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An Inside Look at the Democratic Socialists of America

An Inside Look at the Democratic Socialists of America

Last updated on: July 31, 2026 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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An Inside Look at the Democratic Socialists of America 2026-07-24T18:05:42-04:00 Gene Veith

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Jake Altman used to be a member of the Democratic Socialists of America from the 2010s until 2022. He quit the group when he saw how radical they had become, including “an eagerness to collaborate with Leninist groups.” The straw that broke the camel’s back was when the group blamed American imperialism for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Altman has written an article for the Free Press entitled I Was in the DSA. Here’s What They Really Believe. In it, he discusses the new DSA platform that we blogged about yesterday.

Altman marvels that the DSA is so open about its radicalism. The document proves that democratic socialism is not just liberalism or European-style social democracy. “It advocates the elimination of capitalism, not a thick layer of redistribution on top of the current economy.” It is unreservedly utopian, but Altman discerns underlying threats.

It goes on to promise open borders, the abolition of the police, “free” everything, and guaranteed jobs, all with less effort from the individual. This is the stuff of fairy tales, but instead of a fairy godmother, the reader is greeted by an agent of the secret police.

In our discussion of the manifesto’s call for free, government-supplied housing, we asked if this would eliminate home ownership. Altman says this is indeed the goal. “Many in the DSA,” he writes, “genuinely imagine a world without private property.”

The DSA would strictly regulate investment properties and impose universal rent control—a strategy currently playing out on a smaller scale in New York City. The goal of these policies is not to solve a housing shortage, but to render private rental properties unprofitable, clearing a path for long-term expropriation. Remember, the DSA’s Housing Justice Commission has been clear that its long-term goal is “the end of commodified housing.”

Yesterday we said that the DSA’s proposed reforms would alter the very structure of the American government, requiring the repeal of the Constitution and establishing a new nation. The goal, says Altman, would be to remove all limits to governmental power.

The DSA’s revolution against American institutions is also designed to strip rights and eliminate checks on power. Instead of a balanced government, the DSA calls for replacing “the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” The only way the DSA could conceivably accomplish its total program is through the fundamental elimination of the checks and balances that safeguard America’s pluralism and stability. The changes DSA proposes would conveniently remove any potential brake on their consolidation of state power.

The DSA’s call for a “Working-Class Foreign Policy” would end America’s military power and capitulate to our adversaries. In addition to defunding the War Department, the manifesto calls for the prosecution of all American and Israeli “war criminals” and “the closure of all overseas military bases, effectively seeking an end to U.S. military power.”

Crucially, DSA’s foreign policy positions ignore America’s enemies: While DSA targets U.S. and Israeli leadership for prosecution, the platform is silent on the actual atrocities committed by the Russian, Iranian, Venezuelan, and Chinese regimes.

Altman’s perspective is especially helpful when he brings up elements in the organization that are not mentioned in their website. For example, its paramilitary arm, the “Red Rabbits.”

Part of the DSA program is an attack on the forces of law and order. The DSA continues to push for police and ICE abolition while simultaneously establishing what sounds like a paramilitary wing. The DSA has formed a group called the Red Rabbits to prepare for a “national uprising against federal agents and police brutality.” So it’s a paramilitary force for the DSA, but no protection for the rest of us.

The most revealing part of Altman’s article is what he says about an explicitly communist caucus within the DSA. Democratic socialism has traditionally departed from the orthodox Marxist position that socialism can only come about through a violent class revolution, believing instead that Marxist goals can be achieved by political means. But the DSA’s Marxist Unity Group, which holds seats on the organization’s governing council, still favors old-school Marxist revolution.

The Marxist Unity Group—a caucus with three members on the organization’s governing board of 27, operating as part of theexplicitly communist coalition that governs the DSA—is clear. The demand is communism. A February 2025 statement on their own draft program for DSA, which influenced “Workers Deserve More!” is much clearer about the organization’s ultimate goal: “The maximum program, on the other hand, elaborates the history of capitalist development and the role of the working class within it. It demonstrates our commitment to the long-term struggle for a fully liberated, classless society—in a word, communism.”

That is to say, the policies set forth in the new platform, which are already radical enough, is fine as a first step. But the “maximum program,” which will go even further, will come later. In the meantime, there should be no doubt about “our commitment to the long-term struggle for a fully liberated, classless society—in a word, communism.”

Illustration: People of the World, Unite! Overthrow the American Imperialists! Overthrow the Soviet Revisionists! China, 1969, lithograph – Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art – Eugene, Oregon – DSC09530 via Picryl, Public Domain

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