Cleveland DSA & “The Groups”

by Martin O.

One of the critical questions, if not the most critical and contentious in Cleveland DSA, is our strategic and tactical orientation toward “The Groups.” As we pursue our objectives, where do the many NGOs and activist groups in the metro area fit in? This debate encompasses a variety of political perspectives that have been represented historically for hundreds of years. In fostering healthy discussion of this issue, it’s important to recognize that these positions represent a place in this broader historical political debate rather than simply a particular moral or ethical viewpoint about the value of particular causes.

None of the information I’m going to convey here is new; there are no new insights, it’s all available in other places. However, as I’ve been in the middle of discussion with comrades both to the “left” and “right” of me lately (as you’ll see, this terminology breaks down completely at a certain point), I felt it might be important to put all this together in a single post. After all, it’s easier for someone to read one post than 12 and I think it’s essential that comrades recognize the full scope and nature of the discussion and the positions their fellow DSA members hold.

This will be about the three most prominent orientations in Cleveland DSA (and really the socialist movement as a whole) toward its direction as it relates to cooperation with outside forces, along with the pros and cons that others have laid out, in the way that I see them. These are, as I’ll refer to them, the “Popular Front”, “United Socialist Front” and, “For a single mass party” positions. These positions to some extent exist on a spectrum of their own that seems to defy the traditional left and right descriptions. 

Individuals’ positions in this debate are determined to some degree by their personal relationships to these groups around Cleveland and the issues the groups deal with, but there is also an important political assumption often being made in the background around the question of “is DSA one group out of the many groups that an individual might want to do work in and weigh equally?” or “Is DSA the most important group to me out of all of these possible groups?” This assumption affects one’s position on coalitions to a massive degree. There are also questions about the tactics these groups use, beliefs about their effectiveness, their effectiveness in building long-term power, etc. 

I’ll be upfront that I am a believer in the “for a single mass party” theory of change. Some of this is just because I don’t have the time to be involved in anything other than DSA and my past political activity took me into some of The Groups such as Justice Democrats (not particularly active in Cleveland) and then out of them. My point with this post is to help members understand the perspectives on display so that they can learn to frame questions themselves and we can argue about the politics of the situation and the historical justifications for one approach or the other rather than taking personal shots at each other.

Popular Front

Popular Front politics, as a historical phenomenon, have roots in the earliest days of the movement for working class political power. A popular front simply means an alliance of cooperation between socialists/communists and liberal political forces, usually against reactionary elements such as Fascists. This is almost always a cross-class coalition between people who depend on wages and people who own capital (in some sense). The working class fought alongside the Republican elites (in the “we want a Republic not a Monarchy” sense) in the 1830 and 1848 Revolutions in France in order to eliminate the Monarchy. In the 1920’s & 30’s, Communists, Anarchists, Syndicalists, and liberals formed popular fronts across Europe to oppose Fascism. 

Today in the DSA of 2026, many argue that the conditions of Trump’s second term such as state violence and climate change mandate a popular front approach for DSA to orient itself as part of a “movement of movements”. This “movement of movements” would be an alliance of groups all across non-Fascist politics like Indivisible, labor unions, issue/advocacy-based nonprofits, DSA, to Trotskyist groups (maybe, maybe not), etc. Some examples of DSA writing representing this are “DSA For the Masses: Organizing The Anti-Fascist Majority” by Emmett M and “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda:  A Vision for a Nimble, Mass‑Oriented DSA” by Chris K of LA-DSA. In Organizing the Anti-Fascist Majority, Emmett writes:

 “We are witnessing the breakout of large amounts of unrest targeted at the Trump administration, without DSA at the forefront to meet the masses. DSA should support any anti-Trump protest from the Left instead of applying purity tests to them and thereby allowing liberals to control the anti-fascist and anti-Trump narrative….A strong principled Left opposition is needed to stand up to the threat of Trump, and DSA should be at the forefront of it nationally, not standing by self-consciously worrying that we may be mistaken for liberals.”

