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By: Matt Wolfinger

NEWTON, MA – Members of the Newton community braved the cold on Sunday, December 7 for a 5K fun run to support striking Starbucks baristas. The run, organized by Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) and Boston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), started and ended on the picket line at the Centre Street Starbucks with a unionized Brighton location serving as the midpoint.

Runners and volunteers joined striking Workers United baristas, holding handmade signs and chanting slogans like “No contract, no coffee” and “What’s disgusting? Union busting.” The event also featured live music from the Scollay Square Skiffle Band, who played songs about working class solidarity.

The Newton Starbucks is one of more than 145 stores in over 150 cities engaged in Starbucks Workers United’s open-ended strike called the “Red Cup Rebellion.” The name is a nod to the strike kicking off on Starbucks’ “Red Cup Day” – an annual promotion where customers receive a reusable red cup with their order – disrupting one of the busiest days of the year for the coffee giant.

92% of union baristas voted to authorize a strike following a relentless series of unfair labor practice (ULP) violations.

The baristas are calling on Starbucks to address three key demands: better hours and staffing, higher-take home pay, and the resolution of hundreds of ULP violation charges filed against Starbucks by SBWU through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Ellie Gonzales, a barista with Workers United in Newton, said:

The staffing conditions aren’t what we want. They’re short staffing our stores. They’re cutting our hours and refusing to give us better pay, which is causing morale to be very low while working at Starbucks.

Negotiations between Workers United and Starbucks hit a snag last December, when Starbucks denied a set of proposals put forward by union baristas to improve wages and benefits. They instead offered an economic package that did not address any of the barista’s key concerns.

Baristas at Starbucks have faced an influx of challenges due to new policies enacted by their CEO, Brian Niccol, who took over the role from Howard Schultz in September of last year. Niccol’s first massive change as CEO was his controversial “Back to Starbucks” campaign. Instead of addressing the need for fair compensation, hours, benefits, and an end to union busting. Niccol changed the dress code without warning and required baristas to write handwritten messages on every cup. The outcome was the opposite of what Niccol and Starbucks senior leadership aimed for: longer wait times and angrier customers.

“When they first launched writing on the cups,” said Gonzales, “we did short messages like ‘Hello!’ or a smiley face or their name. Then that wasn’t enough. They wanted us to write phrases, ‘Have a nice day’ or ‘You’re Brew-tastic’, everything they could think of. And that just led to even longer wait times, because we’re already short staffed and now we have to stop to write a longer message that has to keep varying. We can’t write the same message over and over.”

According to Gonzales, all of these issues weighing baristas down don’t just impact their day-to-day work: they also lead to a worse experience for their customers.

“Short staffing the stores has led to significantly increased wait times,” she said. “There’s typically only three or four people on the floor, so customers come in regardless of how they ordered, mobile or in person, and wait upwards of 20 minutes just for a drink.”

Former customers like Adam, one of the roughly 50 runners in attendance on Sunday, attested to this decrease in efficiency. “It feels like a very slow collapse,” Adam told Working Mass.

I wasn’t totally aware of the issues, but, you know, there’s been a decline. I encourage everyone to stop going. It’s the only way things are going to change, for sure.

A November report from the Strategic Organizing Center found that 86% of frequent customers surveyed say wait times have worsened or stayed the same in 2025. Long wait times were the biggest in-store complaint from Starbucks customers.

Starbucks has also opted to shutter some stores altogether. In September, Starbucks shut down hundreds of stores across the U.S.

At least twenty of the shuttered branches were in Massachusetts, including eight unionized locations. Notably, the Starbucks in the Davis Square neighborhood of Somerville was permanently closed just one week after the workers voted to unionize.

While many baristas (both current and those impacted by closures) struggle to pay their bills, executive compensation packages remain unaffected. According to the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch report, Niccol took home $95.8 million in 2024 despite only joining in September of that year. At 6,666 times more than the company’s median employee, it’s the largest CEO-to-worker pay disparity in the country.

Beyond pure compensation, an inordinate amount of money is put into optimizing Niccol’s day-to-day work. His commute to Starbucks HQ in Seattle is on a company-funded private jet. A satellite office was constructed just a 5 minute drive from his California home complete with a $14,000 espresso machine and an oceanside view. The company also spent $81 million on a four-day retreat for managers in Las Vegas in June 2025.

It would take the company less than a single day’s profit or less than 0.0025% of annual revenue to settle the remaining disputes with the union.

The disparity between corporate priorities and workers’ needs both inside and outside Starbucks was highlighted at Sunday’s event. Marissa, a DSA member and organizer, encouraged attendees to take the fight beyond the Starbucks picket line and into their own workplaces. Her place of employment has faced layoffs of its own in recent weeks. With a megaphone, she said:

We had six people laid off last month. No opportunity for recourse and no compensation packages on the way out. With a union, you can.

The 5k is the latest collaboration between Workers United and Boston DSA, who’ve been long-time supporters of their union drives. 

“We try to do weekly events for the picket lines to draw attention to the Starbucks workers and get more eyes on it,” said Ryan G, who co-chairs the Somerville branch of Boston DSA and hosted Sunday’s event. “We thought some kind of event like this would be more approachable for people. And Boston loves to run.”

This is one high-profile event that underscores a broader commitment. DSA has also set up a strike kitchen and logistical transportation support for Starbucks Workers United members through the strike, sustaining the workers whose pocketbooks are more impacted by the strike. DSA and Workers United are already brewing up future ideas for picket line events, including more live music and a set from a stand up comedian. “There’s really no idea too big or too small for these events,” Ryan said. “We’re trying all sorts of things.”

While the indefinite nature of the strike may seem intimidating, recent wins for the union signify that victory is not only possible – it may be within reach. A recent ruling from the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) found Starbucks violated the city’s Fair Workweek Law more than 500,000 times since 2021, when Workers United’s first union was formed in Buffalo, New York.

Baristas are asking everyone to avoid purchasing Starbucks for the duration of the strike. They also encourage donating to their strike fund, showing up to local picket lines, and spreading the word on social media.

Matt Wolfinger is a data journalist, Northeastern University graduate and a contributing writer to Working Mass. Read more of their work here.

The post Cross the Finish Line, Not the Picket Line – Newton locals run 5k to support striking Starbucks Baristas appeared first on Working Mass.

