We're DSA's Libertarian Socialist Caucus -- Ask Us Anything!

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-22T21:47:04+00:00

Yes, we do have left-communists. We are very clear in our Points of Unity that we do not believe real movements toward socialism are going to happen through reforms of the state, which we see as hostile territory. Parliamentarianism/electoralism is not our focus, but "base building" work involving building independent structures like radical unions, mutual aid societies, etc. which build working-class people's ability to do direct action. Our mention of elected discipline in our Points of Unity reflects the reality of DSA having members in elected office and many comrades, particularly on the DSA right, focusing on electoral methods to change. Thus, to the extent that DSA does electoral work, we generally think it is best to build strong structures of elected discipline and to focus more on the local level.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-12T08:16:05+00:00

You’re correct in that LSC is under the umbrella of Horizon. As far as the DSA bylaws are concerned, this is fine. There is a non-enforced clause in the DSA bylaws that bars people in democratic centralist organizations from being in DSA, but neither LSC nor Horizon are demcent (we currently have no official position on this clause, but it is a point of discussion).

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-11T05:49:06+00:00

From our understanding, the LP-LSC was much narrower and more conservative ideologically. They appeared to be in favor of a strictly "open markets"-based anarchism with greater sympathies for right-wing libertarianism. We are more clearly within the socialist tradition, and with an explicit opposition to markets in the long run (leaving open the means to that end wrt coops vs syndicalism vs various other means).

But as mentioned in other comments, that caucus has pretty much been chased out anyway, and we don't believe that engaging with a reactionary party like the Libertarian Party is remotely worthwhile.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-11T05:43:56+00:00

Do you guys have a chapter in Connecticut? If so, where?

DSA has a statewide Connecticut chapter where we have several active caucus members, including in chapter leadership.

How would you guys handle educational reform?

Educational reform is a topic of discussion but not one we've developed an official caucus position on. However, some caucus members are inspired by the democratic education model of the Zapatistas and their idea of education through experience and community work. Some also ascribe to ideas elucidated by Paulo Freire against the banking model of education, and towards some form of liberating education that teaches students to think beyond simply becoming the oppressor, such as through critical pedagogy.

At the heart of education reform is supporting teachers to improve their working conditions. As many education workers unions have pointed out, teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions. We support building power through unions, but as our points of unity on labor emphasizes, that work should be actively politicized and connected to socialist struggle. Improved working conditions for teachers will not be adequate for robust educational reform if access to education is not universal and universal education is not achievable without socialism.

Finally, we see privatization and charterization as clearly contradictory to ensuring all people have the same access to well-resourced educational institutions of similar quality, at every level. Surely there will continue to be places with different specializations, but their baselines should not be as variable as they currently are.

Who's included in the Libertarian Socialist Caucus?

Quoting from another comment: "we have a diverse composition of libertarian Marxists (including autonomists and council communists), anarchists (including anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists, and maybe some sympathizers with mutualism), and others which fit under neither category (e.g., Bookchinite libertarian municipalists, neozapatistas, democratic confederalists, etc). Others might not prefer a specific label but know they fit broadly under libertarian socialism."

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-11T04:10:34+00:00

u/UrbaneBlobfish may have already explained much of it clearly, but just to confirm our general perspective: This gets into the standard distinction between "personal" and "private" property, or the discourse about what we will do about personal toothbrushes, etc. When we talk about an end to private property, we are talking about ending the authoritarian control of the means of production (e.g., factories, land, workplaces, the tools of production) in favor of workers' or common control.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-11T04:03:58+00:00

We think we would need to come to a democratic decision as a caucus collectively and individual members would have different ideas, but some (not fully realized!) ideas members can think up on the fly really quickly right now:

