This text was written as part of the LSC Pamphlet Program. It reflects only the opinions of the author(s) and not the consensus of the Libertarian Socialist Caucus.

What is LSC Doing in DSA?

One LSCer's Understanding of Their Caucus

Written by: Owen H, Wilmington DSA

“The Libertarian Socialist Caucus seeks to provide a political home within the Democratic Socialists of America for all socialists who are opposed to the state. We are a diverse body of libertarian socialists, libertarian Marxists, anarchists, left communists, and adherents to other schools of thought within the left wing of the socialist movement. We strive to build an equitable, democratic and open society, and we believe that such a goal cannot be achieved if our organization is hierarchical, bureaucratic, and opaque in its function. As such, we have come together within DSA with two overarching purposes: first, to preserve and advance those tendencies which harmonize with our vision of socialist means and ends, and second, to create a point of contact and organizing between our faction and the broader socialist movement.”
-Preamble to the Points of Unity of The Libertarian Socialist Caucus of DSA^[1]

“What is the Libertarian Socialist Caucus and what is it doing in DSA?” is a question that has been discussed heavily within the caucus, as well as with others in DSA and beyond. This is a natural enough question given that Libertarian Socialist is often associated with anarchism and is undeniably at least adjacent or affiliated. Anarchism is a notoriously anti-state, anti-electoral ideology, while DSA is a notoriously pro-state, pro-electoral organization. These contradictions and complexities of multi-tendency organizing on uneven terrain are real and have expressed themselves throughout the last two years of growth in the caucus.

Any proper analysis must begin with at least a rough definition of terms and context. It is my assessment that LSC is not and cannot be an “anarchist caucus” strictly speaking. LSC is composed of a wide range of anti-state socialists with many influences including anarchism, but also libertarian strains of Marxism, Maoism. DSA is (currently) a non-revolutionary reform and electoral organization. Therefore, between the ideological mix of our members and the nature of the organization we work in, it is not possible at this time to be an “anarchist caucus” in DSA. While many of our members do engage in classic anarchist organizing, such as direct action and mutual aid, when we do this work within the big tent, non-revolutionary, state-affirming framework of DSA, it stretches definitions to consider such work “anarchism.” This is not a bad thing but rather a necessary and honest analysis of how our work does and does not align with the dominant ideology it is associated with.

That dominant ideology: anarchism is a word dense with diverse interpretations of history and futurity. While much of this article explores how we diverge from anarchism, I wanted to foreground where we align and why I and other comrades still think we have complementary roles to play in the struggle against capitalism and the state. LSC’s anarchist inspirations fall firmly in the camp of organizational or social anarchist communism. Like much of the modern libertarian left, many of us are also inspired by the ideas of Murray Bookchin which we will discuss more later. And finally, especifismo, a method of anarchist organization developed in Latin America has been critical to both our self-conception and to our relationships with other anarchist organizations. There are many anarchists in LSC and we move with great respect for those principles even as contact with reality urges us to broaden the range of strategies, tactics, and theories we employ. So why are we in DSA? What are our goals? And if not anarchism, how do we conceive of the theory informing our praxis? While the specifics of these questions have yet to be definitively answered by our membership, it is my intention here to explore them soberly and critically in order to provide a constructive outlook for how the Libertarian Socialist Caucus can galvanize the best aspects of DSA over the next two years and beyond.

Why are we in DSA?

While answers differ member to member on the specifics, broadly speaking there are two camps on this question, though they are not completely mutually exclusive. One is folx who join out of some necessity in their local context, the other is folx who believe in the capacity of DSA specifically to be an active and positive force in the struggles of the U.S. left. As an aside this is not a dynamic unique to libertarian socialists. I personally joined DSA from a combination of my isolated context in the southeast U.S. and the existence of LSC as a space for libertarian socialists within DSA. Without that feeling of an aligned space I could explore, learn from, and organize with, I would have been more reluctant to commit.

Many others are in similar contexts away from the urban areas where niche political sects and subcultures are usually more easily found and founded. The isolation of suburban and semi-rural sprawl and the anxiety of marginalization compound the issue. In these contexts DSA is often the only organization in town left of the Democratic Party for people inspired by anarchism and/or communism and desperate to do anything at all beyond voting. We decide that imperfect organizing is better than no organizing and show up and get to work.