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There is a feeling among the American working class that has not been felt in decades. The feeling is so electric that it cuts through despair over the move toward outright fascism by the far right. The feeling is so electric that when Mayor Brandon Johnson called for a general strike in this country at Chicago’s October 2025 No Kings rally, it was imbued with possibility rather than just dismissed as a leftist pipedream. But what is a general strike? What does it take to organize a general strike? And what can we expect to see on May 1, 2028, the date called for by the Chicago Teachers Union, United Auto Workers, and now Mayor Brandon Johnson for attempting a general strike by aligning the expiration of as many union contracts as possible?

The General Strike – Origins and Socialist Adoption

Workers have been withholding their labor collectively to exert political power for as long as there has been civilization. However, with the advent of capitalism and the system of wage labor, withholding labor became both more dangerous for workers and more powerful. It was more dangerous because workers no longer did subsistence farming and often did not have the kind of networks of mutual aid which were once common because they were necessary to survival. Now workers could buy their food and other necessities with wages, liberating them from the work and risk of subsistence farming and social reproduction like making their own clothes, but also putting them at the mercy of the capitalists who paid their wages.

But strikes also became more powerful because capitalists depended on workers even more than workers depended on their wages. Labor is not cheap, even at the poverty wages that many capitalists have paid, but capitalists will always spend some of their capital on it because without labor no value is created, and without the creation of value no profits can be made. Capitalists can only earn a profit by paying wages that are less than the value created by the labor provided to them by workers.

Capitalists act as a class as well as individually. Not necessarily in some kind of smoke-filled backroom conspiracy way, but rather because their class position predisposes them to actions that become more than the sum of the individual actions. 

One example of this concerted action by capitalists as a class was in 1842 in Britain. In the midst of one of the worst depressions the country would ever experience, British capitalists slashed wages, laid people off, and cut corners on making workplaces safe. In response to these abuses, a group called the Chartists, formed by utopian socialists, liberal reformers, and workers, submitted a petition to the House of Commons in Parliament demanding  six significant reforms to introduce universal male suffrage, reduce corruption, and strengthen democratic representation and accountability in Britain. The petition had over three million signatures. The vote was not even close; it failed 287 to 49.

Two months later, a coal miner strike began in Staffordshire. For the most part it was like many strikes before and since. But there was one thing that stood out – the miners stated that they wanted the Chartist petition passed, and they connected their strike to it. Less than a month after that strike began, cotton workers who had their wages cut proposed “A Grand National Turnout” in support of the Chartist petition. Within less than a week, all work had stopped in Stalybridge and Ashton, then in Manchester, and soon throughout the country. Though the strike was eventually violently crushed, the capitalists got the message. They reversed  the previous wage cuts. Parliament got the message as well, passing the Factory Act in 1844. Worker organizers learned an important lesson – when the capitalist class uses their collective power to oppress, it takes the collective action of a whole nation of workers to fight back.

However, when early Marxists analyzed the general strike in Britain, they dismissed it due to its connections with utopian socialists and anarchists. Writing in 1873, Friedrich Engels argued that to use a general strike for revolutionary socialism (rather than the liberal reforms accomplished by the Chartist general strike) would require a level of organization and resources that would essentially beg the question “Why not simply use that organization and resources to take over the state rather than carry out a general strike?” But that changed in 1905, when the first of many revolutions swept the Russian Empire. While Russia was still largely feudal, especially compared to a nation like Britain, revolutionary socialists were nonetheless able to organize hundreds of thousands of workers to go on strike, shutting down electricity and newspaper distribution in St. Petersburg completely. The tsar eventually capitulated, abdicating a totalitarian feudal monarchy and creating a constitutional monarchy with a legislature and civil rights. Though these would later be rolled back, prompting the more famous Russian revolutions that created the Soviet Union, in 1906 the socialists of the world stood in awe of the historical victory of their Russian comrades.

One of the most inspired was a German economist and union organizer who had always believed in the potential of strike actions to bring about revolutionary change – Rosa Luxemburg. Not only did Luxemburg join the struggle in Warsaw, where she was arrested, but she eventually met up with Lenin, Trotsky, and others for an intensive weeks-long discussion in Finland about how the Russian revolutionaries were able to pull it off. She turned her take-aways from this discussion into her most influential political writing, The Mass Strike. In it, Luxemburg pointed out that the political mass strike in St. Petersburg was preceded by several strikes all over Russia in the years proceeding – and we now know in 2025 that there were even more of these smaller economic strikes leading up to it than Luxemburg even knew about.

Luxemburg argued that it was the participation of revolutionary socialists in these seemingly just-economic strikes over the years that was crucial to building toward the eventual general strike in 1905. These strikes were almost always unanticipated and unconnected to the socialists – the socialists did not start the strikes, but rather took the opportunity created by them to agitate for revolution and build working class organization. And they were cumulative – like the adage of Paulo Freire, workers make the road to a general strike by walking it, by carrying out strike actions repeatedly.

While Rosa Luxemburg dismissed the idea of “equal authority,” that trade unions should have as much political authority as a socialist party, she argued “everywhere trade-union work prepares the way for party work.” But Luxemburg was not concerned with winning over the trade union leaders, trying to convince them that their political “neutrality” was misguided – the value of trade union work was in the connection to rank and file members. Worker organizing raised class consciousness just as much, and perhaps more, than socialist party organizing. 

To summarize, the general strike is the mass withholding of labor by organized workers across an entire nation and multiple industries which has a political aim that confronts the capitalist class as a whole rather than a single capitalist employer. The experience of the Russian Revolution of 1905, as distilled by Rosa Luxemburg, presented a socialist political theory: revolutionary change could be accomplished through a general strike, built by organizers participating in smaller strike actions and engaging with the rank-and-file workers carrying them out.

The 21st-Century Push for a General Strike in the U.S.A.

There are considerable differences between the 21st century United States and those of 19th century Britain and early 20th century Russia. Most notably, labor unions and strikes were illegal in both of those historical cases, whereas in the U.S. both are, at least for now, legally protected if carried out in the way prescribed by the law. This has made it safer for workers to go on strike, but has also successfully pushed labor unions into less militant action.

While it appears the U.S. labor movement is rebounding from its historic lows of strike actions, we are still below the number of strike actions happening in the 1990s, let alone at the high points of labor militancy in U.S. history like in the 1970s. So is the general strike still a relevant concept for modern U.S. socialists?

