Red Star: or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Vanguard
Boris Kustodiev’s The Bolshevik (1920) (wikimedia.org)
SMC Editorial Board Note: This piece is not an official caucus statement, but the opinion of the authors. Unless otherwise stated, “we” refers to the authors and their opinions.
Six months after their official adoption of the Marxist-Leninist label, DSA’s Red Star caucus released their updated Points of Unity (PoU). These Points of Unity offer a chance to understand that label in practice. The PoU illustrates not only what kind of politics Red Star will be agitating for at the upcoming 2025 National Convention in Chicago, but also the DSA they want to build. Examining them reveals a host of contradictions, falsehoods, and vagueness that serve to mask an incomplete theory of politics. Whatever concrete politics can be found in the PoU betrays an agenda that would only further isolate and marginalize DSA if Red Star managed to fully take control of the organization.
The Points of Unity
Red Star first paints a caricature of the “social democratic modus operandi” that supposedly prevails in DSA: an organization of “professional reformists” run in practice by paid staff. Red Star denigrates the practical work of campaigning and outreach as “grunt work” that is to be relegated away from the people who are doing the thinking, organizing, and decision-making for DSA. We, the authors, subscribe to the radical idea that the daily mundanities of running a campaign, from canvassing to filling out spreadsheets, are not denigrating—they are the practical and hands-on education needed to school our members in democratic practices and make them effective organizers, leaders, and politicians.
To quote Red Star’s own words, “DSA has flourished…as a laboratory where socialists have learned and grown through organizing experience and dialogue with one another.” Red Star betrays their own celebration of DSA’s value as a “laboratory” by calling for an end to that same structure in the same paragraph. Pressing harder into this contradiction reveals it for what it is: shallow rhetoric that is supposed to compose the core of their political agenda. Red Star is uncomfortable with the successes of DSA’s organizing and advocates abandoning engagement with broader coalitions at the very time when that involvement is most critical.
There is historical precedent against what Red Star calls for. Max Elbaum, in his book Revolution in the Air, argued the organized Left of the 1970s failed to grasp the broader rightward societal shift and respond accordingly. Rather than galvanize a broader resistance against this shift and cohering progressives around radical positions amidst mass work, the 1970s Left instead pursued a strategy of self-marginalization. Instead of accepting the compromises and complexities that are part of building ties and engaging broadly with the working class, to quote Elbaum: “they retreated to the safe ground of doctrinal purity and of being a big fish in a small pond.” Sound familiar? Red Star’s rejection of DSA’s mass campaigns, local and especially national, in favor of courting an increasingly small set of “advanced” sections would be a disastrous rerun of this strategy.
Red Star’s final Point of Unity might be their most nonsensical: “The Vanguard Party is a superstructure.” In Marxist thought, the “superstructure” is the social, cultural, and political elements that arise from the “base”, which are the “material forces of production.” In other words, the means and relations of production give rise to thought, ideology, and anything else in society not directly related to production, the superstructure. Therefore, to say the “Vanguard Party” is part of the superstructure is like saying water is wet. Then why does Red Star say this?
Red Star is using the term “superstructure” as a metaphor for what they envision the Vanguard Party (which isn’t DSA, but also isn’t specifically anything else) to be, an overriding home for “all political causes relevant to the class” and a “place for the class to bring their issues and rally for support.” This use stretches the metaphor of the superstructure to obfuscate what they know is an indefensible position: one that calls for a smaller, more insular, less active DSA, just painted a new shade of red.
PoU in Practice
Having examined their Points of Unity, we can now ask: how would Red Star put them into practice if they assumed control of the NPC?
Earlier this year, Rose D., a member of the NPC from Groundwork (GW), resigned. GW nominated Kareem E., whose candidacy was endorsed by Rose herself and generally accepted by the other members of the NPC, including Marxist Unity Group (MUG). However, Red Star nominated and voted for their own candidate—Hazel W. from San Francisco DSA.
We, the authors, have nothing but respect for Hazel and the work she’s done in political education, pro-Palestine advocacy, housing affordability, and trans advocacy. Our issue with Red Star’s actions has nothing to do with Hazel, but that they nominated a candidate at all. The rationale behind supporting Kareem is not that he uniquely “deserved” the seat. Instead, it is that DSA democratically voted for a certain multi-tendency ideological composition of the NPC. In nominating their own candidate to replace the member of another caucus, Red Star acted against the multi-tendency nature of DSA.
