NYC-LSC Platform
As the oldest caucus in the Democratic Socialists of America, the Libertarian Socialist Caucus (LSC) champions a vision for the future of DSA rooted in a belief in the self-organization of workers and their communities through direct, deliberative democracy. In New York City, where a self-identified socialist has been elected mayor, DSA faces an inflection point. The social democratic DSA moderates have emerged from the Zohran campaign emboldened in its electorally oriented approach and top-down management style, while LSC and other left tendencies advocate a markedly more participatory, bottom-up organizing ethos focused on building alternative power structures capable of advancing reforms and preparing for the social revolution through direct action.
At the same time, we face a new wave of social repression and oligarchic power that demands we adopt a strategy for combating capital strikes and police and military occupations that threaten to undermine even a modest program of reforms.
New York is brimming with experiments in dual power as the home of countless non-hierarchical, non-state institutions like radical tenant unions, anti-bureaucratic labor unions, mutual aid groups, direct immigrant defense networks, and neighborhood solidarity organizations. Moreover, New York is the site of the country’s leading Palestinian liberation movements. In spite of all this, NYC-DSA is suffering from a democracy deficit. We are arguably the most electorally-focused chapter in the country with a voter turnout operation that rivals the capitalist machine while failing to address the challenges of our own chapter democracy, insisting we are simply too large to manage, and instead resorting to online member polls without meaningful deliberation or opportunities to participate. This orientation weakens the organization‘s ability to respond to new challenges, develop competent leadership, and present a united and militant front in the face of powerful enemies. Only in this way can socialists chart the course and cohere popular forces.
At such a pivotal moment for socialism in our city, what is our role as anarchists and libertarian socialists in DSA? What work should we be doing in order to best advance our grass-roots, anti-authoritarian vision? What opportunities does our position within DSA offer? After membership polling and much internal discussion, the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of NYC declares that to organize for our Points of Unity in the context of the NYC-DSA, our program of action will be as follows:
1. Develop Bridges From Electoralism to Direct Action and Build Local Autonomous Organizations to Fight ICE, The Pigs, The Polluters, The Landlords, The Capitalists, and The Zionists
Our chapter’s impressive electoral operation brings in many people passionate about abolitionist, anticolonial, and local material struggles only to leave them feeling disconnected from the work that occurs in their neighborhoods. We will intervene to change that dynamic through continued engagement with the chapter’s electoral and onboarding processes, identifying people with interests in specific sites of struggle, and helping connect them to groups engaging in that organizing work.
2. Radicalize Those Direct Action Initiatives With Politicized Interventions To Promote Anti-Statist Socialism and Sustain Working-Class Institutions
When people begin to organize alongside their communities on the basis of direct action, rather than by appealing to a higher authority, they acquire a sense of agency that lends itself to a deeper political critique of the state as a means of achieving socialism. This agency is critical in the context of resisting fascist advances on the terrain of culture, capital, and the state. We seek to activate this participatory spirit by engaging in existing centers of organization such as labor and tenant organizations where we fight for internal reforms and engage in collective struggles. We will be present in these struggles to speak with these comrades directly about the libertarian means capable of charting the path to a classless, stateless, moneyless society – a future which social democracy, left populism, and statist Marxism cannot bring.
3. Fight For Chapter Transformation To Turn NYC-DSA Into A Deliberative Democracy
NYC-DSA is infamous for its challenges with member democracy, a struggle that becomes understandable when considering the size of the chapter and the complexity of making collective decisions towards our ambitious aims. We will fight to hold deliberative meetings, let branches have a stronger say in the decision-making process, and bring large-scale deliberation to the membership for an ultimate synthesis and decision. We will agitate, organize, recruit, network, and whip to bring deliberative, rules-based member democracy, proportional representation, and transparent structures and practices to NYC-DSA. In doing so as libertarian socialists, we will help to diversify our social base and provide a concrete example to other progressives and socialists of the democratic direction we want to move towards.
4. Actively Coordinate With Libertarian Socialist Groups to Strengthen Each Other And Win Support For Our Vision
The demands that DSA, as America’s de facto pro-social democracy party, makes of the state are valuable and laudable, but they won’t end capitalism. Meanwhile, radical struggle against the capitalist state is being waged by anarchists and libertarian socialists across a variety of fronts. Without dismissing involvement in elections, we will prioritize organizing and mobilizing our caucus and aligned individuals to join in the formation of dual power and be a conduit for people and groups to connect into that effort. We will build through collective struggle inside working-class institutions and beyond a purely local or affinity-group terrain in order to develop popular power. By doing so, we will demonstrate the value of our strategy to our ideological compatriots through the fruits of our labor.
5. Foster Connections Between Autonomous Groups and Working-Class Institutions to Facilitate a Municipalist Conception of Self-Organization and Power
Communities across the city have formed numerous politicized structures against capitalism’s many forms, such as anticapitalist mutual aid groups, tenant unions, and community defense networks . These formations have helped develop popular assemblies and political programs around tenants and the right to the city, abolition, and municipal budgets that can shape governance and direct social moovements alike. We will work, both with the branch Community Solidarity Committees and as a caucus, to support and network these groups to increase their capacity to draw upon each other, strengthening autonomous groups’ capacity to fight bigger fights and make bolder demands. As they grow accustomed to collaboration with DSA members, we can ask their help in joining DSA for common struggles, in which the more democratic NYC-DSA we advocate for would amplify their voices, helping DSA serve as a shared project of an increasingly larger and more representative cross section of society.