Can DSA Take Over the Democratic Party? Žižek’s Gamble and the Socialist Trap
Slavoj Žižek has put an old argument about socialist strategy back into circulation with a blunt proposal: instead of constructing a separate electoral party, democratic socialists should fight inside the Democratic Party. His intervention arrives at a revealing moment. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has helped win high-profile primaries, Zohran Mamdani occupies New York City Hall, and the organization has expanded dramatically. Yet the difference between winning a Democratic ballot line and commanding the Democratic Party remains enormous.
“The only serious political struggle in the US today is between MAGA and Democratic Socialists. Democratic socialists should NOT build their own party, but penetrate the Democratic Party.”
The quotation comes from an excerpt supplied to Pamphlets; the full original context of Žižek’s remarks has not been independently established here. The strategic question, however, is clear. Can socialists use the Democratic Party as a vehicle for political transformation, or will the party turn their victories into another method of containing opposition?
A socialist electoral breakthrough is no longer hypothetical
Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City in November 2025 demonstrated that an openly socialist candidate could win a major executive office while building an energetic coalition around rent, public transport and living costs. The New Yorker reported on October 18 that DSA had grown to just under 130,000 members and that 123 DSA-backed candidates had won primaries in the period following his victory, including 19 congressional nominees and five candidates for statewide office. Those figures describe an insurgency with real organizational muscle.
They do not describe a takeover. A DSA endorsement is not proof that the candidate is a DSA member, accepts the organization’s entire program, or will govern according to its decisions. Winning a primary is not winning the general election, and winning office is not the same as passing a transformative agenda. Counting every friendly candidate as a disciplined socialist legislator would turn an important movement into a misleading statistic.
Nevertheless, the organizing gains matter. The Democratic establishment can no longer assume that long-serving incumbency, access to wealthy donors and endorsement networks make primary elections uncontestable. A committed local organization can identify neglected issues, train volunteers and defeat officials who once appeared secure. That is an opportunity even when the final election map looks far less revolutionary than the primary headlines.
Why Žižek wants to fight inside the party
The practical case for his approach begins with the United States’ electoral machinery. Single-member districts, winner-take-all contests, ballot-access barriers, partisan primaries and the fear of splitting the anti-Republican vote make a new national party extraordinarily difficult to establish. The Democratic ballot line already reaches millions of voters, appears on ballots nationwide and can be contested by insurgents without first building a rival electoral apparatus from nothing.
A socialist candidate who wins a Democratic primary can therefore inherit immediate visibility and a plausible path to public office. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 victory over Joe Crowley was an early demonstration; Mamdani’s rise offered a more ambitious example. In this reading, participation in Democratic primaries is not necessarily loyalty to Democratic leadership. It is a way of fighting for access to an arena in which millions of working people already cast votes.
But Žižek’s argument becomes weaker if it treats ballot access and organizational destiny as the same question. Choosing where to compete in the next primary does not decide whether a socialist movement must ultimately remain subordinate to the Democratic Party. One is an electoral tactic. The other is a theory of political independence.
Winning primaries is not the same as controlling the Democrats
The Democratic Party is not a single headquarters that can be captured by replacing one chairperson. Its national and state committees, state legislatures, governors, congressional caucuses, donor networks, consultants, unions and allied interest groups exercise different forms of influence. Democratic primary voters in Brooklyn, the Bronx or Los Angeles do not automatically determine what candidates in competitive suburban districts will do—or what party leaders will fund.
The geographic limits are serious. An August 2026 Brookings analysis identified 282 candidates endorsed or recommended by DSA chapters; only 29 carried a national DSA endorsement. The researchers found that most sought local or state legislative office and that success was concentrated in Democratic-leaning territory. In their snapshot, just 10 DSA-backed candidates had prevailed in districts with a Cook Partisan Voting Index below D+10.
Brookings’ data collection closed on August 12, so its count is not directly comparable to The New Yorker’s later October tally. The two studies also measure different things. But both point to the same essential problem: the left has learned to challenge particular incumbents much faster than it has learned to build a national governing majority. It cannot claim to have remade the Democratic Party while its strongest successes remain clustered in places the Democrats were already likely to win.
Centrists argue that socialist nominees could jeopardize competitive races. Their critics answer that bland moderation has failed to mobilize disillusioned voters and that economic demands can reach beyond ideological labels. Neither contention can be settled by primary victories alone. The November 2026 general election will provide a more consequential test of whether socialist-backed candidates can broaden the electorate or mainly rearrange the Democratic vote in already-safe districts.
The contradiction: DSA itself still wants an independent party
Here lies the strongest objection to taking Žižek literally. In electoral guidance updated September 17, 2026, DSA explicitly commits itself to the eventual creation of an independent mass socialist party. It asks its endorsed candidates to identify publicly as socialists, strengthen their chapters and maintain an ongoing relationship with the organization. Its national endorsement rules also encourage elected socialists to caucus together rather than dissolve into the party’s ordinary legislative machinery.