The argument goes that DSA is still a small organization, unable to effectively oppose fascism by itself and that the circumstances demand a unified defense of the American people by DSA acting in cooperation with their allies. Skeptics of this assumption might ask if the popular front itself is even able to cohere the necessary numbers & political power, or question its capitalist character. Proponents of popular front positions might argue however that the actual chance to build a large movement depends precisely on the cooperation with non-socialist forces because DSA is so small and in such an embryonic stage of life, being barely over 120,000 members as of 2026. It follows that the membership of progressive and liberal groups are the closest to DSA politically and the most likely of anyone on the political spectrum to join DSA and build its numbers, which are required to fight fascism. The essential point being made is that the demands of the historical moment or the threat presented by fascism dictate the need to cohere the greatest numbers to oppose fascism in the short term, through a diverse coalition of political perspectives. 

Critics of popular front approaches such as Jack L in “Coalitions of the Liberal & Socialist Left” argue that this approach has innate limitations that proponents of popular front politics fail to acknowledge or even ignore, such as apparent historical evidence that the bourgeoisie will eventually betray the working class’s political goals. This manifests in particular ways. In “Ultraliberalism: The Dominant Tendency of the American Left”, Chicago DSA member Ramsin Canon argues that the influence of the NGO sector on the left through cross-pollination of membership and the general class position of politically active people means that the socialist movement must fight to maintain its drive to liberate the working class and this requires rejecting the liberal individualist politics of the nonprofit sector that is influenced by competing for funding and the careerism of executive directors.

The traditional historical argument such as in Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution by Vladimir Lenin says that unprincipled partnership between socialist groups and the bourgeoisie results in the “liquidation” of revolutionary politics to maintain the needs of the coalition. Overall the critical position is represented by a belief that coalitions between socialist groups and liberal groups have inherent limitations. These limitations can be driven by class interests, differing theories of change, disparate organizing capabilities, and competition between activist groups and their leaders, but they represent essential differences between DSA and liberal groups. 

Points in favor

  • Historically, popular front movements such as in Spain & France have mounted strong opposition to Fascism even if they didn’t always defeat fascism. In Russia, the Tsar was in part able to be overthrown because the national bourgeoisie were tired of him as well. 
  • Cooperation between DSA & issue-based advocacy groups has resulted in some huge legislative wins like NYC-DSA’s Build Public Renewables Act. 
  • Important electoral wins such as Zohran Mamdani’s in NYC over Andrew Cuomo (backed by Trump) that have energized hundreds of thousands of people 
  • Simple reality that DSA is not politically strong enough to get policies passed on its own because this requires legislative majorities or executive power 
  • Proponents claim that each incremental reform won allows a new baseline from which to agitate for more changes and which validate the effectiveness of the socialist movement 

Points against

  • Skeptics say that liberal organizations are more concerned with control of the state in the sense that they can better manage it than fascists, while (as skeptics say) socialists should be concerned with opposing the state as it exists
  • This can take the form of the political horizon being shrunk to simply incremental reforms – this shows acutely on the topics of policing & anti-imperialism
  • Reconciling strategic objectives & decision-making across both liberal groups and DSA can be very difficult when they are structurally so different – mass member democracy vs nonprofits run by executive directors & full-time staff 
  • Issue-based coalitions often encounter friction between activist leaders along with mission drift which can lead to wasting time 
  • Liberal groups fighting for control of the state / favor with the state might end up shifting their struggle solely to parliamentary concerns or focus just on liberal “consciousness-raising” as Ramsin Canon puts it 

United Socialist Front

As if to address some of the concerns the critics of popular front politics point out, some socialists believe partnerships should only be built with Groups that meet particular political standards such as advocating for police abolition or Anti-Zionism. Operating off a similar assumption that DSA is still a small, still mostly weak formation, they advocate for strategies like running electoral candidates in coalition with other socialist groups like Party for Socialism & Liberation, and using DSA resources to support candidates from those groups. Examples in DSA include the arguments in Akron DSA and elsewhere to support PSL candidates for office and the Springs of Revolution caucus’s strategy of coalitional electoralism.

Similar to the popular front argument, this train of thought says that these groups are all “close enough” to DSA and that the demands of the historical moment require us to form the most numerically robust opposition to fascism that we can, except that Zionist groups or pro-NATO groups and such aren’t included. Some of these groups include (but are not limited to) PSL, FRSO, CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA), Socialist Alternative, Revolutionary Workers’ Party, and the Revolutionary Communist Party (of Bob Avakian fame). I personally never bothered until recently to learn what any of these groups were or were about because I came to DSA from the progressive electoral world and I looked at most of these groups as the weird people who just protest all the time and run the occasional third party electoral campaign that gets 1-2% of the vote. 

