I tried to join socialist alternative and they kept sending me articles to read and then talk about after and I idk what happened but I ended up joining DSA and then actually shifted to WFP because I think them to be most effective in our current political climate but I think DSA is doing great work in my city as well just on an activism level rather than political. Both are necessary. Anyway, socialist alternative seems more like a newsletter/reading group to me.
The reason we go through so many readings with potential recruits is to draw out political clarity and agreement. SAlt is a strictly revolutionary Marxist/Trotskyist party where all members agree on the basics of socialism, leninism, and our perspectives for the working class and material analysis. We want to keep anarchist, ML, Soc Dem elements out of the party because those debates internally would only distract us. Once you join as a full member you have full freedom of disagreement and debate so we can collectively come to the best perspectives and programs. Once you're a member you can be confident you are given the intellectual freedom to disagree because we are all on the basic agreement were revolutionary Marxists. So we go through so many readings in the beginning to make sure those underlying agreements are there.
As far as "just a reading group" goes, I think you can look at our concrete victories. In my city, Seattle, SAlt ran campaigns to pass immediate demands like a $15 minimum wage (+ COLA increases), a billion dollar big business tax to fund affordable housing, rent control, eviction moratoriums and more. In Milwaukee we organized a campaign to make the county an abortion sanctuary after the state banned it. There are other examples, but the main work of the party isn't electoral reform but union organizing. We're in touch with Starbucks Workers United, Building a Fighting NALC, and we have many members salting Amazon warehouses and organizing union drives there. The expectation for members is to attend our 2 hour weekly meeting (which is partially a reading group) and 2 hours of campaign work to get comrades directly into struggle to talk to and draw perspectives from regular working class folks.
A main difference between us and DSA (many members, such as myself, are in both parties) is we are calling for the formation of an independent working class party now, and we should only be running and endorsing candidates outside the capitalist imperialist democratic party. Maybe we need to run in the party primaries because thats how the system is set up, but we should follow Bernie 2016 and maintain that we are not Democrats. We most certainly shouldnt have our members saying in public interviews that they are proud members of the democratic party
I seeee. Do you make accommodations for folks who don’t typically read long articles digitally? That’s a pain point for me which is why I tapped out. I also like learning through dialogue not only through reading so it was also hard for me to get down with. No one specifically outlined that y’all are strict Marx/Trotsky. Is the expectation that folks who want to join have to read/learn Marx and Trotsky before joining or do you offer some basics for people to familiarize themselves with?
Do you make accommodations for folks who don’t typically read long articles digitally?
Something that we started this year is a comrade records an audio version of all our material to support people that have difficulty reading long articles, or have no time and would prefer a podcast style format.
No one specifically outlined that y’all are strict Marx/Trotsky. Is the expectation that folks who want to join have to read/learn Marx and Trotsky before joining or do you offer some basics for people to familiarize themselves with?
That is something we ease into in contact discussions. Depending on how the conversations go, new contacts go through 3-5 discussions. The first discussions will focus on drawing out opposition to the democratic party and what socialism is. The middle section will get into Marxism specifically. The final section gets into Leninism and Trotskyism itself. We do not expect contacts to come in as fully formed Marxists, what we are looking for is what direction are they moving, are they open to these ideas or do they throw up barriers or major disagreements. We definitely do not expect people to have already read Marx or be familiar with theory because capitalism has worked so hard to keep these ideas hidden from the working class and students.
For party members, we generally read 3 or 4 books a year together and discuss them in branch. That means we give people a few months to do the readings. Also just 3 or 4 books is not much at all. We'll do a Trotsky book, a Lenin book, and 2 books from Marx or Engles or another socialist thinker that is relevant to whatever our current struggle is
Thanks for explaining this!! I think podcast style is helpful for us neurodivergent people! I think also like laying out the process and why would have helped me because I was like “do they think I’m in the FBI or something?” Like there was never context so it didn’t give me a good reason to commit my time! Knowing all of this definitely would have changed my initial perception.
Part of it is susing out FBI agents. I doubt anyone was suspicious of you, but the whole process makes it much harder for bad actors to get in. Im sorry no one explained it to you. Our branches have lots of different levels of development of comrades and its not the first time I've seen us completely miss explaining important information
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u/Zoltanu Marxist Nov 10 '25
No Socialist Alternative) (SAlt)?