The DSA is a very mixed bag that varies widely from one chapter to the next, so I’m going to take pains to stress that they’re not all like what I’m about to say. But the organization as a whole, and certainly the ideology as a whole, is contradictory and fatally flawed in it’s entire conception. Here are the reasons why, in descending order of importance:

1-Demsocs are not antiimperialist, and do not understand what imperialism actually is

Democratic socialists, by and large, share the liberal understanding of imperialism: that it’s when one country attacks another. The more advanced version of this analysis is “when a geographically larger country attacks a geographically smaller country.” In either case, this is part of the rich tradition of casual vibes based non-analysis that most of us in the English-speaking world have been raised into. By this definition the allied invasion of Normandy was imperialism. In reality, just as with all fascist rhetoric, the recent proliferation of the term imperialism to describe basically any war is more projection from the world’s most prolific invaders, the US and it’s vassals. This projection isn’t coming from social democrats, it’s coming from a bunch of slimy lanyard-wearing think tank creatures whose salary comes from the CIA’s propaganda slush fund. But the social democrats very often believe and amplify it, because they lack the historical framework to critique it and have unexamined chauvinism that makes them disinterested in looking too hard anyway

-Democratic Socialism has never worked

No working class has ever taken control of the means of production in a society by asking nicely, petitioning, voting, arguing or praying. No ruling class has ever been convinced to peacefully transfer ownership of their society. Not much else to say on the, just a point to the scoreboard. The climate apocalypse is here, and humanity is out of time to fuck around hoping for a miracle. We need something that has already proven itself able to radically transform a society for the better in a short time, and we already have something for that.

-Demsocs are operating off a flase premise and their objective is doomed from the start

This is the last of what I consider the big three dralbreakers. Not that the rest aren’t, but any one of these first three problems is disqualifying on its own. Anyway: The Democratic socialist’s political program is built on the horribly, horribly wrong presumption that you can beat capital at it’s own game, without breaking any of it’s rules, and at no point will they just drop the facade and fucking kill you. History has shown this to be wrong over and over: Vincent Bevins wrote a book called The Jakarta Method, which covers the genocide the US backed in Indonesia in order to stomp out a rising communist party. In my opinion, the most sobering passage is this one:

Playing nice with rich monsters won’t save us. They will try to exterminate us the moment our movement shows any potential of winning, whether by following the rules or not. They don’t care. You and I are insects to them, and they will try to crush us, and if we’re serious about liberating humanity from this horror then we have to be prepared for that. Demsocs do not want to face this fact.

-Demsocs do not grasp that capitalism, imperialism and fascism are the same thing and are thus incapable of solving the problem

They do not understand that imperialism is capitalism grown rampant, they don’t understand that fascism is a starving imperialism eating itself. They don’t understand that class war is the oldest war whose roots reach the deepest through history, and nazism is just it’s blooming flower. They think they can reform away the all-corroding hunger of capitalism, as if it’s some quirk of the system and not it’s DNA. If you don’t rip it up by the roots, abolish the private ownership of production, it will eventually outgrow every safeguard, every time. It’s The Thing, and it will take whatever form it needs to, say whatever, kill whoever, do absolutely anything to continue liquidating and assimilating. It certainly isn’t going to slow down for a petition and a polite request.

It’s too dangerous to live. But the Socdems think they can tame it. They are wrong, and because they are wrong their plan is doomed

-Demsocs participate in capitalist wars of aggression and the plundering of resources from the global south

I’m running out of steam at this point but yeah, when you try to change the dropping-phosporous-on-people’s-houses system from within, it is you who will inevitably be changed into a phosphorous dropper. Also they benefit in a tertiary way from the spoils of imperialism, so they are disinclined to break from it.

-Demsocs are usually nationalists in their thinking, which (especially in times of stress) often leads them to becoming something closer to national socialists.

-Demsocs still have not questioned the fundamental liberal premises about society they were taught as children,

As a result, they often unquestioningly accept the most outlandish fascist propaganda about designated enemy countries just because it fits with everything else the corporate fascist media of their country has told them since birth. They have not yet fully dug down to question the deeper levels of indoctrination, and when they do they tend to become communists. Until then, they throw their support behind whoever the capitalist class frames in the media as “freedom fighters”, whether it’s the future Taliban, the Khmer Rouge, or puppet governments from South Vietnam to Ukraine. The press simply tells a carefully manicured narrative using the language of rebellion, and liberals plus most Demsocs fall for it almost every time, because 1: Demsocs (…) do not understand what imperialism actually is.

Overall, democratic socialism does not make sense in a vacuum: nobody interested in liberating the human race from capitalism would ever invent an ideology like this from scratch. But it starts to make sense when you see the purpose it serves: coming to terms with our position is scary, and many people want to hang on to the hope that some kind of never before seen peaceful socialist transition is possible in the world capital of fascism and slavery. it is an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable contradiction between democracy and private property without harming either. It’s trying to solve a revolutionary situation without a revolution. It’s showing up to class war without a gun. It’s the bargaining stage of a process in which acceptance means becoming a communist.