Democratic Socialists of America

{{USpolitics}}The '''Democratic Socialists of America''' ('''DSA''') are the largest [[socialist]] organization in the [[United States]].  The organization claims more than 80,000 members, about 14% less members than their peak in 2020, but still more than they had in 2015.<ref>[https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/quit-dsa-gaza-israel/# "Why I Just Quit DSA]</ref> The DSA is not a registered political party in any state or nationally; instead, it is a 501(c)(4) organization to promote general welfare, engage in mutual aid and direct action, and educate about single-payer healthcare, free college, and opposition to [[free trade]] deals.<ref>http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-demsocialists-idUSKBN16014M</ref> The group grew primarily as a result of [[Bernie Sanders]]' 2016 and 2020 runs, where he explicitly promoted 'Democratic Socialism', verbatim, repeatedly on a national stage, despite not being a member of the DSA.

Three members of US Congress are at least nominally members of DSA, and are also all Democrats: Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, Greg Casar, and Rashida Tlaib.  However, the first two have increasingly tenuous relations with the DSA.  The DSA publicly withdrew endorsement of AOC in 2024 due to AOC prioritizing the strength of the Democratic Party over left wing causes and organizations, along with her positions relating to Israel/Palestine.<ref>https://www.dsausa.org/blog/ocasio-cortez-is-committed-to-the-democratic-party-not-dsa/</ref><ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/aoc-dsa-endorsement.html</ref>  Greg Casar has also severed electoral relations with his local DSA over Israel/Palestine issues and his local DSA, in turn, has refused to work with his campaign.<ref>https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2022-02-11/greg-casar-dsa-and-palestine-will-it-matter/</ref>

501(c)(4)s are not legally allowed to spend the majority of their efforts on political or electoral activity.  But in the electoral capacity the DSA operates, the DSA supports Democrats and independent candidates who promote views established by the DSA.  They are legally allowed to support third party candidates but choose not to.  Also, the DSA cannot run their own candidates under their own party line, unlike their cousin the [[SPUSA|Socialist Party USA]], due to them not being registered as a formal political party.  

==History==
The DSA was founded in 1982 after a merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), which originated as a splinter of the Social Democratic Party of America, and the New American Movement, the successor organization of Students for a Democratic Society. The DSA took a position as a sort-of lobbying group seeking to pressure the Democratic Party to move left and has endorsed Democratic candidates for president.

While some other industrialized countries have had strong support for democratic socialism for a long time, this political movement has not been particularly popular in the United States for many reasons. American labor unions have traditionally been focused on wages and working conditions and have never really been extensions of democratic socialism. It did not help that democratic socialists opposed America's entry into World War I, and the backlash was intense. In the years after World War II, widespread prosperity diminished the appeal of socialism for most Americans. Furthermore, a number of "socialist" ideas were adopted into mainstream American politics, as can be seen in the introduction of many government programs, such as Social Security and Medicare. Such programs are not called "socialism," except by critics. It was not until the Great Recession of 2007-2008, which resulted in dramatic loss of income and soaring economic inequality, that democratic socialism made a comeback, starting with [[Bernie Sanders]] running for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2016.<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-socialism-ever-have-its-moment-in-u-s-elections Is Socialism Having Its Moment in U.S. Elections?] PBS ''Newshour''. July 29, 2018. </ref>

<!--The party received a lot of publicity from wingnuts trying to attach the socialist label to the [[Obama]] administration.<ref>http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-11-01/opinion/chi-perspec1101socialismnov01_1_countercyclical-policies-moderate-democratic-president-inequality-and-insecurity</ref> The DSA would remain static until the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, which saw [[Donald Trump]] elected president. Many supporters of [[Bernie Sanders]], disaffected by the two party system, as well left-leaning progressives, ran to join organization. Recent growth for the DSA is also attributed to the popular podcast, ''Chapo Trap House'', whose hosts and members usually also use the red rose emoji on Twitter.<ref>A profile in The New Yorker describes the Chapo hosts as "gleeful vulgarians" who refuse to be "handicapped by civility.” [http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/what-will-become-of-the-dirtbag-left What Will Become of the Dirtbag Left? :The gleeful vulgarians of “Chapo Trap House” fight for irony in the age of Trump]. Chapo is also popular in the UK among supporters of Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, and [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/23/chapo-trap-house-leftwing-breitbart has been compared to a leftist version of Breitbart].</ref> -->
In the 2017 off-year elections, 15 DSA members were elected to office under Democratic and independent tickets, including a Marine veteran being elected to the Virginia House of Delegates as a Democrat.<ref>http://www.dsausa.org/15_dsa_members_elected</ref>

Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez was first elected the US House of Representatives in 2018 as a Democrat with support from multiple organizations including the DSA, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, and Brand New Congress, among others.  While AOC was a member of DSA at the time of her election, Justice Democrats were the group that recruited her for office.<ref>https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/04/the-insurgents-behind-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-224542/</ref>

In the 2019 off-year elections, six members to the Chicago City Council were members of the DSA,<ref>https://abc7chicago.com/politics/chicago-city-council-election-democratic-socialists-gain-seats-on-chicago-city-council/5231017/ Democratic Socialists gain seats on the Chicago City Coucil</ref> and half a dozen city officeholders across the country were also members.<ref>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7x5amx/democratic-socialists-had-a-pretty-good-election-night Democratic Socialists had a pretty good night</ref>

In 2020, due to the [[2019-20 COVID-19 outbreak|COVID-19 pandemic]] and the economic chaos that ensued, the DSA saw an increase in ten thousand new members over two months.<ref>[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/dsa-growing-during-coronavirus/611599/ Thousands of Americans have become socialists since March]</ref> In 2020, DSA members has victories in down-ballot elections as Democrats and indepedents, including a slate of five candidates being re-elected for the New York legislature<ref>[https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/nyc-dsa-slate-democratic-socialists-america New York's successful socialist slate shows the left should think big]</ref> and the defeat of a 35 years incumbent by a progressive challenger in West Philadelphia.<ref>[https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/06/rick-krajewski-wins-election-penn-graduate-west-philadelphia Progressive Penn grad defeats incumbent to represent West Philadelphia in the statehouse]</ref>

==Relationship with the Democratic Party==
The group has a complex relationship with the [[Democratic Party]], with many members being part of both groups to try to pull the Democratic Party to the left. However, many DSA members want independence from the [[capitalism]] associated with both major parties and are associated with other parties or none at all. How the DSA should interact with the Democratic Party is frequently debated inside the organization, and sometimes there's a good amount of heat over it.

About half of the 15 DSA members elected in 2017 were Democrats with the other half being independents.<ref>http://www.dsausa.org/15_dsa_members_elected</ref> In 2018, almost all of the National DSA's endorsements were for Democrats,<ref>https://twitter.com/DemSocialists/with_replies</ref> although the National DSA tends to endorse only members that have a high chance of winning, not all candidates (which isn't a good representative of the whole organization anyway).

==Ideology==
The DSA is a multi-tendency organization<ref group=note>It means that it doesn't have a strigent party line where any deviations mean you're either a bourgeois infiltrator or a revisionist western spy. While leftist, such groups are very ideologically diverse, only aligning on set principles of economic justice, civil liberties, workers' rights and anti-imperialism</ref> composed of social liberals radicalized by Trump, social democrats who want America to stop being the laughing stock of the developed world, democratic socialists who want to use social democracy as a stepping stone towards worker-owned cooperatives, eco-socialists, left revolutionaries and all kinds of anarchism (with the exception of the [[Anarcho-capitalism|fake version]]). This gives the party a heads up over other leftist parties who are usually more concerned with ideological purity than actually achieving any kind of progress.

The term democratic socialism is extremely vague,  and can designate forms of socialism that want to achieve their goals through reforms such as nationalisations, as well as [[communist]] movements. Historically, it has been used to describe [[socialism#Reformism|reformist socialism]] and classical (old-school) social-democratic movements separate from communism. Because of this, some political scientists and dictionary nazis take issue with the contemporary use of the term.

