A caucus is like a cactus

I swear this is my last post about DSA for a good long while. (If you missed last week's post on what being a member of the Democratic Socialists of America is really like, check it out here.)

I debated whether to write this one. It covers some pretty insider-y terrain, even for me, and it's probably gonna make some people mad at me.

But unraveling the mysteries of my own personal universe is what this newsletter is all about, and nothing is more mysterious to new DSA members than our org's little-discussed but deeply influential internal caucus system.

So let's talk caucus.

Disclaimer: Green Juice is not an official caucus publication. Opinions are my own unless otherwise stated.

What's a caucus?

All the analogies I have to describe DSA caucuses make them sound pretty awful. "Like a cross between a high school clique, a secret society, and a band of mutinous sailors." But none of those are fair or even particularly accurate. Caucuses are a good thing. I'm in one!

Caucuses are more like cactuses: a group of separate, distinctive limbs sticking out in all directions that collectively manage to form a whole. Each is a bit spiky. Yet capable of flowering.

For a more technical definition, I reluctantly turn to Reddit:

Caucuses are political organizations within DSA that have a particular vision for DSA’s organizing work and organize to try to win DSA over to their vision. They’re formal in the sense that they have their own internal rules and procedures, but informal in the sense that they aren’t actually a part of DSA’s official organizational structure. They’re purely volunteer-based. No one is forced to join a caucus. I would say if you don’t have a specific interest in a caucus, don’t rush to find one to join. Continue organizing with DSA and let your caucus affiliation, if any, come naturally as a result of that experience.

That Reddit post is over two years old, but it remains a solid explanation. A caucus is a party within a party: a group within DSA aligned in certain ways, working together to shape the direction of the organization.

Because caucuses are only semi-official, and because they inherently hold opposing or at least contrasting points of view, they rarely get mentioned in mixed company. This can leads non-caucused members to regard them with wariness. But internal factions are actually vital to the health of the organization. They help hold our leaders and our membership accountable. They demand we remain vigilant and self-critical. In theory, they ensure the best ideas of the day win out.

A relevant nugget from Jane McAlevey's excellent organizing book, No Shortcuts:

...the absence of internal parties, or caucuses, is a symptom of oligarchy.

I wrote last week that DSA is a big tent organization. Anyone to the left of William Jefferson Clinton is welcome to join our ranks, whether you identify as a social democrat or a modern day Maoist. We want lots and lots of people in our movement.

When you're in a big tent, however, it can be hard to make your voice heard and hard to hear others. Especially when everyone's jabbering on at the same time... to say nothing of the elephant in the room (a little circus joke).

So what happens? Amidst the ruckus, likeminded thinkers find each other and form groups with funny names.

What do caucuses do?

In my experience, caucuses have three main functions:

1. We strategize together

Why, just this past weekend, my caucus Groundwork had an all-day strategy retreat to work through some confounding questions: Where do we want to be in 2030? How will we prepare for the election in 2028? How should we prioritize our many projects?

Good news, y'all. We totally figured everything out no problemo.

2. We vote together

In DSA, we vote a lot. Multiple times a month, depending on if it's election season, which it evidently always is. We vote on whether to endorse candidates for public office, for DSA leadership roles, within our working groups, and within our caucuses. We vote on what work to prioritize. Probably we vote on other stuff that I'm forgetting. By voting as a caucus, we can have an outsize voice.

Caucus members are also expected to help whip votes, the awkward term for encouraging people you know in DSA to vote for your caucus's endorsed candidates, AKA your slate.

3. We support, inform, debate, and amuse each other

Much of my lived caucus experience has occurred within the digital confines of a group chat. In Groundwork's constantly churning chat, we share and process the day's news, our electoral masterminds and policy experts make various proclamations, our caucus elders elucidate relevant DSA lore, and hot takes are molded, refined, and cast. The rest of us mainly crack jokes.

We also have an active email list-serv for more thoughtful discussions.

What do DSA's caucuses stand for?

We're all socialists, right? So what's there to disagree about?

Lots of stuff, it turns out!

The thing about achieving socialism in the U.S. is that we are not particularly close to doing it. In fact, we're headed full-steam in the opposite direction, engaging in the same neocolonial bullshit this country was founded on and using the only real state power we have, our domestic military, to terrorize random citizens.

Therefore, the question each and every socialist must ask ourselves is How do we get from here to there?

Or, said another way, what is our theory of change?

Lots of people over the years have come up with lots of theories. Some defy easy categorization. But there are a handful of spectra upon which the most commonly held theories of change tend to fall.

Here is my attempt to name them.

Reform vs. revolution

Do you believe the best way to achieve socialism is by paving the way with reforms—that is, by making changes to our existing structures? Or do you believe the system is so fucked that the only viable path to meaningful change is a full-on revolution, straightaway?

"Revolution" in this context is perhaps better stated as "pursuing a massive cultural rupture that could very well be ideological and nonviolent." Revolutionary inclined caucuses are not necessarily daydreaming about a literal 1917.

