Socialist Alternative or Democratic Socialists of America?

ummm, pretty sure these folks stand against these things…

Tbh I'm in the same boat. I think I'll personally go with DSA since they are a much larger org. (13,000 vs about 1,000) and join the left caucus. The left caucus is Marxist and wants nothing to do with the democrats, they'd rather build a workers party. I'm sure you can find idpol in either org but the DSA people I've talked to seem less into it than SALT folks I've talked with.

The only real struggle is class struggle.

Neither. Get involved in your local, municipal politics and work to create democratic institutions, such as neighborhood assemblies

Join the left caucus in DSA. SAlt is retarded.

Don't feed him

The size difference is pretty astounding. (Wasn't even aware of that) That said, SA actually have people in elected positions. The DSA even with its size doesn't seem all that effective.

What makes you say that?

Democratic Socialists of America is not a political party

Apparently not…and it appears they endorsed Obama according to wikipedia…what is it they do exactly?

Leftypol: where racism and sexism dont real.

LARP

Okay fuck that, that sounds like a boring circle jerk. Does anyone know if either of these orgs do any community outreach like food not bombs? The FNB in my area is poorly managed.

DSA does have members in elected positions they're just democrats and not a 3rd party socialist candidate like Kshama.

Some of DSA chapters do Food not bombs.

Do you have any examples? Although I appreciate the general push to move the country left by working within the two party system, something about endorsing John Kerry puts a bad taste in my mouth…its not like their endorsement would even matter.

The SA are filthy trotskyist, You just have to look at /r/socialism to see why they aren't worth shit. The DSA may ahve killed rosa but they are 1000 times better then all those icepick faggots.

Isn't the DSA also filled with a lot of Trotskyists?

The right-wing of the DSA is old Socialist Party of America people and berniebros who believe in the Harrington's idea that the democrats are a labor party in disguise and want socialists to change it this is why they have endorsed Dems in the past. The left caucus takes the opposite position that the dems are a bourgeois party and we need to build Marxist workers party.

I don't know any names but if you look at thier Twitter or website you might see a few

DSA - they have wider reach I suppose.

The SEP is pretty great. They're not new to the anti-idpol game like many people here. It's been pretty consistently their position that the struggles of identity are inherently diversionary and come at the expense of real understanding of class forces.

I large org has its merits. I'd probably link up with them if I were interested in moving half a klick to my right.
They seem… alright-ish.

This is one of my major concerns, though.

I'm in SA and I like everyone that I met so far. At first I thought they were straight idpol, but they are actually pretty cool. DSA is cool too and the two organizations often work with each other. Most conflicts I experience with them is banter about using rosa's quote.

But always try to feel out the people in each group. Local branches are different. Some DSA people at some city are straight up marxists (but try to water it down in open meetings), while in other cities are flunky democrats. Same with SA. Still, there isn't any problem with just getting experience with how organizations work and joining for that purpose.

Unless you live on the West Coast I think it generally makes more sense to get involved with the Greens. There is a concerted push both from newcomers and old-timers learning new things to make them a workers' party now and they have a greater reach than either of those.

Honestly, what's with the concerted effort on here to ignore the SEP? Genuinely curious

dsausa.org/our_structure
KEK

Fuck them. They're obsessed with idpol, even in Australia.

Legit shit happened to me.

Starts at 35:41

youtube.com/watch?v=y1dhN2pFt6M&t=1046s

Isn't this basically choosing between Trots and Democrats? I would choose neither.

Whew, straight into the fucking trash they go. This diversity quota cancer was used to great effect to undermine effective progressive voices in my own county's selection of Sanders delegates. I never want to deal with this crap again.

ummmm if Sanders had appealed to more than white people y'all wouldn't have had as much trouble finding delegates for the various state/ national conventions. Like it or not a leftist coalition will need to include racial minorities to be successful

ebin

SAlt in Australia is not apart of the CWI, so they aren't the same thing.

SEP are legit Trotskyists and by extension actual Marxists which is why they're so good. Most "Trots" are just liberals wanting to LARP.

This is some well-crafted bait. Kudos, user.

Why is it that socialists on this board seem to have such different values then the ones I meet irl

What is needed is purges of the current superdelegates.

