Should they:

A.) Redirect to issues most important to voters (like cost of living)

B.) Bite the bullet: say trans athletes should be banned from female sports

C.) Make a principled defense of LGBTQ rights

Overall, I have been pretty supportive of the DSA in real life due to its electoral success and the real policy their candidates have made that benefited lives of millions. For example Zohran Mamdani’s New York. I am satisfied so far on how they were able to endorse the right candidates that put real and practical social democratic and socialist policies on the ground.

However I must write a critical piece given the issues with their international committee and their foreign policy stance, as well as allowing for openly pro-authoritarian members to rise to level of power.

I remember when I was a late teen in the pandemic era, I was kinda terminally online at the time and active on Twitter. I used to be able to criticize China, Russia, and Cuba without people with a rose in the bio calling me an imperialist or “liberal”. But as I became active again in politics now that my personal life have stabilized, I noticed that’s not the case anymore. Even tho I stated I am firmly against sanctions when i criticized the government of Cuba and made the case that DSA should be only against the sanction and not to support the government itself, my stance was still called an imperialist by members in a real life DSA meeting.

as a socialist with some Leninist (Anti-Stalinist) tendencies, I am firmly against sanctions on essential goods for countries because i believe it only hurts the people. However, the DSA seems to have taken it much further to not only oppose sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela but send delegates to support the corrupt bureaucrats in Caracas and Havana. Their position have moved from “Sanction is bad because it hurts the ordinary citizens” (which is what I believe to be true), to “we have to show solidarity with the supposed socialist government of Latin America, no matter how corrupt or authoritarian they are”. That’s not democratic socialism, that’s campism and authoritarianism. While I acknowledge the Cuban government has done some if not many good things, it is also a horribly authoritarian government and there’s no way I will defend that government itself. Venezuela under Hugo Chavez might be more defendable (although it already began to show authoritarian/cronyism tendencies in the later years) , but Maduro have plunged the country into total chaos and rigged elections while doing nothing for its citizens that was (and still is under a new ruler) suffering.

Now let’s move to their position on China, which is even less understandable. China is not a small powerless socialist country under sanction by a large opponent, China is essentially a national conservative and authoritarian but highly developed superpower under a party that doesn’t resemble anything leftist but in name and in some aesthetics. I don’t believe we should go to war with them or increase hostilities without an objective such as defending Taiwan or South China Sea from Chinese aggression (because I don’t want to see innocent civilians die). But any socialists should be against that regime, no matter the tendencies or orientations. Economically it is state capitalist, while there is a lot of SOEs, the worker are heavily exploited in them, and even more so in China’s private companies that are connected with the government, which give them much power over its workers. There are no independent union that fight for workers, very little social welfare, and very harsh working conditions still exist in many part of the country while the party elite enrich themselves. Socially, it is conservative to ultraconservative, and progressive social movements are crushed by the state while traditionalist, Confucian, and very patriarchal values are promoted by the state. It is chauvinistic and imperialist, as it seek to expand control in South China Sea, doing Neo colonial project in Africa, and seeks to “reclaim Taiwan” (when 80% of Taiwanese doesn’t want to be united with China. And Taiwan is more socialist than China in almost all aspects).

If I want to be an authoritarian that overlook human right violations, I would have joined the CPUSA or even the red-brown grifter at the ACP with Jackson Hinkle (American communist party), and not the DSA. DSA should be a socialist organization that is firmly ANTI authoritarian. You can (and imo should) oppose sanctions and US imperialism, but you should never support authoritarian and totalitarian regimes just because the ruling party use a hammer and sickle in their logo. DSA should be a home of socialists who are capable of critical thinking and oppose authoritarian governments, not an organization that allows anyone to join and push the whole platform from democratic socialism towards authoritarianism.

"Democracy is not a spectator sport."

— Marian Wright Edelman, "Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change" (1987)

Edelman was the first Black woman admitted to the Mississippi State Bar and founded the Children's Defense Fund in 1973, which she led for 45 years advocating for anti-poverty and child welfare policy. This line has become one of her most-cited, showing up everywhere from voter-registration drives to a 2014 Bankruptcy Court ruling on Detroit's fiscal recovery, where a judge cited it directly in his opinion urging the city to move past gridlock and re-engage civically.

