The House of Representatives passed an updated version of its annual resolution condemning socialism. This year it complained about the Democratic Socialists of American (DSA) in particular. DSA did not take it lying down. A prominent DSA ideologist, Ben Burgis, took to the webpages of Jacobin, DSA’s unofficial magazine, with a fierce protest: DSA is anti- communist!
Burgis begins, “The House just passed a resolution condemning the Democratic Socialists of America and socialism broadly. While it rehearses opposition to Stalinist authoritarianism, the bill’s real preoccupation is with socialists’ advocacy for expanded democracy.”
Burgis is a philosophy teacher and logician. The heart of his rebuttal is this paragraph:
“The resolution’s nominal argument is a mess. The first two ‘whereas’ clauses are claims about the crimes of Stalinist regimes. But democratic socialists have always been critical of such regimes, even then. Condemning democratic socialists with claims about the crimes of Stalinist authoritarianism makes about as much sense as an atheist bringing up the Spanish Inquisition to condemn the Southern Baptists.”
Said another way… someone who does not speak for DSA said something in a magazine that is not affiliated with DSA about condemning communism.
Repectfully, the title of this post is incredibly misleading. It insinuates that the DSA has made some sort of statement about communism in response to Congressional action, when that is absolutely not the case (not even unofficially).
Edit: as far as I can tell, Burgis is at most a member of DSA but doesn’t hold any position of leadership, so you can’t even say DSA is trying to launder this position as not official but coming from someone in leadership.
What leadership there is no leadership in DSA
DSA literally has a leadership structure and official channels of communication.
Hahaha. No.
DSA Leadership and Structure
If you don’t understand what the DSA is don’t go talking about it. They have a billion chapters and they’re all independent.
I’m in DSA, I know what it is. The headline implies DSA is making this statement, when they are not. You can’t even claim that a single “independent” chapter is taking this position. It’s a guy. One member out of 100k+ is saying this, so what. I correctly pointed out the headline is misleading. It’s a clickbait title meant to slander all of DSA as a bunch of libs.