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) decided it was still relevant, and did so before the recent resurgence in interest. On March 26, 2019, Barry Eidlin published an article in Jacobin titled “What is the Rank-and-File Strategy, and Why Does It Matter?” This article was not the origin of the rank-and-file strategy – that traces back to a working paper authored by Kim Moody in 2000 for the organization Solidarity. But with this article, Eidlin applied Moody’s most famous theory to the organizing DSA was doing in some places and seeking to do elsewhere. “Unions give workers a platform to wage class struggle in a coordinated and sustained way,” writes Eidlin, “in the process developing the capacities necessary for future fights.” For this reason, Eidlin argues that DSA projects like YDSA’s campaign to encourage members to become teachers and join or form unions was the crucial way for DSA to engage in labor politics. Eidlin cited the wave of teacher strikes in 2018 as an example of how the rank-and-file strategy had already produced success. 

Like Luxemburg and Moody, Eidlin casts doubt on the revolutionary potential of union staff and leaders, at least as the primary focus of socialist agitation, given their predisposition to conservatism from their material interest in minimizing risk to the financial well-being of the union as their employer. But Eidlin does not argue that these figures cannot play a part in the rank-and-file strategy – the question is whether those union staff and leaders will use their power and roles to empower a militant minority in the union.

Eidlin does not expressly cite the concept of the general strike, but it is easy to see how it fits into his argument when he writes that the rank and file strategy is “a theory of how to build power to change society in the interests of the vast majority…linking workplace struggles to broader community struggles.” But as Rosa Luxemburg notes, the general strike is not simply a campaign that socialists decide to do one day, but rather a culmination of a series of militant labor actions engaged in by socialists.

That is why the DSA Rank-and-File Strategy does not tell our members to “organize for a general strike” but instead to:

1. Educate DSA members about unions and the local labor movement.
2. Launch a jobs program for those interested in taking strategic jobs.
3. Create support structures for our members in these jobs.
4. Support members organizing new unions in their workplaces or choose strategic targets to organize.
5. Join and build union reform caucuses.
6. Support strike and contract campaigns through connections with workplace leaders.
7. Build and use the Labor Notes network.
8. Connect local unions and worker leaders with broader DSA campaigns such as Medicare For All and Green New Deal.
9. Work with unions on electoral campaigns for DSA-endorsed candidates.

We can see this strategy in the work of the Labor Branch of Chicago’s DSA chapter.. Every Labor Branch meeting has a political education section to educate our members about unions and the local labor movement. Our pipeline program connects our members to jobs in unionized workplaces. Our members who get into these jobs form formal or informal networks for discussing our organizing as socialists as well as labor militants. Our CHIWOC (Chicago Workplace Organizing Committee) organizing helps members start new unions in their workplaces. Our members are involved in reform caucuses of unions like Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE) in CTU and Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the Teamsters. And our strike support program has brought our members out to talk to UAW workers, Teamsters workers, and Illinois Nurses Association workers on the picket line.

There is always more that we can do, especially as we expand our membership, but this work we are doing is laying the groundwork for a general strike. A lot of it may not fit our romantic ideas of what carrying out a general strike is – the epic rallying cry speeches, the grand stands against authoritarian politicians and bosses. But as Rosa Luxemburg taught us, it is this work that may only be remembered deep in the pages of history books that builds the road to the general strike. And her own tragic death, in which she was murdered by right-wing forces after a failed attempt at revolution that she reluctantly joined, shows the consequences of trying to force a general strike to happen without laying enough of that foundation.

But we may be getting closer to that crescendo. President of the UAW Shawn Fain, whose election was the result in no small part of socialists organizing as members of the UAW in a reform caucus, has called for unions to line up their contracts to expire on May 1, 2028, providing a legal impetus for a coordinated cross-industry and nation-spanning strike. It is an exciting development in labor militancy and collective working class action across unions rather than siloed in individual unions and individual workplaces. But what can we expect?

The future is always unwritten, and those who make unequivocal predictions should be treated with as much skepticism as a strip mall clairvoyant. But we can use our understanding of history and our analysis of the current conditions of the political economy to outline the most likely possibility. As aforementioned, strike actions in the U.S. are still at a relative low in our history, and there has been no indication within any of the major unions that this will be changing in the near future. Nearly every union has contracts with a “no strike” clause that prohibits going on strike until the contract expires. Even under Trump with the courts and National Labor Relations Board being disarmed as weapons of the labor movement, unions are still stuck in these legal-based strategies and unwilling to engage in strikes. Union density continues to decrease (11.1% in 2024) despite being at newfound highs of popular support according to polling. Lastly, the COVID pandemic unfortunately threw a wrench in the momentum that labor had following the strike waves in 2018 and 2019, with 2020 having the least amount of strikes of any period in U.S. history since the information first started being tracked.

All of these factors weigh against May 1, 2028 becoming a real general strike. Despite whatever their public statements may sound like, the labor leaders involved with organizing the effort are well aware of this. The point of the proposed May 1, 2028 action is to show the working class the power of their collective action and union collaboration, so that in the future if those workers face the decision of whether to go on strike, they will understand the potential benefits as well as the risks.  May 1, 2028 may not be the general strike its organizers hope it to be, but it is part of the process of building toward one, and that is why socialists should absolutely engage with the effort and take hope from it. But even this campaign, with the lofty aim of a general strike, still boils down to the basic work Chicago DSA and the organization nationwide is doing through the rank and file strategy – in the simple words of the UAW, “organize, organize, organize.”

If and when a general strike one day brings revolutionary socialist change to this country, it is impossible to say who will be the faces of that moment or the leaders whose names will be captured in the history books. No one can show you the path to capture that glory. But what DSA can do, through our understanding of the history of the general strike and of the current conditions of the U.S. political economy, is give you a strategic framework through which you can organize your workplace and get it ready for the beautiful day when we will cast off our chains and step bravely forward into a socialist future.

The post Building the General Strike appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Organizing large workplaces can seem daunting. It's crucial to find co-workers to connect with and analyze the power in your workplace together.

The post Sources of power in your workplace appeared first on EWOC.

By: Jo Coutts

It is hard to imagine the future. When I was a young hip hop head in Washington DC in the early 1990s it was inconceivable that icons Ice Cube, LL Cool J, and Ice T would join the police propaganda machine playing cops in mainstream movies and TV shows. What would Biggie think?

S. Trotter seems to ask this question in their piece Rappers Die Every Day B in Swords into Plowshares’ current exhibit Detroit 2050: A Future Beyond Billionaires. Like Trotter, most of the artists in the show focus on the present and the past rather than that oh so hard to imagine future.

In the present, Mike Williams looks at billionaires’ appropriation of our neighborhoods, children, and very lives from the perspective of Greek and Roman sacrifice. His painting, One Hundred White Bulls, depicts “a symbolic herd of sacrifice” to remind us that we are the resources sacrificed to capitalist greed.