Yes user. I'm sure that was the problem not Shillary cheating.

Anonymity gives us the courage to call out this bullshit for what it is when it's much harder to stand up to it and risk being attacked and demonized in real life.

Irl people tone down their actual politics for fear of being ostracized.

Those three million more votes say otherwise. Maybe…just maybe…Clinton had more name recognition and that shifted the results?

fuck off, liberal

Fuck off, cunt. And you call yourself a socialist.

Because we're not retarded idpol centred faggots.

Are you sure? Have you been outside? Have you not met all the Trump supporters?

Who said I supported Hillary. Recognizing that Black people didn't fucking like (or know who the fuck Sanders was) leading to his loss isn't saying I voted for her.

White people in America are conservative. If you are waiting for the white socialist revolution you will be waiting until the heat death of the universe

If you think you can have a socialist revolution without involving the majority ethnicity, you will never see it.

you have it backward, conservative people are white.

I'm a party member of SPUSA who from what I've seen are genuine radicals even though the organization is relatively small. SA and DSA are social democrats overwhelmingly.

Yes all of them are full of faux-intersectional identity politics driven rhetoric. But it really isnt that bad. Anti-racism and anti-racism is encompassed within anti-identity politics, because there's no reasonable objection to being whatever special bullshit you are, unless you operate under identity dependent ideologies.

A lot of Holla Forums's opposition to identity politics seems to just be a way to mask some unfounded reactionary social views under a call for unification behind class struggle - whatever, fine with me as long as you're unified in class struggle and don't allow your personal distastes effect your solidarity with other proles. But when you refuse to engage at all with any organization, that's petty cynicism and you're doing much less as whatever ideologically pure variation you've settled on then these people who act like spergy SJWs half the time but also call for worker ownership of the means of production. When you refuse to participate for that reason alone (there are other good reasons not to participate and I'm not saying that the leftcom or insurrectionist approaches are illegitimate) you are so obviously falling into the same identity based trap, because you're more concerned with your interaction with and identification compared to a group than you are with the common material interests you share with them.

I'm not saying that the identity politics obsessed, language policing variations of socialism aren't cancer, they absolutely are and they alienate the working class and prevent a genuine movement of common people. But maybe the situation wouldn't seem so hopeless if even a tenth of Holla Forums joined a party.

I'm not saying exclude white people (most socialists I know are white), but the majority of white people are conservative. I don't see a future where we get a large majority of whites to back socialism

*anti-racism and anti-sexism, blah blah all that shit

On the risk of this being bait: I don't want to frame myself as a confident Sanders supporter, but I did follow him quite a lot and he was frequently talking about the struggle of all Americans, he spoke to BLM and let them speak and he was very outspoken about feminist causes. The idea of ´´Bernie Bros´´ and Bernie only speaking to and for WHITE MALES has been made up by the HRC camp as a smear campaign, the same kind of smear campaign she ran against Obama in 2008 by the way.

I was talking about normal people rather than those suffering from brain damage.

I don't think he did anything to alienate minorities. I just think his name recognition blew and black people had fond memories of Bill's presidency

Pure fucking ideology. Good look alienating a majority of America's population with bullshit identity politics.

Are we just going to ignore polling about how white people self identify and vote or what?

Then why did you frame it as an attack on Sanders?

I get where you're coming from, but I believe you have fallen prey to PURE IDEOLOGY. While I as well see the need to solidarise yourselves with the minorities that are utilized by the capitalist system and oppressed against and see great potential in movements like BLM, that does not mean you should aim to ignore or even worse alienate White people - another identity created by capitalism in its perverted ploy. Everyone here except porky is a victim of the capitalist ruling class and the White man ought to be marching with the Black man in the streets. To paint him as a lost cause because of how he has been indoctrinated is you succumbing to the very same thought capitalism wants to instill in us - you're playing by the rules and seeing society through a lens of dichotomy. If you want to truly end the class struggle it is absolutely essential you smash these identitarian categories and bring everyone along for the ride. The ´´White conservative´´ your polling station polled is a spook that is in some desperate need of raised class consciousness.