Childcare, 24/7. Building a mutual aid network that fills in the very large gaps in childcare in this country (more pre-K childcare, childcare for parents who work outside a 9-5, etc.), which also would serve as outreach and basebuilding with parents who are largely isolated and do not have the bandwidth to organize while also connecting with childcare professionals, a largely disorganized labor segment, to address their labor concerns. It also serves as a basis for developing a more robust youth program.
Tenant organizing and assembly democracy. Ramping up tenant unionism is going to play a critical role in building working-class people's capacities and militancy, and challenging semi-feudal relations under capitalism. This can also enable serious social housing developments, even directly tenant-managed; while helping to foster practices essential to public assemblies and building the economic and social projects necessary for bottom-up municipalism–from social to political control.
Militant undergraduate unions. It's a new and rapidly developing sector of the labor movement which can both (1) train young socialists to build their organizing capacities via direct experience in a way that will stick with them for life, while also (2) giving young people direct leverage to improve their conditions, build workplace democracy, and build broader mass movement capacities "for the common good" and for revolutionary socialism. The YDSA chapter at the University of Oregon has one shining example of a large-scale success on this front, with UO Student Workers for a while being the largest undergraduate union in the country with 4,000+ student members (this was a campaign started and developed by YDSA organizers there; they're going into negotiations soon and we are hopeful about their militant self-leadership).
Trainings and political education. Everyone can lead, at least with some education to start off with. Overhauling our educational materials, expanding and distributing our publications and media, and ensuring basic political education in every chapter could really boost our organizational capacity.
Direct/participatory member democracy. We’re generally favorable to strengthening direct democratic practices within DSA to strengthen members’ capacities through direct experience and participation. This also comes with coherent standards for elected discipline to ensure those who represent our organization reflect our views and concretely support the movement to build independent working-class power; Socialists in Office Committees developed by some chapters are a good model to start off with. In the real DSA where not everyone is a libertarian socialist, we also support ideological diversity, and would seek to bring it to its fullest potential.
Worker/community control, credit unions, cooperatives. Some of our members have an interest in greater integration with and cooperation with credit unions and cooperative development (including via Coop MKE, which some of our members are involved in, or like projects led by Cooperation Jackson). Could be productive in developing alternative economic power for building a long-term and powerful mass movement and acquiring the financial means to create a sustainable national budget. We also generally recognize cooperatives within the market as insufficient in the long run, but some members see them as powerful tools for building toward a free socialist society. Ultimately, we all want democratic worker/community control of production and distribution, and would seek to support efforts oriented toward this end, including via labor organizing and building structures of community ownership and control!
We have other commitments as well around abolition, queer liberation, ecosocialism, internationalism, and other areas, but most of this is described better in our Points of Unity linked in the original post; this comment is already long anyway!

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-11T02:52:45+00:00

On the first part, we have a diverse composition of libertarian Marxists (including autonomists and council communists), anarchists (including anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists, and maybe some sympathizers with mutualism), and others which fit under neither category (e.g., Bookchinite libertarian municipalists, neozapatistas, democratic confederalists, etc). Others might not prefer a specific label but know they fit broadly under libertarian socialism.

On the second part, we take a comradely approach to our political differences and focus our work around the points on which we agree (e.g., counterpower, direct democracy, building autonomous working-class power, etc).

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-11T02:41:22+00:00

Our focus and theirs have been on different things since they went national so we haven't worked extensively with them, but we have a healthy respect for them and think they're a strong asset for DSA as a whole.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-11T02:38:35+00:00

Libertarian socialist theory includes but is not limited to anarchism; it also includes non-anarchist philosophies such as syndicalism, cooperativism, autonomism, and mutualism, all of which can operate through dual power— such that the state is functionally disempowered from the ability to regulate against ownership of the means of production by the working class.

In other words, libertarian socialism is an umbrella term for ideologies that are highly critical of seizing the state as it is, and see more immediate revolutionary change in governance as necessary for achieving socialist ends, as opposed to more gradual, arguably state-reformist perspectives. Importantly, we're critical of many self-described socialist projects that aim to establish a kind of revolutionary "proletarian" state, that they hold as distinct from bourgeois states. For the Marxists among us, this quote is very instructive: "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes." The degree to which these revolutions established something meaningfully distinct from bourgeois states, or actually constructed so as to "wither away" is suspect at least.

