DSA is the largest US socialist org in 109 years
socialists should embrace the first mass success in half a century
At around 80,000 members, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is currently the biggest socialist organization in the United States since 1914. That's 109 years ago.
No socialist org has had anything close to DSA's membership in the last half century. See for yourself:
For some comparisons:
DSA is bigger than Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in its 1960s heydays (~30,000, peak of ~40,000)
DSA is bigger than Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in its 1940s heydays (~60,000, peak of ~75,000)
DSA is bigger than Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in its 1910s heydays (~45,000, peak of ~60,000)
DSA is still a bit smaller than the Socialist Party of America in its 1910s heydays (~90,000, peak of ~115,000)
That's a big fucking deal!
DSA is the first modern socialist org with truly mass membership. Figuring out how we achieved that is key to winning socialism in the USA.
DSA dominates the modern socialist movement
DSA dwarfs all other modern socialist orgs. No other socialist organization has achieved membership levels anywhere close:
In all of this article's graphs, I've tried to include every socialist org with any public membership details. However, the vast majority of socialist orgs never publicize their membership numbers, which orgs tend to be small orgs in the 50-250 range. Arbitrarily, I assign 250 members to the approximately ~25 of these orgs.
Even with this optimistic assumption, DSA members would make up roughly 65% of the US socialist left:
In addition to microsects, the graph above also counts the Green Party (8k, mostly social democrats), the Socialist Rifle Association (10k, virtually all paper members), and the Industrial Workers of the World (6k, union members, many non-socialist).
The next largest "real" socialist organization is CPUSA, at 6k -- 10 times smaller than DSA.
That fact should indicate that something about DSA attracts new leftists far more than every other modern socialist orgs.
What about DSA is so much more appealing?
Consider two of the biggest differences between DSA and most modern US socialist organizations:
Electoral Entryism: Most socialist orgs run candidates on their own socialist ballot line. As a result, few hold any significant political offices. In contrast, DSA runs socialists on Democratic Party ballots as part of a realignment strategy. As a result, Congress has more socialists than any time in history, most of which are DSA members.
Internal Democracy: Most socialist orgs follow a democratic centralist (demcent) model, descended from Leninism and Trotskyism, which de-facto prevents open criticism of the org. DSA is an big-tent democratic socialist (demsoc) org, akin to social democratic parties. As a result, DSA allows far more criticism and internal political diversity than other socialist orgs.
DSA's democratic socialist structure is important and helps explain DSA's relative organizational stability. But despite being a big tent org, DSA did not see explosive growth during the decades between 1983 and 2015. The 2nd point has held true for a long time, and it cannot explain DSA's explosive growth from 2016-2021.
The 1st point can. DSA's electoral successes are new -- and they coincide with DSA's explosive growth.
DSA's growth was best when DSA won elections and Trump was in office
For support, consider the graph below, which gives a more-detailed history of DSA's membership from 2013 to 2023 and marks a dozen important events throughout:
The data before 2016 come from DSA's public statements (to the press or on Twitter). However, most of the data is too sparse to give much more a broad overview of DSA's growth since 2010:
pre-2015: DSA's membership was stagnant at ~7,000 for decades.
Early 2017: After the Sanders primary campaign and 2016 elections, DSA membership spiked upwards to ~11,500.
Early 2018: After the 2017 elections (where DSA did surprisingly well), DSA membership reached ~35,000.
Early 2019: After the 2018 election season (where DSA elected two new socialist US House reps), DSA membership reached ~55,000 members.
Early 2020: It's not clear whether DSA grew: DSA's Twitter didn't publish any new membership details, and the internal data starts in Jan 2020 at ~54000, below the last DSA Twitter statement in Dec 2018 at ~55000.
Early 2021: After the 2020 election season, DSA membership reached ~95,000. DSA membership stagnated at ~95,000, as interest for "democratic socialism" on Google Trends enormously declined.
Early 2022: In Feb 2022, constitutional membership dropped by ~5,000. This followed the Dec 2021 NPC statement on Bowman and Feb 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Putin, but neither or both might be a cause.
