Program of Central Mass & Worcester DSA
As amended and ratified by our membership at our 1st Local Convention
December 20, 2025
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Capitalism entered the world stage as a liberating force, initiating a new wave of human development, freeing society from feudal shackles, and making people equal as citizens. Differences between people became purely economic, and these differences were magnified a thousand-fold by labor power becoming a commodity. This obliterated formal equality before the law in the face of ever-increasing economic inequality — between people, but also between nations, with imperialism in its colonial and post-colonial forms as its dominant form of oppression.
As the leading capitalist and imperialist force after World War II, the United States imposed its will around the globe. Extracting enormous profits from its imperial domination in turn allowed for a class compromise in which a rising standard of living was granted to parts of the U.S. working class, while other parts of the class remained subject to racist discrimination and exclusion. While the system showed signs of a crisis of profitability for capitalists in the 1970s, vigorous neoliberal attacks on public spending, public services, and the labor movement restored the profitability of capital at the expense of workers. Despite still profiting indirectly from the imperial dominance of the United States, wages and quality of life have stagnated over the last 50 years, at best.
While capitalism has shown that it is still producing regularly crises such as the dot-com bubble, the financial crisis of 2007-08, and the COVID-related supply chain disruptions of 2021-22 — not to discount the global climate crisis that endangers the mere existence of the world as we know it — capitalism has been mostly stable as a whole, while developing new tendencies: The financialization of the economy, marked by commodification of nearly every form of risk, was eventually followed by the rise of tech capital as the dominant force of U.S. capitalism. Partially fused with finance and the surveillance complex, it first put its imprint on politics by aligning with the Democratic Party and a liberal agenda. More recently it has decisively turned to the right, leading to the second Trump presidency and its aggressive revamping of the state apparatus at its will — despite some remaining divisions between different factions of tech capital over questions such as immigration policy.
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Massachusetts was one of the first states in the country to industrialize, originally around mill towns, and with the swelling industrial working class came trade unions and socialist agitation. It was, however, also one of the first states to begin to de-industrialize, forcing successive restructurings of the state’s economy. While Boston managed a turnaround based on education and healthcare, as well as first finance, then technology, and later biotech, the state’s secondary cities kept struggling for longer and, to a good degree, still are.
Worcester, as the state’s second largest city and one of the 35 largest in the United States for a 50-year period starting in 1870, was home to a vibrant and varied industry centered on manufacturing, in particular the metal trades. Compared to other cities in Massachusetts it had a low rate of unionization and was dominated by local capitalist interests. Other cities in the area share some industrial characteristics, with varied core industries such as paper in Fitchburg, furniture in Gardner, plastics in Leominster, and optics in Southbridge.
Economic restructuring and the decline in industrial production led to the largest employers in Worcester County in recent years shifting to education, healthcare, and local government, followed by finance, biotechnology, and transportation and logistics. And despite its dwindling numbers, manufacturing maintains a footprint in the area. The eastern part of our chapter, centered around Marlborough, is more integrated into the Boston metro area’s economy and focused on technology. While changing with the business cycle, the unemployment rate is fairly constant in the long term at about 5%. Union density is at 12.6%, still slightly above the national average, but down from a peak of 30% and still declining, albeit slowly. Rising housing costs and low vacancy rates pose a major challenge for tenants, who are a significant part of the population in the main urban centers in our chapter.
Massachusetts’s state politics are dominated by the Democratic Party, which, while at times paying lip service to demands for progressive reforms, serves the capitalist class. They are not and cannot be a vehicle or ally for our political aims, and as socialists we have to work toward building a socialist party, organized by and organizing for the working class.
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As socialists, our aim is to overthrow capitalism in favor of a socialist society. While we believe that this will eventually require a revolution to overcome capitalist resistance and a smashing of the state apparatus, we also support all reforms that meaningfully improve the lives of workers and oppressed people. Our struggle encompasses many fields: We organize workers in labor unions, tenants in tenants unions, and rally for our demands in the streets. But we also participate in bourgeois elections — despite their limited meaning — and aim to use them as a tool to spread our political message. We aim to use the struggle for reforms to make clear the limitations of reforms in the capitalist system and the need for a transformation toward a society in which the means of production are under the democratic control of the working class and labor power is no longer a commodity.