In a sense, the horizon for the Socialist Front position shifts from simply opposing fascism to also advocating for socialism unapologetically. However, just as with Popular Front approaches, problems arise immediately because of the nature of the various organizations in the coalition, that often also includes “progressive enough” liberal groups or the front groups that these various sects create in order to appear more legitimate to the general public like the Peoples’ Forum in NYC. This is a reflection of the sect groups’ particular attention to certain historical texts such as Vladimir Lenin’s “What is To Be Done,” which Lenin himself emphasizes is merely a snapshot of a debate at a point in time in the history of Russian socialism, not a blueprint for everyone.

The overarching impediment to cooperation between them (and with DSA) is that all of the sect groups believe their organization is the one that’s going to “actually” the one that’s going to cohere the working class against capitalism and the others “aren’t” for various reasons such as their “deviations” in political line. This is a result of the historical development of these groups and the particular interpretations of historical tendencies that they represent, as offshoots of the organizations that came before them. This can include Trotskyists but also Marcyites, Cliffites, Shachtmanites, etc. PSL for example is a Marcyite formation. The question of what to aim for (Socialism in some form) becomes less prominent, although this can be contentious. Instead, the question of how to get there takes center stage. 

An example of the problems inherent in these sect-type organizations is described in “The Task of Left Renewal” by Lewis N in Prometheus Mag talking about the Left in Britain: 

“The left in Britain has a number of problems – a key one of these is the age problem. Within the British left, there exists a core generation which retains control over the apparatus of the broad left (Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, union branches, etc.), primarily those within their 50s-60s. The problem is not with the participation of these comrades within the movement; it is with their insistence upon leading the movement and stifling the enthusiasm and energy of younger comrades with outdated political culture and processes, ultimately resulting in an insular left which exists simply to remember its past and rest upon its laurels (of which it has little in the past few decades). Younger comrades are consistently tokenized without actually encouraging meaningful participation, resulting in those younger comrades who fall in line with the older sections of the movement out of respect or deference for their history becoming absorbed into the same sectarian struggles which have plagued the left for decades. When we have a situation in which younger socialists are splitting into pre-existing sectarian groups based on their perceived disagreements over their interpretation of historical events for which they were never even alive, and then continue to reproduce the same toxic ideological divisions which have consistently paralyzed the left, we are unable to move forward – only to act as a living museum for those who came before us.”

This highlights the primary problem that DSA faces when trying to coordinate strategy alongside these groups. Not only do they solely represent specific niches ideologically, they often are under the control of ruling cliques such as the Becker family that dominates PSL’s central committee. This raises an essential question: are these groups really building a mass movement that can last, or simply a self-serving project of a particular set of activists, usually from a given social class? As we might ask in Cleveland DSA, are they more focused on mobilizing or organizing? 

Points in favor

  • Generally more revolutionary political line than Popular Fronts that excludes problematic politics like pro-policing and Zionism 
  • Preserves ability to have some strength in numbers via cooperation
  • Easier to coordinate agitational campaigning across groups with generally excellent media operations
  • High level of political education across “members” 
  • Centralized governance makes for generally efficient operations
  • Not dependent on government or capitalist funding*
    *exception for Neville Roy Singham and PSL

Points against

  • Not really that many people when you add up all the alphabet soup of acronym groups – for example SAlt was ~1000 pre-split, PSL is estimated to be a few thousand, FRSO is estimated to be even smaller
  • Have to argue for membership in your group vs. the other groups – Why would I join DSA who is knocking on my door when the candidate I like that they’re knocking for is from PSL?
  • Can a coalition of this nature withstand the need for freedom of criticism across coalition members when many of these groups exist because they split from other ones or descend from a prior split? 
  • Critics say because of the history of these groups they are bureaucratized and controlled by various cliques 
  • Emphasis on purity politics and adherence to line means that organizations often split and cohere around charismatic figures and leaders (most famously, splits in various Trotskyist & Maoist groups)

“For a single mass party”

Finally, I’ll turn to my own camp, the “For a single mass party” crew. A sort of synthesis of both the popular front and the purity politics of sects suggests itself through the failures of the groups Our Revolution that originated from the Bernie Sanders campaign and Justice Democrats that originated in the NGO sphere to recruit progressive candidates. As Bernie said, the regular people of this country today have the historic task of building a mass movement to defeat fascism and demand the democratic republic that we do not currently have, restricted by gerrymandering, campaign finance, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and so on. I have always taken this idea to mean we needed one big organization that would be the standard bearer for the left that people could unify around. Notably, he didn’t say “now all of you go join a bunch of various individual groups like your local Maoist or Trotskyist cell”. It took me years to realize that the missing link was that it had to be driven by member democracy in order to be most effective. 

