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Session 2: The Party

Session 2: The Party

📅 Wednesday, September 2RSVP

DSA explicitly sets out to build a socialist party, but uses the democratic ballot line. This contradiction brings up hot topics in DSA: the dirty break (the Democrats kick us off the ballot line), the clean break (we exit the party on our own). What are the reasons for using the ballot line? What are the real risks? What shape does DSA’s party need to take in order to win and wield power effectively?

Marx didn’t clearly define a party structure. Early formations in Germany and France had singular figureheads like Ferdinand Lassalle who held more of a dictatorial power. The SPD that formed through the merger of August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht’s SDAP with Ferdinand Lassalle’s ADAV led to a “Party of a New Type” at the Gotha congress of 1875. The SPD became the model for all socialist parties up until the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The Lenin Rediscovered reading will require a strong effort from most attendees, so it’s worth providing a bit of backstory beforehand. It describes the development of the SPD model of party — the merger formula — in a context-rich manner that presages our later readings (lots of Communist Manifesto quotes, Lenin quotes, and callbacks to Erfurt). Skim the glossary section for this unit before reading — the entries on the SPD, Kautsky, and the Erfurt milieu give useful context.

Zenith: Faction or Tendency? draws directly on Hal Draper’s Anatomy of the Micro-Sect, included here as background for readers who want the source concept.

Readings

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