The latter is perfectly natural, but again there's a line between saying "this benefits everyone" and just going full Asser and arguing that racism and sexism functionally don't matter or need to be addressed, or (in the most insidious variant) that the end of capitalism will automatically end both. Does capitalism need to end for them to be seriously grappled with? Absolutely, but until then the struggles against racism and sexism still need to be a serious and continuing part of praxis. I know there's a lot about "alienating white guys", but if people refuse to acknowledge racism or sexism as a problem then you'll end up being unable to build a mass movement.

Again, it's definitely essential to target the capitalist system as the central problem and make it clear that racism and sexism are both manifestations. Abandoning that is abandoning Marxism. But unless we're willing to grapple with them as well and, in our praxis as well as rhetoric, provide an alternative, then we're not going anywhere as a movement.

What about the Party for Socialism and Liberation?

This is why focusing on racism, sexism, etc. as the core contradiction of society is bad for both you and the socialist movement. Instead of it being the "worker's revolution" it's "the white worker's revolution" or "the male worker's revolution", and thus unless you call it "Homo-trans-chican@-wimmyns-Aztlan-cubano-first-nations-socialism" you'll be called racist, sexist, etc.
By having a political line based on idpol you end up ignoring the economic realities we all live in. I guarantee that you haven't been a socialist/leftist since you were a kid, so why just abandon even trying to talk about it with conservatives? Update the language to make it more palpable, understandable, and clear to the average person, i.e. instead of "Proletarian control of the means of production" say "The collective ownership and democratic control of production and distribution". Seriously, talking about white supremacy, patriarchy, etc. scares off the typical person (male or female) because you end up sounding like the typical caricature of "SJWs".

Trotsky warned us about people like you.
Sure, go ahead and take "white people are currently statistically more likely to vote for 'conservative' politicians within the bourgeois governance apparatus, a socially constructed and historically contingent category which differs from the 'liberals' on purely tactical grounds" as some transcendent, immutable lumpenness, as a fact of human nature that must be accounted for and painstakingly worked around. Go ahead and say that we have to subordinate the political project to the feelings of the masses. Wow, whites are more "conservative!" I guess clearly explaining the truth about their material conditions and why things are the way they are is right out! You should, because everyone deserves to see the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of your case.

Protip: there's no such thing as a "white socialist revolution." There are revolutions which place "identity" ahead of the objective material emancipation of all society, and those which don't. The choice is clear.

I hope you don't really believe this.
Controlled opposition etc.
The liberal focus on "identity" has come at the expense of an understanding of class forces and the real causes of society's ills. It has played a key role in the suppression of workers' struggles throughout history and in recent years. It has proved its utility time and again as a diversionary struggle to contain dissent and funnel it back into safe, ineffectual channels. The case is self-evident at this point.

socialistalternative.org/2015/11/02/identity-politics-struggle-oppression/

SA does not support Identity Politics. They're public about this and hold meetings on it and shit. It even says it on their website

Can you link to this Marxist caucus? Im unaware of them, Im thinking of joining the DSA as well

They don't have a separate website that I know of here is a podcast in which a couple left caucus members are interviewed maybe this will help?

deleteyouraccount.libsyn.com/building-for-socialism

Thanks. I'm surprised anyone here is friendly to DSA, but I'm more alligned with the DSA than I am leninists or trots or stalinists or such but I don't like the Democrats or want to vote for them either

it was anti left wing SJWs who made up the Berniebro bullshit

There are folks sympathetic to Lenin and Trotsky in the left caucus but the goal of the left caucus is a broad marxist political formation that looks more like the socialist party of Debs than the Bolshevik party of Lenin.

That I agree with. The old Socialist Party of America and the old left factions of the european social democrats is who I sympathize more with

Or in other words, I want to see an American Die Linke or Podemos, which is what (at least a good number of) DSA members want

DSA

Also to OP, I've tried contacting SA multiple times online, they never answer. DSA however answered me very quickly

Where do I deny any of this? I'm in complete agreement. I'm just saying that the users on this board, though generally in a much better direction than any leftists on the rest of the internet, draw their own identitarian lines in the sand, just in different places then conservatives and liberals and fascists. Read what I wrote, I don't see how you got that from it

Fuck off with this reductionist bullshit

Emphasizing class struggle in a class society isn't reductionist.

who dropped you as a baby?