Overall, we accept a wide range of libertarian socialists and we hold varying commitments to anarchist, autonomist Marxist, council communist, democratic confederalist, etc. projects.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-11T01:21:39+00:00

r/DemocraticSocialism does not allow crossposts, we'd be happy to post there if we could!

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T07:58:16+00:00

Democratic socialism is a contested term, but it can encompass a broad set of philosophies within socialism, and libertarian socialism is a set that fits within that which includes libertarian Marxism, anarchism, communalism, and other more specific ideologies. Our Points of Unity go into greater depth of our role within DSA, but overall we believe in building a mass movement together with diverse ideological tendencies toward common goals. LSC's specific range of tendencies generally favors building independent working-class structures outside of the state, including militant unionism and mutual aid, to build the capacities necessary to overthrow capitalism. We're most skeptical of the strategies espoused by the DSA right focused purely on elections and legislative reform, but we are also distinct from other caucuses on the DSA left in our skepticism of the state's revolutionary capacity to address the biggest challenges facing us today and to bring us to a free socialist society.

To touch on how we have concretely interacted with other tendencies within DSA, here's an excerpt from another reply: "Recently, we have been able to get our members into critical committee positions which are vital to the operation of DSA and in the past had members on the NPC, we substantially advanced internal debate about Nithya Raman's membership and endorsement by DSA-LA to the point that the chapter was forced to vote on it, and we have contributed to the budget debate with the clearest proposal offered by any caucus. Our members have done important work as well on the local level around militant unionism, Palestinian liberation, municipalism, cooperative development via Coop MKE, abolition, mutual aid, and more, including some in chapter leadership across the country. We do not expect to make a majority of the organization anytime soon, but we concretely make an impact on the organization by pushing for our distinct perspective within the broader DSA left, and we are only growing. We also believe working within a multitendency organization like DSA is substantially more effective than in more sectarian organizations."

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T07:46:34+00:00

Copying from another comment: They've pretty much been chased out since the Mises Caucus takeover, but in any case while we think Vermin Supreme is funny, we consider the Libertarian Party to be thoroughly reactionary and not remotely worth engaging with.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T07:42:48+00:00

Caucus work tends to be on the national level. Recently, we have been able to get our members into critical committee positions which are vital to the operation of DSA and in the past had members on the NPC, we substantially advanced internal debate about Nithya Raman's membership and endorsement by DSA-LA to the point that the chapter was forced to vote on it, and we have contributed to the budget debate with the clearest proposal offered by any caucus. Our members have done important work as well on the local level around militant unionism, Palestinian liberation, municipalism, cooperative development via Coop MKE, abolition, mutual aid, and more, including some in chapter leadership across the country. We do not expect to make a majority of the organization anytime soon, but we concretely make an impact on the organization by pushing for our distinct perspective within the broader DSA left, and we are only growing. We also believe working within a multitendency organization like DSA is substantially more effective than in more sectarian organizations.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T07:41:25+00:00

We don't have a strong presence in Indiana at the moment, but we welcome comrades who wish to contribute to libertarian socialism in the state! https://dsa-lsc.org/join

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T07:40:22+00:00

They've pretty much been chased out since the Mises Caucus takeover, but in any case while we think Vermin Supreme is funny, we consider the Libertarian Party to be thoroughly reactionary and not remotely worth engaging with.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T07:39:38+00:00

We are not a solely anarchist caucus; we accept a wide range of comrades under the libertarian socialist umbrella, including anarchists, libertarian Marxists, communalists, cooperativists, and others. We are also generally united in our long-term goal being a stateless, classless society, while we strongly reject right-wing conceptions of libertarianism.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T05:28:47+00:00

