Protagonism and the Party: On Staff- and Member-Led organizing

Red Star seeks to cohere a vanguard party. We believe DSA’s resources, broad membership, organizing ethic, and robust democratic processes make it, out of all existing US socialist organizations, the best incubator for such a party. The party should be a weapon to allow the working class to contest for political primacy. We believe we can make DSA into an organization capable of building a foundation for the creation of a socialist party in the United States.

As it stands, the advanced sections of the working class are disjointed, working across a variety of organizations and formations to advance issue-based struggles. The task of the party, our task, is to unite these advanced sections of the working class. Advanced doesn’t only mean those who are well-read and who identify as political, it means anyone who organizes their workplace, neighborhood, anyone who protests for Palestine; anyone who is ready to advance the class struggle. This means millions of people across the United States. 

Protagonism, as articulated by the late Chilean Marxist journalist Marta Harnecker, is a cultivation of the political subjectivity of individual workers as well as the whole working class via participatory democracy. As socialists we’re trying to create an organization that perceives the outside world, reacts quickly, and understands the effects of its actions, scientifically. The way we get there is to develop skilled organizers who regularly meet and struggle together to sharpen their analysis. 

Another way to look at protagonism is to examine the deep linkage between the activities we undertake, and the changes those activities make on us. Michael Lebowitz elaborates in Protagonism and Productivity in Monthly Review: 

“If we begin from the recognition that every activity in which people engage forms them, then we understand that there is a relation between the nature of our acts and the capacity we develop. If, for example, workers democratically decide upon a plan, work together to achieve its realization, solve problems which emerge and shift from activity to activity, there is a constant succession of acts which expand their capacities.”

So seeing that we want to recruit and train the advanced sections of the working class, we need to develop a practice of scientific socialism, wherein we tirelessly optimize our recruitment, campaign tactics and democratic deliberation. In this way we can learn from our mistakes in a systematic way and act on the world with intention. 

This is going to be a long road. Socializing and instituting a member-centric, vigorously democratic, revolutionary vision for the organization will take a considerable amount of work, but this is our goal.

In this piece we examine two modes of organization and the different kinds of membership activity cultivated by each. First is the Nonprofit Model and its cultivation of the member-donor through top down direction and legislative pressure campaigns. Second is the Socialist Party and its cultivation of the member-organizer. Then we examine DSA’s development so far and gesture toward a new paradigm where National’s purpose is to concentrate and share lessons learned from the primary site of struggle, Chapters. 

Professional Revolutionaries, and the Member-Organizer

What does DSA have in common with a secret, illegal, communist, newspaper distribution operation from 1904? The need for high quality cadres. In 2025, we’re in a different context. DSA is building a mass party that is going to have to recruit and develop millions of workers. Toward that end we’re going to need tons and tons of world-class organizers, politically and practically trained, with the skills to fight against bosses, landlords and the capitalist state. We need to be actively drawing in and developing the capabilities and partisanship of all our members. 

In What is To Be Done Lenin urges comrades to “recognise our duty to assist every capable worker to become a professional agitator, organiser, propagandist, literature distributor, etc.” He admires the SPD’s dedication to develop their members’ knowledge, experience and political conviction, in order to wage a competent struggle: 

“For this reason they immediately try to place every capable working man in conditions that will enable him to develop and apply his abilities to the fullest: he is made a professional agitator, he is encouraged to widen the field of his activity, to spread it from one factory to the whole of the industry, from a single locality to the whole country. He acquires experience and dexterity in his profession; he broadens his outlook and increases his knowledge; he observes at close quarters the prominent political leaders from other localities and of other parties; he strives to rise to their level and combine in himself the knowledge of the working-class environment and the freshness of socialist convictions with professional skill, without which the proletariat cannot wage a stubborn struggle against its excellently trained enemies.”