The big tent nature of DSA along with its diffuse highly localized chapter structure provides a lot of hope to this kind of new member for the possibilities of libertarian organizing. The organization also places a lot of emphasis on democratic culture and while development remains uneven, many of the small and mid size chapters especially do foster real participation and deliberation. In addition to all of this is the much touted size of the organization, offering greater possibility for the necessary building of solidarity with various sectors of the organized left than the traditional affinity group or specific anarchist organization models provide. So in short, we find ourselves in DSA largely out of necessity but also because many of us see real promise in the liberatory seeds throughout DSA’s structure, culture, and position in the landscape of the U.S. left.

What are our goals?

I believe this question is the real crux of confusion about LSC both from within and without. While there is still work to be done cohering the caucus around a unified analysis, I offer the next two sections as a sketch of the answers which arise from our circumstance. The immediate horizon of our caucus is constrained by the current functioning of the broader organization we exist within. The fact is, DSA remains an organization heavily focused on electoralism and state-backed reform in stark contrast to the anarchist line of militant mass organizing and direct action to overthrow the state and dispossess the capitalists. On top of this there is the fact of institutional capture by the more moderate and state-affirming wing of the organization, both at the national level and in many of the largest chapters. Yet here we are, many personally identifying as anarchists, in an organization with significant structural inertia in the direction of social democracy and statist reform. So what, then, can our near-term goals be?

It is my belief that the first and foremost goal of LSC by virtue of being a caucus in DSA, is broadly: to win power in the national organization and wield that power in line with and pushing the organization towards our ideals of anti-authoritarianism; and, elevating the non-electoral means of struggle already being nurtured throughout chapters and national bodies alike. In addition to these main overarching goals, our caucus is dedicated to raising the bar within the organization for accountability, anti-chauvinism, and principled cross-tendency collaboration. This is not a settled position within our caucus and is certainly not the main focus of all of our most active members, however it is my opinion that this is merely an unavoidable fact of our context.

If LSC can cohere around the aforementioned short term goals, we can begin to envision a medium term goal of contributing to a DSA that works to empower the people to develop their capacity for direct action and direct democracy. DSA is unlikely to ever be an insurrectionary catalyst but we can ensure that it is an organization that truly works in the interests of popular power. On the national level we can transfer political agency downward to chapters by supporting their autonomous projects and offering guidance. At the same time we can transfer administrative burden upward, allowing National to handle things in the realm of law, tech, comms and the like. On the chapter level we can lead the way on integrating deeply with our neighbors and other local progressive elements. We can and should provide the growing mass of the disaffected and disenfranchised with community, political education, and comrades to stand alongside them in their struggle.

What do you call this?

Many of us are inspired by the especifismo ^[2] school of anarchism and its advocacy for a specific anarchist organization to be present in social movements and popular struggles. It is this author's opinion that this theory is the closest strictly anarchist theory to what I have found in LSC in practice. However inspiring the theory is to many of us though, due to being a “big tent within a big tent” we cannot be applying the theory to its fullest^[3]. In the language of especifismo, LSC is not a specific anarchist organization but a small grouping of tendencies within the political organization that is DSA. I will note that it is my belief that we can and should move closer to the especifist model of organization.
In addition to especifismo, I see in the practical situation of LSC many reflections of the later writings of Murray Bookchin as he embraced broad left coalitions, municipal elections, constitutions, and majoritarian voting in what he called “communalism” or "libertarian municipalism.”^[4] He believed that a 21st century revolution must be one of the majority of the people, growing from a dual power rooted in neighborhood councils and that it must be towards what he called a “rational and ecological society.” Bookchin himself was often criticized by anarchists for his commitment to these positions which ultimately drove him to coin the term “lifestyle anarchists” and disavow the anarchist label entirely. While I do not particularly care about the individual political IDs of my comrades, I do think a similar reckoning with how we conceive of the work of the caucus is in order.

I believe currently our group is functionally a communalist caucus; that is to say, we engage in a broad left coalition doing work that flows into municipal elections, with the goal of developing more and more libertarian possibilities, and with a strong focus on local work. This is not a claim of any individual or group ideology but rather an observation about what is actually happening. I, for one, find much encouragement in this reality. I think the communalist perspective has much potential to synthesize the energy of the U.S. left into something durable and generative. If we are able to come to terms with this, I believe we can cohere a synthesis between our especifist inspirations and communalist reality with the potential to achieve our goals of an anti-authoritarian, bottom-up DSA with electoralism reduced to one node in the ecology of tactics, instead of the one thing all other work flows into.

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You can discuss this on the DSA National forums here.