Next to Williams’ piece, Andrea Cardinal’s 26 Billion Dollars visualizes that greed by screen-printing Dan Gilbert’s estimated $26 billion net worth. The billion-dollar notes are a stark reminder that our sacrifices lead to unimaginable amounts of money for the rich.

Looking back to the past, Melanie Bruton’s When Memories Fade depicts a rain-swept fresh produce stand and asks us to consider what it feels like to lose your community. How does it feel when places that brought life feel ghostly? The piece brings to my mind the iconic drawing of “the shooter” by an unknown to me artist on Dequindre Cut. Created when the Cut was a hub of community creativity, today, The Shooter lives in a ghostly emptiness of iron railings, shipping container pop-ups, and surveillance cameras. If you close your eyes on the Cut, you can just about imagine the community of artists with spray cans, people hanging out drinking beer out of brown paper bags, music, relationships growing and failing, and conversations that never end. But the memories are fading as the denizens of the Cut have been moved out to make way for developers building condos funded by our tax dollars through tax increment financing (TIF).

Tax Increment Financing is a way that government “economic development” departments like the Downtown Development Authority and the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation “capture” our taxes and redirect them to private businesses without our knowledge or oversight. TIF is not the same as tax abatements. Tax abatements, which developers also receive, are a direct reduction in taxes for a certain period. Tax captures actually take our property taxes and give them to developers to use to pay for their projects.

Dan Gilbert has received more than $618 million through TIF. Ian Matchett’s portrait of Gilbert as an empty suit ready to dump all we hold dear into a trash can counters the prevailing official narrative of Gilbert as a philanthropic billionaire who has brought Detroit back from the trash heap.

And it is so hard to counter this narrative. In the face of the overwhelming propaganda by the City, the media, and even in some cases Detroiters like ourselves, we have to remember that none of the so-called Detroit revival is for our benefit. Gilbert’s theft of the taxes we pay to the City has gone to develop Library Street — when we approved the millage to fund libraries. It has gone to build a glass skyscraper where the Hudson’s building used to be — when we continually ask the City Council to increase the funds for home repairs. It has been used to develop $1,755 a month studio apartments in the Book Tower while we plead for water affordability.

A Future Beyond Billionaires is more than libraries, home repairs, and water affordability. Arthur Rushin III asks us to look for What Lies Yonder? to contemplate whether freedom is in the stars. Not just the stars in the heavens but also the stars in our hearts, our minds, and our souls.

Detroit 2050: A Future Beyond Billionaires is at Swords Into Plowshares Peace Center and Art Gallery, 33 E. Adams Street until December 20, 2025.

Gallery hours Fridays and Saturdays 1 to 6 p.m.

Political Discussion Thursday, December 11 at 6 p.m.

Artist Talk Friday, December 19 at 6 p.m.

Free Parking in the lot behind the gallery. Let the parking attendant know you are visiting the Gallery.

Jo Coutts is a member of Metro Detroit DSA.

Detroit 2050: A Future Beyond Billionaires was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Author: Mike B

A multigenerational, intersectional hub for Palestine organizing in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.

Vision
A free Palestine as part of a liberated world.

Mission
Mobilize and organize the greater Cleveland community to elevate the visibility of Palestine and put material and political pressure on the occupation.

Save The Dates

• PSL Rally – W 25th Market Square, Saturday 3pm. In response to the US’s threat to invade Venezuela, we’re having a rally at Market Square.
• Dec 8th – Game Night at Algebra Tea House. $10 suggested donation going to Ivy’s legal fees.
• Dec 9th – We’re showing PYM’s webinar on US Imperialism in the Middle East and having a discussion afterwards. This, and the next event are great if you are interested but can’t commit to weekly meetings.
• Dec 16th – Starting at 6:30 whole group will meet to reflect on petal work for the year and set goals for the first meeting in January.
• Potluck for second half of the meeting. As a social, this is a great time to meet the larger coalition.

OFF DEC 23 & DEC 30
First meeting back will be Jan 6th

The post Cleveland Palestine Advocacy Calendar: 12/6-12/16 appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

By: Mike Kinnunen

Finland. Land of saunas. Happiest place on earth. One of the homes of Nordic Socialism.

Being half-Finnish from my father’s side, I’ve always wanted to visit Finland, and have been a bit jealous of my relatives fortunate enough to do so. I’ve got one benefit going for me, however, that my relatives don’t: I’m a member of DSA, and I’m curious to see how Finland’s brand of “Nordic socialism” works for their people.

As I started plotting out my places to visit in Helsinki this fall, I realized I was staying near the Socialist Democratic Party (SDP) national headquarters. The SDP is the largest party in Finland by membership, and is a driving force behind what is often called “Nordic socialism” and something all the nations of Northern Europe are famous for: Although they have not exactly dismantled Capitalism, they generally have a much stronger social safety net than countries like the United States, and have enacted many policies that socialists here would want to see. (Some of us may debate whether they are truly “Socialist,” but that debate is outside the scope of this article.)

I also came across a restaurant, Juttutupa, that was one of the oldest restaurants in Helsinki and was also a Socialist club. Lenin used to frequent Juttutupa before his return to the Soviet Union and it was right across the street from the SDP offices.

RIGHT-WING GOVERNMENT

Politically speaking, Finland is going through some struggles. The government since April 2023 is led by a right-wing coalition headed by the National Coalition Party, with Petteri Orpo serving as Prime Minister. Besides the National Coalition Party, this coalition consists of the Finns Party, the Swedish People’s Party of Finland, and the Christian Democrats.

Since coming into power the National Coalition Party has been trying to weaken labor unions with, for example, fining unions for organizing strikes deemed “illegal” as well as deregulating bargaining to make it easier to deviate from sectoral agreements. They also are attacking social programs for youth and the elderly with budget cuts. Finland is experiencing high unemployment, high inflation, and domestic slowdowns in industries such as construction. They also have an aging population, which affects the workforce. In conversations with everyday citizens, they are starting to see impact from the U.S. tariffs, resulting in more slowdown due to added inflation. The ultra-right-wing Finns Party has seen membership steeply decline since 2017 which saw an anti-immigration faction assume leadership, while conversely the SDP has become the largest political party in Finland.

Even through these tough economic times, the Finnish people seem very happy overall. In my conversations I found that people, regardless of party, have their main priority rooted in happiness and security for their fellow citizens, not just themselves. This was a theme that held true in my observations and experiences over eight days there.

Further, I found that Finland was much more diverse than I expected. They have a pretty robust population of Afghani immigrants, not to mention sizable Asian and Black populations. My first cab driver, Juma, had been in Finland with his family for about 15 years and was from Afghanistan. Upon hearing my accent, he said, “Oh, you’re American? You guys have a lot of problems.” We proceeded to talk about Trump and how the effect of right-wing American politics has spread globally.