In the time that Lenin was writing WITBD, political agitation was actively illegal, meaning that a high degree of security, obfuscation, and literal invisible ink and safehouses were required to keep cadres safe and out of the hands of the authorities. What we need right now is not to hide out and send invisible messages, but we do need to instill revolutionary optimism and organizing skills into our members. 

A pillar of the party is the self-replicating process of taking an eager new member who walks in off the street, frustrated with the status quo, igniting their protagonism, and developing their skills so that they can begin the cycle anew in the next political moment. This is the way that a socialist party builds member-organizers, equipped and encouraged to practice scientific socialism.

Chapters

Many members’ first and only experience of DSA is via their local chapter. Chapters are well placed to be embedded in their community, with a ground-level view of actual or potential sites of class struggle in a geographic area. Chapters offer ample opportunities for members to get to know each other, and to struggle with and against each other in order to develop into more principled and effective socialists. An analysis of member-retention data shows that if a member sticks around for the first year, they are much more likely to stick around long term. Chapters are the glue that makes DSA sticky for new members.  

Members stay in DSA because of their ability to affect the organization, and this ability is most keenly felt and developed in chapters. The rich democratic life that exists within chapters provides an antidote to the alienation so common in life under capitalism.

The chapter general meeting is a key space for teaching members the skills of deliberation and political decision making. This is where the Robust Rigorous Socialist Democratic Culture can really develop. General meetings are a key tool which can build members’ analytical skills, by working through relevant political questions in real time. Making impactful decisions at general meetings, and debriefing those decisions collectively, can improve chapter’s political cohesion by integrating committees and working groups into a cohesive whole. 

Getting involved with a local chapter is easy: a new member can walk right in the door and say hello, and soon after become involved in the democratic life of the chapter. Because of this ease of getting involved, and the proximity to members, chapters tend to face a productive pressure to operate democratically, communicate transparently, and empower members. Chapters are where people become member-organizers, where they connect with their political power, where they can dialectically develop the protagonism of the working class through action and reflection.

The NGO Model and the Member Donor

DSA organizer and Bread and Roses member Ramsin C, writing for Midwest Socialist, picks apart some key differences between “mass organizations” and “NGOs.” NGOs represent a broad category ranging from nationwide policy advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood to neighborhood advocacy groups like Communities for a Better Environment, to DSA itself. The section of NGOs that DSA finds itself most often in conversation with, and the variety we critique now, are the “advocacy and organizing NGOs” which “engage a constituency and move them towards political action, advocate for policy change, or a combination of both.” To be clear, many in these organizations do earnest work in mobilizing or providing services to oppressed communities. 

In the piece, Ramsin lays out some common critiques of NGOs:

“a paternalistic attitude towards a particular community or the working class in general; an overly-centralized decision-making apparatus; a too-narrow ‘issue focus’ or conversely a too-dilettantish scattershot approach to choosing ‘fights’; a deference to experts, professionals, and technocrats; an organizational culture that demands sacrifice by volunteers on behalf of ‘the impacted’; and placing too-high a value on connections to powerful people and institutions.”

He goes on to identify a core contradiction that conditions the behavior of NGOs: 

“NGOism is characterized by this tension, which is (1) to encourage participation from the people most impacted by the exploitations of capitalism while (2) maintaining professional management of the organization, not out of cynicism or hypocrisy, but in response to material pressure from funders, the state, and formal political power.” 

Later he explains several features of NGOism, one of which gets to the heart of the question of member driven organization – what is our resource? (original emphasis)

“Because organizing NGOs are staff-driven, the key resource is financial—their ability to act relies on their ability to pay staff, so even ostensibly ‘people-powered’ NGOs are in fact cash-powered. Revenue relies in significant part on the expertise and managerial control of professionals. By contrast, in socialist and ‘movement organizations,’ the key resource is operational capacity—volunteer time”

We’re left with an impression of power in NGOs flowing from the top down; A national director and small, unelected circle decide which campaigns to work on and paid professionalized staff drive the daily operation of the campaign, making decisions about which tactics and methods to use. Members are rarely, if ever pulled into the decision making process. NGOs are also often focused on mobilization, where members are treated as volunteers; a passive pool of member-donors which can be called into action around specific issue based campaigns. 