{{cquote|Democratic socialism, in reality, actually is post-capitalist. It's a post-capitalism philosophy. So, in other words, it doesn't co-exist with capitalism, it's not a mixed market economy, it's post-capitalist. So, what that means is, social ownership of the means of production.|||[[Kyle Kulinski]]<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07xFULkgBoI "Democratic Socialism vs Social Democracy"]</ref>}}

Regardless of the philosophical arguments, democratic socialism is presently seeking traditionally progressive policies like [[Universal health care|UHC]], tuition free education, [[Union|union rights]] et al. However it should be noticed that two elected self-proclaimed socialists, Bernie Sanders from Vermont<ref>https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/an-economic-agenda-for-am_b_6249022.html</ref><ref>https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/worker-owned-businesses-2014</ref> and Lee Carter<ref name="Carter">http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/socialist-who-won-pivotal-swing-district-says-democrats-must-confront-corporate</ref> from the Virginia House of Delegates both support workplace democracy and employee ownership.

Thanks to its recent growth, the DSA has taken bold steps such as withdrawing from the utterly corrupt Socialist International,<ref>[https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/dsausa/pages/4039/attachments/original/1510787414/Public_Document_of_2017_Convention_Resolutions.pdf?1510787414 "2017 Convention resolutions"]</ref> support for the BDS movement and reparations for slavery<ref>[http://www.leftvoice.org/DSA-Votes-for-BDS-Reparations-and-Out-of-the-Socialist-International "DSA votes for BDS, reparations and out of the Socialist International"]</ref> as well opposing the  [[Conservative correctness| politically correct Nazis]] of the [[Alt-Right]].<ref>[https://www.dsausa.org/statements/charlottesville/ "Statement on Nazi violence in Charlottesville"]</ref>

===Support for authoritarian leaders===
The DSA often shows its [[hypocrisy|belief in the democratic process]] by supporting authoritarian figures around the world. On an official statement on [[Cuba]], while comdemning the US embargo on the island, the DSA has also claimed that they are "opposed to U.S. imperialism and to economic sanctions or other actions that would undermine the self-determination of the Cuban people"<ref>[https://international.dsausa.org/statements/statement-on-cuba/ Statement on Cuba]</ref> ironically ignoring that Cuba is a brutal dictatorship with no "self-determination" whatsoever. Some members of the DSA have also shown fondness for [[Vladimir Lenin]]. The former co-chair of the Young DSA for instance wrote a puff piece on Lenin, arguing that "there is much to learn" from him.<ref>https://y.dsausa.org/the-activist/lenins-relevance-today/ Lenin’s Relevance Today]</ref>

The DSA supported Venezuelan dictator [[Nicolás Maduro]] after he rigged an election, stating that they could "verify that the election was conducted freely and fairly",<ref>[https://archive.is/2tpZM DSA IC Congratulates President Maduro on His Electoral Re-election]</ref> also translating a text that calls [[Hugo Chávez]], Venezuela's former leader and the cause of much of the turmoil in the country, "a world-historical leader".<ref>[https://international.dsausa.org/statements/leader-hugo-chavez Hugo Chávez: A World-Historical Leader]</ref> On the eve of Russia's invasion of [[Ukraine]], the DSA published another work that would probably make [[Marjorie Taylor Greene]] proud, stating that "NATO is a mechanism for US-led Western imperialist domination, fueling expansionism, militarization, and devastating interventions."<ref>[https://international.dsausa.org/statements/no-war-with-russia/ DSA IC opposes US militarization and interventionism in Ukraine and Eastern Europe and calls for an end to NATO expansionism]</ref> The text doesn't mention Russia's dictator [[Vladimir Putin]] even once. The DSA also came in defense of Mexico's former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, when the mainstream media was accusing him of causing a democratic backslide in his country.<ref>[https://international.dsausa.org/statements/us-media-morena-mexico/ DSA IC rejects U.S. media war against MORENA and Mexico]</ref>

