Our founding document
By: Spring, Bread, Roses, Momentum Split
Tags: Dsa, Politics, Philly Dsa, Momentum, Philadelphia

February 21, 2019

To the National Coordinating Committee of DSA Spring Caucus,

In the month since the founding conference of Spring Caucus, it’s become increasingly clear to many of us on the NCC that deep divisions exist in our group between the majority of the national caucus and comrades in the Philadelphia caucus. For the purposes of this letter, from here on we’ll refer to ourselves as the “majority” and comrades in the Philadelphia caucus as “Philadelphia caucus,” while recognizing that some in Philly dissent from the perspective of that caucus and there are several others nationally who are close to Philly’s positions.

We have tried now for several weeks now to address our differences openly in the NCC and have encouraged others to do so as well. Many of us have put our reflections on the state of the caucus in writing so that they could be available transparently to everyone on the NCC but frustratingly, we have received no substantial response from the Philadelphia caucus.

At this point, it’s our opinion that four main factors have stymied our hopes of building a unified national caucus.

First, and most seriously, we believe that there exists a substantial political disagreement between the majority and the Philadelphia caucus over the question of our position on exploitation and oppression. The positions of the majority are articulated in two sections in our “Where We Stand” (“Centrality of Class Struggle” and “Against Oppression”) and in the “Fighting Oppression” section of “Tasks for 2019”. We believe that racial, gender, national, and other forms of oppression remain significant barriers to building a free, democratic, and socialist society. We believe that socialists have an obligation to fight these oppressions through class-wide demands that disproportionately benefit oppressed people and through incorporating specific demands that tackle oppression head-on in our electoral and union campaigns and by participating in and actively supporting mobilizations against oppression when they emerge.

In our opinion, this set of politics is critically important to have unity around, as we operate in a difficult environment where criticism of liberal theories of oppression and privilege is immediately discredited as “class reductionism”. After trying to come to a consensus with the Philadelphia comrades on these questions, we have concluded that the Philly caucus remains unconvinced of our approach. Our concerns began with the publication of an article by one Philly comrade in Jacobin which asserted that it is not possible to fight both for class-wide demands and for demands that explicitly address and tackle particular forms of oppression. Those concerns were heightened at our founding conference when Philly comrades argued for removing the “Fighting Oppression” section from our “Tasks for 2019” document. And they were solidified when we learned that the Philly comrades had removed all explicit references to fighting racism and sexism from the preamble of their new bylaws for their chapter.

Whether out of some commitment — as yet unstated explicitly — to class reductionist politics, or simply out of an extreme case of tone deafness on these questions, the Philly comrades have repeatedly in our eyes placed themselves at odds with the rest of the caucus — and the rest of DSA — on these critical questions.

Second, we believe that we have significant differences on how to relate to the vast majority of members in DSA. We believe that it is critical to defend and celebrate DSA’s multi-tendency character, and to develop positive and collaborative relationships with other tendencies in DSA. We were repeatedly concerned when in the weeks leading up to and at the conference, members of the Philly caucus referred to others in DSA as our “enemies”, encouraged us to lean into “caucus warfare”, and posed the conflicts in DSA as between the “normal people” and the “weirdos”. This kind of rhetoric, which seems to be a pervasive part of the Philly caucus culture, is deeply off-putting not only to the vast majority of DSA members but to the vast majority of Spring Caucus members. There was clearly a significant cultural divide between the way the Philly caucus views DSA and the way the majority of the national caucus does. These concerns were also heightened after the conference when Philly DSA leaders put out a new set of bylaws for their chapter that we believe are far too overbearing and centralize leadership in a small Steering Committee. DSA today suffers from an overly horizontalist bent, but we believe strongly that the Philly caucus is over-correcting for these problems.

We also remain deeply concerned that the Philly caucus seems to purposefully neglect correcting the negative reputation they are developing in the national organization. Their sinking reputation is having a detrimental effect on our ability as a national caucus to organize. At times, it seems like the Philly caucus leans into opportunities to antagonize the rest of the organization — for example, when they forbade DSA members from hosting a reading group about a book the Philly caucus had disagreements with and when they launched a poorly-conceived and unnecessary polemic in November of last year against anti-fascist mobilizations.

Third, we believe that there is a significant division in the caucus over the point of Spring Caucus. For the Philly comrades, the caucus seems to be first and foremost about winning specific resolutions at the national convention and winning as many spots as possible on the NPC. For us in the majority, the caucus needs to be oriented instead towards developing political strategy and program, training organizers, and making collective decisions about where to try to concentrate the time and energy of caucus members — while never losing sight of the importance of building a broad and multi-tendency DSA.

