The Democratic Socialists (DSA) - Totalitarian?

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), founded in 1982 and now the largest socialist organization in the United States with over 90,000 dues-paying members, openly declares its ultimate goal to be the democratic control of the economy by the working class.

While the DSA often presents its agenda in the language of “worker empowerment” and “economic justice,” a closer examination of its platform, resolutions, and the writings of its leading intellectuals reveals a far more radical vision: the gradual but systematic replacement of private ownership of the means of production with collective or state control, culminating in a society where private property rights, especially in housing and land, are severely curtailed or abolished altogether.

The DSA’s 2023 platform and numerous chapter resolutions call for the “democratic control of the means of production” through mechanisms such as worker cooperatives, nationalization of key industries, and the creation of worker-elected committees that would oversee or outright replace private management. The organization’s “Ecosocialist Green New Deal” resolution explicitly demands public ownership of utilities, transportation, and heavy industry. Its housing platform goes further, advocating rent control, massive public housing construction, and “social housing” models that transfer ownership of rental properties from private landlords to non-profit or state entities.

Several DSA chapters have passed resolutions supporting “decommodification” of housing—meaning the removal of housing from the private market so that it can be allocated according to “need” as determined by public authorities rather than by individual choice or market exchange.This is not mere reform. Once housing is “decommodifed,” private property rights in residential real estate effectively cease to exist for large segments of the population.

The state or its designated committees decide who lives where, for how long, and under what conditions. Historical precedent is unambiguous: every 20th-century regime that began with slogans about “housing as a human right” and “ending speculation” ended with state bureaucracies assigning apartments, confiscating “excess” living space, and punishing citizens for attempting private rentals or sales.

The DSA may insist it wants a “democratic version of this arrangement, but the end result is the same: the individual no longer owns or controls the roof over their head; a committee does.This vision places the DSA on the extreme left of the classic liberty spectrum. That spectrum is not primarily about “change versus tradition” or “equality versus hierarchy,” as some academics misleadingly teach. It is, at root, a measure of who ultimately holds power over the individual’s life and property: the individual themselves (right) or the state and its appointed authorities (left).

Capitalism, for all its assumed flaws, disperses economic power among millions of private decision-makers and protects the individual’s right to own, buy, sell, and use property without needing permission from a central committee.

Socialism of the DSA variety concentrates that power in the hands of the state or state-empowered “worker councils,” which inevitably become political bodies enforcing ideological conformity.The result is not “worker liberation”; it is totalitarian control dressed in populist rhetoric. When the state or its committees can decide who gets what job, what factory they work in, what apartment they live in, and what income they are allowed, the distinction between “economic democracy” and comprehensive state domination collapses.

The individual becomes a ward of the state, granted resources only insofar as they serve the collective goals defined by the ruling ideology.This is why the DSA’s program, however softly it is marketed today, represents a direct assault on the core American principle that rights inhere in individuals, not in collectives, and that the state exists to protect those rights rather than to abolish them in the name of “justice.”

Oregon provides a clear illustration of these competing visions in practice. U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley has repeatedly aligned himself with DSA positions and members. He has co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’ workplace democracy act that would mandate worker seats on corporate boards, endorsed the PRO Act that would dramatically empower unions at the expense of private business owners, and consistently supported the most aggressive versions of rent control and public housing takeover legislation.

Multiple DSA chapters in Oregon have endorsed Merkley or praised him as an ally in the fight for “socialist policies.”In contrast, Republican Senate candidate Russ McAlmond has made opposition to socialism and defense of free-market capitalism a centerpiece of his campaign.

McAlmond explicitly warns against the nationalization and worker-committee takeover of industry, defends private property rights as the foundation of liberty, and argues that free markets—not government committees—are the only proven mechanism for setting fair prices, allocating resources efficiently, and maximizing individual freedom.

The choice Oregon voters face in the coming years is therefore stark: one path leads toward ever-greater state control over the economy and private life in the name of democratic socialism; the other defends the classical-liberal order of limited government, private property, and individual rights that built the most prosperous and free society in human history.