The Moment is Here: A Defense of the 2025 DSA National Convention + Repudiation of Right Sectarianism

Comrade BRG

Tom Goodkind, a member of Liberation Road, a social democratic splinter group from Freedom Road Socialist Organization, recently released an article titled DSA’s 2025 Convention: Can We Meet The Moment? Couched in the manipulative rhetoric that we recognize as being the stock in trade of the DSA right, it is a sour, salty piece and was immediately lambasted by comrades on both the DSA hard-left and center left. Let’s dig in a bit more and correct lies with revolutionary truths. Goodkind begins:

“With nearly 1,300 delegates in attendance, the convention could have been a decisive moment to chart how DSA might “meet the moment”—to orient its chapters, campaigns, and national leadership toward building mass, working-class based power in defense of democracy and for socialism. Instead, what unfolded revealed both the organization’s enormous potential—its energy and enthusiasm, its attraction to new generations of revolutionary activists, its broad range of campaigns—as well as its deep limitations: a culture of performative factional combat, a national leadership paralyzed by electoral abstentionism and “left” sectarianism, and a gathering that too often turned inward rather than rooting itself in DSA’s own mass-based practical achievements and the urgent tasks before us.” 

The convention was, indeed, a decisive moment. We committed ourselves to a firm, unyielding anti-Zionist line, an abolitionist line with regards to ICE, and established further our path towards building an actual revolutionary socialist party. We Communists always ask the question: “for whom”. For whom do we fight? For the proletarian, those who have nothing to lose but their chains? For the migrant? For the prisoner? For the revolutionary youth fighting in the streets of Los Angeles? Or for the scared professional managerial class and Democratic Party staffers? Who are the masses? Who do we work for? Who are the key strata that we must unite with and bring into our formation in their tens of thousands? What do we lack? Who are the advanced, intermediate, and backward in our context? We cannot speak of a “mass party”, a “mass politics”, or a “mass movement” without addressing these questions. Mass politics is not simply a question of getting a bunch of liberals to join DSA and try to push the Democratic Party to the Left, because there is about as much hope of pushing the party of Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and John Fetterman to the Left as there is hope of pushing the Republican Party to the Left. 

Factional “combat” is a given in a formation with almost 100,000 members of various political points of view. Line struggle is not to be shied away from, it is to be embraced. Goodkind is angry because the lines of the factions that he supported were not supported by the highest body of our organization. Why did they fail? Simply because, in response to his title question: they could not meet the moment. In an atmosphere of violent fascists roaming the streets, some with badges, some without, SMC is not enough. In an atmosphere of the masses storming the gates of heaven in the streets of Los Angeles, Groundwork is not enough. Bernie Sanders yammering about “rich people bad” is not enough. We, the left delegates, demanded more, and we got it. That’s how democracy works. 

Electoral abstentionism. I was a hardline, uncompromising, electoral abstentionist for years, as are the overwhelming majority of Maoists in the United States. Our theory of change is a revolutionary one, meaning that we see the victory of socialism as being brought about not through an election but through a violent overthrow of one class by another. The ruling class must be overthrown by the proletariat. That isn’t me speaking, that is Marx, Lenin, Mao, and everybody else who has actually won. That position has not changed. This being said, every left caucus and slate represented at convention, from Red Star, to Emerge, to Communist Caucus, to SoR, to MUG, to Liberation, to LSC, supports tactical intervention in elections. We do not support ceding this trench of combat to the enemy, allowing fascists and gentrifiers to capture city councils and school boards from which they make war on our trans comrades and turn our cities ever further into dystopian hellholes, where the working class shuffles from slum to slum, eventually ending up in shelters or tents under the overpasses. We are not accelerationists. With this being said, we also are not fools, or people who throw our principles to the four winds for a better electoral return. We are Marxists, and our engagement with elections is not because we believe they will bring revolution. Electoralism as strategy is a dead end. History has demonstrated the truth of this. 

Goodkind goes on to attribute the success that DSA has to Bernie Sanders, a decrepit Zionist who consistently arouses groans by defending Israel’s right to exist - even in situations where Israel is not being discussed, such as during the Stop Oligarchy tour. Attributing the success of thousands of working class activists, many of which are BIPOC, many of which have been long scoffed at and disrespected, along with their work, by the shrinking right sectarian (I'm sorry - "mass politics") wing, to a single old white man is simply absurd. I was in college during his first run in 2016 and was never convinced that this old white man was going to bring us socialism, nevermind the liberation of Black people. Malcolm X taught me that the liberation of my people will come from my people myself. What use is a Bernie Sanders when the masses burned down a police precinct? What use is a Bernie Sanders when the masses of students seize buildings and fight the pigs for Palestine, risking it all? Bernie is barred from the front door, rightfully so, for being a Zionist, and not meeting the moment. If he brought you to question the hell we’re living in, well and good. Don’t be frozen in 2016. There’s war outside. 