Finally, and in part we believe as a consequence of these underlying disagreements and the Philadelphia caucus’s frustration at finding themselves in a minority in the caucus, many things have been said and done on both sides that have led to a breakdown in trust in the caucus. Many caucus members in our chapters noted that it felt at times like the Philly caucus was operating as a “caucus within a caucus” at the founding convention by whipping votes, etc. Several members told us that they sat next to Philly caucus members during the conference and observed Philly members mocking and criticizing speakers from other chapters in private WhatsApp chats.

Concerns about an emerging caucus within a caucus were exacerbated when we learned how the conference was being debriefed in the Philly caucus. The Philly caucus apparently resolved that members of the NCC from Philly should vote as a bloc in debates and that Philly caucus members should begin to intervene in email debates in a coordinated way in order to “reform” the caucus. In emails sent to the Philly caucus list which were forwarded to us, leaders of the caucus there recommended that Philly treat the national caucus “instrumentally”. Most concerning of all, repeated criticisms were made of the national caucus’s supposed turn to “Trotskyism”. The evidence marshalled for this surprising claim included the fact that one member of the caucus had used the phrase “industrialization” to describe our rank-and-file strategy and that the caucus is focused in part on training cadre.

We had some indications of these divisions in the lead-up to the conference, but the conference and its immediate aftermath were a turning point for many of us where we recognized that these divisions were more serious than we originally comprehended. This was in large part because in chapter-wide and one-on-one debriefs, we repeatedly heard from members in our chapter caucuses and from at-large members that people felt they had been unable to build bridges with the Philly caucus. We believe there is a general sense among a sufficient number of members in Spring, ourselves included, that by continuing to be in a caucus with the Philly comrades, all of Spring Caucus will be held responsible for Philly’s decisions, and that positions taken by the Philly caucus will be ascribed to Spring Caucus. In the lead-up to the convention and in our efforts to grow our caucus, we believe this situation would become untenable, and that it would almost surely end in repeated and unproductive controversies with Philly. Despite assurances from comrades in Philly that this will not be the case, we remain unconvinced.

As a result, we’ve now come to the firm conclusion that in the process of building the Spring Caucus we rushed too quickly to merge the majority with the Philadelphia caucus.

Truthfully, this was in part the fault of the majority, and in particular the members from the majority on the national caucus Organizing Committee — Neal M., Jeremy G., Andrej M., and Marianela D. We take full responsibility for this. From the start we didn’t stop to really consider whether or not sufficient unity of experience and perspective existed to bring the Philadelphia caucus into a new national group. At times we heard what we wanted to hear to make it work and rushed to focus on specific organizing tasks rather than engaging bigger political questions. And at specific points we even tried to discourage and avoid political debates in order to avert what we feared might be divisive discussions. At the same time, Philly comrades also need to take responsibility for not participating in the six months leading up to the national conference. By largely absenting their chapter caucus from a long period of political discussion that was conducted via conference calls and email discussions, they did not help lay the groundwork that our other chapter caucuses laid to build a unified group.

At this point, we are firmly against pursuing any disciplinary measures as a solution to our political disagreements in the NCC, such as asking the Philadelphia caucus to uphold the Spring position on anti-oppression organizing in their chapter and enforcing penalties if they fail to do so. We believe that such a path would lead us too far down the road towards democratic centralism and the mistakes of socialist cadres that came before us. Moreover, we see this as a patch fix on real political differences that are unlikely to go away any time soon. Instead, it is our sincere desire to find a way forward that would allow us to work together on specific projects where we share common ground but not on the issues where it is clear that we disagree.

The solution we would prefer — and one which we think actually allows us to do what we all want to do (i.e. work together on specific projects without being held responsible publicly for each other’s larger political perspectives) — involves distinguishing between a national membership caucus on the one hand and caucusing together on the other. We believe this is the only way we can rebuild trust across our group and stop punishing each other for our political differences. Under this arrangement, we believe strongly that it would be necessary for the Philly caucus to voluntarily leave the national caucus as a first step. From there, we believe it would be best to have a month-long cooling off period, perhaps in which some kind of mediation could be sought between leaders of both sides, which we hope could lead to constructive work together on specific resolutions at the national convention — a goal which we all hold in common.

Unfortunately, so far Dustin G. and others have rejected what we see as a viable solution to the problem. We implore him and others in the Philly caucus to reconsider their decision and to do so as quickly as possible. Following this letter, we will wait about 48 hours for a response from the Philadelphia caucus and if they are unwilling to leave, we the undersigned will announce to the membership of DSA Spring Caucus that we have lost faith in this project. We will share this letter to the caucus builders listserv as an accounting of what has happened, including our intention to form a new caucus under a new name using the same documents and organization that were established at the Spring conference.

Again, we implore the Philly caucus to choose this resolution to the conflict, as we believe it is in all of our best interests and the means by which we can rebuild trust, friendships, and a collaborative relationship.

In solidarity,

Abigail G

Ajmal A

Andrej M

Eric B

Jack M

Jane S

Jeremy G

Lillian O

Natalie M

Neal M

Nick C

Marianela D

Melanie A

Marsha N