DSA – Democratic Socialists of America has a website. Alexandria Octavia-Cortez and Rashida Talib are members of the DSA. Ilhan Omar “is close to Democratic Socialists of America and its front organizations.” Ayanna Presley was endorsed by the Boston DSA chapter. All are in Congress as Democrats, together termed the “Squad”. All are active in moving the Democratic party toward the positions of the DSA.
The key tenet of DSA is “Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few.” Elizabeth Warren’s radical plan to restructure the organization of corporations fits perfectly with this DSA belief. The Democratic Party’s movements toward the Green New Deal and Medicare for All are also movements toward the DSA’s positions and policies.
Actually, there are close to 25 million businesses in America who seek to profit by serving consumers. This is hardly “a few”, and they cannot survive and employ people without serving consumers successfully. DSA is against profits. That’s a core Marxist belief, one that’s been discredited in every way possible; but this doesn’t faze the DSA one bit.
In the radical Garden of Eden that the democratic socialists envisage, profit-seeking is replaced by democratically run organizations. Most people do not understand what goes into running an organization successfully. There is a field of study called “organization theory” that’s in business schools, but it has not distinguished itself by its scholarship, and that’s a kind understatement. Therefore, one cannot blame those interested in organizations for their lack of knowledge of organization theory. It’s been a barren field of scholarly endeavor.
Michael C. Jensen at Harvard’s business school has spearheaded a far more incisive and useful organization theory; and it is to his and like work that one must turn if one wants to grasp the enormously simple-minded and flawed goal that’s proposed by the DSA. Most organizations are NOT run democratically, the underlying reason being that they do not work at all well. A successful operation of an organization of any kind, profit-seeking or not, requires much different properties than being democratically run. The DSA doesn’t understand this, and so their basic principle is deeply flawed from that angle alone. In Parts 1 and 2, other flaws were briefly brought to light, such as the highly questionable connection between democracy and justice that DSA alleges exists and justifies their politics.
The notion of jumping into a radical transformation of organizations so as to meet so-called “public needs” is the furthest thing from wise, prudent, fact-based, or scientific. It is literally crazy to do such a thing, and yet this is what DSA and the Democratic Party aim to do. And it would not be surprising to find many Republicans going along with the program. Mind you, these sorts of changes being advocated are rather distinct from the even more wild and crazed ideas emanating from the antifa/BLM axis.
One thing held in common between the DSA and antifa/BLM is the notion that society, not only economic relations, but social relations should be “run”, itself a radically bad idea, and should be “run” on the basis of principles established by democratic means.
All this craziness has been inculcated in colleges and universities, from which it has spread more broadly. One wonders how this could have come about, and a proper scientific organization theory along the lines that Jensen represents can help us understand this, but that is beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice it to say that these institutions secured financing from sources that failed to institute controls over their use or even supported uses of the funds opposite to the intentions of those supplying the resources because of lack of proper accounting and reporting, and because of coercive elements within the system that broke the connection between financing and proper control. Most of the corrupted organizations themselves, the colleges and universities, allowed departments to form and gain influence that promoted crazy ideas in the name of various liberal notions, such as diversity, racial balance, multi-cultural education, feminism, etc.
The bottom line is that there isn’t going to be any Garden of Eden inspired by DSA ideas that find their way into the Democratic Party or its rival, not just because their ideas may be rejected in political contests, but because, even if they win and attempt to institute these ideas, they will utterly fail. They will make Americans worse off. A paler version of the communism of the USSR that parades around under the banner of democratic socialism won’t succeed either. Combining two flawed systems, democracy and socialism, and extending them across the land, won’t result in the hoped for Garden. Most organizations do not succeed by being democratic. Decision rights have to be carefully dispersed along with requisite information needed to make the right decisions to achieve the aims of the organization. There have to be accounting controls and feedback. Voting doesn’t comprehend these vital and necessary aspects of a proper organization. And most societies do not succeed by being socialist, i.e., eliminating incentives to profit.
The DSA’s founding principle is bound to lead to disaster if implemented.
9:07 am on September 17, 2020