AFAIK Socialist Alternative in the US is more like the Socialist Party in Australia- slightly less cooked than the main Trotskyist alternatives (but still cargo cults).

I like Kshama Sawant and I like some of what SA does, but its too Leninist and tight knit for my tastes

Neither.

Let's review Kshama Sawant's (SAlt) recent repeat of the classic liberal slogans (which she espouses unironically!):
Claiming MLK: check

Le 99% maymay: check

Billionnaire class: check

SocDem worship: check

"Socialism is worker ownership" AKA the most successful meme of the 21st century: check

Bonus gold:
Ayy, how many layers of voluntarism are you on fam?

Extra, extra bonus:

Nail in the coffin of irony:

Are Socialist Alternative going to make a facebook event for a new year's eve party in Times Square and claim that they mobilized a million people?

...

The eternal leftcom strikes again.

They're a Marxist-Leninist party and act like it so I dont like them too much, at least theyre not for me

Sup. Me on the bottom right.

I like the reforms she's gotten passed in Seattle, I don't care if she offends some people on an imageboard

...

In practice it's exclusive. Porky will give in to idpol demands from time to time. Since it seems this part of the struggle is most successful leftist organization that deal in both class struggle and idpol tend to end up focusing on idpol as it's the more "rewarding" in terms of political success.

It's a fairly common accusation here that our opposition to idpol is either itself a form of idpol or cover for one. But this isn't true, and moreover misses that "it's poison to both theory and praxis" is a simpler, sufficient justification for this stance, no covert identarianism required. I'd like to see if you have any actual evidence of our "reactionary social views," beyond an impressionistic "analysis."
In light of idpol's extraordinary effectiveness at doing all those things your post quotes, its extraordinary virulence, and its extraordinary utility as a device of class rule throughout history (see Frederick Douglass' Narrative,) It's simply a prudent, common-sense measure to avoid it. You wouldn't, I hope, call it "petty cynicism" to balk at the idea of joining the Democrats with the object of reforming the party into a socialist organ from inside, or cast such reluctance in an identarian light. "Oh, I'm keeping out of the good fight because the Democrats are insufficiently socialist for my personal tastes."

Nobody's suggesting you can't participate. Go to protests, organize, and get your message out there while unaffiliated, go with a group of friends or alone if you have to, whatever. But tying/subordinating your political activities to those of a party is a major commitment, and you have to be sure it's worth it. If your political activity becomes less useful due to diversionary struggles than it would were you all by your lonesome - and make no mistake, there are many groups for which this is true, since it is the essence of bourgeois party politics in general - you're getting less done. Similarly, if you have to tiptoe around a veritable minefield of "harmful speech/opinions" in discussions, your practice is less efficient, less effective, and rather severely artificially limited.

It really fucking pays to watch out for these objective concerns. People here looking for parties to join are looking for a way to be effective and make a difference, not for a community to self-satisfiedly circlejerk with once a week in their Sunday best. They can do the latter just as well on here. Which is why it's so easy to confuse "muh purity" memeing on here with the political project out there. The complaint against idpoler groups is that they're ineffectual. If we wanted to LARP on some misbegotten notion of "purity" irl we'd have far less of a problem with neutered organizations, believe me

...

Forgot to link the sauce. Feast your eyes on it: sawant.seattle.gov/socialist-response-to-trump/

Dear god, it's worse than I thought.
It's like that time Obama was a crypto-socialist that had a plan to liberate mankind, but in the interest of pragmatism he couldn't use any socialist theory, terminology or rhetoric or propose any "socialist" measures or actually do anything good at all or keep from comitting exactly the misconduct and war crimes of his predecessor, lest the Republicans catch the scent and crucify him.
#IWantToBelieve

But this is much ado about nothing tbh. "We didn't actively run a witch hunt against one of our leaders over an allegation that was never reported to the police" doesn't translate into a "cover-up." Come on, look at Assange. Public figures are always targets for harassment, political types doubly so, and that's why we have established procedures for investigating and resolving this sort of thing which balance the need for justice and the rights of the accused, at least when you're not a bourgie or Enemy of the State. It's not sound to expect a group to presume guilt whenever an accusation is made, even though Universities do this. You realize the political landmine that would be? It's the equivalent of "Russian Hackers" unironically being able to insert CP into your computer, report it, and effectively end your political career. That's why the left-idpol crowd are led by their masters to push so goddamn hard for it

