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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rejoins DSA after membership lapse of seven years
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
255 points (98.1% liked)
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I support AOC specifically and the DSA in a broad sense - but what made me cancel my membership is the DSA’s pants-on-head stupid and geopolitically naïve stance on the Ukraine war. The DSA leadership appears to not be capable of understanding that it was an expansionist war of conquest started and maintained by the Russian Federation, opposes US + other international military aid to Ukraine, opposes sanctions on the Russian federation in response to their grey-zone tactics and unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine, decries “NATO expansionism” (ignoring the fact that “NATO expansionism” is not only a very direct quote from the Kremlin, but also that the nations in question joined - and continue to join - as a direct and pointed response to Russian expansionism), and seems to think the problem can be solved by gathering around a campfire and singing kumbaya.
I hope that we eventually actually live in a consensus-oriented world where grievances are solved exclusively through diplomatic means… but that’s not today’s world. To pretend that it is is not only geopolitically naive to the point of self delusion, but strategically dangerous as well.
I've seen members of the DSA speak against Russia's invasion, so this is hardly a universal thing. There's never going to be a party that does everything exactly as you want, so you just have to accept the next best option. The DSA has done a fairly good job aligning with my values. Obviously I disagree with this totally, and many other things, but they're doing a lot of good things too, and significantly more compared to the DNC.
One thing you show as a positive, the disunity of the DSA, is also why they are less effective per member than democratic centralist organizations. It's very difficult to steer a ship that wants to go in many different directions at the same time, it's much more effective to democratically come to a consensus on where to go and agree to publicly uphold that consensus externally, than it is to have endless factionalism and outward instability.
This is why I've remained an unaffiliated independent since first registering to vote in 1977. Plenty of alternatives have come along, but they have all had problems that I felt were insurmountable, so I've never joined any of them. Even when Republicans went full MAGA, ensuring that I will never vote for a right-leaning candidate ever again, I still didn't joint he Dems, because I have lots of problems with them, too. And I have problems with the DSA, too.
I vote based on ISSUES, not parties. I am actually right on some issues, left on some, and I have a nuanced take on many more that aren't right, left, or middle.
No party is EVER going to be able to count on my vote. They have to EARN it every time.
I hope to god that you have always lived in a state with an open primary then. If not, then that's a idiotic take overall.
If you don't vote in the primaries you're ensuring that no party will ever earn your vote because you're not helping select a good candidate and you're just pissing in the wind and then complaining that you're wet.
I don't like Democrats either but I vote in the primaries to make sure that progressives at least have a chance of getting in.
ETA: A reminder that simply registering for a party will get you some annoying texts, well at least if you're in sign up for the Democratic party because they really suck at outreach, Republicans will flood the ever loving shit out of you, but registering doesn't mean you have signed some kind of blood pact to vote for them in the general every time. Fucking vote in the primaries you animals!
Can confirm, worked for the post office. Democrats will occasionally send their registered voters something, usually a small little brightly colored card or something with a "vote for me pls" slogan. Republicans will send you a fucking small poster every other day talking either about god, guns, and trump, or how the local democratic candidate literally eats babies and the Republican candidate does, in fact, oppose eating babies. It was annoying as hell. I got so tired of casing political shit.
You were willing to vote Republican pre-MAGA? Back when they were only Christian dominionist war criminals?
Their pamphlet calls for “the withdrawal of Russian troops through a settled ceasefire agreement” — a negotiated peace, basically. The (geopolitically not-naïve?) alternative is what exactly?
They’ve been saying that since pretty much immediately after Russia invaded, and haven’t changed it. Not an exhortation to respect the territorial boundaries of sovereign nations. Not supporting sanctions against the attacking country (Russia). No mention whatsoever of the grey-zone and subterfuge and repeated, systematic, brutal expansionism that Russia has engaged in since pretty much immediately after the Soviet Union fell. Just a “negotiated settlement”.
What even is an equitable negotiated settlement would be with a country that launched an unprovoked invasion under cover of subterfuge that violates the Geneva Convention?
A couple thing:
There was a potential peace deal in April 2022, just after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February. At that time, Ukraine and Russia appeared close to agreeing on a 10-point peace plan during talks in Istanbul, Turkey. Boris Johnson persuaded Zelenskyy to abandon the talks. It’s all documented. Johnson has a lot to answer for.
