US Congress has more socialists than any time in history
leftists should not turn away from this historical success
More socialists have seats in the United States Congress -- 8 of 535, or 1.5% -- than any point in history. Of those, 5 are members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
If that doesn't seem like much, compare the Green Party (highest: 0 federal electeds), the Libertarian Party (highest: 1 federal elected, for 1 year), or historical socialist parties below:
This is a big fucking deal! It's an electoral and media success story that socialists should replicate.
In this article, I discuss:
History: When and how have socialists been elected to Congress?
Impact: Why does this matter?
Subscribe to my Substack to support my work:
1. History: How many socialists have been elected to Congress through US history?
To answer this question, I created a Wikipedia article, "List of socialist members of the United States Congress" and looked through half a dozen short histories of socialists elected to Congress. The table there summarizes the electoral outcomes, but doesn't tell a story of the socialist left's long failure -- and sudden success -- in getting federal representation.
I found five "eras" of socialist federal electeds, detailed below. I believe these eras highlight the weaknesses of socialists running on third party ballot lines:
Era 1: Socialist Party of America: 1910's-1920's
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) achieved its highest membership in the 1910's, especially in the Midwest and Northeast.
Two SPA members, Victor Berger and Meyer London, were seated intermittently between 1911 and 1929. (London lost and then won re-election; Berger lost and then won re-election and was once removed from Congress twice for anti-war activism.)
However, the First Red Scare and various splits (1919 left split to Communist Party, 1936 right split to Social Democratic Federation, 1937 left split to Trotskyists) hamstrung at the organization's already-meager electoral capabilities.
Between Berger and London, socialists had ~1 seat in Congress.
Era 2: American Labor Party: 1940's
During the Roosevelt presidency and World War 2, the Red Scare died down. In its stead, and in the context of rising fascism, Americans often adopted a "popular front" mentality. In 1936, ex-SPA members created the social-democratic American Labor Party (ALP).
The ALP elected one candidate, Vito Marcantonio, from 1937 to 1951. (Marcantonio had previously been a socialist in the Republican Party, which had not yet embraced social-economic conservative fusionism, and contained progressives like Fiorello La Guardia.)
The ALP was unable to replicate Marcantonio's success. Another candidate, Leo Isacson, won a 1948 special election, but lost the next general. Over time, the ALP lost members to the progressive Liberal Party of New York.
From Marcantonio, socialists had ~1 seat in Congress.
Era 3: McCarthyism, Factionalism, and Localism: 1950's-1970's
In the 1950's, the Second Red Scare, sometimes called McCarthyism, saw an exodus of people from socialist organizations and socialists removed from progressive organizations.
Socialist organizations in the late 1960's often collapsed or splintered due to radical faction infighting. For example, the ~50,000-member Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) splintered and dissolved over infighting after Stalinist entryism.
Other socialist organizations, like the Black Panther Party, focused on mutual aid efforts (partly successful) and local political campaigns (almost always unsuccessful). These orgs were often targeted by COINTELPRO.
Socialists had ~0 seats in Congress.
Wave 4: Early DSA: 1980's-2000's
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) was founded in 1983 from a merger of New American Movement (NAM), a big-tent socialist successor of SDS created in 1971, with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), a 1983 split led by Michael Harrington from the Socialist Party of America (SPA), which was reorganizing itself rightward as Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA).
In short: The modern DSA formed as a big tent socialist organization in 1983, with a few thousand members from other socialist orgs.
DSA's strategy, unlike socialist orgs before it, rarely featured socialists running on a third party's ballot line. Instead, Harrington argued that socialists must shift the Democratic Party left from the inside, what we'd nowadays call "realignment":
[H]ow do we transform these basically antisocial structures with the urgency that is required? Not by a vague third force. The Democratic Party is where the overwhelming bulk of the reform forces — trade unionists, minorities, women, the issue constituencies — is concentrated. As a Democratic Socialist [...] I have no illusion that it is as radical as the times demand. But it is just the only place where a beginning can be made.
Over the next three decades, a few scattered socialist Democratic congresspeople joined DSA:
Ron Dellums, in US House 1970-1998
Major Owens, in US House 1982-2006
John Conyers, in US House 1964-2016
David Bonior, in US House 1976-2002
Bernie Sanders, who won election to the US House in 1990, did not join DSA, but enjoyed DSA's support
Chicago DSA endorsed DSA member Danny Davis for his successful 1996 US House election
However, DSA remained so small that knowing what "DSA" meant was just "left-wing insider baseball". Throughout this period, DSA had a membership below ~8,000, low level of publicity, and little influence.