Says the self-outing cultural creationist

I don't think there is such a thing as idpol with socialism. It's a contradiction.
I dunno, but I'd guess he meant that while the alt-right has a rotted intellectual foundation built atop sand, it still has an internally consistent logic and doesn't perpetually require you to betray yourself every time intersectionalists shove class to the back burner, or, rather, the alcohol lamp on the goddamn porch. If you're already going to reject the materialist view of history and scientific socialism, no one disconnect from reality is really all the preferable to another

I was thinking about maybe joining a local SA chapter for the time being. My thinking is that even if I end up recognizing I disagree with them at least I am out doing something, expressing my opinion, organizing, whatever. You can't influence an organization if you don't show up.

Some local SA guys put on a small anti-Trump rally in my city. Tons of communists showed up, guys from SA gave great speeches promoting class struggle, shunning both Democrats and Republicans. shunning the Bourgeois ruling class and steered clear of identity politics for the most part. They seemed to align with my beliefs personally so I am willing to give them a chance.

SAVAGE:
wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07/30/salt-j30.html
How will SAlt EVER recover?

It's a weird alt-righty attitude to say that a race is _.

Tons of whites are reactionary but tons are not. We can probably expect a much higher percentage of minority folks to join a revolutionary movement than whites, but no revolutionary movement can succeed without a lot of whites participating.

SA seems to be the only socialist group doing anything so I'll try them out

CPUSA are Democrat shills that supported Hillary during the primary

DSA aren't a party, they're entryists into the Democratic Party. You should only join them if you genuinely think the Democratic party can be reformed. It should be noted that DSA is generally recognized to be the largest socialist organization.

SPUSA is a "big tent" socialist party and, as a result, kind of lacks any direction (and lets in even bigger SJWs and weirdos than other organizations I've noticed)

Socialist Alternative is Troskyist and wants to establish itself as a sort of vanguard. It regularly engages in electoral politics and reform movements in what they see as accordance to the "Transitional Program"

Everything else is too small to really worth mentioning, tbh. You can join them, but the organization will probably be smaller than the active userbase of Holla Forums

Join one, interface with the others for general unity, and make sure to focus on local politics over all else

Trust me, when you're fixing your own neighborhoods no one will give a fuck about national org politics. And it gets the people in your city to see that socialism does something for them

Socialist Appeal? The US section of the IMT

socialistappeal.org/

Holla Forums shitposters detected.

Definitely agree with this to a large degree

Probably unlikely to have attended any SA meetings, relies on leftist sectarian propaganda

SA ideologically extends from the Fourth International. Past Trotsky's hand in founding that organization, SA draws from a wide range of ideological, theoretical, and pragmatic approaches

This user gets it. Not everything is as black-and-white as these armchair socialists make it seem

Because most of these internet ideologically-tough-guy socialist are cowardly about publicly expressing their beliefs

learn to read

All struggles are rooted in class struggle, so in this sense intersectionality can have huge appeal to the moderately conscious left-leaning proles

Lost me a little here

Thank god at least one user is capable of reading on their own, and doesn't just regurgitate memetic quips about various socialist orgs

Where are you located? And how have you tried contacting them?

She's talking to as many real people as possible, not just huge autists like yourself

I say do this, and if you don't like it try the IWW, SPUSA, or DSA. What city are you in? They have a branch here in WI near where I live

Fair enough I see your point thank you for the response.

Still tho I will defend that there are plenty of genuine sexists and race realists on here that act divisive and reactionary at the same time they (correctly) dismiss SJWs as such. Not everyone on here of course and I'm not saying it's necessarily part of the board culture here because there's not even that much unity but the NazBols and a couple of the social democrats definitely fit that description.

Ah, the "drive-by shooting" style of discourse.

Pragmatism is reactionary. That was Trotsky's line
Ironically enough, pragmatism is great in theory but breaks down in practice.

Same issue here with lying to the workers to gain their now-tokenized "support"
I really can't tell whether your point is "the SA does enough to oppose idpol, I swear" or "idpol isn't that bad, really." You're sending confused, conflicting messages.

