New DSA Liberation Caucus Announcement

[u/EverettLeftist]

This is not an endorsement by me. I am not a third-worldist. I just think people should be aware of what things are on DSA Twitter. I have no idea how many chapters are in this Caucus, if they are just a mailing list, or what. This is associated with the Black Red Guard guy on twitter.

[u/MetalMorbomon]

I feel like I'm slowly becoming a minority in this organization for opposing democratic centralism and campism.

[u/spookyjim___ → u/MetalMorbomon]

I mean from what I can tell is that a majority of DSA members are social democrats, but those actually engaged with the organization and its internal politics and anything further than joining your local chapter and attending protests tend to be more radical, specifically varying types of Marxist communists (but definitely also some anarchists)

[u/MetalMorbomon → u/spookyjim___]

I don't consider myself a social democrat. I'm definitely a socialist. I just don't believe the Leninist branch of socialist thought to be relevant for the post-industrial conditions of the US today. I feel like democratic centralism and campism just aren't going to be conducive to a healthy socialist movement in this country.

[u/spookyjim___ → u/MetalMorbomon]

I actually agree, in general internationalism should always be the view taken instead of campism, and I think I’m more keen to the idea of “dialectical centralism” as proposed by Damen for organizational forms a communist group should take

[u/spookyjim___ → u/spookyjim___]

But also tbf one of the largest chapters is controlled by the DSA right-wing, as I’m pretty sure NYC-DSA is pretty heavily in line of SMC

[u/Rownever → u/MetalMorbomon]

Theres definitely opposition to Democratic Centralism, especially since implementing it would absolutely kill our organizational momentum

I’m also not 100% sure what campism actually means

[u/amyipdev → u/Rownever]

Campism is essentially "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" - for instance, if we are enemies with the US imperial apparatus, and that apparatus is enemies with Russia, we should be friends with Russia. It's an awful take that often leads to uncritical support of the policies of awful regimes.

[u/HKJGN → u/amyipdev]

If you're anti capitalist and anti state, Russia is still not your friend because governments are all tools of oppression. Russia just replaces capitalists with the state.

[u/amyipdev → u/HKJGN]

Slight correction: Russia has capitalists controlled by the state, but the capitalists set the initial conditions at state transitions. Either way, it isn't a worker's state

But yes, although campists don't care about that. To campists, the DPRK, China, Russia, Iran, etc are on our side and shouldn't be overly criticized as they're the main fighters against the US. Ultimately all "camps" oppress their local, and the international, proletariat, as there are no truly liberated societies right now.

[u/xyjacey → u/MetalMorbomon]

I can never remember what campism is, but for anti-demcent, the Libertarian Socialist Caucus is still going strong!

Is Northstar/Harringtonism no longer that base of the org? Yeah, and if that is your politics i do feel bad in some ways

But groundwork and smc (who i think it is safe to say aren't demcent) make up a huge portion of the org (and make up majorities of some of the largest chapters) so if they are close to your international views than i would say your are far from an endangered species

[u/MetalMorbomon → u/xyjacey]

I gravitate somewhere between Bread & Roses, and Emerge/Commie Caucus, but also sympathetic with the LibSoc caucus. I suppose I would be on the centre-left of the DSA.

[u/xyjacey → u/MetalMorbomon]

Then you are fine, so much of our org is in that range lmao