What We Demand
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We work ever longer hours while our real wages and salary shrink in the face of inflation, and always in fear of getting laid off at a whim from our bosses and not having put enough money aside for a retirement in dignity. Therefore we demand:
A minimum wage of at least $30/hour with an annual increase at least equal to inflation
A 24-hour work week without reduction in wages or compensation
A universally guaranteed right to a secure retirement for all, with a generous national pension plan replacing the uncertainty of employer-based defined contribution plans
A union for every worker, with union members in democratic control of the election of their leaders, contract negotiations, and strikes, and a ban on lockouts, on anti-labor injunctions, and on employer or state interference of any kind with workers’ right to organize, picket, and strike
An end to casual and contract employment, no termination without just cause, and no layoffs at employers making profits
An expansive public jobs program with well-paid jobs for everyone who needs work
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Rents are rising, and we pay ever more to landlords for worsening housing, as utility bills grow and healthcare becomes unaffordable and at the whim of claim-denying insurance providers. Public transportation is insufficient. Education is subservient to the dictates of employers and markets. Climate change, initiated and driven by capitalist production, becomes a threat to humanity, undermining our conditions of living. Therefore we demand:
A universally guaranteed right to food that is high quality, varied, and that satisfies one’s nutritional needs, dietary restrictions, and other health requirements, to be provided through communal kitchens and canteens, which will also offer options for people to take out meals, receive groceries, and learn to cook
A universally guaranteed right to free and comprehensive healthcare coverage for all by placing all hospitals in public ownership — with democratic management by workers and patients — and by eliminating private insurance companies with a single-payer system that is without copays, coinsurance, deductibles, denials of claims and service, and restrictions to in-network doctors and providers
A ban on rent increases above the rate of inflation, no evictions without just cause, and no imposed time limits on leases
A universally guaranteed right to publicly-owned housing for all with an extensive program of union construction and renovation that eliminates the role of landlords and provides choices from a range of high-quality housing options that are mixed-income and suitable for different kinds of family and individual needs, whose cost is capped at an affordable 10% of one’s monthly household income, and where tenants’ right to collectively organize and democratically manage their housing is guaranteed
An end to price-gouging for utilities through the placing into public ownership — with democratic management by workers and consumers — of electricity, phone and Internet service, water and sewer, waste removal, and other services
A rapid and just transition from an unsustainable, high-emission society through a ban on new fossil fuel infrastructure and massive spending on clean energy and green infrastructure, retraining and economic support for impacted workers and communities, and a dramatic expansion of buses, rail, and other public transit, with democratic management by workers and riders and reliable and on-time service that is free, frequent, and far-reaching
A universally guaranteed right to free public education from pre-K to elementary, secondary, higher, and continuing education, with funding that is not dependent on the wealth of a community, programs and support that meet the varying needs and interests of individual students, nationalization of all schools and universities, and democratic management by educators, staff, students, and families
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The capitalist class divides us to better exploit us, building on and reinforcing historic oppression by gender, race, and immigration status. We have to fight together against all forms of discrimination as nobody but the working class can liberate itself. Therefore we demand:
An end to racist discrimination by the state, employers, and landlords
A program of reparations to the descendants of enslaved people
A right to self-determination for all tribes and U.S. territories
A full recognition of people’s gender identity and bodily autonomy, including a full right to abortion and free reproductive, gender affirming, and sexual healthcare
A universally guaranteed right to parental leave at full pay for all parents
A program to ease the often unfairly distributed burden of domestic work, with free laundry and dependent and child care and development of high-quality communal options for cooking, sitting for, or taking out meals
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Police and military are not here to protect us, but to protect the assets of capitalists. They plunder foreign countries and harass and murder people of color and immigrants. This has to end. Therefore we demand:
A withdrawal of all forces stationed in or otherwise deployed to foreign countries, closure of all overseas military installations, and abolishing the professional military
A ban on all U.S. foreign military sales and transfers — in particular an end to all aid to the largest beneficiary of U.S. funds, the apartheid state of Israel — and an end to support for genocide, human rights violations, and the collective punishment of sanctions
An end to intelligence-sharing agreements, abolishing all secret and intelligence services, and publication of all secret diplomatic and intelligence documents
An end to deportation or removal as criminal punishment, granting of citizenship for all living in the country who desire it, and abolishing ICE and Border Patrol
A defunding, disarming, and dismantling of the police as a repressive force and their replacement with a body which includes social workers, crisis counselors, and other mental health and addiction specialists and that is democratically accountable to the community and meant to help people instead of harassing, brutalizing, or locking them up
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While our goals will only be achieved in a socialist society, we demand an immediate reform of the capitalist state to better represent the people. We realize that to fulfill our demands there is a lot of money needed. But the money is there: with those who exploit us and make a killing on our misery — we have just to reclaim it. Therefore we demand:
A system of legislative supremacy, with single-house legislative bodies where the people’s representatives are elected by proportional representation, are paid the median workers’ wage of the area they represent, and are recallable at all times
A system of courts which are accountable to the people and subordinate to their representatives
An end to sales taxes and other indirect taxes in favor of progressive taxation of income, inheritances, and wealth
A centralization of credit under the democratic control of the people with the nationalization of all banks into a publicly-owned bank