The conditions under which DSA attempts to build socialism are unique in history: nowhere has a developed, late-stage capitalist state–much less the most militarily and economically powerful empire on the planet–been successfully guided towards socialism, be it through electoralist or revolutionary tactics. There is no world war, no invading force capable of weakening the capitalist state to the point where it could be swiftly abolished by force of arms. If there were ever to be armed conflict, it would be asymmetrical and without recourse; the North Vietnamese could fight knowing that, eventually, the American public’s will to fight would fade, and our forces would withdraw across the Pacific. Not so for an American revolution–with conflict threatening its very existence, the American bourgeoisie would fight to the last to maintain its power. The revolutionaries could not rely on attrition to succeed; it would be an all-or-nothing struggle, a fight that favors the better armed and funded force.

Nor, however, can American socialism be legislated into existence under our current electoral system. Our electoral system of first-past-the-post voting and single-member districts incentivizes the electorate to vote strategically for candidates most likely to win, which inevitably leads to a political system dominated by two major parties, to the exclusion of all others. Under this system, it is almost impossible for socialists to get elected save for running as Democrats, which places them at the mercy of the bourgeois Democratic leadership. When socialists run independently, we barely win a handful of local and state elections. When socialists reach national prominence at all, the two-party system forces them to collaborate with corporate Democrats to obstruct the Republicans, detaching socialists from the radical platforms they were elected on. Even if the Democrats were realigned into a Workers Party through long-term entryism, the Republican Party, with firm control of the Supreme Court, would remain powerful enough to obstruct any socially-minded legislation, paralyzing government from implementing all but the weakest of reforms.

Even these unfavorable conditions have worsened–the Supreme Court has declared the President above the law with their ruling in Trump v. United States, allowing for the weaponization of the executive branch against any upstart movements which threaten the status quo. The effective legalization of bribery and extensive influence over government wielded by the capitalist class has further ensured that their proposals are de facto law, and that electoral opponents to socialists will be better-funded in what few races we can contest in the first place. Therefore, with reform and revolution impossible under the current conditions, the American Road to Socialism must be wholly original, taking best-practices from history wherever we can, but ultimately charting our own course without the aid of historical precedent. Neither European parliamentarism nor revolutionary vanguardism can guide us in our fight against the most powerful bourgeois “democracy” history has ever seen. It is the aim of this article, however, to propose a strategy which will aid DSA’s chances of building power in the heart of global capitalist hegemony.

All plans of action are irrelevant without first addressing the most important question: how do we grow? DSA currently numbers some eighty-thousand on-paper members, making up roughly 0.03% of the electorate. This is, for political purposes, functionally irrelevant–our influence over national politics has been tied more to the candidacies of Bernie Sanders than to our own weight of presence, and we have struggled to maintain growth even after the wave of support we received in the late 2010s. This must be compensated for in the short-term through coalition-building with as many left-wing movements as possible; DSA must adopt a diplomatic posture within the broader American left, with members acting as emissaries to a tapestry of groups in the labor, anti-racist, feminist, environmentalist, queer, Palestinian, and anti-Trump movements. DSA must take a leading role in organizing coalitions among these groups, with chapter and national leadership dedicated to forging popular fronts in the model of renowned Black Panther leader Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition. The only way these fragmented, individually weak movements can exercise credible political, economic, and social power is through a united front. It is important to stress that the organization of these coalitions must, wherever possible, be done covertly; Fred Hampton was assassinated by the FBI, leading to the collapse of the first Rainbow Coalition. Overtures, envoys, and agreements between groups should be handled as discreetly as possible. The use of digital organizing should be reduced when sharing sensitive information–the bourgeoisie need only know the united front exists, not its precise organizers. When communicating with the public, we should do so only through carefully-chosen, charismatic spokespeople–let those who can speak do the speaking, and those who can plan do the planning.

Once organized, coalition members must cooperate in electoral, propaganda, direct action, and humanitarian work. While electoral campaigns can see limited success and provide public platforms from which to advocate our ideals, electoralism must ultimately be a single facet of recruitment and outreach, with the bulk of our limited resources and manpower dedicated towards propaganda and humanitarian efforts. Voters cannot and will not support a political organization incapable of being elected in appreciable numbers, so party-politics cannot be a priority without substantial electoral reform, defined as replacing plurality voting with some method of proportional representation, wherein the percentage of votes a party receives translates to holding that exact percentage of seats in the legislature. This is a concession the political establishment would never dream of granting unless facing overwhelming public pressure, so a key priority of our campaigns must be in making electoral reform a prominent topic in political discourse, while emphasizing the malaise of the two-party system.

The fundamental inability for ordinary citizens to enact change under the status quo must be the most resounding topic of our propaganda. Our propaganda must be short, sharp, and simple, capable of explaining briefly and confidently why the present system cannot be reformed or sustained, and so must be replaced. Striking iconography and resonant slogans espoused by charismatic speakers must be made omnipresent, with our messages emphasizing how even the most moderate of policies which are already standard in other developed states, such as universal healthcare, childcare, higher education, and paid parental leave, cannot be achieved under our current two-party system. A condensed version of DSA’s program, containing only our most popular and realistically achievable policies, should be distributed as widely as possible, taking up no more than three pages, front-and-back, so as to maximize its readability and appeal. We must be able to capitalize on public discontent with our polarized political system, to demonstrate how often the American People don’t get the policies they voted for. This is the focal point on which we can organize coalitions; all member groups would stand to gain from breaking the two-party system.