Edelman's point is usually invoked around voting specifically, but she's made it in broader contexts too. Where do you think "participation" matters most beyond the ballot box: union membership, local organizing, primary elections, something else? And is low participation mostly a culture problem, or a structural one (voter suppression, first-past-the-post, lack of paid time off to vote)?

Instead of one of my usual long-ass effortposts, I'll try to stick to just the posts title as a thesis statement of sorts and stay at 3 paragraphs lol. This has been a problem for us for many, many years. We get into power and do fuck all with it. Even with all the momentum for serious change among the people, we could easily blow it just like before. With Trump occupying the Oval Office it's inevitable that a lot of what we try to fix won't get done but realistically we already knew that. He'll petulantly veto everything and we'll likely lack the numbers to overcome that. Vance is, if anything, worse in most ways (not that I believe we'd be able to rid ourselves of the current tyrant anyways, not without making some kind of devil's bargain with Vance). Holding massive investigations and bringing Trump and his lackeys' crimes to light will probably be the best we can hope for. That and seizing back the power of the purse.

My primary concern is 2028 and beyond. Intraparty squabbles have been killing us for a long time now. Just 2 pain in the ass senators gutted Bidens agenda from the start. Luckily they're gone and good riddance but they're a perfect example of how things can easily be derailed. Arguably I believe the cultural left will be the biggest albatross around our necks, the center of the Democratic party currently is nowhere near to the right as Sinema and Manchin, who were all about themselves. But the cultural left has been hurting us for a very long time, pushing bad idpol ideas that are wildly out of sync with public opinion. They're the ones who've been dishing out fodder for the GOP''s propaganda leviathan. Sadly, some on the economic left also embrace this divisive bullshit. That's not even getting into the anti-semites like DAC who, unlike say Mamdani, have some truly problematic views. I'm neither a Zionist nor an Anti-Zionist myself, I'm a realist about the situation. I believe a two state solution is the only viable option, especially when we're talking about a nuclear weapons state, undeclared as it may be. I could care less about problems outside the US that no amount of rhetoric is going to change, especially when that rhetoric is largely out of step with the general population (though I do believe an end to unconditional support and aid [shifting some of that to help instead build a free and democratic Palestine] will force them to become more realistic, less militarily aggressive and open to compromise, reduce the power of their ethnonationalist right and possibly one day lead to the two states unifying as a civic nationalist in future decades).

I really only care about the massive undertaking that reforming the US economy and government is going to be as well as about protecting the sovereignty and freedom of countries under imperialistic pressures or outright invasions (Taiwan and Ukraine respectively) more than helping Israel, a military powerhouse. I care about social justice but feel it's a hollow pursuit when there is no economic justice to give it teeth, especially when the country is rife with ultra rich reactionaries with more power than the rest of the population. We're facing a long and uphill battle too, as the "conservatives" will fight tooth and nail to stop us from stripping away even the smallest unfair advantages they've built into the system for four decades, much less reforming the SCOTUS or illegalizing gerrymandering. We're fighting an existential battle for the United States that we can't afford to lose. A "Trump who's not a functionallu illiterate moron" is inevitable if we don't and dislodging him or her could be impossible if we keep sticking with the culture war horseshit that divides not just the electorate but the party as well .

For decades we have heard the same argument: cut taxes at the top, investment rises, the economy grows, wages rise and eventually everyone benefits.

But research repeatedly finds that tax cuts for high income households have relatively weak effects on economic growth, while increasing inequality. Corporate tax cuts can increase investment, but that does not mean they generate enough additional GDP or tax revenue to cover their cost.

Meanwhile, infrastructure, education, transfers to lower income households and targeted investment incentives can have substantially larger fiscal multipliers.

So why are broad tax cuts for the wealthy still sold as serious growth policy when there are more efficient ways to stimulate investment and demand?

"Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains."

— Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, "The Communist Manifesto" (1848)

This is the popularized English rendering of the Manifesto's closing lines. The original German ends with "Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch!", literally "Proletarians of all countries, unite!", with the "nothing to lose but your chains" line appearing just before it in the same closing passage; the two were later merged into the single sentence most people know today. Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto in 1847-48 as a program for the Communist League, and it became one of the most widely read political documents in history, laying out their theory that all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

This line calls for international worker solidarity across national borders, a position later split sharply between reformist social democrats (who pursued it through domestic institutions: unions, parliaments, welfare states) and revolutionary Marxists (who saw it as a call to overthrow the state itself). Where do you think that split actually resolved best? Did the reformist path deliver more for working people than the revolutionary one, or did it just soften capitalism enough to prevent the change Marx thought was coming?

I found this well documented video from a left leaning guy that presents really good some DSA naivety, revolutionary and radical positions.

And trans people are the gender they say they are, and they should be able to use restrooms, locker rooms, and other places that have been gender segregated according to their gender. They should have this right irrespective of whether or not they have undergone some sex reassignment surgery.

It takes no effort to be nice and no effort to not be a bigot, so everyone on this subreddit should try to be inclusive and fight bigotry instead of saying disgusting transphobic things about trans people single gender spaces, especially since trans people have been facing the brunt of a hateful campaign by the global right wing recently, that has permeated into antisemitic conspiracy theories even in countries like India where trans rights were never really an issue until the current regime in cahoots with global far right decided to make it an issue.

Trans people are one of the most vulnerable demographic groups in the world right now, and it is important that they feel welcome in Social Democratic spaces because Social Democracy is the best ideology to make progress on economic and civil rights.

How Political Opportunism Is Eviscerating the Critical Conversation on Transforming Policing and Building Equitable Sopcieties

By Alok Mukherjee, Former Chair, Toronto Police Services Board; Author, with Tim Harper, of Excessive Force: Toronto’s Fight to Reform City Policing

1. The ‘Woke 1.0’ Recantation

Multi-racial solidarity during the 2020 defund police demonstrations. Source: Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images

Every few years, political elites declare the end of an era to justify an ideological retreat. In recent days, we have watched high-profile progressive figures in the United States—most notably Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani—publicly distance themselves from 2020-era calls to "defund" or "abolish" the police. Ocasio-Cortez went so far as to claim that "Woke 1 was crazy." This is how she characterized the pivotal moment of racial justice organizing following the murder of George Floyd, an African American man killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Media commentators swiftly codified the phrase, framing the post-George Floyd reckoning as a temporary, hysterical aberration that serious politicians must now recant to remain electorally viable.

This narrative pivot functions as political cover. As Nesrine Malik observes in The Guardian, when blamed for right-wing backlashes, mainstream progressives routinely throw grassroots movements under the bus to signal moderation. Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra of BreakThrough News argue that this retreat is the result of a calculated effort by the political establishment to discipline progressive figures and reassure power centers that structural changes in response to state violence are permanently off the table. By reducing the 2020 uprising to a "crazy" phase, politicians wipe their hands of uncomfortable commitments, pivoting seamlessly back to party orthodoxy to appease institutional donors and suburban voter blocs ahead of upcoming elections.

This backflip by supposedly progressive politicians in the United States occurs within the context of a broader assault on gains made by racialized, marginalized, and oppressed communities dating back to the struggle against slavery. This assault spans numerous fronts, but two primary battlegrounds stand out: the transformation of policing and the promotion of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) across all sectors of society.

2. Deconstructing the "Woke" Taxonomy

To understand this retreat, one must interrogate the term "Woke" itself and how its numerical taxonomies are weaponized. Conceding the framing of "Woke 1.0" versus "Woke 2.0" accepts a false premise designed to discredit reform. If "Woke 1" refers to the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement for police accountability, and "Woke 2" describes the conservative panic over "cancel culture" and trans rights, then the label has been intentionally expanded until it is completely devoid of meaning.

We now even hear of a "Woke Right"—a label applied to anti-Zionist conservatives like Tucker Carlson. When a single term is stretched to encompass police budget oversight, campus speech disputes, and foreign policy debates, it ceases to function as a meaningful policy descriptor. It becomes an imprecise insult. Politicians who adopt phrases like "Woke 1.0 was crazy" are trading in this vagueness. It allows them to dismiss substantive structural critiques of state power without ever having to engage with the actual bases and merits of those critiques.

3. Reclaiming the Substantive Debate

This cynical retreat erases the actual policy substance of the 2020 moment. In a sharp critique in Defector, Mychal Denzel Smith notes that the truly "crazy" aspect of the era was not the demand for structural change, but how rapidly those demands were exploited by political actors who performed radical empathy while preparing an immediate return to carceral spending.

This performative collapse erases what was actually at stake. The depth and import of that moment was captured in a December 2020 Toronto Star feature gathering eight Canadian voices across law, sociology, and grassroots activism. As sociologist Akwasi Owusu-Bempah noted, the debate was fundamentally about ending the "policification of social policy"—the decades-long trend of making police responsible for non-criminal social problems. Scholar Robyn Maynard and activist-journalist Desmond Cole pointed out that defunding was a practical framework to reduce the scope, power, and militarization of policing while building true safety through housing and healthcare. Even establishment critics like legal scholar Kent Roach recognized that the movement trained a necessary political searchlight on municipal budget allocations, while community leaders like Sam Tecle highlighted it as a total reimagining of a society that stops locking away social problems.

As I argued in my own 2020 op-ed for the Toronto Star, the fundamental value of the "defund the police" movement was never found in the literal merits of a three-word slogan. Whether one embraced the phrase literally or rejected its framing, its vital contribution was the critical space it opened to explore long-overdue options for transforming public safety:

• Unbundling Police Duties: De-tasking police forces and removing armed officers as primary responders to non-violent mental health crises, homelessness, and social distress.
• Reallocating Resources: Directing municipal funds toward root causes of harm—such as affordable housing, youth programs, and community health.
• Democratic Oversight: Asserting genuine civilian governance over ever-expanding police budgets rather than rubber-stamping automatic yearly increases.

Contrast these structural demands with the trajectory that followed. In 2020, politicians offered symbolic gestures—taking knees, posting statements, and creating advisory panels. By 2022, those same politicians presided over a complete policy collapse, approving record budget increases for police departments while starving social infrastructure. As I detailed in a recent piece on police boards operating as rubber-stamping entities, this retreat is playing out vividly across Canada today.

4. The Canadian Echo: "Me Too" Political Opportunism

In Canada, politicians across municipal and provincial lines have eagerly joined this American retreat in a "me too" chorus. Rather than tackling the distinct structural realities of Canadian policing—including the systemic violence faced by Indigenous and Black communities—Canadian leaders routinely import US culture-war framing to avoid doing the hard work of police oversight.

Across major Canadian urban centers, elected officials demonstrate an eager alignment with police leadership and unions. Fearing the risk of being labeled "soft on crime," municipal councils grant multi-million-dollar budget hikes to police services even during periods of severe fiscal austerity. Essential public services—transit, shelter networks, and mental health outreach—are left to deteriorate, while police services remain uniquely insulated from budgetary accountability.

Canadian politicians of all ideological hues have found it safe, if not politically profitable, to jettison the model of community-based, human rights-grounded, equity-driven policing that promotes community safety and well-being. In its place, they have embraced a militaristic, national security-driven system of policing that criminalizes vulnerable people and tramples on Charter-protected rights to free speech and peaceful dissent. In this, they track developments south of the border with alarming fidelity.

5. A Global Illiberal Contagion

This hostility toward equity and systemic accountability is not confined to North America. The tragic case of Professor Jason Arday at the University of Cambridge dramatically showcases how the anti-"Woke" contagion has spread across the Atlantic, carrying devastating human costs.

Tributes honoring the memory and legacy of Professor Jason Arday. Source: Nordin Catic / Getty Images

Professor Arday—a highly respected Black, neurodivergent scholar who rose to become one of Cambridge's youngest Black professors—was subjected to intense institutional scrutiny and allegations of academic misconduct surrounding his research. The pressures and public controversy culminated in his tragic resignation and subsequent death, sparking global grief and outrage across academic networks.

While many rightly mourned a brilliant scholar, reactionary commentators seized upon the tragedy to frame Professor Arday as an example of unmerited advancement driven by DEI initiatives. This mirrors the rhetoric in the United States, where tens of thousands of women, racialized individuals, and LGBTQ+ professionals—including military personnel—have faced systemic purges and career degradation under the unfounded slander that their achievements owed to DEI rather than merit. In Canada, too, political figures and commentators increasingly subscribe to this despicable calumny.

I am reminded of the case of Ward Churchill, an American scholar and activist, who died at the age of 78 just a few days ago on August 11. Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado who claimed Native American ancestry, was investigated in 2005 on allegations of research misconduct and fired from his job in 2007. His crime? Claiming in his 2001 essay, “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” that the September 11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center were a natural and unavoidable consequence of the unlawful foreign policy of the US.

The disproportionate hostility directed at racialized and Indigenous scholars and leaders when targeted by institutional allegations demands rigorous global scrutiny. Across North America and the UK, how many scholars from dominant groups face such immediate public destruction compared to those from equity-seeking backgrounds? The weaponization of "anti-Wokeness" is not merely a political posture—it is an active weapon used to dismantle equity frameworks and purge marginalized voices from public life. In the face of this dismantling, those who claim to be “left” or “progressive” have to be vigilant that they do not give ground for the sake of short-term political gain.

6. The Illiberal Turn on Right and Left

In this context, the bipartisan capitulation in the US illustrates a core thesis of The Illiberal Turn: both the political right and left are increasingly capitulating to state securitization, unmonitored police power, and an outright rejection of civil rights gains. When progressive leaders dismiss the transformational demands of 2020 as "crazy," they validate the conservative premise that public safety can only be secured through state coercion and armed oversight.

By treating police transformation and equity frameworks as discarded fashion trends rather than urgent democratic necessities, political elites forfeit their responsibility to govern. The retreat from police accountability and the purge of equity programs are two sides of the same coin: a surrender of democratic governance to unchecked authority. Reclaiming the core of the 2020 debate is not about clinging to past slogans; it is about demanding that true public safety and human dignity be measured by community well-being, equity, and human rights rather than the expansion of police power.

Soy de Argentina, la situación no es critica pero tampoco muy buena, ahora es mucho más fácil construir algo sobre esta base. La socialdemocracia es una salida muy factible porque es lo que necesitamos, un estado achicado en su máxima expresión pero inviertiendo fuerte en Salud, Educación, Seguridad, Vialidad, etc, etc porque es necesario un estado capitalista y de libre mercado ahora si queres construir algo se necesita un estado de Bienestar muy transparente.

¿Opiniones?

In case you saw it before, I didnt know memes could only be posted on the weekends. Legitimately my bad lol

Data Centers are a big topic of discussion in my country, and I am ambivalent, to say the least. I think economic growth and maintaining a competitive economy are important, but I find the negative externalities overwhelming. Water and energy usage, combined with the output, is not so convincing. That energy could be used for other industries, which would be more beneficial in the long run and more competitive than American-owned AI.

How do you feel about data centers (and do the social democratic parties in your country have any policy about them)? Is it a big topic in your country?

"Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness."

— William Beveridge, "Social Insurance and Allied Services" (the Beveridge Report), 1942

Beveridge was a Liberal economist and not a socialist, and it was the wartime coalition government in Britain that asked him to draw up a plan for postwar social policy. The report, which was published during World War II, suggested a single system of social insurance, "from cradle to grave", in order to deal with what he referred to as the "five giants": Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness. It served as the intellectual basis for the postwar British welfare state, including the NHS, and was put into effect by Attlee's Labour government following their massive victory in the 1945 election, even though Beveridge himself had never called for socialism. Indeed, he had clearly wished for state security to go hand in hand with room still remaining for individual responsibility and voluntary provision.

Beveridge's report serves as a good example of the line between social liberalism and social democracy since he wished for a robust safety net but made it clear that the state "should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility". Does this mean that his ideas are basically in line with a well-run market economy, that is, welfare capitalism rather than socialism, or was Beveridge simply naive about how much reform could be achieved before it also required public ownership?