For all his “anti-sectarian” energy and denunciation of caucuses, Goodkind praises his own sect and describes himself as a “lightly active” member of Socialist Majority Caucus, which I find unconvincing, since I’ve seen SMC members sharing this article since its release - leading me to believe he's more than "lightly active". We should look askance at a critique of sectarianism from a member of a sect that seems to work almost exclusively with one DSA caucus. The author delves even further into uncharitable sectarianism and demonstrates his own lack of knowledge, describing Springs of Revolution as “anarchist-inspired” and calling Libertarian Socialist Caucus “venerable and annoying”. He then goes on to lament the fact that the 20% of caucus delegates that he believes are “ideologically independent” broke overwhelmingly for the Left. He demonstrates a remarkable lack of introspection as to why this was the case. The uncaucused delegates broke for the Left because the Left, again, meets the moment. In the midst of a genocide, ICE raids, and all kinds of other escalating evils, the masses at convention and in the streets demand better. The old way is not enough, and actually helped get us here in the first place. When a crisis happens, you turn to a Communist. 

The author goes on to recount his own personal history and characterize the entirety of the New Communist Movement as “ultra-left”. The New Communist Movement can be broadly characterized as the myriad of groups that came out of the collapse of SDS, splits from the old revisionist CPUSA, and other groups broadly inspired by revolutionary movements in the Third World, especially Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China. The RCP to which Goodkind’s sect traces back (RWHq split from RCP in 1977, merger with other groups to form FRSO in 1985, post Soviet ideological crisis leading to split of the “democratic socialist” faction from FRSO in 1999) was part of this milieu. I can definitely understand why a veteran of the oftentimes ludicrous struggles of this period would be particularly paranoid about the “ultra-left” boogieman under the bed, but that’s simply no excuse for bad politics and mischaracterization of your comrades. He goes on to rehash the already debunked “electoral abstentionist” canard and call for things that the DSA left is already engaging in. He calls for turning away from sometimes overly comfortable left spaces and towards working-class communities and workplaces; it means developing campaigns on every available terrain of struggle which broaden and deepen the front against fascist autocracy while centering fights against the ethnic cleansing of immigrants, against the wiping out of the gains of the Civil Rights movement and Black Lives Matter upsurge, against the attacks on trans people, and against the genocide in Palestine; it means working closely with all left/progressive organizations and activists who are committed to developing left leadership of the front independent of establishment Democrats; and it means working closely with all socialists committed to these efforts in order to help coordinate the resistance and turn its eyes towards the future. I agree! DSA Left comrades are engaged in rapid response to the targeted harassment and kidnapping of migrants, organizing workers, building coalitions of revolutionary BIPOC organizations, and R22 opened up a new door for us with regards to the revolutionary wing of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. The methods that generally have served the masses in times of crisis and advanced the working class down the path of revolution are the methods that are generally derided by our right sectarians as being "ultra-left", while the methods that have led movements down blind alleys and into cooptation by the Democratic Party have generally been the methods they embrace. They should seriously investigate this contradiction, if they are honest about winning. Or, perhaps, they are simply allergic to real power, preferring to play at it.

Goodkind identifies three “failures” from convention: “a failure to ground itself in practice, a failure to center the fight against fascism, and a failure to build unity against ultraleft tendencies in the organization”. One must ask how hundreds of DSA Left organizers from varying fields of work ranging from organization of militant mass demonstrations against fascism to migrant rapid response to community defense to mutual aid to radical unionism are not “grounded in practice” - Goodkind would have been better off saying “not grounded in the practice that I personally prefer and which is aligned with my reformist theory of change”. The “ultraleft tendencies” that he decries meet the moment because they are rooted in the practice and positions of the masses who rose up for George Floyd, who defended migrants in Los Angeles with their bodies, and who waged struggle against Zionists at universities all across the country. Where is the failure to center the fight against fascism? How is fascism defeated? At the ballot box? Did the comrades who stormed Berlin in 1945 come armed with ballots and clipboards? The author goes on to uncharitably attack one of our organization’s co-chairs for maintaining principled, revolutionary Marxist positions and refusing to concede to revisionist notions of power and how it is gotten. She was reelected overwhelmingly. I ask - if the “sectarian” wing of the organization consistently gets support from the masses on resolutions and NPC candidates, is it truly sectarian? Each one of us was elected by our chapters. We didn't hijack the convention, we didn't lie to our comrades that elected us. We were open about our politics and what we would do if we were sent to Chicago, and our comrades liked what they heard. Goodkind’s “dead end ultraleftism”, aka principled Marxism-Leninism, defeated the Nazis, liberated China, took a rotten Russian empire and turned it into a superpower, and brought hope and a decent life to billions of people in the 20th century. Comrades recognize this, hence our election. What has electoralism and reformism brought except continued misery through lying to the people? 

The article wraps up with what is essentially a call to splitting, building up of mountain kingdoms, and is fundamentally a strategy that, if followed, can be reasonably interpreted as wrecking. It essentially calls to ignore the highest body of the formation between conventions, our NPC, because of its composition. In response to Goodkind’s sour grapes and calls for obstructionism, I call on comrades in DSA to study works of Marxism, with focus on works by Lenin and Mao, both of which taught the importance of unity, discipline, and firm adherence to basic ideological principles. See you in 2027, when we will solidify our gains and build an ever stronger organization, capable of serving the people and leading them to a socialist future.