Those requirements are not decorative. They establish a dividing line between an independent working-class organization using a Democratic ballot line and a loose collection of progressives hoping to influence Democratic leaders. The former can develop its own program, membership, finances, organizing culture and accountability. The latter risks becoming a more radical campaign brand within a political machine it does not control.
There is therefore a possible reconciliation—but only a conditional one. DSA can contest Democratic primaries today while refusing to abandon the objective of an independent socialist political force tomorrow. Some on the socialist left call versions of this strategy a 'dirty break': building organization through existing electoral openings while retaining the capacity to separate. That is different from declaring that a new party should never be built.
The absorption trap: what happens after victory?
The hardest test does not occur on election night. It comes when an elected socialist must negotiate budgets, enforce existing laws, confront private ownership and choose between movement demands and the requirements of running a public institution. A mayor does not directly control state tax policy, the federal government or every part of the municipal bureaucracy. Those limits can force compromises even when the campaign was completely sincere.
Mamdani’s early tenure makes the tension concrete. Keeping Jessica Tisch as New York City police commissioner, as reported by The New Yorker, illustrates the distance between campaigning with a movement and governing a vast institution. Supporters can defend tactical compromise as necessary for retaining power. Critics can reasonably ask how many such compromises a socialist administration can make before the movement’s distinct program becomes difficult to recognize.
The question extends beyond policing. What happens when business groups resist stronger tenant protections, when fiscal rules constrain public services, or when Democratic officials demand silence on foreign policy in the name of party unity? DSA’s commitments on Palestinian rights and opposition to military support for Israel could prove especially difficult to square with the party’s established leadership. A movement that can win only by concealing its defining disagreements may discover that its influence is thinner than its vote totals suggest.
There is also a democratic problem inside the movement itself. If successful politicians become larger than their local chapters, endorsements can turn into personal loyalty tests and members into campaign volunteers with no meaningful authority after election day. Socialist organization then supplies free labor and legitimacy while elected officials retain the freedom to disregard it. That is a path to professionalization, not necessarily to social transformation.
Three different futures, all hidden inside the word 'takeover'
The first is absorption. DSA wins more Democratic primaries, contributes compelling candidates and pushes the conversation left on housing and wages. Over time, however, its elected officials behave like a familiar progressive faction: they negotiate for modest policy concessions, seek leadership approval and gradually shed commitments that threaten their careers. The Democratic Party changes some of its language while the socialist organization loses its distinctive purpose.
The second is disciplined dual power in electoral form. Socialists keep using Democratic primaries where they offer the best route to office, but their funding, membership, candidate recruitment, policy demands and elected caucuses remain answerable to an organization outside Democratic leadership. Electoral victories then strengthen unions, tenants’ groups and neighborhood campaigns instead of replacing them. This could make DSA a consequential force without a separate party label—but it demands precisely the organizational independence that a permanent strategy of 'penetration' could weaken.
The third is a future break. A larger, rooted socialist movement decides that Democratic primaries have become a ceiling rather than a ladder and attempts independent electoral work where labor alliances, local geography and ballot law make that plausible. Such a break would be risky: it could fragment votes, isolate elected officials and cost hard-won access. But the possibility of leaving matters. Without it, party leaders know that socialists have nowhere else to go.
What would prove a real shift in power?
The most useful measures are not viral speeches or even raw membership totals. Can socialist-backed candidates win outside the safest urban districts? Can their coalitions build lasting strength among organized and unorganized workers rather than relying on a narrow activist base? Can elected officials win enforceable rent protections, better labor standards, improved public services and public accountability while surviving powerful opposition? And can DSA discipline its own elected representatives without reducing every disagreement to factional warfare?
Financial independence is equally important. A movement funded by ordinary members, tied to workplace and community struggles, and capable of running campaigns when establishment donors object possesses leverage that a collection of popular politicians does not. A socialist label is meaningful only if it corresponds to institutions that can sustain a fight after the candidate’s last rally.
This is where the promise of the current moment remains substantial. Housing insecurity, medical costs, low pay and the concentration of wealth have created an audience for a politics that names economic power directly. Mamdani showed that such a message can become a winning electoral program. But the transition from a winning message to durable working-class power is the work of years, not a sequence of dramatic primary nights.
The verdict: use the ballot line, do not surrender the movement
Žižek is right to reject the fantasy that proclaiming a new party instantly overcomes the U.S. electoral system. Democratic primaries are a real arena of struggle, and DSA would be foolish to discard victories simply because the ballot line belongs to a party whose leadership it opposes. But he is wrong if his advice is read as an instruction to abandon the project of political independence altogether.
DSA can infiltrate the Democratic electorate more easily than it can take over the Democratic establishment. The former is already happening. The latter would require a far wider social base, electoral reach beyond reliably Democratic seats, collective discipline in government and institutions that cannot be bought off or bypassed. The opening is real. So is the danger of absorption.
The defining question is not merely whether socialists can win elections as Democrats. It is whether they can build enough independent power to change what winning elections actually means. If they cannot, the Democratic Party may prove better at absorbing socialist candidates than socialists are at transforming the Democratic Party.
Sources and image credits
Brookings — 'Democratic socialist candidates show gains but limited reach in 2026' (August 19, 2026)
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