DSA's Electoral Success Is a Necessary but Insufficient First Step; Lasting Working-Class Power Requires Rebuilding the Labor Movement
Source: Paul Heideman. "Can the DSA Build Working-Class Power?." November 5, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
DSA has gone from obscurity to real influence by winning elections and pushing the Democratic Party toward economic issues. But the authors argue that winning office isn't enough. Just as the Left's power in the 1930s and 40s came through the labor movement, DSA will need to help rebuild unions to turn its electoral wins into lasting power.
Conclusion
DSA's electoral victories, though a historic breakthrough, will not by themselves produce lasting working-class power. To avoid stalling out, the Left must rebuild the labor movement as it did in the interwar years.
Premises
- DSA and the Sanders-Mamdani wing have achieved unprecedented socialist relevance in the electoral arena in a century, forcing Republicans to attack them and Democrats to adopt their economic-focused positions such as national health care and affordability.
- Mamdani's affordability-focused win shows that a politics centered on material economic needs can win, mobilize working-class voters, and win back voters who drifted to Trump, and it has settled the debate over 'class reductionism' in favor of economic issues.
- Electoral institutions have changed since the People's Party era: primaries now let the Left challenge the Democratic establishment from within, while restricted ballot access (and the loss of fusion voting) has closed off the third-party route, so running in Democratic primaries is the strategically sensible approach.
- Socialist influence in American politics has historically depended on the labor movement ('as the labor movement goes, so goes the Left'). The Communist Party's work in the CIO in the 1930s and 40s, on both labor and race issues, was the foundation of the New Deal era.
- Nothing today matches the labor movement's historical role in building working-class power. Electoral success alone is therefore a fragile first step that could also be the last.
Assumptions
- Lessons from the 1930s-40s CIO era transfer to the present political and economic context.
- Durable working-class power requires organized institutional power in workplaces and unions, not just control of elected offices.
- DSA's electoral gains are not self-reinforcing and could stall without an organizational base in the working class.
- Rebuilding the labor movement is feasible and the Left can meaningfully contribute to it.
- Mamdani's victory is representative and replicable rather than specific to New York City's conditions.
- The decline of identity-focused politics and the turn toward economic issues is a durable shift rather than a temporary one.