In my opinion, the data and the overview above suggest two important conclusions:
Electoral Growth: This graph doesn't have enough data to prove that DSA's membership growth spikes around elections, but it certainly suggests it. (See the post-2016 and post-2020 spikes, when we have the most data points.)
Anti-Trump Growth: The plateau in 2021 after Trump left office also suggests that recruiting socialists will be significantly harder without the imminent anti-democratic, white nationalist threat from Trump.
Why is DSA shrinking?
It's easy to see that DSA membership flatlined in 2021 and started to decline in 2022.
I think this decline is "mechanical" and not "ideological". Or: DSA is shrinking because not because its ideology is unappealing to unorganized socialists (which is usually the position of vanguardists in DSA) but because socialism as a whole is less popular in the United States.
Trump's victory was clearly part of the spectacular success of DSA. Anti-Trump (and thus anti-racist, anti-sexist, pro-queer) energy helped push leftists and progressives into dozens of orgs, including the DSA.
Interest in democratic socialism has declined since Trump left office. Easy anti-Trump recruitment is over:
If true, we should expect to see a decline across all socialist organizations. Unfortunately, most socialist orgs don't release yearly membership numbers -- and most orgs only promote their membership numbers when the org is growing, but never when it's shrinking.
However, two socialist-ish orgs -- the Green Party and the Industrial Workers of the World -- do release yearly membership tallies. And both the GPUS and the IWW have seen falling membership since 2021:
In addition, we can see that all the orgs which were publishing membership numbers -- the SRA, SAlt, FRSO, CPUSA -- stopped publishing in 2021 or 2022. That very likely means they're not growing or that they're shrinking.
In short, the evidence suggests that all socialist orgs are having a hard time with membership, not just the DSA. This supports the "mechanistic" view of DSA's decline in membership.
What can DSA do to keep growing?
If Trump stays far from the levers of power (as he should!), then democratic socialists must find new ways to recruit to our cause. What can we do?
#1: Keep winning elections.
Socialist representatives have huge platforms that can generate interest in our politics -- and DSA's inside-outside strategy has resulted in a US Congress with more socialists than ever before. DSA should not abandon these successes for another failed independent socialist party.
(This is the first part of the inside-outside strategy.)
#2: Move beyond Trump.
The far right won't disappear if Trump loses. White nationalists, sexists, and anti-queer activists are the most energized they've been in decades, as we see in the return of open scientific racism, the spectacular rise of sexist influencers, and anti-queer legislation across Republican-led states. DSA should partner with other socialist and progressive organizations that oppose this threat, both for the health of our democracy and our org. DSA volunteers should also continue to build union power and tenant power by organizing the unorganized, which in turn empowers DSA and progressive politics.
(This is the second part of the inside-outside strategy.)
#3: Ask people to recommit.
It's easy to conclude that DSA's recommitment drive was a failure -- after all, it only increased DSA's membership by ~1,500 paying members! It's just a blip!
But it's worth remembering that DSA's membership was declining at a nearly linear rate before and after the recommitment drive. If we instead estimate the number of dues-paying members who joined and those who didn't leave, the recommitment drive effectively added 6,800 members:
That might not seem like a lot -- but 6800 members is more than the entire CPUSA. The fact that, in three months, in a time when people are leaving all socialist organizations, DSA can retain or gain more dues-paying members than the next-largest socialist org has in total is pretty damn good!
(This is just the nuts-and-bolts of being a large, member-funded organization.)
Conclusion and shilling
In short: DSA's growth is important. DSA has managed to create a true mass org, unlike all other socialist orgs in the last 50 years. That growth rested on socialist electoral victories and anti-Trump sentiment. We should continue the former and reorganize the latter into a broad front against the reactionary right.
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Data download
You can see all of the sources cited, with page numbers and quotes, in this Google Sheet. The list of modern socialist organizations with unknown memberships is taken from this draft Wikipedia article.
Could you please unhide the rows on the spreadsheet?
Lol this is several months after my last comment, but what’s your estimate on the size of International Marxist Tendency and it’s various branches like Fightback! and Socialist Revolution?