COFFEE LOVERS

I like to pick a coffee shop when traveling and make it a “home base,” where I can do a once-over of my daily itinerary before I head out as well as getting some local flavors both literally and figuratively. The coffee shop I frequented was Afghani-owned and the staff was quite friendly. Finns drink more coffee per person than any other nation in the world. I had the luxury of four coffee shops within a two-minute walk from my Airbnb, not to mention thrift stores, record stores, bars, restaurants, and an optometrist! The neighborhood square also had built-in chess boards, pingpong tables, and a mini half-pipe, all for public use. Daily, the square was filled with people of all ages, from break dancers to lovers on a date, to dog walkers (lots of dog walkers!).

Monday, September 29 was the day I picked to make my visit to the SDP and to Juttutupa. I had a Metro Detroit DSA “solidarity pack” filled with buttons, flyers, and stickers to give them, and I was quite excited to ask them questions about their brand of socialism, what works (or may not) work for them.

The SDP office is in a pretty modern-looking office building, a part of the top floor. The main doors to the elevators and offices were locked, but an office worker from another company let me in the locked security door. My years of being a salesperson paid off, I guess. I must have looked professional!

I told the Office Manager, Malin, that I was with the Metro Detroit Democratic Socialists of America and I was there to drop off some “solidarity swag.” Once she knew my intentions she instantly opened up. (One big misconception is that the Finnish people aren’t friendly. They are. They’re just stoic. Huge difference).

Malin told me the last American visitor they had at their offices was Elizabeth Warren, a couple of years ago. Yes, they knew she wasn’t a socialist, but it was nice that she’s progressive enough to want change and respects the work the SDP and other organizations in Finland are doing.

The SDP fears that all the attacks the National Coalition Party is doing to labor and to social programs may take several election cycles to fix, even if the SDP wins the next election. A big takeaway I got is that the far right has lost momentum, and that the SDP has grown at the same time. However, the main reason the SDP has grown is by creating their mass movement through coalition, and then has recruited members through those coalitions. Then, they begin to educate their new members to their platforms after they’re in the door.

This definitely seems like a clear and logical approach that we — DSA — can use to create our own mass movement and increase our membership quickly. In my opinion, we cannot barrage our new members with various positions on socialist theory or positions on various hard-line stances immediately. I brought a potential new member to one of our chapter meetings in April, and sadly she won’t be back. She told me that she got stuck in the middle of an in-depth ideological discussion in one of the breakout groups. That was her first exposure to DSA. Maybe we weren’t going to be her cup of tea ultimately anyway, but a softer approach when someone enters our “big tent” may help us in the long run in gaining and retaining new members.

Conversely, the SDP is not joining other left coalition groups in protesting. The SDP is quite cognizant of their position as a leading party in the country and they do not want to lose favor with the general population or undecided voters. To that end, they seem to avoid association with groups that may be seen as “extreme” by the general population. Of course, DSA may be the type of group that might be shunned by the SDP in this way. But maybe for them it is a successful tactic, and has brought about many Socialist-inspired policies and made them more palatable to the general population.

And of course more radical influences are prominent and very visible in Finland as well. In fact, the day after the Global Sumud Flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces, I happened upon a pro-Palestine protest that was formed by the group Rhythms of Resistance, which has a presence in many of the major cities in Western Europe.

The SDP is very excited and curious about the electricity Zohran Mamdani is bringing to our movement and to American politics in general, and hopefully more further left candidates and DSA members in particular can start replacing the liberal corporatists and centrists that seem to run the Democratic platforms in America. Malin was aware of the work Rashida Tlaib and AOC are doing, and I think Malin saw my grin get bigger as she mentioned our local comrade Rashida.

At that point, SDP National Chairman Antti Lindtman walked past, gave a kind nod, and walked into a meeting he was late for. Yes, Malin assured me that she would be giving him a MDDSA button!

Malin escorted me to “the wall” for a picture, which was a rose mural of the SDP logo. (When we get our own chapter office, we definitely need a wall mural of our chapter logo, for fun and inspiring photo ops!) She then gave me some SDP swag, and I was on my way.

I proceeded to Juttutupa for a traditional Finnish buffet. Even though it’s a known Socialist club, there were no Socialist activities displayed on their calendar, and their dance poster sadly was not a Dance Against Fascism.

NORDIC SOCIALISM?

Finland was indeed a magical place, and I intend on going back one day, especially in summer when there’s 20 hours of sunlight. However, the last topic of my discussion with Malin stuck with me: Why do socialist ideas seem to perform better in the Nordic nations? Scandinavians in general are joiners and organizers. For them, it really boils down to trust. They trust in their neighbors, in their government, and in their social programs. They trust that in the end they will be happier people, and they won’t let others’ views get in the way of that quest for happiness. Rashida said during her DSA convention speech this summer that “trust is built on human connection.”

That is what makes so much of American politics and life in the current climate pretty disheartening. That lack of trust. That lack of human connection. In my neighborhood, I see a house with a MAGA flag, and their next door neighbor has a Pride flag. Do you think that those neighbors trust each other? Do those neighbors have any sort of human connection with one another? How do we get back to trusting in our neighbors, our institutions, and our government?

I think it starts with us. It starts with empathy for our neighbors, and showing others that things don’t have to be the way they are. We are a new way forward, and a new path in re-establishing that trust in our life fabric. The more people we bring into our mass movement, the more of that life fabric we can create. It starts with us, and it starts with trust.

Social Democracy in Finland: Lessons for the Left? was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Image: bijanterani.com/photography

INTRODUCTION

Until today, electoral strategy debates within the Democratic Socialists of America have been argued on the same terrain. They have strategized within the constraints of the U.S. electoral system, but there is an alternative way of thinking about electoral strategy. The alternative demands a new kind of organizing aimed at eliminating those constraints. I call the strategy structural eliminativism, grounded in the practice of democracy organizing.

Structural eliminativism is the idea that some projects of social change require the elimination of structural obstacles for those projects to succeed. When applied to the project of building a mass working-class party, the idea is that the success of that project necessarily depends on eliminating the legal obstacles that frustrate multi-party democracy.

Democracy organizing is the idea of building power through collective action to enact legislation that reforms elections and governance. In this way, democracy organizing is distinct from electoral organizing–it’s not organizing to win elections, it’s organizing to transform the laws that govern elections and elected officials. That is, organizing to transform the law of democracy.

