Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST ORGANIZING COMMITTEE. Opening a new phase of the American Left in 1973, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) established a public presence and a firm organizational base for renewed socialist activity. Breaking in part with Cold War sentiments, DSOC welcomed merger, in 1982, with the New American Movement (NAM), a smaller group emerging of the New Left, together creating the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The solid and enduring organizational structure made possible the rise of the DSA to large-scale membership and wide influence, especially upon young people, during the second half of the 2010s.

DSOC leaders, particularly its founding chair and leading personality, Michael Harrington, emphasized that the new movement represented more than a break with the rich traditions of the Socialist Party. DSOC, however, did reinvigorate one important component: radical religion. The Religion and Socialism Caucus (R&S) revived and enlarged a tradition dating to the reform-minded Social Gospel movement and the Christian Socialists who opposed US participation in World War I and grew in significance with the leadership of Norman Thomas, an ordained minister. The R&S, if never a large group of socialists, brought together Catholics, observant Jews, a wide range of Protestant denominations as well as believers from other traditions. Prominent public figures such as Harvey Cox, Rosemary Reuther, and James McCone supported DSOC and sometimes took an active role.

Alongside radical religion, socialist feminism revived a long-standing tradition at the edges of the American Left. DSOC began with a few earlier, outspoken critics of feminists and feminism, Irving Howe most prominently, but socialist feminists organized themselves to play an instrumental role within the new organization. By 1977, equal representation of men and women had become the rule on the National Committee, and a number of prominent feminists, including Gloria Steinem, supported the organization.

In other areas, DSOC held to familiar ground: college students and youth recruitment. DSOC developed an active youth section with a full time organizer by 1979. Meanwhile, labor support work advanced, and DSOC served as a political home for many labor leaders and staff at the leftward corners of the AFL-CIO. DSOC also worked in mainstream electoral politics, usually supporting Democrats rather than running independent candidates. Maintaining the unity of liberal and labor forces remained an essential element of the DSOC aspiration to reform. Back in 1968, this strategy had won the majority of the Socialist Party that elected Michael Harrington as the National Chair. Others highly placed in the organization insisted that the coalition with labor depended upon supporting an increasingly unpopular US war in Asia. Bayard Rustin broke with Martin Luther King, Jr. after his 1967 speech at Riverside Church denouncing the war and refused to support King’s Poor People’s March. This move forecast future problems in the Socialist coalition. King meanwhile recruited Harrington to write the economic program for the Poor People’s March.

Events of the era worked against a continuing coalition with Democrats. The assassinations of King and Bobby Kennedy, the police riot against anti-war protestors in the streets of Chicago, and the manipulated Democratic convention all doomed Hubert Humphrey’s candidacy. In the 1970 primaries, insurgent peace candidates defeated many entrenched pro-war Congressional Democrats. Even Humphrey’s former Vice Presidential candidate Ed Muskie spoke at anti-war rallies. Within the narrower confines of the Socialist Party, Harrington had concluded by 1971 that the domestic war on poverty had been lost in the bloody and futile Vietnam misadventure. After years of costly delay and uncertainty, Harrington finally advocated unilateral US withdrawal from Vietnam. Overruling the objections from hawkish liberals and socialists, Harrington formed the Coalition Caucus and was joined by reporter Jack Clark and educational reformer Deborah Meier. Together the three prepared the groundwork to launch DSOC.

Harrington, in a letter to The New York Times, announced his resignation as co-chair of the Socialist Party, concluding that the party of Debs and Thomas had by 1972 set itself to do the work of Richard Nixon. In December, 1972, the Socialist Party held its last regular convention and changed its name to Social Democrats, USA. A conference at New York University discussing the future of the Left after the defeat of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern resulted in the formation of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee.

The tiny national office of DSOC came alive as major labor figures like Victor Reuther and Ralph Helstein signaled their support. Small DSOC locals organized in Houston and Dallas, Des Moines, Davenport, and Louisville, alongside larger groups in Boston, Chicago, Detroit and on the West Coast. The national offices moved to a larger space in New York City’s Union Square and collected enough funds to support a national staff. Jack Clark served as the founding national secretary and remained in the job until May 1979.