Our Revolution never became that organization because it was not based on mass member democracy but run like any other nonprofit around an executive board. But we also need the labor movement to be there too, as the class of society we fight for and whose historic task socialism is to carry out. The classical Marxist merger formula as stated by Karl Kautsky says “Social Democracy [meaning the mass socialist party] is the merger of socialism with the workers’ movement”. So what this “For a single mass party” orientation represents is the project of building that organization, according to its proponents.

The “focus on building DSA first” approach views DSA in this light. Supporters of this view of how to run DSA often view DSA, despite its relatively small membership, as a successor to socialist parties of the past and the best shot at a Socialist party of the future. Therefore, for it to be successful requires the organization’s politics and structure to be cultivated carefully into a true party, with conventions, a program like the Erfurt one adopted by the SPD, and so on. 

In Cleveland specifically, this dovetails with the reverence this crowd expresses for the organizing style of Jane McAlevey in her book No Shortcuts. No Shortcuts, as many would hold, is the key blueprint for building up the organization that merges socialism & the labor movement into a big whole because of its emphasis on building members of the working class into majorities for political action and building individual agency. The main criticism of both the nonprofit sector and the sects that is made by this group is that nonprofits and groups like PSL are all primarily oriented around mobilizing and direct service provision; protests, one-off rallies, harm mitigation, etc. This is in contrast to the mass-movement building that they see happening through organizing in the McAlevey style.


But why is DSA the organization most likely to accomplish this out of all the ones that have existed? The answer lies not just in its mass membership democracy but also in Mike MacNair’s thesis in his book Revolutionary Strategy that what is essential to defeating capitalism in the 21st century is a party that harnesses “unity in diversity” across the left. 

In contrast to the marginalization of the many sect groups throughout the 20th century due to splits and purges, and the absorption into liberal coalitions that the UK Labour party underwent, MacNair advocates for a multi-tendency organization to be the independent political home of the working class, one driven by mass member democracy. Because many of the “for a single mass party” people understand the importance of the multi-tendency organization (not limited to them however), they are some of the most committed to DSA for its own sake. 

Central to this debate from the perspective of this tendency is what Mike MacNair refers to as the “Strategy of Patience”, the idea that the independent class-based political party must preserve its own political independence and revolutionary character so as to ensure it can build strength and carry out its mission. This means a cautious approach to entering into government coalitions with bourgeois politicians and a cautious approach to partnerships with liberal politics, save for in specific campaigns as a tactic to advance our goals. 

However, unity in diversity and mass member democracy are not a magic wand. A “DSA for everyone” would seem to replicate the same problems of coalitions, except internally rather than externally. In that sense, it cannot “be” everything for everyone at the same time. 

Points in favor

  • Emphasis on multi-tendency organizing means new ideas are generated constantly
  • Focus on building majorities within 1 org means able to wield organizational power in a focused way
  • Proponents say avoids pitfalls of popular front politics (risk of liquidation into liberal politics or other organizations)
  • Proponents say avoids pitfalls of sect form of organizing (such as consolidation of power and lack of accountability) because of emphasis on internal democratic processes & structure-building
  • ”Better off together than apart” 

Points against

  • Can be hard to make decisions among clashing political perspectives
  • Not always responsive to immediate conditions
  • Dizzying to navigate for people joining
  • Critics might say the Strategy of Patience is incompatible with the timetable presented to us by climate change 
  • Can lead to strategic flip-flops as different tendencies vie for control of the organization 

The current composition of DSA is only slowly starting to move toward multi-racial nature and still biased toward a “precariat” perspective, far from fulfilling the promise of the merger formula. But many would say that this represents our best chance so far. Above all, answering the question of how you think DSA should relate to The Groups requires you to clarify what you believe DSA is FOR and how it would be most effective at achieving that.