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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Chapter and Verse: a Summary of Chapter News for November 2025

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A clear, accessible walkthrough of Marx, Engels, and Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, this piece explains why the working class must dismantle the capitalist state and build a new commune-state to achieve true emancipation and, ultimately, a classless society. Illustration of the Paris Commune adapted from the century edition of Cassell’s History of England, (ca.…

The post The Road to Working Class Power: Permanent Revolution and the Proletarian State appeared first on YDSA.

Author: Barbie A

Day in and day out, more and more people are disappearing off of the streets of our communities. From migrants going in for routine immigration check ins and being detained, being targeted in traffic stops, being sought out on their way to work, or out right having their paperwork revoked from them and hunted down like animals. All across the United States, including here in Cleveland, people who call this place their home are having their lives destroyed by the racist and inhumane Trump administration. A country that once guaranteed safety and sanctuary is now trapped within a shifting system in which anyone could find themselves entangled with ICE or DHS, including U.S. citizens. 

Living in the most diverse country in the world, with a long history of immigration, racism, colonization, imperialism, and injustice, as democratic socialist, it is our duty to show up for the marginalized groups of our community and stand up against fascism. During Trump’s campaign for presidency there was a lot of talk about expanding ICE operations and abilities to go after criminals, or “the worst of the worst” as he put it. For those of us familiar with the immigration system and the terminology around immigration, we understood clearly that they were going to use this opportunity of power to abuse their authority and go after undocumented migrants, child U.S. citizens, and various documented legal immigrants. A majority of immigrants who are undocumented did not come into the United States without being vetted first. Most immigrants enter the United States with legal status and end up falling out of status because of expiring paperwork, financial barriers, changes in their life situations, or for most it being that they do not have a legal way to obtain permanent residency or citizenship from the status they do have. 

For example, those with temporary protected status (TPS), and people with other statuses of immigration, do not have a pathway to citizenship despite being legal documented migrants who must obey the law, pay taxes, and are excluded from social welfare, unemployment, social security benefits, and other rights afforded to US citizens. In most cases of immigration the only way to obtain citizenship is by being sponsored for a green card by an employer or by marrying a U.S. citizen. TPS holders and others are having their paperwork revoked or denied under the Trump administration. Migrants come to the United States seeking refuge and they have created lives with families, jobs, homes, businesses, and more, and yet they could lose everything they have paid and sacrificed for because this administration would rather punish the innocent than negotiate fair immigration reform. Migrants being deported who have U.S. born children have to decide between figuring out living situations for their kids here in the United States or bringing them to the countries where the parents are from but are of no familiarity to the children. This disenfranchises child U.S. citizens from having access to medical care, education, food, and many more opportunities.

We are watching the Trump administration abuse their power. The escalation is something we must be prepared for as we know anti-immigrant agencies have been rewarded $170 billion dollars via the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”. It’s imperative that all people in our country and region understand their rights under the constitution and what they’re lawfully protected to exercise. 

So far we have seen Donald Trump use executive orders to try to revoke birthright citizenship (14th amendment) from people. We have seen the attacks on the fifth amendment by blatantly denying people their rights to due process, including denying people their rights to a fair hearing, to challenge deportation, or to their rights to challenge their unlawful detention (habeas corpus). Regardless of any person’s status they’re guaranteed the rights to the first amendment, in which we have seen the invasion of these protections and discriminatory practices used to target people for their rights to freedom of speech, rights to protest, rights to assemble, rights to petition the government, freedom of press, and the freedom to practice whatever religion they choose. Across the country we have also seen an overwhelming amount of evidence showing violations of the fourth amendment, which protects all people from themselves and their personal belongings illegally being searched or seized without a judicial signed warrant that would prove that there is substantial evidence to have this protection breached. 

Recently the Supreme court has ruled (6-3) in favor of Noem (Kristi Noem) v. Vasquez Perdomo, in which it allows for racial profiling and discrimination. This opens the door to allowing immigration, and other enforcement, to violate the rights of all people. Agents are now permitted to bother people based on their appearance and ethnicity, language and accent, location and occupation, and other suspicionless stops. This has led to the arrests of U.S. citizens who are being treated inhumanely and having their rights violated. Cleveland DSA has vowed to commit to helping prepare the community and support immigrants during these turbulent times.

Cleveland DSA’s mission with our immigrant solidarity priority project is to show up for the communities of people who are many times forgotten about. Through preparation of our comrades to take part in our rapid response network, building and participating in extensive coalition efforts in greater Cleveland and surrounding areas, and showing up to support our communities in courtrooms, check ins, their places of employment or business, worship, and social activities; we want to meet people where they’re at and show them our commitment to justice and solidarity. 

First we will start by preparing all comrades through various know your rights (KYR) training so that they can help our community to observe and document people’s interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and/or local law enforcement. When our chapter is prepared we will begin canvassing through Greater Cleveland’s businesses and organizations, churches, and public spaces, to prepare them for potential illegal raids. We will support the immigrant community by showing up in solidarity during court proceedings and check ins, time spent in detention centers, rapid response networks, protesting, and various mutual aid efforts. During this period we will build trust within the community and build our reputation to prove that democratic socialists care about the real issues facing the people in our neighborhood. 

No matter anyone’s race, sex, age, language, origin, or status here in the United States, this fight impacts us all. To challenge the structural injustices that divide workers and communities, we must recognize that affirmation of the rights and humanity of immigrants is inseparable from the struggle for socialism and justice, because it confronts the very systems of exploitation, exclusion, and inequality that a society must overcome in order to truly be free. We must fight to dismantle the entrenched structure of the injustices that constrain human possibility, forging a path towards a society rooted in collective ownership, democratic empowerment, and genuine social equality!

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This essay explores why young organizers in Georgia have become disillusioned with a Democratic Party that speaks of change yet resists it, arguing that genuine progress requires confronting entrenched power and pursuing a more transformative, democratic socialist vision. In 2024, perhaps the most important election of my lifetime showed that red was Georgia’s true color.…

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A critique of the No Kings Rallies, this piece argues that while millions of liberals are mobilizing against the far-right, their protests lack strategy, and that only socialist organizing can turn widespread anger into real political power. On Saturday, October 18, millions of people took to the streets for the second round of the No…

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