DSOC members worked within the Democratic Party, engaging in local electoral activity, with successes in state legislatures in Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska; and municipal governments, with Harry Brett, the San Francisco City Supervisor, most prominent. DSOC recruited many members in New York City, especially on the Upper West Side, including Bella Abzug and future mayor David Dinkins.

A progressive labor bloc served as a bulwark for DSOC to build its own coalition within the Democratic Party. In 1976, Harrington and DSOC organized a “Democracy 76” campaign. A wide range of labor, liberal, feminist, and civil rights leaders signed on to demand that the next Democratic Administration put a high priority on full employment, national health care, and anti-inflation policies that restrained corporations. The campaign succeeded in winning progressive platform planks that the incoming Carter Administration chose to ignore. As a follow-up, DSOC organized the “Democratic Agenda,” an effort to secure the progressive platform planks once again. The UAW, AFSCME, the machinists’ union, and the clothing and textile union stood high among international unions supporting the agenda. The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists joined, along. with prominent feminists, environmental advocates, elected officials, and some Democratic Party leaders. DSOC and its Democratic Agenda allies dug in for a grueling effort to influence delegates to the 1978 mid-term convention in Memphis. At that convention, Harrington and UAW President Doug Fraser emerged as the floor leaders opposing Carter’s domestic policy agenda, and more than 40 percent of the delegates voted to repudiate the rightward tilt of Carter’s economic policies.

Wielding influence at the midterm convention, DSOC faced a question: should Harrington enter the 1980 Democratic primary to challenge President Carter? Harrington supporters viewed this prospect as an opportunity to open up the national debate and to demonstrate that a substantial bloc of Democrats had moved further left. Opponents worried that this move represented a step back toward sectarian socialist politics, alienating DSOC from allies, particularly in the labor movement. An expanded meeting of the DSOC National Board voted in favor of Harrington’s insurgent candidacy. However, the momentum from the midterm convention proved strong enough to convince Ted Kennedy to challenge Carter. Kennedy laid out a clear program too late to win the nomination.

DSOC continued to engage in local electoral campaign, in some cases playing a leading role in independent left insurgencies, including a few openly socialist. In Michigan, Zoltan Ferency ran as a socialist for the Democratic nomination for governor. New York DSA mobilized behind Frank Barbaro, challenging Edward Koch in the 1981 Democratic primary for New York mayor. Koch won, but the Barbaro campaign created the coalition of labor, people of color, and progressives that allowed Mario Cuomo to defeat Koch in the 1982 race for the Democratic nomination for governor.

DSOC also took strong positions on US foreign policy. A month before its founding in 1973, Nixon and Kissinger had arranged for the violent overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile. Solidarity with the Chilean people against the new Pinochet dictatorship became central to DSOC’s politics. Continuing opposition to the war in Indochina and to new imperial adventures also defined the organization’s world view. When Carter re-instituted registration for the draft, DSOC led the anti-draft resistance movement. The Socialist International also affected positions, as DSOC closely followed and supported developments abroad. The established European social democratic parties organized support for the struggle to lead Portugal and Spain out of decades for fascist rule; the Swedes started to debate what became the Meidner Plan to use worker-controlled funds to buy controlling interest in major firms; and the revived French Socialist Party showed electoral strength. In 1975, the Geneva Congress of the Socialist International voted to admit DSOC as a member party.

In 1981, DSOC helped organize a conference in Washington, DC on “Eurosocialism and America.” The conference offered a ray of light in the darkness of the new Reagan era, and a late defining moment for DSOC. Meanwhile, a debate about DSOC merging with the smaller but younger New American Movement (NAM) had been underway in both organizations for more than a year. Differences remained. Support for Israel ran strong in DSOC, while NAM members felt more strongly for Palestinian rights. Others expressed concern that NAM would lead the new organization away from mainstream politics back toward the practices of the vanished New Left. Despite reservations on both sides, DSOC and NAM merged and in 1982 to become the Democratic Socialists of America.

Isserman, Maurice. The Other American:The Life of Michael Harrington. Washington: Public Affairs Press, 2001.

Harrington, Michael. Fragments of the Century. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972.

Miller, James. Democracy Is in the Streets: from Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1987.