Within DSA’s project to build a mass working-class party, the function of democracy organizing is to strategically organize to transform the law of democracy by concentrating on the elimination of legal obstacles that frustrate our electoral aspirations. The idea is not to compete with pre-existing electoral strategies, but to supplement them. At a minimum, a structural eliminativist strategy aims for public finance matching programs and rank-choice voting. At a maximum, a structural eliminativist strategy aims to kill the two-party system.

EXPERIENCING THE POWER OF LAW

In September of 2018, I started my freshman year of college. I was a naïve and ignorant 18-year-old child of uneducated immigrants, yet I was politically curious. In my first semester, I took a course on Comparative Politics. I never did the readings, I barely showed up for class, and I do not recall most of what the course was about—except for one topic: electoral systems. 

I vividly remember my professor explaining the difference between a non-proportional and proportional electoral system. A non-proportional electoral system, she said, is designed to manipulate electoral outcomes in a way that does not accurately represent group preferences. She explained that these systems are designed to favour two-party democracy, such as in the United States. A proportional electoral system, she said, is designed to produce electoral outcomes that accurately represent group preferences. She explained that such systems are designed in a way that favors multi-party democracy. Through my professor, I learned about the power of electoral systems.

The summer after my freshman year, I interned for my local state representative in New Jersey. The internship was generally mundane. I made calls, I wrote letters, and I bullshitted with co-workers. One day I overheard a conversation between the chief of staff and a staffer. They were discussing a conflict during a legislative committee. “He had her dragged out,” she said. The “he” was George Norcross—an insurance executive, prolific fundraiser, and political machine boss. The “she” was Sue Altman—the executive director of the New Jersey Working Families Party, an organization leading the fight against Norcross’ political machine. Sue was protesting at a hearing where George testified on his use of tax incentives. The chair of the hearing had Sue forcibly removed by state police.

Fast forward to January of 2020, when I began interning for Working Families. Through research, I learned that George had been fundraising for gubernatorial, municipal, federal, and state elections, for decades. Through fundraising, he built a political machine: winning election after election, enriching himself at the expense of working-class communities. Such as in one instance, for example, where he manipulated government tax breaks in Camden—home to some of New Jersey’s poorest black and latinx working-class communities. Through George Norcross, I learned about the power of campaign finance. 

In 2019, I left my summer internship and started an independent political organization (IPO) in my hometown with a childhood friend. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders was ramping up his primary campaign for president. Through my IPO, and my eventual internship with Working Families, I developed relationships with congressional candidates across the state answering Bernie’s call for a grassroots “political revolution” from the bottom up. That slate of candidates came to constitute a state-wide movement. For the first time in my young adult life, I felt the power of solidarity, and with solidarity, hope. Little did I know what was about to come next. 

Early in that period, I attended an event. Overhearing a conversation, I heard an organizer use the phrase the county line. Later on, in another conversation, I heard a candidate saying, we’ll see if we can beat the county line. And again, in a presentation, we have to target the county line. Frustrated, I finally found the courage to ask, “What the hell is the county line?” 

An organizer explained that the county line referred to the way Democratic Party county committees designed ballots to legitimize establishment candidates and delegitimize grassroots candidates. County committees—a part of the official infrastructure of the Democratic Party—would place endorsed candidates in a perfectly straight column with the language “X Democratic Party County Committee, Inc.” Meanwhile, challengers to endorsed candidates would be placed in ‘ballot Siberia,’ chaotically sorted into different rows and columns far away from the pristine Democratic Party column. The purpose of the design was to psychologically influence voters into perceiving some candidates as more legitimate than others. The saying among organizers was that no one has beat the county line in over 50 years. At the end of the democratic primary, every movement campaign lost. Through county committees, I learned the about power of ballot design.

FROM NEW JERSEY TO CHICAGO: Chicago DSA & RE-THINKING ELECTORALISM

Fast forward to February 2025, when I joined an organization called Chicago DSA. With my organizing days long behind me (as well as my days of being a bad student), I moved to Chicago in 2023 to pursue a doctorate in philosophy. I began to see education as a vehicle for social change. Through my program, I spent time studying political philosophy. I became particularly enamored with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s/60s and Karl Marx. Eventually, after the 2024 presidential election, I realized that philosophy wasn’t going to change the world. With the memory of electoral anger at the Democratic and Republican parties, I turned back towards organizing.

Initially I joined DSA out of a vague memory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s membership. When I joined, I did not know what to expect. I was exploring. Then, at a DSA 101 orientation, our chapter co-chair Sean Duffy went on to explain the aspiration of DSA to become a mass political party. In that moment, my soul shined with joy. My experience as an organizer in New Jersey taught me the harsh lesson that the U.S. electoral system is designed to systematically exclude working-class communities from the democratic process, while privileging a capitalist class. The experience of exclusion within the Democratic Party, especially, left a gaping hole in my political identity. I was hopeless, but DSA offered a political home.

Eager and excited, I began exploring the Political Education Committee. At my first meeting, the Committee spoke about Socialist Night School and explained that they were in the process of organizing a new semester. One of the semester’s sessions was titled “Do We Need Our Own Party?” With curiosity, I volunteered to help organize the session alongside Sean and another comrade, Alan M.

Sean and Alan went on to suggest a few readings that laid out established positions and debates. I learned about the idea of “proletarian disorganization,” of a “dirty break,” of an “independent surrogate,” of an “independent ballot line,” and so on. With conviction, I dove into the readings, analyzing them vigorously and finding them both interesting and confusing. 

They were interesting because they were all anchored in a strategic conversation about creating a party that I had never been exposed to. I found value in the idea of weaponizing the Democratic Party to sharpen class contradictions. I found value in not focusing too much on party association and more so on developing an independent organization. I also found value in concentrating on organizing the working class, while affecting electoral conditions through extra-electoral activity.

They were confusing because they all seemed to avoid an extensive discussion of the power of structural legal obstacles that frustrate third party success: a non-proportional electoral system, a private campaign finance system, and establishment party control over ballot procedures. Rather, they were mainly focused on the question of independent organization and that organization’s relationship to the Democratic Party. In retrospect, what frustrated me about the debate was that it seemed to accept the constraints of the U.S. electoral system–strategizing within those constraints, as opposed to outside them.

STRUCTURAL ELIMINTAVISM: RE-THINKING ELECTORALISM

Faced with this problem, I turned towards solving it through my coursework. In doing so, I started to realize that the nature of the problem proposed a solution. What if, instead of organizing within the electoral obstacles, we organized to eliminate them? 