Electoral power vs. people power

Do you believe we can achieve socialism by electing socialists to office? Or is electoral work a dead end, because you believe politicians will never deliver real results and always move to the right once elected?

The alternative to electoral power is for a combination of unionized laborers and tenants to collectively rise up and seize power.

Mass politics vs. selective coalition-building

Do you believe it's better to have a massive group of people in your political camp, even if it means some of them likely won't be as diehard or radical as yourself? Or do you prioritize building a coalition of amenable parties, even if it means a more limited ceiling of total members?

Elected permissiveness vs. elected discipline

When we elect a socialist to office and they do non-socialist things, how should DSA respond?

Tailing vs. leading

When we elect socialists to office, is it DSA's job to get behind them in support, like Sharks behind Bernardo? Or must we always be leading the charge, pushing the system ever leftwards in ways that our electeds often cannot? And how might this calculus change as we elect socialists to higher and higher offices?

Incrementalism vs. aggressiveness

Is the best way forward to continually notch small, manageable, lower-risk wins? Or is it to take big, aggressive, riskier swings?

Big government vs. something else

Most leftists believe proper socialism requires a strong State. Not an authoritarian State, necessarily, but a State strong enough to keep Elon Musk and his ilk under our thumb. Others on the left feel differently. Some want no state at all. Others favor a so-called libertarian socialism, which I admittedly don't fully understand.

Practical vs. impractical

We're approaching the point at which people may get mad at me. Yet I can only speak my truth.

I doubt any caucuses would ever describe their theory of change as impractical. Ambitious, maybe, or perhaps even essential. It's all about your perspective. Mine is that some theories of change make more practical sense than others. We must always look closely at the current political conditions and use them to inform our strategy.

That said, as we slide further and further into authoritarianism, seemingly radical socialist ideas may become more acceptable to mainstream Americans.

Left vs. Right

The most common framing of the different DSA caucuses I hear is along the classic Left to Right political spectrum. I find this funny, since we're pretty much all ten feet left of liberal. But if you were to isolate the Left side of the broader political spectrum, you can kind of analyze it as a standalone thing. Still, as a member of one of the so-called Right-leaning caucuses, to me this framework is reductive. But I'll talk more about this in a bit.

The major NYC-DSA caucuses

One final point of clarification before we name names. The caucuses active in New York City DSA are not a microcosm of the organization nationally. Some of the "national" DSA caucuses don't have a footprint in NYC, while those that do may not be perfectly aligned with their national counterparts. It all gets a bit confusing. I will be focusing on what I'm familiar with: the most active caucuses in NYC-DSA.

(If I didn't include your NYC caucus here, I am sorry! Email me a statement and I'll issue a correction.)

Groundwork

"Groundwork is organizing to change DSA into what we all want but don’t have: a force strong enough to meaningfully influence politics on the scale of the next presidential election, potential general strike, and whatever other national ruptures may come. The only way to do so is to become a genuine, mass political party."

Tags: reform, electoral, labor, mass politics, aggressiveness

Caucus publications: Building Up, Power Map Magazine

The Green Juice take:
Groundwork was formed by some NYC-DSA Ecosocialists who worked on passing the Build Public Renewables Act. After years of struggling to move the bill, they realized their best bet was to primary the bill's own co-sponsor, Kevin Parker, once it became clear he was only sponsoring the bill to prevent it from seeing the light of day. So for a whole year, Ecosoc members put down their trowels and got heavily involved in running local electoral races, pushing candidates to feature BPRA as a core election issue. It worked. The bill passed, Sarahana Shrestha won office, and soon afterwards those Ecosoc folks formed a new caucus called Uniting to Win to bring a multifaceted and experimental approach to organizing. Uniting to Win eventually merged into the national Groundwork caucus.

Groundwork's strategy remains informed by the urgency of the climate crisis. We must be willing to try anything and everything to win. The caucus maintains a strong presence in the Ecosocialist and Trans Rights & Bodily Autonomy Working Groups.

Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC)

"Only a majoritarian, popular movement can pave the democratic road to a socialist revolution: a radical democratization of our politics, economy, and society."

Tags: Reform, electoral, mass politics, incrementalism

Caucus publication: The Agitator

The Green Juice take:
SMC has been instrumental in shaping NYC-DSA's recent electoral success, pioneering a winning formula of running socialist candidates of color in districts with entrenched establishment Democrats, and then canvassing hard to drum up support. They have members across many DSA Working Groups, but their primary love language is Electoral.

No shade intended, we're all just doing what we think is best, but SMC can lean too conservative for my tastes. They recently voted against endorsing Chi Ossé to primary Hakeem Jeffries and I remain deeply bitter about it. Chi would be absolutely crushing this primary right now and I think we all know it. Okay sorry.

Marxist Unity Group (MUG)

A statement provided by MUG:
"Marxist Unity Group is a democratic centralist & Marxist caucus within DSA. We think the primary problem in the United States is our undemocratic & colonial political system which empowers the least representative parts of our government. We also oppose the way our federal system insures funding for our military and police state while limiting funding for social welfare.

