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Session 1: The Socialist Program

Session 1: The Socialist Program

📅 Wednesday, August 19RSVP

The program is DSA’s guiding star. It’s what we hold ourselves to and how we define ourselves to the masses. This session compares several historical programs — Erfurt, the RSDLP, the Socialist Party of America — with DSA’s own 2026 National Program, “Workers Deserve More,” to understand the similarities and differences between then and now.

The WDM Program is a good guide for exploring individual items, but we’re starting with Programmatic Politics itself: what is a program for, and what should it commit an organization to?

Readings

Discussion questions

Big questions (4)
  1. What does the Program tell us about the world?
    • What is wrong with capitalism?
    Your response
  2. What does the Program tell us about ourselves?
    • Who are democratic socialists?
    Your response
  3. What does the Program tell us to do?
    • How do we build the power necessary to create the society described in the Program?
    Your response
  4. What would DSA look like if none of the chapters used the DSA WDM Program to guide our organizing?
    Your response
General questions about the readings (18)
  1. What is a socialist program for, and how should DSA's Program function as the political "guiding star" of a mass working-class organization?
    Your response
  2. How are programs developed historically?
    Your response
  3. How much political disagreement can a mass organization contain?
    Your response
  4. What is a program supposed to do?
    Your response
  5. What are the key points of the Erfurt program?
    Your response
  6. What changes in the organization of the working-class movement over the period from Chartism to the Communist Manifesto to the First International to the Eisenach Party to the Gotha to Erfurt?
    Your response
  7. Are there similarities in DSA's program and the Erfurt program?
    Your response
  8. Why a platform/program and not a manifesto/longer reading?
    Your response
  9. If a program cannot contain every socialist idea, what does it NEED to contain?
    Your response
  10. How can a DSA member use the platform?
    Your response
  11. Look at the Erfurt Program's immediate demands. Why would a socialist organization fight for reforms within capitalism if its ultimate goal is to replace capitalism?
    Your response
  12. What has changed since the Erfurt program in 1891?
    • What has changed about the working class?
    • What has changed with the relationship between the state and capital?
    • What has changed about democracy?
    Your response
  13. What is in the DSA program that could not have been in the Erfurt program? What remains?
    Your response
  14. What does DSA mean by "our class"?
    Your response
  15. What does "guiding star" mean? Is the program a set of demands? A tool for organizing? A standard to judge our work?
    Your response
  16. If someone comes to a DSA meeting and is upset about rent, healthcare, climate change, etc., how does the program help us explain why that problem is connected to capitalism as a system?
    Your response
  17. What should a person who encounters DSA for the first time understand about DSA?
    • What do we want?
    • Who are our opponents?
    • Who do we want to organize?
    • What kind of society are we trying to create?
    Your response
  18. Which campaign should DSA choose?
    • Campaign A: likely to win a modest reform quickly, but doesn't build much independent working-class organization.
    • Campaign B: more difficult and less immediately winnable, but could build lasting working-class organization and political power.
    Your response

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