It’s quite right that most of the DSA’s focus is on the impact of America’s actions in the world, not Russia’s.
Unilateral US sanctions can cause some inconvenience to wealthy, powerful targets, but above all, they have been proven to cause widespread and often deadly harm to people who certainly don’t deserve it. See https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext
The idea of an American political party demanding sanctions against countries that infringe the territorial boundaries of sovereign nations and engaging in unprovoked invasions is so ridiculously hypocritical that it's hard to believe people actually support it.
So the DSA is tankie?
No, it’s not.
I feel like you’re just trying to get a reaction by saying that.
Given that, in practice, "tankie" just means "anyone to the left of the western Overton window", yes they are tankie
If they're against Nato, recycle Kremlin talking points, and are against giving aid to Ukraine, then yes, they are tankie. Why wouldn't they be?
Tankie continuing to just mean "anyone to the left of Joe Biden"
Communists tend to be very critical of the DSA for its reformist approach, but the DSA line on NATO expansion and imperialism is closer to what communists believe.
The overwhelming majority of communists have a similar line on NATO expansionism. Most communists also support the CPC in building socialism, and critically support Russia as far as it acts against Statesian unipolarity.
Pro-authoritarian does not equal Communist. The goal of a Communist government would be to remove those in charge. Russia (and China) are not Communist, because they aren't attempting to remove their own power structure and give it to the people.
The goal of a communist government is the establishment of communism, a classless and fully collectivized society. Russia isn't communist because it became capitalist after the dissolution of socialism. China is a socialist country run by a communist party, where the working classes have supremacy. "Power structure" means nothing when divorced from the class struggle, communists don't support abolishing power, but instead establishing worker power and protecting it, as is the case in China. The people run the state in China.
How do you believe this? In what way does the working class have supremacy over the capitalist elite in China?
Communism, as described by Marx, establishes a strong power to replace the elites, but then removes itself to give the power to the people. A powerful ruling class is not supposed to be maintained, as it is in China. China is largely capitalist, with a rich and powerful owner class who command businesses, and have more political influence than the average worker. This is not Communism. I don't know how you fail to understand this. Do you just listen to propaganda and not try to understand things for yourself?
I believe this because I am a communist, I'm a member of a party and I study the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the history of existing socialist states. In the case of China, the workers and peasants established political supremacy through a long civil war and revolution, solidifying a socialist state in 1949. Capitalists exist in China, but they do not form a coherent political body, the revolution decided that they will not be allowed to usurp the power of the workers.
Regarding communism, you're confusing the eradication of class society with the eradication of all centralized administration, and confusing the socialist stage with the classless and stateless communist stage. China has capitalists, correct, because China is a developing country. Communism is not a moral decree, but a mode of production predicated on immensely developed productive forces. China does not yet have those productive forces necessary for the complete eradication of class.
Regarding the economy of China, the commanding heights of the economy are overwhelmingly publicly owned. Private ownership is largely in secondary industries, and are utilized in order to accelerate the buildup of immense productive forces. This is called the Socialist Market Economy, which is a transitional form of economy in service of building more developed socialism.
To circle back, I do understand this. I work constantly through organizing work and study, both on my own and with comrades, to understand Marxist-Leninist theory and practice. It's critically important for my own work as a party member. It's critically important to not make any confusion on theory or practice, and to defend existing socialism.
The issue is your view is clouded with a history, and propaganda. The US decided it wouldn't allow tyrants to take power. Does that actually mean it won't, or hasn't, happened? Of course not. The peasants do not have the same power as the owner class in China. You know that. Why do you insist that they do?
At what point will it? When do you think they'll decide they have the productive forces necessary and dissolve their own power? They're one of, if not the, largest productive force the world has ever seen. If not now, it's never. Those with power will never want to give it up, and they'll do everything they can to cement their power. They'll have you believe they're not, and they're just working in your best interest, and then it'll be almost impossible to remove them. This is how it always goes. This is not a criticism of China. It's a criticism of hierarchy. Those at the top never want to stop being at the top.
