Why I Am A Paper Member of DSA
I am a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). I follow its activities, read its publications, and support its efforts for a more equitable and just society. However, I remain a “paper member,” abstaining from direct involvement in the campaigns and organizing work that define so much of DSA’s current activity. My wife, in contrast, is deeply involved with NYDSA, contributing to the ecosocialists working group, advocating for the NY Build Public Renewables Act, and serving on organizing committees. Her commitment, and that of her comrades, is extraordinary, and I deeply respect their efforts. Yet I choose not to join them, and this essay aims to explain why.
The issue is not a lack of belief in DSA's values or its goals. I fully support the fight for economic justice, public ownership, ecological sustainability, and the radical transformation of our social and political systems. Rather, my reluctance to engage stems from a broader critique of contemporary activism and the limitations of focusing on isolated policy victories and candidates. I worry that these efforts, however commendable, operate within a sociopolitical context that makes them inherently fragile, reversible, and limited in their potential to inspire deep, systemic change.
The Limits of “Meeting People Where They Live”
In my blog post Breaking Free: Why 21st Century Activism Can't Just Meet People Where They Live I argued that contemporary activism often falls into the trap of meeting people on the terms set by the current system, thereby reinforcing the very frameworks it seeks to challenge. This is the crux of my concern with many of DSA’s campaigns: they operate within a political, cultural, and economic environment dominated by possessive individualism, market logic, and neoliberal ideology. By pursuing victories within this context, we end up playing by the rules of a game designed to confine us to small, incremental changes that the system can easily absorb, co-opt, or roll back.
DSA’s approach, while strategically savvy, often seeks to appeal to voters, legislators, and other power structures “where they are” rather than seeking to radically transform the broader interpretive frameworks that shape our understanding of society and economics. For instance, the campaign to pass the NY Build Public Renewables Act is laudable in its pursuit of expanding public ownership in the energy sector. However, the success of such campaigns is contingent on framing them in terms that are palatable within the current market-centric, growth-oriented paradigm. This framing risks reinforcing the idea that public ownership is merely a pragmatic, market-compatible option rather than an expression of a fundamentally different way of organizing our social and economic life.
In this way, activism that focuses primarily on policy wins operates in a fragmented fashion, addressing symptoms without transforming the underlying “soil” from which these symptoms arise. The result is a continuous game of Whac-a-Mole, where victories are celebrated, but their effects are limited by the cultural and ideological terrain that remains largely unchallenged. The broader social consciousness continues to be shaped by a market-oriented, individualistic framework that constrains the potential for these policy gains to grow into a truly transformative movement.
The Need for a New Sociopolitical Soil
The series of posts introducing the Communitarium Project (Part 1, Part II, Part III, Part IV) outlines the necessity of cultivating new interpretive frameworks—ones that foreground cooperation, mutual aid, and communal responsibility while rejecting the reductive individualism and commodification that define our current era. The problem with much of today’s activism, including the work of groups like DSA, is that it too often focuses on advocating for changes within the existing system without sufficiently challenging the interpretive frameworks that sustain it. It’s not that these policy victories are unimportant; it’s that they are unlikely to foster the kind of radical transformation we need unless they are part of a broader cultural shift.
The Communitarium Project proposes that what we lack is not just new policies but new ways of understanding and engaging with the world—what I have referred to as the creation of a new “sociopolitical soil.” This soil involves reshaping how people conceive of themselves, their communities, and their relationship to the broader world. It entails moving beyond meeting people “where they live” in their existing frameworks and instead inviting them to participate in the development of alternative ways of living, thinking, and interacting.
Without this deeper cultural groundwork, efforts like those of DSA, while important, risk being diluted or absorbed by the prevailing systems of power. They remain isolated patches of resistance in a landscape that continues to prioritize market logic, individual competition, and private ownership. The focus on securing individual policy victories, while necessary in the short term, lacks the capacity to nourish the emergence of a new collective consciousness capable of sustaining more profound, lasting change.
Why I Remain a Paper Member
I remain a paper member of DSA not out of apathy, but because I believe that my contributions might be better directed toward cultivating the interpretive frameworks that can make deeper, systemic change possible. The real challenge lies not just in winning policy battles, but in fostering a cultural transformation that shifts the focus from individual advancement to collective well-being, from market transactions to communal deliberation, and from isolated policy interventions to systemic reorganization.
The Communitarium Project represents one attempt to engage with this deeper work. It seeks to explore new forms of community, new modes of knowledge-sharing, and new ways of thinking about value that transcend the reductive frameworks of possessive individualism and commodification. It aims to create spaces where schmooze-level interactions—those everyday processes of negotiation, meaning-making, and community-building—can flourish outside the confines of market logic.
My wife and her comrades within the DSA are doing crucial work, and I have immense respect for their dedication and accomplishments. Yet, I fear that without a broader cultural movement that challenges the interpretive frameworks of our society, these efforts will remain precarious and easily reversed. This is why I choose to remain on the sidelines of direct activism, focusing instead on what I see as the foundational task: building the sociopolitical soil in which true transformative change can take root.
The Path Forward
This is not to say that policy advocacy is pointless. It is to argue that, in the absence of a broader cultural shift, policy victories will struggle to endure and multiply. We need both: immediate, tangible wins that improve lives and a long-term project of reshaping the interpretive frameworks that govern our collective existence. I support DSA in its efforts, but I believe the time has come to expand our focus, to build spaces where new ideas can take hold, and to encourage the development of a collective consciousness that values cooperation, mutual aid, and ecological stewardship over market-driven competition. We need to invent new forms of organizing to meet the unique challenges we face in the rapidly transforming landscape of the 21st century.
My paper membership, then, is not a rejection of activism but a call for a deeper engagement—a call to break free from the game of Whac-a-Mole and to cultivate the cultural and ideological conditions that can support a more profound transformation of our society. This is the work I believe must be done if we are to move beyond the isolated, temporary victories of the present and build a future where communal values can truly flourish
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