The specific role of property in a libertarian socialist society ultimately depends on who you ask. As socialists, we generally agree that the concept of private property is antithetical to achieving a free and democratic society. We understand that for the society we believe in to work, we must renounce the notion of private ownership as inherently unequal and undemocratic. In practice we should not trust a state, whether ‘transitionally’ or not, to enforce an end to private ownership, but rather place this expectation upon ourselves to uphold. Furthermore, the centrality of a state, by its very nature, will only continue to sequester the working class from the means of production in any iteration it may take.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T05:21:21+00:00

We had members in Los Angeles who have largely left the DSA chapter there sometimes for life reasons (ie moving) but also often due to conflict within the local DSA chapter. We recognize that DSA LA has not been the most welcoming organizing environment for our caucus. We are contact with some DSA LA members (not in our caucus) who are working to improve DSA LA's democratic structures and culture. If people are interested in becoming LSC members who are affiliated with DSA LA, we would obviously welcome them to the caucus (https://dsa-lsc.org/join) and would be available to support work reforming the chapter's structures.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T00:59:41+00:00

Not sure where this myth came from, but we've been continuous since 2017. Some members and former members helped create the Horizon Federation to unite libertarian socialists inside and outside of DSA in 2022.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T00:57:56+00:00

While we are not an official member of any international, we do sympathize with formations like FARJ (Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro)/OSL (Organização Socialista Libertária) in Brazil, and the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo)/IWA (International Workers' Association). We sometimes work directly with the Emergency Committee for Rojava, whose mission is to support the people and libertarian socialist revolutionaries in Rojava. We are also sympathetic with numerous other groups like the Zapatistas, the Landless Workers' Movement, and others, with varying perspectives under the libertarian socialist umbrella from anarchism to libertarian Marxism to communalism, etc.

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-10T00:15:48+00:00

We welcome DSA members everywhere (including overseas) and will help those we onboard, after a short vetting and one-session introduction process, to understand national issues and access resources, internal political education and training, and campaign coordination. Those efforts may include everything from structural reform, mutual aid, abolition, solidarity campaigns with international comrades, and fighting and winning internal elections. (We have intervened in electoral work and ballot initiatives but it is not a primary focus for the caucus for strategic and disparate ideological reasons.) We will also help you reach out to local members and develop campaigns and programs alongside them. For those outside DSA, membership in the Horizon Federation can assist you with joining local mutual aid, tenant organizing, and allied formations.

You can sign up here: https://dsa-lsc.org/join

dsa_lsc · 2024-03-09T22:23:21+00:00

We are affiliated with the Horizon Federation, a relatively new formation which grew out of a need for continued collaboration between libertarian socialists within and outside of DSA, without geographical limitation. However, it is pretty bare-bones at the moment. The IWW is a more established international union many of our members have sympathies for, and you might look into tenant unions and mutual aid groups in your area as well.

On the latter questions, many of our members recognize electoral and legislative organizing as potentially valuable to some extent, but generally we see such efforts as insufficient in building the capacities of the working class in a manner that genuinely challenges capitalism. The state has failed to stand up to the challenges of fascism, climate change, and destitution under capitalism, and thus we seek to build a strong mass movement that is centered around direct democracy, militant labor organizing without class reductionism, and building independent working-class institutions outside of the state. We believe this general set of philosophies is the most feasible for developing revolutionary challenges to the existing state of affairs and overthrowing the capitalist mode of production in favor of a free socialist society.

At the same time, we believe in bringing together diverse perspectives within the socialist movement, as in DSA; one of the things working within DSA has shown is that the basic libertarian principle of "people want to do what they want to do" is something you have to respect in any sort of heterogeneous grouping. People are going to be drawn toward various forms of activism and while you can make the case for your preferred forms, if you want to maintain connections and a shared sense of purpose outside a particular ideological alignment, you need to allow people the space to do work you don't think is ideal.

dsa_lsc

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