Who We Are
The Libertarian Socialist Caucus is an organization of members of the Democratic Socialists of America who believe that libertarian socialist values are the fullest embodiment of this democratic socialist vision. We cherish the DSA’s status as a multi-tendency mass socialist organization and wish to create a space within the DSA to discuss and organize for the development of socialism beyond the State, and all other forms of hierarchy and domination.
We take libertarian socialism to encompass those parts of the socialist movement (including syndicalists, council communists, anarchists, cooperativists, communalists and libertarian municipalists, among many others) which have historically seen the surest path to socialism as residing in the creation of independent, autonomous working class institutions in civil society that give people direct power over their lives.
We believe in the socialist principles of common ownership and that worker control over workplaces can only be advanced through the creation and support of worker-owned cooperative firms, radical trade unions, workers’ & neighborhood councils, hubs of mutual aid, popular assemblies, time banking, alternative banking systems, community land trusts (CLT’s), and other directly democratic non-State institutions. Through the assemblage of liberated institutions and non-hierarchal practices, we can “build the new in the shell of the old.” The power of any socialist parties or socialist governments should be subordinate to these decentralized, autonomous formations. See our Dual Power platform here for more information on this strategy.
Our particular vision of a libertarian socialist society—and the specific path we intend to take to get there—will emerge out of the discussions and activities of the LSC itself. We believe that radical, engaged direct democracy is an ongoing participatory process of deliberation, renegotiation, and collective self-determination. It is for the people themselves to decide what the world they wish to live in is to be. Our inability to describe the precise contours of the liberated society is rooted in the simple fact that democracy is inherently a work in progress, continually created and recreated by its participants.
In short, wherever domination exists—of bosses over workers, of men over women and gender nonconformists, of states over subjects, of whites over people of color, of human society over the rest of the web of life—we seek to replace it with equality, cooperation, love, and mutual respect.
Ours is a vision of total liberation, not just in some far-flung revolutionary future, but in the here and now.
Educational Recommendations of the MKE LSC
Recommended Reading
Anarchism and Other Essays, by Emma Goldman
Dual Power: Building Socialism In Our Time by DSA Libertarian Socialist Caucus
Socialism Will Be Free, Or It Will Not Be At All! – An Introduction to Libertarian Socialism by Black Rose Anarchist Federation
Black Anarchism Reader by Black Rose Anarchist Federation
A Lifelong Anarchist! Selected words and writings of Lucy Parsons, by T. S. Greer
An Anarchist Program by Ericco Malatesta
The Jackson-Cush Plan: The Struggle fo Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy by Cooperation Jackson
The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies & The Promise of Direct Democracy by Murray Bookchin
The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader, edited by A. J . Brigati
The 1905 Proceedings of the Founding Convention of the
Industrial Workers of the World, by I.W.W.
On Dual Power by multiple authors, ROAR Magazine
Libertarian Socialism, Politics in Black and Red, edited by Editors: Prichard, A., Kinna, R., Pinta, S., Berry, D. (Eds.)
How to Build a New World in the Shell of the Old by Symbiosis Federation
Means and Ends: The Anarchist Critique of Seizing State Power by Anarchopac
Anarchism’s Relevance to Black and Working-Class Strategy: Dispelling Ten Myths by Lucien van der Walt
Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists by “Delo Truda“ Group
Worker’s Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society by Cornelius Castoriadis
The Revolutionary Potential of Solidarity Economy by Yavor Tarinski
Mutual Aid: A Factor In Evolution by Peter Kropotkin
The Ecology of Freedom, by Murray Bookchin
Recommended Podcasts and Videos:
Worker Owned Cooperatives: Widening Spheres of Democracy
Black Rose Anarchist Federation: From Below Podcast
Dual Power Beyond The Local: A Conversation With Symbiosis
Groups that DSA-LSC is Affiliated With:
Industrial Worker’s of the World
Join Us
Please fill out our intake form and we’ll get you plugged in to LSC as quickly as we can! For more information, feel free to find us on twitter, email us, or follow us on facebook.
If in the Milwaukee area and are interested in the work of MKE DSA-LSC, please email us at dsamkemutualaid@gmail.com
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“Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!”
– Otto Von Bismarck
