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The DSA was founded by Marxists and has always been socialist. If you show up at a meeting and say 'I don't think we need to overthrow capitalism' you will be laughed out of the room. I've seen it happen.
The libertarian wing of the DSA doesn't caucus within DSA because they got completely shut down in either the 2017 or 2019 confrenece. Everyone else actually learned something from the failures of Occupy.
What goes forthe Social Democrat wing of DSA is the faction most connected to Labor unions in the DSA, namely Bread and Roses. The rest are either Trotskyite or ML. There are plenty of anarchists still but they don't bother with any national caucus. Besides, its not like anarchists aren't also reading from spooky "authoritarians" like Lenin and Mao. If you want to overthrow capitalism you should read up on the people who've actually done it.
...what? They may read them, but not sympathetically.
Yeah, like the anarchists in Catalonia, the EZLN in Mexico, AANES/Rojava, and the original workers councils in Russia.
First everyone should be reading these works critically and not as absolute doctrine. Any ML who's actually knows what "scientific socialism" means and isnt a tankie larper should know that.
Second, all except for the Catalonia examples are false.
EZLN did start out as a more authoritarian-influenced group (in the 80s, that was where USSR influence and support was going!) but they have since evolved away from that in major ways, especially after learning from/integrating with indigenous peoples after some initial contact with Mexican national forces. I am not as up on PKK/AANES history, but Ocalan's major works are primarily influenced by Murray Bookchin, who was extremely anti-authoritarian.
The soviets eventually came to be dominated by the Bolsheviks, who were majorly influenced by Lenin, but they were formed and initially populated by several factions. It's reductive to the point of absurdity to give Lenin the whole credit for the overthrow of capitalism in Russia (which was messy and complex), despite his outsized influence on the country from then on. Capitalism had only begun in Russia when serfdom was abolished in 1861 anyway, so the society that was overthrown was really one that failed during the transition.
Look, debate on these points in this thread is silly and I kinda regret being baited here. We need an easy intro to what socialism even is at this moment, for people like the OP, and we can talk strategy in another place. I'm glad we're broadly on the same team! Let's show others questioning society in this moment what we can offer.