Re: DSA's Platform Reboot

Tony,

> On Aug 4, 2026, at 21:45, Anthony Teso via groups.io <[email protected]> wrote:


...
> 
> You write that an analysis of what DSA says misses what DSA does, and that in any case "there is no requirement for chapters to implement it." That is not a gap in the essay; it is the essay's finding. My object was the program-form itself. A platform that binds no one who holds office and obligates no chapter to act is not a plan that failed to be executed — it is a horizon, which is a different kind of object, and one whose non-binding character is a feature of how it gets produced. So when you say the real problem is power, I agree. I would only add that the deliberative question and the power question are one question, not two. More democracy in the writing of a platform, absent anything that makes the platform consequential afterward, yields a better-ratified horizon and nothing else. What converts a program into a plan is the machinery I have been harping on elsewhere: fractions with binding discipline, recall, salary caps at a skilled worker's wage, published votes, the elected accountable to the organization rather than to the electorate that returned them.


These are all good points, But the founders engineered the DSA to be an adjunct to the Democratic party, and it is structured for this purpose. We can't restructure it independently of the organization's goals, strategy and tactics, which I'll call its "orientation" as a shorthand. The current orientation is the electoral orientation of the Democratic party - but with socialistic campaign platforms. I think that the machinery will change only when the organization's orientation changes. Members who actively engage in class-struggle politics rather than mainly electoral politics will see the need to change the machinery. The change will be based on lived experience. 

So, I think it's important to first engage with the DSA in united-front activism that is independent of, but complementary to, electoral politics. I expect that a class struggle orientation will become more important to more members as two things happen. First, the collapse of the US neoliberal world order worsens and brings other class forces into the struggle. Second, the limitations of a mainly electoral orientation becomes obvious. Regarding its limitations, Zohran is not the first DSA member to be the mayor of New York City.

> That machinery is also what would give chapters an obligation rather than an invitation. Your amendment is friendly; I would press it further than you do.

I expect that the chapters will adopt the "machinery" of class struggle only when they see the need for it. And that will demand an organization that can lead national struggles to really tax the rich, end imperialist forever wars, fight fossil capital, and etc.

> 
> On Bonapartism I think there is a real disagreement, and it turns on which Bonapartism is under discussion.
> 
> You say ours is not a Bonapartist crisis because there is no stalemate between a mobilized, militant working class and a capitalist class whose rule it threatens — "it's not Weimar." That is Trotsky's formulation from the thirties: an equilibrium of class forces, the state raising itself as arbiter between two camps both capable of mobilization. It is a real and useful concept, and on its terms you are right that it does not describe 2026.

Good catch! I have studied Trotsky on this topic in the distant past. In fact, I didn't read 18th Brumaire until after I read Trotsky's application of it. That was in the 1970s, So I just went back and reread the 18th Brumaire. It is striking in light of our MAGA experience. I recommend it. But aren't Trotsky and Gramsci more relevant for today's industrial nations that have long had trade unions, highly-developed civil societies, absence of a peasantry or small-landowner class as an important social force, and long traditions of bourgeois democratic forms? I think that it falls to us today to further develop the Marxist theories of the state to post-industrial societies. I'm stuck on what's different rather than the similarities.

> 
> But it is not Marx's. In the Eighteenth Brumaire the proletariat is not poised; it is beaten. June 1848 is behind the story, not ahead of it. What produces the Second Empire is the mutual paralysis of the bourgeois factions — Legitimists and Orleanists unable to rule in the name of either dynasty, the party of Order unable to rule in its own name at all — combined with a bourgeoisie prepared to surrender political rule in order to preserve social rule, and an atomized mass that, in Marx's phrase about the smallholders, cannot represent itself and must be represented. Defeat and deadlock, not equilibrium.
> 
> Which is to say: your own description of the conjuncture is the Brumaire's, not Weimar's. You write that the crisis is largely within the capitalist class and its inability to agree on what follows the failure of neoliberalism, and that workers are not organized independently of the capitalist parties. Those are precisely Marx's two conditions. You have given a Bonapartist account of the crisis while declining the category.

Like Weimar, the major contending class forces today are the capitalists and the wage earners; small landowners are not a major factor. Unlike Weimar, the working class is not an organized threat to US capitalism. 

Like Marx's Bonapartism, Trumpism arises from conflicts among the capitalists, each with their own backing from other social classes. Unlike Marx's Bonapartism, the major social force backing Trump is one segment of the capitalist class against the others. AFAICT.