Thinking back to my studies, I realized that the proposition of eliminating structural obstacles was not a new idea. The civil rights movement, for example, organized for the right to vote without the right to vote by eliminating discriminatory racial classifications. Likewise, some Marxists historically organized for collective ownership without such ownership by eliminating the legal distinction between owners and workers. What if, I thought, we organized for a mass political party without a formal party by eliminating structural obstacles within the U.S. electoral system? The culmination of my thinking was a strategy I called structural eliminativism, the idea that some projects of social change require the elimination of structural obstacles for those projects to succeed.

In my view, DSA will never be a mass political party unless it eliminates the structural obstacles that frustrate our electoral success. The U.S. electoral system is systemically designed to uncontrollably frustrate our electoral aspirations. We are dominated by an electoral system designed to entrench two parties. We are dominated by a private campaign finance system designed to privilege the political influence of capitalist elites. We are dominated by ballot procedures weaponized to exclude working-class candidates from challenging the democratic establishment. If we are to achieve the project of building a political party, we must eliminate the structural obstacles that constrain multi-party democracy and the success of working-class electoral organizing.

In practice, eliminating structural obstacles can be both maximalist and minimalist. At a minimum, we can organize to eliminate disadvantages through piecemeal reforms that make it easier to win elections. Public finance matching programs and rank-choice voting are paradigmatic examples. In New York City, for example, Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign benefited from over $13 million dollars in public funding, while also benefiting from cross-endorsements that strengthened his position as the anti-Cuomo candidate. In Chicago, a group of our members, including myself, are already doing this minimalist kind of work by exploring the endorsement of the Fair Elections Coalition—a group of organizations advocating for a public matching program in Aldermanic races. 

Meanwhile, at a maximum, we can organize to eliminate the two-party system. Every 20 years in Illinois, for example, voters are given a ballot proposition to call a state constitutional convention. Through that convention, voters elect delegates through electoral procedures constructed by Illinois State Representatives. Notably, the convention provides an opportunity to re-design the state’s electoral system. Which, in Illinois, is not a radical idea. Up until the 1980s, the Illinois state legislature embodied a version of multi-party democracy through cumulative voting and multi-member districts. Meanwhile in 1991, citizens of Peoria successfully filed a voting rights lawsuit that forced their city council to move from winner-takes-all to cumulative voting. By re-designing the electoral structure of Illinois, through a constitutional convention and/or strategic litigation, we can effectively kill the two-party system in our home state, which would open the legal door to a working-class party.

None of this is to say that we should abandon our current electoral efforts, of course. Chapters should continue weaponizing the Democratic party line, organizing the working class, building independent infrastructure, and experimenting with independent candidates towards strategic goals. This is to say, however, that there is another way of solving our problems as a dominated political group in an oppressive electoral system. We can strategically eliminate the obstacles that oppress us and we can eliminate them through a new kind of organizing.

A NEW KIND OF ORGANIZING: DEMOCRACY ORGANIZING

Democracy organizing is the idea of building power through collective action to enact legislation that reforms elections and governance. In this way, democracy organizing is distinct from electoral organizing. You are not organizing to win elections. You are organizing to transform the laws that govern elections and elected officials. That is, you are organizing to transform the law of democracy.

Democracy organizing is a long-standing tradition, practiced especially by advocates for voting rights. When the Women’s Suffrage Movement was organizing for the right to vote, they were democracy organizing. When the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s/1960s was organizing for the right to vote, they were democracy organizing. Democracy organizing exists in a tradition that stands alongside the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Sylvia Pankhurst, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Fanny Lou Hamer, embedded in a deep relationship with the socialist movement.

Interestingly, the tradition of democracy organizing is often practiced when alternative options are not available. For example, the Suffrage and Civil Rights Movements were organizing for the right to vote without the right to vote. The lack of alternative options is notable because it poses a curious question: when you can’t win through electoral organizing, what do you do?

In my view, the problem that voting rights activists faced bears a striking resemblance to our own problems as DSA. We want a mass-party, yet we exist in a two-party system. We want working-class electoral representation, yet we exist in a private campaign finance system. Just like the voting rights activists, our options are limited. The only difference is that we have some agency. We can win some seats at some levels of government. Extraordinarily, we have done this. Still, no matter how hard we try, the structural barriers we are embedded in frustrate our aspirations and facilitate internal conflict within the organization over our relationship to the dominance of established party institutions. Despite the creative use of our collective power, we inescapably find ourselves in situations where there is an extremely limited range of electoral options. We find ourselves in a slightly different, yet similar, situation: when you can’t win through electoral organizing alone, what do you do?

The strategic response is democracy organizing. By building power through collective action aimed at strategic democratic reforms, we can supplement our electoral efforts through a transformation of the U.S. electoral system. In practice, this can look like a variety of things. 

From the example of NYC DSA’s Democracy Working Group, we can establish Democracy Working Groups in chapters across the country. From the example of our members in Chicago DSA, we can explore projects like the Fair Elections Coalition. From the example of Peoria, Illinois, we can file strategic lawsuits that aim to challenge the constitutionality of legal requirements that entrench two-party politics. From the example of Illinois history, we can strategically organize a constitutional convention that successfully re-designs the Illinois state legislature. From the example of the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Suffrage movement, we can engage in non-violent disobedience and insider lobbying, by organizing direct actions at strategic locations such as marching through the state legislature, organizing sit-ins at city council, and crashing private fundraisers.

Whatever form it might take, democracy organizing is a strategic solution to our electoral problems. We do not need to exclusively organize within the constraints of the American electoral system. Instead, we can organize to eliminate those constraints. By supplementing electoral organizing with democracy organizing, we can strategically open the door to multi-party democracy and transform the American electoral system over time.

The post A New Kind of Organizing: Re-Thinking Electoralism  appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

John Elward, @uniondrip on Twitter, shares his top picks for what to buy this year's worker active in the labor movement.

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Author: Andrew O.

“Theory” may be the most misused and misunderstood term on the left today. The popular understanding of theory, as simply things written in books, is deeply harmful to our movement. This understanding leaves the impression that theory is an object locked behind the elitist walls of academia, to be known of and kept only by those with the training and time to learn it. Frequently, this idea becomes an insistence that action is superior to theory, rather than the two not only being inseparable, but actually being one in the same.

This faux-debate seeks to make a distinction where none exists. Engaging with this debate at all limits our ability to organize and blinds us to the ways in which theory and action inform one another. When we give preference to action and minimize theory, we may occasionally hit on something that works, but we will have a limited understanding of why it worked or if it will work again in the future. On the other hand, preferencing theory and minimizing action limits our ability to effect change on the world around us. We must instead build a theoretical framework of the world to instruct our actions. This is essential to participating in a socialist movement.

