“We constitute ourselves when we collaborate with others: constitutionalising is just a way of deciding how we want to do this. At a bare minimum, how we constitute ourselves challenges, divides and balances power, and because there is never a point at which our social relationships can be harmonised perfectly, once and for all, we must keep on reviewing how we do this… Because society is always changing, as is our understanding of it, so should our constitutions.” -Ruth Kinna, Thomas Swann, Alex Prichard, Anarchic Agreements, pp. viii

On November 23rd, 2025, the Horizon Federation was formally dissolved by a vote of Horizon’s General Assembly. This decision was formally enacted on January 7th, 2026. The Libertarian Socialist Caucus (LSC) will inherit Horizon’s assets and continue as a caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Horizon as a concept emerged after the 2021 DSA National Convention. This Convention was a pivotal event in LSC’s history, as the culmination of years of internal discord resulting from the wider diversity of political views within  the pre-2023 iteration of the caucus, which our members refer to as “Old LSC”. Strategic disagreements over LSC’s response to the delegate credentialing of Portland members of the Class Unity Caucus resulted in an escalation of disunity over LSC’s organizing strategy within DSA.

After years of frustration from hostility toward our politics by other tendencies within the organization,  a number of disillusioned caucus members finally sought to pursue a direct break with DSA. Many wanted to shift direction to organizing solely outside of DSA in new, potentially more promising organizations such as Symbiosis, and some went as far as to openly degrade any ongoing interaction or relationship to LSC or DSA, often disrupting what productive organizing work was ongoing, or levying personal attacks against members with differing views. For most who were in LSC at the time, these events were simply a bridge too far. Many left outright, while others left over time. Some former members nonetheless professed a desire to maintain the ties they had built with LSC, despite ceasing their personal political involvement in DSA. The Horizon Federation was the compromise.

In its ideal form, Horizon was intended as a gathering place of LSC and like-minded libertarian socialist organizations for mutual work and communication. However, that ideal never came to be. The desired Federation was, even at its height, merely a front group of LSC, and was unable to actualize the federation of movements that its founders had envisioned. Though at one point it enjoyed input and participation from a few libertarian socialists outside DSA, it never became a collaboration of outside groups working toward the same goals. What groups did emerge and “federate” with Horizon often had narrow points of contact that created brittle relationships. At worst, Horizon was a shell, only created to facilitate communication with former LSC members. We never built a true coalition, nor the structure needed to sustain one. Horizon’s bylaws were essentially a political document created in strife; a tenuous compromise, yielding to every possible perspective by its founder members.. Instead of serving as a clear and unobtrusive description of structure, in practice the Horizon bylaws were dense, arcane, and confusing to most of its members. After many of the individuals who had pushed the hardest for Horizon’s creation ceased their involvement, what remained of Old LSC was left adrift with a messy internal structure that failed to suit its interests or needs.

Frustrated with this cumbersome framework, the Horizon members who remained in DSA simply re-constituted LSC anyway as a “circle” of Horizon. This project was known as the “Caucus Revamp.” Shortly afterward, at the 2023 Convention, LSC received an infusion of newly involved organizers— “New LSC”— who identified more with the prospect of continuing to engage in DSA than the confusing and underutilized apparatus of Horizon. Over time, this dynamic only accelerated. Horizon’s General Assemblies routinely failed to make quorum. Its Standing Committee, Horizon’s de jure executive, struggled to maintain basic membership and participation. The LSC Circle made up more than 75% of  Horizon’s active membership, while Horizon struggled to independently sustain itself. This state of affairs was not improved by a late effort to revise Horizon’s bylaws, which proved to be a major undertaking that was ultimately never fruitful. Ironically, many of the same dynamics that plagued the Symbiosis Federation and led to its collapse also emerged within Horizon. Horizon lacked binding ties motivating involvement between members, work was still abandoned and left to a small, overwhelmed core, and the majority of Horizon’s members placed more of their focus on smaller, more immediate struggles. These issues did little to address a largely hypothetical superstructure that still lacked a compelling raison d’être, especially problematic at a time when LSC was growing more active, productive, and prominent within DSA, especially given the enthusiasm we’ve received around the program and candidates we offered at the 2025 DSA Convention.

There are many lessons for us as members of LSC and as libertarian socialists to glean from Horizon’s dissolution. Importantly, this is less an end, and more a cessation of a pretense which served neither our caucus nor wider libertarian socialist projects. Horizon’s biggest flaw was in its failure to nurture an independent identity from LSC. Horizon didn’t establish a separate presence from LSC in communications or strategy, and most of its members were only in Horizon by default, as LSC members. Horizon lacked projects that were materially distinct from LSC. Most damning, rather than forming organic, independent, and mutually-beneficial connections with other organizations, the expectation of political and activity commitments, submission to internal membership lists, and Discord participation, all baked into Horizon’s structure from the outset, proved a bridge too far for many organizers outside Horizon who had been careful to forge their own independent political identities and operational security standards. Horizon failed to provide meaningful incentives for other organizations to federate, whose Horizon participation would impact their autonomy and take focus, time, and energy away from projects that they saw as higher priorities, for little in return.

This approach to organization was frankly juvenile, and significantly more optimistic than the reality of how organizations and coalitions truly collaborate or benefit from cooperation. True collaboration requires effectively communicating with other groups before lasting political and strategic expectations can be established, not siloing ourselves before an effective movement has been built. For us to create an effective federation, or even a coalition, we need to be willing to communicate with different established organizations on our purpose together, and not solely define those objectives on our own. A true and lasting federation of organizations cannot just be declared unilaterally before such a discussion has even been attempted.

One encouraging sign we’ve recently seen was in the response we’ve received to our 2024 Letter to the Libertarian Left, which many organizations have shared, and others, such as the Black Rose Anarchist Federation and LIZA, have critically engaged with. This kind of interaction was something that LSC was not effective at as part of Horizon, the main structure we’d previously associated with organizing projects external to DSA. It is our hope that we can start to more proactively establish lasting political dialogue with others who are open to discussion and collaboration at the current stage of our organizations’ individual politics, without false pretenses of federation. We as a formation should also remain open to adapting and further developing our own organizing strategies in response to the feedback we receive from those outside of our membership. This cannot happen if we are unwilling to solicit or receive such feedback to begin with.

Internally, while much of Horizon’s brief history was beset by failure, this period has been important as a learning experience for how we should constitute ourselves. Ultimately, there needs to be better organizational synthesis in our activity between top-level administrative work and bottom-up communication between members if we are to avoid replicating the same mistakes within LSC that were experienced in Horizon. We have to ensure, when people join our caucus, that members accept the call for active involvement and meaningful contribution to our activities, rather than allowing cadres to form through inaction.

If we cannot do that, we can’t grow a movement, and we certainly can’t provide a meaningful contribution to our organizing presence, whether internally or externally. In dissolving Horizon, we now have a clearer picture of how our approach needs to adapt, both in how we relate to other organizations and in how we maintain our purpose and direction within the Democratic Socialists of America. As LSC turns a new page in its history, we must remain conscious of our past failings, and be willing to continue to engage them as we improve and grow.

Contact us: lsc.dsa.lux@gmail.com

Join LSC: dsa-lsc.org/join