Sunrise

Beginning in late 2018, with their iconic sit-in at Nancy Pelosi’s office, Sunrise Movement has been a political force in bringing the Green New Deal and climate politics into a broader general consciousness. Former DSA GND Coordinating Committee Steering Committee member Lake L wrote some reflections about the heart-wrenching but ultimately predictable failure of the struggle for democracy within the Sunrise Movement. Lake describes meeting the right staffer at the right time and being pulled into the exclusive “AllHands” slack workspace. This is where staff would make decisions and a select few volunteers were consulted. Another venue where staff would seek advice from members was called the Hub Council. It was made up of 15 volunteers selected by staff from hubs (the sunrise equivalent of the chapter) across the country. From Lake:

“Despite its purpose, the Hub Council held no power over staff – staff departments were supposed to report national proposals to Hub Council for our feedback, but we were ignored.”

Around spring 2021 some volunteers started the Movement Democracy Project, due to their frustration with the lack of internal transparency and democracy. The MDP was a slack space to organize for democratic reforms within Sunrise. Volunteers swapped stories of staff ignoring or interfering with their work and began to coordinate critique of the staff-driven nature of Sunrise. Lake writes of the Movement Democracy Project slack:

“I heard stories of regional staff organizers ignoring hubs, or conversely, hub members whose campaigns had been taken over by staff. … Sympathetic staff members who talked to their colleagues about the need for democratization were met with responses along the lines of: ‘We are trained, professional organizers who know more than volunteers. Volunteers can’t be trusted to make decisions for the movement.’ ”

The dismissive attitude from staff toward members deepend the division between them, and some volunteers even talked about seceding from the national organization. Again and again, staff ignored volunteers' demands for political control of messaging and strategy, and instead placed barriers in the way of their participation. Volunteers repeatedly urged a focus on local base-building for each hub, and staff were unmoved from their focus on federal pressure campaigns and the abstract shifting of public opinion.

After this long, disorganizing fight between members and staff, a democracy proposal was passed by membership and another consultative body was created. Staff again wrested control of the application process from membership, leading to the obvious conclusion that the underlying dynamics haven’t changed. To this day, the Sunrise website FAQ page states that they are “creating processes for our members to weigh in on key decisions pivotal to our movement,” with the implication being that the structures have remained unfinished, and will remain purely consultative, with staff still holding final decision making power.

We see hints of protagonism in Lake’s critiques of sunrise, as he repeatedly underlines the importance of the development of volunteers’ political and practical capabilities through struggle. The key piece that’s missing from Lake’s analysis is that Sunrise Movement is a foundation funded NGO, which faces structural pressures to keep political control of the organization in the hands of paid staff. Despite the huge amount of volunteer time and energy that folks have put into the struggle for democracy within Sunrise Movement, the core tension of a movement NGO remains.

DRUM - A Push Toward Protagonism

The struggle for member empowerment within another left NGO, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), is instructive for an organization like DSA. LeftRoots’ Developing Mass Protagonism, explores some experiments in cultivating an active, politically educated base of membership, who feel a sense of ownership over their organizing work.

DRUM was operating in the NGO model, with paid staff organizers working full time on coalition building for public policy focused campaigns. Members were mostly mobilized as needed, and did not have an active sense of ownership over the course of the campaigns. Members were not encouraged to act as protagonists in their organizing work, leaving them without the skills, political training, or feeling of agency required to be effective political actors. 