While Red Star’s approach to internal DSA politics is concerning, there is nothing that could be construed as an external “electoral strategy” in the PoU. One can see how incoherent their theory of governance and electoral strategy is by looking at the goings-on of the chapter most dominantly controlled by Red Star: San Francisco DSA. The most notable examples of measures Red Star has implemented there include a requirement that members have participated in a certain amount in chapter events before they get to vote in the chapter convention. These measures haven’t seemed to translate to increased new member engagement or, most importantly when discussing electoral strategy, increased electoral prominence.
“In essence, this is the problem with Red Star and those who share its perspective: a ready willingness to caricature and oppose DSA’s political interventions for any problematic qualities while offering no alternatives”
Dean Preston, once SF DSA’s most prominent elected official, narrowly lost reelection in 2024, despite the chapter’s “Extreme Dean” priority resolution supporting his re-election. This was partially due to his stances burning valuable capital and alienating potential coalitional allies, putting Red Star’s theory of independent politics to the test. The failure of Preston’s campaign is thus slightly more complex than “working-class hero versus big business,” as campaigns often are. Preston on his own pushed away potential voters and allies, but GrowSF, a billionaire and tech tycoon-funded PAC, was able to highlight his antagonism very effectively in their “Dump Dean” advertisements. Something that seems to have struck a particularly strong note were allegations that Preston was overly opposed to new housing. I will not weigh in on whether or not this was correct, as even if it was, I fundamentally oppose the existence and practices of corporate-funded PACs like GrowSF. My point on it is, rather, that it was effective and a weakness of Preston’s campaign. This campaign’s failure demonstrated the incoherence of Red Star’s practical electoral strategy and the consequences that incoherence leads to: a loss..
Unfortunately, this new PoU (despite coming after Preston’s loss) offers no reflection on the electoral strategy that led to that loss or really any other electoral strategy, just a vague disillusionment with the strategies of the so-called “social-democratic wing” of DSA. The section “Building For a Revolutionary Situation” repeatedly points to a disillusionment with DSA’s electoral projects and an opposition to continued pursuit of office and legislative projects. The only role Red Star seems to advocate for “popular legislation and politicians with benevolent intentions” is to help usher in said “Revolutionary Situation.”
When pressed as to the lack of a positive electoral program, Red Star members responded that this was an area where the caucus simply lacked the unity to include a single vision. In essence, this is the problem with Red Star and those who share its perspective: a ready willingness to caricature and oppose DSA’s political interventions for any problematic qualities while offering no alternatives. Unwilling or incapable to offer their own vision, with a sense of guilt for their own association with DSA, they suggest chasing after the arbitrarily termed “more ideologically or practically advanced movements” that supposedly exist outside and beyond us.
Red Star further contends that the incumbent “social-democratic” model is responsible for DSA’s failure to “persuade” non-socialist legislators to back a package of “our” reforms (“Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and the PRO Act”), all of which actually originate from a broader constellation of left-liberal forces. The Green New Deal is not purely a “socialist” creation and was partially conceived by establishment chameleon U.S. Senator Ed Markey. That legislation received 96 sponsors in the House and 12 in the Senate in the last Congress. Medicare for All was first introduced in 2003 and, in the 118th Congress, received 113 sponsors in the House and 14 in the Senate. The PRO Act actually passed in the House with 225 Representatives in favor in 2021; it was reintroduced in the last Congress with 217 sponsors in the House and 48 in the Senate. Much of the Democratic Party elected establishment seems to be amenable to or supportive of these reforms, although their support is highly dependent on the specific political moment. They say this work is doomed, but we see that a slightly larger bloc of socialist legislators, combined with the left-liberal bloc, could feasibly win these huge improvements for the working class.