What we are missing in the comparison with 18 Brumaire to the present United States are (i) the small-landowning peasantry as a social force, (ii) the exploitation of the peasantry by the bourgeoisie, and (iii) the hostility of a crucial section of the peasantry to the working class. In 1848-52, Bonaparte did not use one segment of the bourgeoisie against the others as a base of support. He had the peasantry, which was the backbone of the army he needed for his coup. As Marx explained, Bonaparte had the tacit backing of parts of the French bourgeoisie outside of the National Assembly, particularly the commercial bourgeoisie; Marx noted that Bonaparte won the endorsement of the London Economist. But Trump's base today is one segment of US capitalist class against the other anti-Trump capitalists and institutions. 

There is a parallel between the French proletariat and The Mountain with the US working classes and the Democratic party. Regardless, the differences are also striking in that the US working class has not suffered a June 1849 defeat, and the class in itself is in entirely different circumstances overall. 

As a side note, I think that Marx's "sack-of-potatoes" analogy for the French peasantry is somewhat analogous to our post-industrial, highly-stratified and consumer-oriented US working class - as compared to the dense, urban, communal experience of the mine, mill, and factory. But that's neither here nor there for this discussion.

> 
> Nor do I think Gramsci is the alternative you want him to be. Caesarism in the Notebooks is Gramsci's own reworking of Bonapartism for exactly this case — the organic crisis in which the old order can no longer rule as before and the new cannot yet be born,



> and a personalized arbiter emerges from the deadlock, in progressive or regressive form. Hegemony and Bonapartism are not rival explanations. The crisis of hegemony you describe is the condition under which Bonapartist state-forms become available. And the qualifier I have been using — patrimonial — is doing the work you are asking Gramsci to do: naming a rule that personalizes the state and distributes office as private favor rather than mobilizing a mass movement behind it. That is what a Caesarist arbiter looks like when there is no mobilized camp on either side.

I had one sentence in my note referring to Gramsci. I did not develop it and can't because I am not well-versed on Gramsci. For starters, I'd like to understand Marx's denunciation of "Caesarism" in the 18th Brumaire with Gramsci's later adoption of the term. 

But I don't understand and cannot square your last sentence with one of Gramsci's characterizations of Caesarism:

"When the progressive force A struggles with the reactionary force B, not only may A defeat B or B defeat A, but it may happen that neither A nor B defeats the other – that they bleed each other mutually and then a third force C intervenes from outside, subjugating what is left of both A and B. It Italy, after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico, this is precisely what occurred" (https://marxistleninists.org/Reference/Antonio%20Gramsci/prison_notebooks/state_civil/ch02.htm). 

Gramsci added that "... Caesarism is a polemical-ideological formula, and not a canon of historical interpretation." This is the sense that I invoked Gramsci in my previous note. I didn't mean to suggest that Careerism is counterposed to Bonapartism. I think it's complementary to it but different. But I don't think that Caesarism is Bonapartism under specific historical conditions.

> 
> One word on the exchange with Marv, since I think you are both right and talking past each other.

My experience with Marv is different from yours: Compare Marv's flippant response to my note, https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42769, with the thoughtful and respectful response that you give here. His last response to my post puts words in my mouth and then ridicules the words. He finished with a gratuitous smear of me and Charles https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42779.

I don't know what I did to provoke either of those two messages, but I won't be cast in one of Marv's Tom and Jerry sideshows on marxmail. As a moderator, I've asked both Marv and Charles to stop slinging mud at each other because their exchanges are largely information-free and create a negative tone on the list. I think it runs counter to marxmail's stated purpose:

"The Marxism list is a worldwide moderated forum for activists and scholars in the Marxist tradition who favor a non-sectarian and non-dogmatic approach. It puts a premium on independent thought and rigorous but civil debate. While it is a high-volume list, it has a very good "signal to noise" ratio."

It is easy for people from the diverse Marxist traditions to be at each other's throats, calling each other names and ridiculing their positions. Some of our predecessors, after all, have killed one another in the past. It would be very easy for us to continue these fights rudely and indefinitely. Personal and political insults could easily come to dominate the posts. Instead, we aim for "rigorous but civil debate." This civility is needed if we want to include the many tendencies of the Marxist traditions. We are here to learn and share, not to convert people or to construct a marxmail revolutionary program. I've urged Marv and Charles to ignore one another rather than respond in endless tit-for-tat. That's what I plan to do with Marv going forward.

Mark



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