The staff of DRUM identified this method of work as an issue, and decided to make an intervention in their gender justice program, to reconstitute it as the Gender Justice Committee (GJC). They identified members who showed dedication and political commitment, and conducted some basic but thorough political and practical education, which included gender justice, 1:1 relationship building, canvassing, and campaign strategy. To prepare for a first round of projects, members did research both out in the community and within the organization to hone in on some project ideas. After the first round of projects, the GJC collectively evaluated the work they had done and used this experience to inform the next stage of organizing. 

For the GJC members that had participated in this process, there was a marked shift in the way that they showed up in DRUM spaces. GJC members organized meetings without staff; making decisions, discussing, and participating actively in defining the work of the organization. This kind of intentional deepening of member-leaders’ capacities for community outreach and campaign planning is instructive for us as we try to grow DSA into a socialist party. 

DSA, the NGO

The history of DSA is tied up with the development of the contemporary US left. DSA’s modern incarnation was influenced by tools and ideas from Occupy and a socialist identity popularized by Bernie Sanders. It has also been defined by its attempts to relate to the popular uprisings and mass mobilizations of its modern era: the antifascist organizing of the early Trump era, the George Floyd protests of 2020, and the increased urgency of the Palestinian liberation struggle since October 2023. In spite of – and in part because of – these political struggles, DSA has emerged and developed into the leading broad-based socialist organization in the United States. 

Having grown up in the US, within an organizing ecosystem including Sunrise Movement, Working Families Party, Planned Parenthood and others, it's no surprise that DSA has inherited some of the structures and strategies of NGOs. But for an aspirational socialist party, these structures and strategies act as a brake on the recruitment of advanced workers, and slow the development of our members. 

As DSA continues to develop, remnants of the NGO model linger, limit the development of our membership, and condition us against engaging in political struggle. National DSA’s structure resembles that of a chapter, with a loose collection of Committees, Campaigns, and Working Groups with fairly recognizable themes: Labor, Ecosocialism/GND, Queer Socialism, Anti-Imperialism. The membership of these bodies is often closed, with admission criteria that limits who is allowed to participate. The leadership of these bodies is chosen through a sometimes confusing combination of appointment by NPC and election by the committee. 

As it stands, National DSA controls the vast majority of DSA’s financial and infrastructural resources, but is operated by a tiny minority of members and staff. The organization floats above the much broader base of membership that interacts with DSA almost entirely through chapter structures. Connection between national and chapters comes in the form of convention delegate elections every two years, periodic guidance from staff field organizers, or occasional pressure campaigns run by one committee or another. National does not emerge organically from Chapter democracy, but rather operates mostly independently. It takes only nominal guidance from convention resolutions, and historically has provided little communication or explanation for its actions.

Under the leadership of the reformist wing of the organization including SMC and Groundwork, a large part of what the national org has done is run pressure campaigns, sometimes even against “our own” electeds! These pressure campaigns, like the PRO act, Medicare for All, and most recently Uncommitted, all have some characteristics in common. They treat our membership as a passive base to be mobilized. They only develop a narrow skillset, mainly phone banking politicians. They also originate and flow from the top down: a national committee or commission starts a campaign and National, with the help of staff, brings the campaign down to chapters in hopes they become involved. These national pressure campaigns direct members’ attention away from their local context, and toward navigating a hostile bureaucracy designed to frustrate and resist any changes that the capitalist class doesn’t want.

Even with these limitations, DSA has a robust internal democratic process, whereby we elect national and local leadership and deliberate over important issues. DSA’s democratic culture is what gives us a political advantage over more closed-off socialist organizations like PSL or CPUSA. This democratic culture of DSA chapters provides a solid foundation upon which we must build a party capable of absorbing and developing the U.S. working class as it is radicalized by the successive crises that capitalism produces. 

The Budget Fight

The historical NGO character of DSA and the emerging socialist democratic culture came into sharp conflict last year during the long, bitter fight about how to balance the budget. DSA had over-hired based on Bernie-era growth projections and needed to make some adjustments to the budget to remain solvent and build up a safe reserve margin. The main areas of contention were around staff layoffs, committee funding, and dues share.