Unfortunately, the story of the unraveling of the Biden administration’s agenda and the promise of the Democratic majorities in Congress defies explanation through internal DSA political debates. And as Red Star correctly points out, despite the organization’s successes, DSA’s strength and success has come primarily from the activity of its local iterations instead of national campaigns. Local chapters and statewide alliances have convinced non-socialist politicians to get on board with ambitious and transformative socialist reforms through effective coalition-building and campaigning. Take as an example the Build Public Renewables Act that was pushed by DSA electeds in the NY state legislature (including Zohran Madmani!), which was passed with the support of most Democrats in the New York State Legislature. DSA legislators, backed by numerous engaged and well-organized local chapters, have proven that they can pass long-term, meaningful reforms through coalitions with non-socialists.
Next, Red Star invokes the names of Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, arguing their ouster from Congress “shows that there is no clear path to a socialist legislative supermajority.” Here again Red Star advances a view that corresponds with their self-constructed false reality, while obfuscating the many other contributing factors that led to their loss: some general, others specific to Bush and Bowman. Several gaffes, politically damaging votes in Congress, and the brutal redistricting of Bowman’s seat sealed his fate, regardless of anything DSA could do. Bush suffered for her votes too, like the one against Biden’s infrastructure bill, which she took as a symbolic stand for the Build Back Better initiative. Of course, whatever weaknesses Bush and Bowman had were ruthlessly exploited by AIPAC, who spent millions to unseat them both.
Neither Bush nor Bowman emerged from DSA and socialist politics; they were recruited by Justice Democrats to push the congressional Democratic Party left via primaries. Their membership in DSA was welcome and beneficial to the organization, but in citing the failures of both politicians, Red Star is confusing several competing projects. The same non-DSA organizations that encouraged Bush to vote against Biden’s infrastructure bill failed to show up to support her 2024 re-election campaign. It is simply inaccurate to evaluate their losses as representative of majoritarian socialist electoral politics, and the insinuation that Bush or Bowman were ever the base upon which a “socialist legislative supermajority” was to be built is fanciful.
Red Star initially declined to take steps to support Bush's campaign, as part of a coalition on the NPC that voted down a proposal to rally DSA’s full weight behind Bush’s reelection campaign. Admittedly, it’s not as if more field support could have overcome the immense amounts of money AIPAC spent against Bush, yet the unwillingness to help Bush against “interference from billionaires” is still notable. Red Star is trying to have it both ways by claiming majoritarian politics failed Bush while having actively blocked efforts to re-elect her. The caucuses that supported Red Star in the vote, namely Bread & Roses, are at fault as well; despite the multiple changes B&R made to the proposal, only GW and SMC voted for it.
Bush isn’t the only socialist elected official that Red Star has marshalled themselves against. The decision to not nationally endorse AOC in 2024 continues to be controversial, but it would be remiss to not point out that Red Star and MUG postured as democratic by soliciting survey responses from membership, only to discard the results and the will of membership when they came back overwhelmingly in favor of AOC. Even if you were not among that supermajority of polled members who supported AOC’s endorsement, you can see the contradiction between their stated pro-democratic rhetoric and anti-democratic actions.
“Very much like with their electoral strategy, their lack of a labor strategy belies the incoherence of their politics.”
More alarming than the lack of electoral reflection or program is the silence of Red Star on labor matters. Seriously, CTRL+F their PoU and look for the words, “labor” or “union.” There’s nothing. Red Star members have defended this choice by saying that there is no caucus-wide “understanding of and approach to” labor issues. Individual members have offered either platitudes all members of DSA can agree to or ritualistic reassertions of the need to organize the unorganized, which everyone in DSA says. Nobody can contest the urgent need to reverse the labor movement’s decline and rebuild the organized power of the working class; what is at question is the best approach to do so.
New labor organizing is already extremely difficult nation-wide and looks to become only more difficult in the coming years. Members of Red Star’s emphasis on the limitations of the NLRB and administrative labor law apparatus make sense in this light, but their aversion to engaging with existing unions and their reform movements becomes confusing. Very much like with their electoral strategy, their lack of a labor strategy belies the incoherence of their politics.
Nothing they’re saying is new, and in fact represents a step back from the state of labor discourse recently. Everyone in DSA knows that the current systems are obviously insufficient. It is also widely known, although seldom admitted, that the causes of union decline lay partially on union leadership for mistakes they committed and opportunities they squandered. But simply restating the problems (e.g., the need to organize the unorganized and push rank and file unionists to the left) is worse than useless if it is not paired with any practical strategy. If these efforts are to go anywhere, they must utilize the millions of still-organized workers and the financial resources their unions can wield.