It is here and at every turn that DSA and our coalition partners must contrast ourselves with the bourgeoisie–the Democrats most especially–by doing what they cannot: improve people’s lives. Alongside marketing and organizing, humanitarian outreach programs must be a primary focus of DSA chapters and their coalition allies, working cooperatively to improve the lives of their unofficial constituents through programs like school lunch drives, tenant and union organizing, infrastructure redevelopment, housing construction, hiring legal defenses, establishing community gardens, winter clothes campaigns, and similar on-the-ground efforts to aid communities neglected and exploited under the status quo. Beginning in the cities, our humanitarian work should ideally extend to rural communities over time, and in doing so expand our influence among farmers, farm-laborers, migrant fieldhands, and all other segments of the working class. The Middle Tennessee Chapter is already practicing this philosophy with its “Burn Debt, Not Books” program, which is fighting to abolish the medical debts of working class Southerners–if similar programs were started by local coalitions across the country, campaigns like these have the potential to endear DSA and the broader American Left to millions of people.

These efforts will, with persistence, build genuine loyalty among working class communities in ways that electoralism alone cannot, and will create a public more receptive to our ideals, which translates to increased membership, more dues payments, and greater capacity for outreach–the foundations of any successful mass movement. Cooperating on mutual aid programs will likewise serve to build solidarity within the coalition, strengthening overall unity among the American Left in spite of bourgeois efforts to divide us through prejudice. As membership increases and its resources expand, the movement can become increasingly autonomous, providing members with goods, services, and community that they cannot otherwise find in bourgeois society. DSA membership can be made desirable by offering tangible benefits: paying members’ legal fees, helping them make rent, organizing their workplaces, caring for the sick, housing the homeless, feeding the hungry. Mutual aid efforts should be accompanied by festivals and gatherings featuring music and art of all sorts, intentionally fostering the freedom and flourishing we seek in a future socialist society.

It is through these means–coalition-building, strong propaganda, and humanitarianism–that we can build popular power in the heart of global capital. The coming years should prove an especially fertile time for movement-building: the upcoming presidential election, the genocide in Gaza, the climate crisis, rising costs of living, and widespread dissatisfaction with both establishment parties will create a public primed for radicalization to an extent unseen since the mass movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Protest politics have reemerged in force, which socialists should use as vehicles for visibility and building ties with other left-wing movements. DSA must be seen as the vanguard of public discontent, going where the fight is and rallying our allies; that is how we build up our reputation, our coalitions, and ultimately, our power.

Once we have earned support, comes the next question: how to channel it? Entry into electoral politics is at this point still nearly impossible by virtue of the two-party system, so electoral reform must be our earliest and loudest demand. The means of coercing the state into granting this basic concession are mass mobilization: protests, strikes, encampments, and most importantly, the electoral discipline to withhold votes from Democrats not campaigning for proportional representation. At that point, the state would then have two options: grant concessions (electoral reform the first), thereby legitimizing the movement, opening the door to electoral politics, showing our working-class base that mass action is capable of winning victories; or, deny us, repress our organizing and risk even stronger backlash in the form of riots, economic slowdowns, and working class militancy as voters realize the hopelessness of reformism under the status quo. A degree of arming amongst workers may even prove fortuitous, both as a means of defense in the event of a worst-case scenario, and to motivate the state to grant more moderate concessions to our public representatives so that support for the militarists doesn’t increase. History has shown that this “ballot-and-bullet” strategy can prove effective, with the relationships between the Black Panthers and the Civil Rights Movement, the IRA and Sinn Féin, demonstrating how fear of militancy can coerce the state into negotiations. Every victory serves as a triumph for our marketing and reinforces the faith of our supporters, allowing us to then steadily advance our demands further to the left.

Ultimately, there will come a point where our demands have become too radical for the establishment to tolerate, and we are faced with violent state repression. Our reaction depends on when this point is reached: if it is after we have entered mainstream politics as a competitive political party, we may be capable of prevailing through the mass support of the public in a peaceful transfer of power. If the critical moment comes before this point, or the bourgeoisie prove unwilling to concede peacefully, then we must plan accordingly. In either case, it is during this critical stage that DSA will be faced with important organizational questions. With its increased size and prominence, DSA will have to adapt in order to quickly and collectively react to volatile political developments and potential dangers; in this respect, lessons may be found in the mass revolutionary parties of the 20th Century, which too faced the challenges of maintaining cohesion and efficiency without falling prey to excessive bureaucratism and a weakening of party democracy. These are questions that bear considering now, so that when DSA attains national prominence, we are prepared to hit the ground running.

While it is impossible for any plan to predict all of the obstacles it will come to face, it is through vigorous coalition-building, strong propaganda, and widespread mutual aid that DSA can help build a United Front capable of exercising the economic, social, and political power necessary to break the two-party system. With the rapid deterioration of American bourgeois democracy, the rise of the far-right, and the ever-worsening climate crisis serving to exacerbate material inequalities, the American Left cannot–must not–fail to build its strength and attain power. Never before have the stakes been higher and democratic socialism needed more strongly; let us all do our utmost to meet the moment history has presented us, and guarantee a better, brighter future for all.

Image: Attendee sporting a Democratic Socialists of America jacket at the Bernie Sanders Rally in the LA Convention Center on March 1st, 2020 in Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Cory Doctorow. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.