We believe the path forward for DSA is to unite the workers & oppressed movements' through a struggle for a new, democratic constitution, and consistent opposition to our undemocratic empire. MUG believes DSA should strengthen our member’s ability to strategize together with our elected bloc, and we believe that DSA needs to focus more on national level races with a goal of a disciplined group of congressional electeds who are able to agitate for socialism & democracy at the highest level."

Tags: Revolution, people power, purity politics, elected discipline

Caucus publication: Light & Air

The Green Juice take:
MUG's big thing is that they want to fully rewrite the U.S. constitution. I personally don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon, although I agree it'd be cool to do. Their commitment to Marxism means they make little allowance for political compromise. They value big national electoral projects over local politics. They are skeptical of the market urbanist's commitment to fighting displacement, which I might call YIMBYism, preferring instead publicly funded real estate development and autonomous tenant organizers. MUG members are most active in the Labor, Electoral, and Tenant Organizing Working Groups.

Bread & Roses (BnR)

A statement provided by Bread & Roses:
"Bread & Roses is a Marxist caucus that believes the socialist movement must be labor-led and politically independent—that means developing working class power both at the workplace and the ballot box.

On the labor side, BnR is focused on building a militant, left-wing, and democratic labor movement through the rank-and-file strategy. Rank-and-file is an approach to labor organizing that emphasizes rebuilding the connection between the socialist movement and the labor movement through organizing as rank-and-file workers, challenging union bureaucracies, and confronting employers.

On the electoral stage, BnR believes in independent political action. We reject the idea that the Democratic Party can be captured from within (i.e. realignment). Instead, we propose a dirty break strategy. When necessary, we continue running socialist candidates on the Democratic Party's ballot line. However, DSA can (and must) act as a "proto party" now, so that we are positioned to formally break from the Democrats later. This will mean embracing a mass politics to build our numbers and capacity, develop our own independent infrastructure and institutions, and ensure our socialists in office work and vote together as a bloc (resisting pressure from the Democratic Party's establishment)."

Tags: Labor, third-party, mass politics

Publication: The Call

The Green Juice take:
BnR is one of the oldest caucuses in DSA. They may be the most middle-of-the-road caucus politically in that they prioritize rank-and-file labor power but also see the value of electoral politics. They espouse an anti-campist foreign policy, meaning they offer critical support for "real" Leftist parties around the world, but do not uncritically support all enemies or targets of the U.S.

Emerge

"Emerge is multi-tendency, staking our unity in abolition, anti-imperialism, and supporting working class self-organization. We support democratic, big tent socialist organizing both inside DSA and coalitionally in the broader movement. We favor curiosity and deliberation over rigid dogma, working towards an emergent strategy that adapts to meet the moment. We aim towards equity by actively structuring our caucus to have racial and gender parity."

Tags: Revolution, people power, purity politics, something else

Caucus publication: Partisan

The Green Juice take:
Emerge is a revolutionary communist caucus concerned with liberating the third-world from the oily talons of Western imperialism. They believe the best way to bring about revolution in the U.S. is by organizing tenant unions here and fomenting revolution in the global south. They maintain a close relationship with the anti-imperial Springs of Revolution national caucus, though I hear they're trying to break out on their own, as their name foretells. Emerge members are most active in the Anti-War and Tenant Organizing Working Groups.

Why I chose Groundwork

I think my journey is fairly typical, as far as these things go. I got involved in a DSA Working Group. Over time, I started to pick up on some behind-the-scenes machinations taking place behind closed DSA doors that I was not privy to. The word "caucus" hung in the air like woodsmoke, tantalizingly out of reach.

So one day I straight up asked my friend and Ecosoc mentor Zack what a caucus was. He told me. He also said that he was in one, called Groundwork. He didn't pressure me to join then. But we talked more about it the next time we saw each other. He sent me Groundwork's Points of Unity to consider. They all seemed good, but what did I know?

Mostly I was concerned about having the capacity to take on yet another DSA thingy. It was already starting to take over my life. But then I learned several of my Ecosoc friends were already members of the caucus, and I hate feeling left out. So I applied to join as a Supporter—not yet a full Member—just to get a feel for it.

The first few weeks were a whirlwind. The group chat was intimidating and overwhelming. I felt like a Nordic infant being tossed into the roiling sea to sink or swim. But I soaked it up, asked Zack a million questions, and learned so much, so quickly. I decided to apply to be a full-on Member and haven't looked back since. I still learn new things from my caucus mates every day.

Who should join a caucus?

The general consensus is that you shouldn't join a caucus until you've become actively involved in another part of the organization. Being in a caucus shouldn't be your "main thing" in DSA.

That said, I don't think anyone needs to wait a set number of months or have read the full canon before feeling ready to join. You can be politically "unfinished"—I certainly was (and still am!). You can even be a new DSA member. The learning curve just might be steeper.

But if you're caucus curious, I recommend trying it out. They don't teach this stuff in school, y'know? We learn from those who have come before us.

And at the end of the day, the only way to find out if your theory of change is the right one is to get out there and put it to the test.