Why is DSA Divided?

DSA’s ideological splits reflect our divided political terrain

“Can We Meet the Moment?” The question posed by Tom Goodkind in his analysis of the 2025 DSA Convention spurred debate and discussion on the left. To sharpen our collective thinking, The New Liberator is publishing a series of responses, rejoinders, and hot takes. Here, Ben Davis responds.

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By Ben Davis

I deeply appreciate the chance to respond to comrade Tom Goodkind’s piece on the DSA and divides in the DSA convention. While I agree with much of the analysis, I would like to very briefly expand on my view of why these divides exist, and then what can be done to synthesize them and build a mass politics-focused organization that meets the moment against the fascist threat—on the streets, on the shopfloor, and at the ballot box.

An analysis of the results at this convention, as well as the previous one, shows that the tension between the “mass politics wing” of DSA and what Tom calls the “ultraleft” (my view is these tendencies often make ultraleft errors but are not necessarily ultraleftist as a matter of course) reveals a startling divide between large chapters and small chapters. While there are large chapters that favor the more vanguardist caucuses, and small chapters that favor the more mass politics-oriented caucuses, the correlation between chapter size and the vote share for Groundwork and SMC is extremely strong. Understanding this gets to the heart of the divides in DSA that seem so hard to bridge.

I posit that DSA exists essentially as two parallel organizations in terms of practice, based on the political terrain each chapter contends with. In many large chapters, DSA is a party, right now, or a party surrogate, and functions as either the primary opposition bloc or, in New York City, as something more. In these places, the primary political divide is between DSA, which has a measurable mass electoral base, and establishment Democrats. This is the case in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Minneapolis, and a number of other major American cities.

This affects the analysis and the practice of members in these chapters. Their model, then, is the historic mass parties, from the pre-1914 First International, to the post-war mass Communist Parties of Italy and France, to the pink tide parties of South America. These chapters have the potential for a real majoritarian politics and can wield power at the municipal level; the questions they face and the issues they deal with are based on this. This has become even more urgent as Trump has turned his sights on America’s major cities, treating them as unruly colonies to be subjugated by racialized brute force, to which the local establishment Democrats have largely acquiesced.

In many (though not all) smaller chapters (and some larger chapters), DSA is what the German New Left referred to as the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition: a street protest movement, or a student anti-war movement in the vein of much of the American New Left. In many of these chapters—often due to structural factors such as statewide preemption of local government or the broad makeup of political opinion itself—the idea of functioning as a political party with a mass base and the ability to govern at the local level or win over unions seems effectively impossible. To a socialist, outraged by the genocide in Gaza, and without a clear way to engage in politics through elections or within the labor movement, it’s very easy to conclude that the only moral option is a hardline protest strategy. Indeed, since October 7th a large faction, maybe even a plurality of the organization, are now effectively single-issue Palestine activists rather than socialists oriented toward a broad class alignment project based on a program that can move masses of workers.

This is reminiscent in many ways of the New Left in the late ‘60s or the big-tent anti-war movement under Bush: socialism as an ideology becomes subsumed to a single, deeply moral cause. This was extremely apparent in the room at convention. It’s important to note that this is not politics as a flight-of-fancy, or of a naive privileged middle-class strata, but a rational response to the political conditions of much of the country. The drift of unaligned delegates (disproportionately from very small chapters) toward an ultraleft orientation is based more on this experience than a spontaneous movement on the convention floor: it was largely baked in by the previous two years.

We are essentially two different organizations, depending on the chapter. So how do we reconcile? The key issue within DSA since its rapid growth in 2016-17 is how to reconcile an organization that is extremely decentralized, where practical political work takes place nearly entirely at the chapter and local level, with the need for a national organization and movement of the left with a clear strategy. It’s impossible, of course, to win socialism at the level of one city—or indeed even to resist rising fascism, which is happening at a national or global scale. The chief way to build a national-level political project would be to radically democratize DSA, allowing members to participate in guiding the national organization, and to ground DSA members in a conjunctural analysis. Rank-and-file members, beyond the most active layer, need a stake in the national organization and a way to actively participate in its political life. Unfortunately, at convention itself, both attempts to bring mass-level democracy into DSA and to seriously discuss strategy for the political moment were defeated, and the organization tended to focus on very in-the-weeds structural and process-oriented debates.

So, what’s to be done? The best strategy is to throw ourselves into mass work and launch real campaigns at the national level that will bring in masses and temper cadre through practice. In this way, I agree nearly entirely with Tom’s key conclusions in the “​​Living With Ultraleftism” section.

I do, however, want to push back on the critiques of “subjectivism” and the idea that DSA can and should function as a political party, and aspire to be the political vehicle for the working class. While it is true that DSA is fairly isolated from large swaths of class struggle, and primarily represents just one stratum of the working class, and must always be aware of this, there are a few reasons the vision of DSA as a party in itself is important. By a party, I mean fairly simply a democratic, membership-based political organization that has its own program and runs its own candidates, rather than a party meaning a third party in the US context. Firstly, the working class does need a political vehicle, and a democratic one, that unites us all in struggle. Secondly, it’s clear that this positioning of DSA, as an organization with its own branding, aiming to build its own base, in conflict with the Democratic establishment, and with a disciplined approach to electoral work, has been orders of magnitude more successful in building a base for socialism than both electoral abstentionist or third-partyist strategies and, crucially, liquidationist strategies.

DSA’s structure as a membership party has shielded it from many of the flaws that are inherent in the grant-funded structure of much of the progressive left, which by nature gives donors enormous control over the political orientation of these organizations, and limits the ability of workers to engage in actual political activity beyond the realm of footsoldiers. DSA’s comparative independence was necessary for the Mamdani campaign, both in terms of developing him as an organizer, and providing the organizational heft that allowed him to run—whereas a deferential approach to other organizations of the progressive left, who were mostly extremely skeptical of the campaign, would have foreclosed him from running at all.

There is always a push and pull here, but DSA functioning as an independent pole within the often incestous “movement ecosystem” has objectively helped reorient politics, at least within the broad Democratic coalition, along class lines. This of course does not mean that DSA should not be part of all struggles for democracy and against fascism, and in broad coalition with anti-fascist forces. But it does mean that it should do as an independent identity and structure, and that a perhaps lofty long-term horizon of being the party of the working class is a necessary part of the organization’s orientation. This orientation, if approached with seriousness and humility, can work hand-in-hand with mass movements outside of DSA in building class alignment.

Part of what will be necessary for reorienting DSA around mass politics is putting our ideas and analysis out publicly and clearly, which has been a weak point for mass politics-oriented members of DSA. A crucial point will be clarifying the political horizons across the country, and understanding that there is potential even in small chapters and red areas. In Bay City, Michigan, in a county that has voted for Trump three times, DSA members were able to take a governing majority on the city council. With a clear-eyed analysis of conditions, it is possible for socialists to begin building a mass base nearly anywhere.

The most important step for a reorientation of the organization is a real discussion of the present conjuncture, grounded in mass work. Part of why the organization has turned inward is we have allowed it to happen. We need to begin by developing a shared understanding of the present political moment and our long-term strategy.

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Ben Davis works in political data in Los Angeles, California. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign and is an active member of DSA-LA and DSA’s Groundwork Caucus.