If Red Star is a serious contender for leadership in DSA and seeks to cohere a significant portion of the membership around its viewpoints, it should have some unique views. To release what is supposed to be its foremost political document half empty without some of the most important parts of DSA’s work should be disqualifying in itself.
Against Marxist Pedantry
While we admit we’ve been pedantic, it is with a point: to make use of our humanities degrees. Red Star’s pedantry too has a point: to disguise their sectarian politics and distract from their undemocratic and demobilizing tendencies. Their program is ultimately a list of ambivalent stances on DSA—is it the most effective socialist organization in the country and vehicle for a future socialist party, or is it a group of social democrat neophytes trailed by years of national failures? Red Star simultaneously suggests both and neither.
Scientific socialism is the use of historical materialism to analyze and examine the development of socialism and class struggle. As Frederich Engels explained in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, “the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.” In other words, socialism is propelled by material reasons first, ideas second.
Red Star hopes to use this framework to nuance and guide their choice of strategies, imbuing them with a flexibility that doesn’t wed them to any one strategy. The contexts of the past and present, according to Red Star, inform their choices rather than the “virtue or principle” of a position. The lessons we should take from Marxism-Leninism is how to avoid the failings of authoritarianism, not that we should adopt the ideology.
“Red Star directs us to abandon mass work for fear of success, to organize principally with other socialists in mind rather than the broader social base we hope to realign and cohere.”
We see these choices as indicative of a larger issue with many groups on the “Left”: they mask bad politics behind archaic terms, complex languages, and often opaque references to theory. Much of their appeal and the legitimacy for them as a “vanguard” rests in them appearing to be smarter and better-read than the rest of DSA and the working classes, but this simply is not true. In cases like this, they even manipulate basic Marxist concepts to disguise how hollow, contradictory, and negative their platform is.
In essence, Red Star’s Points of Unity are a call for a renewed socialist identitarianism at just the time when the Left is breaking through to the mainstream and the need to cohere around a mass organization is greater than ever. Red Star directs us to abandon mass work for fear of success, to organize principally with other socialists in mind rather than the broader social base we hope to realign and cohere. Without the electoral or labor work Red Star advocates abstention from, DSA is little more than a book club and a collection of squabbles on online forums.
Their PoU are, aside from its own contradictions and cynicism, not even Leninist. As Lenin said, referring to abstracted, intellectual posturing in the face of serious, demanding realities, “politics begin where millions of men and women are; where there are not thousands, but millions, that is where serious politics begin.” Let’s not quit when we’ve only just begun.
So…What Now?
Red Star’s program is one that attempts to bend domestic reality to fit historical international revolutionary actions abroad, calling for DSA to learn from and emulate other state socialist, or actually existing socialist projects from around the world. Certainly we can learn from all attempts to build post-capitalism, but DSA should acknowledge the serious problems with state socialist regimes and aspire to be more visionary than just aping the traditions of preceding generations and the revolutions of others. As historian Alina-Sandra Cucu said:
We should struggle instead to free our political imaginary in order to find creative solutions to the problems we face now, and new paths for the future…I don’t find the memory or the lessons of actually existing socialism effective enough for curing us from…“capitalist realism,” or…radical enough as a foundation for the politics of our times.
DSA can build something better if we don’t waste energy constantly rehashing the revolutions of yesteryear.
DSA, especially ahead of our upcoming convention, is faced with a choice. The organization can build a stronger and more vibrant DSA by protecting its democratic practices. DSA can grow through mass democratic politics that understand our domestic conditions and respond accordingly with electoral programs that meet the moment, and a fighting labor movement on the shop floor. The decision by NYC-DSA to run Zohran Mamdani for mayor and DSA-LA’s involvement with the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike are two examples of successful socialist interventions in mass politics.
Alternatively, DSA could follow Red Star’s path of incoherent sectarianism and self-marginalization that is socialist in name, but not much else. Let’s not.
Correction: A few hours after publication, the section about former San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston was edited for accuracy and to provide additional context. We regret the error.