Before the budget fight, director-level staff held disproportionate influence over political decision making and hiring, much like an NGO. From an ex staffer Hayley B’s reflection on her time as a staff member:

“Until very recently, some director level staff had the power over hiring any new staff, with very few decisions being made by the NPC and not until the very end of the hiring process. Staff sometimes decide what members have a say over or not, and have made decisions that prevent members from engaging in the organization under the pretense that it will be too much work to bring members in, members don’t know enough, or that members can’t be trusted with this information or that technology, etc. “

At the peak of the fight about how many layoffs we would have to do, Socialist Majority Caucus and Groundwork both put out statements urging deference to the staff union. Comrades from SMC filed a memo to direct the Budget and Finance Committee to “make its highest priority avoiding laying off existing staff members.” SMC proposed to cut chapter dues share. 

In contrast, Red Star drove the budgeting process, leading Marxist Unity Group and Bread and Roses and independent NPC members toward prioritizing committee funding and dues share at the expense of laying off staff. 

For a proto-party organization like DSA, the power of the membership to engage in political struggle and make decisions about how to direct the resources of the party is of the highest importance. When it is staff instead who are directing the political work, the ability of members to be further conditioned by struggle is limited - i.e. the protagonism of membership is limited. 

Balancing the budget was a political fight about what kind of organization DSA would be: a staff-driven NGO or a member-driven socialist party. The reformist, electoralist wing of the organization has used the ossified national structures as defense-in-depth against an emerging robust rigorous socialist democratic culture. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Red Star NPC members and caucus support, DSA broke in the direction of a socialist party. 

What Comes Next?

To create the foundations of a more effective DSA, we have to decisively turn the national organization away from the campaign model, which leans very heavily on staff-based, top-down, mobilizing around electoral causes. Instead we must build on chapter democratic practice, prioritize sharing lessons from local organizing, and build strong, protagonistic socialists. This is the first step towards turning DSA into a revolutionary party that is capable of fighting and winning on a variety of fronts.

Staff will still have an important role to play in DSA. They can be a crucial force multiplier for the organization, bringing specialized skills and the ability to dedicate their full time to the organization. However, staff should only facilitate member-led programming and organizing, rather than drive political decisions. The methods should be owned by membership. The way we use our staff should be to more fully understand member desires and more efficiently translate those into actionable plans.  As an example, the field organizer program could be improved by close collaboration with GDC. Right now, FOs are expected to be super-organizers, parachuting in to give advice about strategy, compliance, and more, rather than laser-focusing on connecting chapter leaders and drawing out their collective experience. 

Chapters around the country struggle to reinvent and redesign the same skill trainings, audio-visual guides, parliamentary procedure sheets, and political education classes. Tax and legal headaches are hard to navigate for chapters small and large. This is where the national organization could come in! National structures can facilitate members connecting to other experienced political organizers, with staff consulted on finer points as members develop and solve problems themselves. 

We need a centralized, coordinated, rigorously democratic national apparatus to help us systematize the practice already developing within the democratic laboratories of chapters. Experienced chapter cadres need to be pushed up into national connective-tissues roles, and be pushed together across geography in order to broaden the base of practice on which they are able to draw. In this way chapter leaders across the country can benefit from expertise generated in other chapters. As chapter leaders understand themselves to be part of a national organization, a collective understanding of the party can grow. 

Red Star recently led the push to open up the Growth and Development Committee, which had languished due to structural and political issues. The GDC will be a crucial tool for DSA to level up our chapters democratic practice, and our members’ skills. The committee can serve as a piece of this interchapter connective-tissue and bring organizers together. Other national bodies like the NEC or the NLC should also serve a connective and concentrating function for the development of local cadres. 

We want to cultivate the ability and desire to make the org an actor in history. We need a decisive break with NGOism, and to instead cultivate a revolutionary protagonism!

Further Discussion

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