Kek. Dissent from the reactionary pragmatist line is "autistic."
A style of language designed to completely obscure class and a determined avoidance of any historical analysis is wholly justified and in fact desirable because we can't alienate the normies, right? The ones who voted in Donald "Build a Wall" "Ban the Muslims" "Pepe" "Race War Now" Trump? Under a relentless media assault for his "unpopular" opinions which broad masses nonetheless came to identify with, because they saw a kernel of truth in it all? Exactly! We have to be "inclusive" and "electable" to "normal people," of course, whatever those mean! Telling them the truth wouldn't achieve that! We're secretly socialists, of course, deep down, we just have to behave contrary to that in every observable capacity so that we can get public support for socialism
This specter has you bent over a barrel. I hope you can see the contradiction here.

Do you have a response to ?

Is there even a political organization like our hivemind? Extreme left but libertarian, favors drug legalization and gun ownership?

This is not a liberal slogan. Liberals never say shit like this in America. SocDems maybe, but not liberals. The Seattle liberal establishment fucking hates Sawant, you idiot.

This is your brain on ultraleftism

Duh? Do you disagree?

What the fuck does this even mean

Post evidence that the CWI has ever covered up a rape scandal, or gtfo

Oh God I promised I wouldn't comment on this.

Anyway, SAlt. SAlt all the way. SAlt is doing shit and not shmoozing up to career-politicians. And this is from someone who is in a party that is not SAlt.

DSA old-guard might have principle, but DSA for all practical purposes is an obvious Democratic Party front group.

lol left my FBI flag on that whoops

You didn't even get the best parts lmao

Apparently paltry reforms are now "audacious" demands! The Audacity of Hope certainly comes to mind, especially after an apology of Obama's thoroughly reactionary tenure as "Republican obstruction."
It's like she's deathly allergic to drawing any lessons from history.

I wonder what exactly it is that SocDems think ending cops picking on blacks entails

Is IMT Muke's group?

If you are going to become a due-paying member of an organization, become a member of DSA, just make sure you get involved/connected in the Left Caucus. DSA is experiencing a massive membership surge and their chapters are in the 100s, where as SAlt has been p stagnant in terms of membership.

More so, if you are in an area where there is no active socialist presence or there is just one starting up, join DSA. Waaaayyyy more DSA organizing committees popping up across the US than SAlt.

I am involved in DSA but still very much like Sawant and the work SAlt does. I am in a large city so there is work by both there. Socialist Alternative is definitely WAY better with getting their message out there and getting big rallies together, so I help organize w/ them in that regard but stick to DSA for other stuff. DSA is improving their messaging and all so hopefully it works out in the near future.

If you join your local chapter or make an organizing committee you can basically do whatever you like as long as it generally falls in line with their principles. As usual, Trot orgs are very strict in terms of sticking to principles and following committee decisions. This is why a ton of people in leadership positions recently resigned.

SEP is peak Trot sectarianism. They show having the right policy points + a nice website means nothing if you don't know how to organize/do politics.

I seem to be mostly in agreement w/you but majority of white people are not conservative. Not even the majority of white voters are conservatives. Most people are disillusioned by the whole process.

PSL is cool but can be a little alienating with their anti-imperialism and occasional defense of stalinist-leaning regimes abroad.

I agree. Many are revolutionary socialists. They are just revolutionary socialists who understand building a broad socialist left comes before the whole Bolshevism part.

jacobinmag.com/2014/12/pablo-iglesias-podemos-left-speech/

This is a great Jacobin piece that the directors of DSA aspire to use as a model.

The divide within DSA is not "Do we join the democrats?" it is "Do we never collaborate, or do we collaborate only to occupy them like Sanders?"

The most right-wing thing they did was support Ellison and that had internal backlash + they only did it to support someone who would be more friendly to socialists running as DINOs in future.

Work on your reading comprehension skills, because she is not giving an apology for Obama's failed policies here. Also do more research on her positions. Sawant has, at every opportunity, denounced the Obama administration, and denounced liberal illusions in Obama.

I would love to watch the spaghetti explode out of your pockets when you attempt to convince a group of workers that raising their wages, and protecting them from killer cops are nothing but "paltry reforms"

Hell yea it's not the divide. They already made that decision. They stopped running people outside the Democrats years ago on principle.

