Dr. Miklos K. Radvanyi
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) was founded in 1982 as a coalition of several left-wing traditions and thus far it has not become a political party. Its ancestry, however, reaches back to the 19th and early 20th centuries through many overlapping movements: Marxist organizations; immigrant labor associations; agrarian populism; Christian socialism; trade-union militancy; municipal reform movements; the Socialist Party of America. The most famous American socialist leader was Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president five times. The Socialist Party of America once elected mayors, state legislators, and members of Congress, while socialist administrations in cities such as Milwaukee developed a reputation for practical municipal government – public sanitation, utilities, parks, and honest administration. This tradition became known, sometimes dismissively, as “sewer socialism.” Initially, the Russian Revolution of 1017, created a deep division between “Democratic Socialists” and “Communists.” By the 1960s, the old Socialist Party of America had its internal divisions about three issues: How should socialists relate to the Democratic Party? How should they respond to the Vietnam War? Should anti-Communism remain the central principle of socialist foreign policy? One wing of the party emphasized opposition to Soviet Communism and cultivated close relations with anti-communist labor leaders. Its more moderate democratic-socialist wing, associated with MIchael Harrington, opposed both Soviet dictatorship and American militarism. In the early 1970s, the Socialist Party of America fragmented. The majority renamed itself Social Democrats, USA, becoming increasingly associated with staunch anti-Communism, the labor establishment, and some members even moved toward neoconservatism. Clearly, Michael Harrington was the central figure to the creation of modern American democratic socialism. His Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) became one of the two principal organizations that merged to form the DSA. His 1962 book The Other America drew national attention to poverty that, according to him, remained concealed beneath postwar prosperity. In essence, his Socialism anti-Stalinist, humanistic, reformist in practice, socialist in its long-term aspirations, and started to advocate “realignment strategy” with the Democratic Party. The other parent organization was the New American Movement, or NAM. NAM emerged in the early 1970s from the disintegration of the New Left, particularly Students for a Democratic Society. Whereas DSOC represented an older social-democratic, labor-oriented tradition, NAM reflected the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. NAM was generally more sympathetic than the DSOC to Marxist analysis and revolutionary language.
In March 1982, DSOC and NAM merged to form the Democratic Socialist of America. Yet, the fundamental ideological ambiguities of both movements remained: Was DSA primarily trying to create a more generous welfare-state Capitalism, or did it seek ultimately to replace Capitalism altogether? Under the Reagan era, the DSA remained politically in suspended animation. For the DSA, the years between 1990 and 2008 were the years in the political wilderness. Under Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party moved toward the political center. Under George W. Bush, the DSA again faltered in the political no man’s land. The 2008 financial crisis seemingly transformed the political environment in which DSA operated. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement of 2011 introduced the language of the “one percent” into public discourse. Although the OWS was not a DSA creation, it helped legitimize a class-based critique of American society.
The DSA has become more relevant with the appearance of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. His 2016 presidential campaign transformed DSA more than any event since its founding. Sanders openly called himself a Democratic Socialist, although much of his program resembled European Social Democracy, or the American New Deal rather than comprehensive socialist ownership. More importantly, the most symbolically important DSA electoral victory came in 2018, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary in New York. Other DSA-aligned candidates also won state and local offices. This success produced both opportunity and tension. The latter has centered around the Social-Democratic Reformers, the Democratic Marxists, the Revolutionary Socialists, and the DSA’s relationship with the Democratic Party. Within these convoluted ideological tensions, identity politics emerged as an attractive displacement of class solidarity. Finally, DSA’s foreign policy differs sharply from mainstream Democratic liberal internationalism. In addition to the familiar anti-American/anti-Imperialism slogans, DSA has made the Palestinian question its central foreign policy issue. And this realignment with Islamic Terrorism is the DSA’s principal weakness both domestically as well as internationally. While its domestic policies are absolutely incompatible with constitutional democracy, its foreign policy is lethally destructive and nonsensically anti-human as well as anti-humanistic.
Framing Muslim equality/equity as a Socialist issue, the newly elected Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani has raised protest politics practiced by Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib to a new level by making economic policy the center of Muslim socialist politics. Moreover, linking Palestine to municipal progressivism, coupled with his ubiquitous anti-Judaism, he has attempted to radicalize strategically the Democratic Party’s foreign policy. Finally, Abdul El-Sayed in his current Senatorial campaign in Michigan has further promoted Islamization to congressional level, emotional visibility, organized political constituency, a direct connection to American Muslim and Arab communities, and a test of loyalty for DSA candidates and officeholders. Thus, Palestine has become not merely an international issue, but an internal organizational boundary.
In conclusion, DSA is increasingly treating the tribal Muslim strategy as a policy against American militarism, patriotism, immigration enforcement, racial hierarchy, and police as well as surveillance institutions. More alarmingly, the alliance between the Democratic Party and DSA is becoming more theological rather than political. As a result, the traditional distinction between Muslim identity and Islamist policy are gradually disappearing. The negative consequences of such a process are that Muslim, Jewish, Christian are not subjected to the same constitutional, factual, and moral standards. Thus, DSA’s economic objectives, under the guise of fighting “Islamophobia,” will progressively undermine the independent foundations upon which democracy rests. Such an outcome would lead to the complete abolition of the 250 years old American Republic and the emergence of an Islamic Republic of America.