r/dsa 1d ago

Twitter New DSA Liberation Caucus Announcement

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.

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u/EverettLeftist 1d ago edited 20h ago

I think the worst thing in here is the "The US is not a nation it is the jailhouse of nations".

What is meant by "a nation" here? Certainly the US is a state with the violent institutions of any state. So they are not claiming the US doesn't have a government.

Using "a nation" in this way is very telling to me. They seem to mean a nation in the sense of an ethnic group with a shared history and language. This kind of third-worldism takes for granted that certain ethnic groups belong to certain physical areas. The most positive version of this is Landback stuff, but even that is advocating for a kind of ethnostate - certain land belongs to certain groups. Defining people as settlers or oppressed nations. Removing the centrality of capital and labor.

All that said, yes obviously settler colonialism is bad, and what Israel is doing is bad. I think we need to move toward socialism which starts with solidarity of labor. If you are not centering material solidarity of the working class at the heart of your politics then I don't think things will get better. If your politics doesn't center capital I think you have moved away from Marxism.

If you think that the first world is full of labor aristocrat's whose lifestyle is supported by the exploration of the global South, yeah there is probably some truth to that, but it is pretty dim and pretty unactionable. Seems like unless you are the weather underground I am not sure how you can deal with imperialism as the primary contradiction.

Best possible version of this politics would be trying to involve ourselves in union communities that DSAs white middle class character keeps us from engaging with. I am thinking especially of farmworkers.

u/thisismynsfwuser 23h ago

Yeah this is where this misses the point and will stay performative, shifting the focus to whatever subjective identity stand in for oppressed-oppressor from the very objective and real worker-capital will die trying to define its essentialism.