Outside of DSA:
The Labor Party was founded 1996 by several large unions in hopes of being able to run a 3rd party ballot line. It fielded zero successful candidates on its ballot line.
The modern Green Party, which emerged around 1996 and gained massive publicity thanks to the 2000 Ralph Nader campaign, has won zero federal or statewide elections on their ballot lines.
A dozen socialist parties -- Leninist, Stalinist, Trotskyist -- achieved some local wins but zero federal or statewide election wins on their ballot lines.
Socialists had ~5 seats in Congress, from five DSA members and Bernie Sanders.
Wave 5: Democratic Socialists of America: 2010's-2020's
In 2011-12, the Occupy Movement energized leftist movements around the world, including DSA.
In 2015, Bernie Sanders began his primary campaign for Democratic presidential candidate, which was far more successful than expected, and catapulted his self-described "democratic socialism" into the limelight.
This success caused DSA membership to explode. DSA had ~8,500 members in 2015, ~50,000 in 2018, and ~90,000 in 2021.
In turn, this energized membership helped elect the most socialists to Congress in US history:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 2018-now (DSA member)
Rashida Tlaib, 2018-now (DSA member)
Ilhan Omar, 2018-now
Cori Bush, 2020-now (DSA member)
Jamaal Bowman, 2020-now (DSA member)
Summer Lee, 2022-now (former DSA member)
Greg Casar, 2022-now (DSA member)
Danny Davis -- that DSA member elected in 1996 -- has since shifted significantly right.
Socialists have ~8 seats in Congress, from five DSA members and three non-members.
2. Why does it matter?
To me, this history highlights two facts:
1st: For socialists, "partyist" or "clean break" strategies have been total failures.
In the last century, dozens of socialist organizations have run thousands of candidates for federal office on their own ballot line. Just four candidates have succeeded.
The single socialist success since 1960, Bernie Sanders, ran as an Independent. But since 1990 (his first successful federal elections), he has run with tacit (if reluctant) support from most of the local Democratic leadership and nearly all local Democratic voters and routinely cooperates with the Democratic Party in Congress.
In short: In the past century, there was virtually no route to socialist federal electeds outside the Democratic Party ballot line. That won't change any time soon.
2nd: Socialist electoral wins and close losses can help socialist causes considerably.
As a framing mechanism, consider Luke's "three faces of political power":
1st face: Decision-Making Power: Electoral wins give socialists some power to vote on policy, pass laws, and sway legislators. But since elected socialists are few, this only results in slightly better policy outcomes. For example, Bush, Ocasio-Cortez, and Pressley's sit-in to extend the eviction moratorium in August 2021 extended it -- for three weeks, until the Supreme Court ended it.
2nd face: Agenda-Setting Power: Electoral wins give socialists some power to choose which issues and policies are in mainstream political discussion. Socialists have more luck here. For example, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used their massive platforms (bolstered by electoral wins) to push Medicare For All, a $15 minimum wage, a Green New Deal, and a dozen other issues into mainstream political discussion. Hell, you can see the Bernie Effect in the Google Trends of "single-payer healthcare".
3rd face: Ideological Power: Electoral wins give socialists some power to determine what people believe. All of us are bathed in propaganda from thousands of sources, which shapes our ideologies: What we think is in our self interests, how we evaluate truth, the narratives we tell ourselves, the labels we use. Having a socialist counter-narrative -- on mainstream television, in Congressional hearing questions, on the President's Twitter feed -- will pay long-term dividends. Millions more people today are ideological socialists (or have socialist leanings) than before Bernie, before AOC.
Elections aren't everything. Socialists must work to re-unionize America, to build community power beyond election season.
But elections give real, massive benefits. Socialists would abandon these benefits if DSA abandoned running on the Democratic ballot line, as "clean break" strategies demand.
Nobody cared about all the tiny third-party socialist candidates. Nobody cares about them today. Hell, most Americans probably can't tell you which Green ran for President in 2024. They didn't affect capitalist cultural hegemony. They just wasted our resources.
In short: It's not enough to run as a socialist -- you've got to win or come damn close. Running as socialists on the Democratic ballot line allows that.
Conclusion and shilling
In short: There are more socialists in Congress than ever before. That fact brings real benefits to the socialist cause. Socialists should be damn proud of that fact and seek to expand it -- not abandon this successful strategy.
If you agree, and you're not a DSA member, you should join DSA. If you agree, and you're a DSA member, you should join my groupchat list!
I'm writing blogs on socialist and progressive topics. To support my work:
Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/socdoneleft
Subscribe on Substack:
