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Democratic Socialists of America
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Democratic Left needs skilled volunteers!
Democratic Left is DSA’s volunteer-led nationwide print-and-online publication. It’s now America’s largest socialist publication at a time of exploding interest in socialism, and we’re eager to improve the quality of the publication and increase its online frequency and reach. To accomplish that, we have great need of skilled volunteers in the following categories: Graphic designers,…
Welcome to the New Democratic Left!
Welcome to the new Democratic Left site. Democratic Left is the quarterly print publication of the Democratic Socialists of America, now in its 46th year of publication. Here you’ll find (soon) back issues of Democratic Left since its founding; the current issue, with articles you can share with not-yet-socialist friends; and web-only content that just…
How to Raise Money Without the Rich
By Colleen Shaddox Say what you will about capitalists, they’re good to have at a fundraiser. But as DSA chapters raise bail money for comrades arrested at protests, few capitalists will be riding to the rescue. So, I share the story of a fundraiser mounted by an ongoing resistance group in the small, rural town…
Review: When Karl Marx Was Young and Dashing
By Michael Hirsch Photo (left to right): Vicky Krieps, August Diehl, Stefan Konarske in The Young Karl Marx. Credit: The Orchard. Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx is the best buddy movie since George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969. It’s also among the most important films in decades, bringing to a mass audience not…
This International Women’s Day, Fight for Health Care, Fight for Women
By Christine R. Riddiough March 8 is International Women’s Day – celebrating the struggles and achievements of women around the world. While IWD was initiated by the Socialist Party in the United States, for decades it was ignored in the U.S. until the second wave of the women’s movement revived it in the 1970s. Yet…
Swing Low, White Women
By Brigitte Fiedler Twitter/Corey Townsend [As Black History Month is followed by Women’s History Month, we are sharing here a brief excerpt from an important article about black women’s perspectives on the Women’s March and its context. It is published in “Avidly,” a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Please read the full…
Socialism and International Competition: A Response to Daniel Adkins.
By A. P. Winslow Upon the outbreak of WW1, the socialist parties of Europe were swept up in a patriotic fervor; national chauvinist tendencies broke out into the open and their factions were victorious in all established political parties of the belligerent countries with the exception of the Russian Bolsheviks. I’m reminded of this history…
Paul Robeson: Life, Legend, and Contradictions
By Paul Buhle Review: No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson. By Jeff Sparrow. Melbourne: Scribe (US: Cursor Marketing), 2018. 304pp, $19.95, paperback. Much like C.L.R. James, the heterodox Pan African Marxist who inspired sections of the New Left (including my own), Paul Robeson is now the object of a rapidly expanding scholarship and…
Building Socialist Majorities
Photo: Alice Bacon/NYC-DSA by Luke Elliott- Negri In 1920 the Socialist Party hit its national peak, when nearly one million people gave Eugene Debs some 6% of the popular vote for president. But you have to dial back a few decades more to find a truly successful third party in the U.S. electoral system…
Remembering Martin Luther King’s Last, Most Radical Book
by Peter Kolozi and James Freeman Marking an anniversary of a book’s publication is, appropriately, reserved for books that were widely read when they first appeared many years ago. Books we commemorate with an anniversary are ones that ushered in a new way of thinking and influenced the way society tries to make sense of…