Also,even actual political parties (unlike DSA) that hate how the Democrats suck the life out of every political movement and effort supported Sanders for the purpose of dividing the Dem Party.

DSA is larger than SAlt, but only because they are a Dem Party/ liberal front group. Even fuckin Neera Tanden retweets DSA stuff. As far as socialist parties go, SAlt is the largest and you can find SAlt in places where DSA doesn't exist.

The problem with SAlt is they have to prove they can survive without Sawant like the GP survived without Nader, or SPUSA which survived the 55 splits after Debs.

THIS, basically this

Saying that class struggle is the only struggle IS reductionist.

Recognizing that it is the struggle that can lead to socialism doesn't mean that it is the only struggle that should be fought.

ISO has a larger membership than the SPUSA and SA.

They are IMO SA just less reformist.

The membership has increased tenfold and all the dem entryists are either dead or not in the org anymore.

The DSA is going under massive restructuring.

Socialist Alternative is just a Social Democratic Party. You're better off just supporting the Green Party at this point.

Honestly I can't think of any real good far-leftist parties in the US or Western Europe.

kek

Obama didn't have a progressive agenda, "Republican obstruction" isn't relevant to what made his presidency a shameless continuation of Bush-era policy, Democrats accepting Trump's election aren't "cowardly" but working as intended/expected of the officers of class rule, Trump wasn't elected through "voter suppression." Am I wrong?

In the sense that they're impermanent stopgap measures which due to the structure of bourgeois rule cannot enduringly secure everyone the rights which capitalism does not provide for…? Because that's literally the basis of socialism.
You SAltfriends paint yourselves red but keep spewing socdem talking points. So which is it?

It doesn't fall to me to put together an exhaustive biographical sketch on everybody I critique for an obviously bad argument. If there's something else she's written you feel paints her in a better light, feel free to post it, mention which views and theory are her "real" ones, and how she justifies misrepresenting the other or how they're "really" the same, whatever. But you can't call me to be some some desperate character witness

lel

All these posts putting you on blast and you respond to the one that basically didn't say anything

You go back to Holla Forums. Brocialism does not mean anti-feminism, it means anti-liberal IDpol.

so you're not a leftist. >>>Holla Forums

SA is a Trotskyist party, remember? They use the transitional program. They support reforms only as means to end, unlike SocDems. I'm not gonna spoodfeed you with links, but SA constantly calls for the need for revolution and going beyond reforms, in both their public meetings and literature.
Personally, I don't see why fighting for reforms and revolution have to be mutually exclusive. The Bolsheviks started as a social democratic party

You don't have to put together an exhaustive biographical sketch to have an informed opinion on a politician, user

While there's no substitute for trustworthy candidates who will actually fight for the proletariat's interests, voter suppression has absolutely become a major part of Republican success over the last 20 years. It's not smart to turn a blind eye to the incredibly poor state of the democratic process in America. You need to see this.

I thought this board bans you for believing that racism and sexism is real?

I kinda feel like we could solve both "orgs with the right policy and theory are ineffectual due to lack of organizing efforts" and "orgs with good organizing efforts are ineffectual due to shitty theory" in a single stroke, by encouraging and funneling people towards the parties with the right theory, building their membership and reach.

It's far easier to reform poor community activism than it is to reform theoretical deficiencies that manifest themselves on both the local and grand scale.

I mean, WSWS is the most widely read socialist publication on the web. They're influential, like it or not. Just not in the one way they constantly call for.

Right now I'm getting pretty good vibes from DSA. They have a ton of members and they're really active, they actually focus on economics and their website isn't horrendously ugly, outdated and unusable unlike most leftist websites lmao. They've got the most potential and even if you're not 100% on the same page with them, the left in America is too small, we need unity and compromise bad.

