The DSA’s Platform Really Is Nuts

Monday the Free Press posted an article by a former member of the DSA explaining what the group really believes. Author Jake Altman takes some time looking at the DSA’s newly released platform and it’s fair to say it really is nuttier than a fruitcake.

I was a member of the DSA from the 2010s until 2022. During that time, I witnessed a rise in extremism, ranging from an eagerness to collaborate with Leninist groups to a growing animosity toward the U.S. and the West. My final departure was prompted by a DSA statement that attributed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to American “imperialist expansionism.”

So what does the DSA stand for? An answer to that question arrived last week in the form of a new platform. Among the DSA’s core aims are ending the presidency and Supreme Court. Abolishing prisons. Universal free housing. The elimination of all debt. Closing all U.S. military bases overseas. Lifting all sanctions from Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. And so much more.

The new platform is called “Workers Deserve More!” and you can read it opens with a focus on anti-capitalism, i.e. less work and more money.

Imagine taking a day off from work in a future without capitalism. It might not feel as badly needed as it does now. You enjoy your work; it’s interesting to you, and you’re well trained for it. You work as much as you are able and no more than needed, and you would control your own labor and see it going to good use. It’s not just a job to pay the bills.

Make every career into a side-hustle. That’s the DSA’s goal. How will this allow people to live though if they’re just taking off whenever they want and working when they feel like it? What about paying the rent?

A-ha! You fell right into their trap. They have a plan for that too.

Speaking of bills: you don’t really have them anymore. You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.

So that’s free healthcare, free housing, free retirement, free food, free education, free electricity and free transportation. I mean, who doesn’t like free everything. But how does it work? Doctors don’t work for free? Construction workers and plumbers don’t work for free. Farmers and grocers don’t work for free. Oil workers and truckers don’t work for free. And auto-workers don’t work for free. 

Have all of the people been replaced by robots? Is that the plan? Or is someone paying all of these people to provide everything to DSA members for free?

Assuming the answer isn’t robots, I’m guessing the answer is that the government pays all those people so “you” don’t have to. Okay, but where did the government get the money to pay them? Did it just print it up in the treasury? Because that leads to big jumps in inflation and eventually hyper-inflation. In Venezuela a few years ago, shops would weigh the money instead of counting it because there were huge stacks of bills needed to buy a sandwich.

If they’re not printing it, then the government had to be taxing it from someone. But who? The DSA is pretty clearly anti-capitalist and anti-corporation. Bosses are the enemy. They want a classless society in which there are no bosses and no private property.

The political and economic system under which we live is built on private ownership and profit at all costs. As capitalism fails to solve problems of its own making, it turns to right-wing authoritarianism. Big business makes deals with the government to line their pockets, and politicians stoke hatred between working people. Instead of offering real solutions to unemployment and the cost of living, they attack immigrants, communities of color, and trans people. Rather than fixing our broken healthcare system, they push snake oil and circulate conspiracy theories. The Republicans are in on it, the Democratic Party is asleep at the wheel, and both are funded by the same criminal class of billionaires and war profiteers.

Democratic socialists know that no one has to live like this. If we lived in a classless society and governed ourselves, we could freely build a world without war or poverty. We could build a world where no one suffers for their race, gender, or religion, and everyone is free, equal, and cared for. Building this world is the guiding star of our movement. When we labor for our common good instead of private profit, we can all have a secure and dignified life, and use our time and talents how we wish.

To achieve this future, our class must organize. The Democratic Socialists of America is building a party whose goal is a democratic society of the working class. Our enemies are not just individual bosses, but the entire global system of capital; not just this or that cop, judge, or president, but the entire anti-democratic structure of our society.

Not to throw a monkey wrench into this brilliant plan, but if the doctor or the teacher or the truck driver providing all my free services decides to take a week off because work isn’t a necessity, what happens then? I mean, work isn’t a necessity so what if they decide to work 3 days a week? Who is going to deliver all my free medicine and free education and free food? And if the toilet breaks but the plumber is enjoying his socialist life, who can I get to fix it?

It just seems like if everyone gets paid regardless, maybe scheduling issues would be a lot more common. What if the baker takes two weeks off and there are bread lines? Socialist bread lines, imagine that.

The platform offers a utopian vision that erases the complexities of human life. It includes vague demands for a massive expansion of public resources alongside specific proposals like “paid family leave for all workers, a 32-hour work week with full pay and benefits, and a living minimum wage.” They also call for free college and the cancellation of all student debt. It paints a world devoid of anxieties and limits—no debt, no mortgages, no landlords, and no bills coming due.

The platform makes no mention of homeownership, likely because many in the DSA genuinely imagine a world without private property. Instead, the proposal promises that “you work as much as you are able and no more than needed,” a near restatement of Marx’s famous dictum: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” By suggesting that you could “control your own labor and see it going to good use,” the document makes a complex reorganization of society sound suspiciously easy. As history has shown, such experiments yield catastrophic results.

Don’t be dissuaded by reality, the DSA says.

It’s been said that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. But just because it isn’t easy to imagine now doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make it happen.

Um, okay. I’d like to be a space pirate living on Mars but I’m not sure that plan will work out. Should I try anyway or is it time to maybe stop acting like a child and get a job?

Maybe the DSA aren’t the people to ask.

Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.

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