All of us have an instinctual understanding of action or “the work”. It can take many forms, whether canvassing, protesting, writing proposals, debating and deliberating, doing turnout, organizing mutual aid, the list could go on forever. This “instinct” is actually a theoretical understanding of our world. Theory is simply the way we connect our abstract ideas of the world with our concrete reality so we can hold an understanding of it within our heads. We use our theoretical framework of the world to build our personal politics. When we analyze this theoretical basis for our worldview, we are able to give greater strategic reasoning and direction to our work and actions. If our personal politics are the house we build out of our ideas, theory is the foundation we build our house on. 

To ensure our foundation is strong, it should be constantly inspected, analyzed, critiqued, and updated both by ourselves and via discussions and arguments with our comrades. Each of us are perfectly capable of building and writing our own theory–our own understanding of the world–by living within it, but that doesn’t mean we need to start from scratch. Many great political theorists have done the heavy lifting already. We should study their work critically, rejecting some elements, and embracing others. In a very real way we can place our own ideas into debate with theoretical giants like Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Luxemburg, Nkrumah, and countless others.

Reading theoretical texts from those who came before us will allow us to build our own method of analyzing the world. With practice, we can more easily and readily share our understanding and politics with others. Our theoretical frameworks will not and cannot identically reflect anyone else’s. Each of us has lived a wholly unique life. It is our responsibility as socialists to build our own political theories and drive ourselves, our organization, and our movement forward. We, as socialists, must seek to politicize all of our decisions, particularly those within DSA.

It is up to each of us to ensure theory is not the arena of academics, dead socialists, or our nerdiest friends. Many people have written theory, and many of those theories are good, important, and relevant today. However, most theory ever written was not widely read or remembered.  It is not impossible to write theory, I am doing so right now. In fact, it is a certainty that I am writing ideas that have already been written and shared. 

Academics and nerds are not the arbiter of theory, much less of your own theory of politics. For our movement to win, theory cannot be used to gatekeep the movement. You do not have to have read any specific work to enter debate. Rather, you are responsible for doing what each of the great theorists have done before; you must analyze the world around you. No one will hand us a map to socialism, we must draft our own by constructing our own personal theoretical framework for our politics. This can, of course, be made easier by reading the writing of those that came before us.

The second major flaw with the understanding of theory within our movement are our methods of teaching and learning. The too common and dismissive refrain of “read theory” leads us to believe that we should go read a boring and difficult book by ourselves. Frustratingly, this is frequently what a person telling us to “read theory” means. This sort of attitude is unacceptable. To put it bluntly, you cannot learn theory this way. This is not a critique of your intelligence, rather, this is a comment on the reality of what theory means to the socialist movement. We all bring unique perspectives, catch different things, and we all benefit from sharing these perspectives with each other. Collective action is a strength to us in all aspects of our movement. We should not limit ourselves in this area by learning individually. Collective and mutual political education is socialist education.

So is the answer then to read with as many comrades as possible? In the long term, yes! But, if we try to introduce too many people into one reading group, we find many pitfalls. It is great to get a lot of passionate people in a room, but the discussion, debate, and deliberation suffer from the necessity to get in line to speak in groups this large. Conversation, explanation, and deliberation become confusing, disjointed, and ultimately counterproductive. Worse, if it is not well organized, it turns into a lecture where the most vocal people dominate the discussion to the exclusion of all others.

Instead, we should read with many small and varied groups of comrades. We open the ability for free flowing discussion and debate. This will give us the best opportunity to understand and digest the texts we have read. This method still is not perfect, and while free flowing conversations and arguments are great for learning, they can still be monopolized by the most confident and opinionated people in the group. As socialists, we must ensure that everyone is able to participate as much as they are willing and able. It is our collective responsibility to redirect conversation towards people who are seeking to speak, and to give space for everyone’s ideas to be heard. This is hard to do and takes constant practice and reflection to achieve. Even with these pitfalls, small discussion groups are the best method for reading and learning theory.

Socialists were able to learn, teach, and argue about theory when the literacy rate within the United States was under 70%. One third of labor organizers in this period (and likely much more) were unable to read. Still, they were able to build personal politics and deep understandings of political theory. Reading together and arguing about books helps us build our own theories and politics through having to listen to other perspectives as well as having to sharpen our own arguments. It is more engaging and more fruitful than a lecture can be, and it keeps us more accountable and engaged than reading alone will. 

We are all already forming and applying theory whether or not we realize it. We have all read theory, and have been inundated with liberal theory for our entire lives. What is important now is to analyze our own theoretical frameworks, our own politics, and ask why we believe what we do, how we got here, and if our frameworks are still accurate and useful to who we are and where we want to go. 

There is not a difference between building your theoretical frameworks and your personal politics. Your politics are downstream of your theoretical base, and they will be built, changed, and updated simultaneously. This is not a process that can or should be completed, we should always be working to learn and update our theories and politics as often as we are able. There is no shame in being wrong. Learning, growing, and changing our minds are all parts of engaging in politics, and engaging in the world.

We should not seek to create identical political theories or politics. It is not possible and it would hinder our movement. We must, instead, find ways to resolve these differences through principled and good faith debate. As long as everyone is accurately and honestly representing their viewpoints and perspectives, we should be able to engage in debate regarding ideas, actions, and arguments with anyone. “Good faith” simply means we have all come to the table with honesty and integrity. Being dishonest about the why behind your argument is just as destructive and harmful as any other dishonesty to our movement. The concern about honesty within our debates is not just high-minded idealism. Dishonesty functionally and materially holds back our ability to make decisions, learn, and grow as individuals and as a collective movement. Debate, discussion, and deliberation will build our movement and is just as much action as canvassing or protesting.

As socialists, we seek to make every person a leader in the movement. If we are organizing effectively, the movement will not notice if we need to take a break or step away temporarily. As a result, all people within a socialist movement must be an active participant within building democracy whether that is our chapter, the national organization, or in the broader world. Finding the direction of our movements and our actions, finding the common ground between our personal politics, and finding the principles we must uphold are only possible through debate.

It is imperative for each person in the socialist movement to build their own understanding of theory and their personal politics. It is equally important to build our movement via debate and deliberation with our comrades. We are not individualists. We are a collective movement of individuals. If the working class is to build itself into a class ready to lead itself, into the worker class, we must all take the responsibility to build our theoretical framework, our personal politics, and to build each other into these leaders.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of DSA Cleveland as a whole.

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