Zenith Volume 4

Announcing volume four of Zenith, a journal of theory and practice from Red Star.

Matt M.

May 11, 2025 • 3 min read

Art by William Z

How do revolutionary parties facilitate class struggle? Since the first utopians dreamed of a classless society, the task of fighting the ruling class has loomed large over these hopes. In every instance, the question of how to seize power by confronting the political challenges faced by revolutionaries in their time and place has been an open one, until it was answered. And even then, the challenges of governing, resolving contradictions through practice, and building a new society to replace the old have to be taken in media res, without the opportunity to go back to square one. The struggle against the existing way of being starts where it must: in the present, with the tools at our disposal, and our comrades alongside us.

Welcome to the fourth issue of Zenith, a journal of theory and practice from Red Star, a Marxist-Leninist caucus in the Democratic Socialists of America. This collection of writing follows Red Star’s points of unity revision, a monumental project we embarked on after our nationwide expansion and election of John, Megan, and Sam to the National Political Committee. Here, we attempt to paint a more complete picture of the present challenges DSA faces as we understand them, and how we hope to address them. We hope it is provocative, clarifying, and inspiring in whatever measure is needed. Our aim is to support the work of DSA members committed to building a revolutionary party: one that can cohere the disparate struggles against capitalism and imperialism being waged all around us, support the militancy so urgently needed in this moment, and become the instrument for building a new socialist society.

This issue has four main elements. The first is Build the Foundation to Raise the Roof, a complement to our revised points of unity that spell out the overarching vision for DSA we are building toward: a democratic National organization that supports the development of protagonistic member-leaders who are capable of waging struggle campaigns in whatever context they are in. The second section contains reviews of books that Red Star has studied this past year that we find particularly important in this current moment of class struggle: J. Sakai’s Settlers and R. Palme Dutt’s Fascism and Social Revolution. The third section articulates strategic or practical challenges within DSA that will be important to resolve in the coming years: the limits of NGO-style, staff-led organizing campaigns and the member-leadership we hope to replace it with; the necessity of cohering the competing visions for DSA into a more unified praxis; and the limitations of a labor strategy that doesn’t foreground socialist politics and the proletariat’s revolutionary potential. Finally, we offer deeper elaborations of two key elements of our vision for DSA: the form of the vanguard party, and the role of international socialist solidarity in our work. In these paragraphs and pages, we hope revolutionaries alongside us in the United States – at the heart of a wretched empire, in a moment of world-historic reaction, and amid a deepening crisis of legitimacy that shakes the capitalist world to its roots every day – can find clarity about the tasks before us. We are endeavoring to organize a revolutionary party – because now, as ever, it is the only tool that can bring the new world into being.

- Matt M

Red Star Points of Unity

Red Star elaborates on what the caucus is, what we believe, and how we approach DSA.