I am posting from my phone, so I was replying to posts individually in a stream of consciousness sort of way from scrolling through the thread. I think you seem to have patterned a coherent argument behind my posts when there isn't any: I essentially assumed each posts' author separate

Further I'm not an active member of any organization, though I have been to events from many orgs, so as to say I'm not defending or beholden to any org

And finally, I see your vision of the day-to-day activities of SA departs from actuality. On the 20th, 21st, and 23rd at least four orgs in my area (IWW, DSA, SA, and Antifa) were present in the thick of the protests engaging people on ideas of dramatically restructuring the economic and social paradigm. These orgs go to places where high concentrations of people receptive to socialist theory have congregated, and try to frame their views of oppression and economic inequality in terms of class analysis in order to move these people further to the left.

whoever made that I appreciate for acknowledging the existence of the Constitution Party

I'll eat a live bug on Youtube if DSA stops being Dem Party shills.

You guys are all so delusional.

EVERY SINGLE FUCKING LEFT PARTY WITH MORE THAN 100 ACTIVE MEMBERS CAMPAIGNS ON A SOCDEM PLAFTORM,

PSL, PFP, FSP etc

The only exception this year is SPUSA, cuz their nominee Mimi Soltysik broke from their platform and went full militant/ anti-reform this year (he used to campaign as a socdem though in previous years)

ah mean to link him

All left parties have increased 3-5 fold since we hijacked the Sanders campaign. The problem is the parties only had a handful of people attending monthly meetings if any at all, so it comes no where close to a party with even county level distribution.

The Green Party comes close to county level distribution in some states. But the old guard GP are just Progressive Dems who want to be in a party that refuses big money. A lot of them are relatively conservative or averse to radical ideas.

And the Green Party wasn't really built to be a Leftist Party, it was built as a New-Agey environmentalist party that happened to attract leftists at it's founding and later years. It barely has any mechanisms to expel reactionaries, and it's 10 key values can be interpreted to mean anything.

Why are leftcoms so insufferable? At least be cute like Leftcom cat.

I have found the Green Party old guard to be highly receptive to anti-capitalist ideas in recent years and a number of the people that ran for office this year have been successful in creating a general movement further left within the party. I had a long discussion with one of the party leaders about the weaknesses intersectionality earlier this summer and she's a become a fairly radical socialist the last couple months.

Those in the general environmental movement are slowly coming to terms with the fact that there can be no lasting protection and conservation under capitalism.

With that said, I will say that there is a very irritating segment of the black part of the party that drinks the fuck out of identity politics and is sometimes straight up racist (a reaction to Cynthia McKinnis's run in 2004 I think).

I am listening to a Green stream right now where a guy just said "we have to outgrow identity politics", and the support of people from Black Agenda Report is invaluable.

I'm interested in a group that has a grasp of Marxist theory but is also committed to reforms and bettering peoples lives in the here and now. Which is better for that, DSA or SA

DSA according to Amber is going through a transition to better organize and build local movements and work with unions etc. So depending on how well that turn out I'd say them
Plus side is you may meat the bois through it

SA is a Marxist Trotskyist party and DSA is less Marxist and more Social Democratic.

Both fit this criteria. SA and DSA have very different tactics about doing this, though

Can someone explain how you can be a socialist without being a Marxist? I've heard this shit before but I don't get it.

Whats the differences?

yea, but still a good chunk, like 20-25% of party leaders voted no on the anti-capitalist plank.

My state GP is in that 20-25%, it's not a fucking eco-socialist party in my state. And hardly anti-capitalist or radical. There is a long history of conservatism in environmentalism and the last candidate my state GP ran you could classify as a Rockefeller Republican.

Ouch, which state?

SA organizes independent of the democratic party, while DSA is more involved in reforming the Democratic Party.
Trying to reform the Democratic Party seems dumb and impossible to me, so I think you should stick to Socialist Alternative if your interested in seeing change

Fair enough but I'm a DemSoc I admit and not a Trot. Are they ok with that

Thanks for the Jacobin link, affirms what I already thought.

No-one?

Shall I have to start my own organization because there isn't a single place on this gay Earth that agrees with me? Become a one-man party?

Congrats to DSA members in the thread.

Which left organization isn't "libertarian"? I don't see any tankie organization listed here.

PSL is lowkey tankie and has a relatively large base

Most are fairly libertarian.

Go to your local SA branch meeting and ask the organizers or leadership

Are they pro-gun and pro-drugs? Because few far left organizations I've known so far have been the former, and none have been the latter.

there's a lot of ducking of that question by insisting that the problem is "corporate capitalism"

Create Union of Egoist my property