There are no peasants in China anymore. Agriculture has been near entirely industrialized and proletarianized, there are no feudal lords any longer. The leader of China is the proletariat. The proletariat establishes and maintains dominance over the existing capitalist class through public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, and the communist party which itself is a mass proletarian cadre organization. The worker state has dominance over the less powerful private sector, and enforces this. The PLA is also subject directly to the CPC, not the state itself.
The capitalists in China do not have power over the CPC. Not only are they barred from the top levels of administration, but corruption and subversion are harshly punished. The very fact that China has capitalists means the CPC cannot allow them to form a coherent political bloc by which they can wage counterrevolution and reverse socialism.
In other words, I insist on very basic facts from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, that the state in China is run by the CPC, which itself is a mass proletarian party, and that the core aspects of the economy are owned collectively. It is from this basis that I understand China as socialist.
As for the idea that the workers should simply decide to dissolve their own power, this is not how the withering of the state works. The state is specifically the superstructure by which the base of society, the mode of production and distribution, is maintained in favor of the ruling class. Since the ruling class of China is the proletariat, it does not need to abolish its own power. What it needs to do is gradually collectivize the economy as the private sector itself grows to national levels and markets cease to play a progressive role in socializing production. This is how the proletariat abolishes itself as a class, and the oppressive elements of administration for maintaining proletarian rule fade.
What will not fade is any and all hierarchy. Marxism is not anti-hierarchy, this is an anarchist conception. Marxists seek to abolish class society, which does not mean eliminating all administration. Just as a principal and a teacher are both proletarian, so too are proletarian factory workers and state administrators. Hierarchy is not the problem, class is. There is no "abolish the state, implement communism" button. Instead, the material relations of production are shaped primarily by the level of development of the forces of production.
I really do think reading Marx could help explain a lot of these concepts like class, the socialist state, and transformation from capitalism to communism. If you want suggestions, I can make some.
I used the term peasant because you did.
Anyway, I'm not going to continue this. This will be my last comment here.
The workers are not the ones in power. There's a party that supports them nomitively, but those in power are sitting in offices and wearing suits. They aren't workers, and they have more power than the workers do. I don't know how you don't understand this.
I didn't say Communism would remove hierarchy. I said the issue is that it won't dissolve itself, at least if it stays around this long and establishes itself. The hierarchy, as always, gives too much incentive to those in power to maintain their power. That's why I'm an Anarchist, because those incentives should never be allowed to exist. It'll require another revolution to dissolve them, and then we're in the same situation we started with.
Assuming they'll just hand over power puts you in the same category as people who believe in benevolent monarchies/dictators. Maybe it can work for a short time, but power will be cemented and it'll never naturally be dissolved.
China was predominantly a semi-feudal country in 1949, the workers and peasants worked together to establish socialism. Over time, China has developed out of having a peasantry, thus there is no longer a peasant class. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
The biggest problem is that you are explicitly rejecting Marxist class analysis in favor of an entirely different, idealist form of class analysis. Office workers, administrators, etc. are workers. What makes a worker isn't where they work, or how they work, but their social relations to ownership of the means of production and distribution.
For example, consider a shoemaker. Said shoemaker lives his entire life making shoes. Our shoemaker here inherited a shop, which he owned. This made him petty bourgeois, and his thinking gradually shifted towards individualism. Then, hardship fell upon his shop, and he had to join a factory. He was still making shoes, but his class changed to proletarian. He no longer sought individual powers as a business owner, but instead gradually came to join the shoemaker's union and agitate for collective ownership.
The job was effectively the same, but the class and thus the class ideology changed.
In China, the commanding heights of the economy are overwhelmingly publicly owned. The CPC is an overwhelmingly proletarian party. The fact that high administrators have more material benefits does not make them a class, as they share the same social relations as the rest of the proletariat, and thus are also emancipated by furthering collectivization.
This is Marxist class analysis.
Your analysis does fit anarchism. Your issue isn't with class, but with hierarchy. Socialism does not need a second revolution to abolish worker power, it will gradually develop into communism and class distinctions are gradually abolished. Your analysis returns to idealism, it lacks a materialist basis and thus runs into problems when applied to reality.
The term "authoritarian" is meaningless in a communist frame work; it is strictly a liberal concept
Lol.