Why Not DSA ?

Stuart Elliott wrote:

Gabe

I have a sympathy for your orientation, though I think the effort to revive all the SDUSA/SP is quixotic and would recommend joining DSA where I think you could have a real impact.

Stuart

Good to hear from you old friend.

I joined the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in 1976. Four years earlier, in May,1972, on my 16th birthday, I joined the Young People's Socialist League and the Socialist Party,USA. Great timing right ? After the schism, I became active in both DSOC and Democratic Agenda in 1978. I was member of DSOC's national board from 1979 until the merger in 1982. I helped to build the largest single Youth Section chapter in the organization at Indiana University of PA. I worked in the Democratic Agenda effort at the 1980 Democratic Convention. Our chapter took the largest contingent to the Euro-Socialism Conference also in 1980. Our group included not only DSOC members, but members of the SPD and PSF as well. My friend David Hacker and I dropped the balloons in Detroit as merger was voted into being. I figured at the time of merger that I had personally recruited about 100 of the 6200 members of the new organization.

However, as you wrote in Mainstream 2, the internal organizational cultures of NAM and DSOC did not mesh. DSA was doomed from the start. Members have left in droves. How many of our comrades at the time of merger are still members? I recognize less than 100 of the names. Of course the organization has a large"paper membership". The constitution of DSA says that every member gets a copy of Democratic Left. The masthead says there are, I think 4300 copies, printed a month. That means DSA has a thousand less members than just DSOC did in 1982 at the time of the merger.

I counted Mike Harrington as friend. I passed out enough literature at his speeches to have spent considerable time with him. When Mike died in 1989, DSA began falling apart. As our friends, Eric Lee and Alex Spinrad wrote in the New International Review,in May 1983, DSA needed a "collective leadership not organizational barons". DSA never learned to "say no" as Eric and Alex wrote. It never developed a strategy to work in the liberal Labor Left. The Cause célèbre du jour was always more important than organizing a real Social Democratic movement. Because of my fondest for Mike, I remain a member of DSA to this day and have no plans to drop my membership.

I remained a member of SD USA, as did my late wife, until they closed their mail box. I am the state chair of the Socialist Party of PA. Susan and I were active in all three of the splinters of the old Socialist Party, USA

As you are keenly aware the old Social Democrats,USA functioned like a cult. The"new Socialist Party,USA" runs candidates merely to wave the red flag. I have tried to organize a local of the SP of the USA, DSA and even to reorganize the SD,USA local I started in late 1970's in Western PA when I returned here in the late 1980's We would get up to about five to seven members and then everyone would quit because the national organizations did nothing but debate, interfere, ignore requests for literature and send dues notices. There are no truly functioning locals of DSA in PA and the SP PA has lost one hundred members in last two years statewide do to the national bickering.

As the old saying goes,"doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity". DSA and the SP of the USA are essentially email lists and rather small ones at that. The idea of DSA becoming the Socialist caucus in Progressive Democrats of America which is essentially a website is just silly.

The Committee to Revive the Social Democrats, USA / Socialist Party is small but growing. We have one minor office holder now, me. This will likely be my only chance to be called
honorable. We have two more municipal campaigns planned for Western PA alone next year. The old "sewer Socialism" route is less glamorous than publishing economic statements, but all our members actually know what we are going, What percentage of DSA members do you think will actually read the Economic Justice statement ? Only 148 members even subscribe to the DSA's internal listserv. My guess is if you cut out the duplicate addresses that number is really 75.

Stuart, nobody wishes DSA could have "a real impact" more than I do. It would save me a great deal of work, However, those days are gone. We actually challenged a sitting US president in 1978 and 1980. Now, we can barely pull of our own national convention. Jeff Brindle and I offered DSA a centralized way to help Socialists running for office. We found no interest.

Electing a Social Democrat as mayor doesn't really mean that much. Wait, I am wrong ! Electing a mayor can be the first step to long political career of great activism that actually effects real people's lives. Zeidler, Sanders, and the dozens of Socialists elected across the country in the first half of the last century prove that. The Reading, PA. Socialist machine proved it. The efforts of our comrades in the parties of the Socialist International prove it in towns all over the world all the time.

We could use a another member in Kansas. I would like to write for the same publication as we did for New America and the Socialist Standard again. It is time for me to appeal to your reason and ask you to join us.

In Solidarity and Friendship,
Gabriel McCloskey-Ross. assessor for Richland Boro and acting national director, Committee to Revive the Social Democrats, USA / Socialist Party