internal friction.
The more extreme members under the big tent tend to push a more militant framework and radical analysis into everything the DSA does. For example, Connolly, a member of the Marxist Unity Group caucus, argued, “[W]e’re never going to have democracy or socialism in the United States as long as the president and the Supreme Court exist in their current form. The whole point of having the Senate, the president, and the Supreme Court is so that, if popular legislation passes through the House of Representatives, the ruling class has these other levels they can pull to stop it from happening.” Connolly pointed to the Supreme Court’s blocking President Biden’s student debt relief as a recent example of this dynamic.
Sarah Milner, a member of the far-left Reform & Revolution caucus, acknowledged that the platform’s more radical language may be “off putting for people.” But she pointed to Woodrow Wilson’s advocacy for dramatic structural change in American governance. Milner said this amendment “puts forward a vision of transforming the functions of the American state to allow for the implementation of socialism.” One of the NPC co-chairs, Ashik Siddique, admitted that “abolishing the Senate is pretty radical and is something that I think more and more people are . . . seeing that as very reasonable.”
The debate over “abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state” also exposed divisions within the DSA. Some factions wondered whether this language could translate into actionable campaigns and demands for DSA candidates; Red Star Caucus’s Hazel Williams, by contrast, described it as a “basic socialist demand.” Siddique argued that the issue required greater nuance, pointing to Black Liberation organizers and “credible communist organizers” who have advocated for community control of the police rather than full abolition.
Milner, who supported the carceral abolition amendment, acknowledged that this position was far removed from the current practices of DSA candidates and elected officials, but maintained the demand was still important for defining the organization’s political direction. Katie Sims of the Socialist Majority Caucus countered that adopting this position would put endorsed candidates at odds with the DSA’s platform at a moment when the organization was pushing for greater alignment with its elected representatives.
Sidney Carlson White, a member of the Marxist Unity Group, argued that the amendment’s drafters had given elected officials room to work toward its stated goals, including demilitarization, weakening police unions, and redirecting police and prison funding toward public services. White emphasized that the DSA needed clearly to articulate its position, “especially as we have taken executive power in New York and are in places where we are now responsible for the actions of the police.”
Williams returned before the vote to express that she was “disappointed by the arguments against [the prison-abolition amendment]” and clarified her position. She stressed, “the abolition of the carceral elements of the capitalist state is a very specific thing. That’s always what I mean when I mean abolish the police. I don’t mean abolish some community force under communism that can sort of hold each other accountable.” Despite the relatively brief debate, the amendment ultimately passed by a vote of 16 to 8.
The NPC unanimously passed the next two resolutions—on Palestine and ranked-choice voting. Francesca Maviglia of the Spring of Revolution caucus sought to amend the section related to Palestine to specify Jerusalem’s importance as the “capital of Palestine.” She argued that this is “one of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” and “a deeply felt issue for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and millions of Muslims around the world.”
Though “Workers Deserve More!” was formally adopted through the DSA’s resolution and proposal process, it effectively serves as the organization’s platform despite not being ratified at the convention. By reviving the name of its current platform, the DSA appears to be carrying out a soft reboot and rebranding effort aimed at energizing and mobilizing the organization this summer.
One NPC member described it as “what a horizon of power looks like.” NPC members made it clear that “Workers Deserve More!” would make its full debut at the DSA’s “Socialists Summit” national organizing conference in Chicago at the end of July.
The DSA’s governing body, on other words, is on board with the platform’s ideas. And they have openly discussed the need for DSA elected officeholders at least to begin to align themselves. As more and more DSA members take power, the group they belong to keeps getting more radical—a tension they will inevitably have to resolve.