==Notable members==
*[[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]] (NY-D), member of the US House of Representatives (NY-14).<ref>[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/27/17509604/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-democratic-socialist-of-america Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Democratic Socialists of America member. Here’s what that means.] ''Vox''. June 27<sup>th</sup>, 2018.</ref>
*{{wpl|Greg Casar}} (TX-D), member of the US House of Representatives 
*{{wpl|Rashida Tlaib}} (MI-D), member of the US House of Representatives (MI-13).<ref>[https://www.thedailybeast.com/rashida-tlaib-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dsa-democratic-socialists-of-america There Will Now Likely Be Two Democratic Socialists of America Members in Congress] ''The Daily Beast''. August 8<sup>th</sup>, 2018.</ref>
*{{wpl|Kaniela Ing}} (HI-D), ex-member of the [[Hawaii]] House of Representatives.<ref>[https://twitter.com/dsahonolulu/status/1022093302504419330 Tweet from DSA's Honolulu chapter.] July 25<sup>th</sup>, 2018.</ref>
*{{wpl|Lee Carter (politician)|Lee Carter}} (VA-D), former member of the [[Virginia]] House of Representatives.<ref>https://newrepublic.com/article/145727/socialist-beat-one-virginias-powerful-republicans</ref>
*{{wpl|Rob Delaney}}, comedian and actor.<ref>http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/how-democratic-socialists-are-building-on-bernies-momentum-w465452</ref>
*{{wpl|Tim Heidecker}}, comedian and actor.<ref>https://twitter.com/timheidecker/status/1009257078643351552</ref>
*[[Noam Chomsky]], nearly dead academic and activist.<ref>http://www.dsaboston.org/about/</ref>
*[[Cornel West]], activist.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20180419052144/http://www.dsausa.org/cornel_west Cornel West - Democratic Socialists of America]</ref>
*{{wpl|Ed Asner}}, Actor and former SAG President. Asner was also involved with DSA's predecessor DSOC in the 70s.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Asner#Political_views</ref>
*{{wpl|Cori Bush}} (MO-D), former member of the US House of Representatives (MO-01)<ref>Cori Bush, [https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/08/cori-bush-congress-socialism Cori Bush on How She Took on the Political Establishment and Won], Jacobin</ref>
*{{wpl|Jamaal Bowman}} (NY-D), former member of the US House of Representatives (NY-16)<ref>Jamaal Bowman, [https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/jamaal-bowman-eliot-engel-democratic-party “If You Want to Call Me a Socialist Then Call Me a Socialist”], Jacobin</ref>
*[[Zohran Mamdani]] (NY-D), mayor of [[New York City]]

[[Bernie Sanders]] is popular in the DSA but is not a member. There's an [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7x18SmhmJstaTdkNVBLZDRDV0E/view?pli=1, 2014 article by the Madison DSA stating he is], but this was just a typo.<ref>http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/09/exclusive-democratic-socialists-of-america-bernie-sanders-membership-was-a-typo/</ref> Of course, [[KeyWiki]] still cites him as one, though.<ref>http://keywiki.org/Bernie_Sanders</ref>

==Future==
The DSA has three members of US Congress as dues-paying members, all of whom are Democrats,<ref group=note>Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Greg Casar</ref> down from over 5 a few years ago, with two of the three having tenuous relations.  In the past about twelve state legislators and nine confirmed<ref group=note> The media tends to portray independent progressive groups like the Working Families party as "democratic socialist", which creates confusion. This article only covers actual members of the DSA</ref> municipal seat holders were members of the DSA.

Members are discouraged from running as third party candidates and the party has no notable history of such endorsements, although some members have run as independents for political office.

==See also==
*[[Jacobin (magazine)|Jacobin]] - A socialist magazine which maintains discussion with the DSA and arguably shares ideological space

==External links==
* [http://www.dsausa.org The DSA website]
* {{wpa|Democratic Socialists of America}}
* {{wpa|Category:Members of the Democratic Socialists of America}}

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

{{USPoliticalParty}}

[[Category:Socialism]]
[[Category:United States politics]]

Categories: Socialism, United States politics