America's largest socialist organisation, with about 78,000 members. Its most prominent members include Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, whose version of socialism resembles European social democracy.
The DSA recently replaced its old platform with a more compact, less radical one. Gone from the old platform: sovereignty for Hawaii, public ownership of media and lithium-ion-battery production, calls to "decommodify survival", demands to end "fictions of whiteness" and "enforcement of heteronormativity". The new platform calls for "thriving working-class communities", "an economy for the working class", Medicare for all and taxing the rich. It calls to "demilitarise" (not defund) the police. Freeing Palestine remains.
The DSA excludes one class of worker from membership: police officers.
Zohran Mamdani, a DSA member, won the Democratic primary for the New York City mayoralty in 2025. At the DSA convention in 2023 Mamdani cited Palestinian liberation as at the core of his politics and as what brought him to the party. He invoked the precedent of the "sewer socialists" who governed Milwaukee a century ago.
A Gallup poll published in November 2025 found that two-thirds of Democrats had a positive image of socialism, while less than half had a positive image of capitalism.
Most alchemists were nervous, in any case; it came from not knowing what the crucible of bubbling stuff they were experimenting with was going to do next.