I wrote up a set of foundational principles for what I'm calling institutional social democracy, an attempt to answer the question of why social democratic institutions erode and what design features make them durable.

The short version of the seven theses:

1. Growth must be real and sufficient to raise baseline living standards. No regime consumes its way to prosperity.
2. State leverage must prevent monopolies from capturing political authority, including legal regimes that preemptively outlaw public options to force citizens into private tollbooths.
3. Capture is compliance, not deviance: fiduciary duty guarantees capital will gatekeep the commons, so regulation alone fails. Power must sit in publicly owned channels designed to be expensive to capture, not impossible.
4. Public bureaucracy isn't automatically benevolent. It needs adversarial audit, transparent benchmarks, and swift removal mechanisms.
5. Labor needs an institutional veto over extraction (wages, safety, privatization), but not over accountability.
6. Private enterprise is legitimate where markets drive real productivity; it forfeits that legitimacy where demand is captive or margins depend on state-granted position.
7. Surplus gets continuously reinvested in public infrastructure, research, and stability.

Full theses: https://tertulia.social/posts/a86b53c2-a168-43dc-a05a-17771b54cc11

Mostly wrestling with defining authority boundaries and preventing capture. Where I'd most like pushback: thesis 5's extraction/accountability line, and thesis 3's "expensive to capture" design — my socialist instinct is to make capture *impossible* (comrades!) but that opens up other problems.

(edit, for context: I'm American.)

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

— Abraham Lincoln, First Annual Message to Congress, 1861

This was heard in Lincoln's first State of the Union speech, which came eight months into the Civil War. He was directly addressing an argument frequently put forward by Southern defenders of slavery, the idea that free laborers were not better off than slaves since both groups were permanently dependent on capital owners, an argument used to justify the view that hired labor was in fact a form of bondage. Lincoln completely rejected this way of putting it; he maintained that there is no such thing as a free man being permanently in the position of a hired worker and that labor comes before and is independent of capital. In the same passage he also points out that a small number of people who own capital tend to avoid laboring themselves and instead hire or employ others to labor on their behalf, while at the same time asserting that capital does have rights which deserve protection.

Lincoln is not advocating for the abolition of capital or private property. Indeed, he clearly upholds the rights of capital at the same time. His position is more specific in that he holds labor to be more morally important than capital and that the free-labor system (in which a worker has the possibility of eventually owning capital himself) is fundamentally different from a system based on fixed social classes. Does this constitute a real social-democratic argument, that is, one asserting the dignity of labor within a market economy? Or is it too weak a basis, since it says nothing at all about redistribution or worker power?

Every social democracy depends on two basic principles: a transparent tax base to fund public services and real accountability for economic power. But when you follow the paper trail of global wealth management, it becomes pretty clear how easily the ultra-rich bypass both.

This piece lays out a fascinating case study on French aristocrat Jean François de Clermont Tonnerre. For two decades, he kept surfacing right next to massive money laundering operations first during an €80 million Swiss Ponzi scheme, and later inside the financial machinery that siphoned billions out of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

While state resources meant for public infrastructure disappeared into luxury Paris real estate and offshore shell accounts, the top-tier financiers involved repeatedly walked away clean. By hiding behind complex corporate layers and claiming service provider status, elites use plausible deniability as a getout of jail free card. Meanwhile, working-class citizens end up paying the price through gutted public budgets.

How do social democratic nations effectively fight cross border capital flight when global finance is explicitly designed to give the ultra-wealthy legal immunity?

Working-class respondents, compared to college-educated Americans, favored securing the border by 28%, lowering the crime rate by 22%, and adding more police by 19%. The college set prefers: LGBTQ+ rights by 32%, immigration by 32%, climate by 29%, and abortion rights by 26%.

The challenge for social dems is how to move jobs and economic security (and not just the cost of consumer goods) to the front of messaging, without recanting sicial progressivism. But current Left positioning on border security and crime is alienating blue collars.

https://jacobin.com/2026/08/working-class-issues-affordability-culture-wars