Paul Heideman asks whether DSA’s extraordinary growth can become lasting socialist power. Rather than treating its internal fights as proof of collapse or its electoral wins as proof of inevitable success, he looks at the institutions and class relationships shaping both.
- Direct primaries make it possible to challenge Democrats from within; ballot-access restrictions make third-party organizing much harder.
- Sanders’s campaigns turned a small, aging organization into a mass home for conflicting socialist traditions.
- NYC’s victories, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Zohran Mamdani, show what disciplined local electoral work can do. Chicago’s organizing drew more heavily on union allies.
- DSA’s own survey found college graduates heavily overrepresented and blue-collar workers sharply underrepresented among members.
- The Emergency Worker Organizing Committee has helped union drives, but DSA’s labor base is still thinner than its electoral success suggests.
The sharpest distinction is between electing socialists and organizing the workers who could sustain socialist reforms against capital’s resistance. Heideman sees real victories, but no shortcut from a winning primary to workplace power.