Re: DSA's Platform Reboot

> On Aug 4, 2026, at 12:58, Marv Gandall via groups.io <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Aug 4, 2026 at 10:52 AM, Mark Baugher wrote:
> Well, Marv, since you have embraced the Bonapartist theory of the current US crisis...in my opinion, the crisis in the US today is not Bonapartist in that workers are threatening the rule of the capitalists, workers are not organized independently of the capitalist parties.


> Mark, have you not read the lengthy exchanges between Tony and me and to a lesser extent with Hari and John R.?  I believe you meant to say the  crisis in the US today is NOT Bonapartist,

That's what I wrote and that you quoted above.

> for the reason you mention and others I expressed earlier. If so, we're on the same page.

Sorry, I misread https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42594 and your comment about Trump's cosplay Bonapartism. 

>   You and Tony are closer to the DSA than I am and if they are focused on electoral politics to "the exclusion of mass organizing" then I'm in full agreement.  My impression, though -  admittedly from a distance outside of the organization and based on second-hand accounts - is that the DSA does pay due attention to both.

I don't know why you say that?

>   If there is more emphasis on electoral work, it may be because more attention has quite naturally been drawn to its highly-publicized victories in the electoral arena than to the less visible and tougher slogging in the multiple workplaces and neighbourhoods where its members are located.

Isn't that same as opportunism? We run because we can get elected and the other work is too hard.

> That's doubtlessly been what's prompted its rapid growth, as the Mamdani campaign illustrated, so I'm therefore inclined to cut them some slack.

It's not whether we are being too critical of the DSA. What I thought we were doing here was critiquing the DSA in light of the present political crisis in the US.

>   If the SWP back in the day was having that kind of electoral success, you can bet the party would have encouraged it. 

I would not take that bet. But I'd like to hear if David W would. My last major assignment in the SWP was campaign director of the SWP's Kansas City School Board campaign. Our candidates got roughly 30% of the vote IIRC. To me, that was the tail and the mass organizing work was the dog. 

> Rather than diverting resources from other mass work, it more likely than not would have had knock-on effects in recruiting from within the unions and the antiwar movement where it was also engaged. 

This is so hypothetical that it's not worth spending much time speculating about it.

>  
>   My previous comment was aimed at your remark that "what is crucial today (is) the mobilization of the working class and its allies in the general population as an independent political force rather than as voters in capital-dominated election cycles.”

In the context of the DSA, that was a critique. I thought you trivialized it.

>   Obviously, we all share that goal.  But the issue, as always, is how we get from here to there. Tony to his credit is one of the few on the list who is wrestling with the nuts and bolts of the issue in relation to the actual rather than idealized political consciousness of the masses which is at an historically low level. 


Mark



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