Organization Is Our Principal Task! On Socialist Electoral Work
By Sam H-L
DSA caucuses have spent endless time squabbling at the national level about “the break” from the Democrats: when this break should happen, and how clean it should be. Regardless of where you stand, the question remains the same: what should our relationship to the Democratic Party be?
This question is emblematic of the kinds of arguments that DSA is having at this stage in our development: one could imagine this political question having real stakes behind it, but only if DSA were the type of organization whose decisions at the national stage mean much of anything at all. Without a clear and sober analysis of the actual conditions facing our electoral work — both the nature of the Democratic Party and the practical implications of DSA’s organizational structure — the question of our relationship to the Democratic Party will remain untethered from our practical activity. The political questions that we struggle through matter! But they mean nothing without a strong institutional coherence and scientific outlook. Our principal task is organization: building a robustly democratic working-class system to contest power and exercise it. We must not stray from this goal.
As students of history, we know that revolutionary activity