Which socialist political parties around the world can DSA learn from the most? Why?

DSA convention delegates. For your consideration.

In the lead up to the convention, I will be sharing edited portions of my NPC candidate interview conducted on July 5.

The purpose is to give delegates more time and opportunities to review prior to the August 5 vote.

This is part 2: Which socialist political parties around the world can DSA learn from the most? Why?

To answer directly regarding socialist political parties around the world, our neighbors to the south, Mexico’s MORENA offers a lot we can learn, but before I get into that…

There are much clearer and I think important lessons we can learn from the “working class itself” acting towards their own “emancipation” in different parts of the world.

I’m referencing what Engles wrote when he and Karl wrote the manifesto:

“And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,”

Right. And not a political party!

Looking at our current trajectory: what I think set off Occupy, that made Bernie 2016 and 2020, and DSA’s exponential growth possible — was “the working class itself”. The party of the working class, “party” as in the side of a dispute, was the Arab Spring. It’s important to keep focus on the people’s movements acting towards their own liberation. Without the Arab Spring there is no Occupy, no Bernie 2016/20 and not the growth we saw in DSA.

The international working class over any party. I think that’s something that needs course correction.

One lesson, from the Arab Spring and following events of the working class working towards our own liberation (I believe there is broad consensus in DSA on this) is a lack of organization. Addressing this will take time…. We have no choice but to prepare. And for me, part of that preparation is seeing people’s humanity, and organizing around our human needs. Not dogma.

Prepare by creating on-ramps for members and new members. And getting resources out, particularly during those moments when excesses of capitalism lead to crisis. Real-world crisis, not manufactured factional crisis.

That’s on the international parties of the working class.

On political parties, and lessons there: MORENA, Movimiento Regeneración Nacional: La Esperanza de Mexico, or National Regeneration Movement: The Hope of Mexico. It’s AMLO’s party (Andrés Manuel López Obrador), which came about from multiple attempts to win the Mexican presidency, and brought together the social forces to topple entrenched Mexican political elites.

It’s the culmination of the social forces behind his initial loss by .5%. In 2006, the party MORENA was formed prior to AMLO’s 3rd and ultimately successful campaign for the presidency in 2018. Time, patience, and building on previous work are key lessons here.

Today there are over 37 million people of Mexican origin living in the US. Mexican expats are organizing here, creating political groups aligned with MORENA. There are dozens of groups sympathetic to MORENA in the United States, especially in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles , San Diego, and New York that DSA can be working with.

Even at the Mexican consulate, the government led by MORENA is always expanding their reach to Mexicans and others from the Latin American diaspora with services.

MORENA shows us how a mass organization can transition to governing. And how to use the power of the state to continue mass organization.

Those are lessons of continuous organization and campaigns, that we can apply towards becoming a real mass socialist organization.

See part 1: Intro and Question 1