Can they say goodbye to the revolution?

In the aftermath of the disastrous 2008 financial crisis, elements of the working class in the United States have embraced class consciousness, leading to the resurgence of explicitly socialist politics among a small but influential strata of young people.

The socialist movement, predominantly following the lead of a revitalized 21st-century social democratic reformism, shares common political coordinates. Ideologically represented by the journal Jacobin and organizationally by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), this broad current emphasizes the centrality of participation in elections, the efficacy of running candidates under the Democratic Party ballot line, and the supposedly “revolutionary” character of reforms.

The persuasive influence of Jacobin and the dominant political position of the DSA within the US Left have coincided with a rapid collapse and shakeup of what remains of the revolutionary Left in this country. In the Trump era, even veteran socialists, in desperation, have become ideologically disoriented and susceptible to the temptations of political opportunism. One of the most serious errors within the socialist movement has been the subtle degradation of the prospects of revolution in North America.

The widespread promotion of the argument favoring a more gradualist approach and downplaying the centrality of a revolutionary rupture has led to the dominance of a strategic perspective. As articulated by Vivek Chibber, the Left is urged to navigate a more gradualist approach, recognizing that revolutionary conditions with state breakdown are not currently on the cards. Chibber argues that, at present, the Left cannot reasonably expect the emergence of such conditions, advocating for a pragmatic acceptance of reformism.

While it is true that there are currently no obvious models for revolution in advanced capitalist regimes, the question remains: does it follow, as democratic socialist comrades assert, that “a ruptural break with capitalism is off the agenda?” Although it may seem that way presently, history has a penchant for surprising naysayers, and revolution has defied expectations more than a few times.

The question of revolution is a practical question

Revolutionaries are often condemned for dealing in abstractions, but proponents of reformism are generally no less abstract when they argue that “the democratic [sic] state commands tremendous legitimacy.”

There are a number of assumptions baked into statements such as this: Which state are they speaking about in particular? Is the capitalist regime actually democratic in any meaningful sense? Does the capitalist state command legitimacy among the working masses? If so, is this legitimacy a permanent feature of working class consciousness? Or is it rather provisional and enforced with periodic bloodshed?

It is inadvisable to attempt to deduce strategy from first principles. Instead, strategy must be rooted in what Lenin referred to as “a concrete analysis of a concrete situation.” That is to say: there is no other alternative than to study each society in its particularities and ask the question: Can this society follow a parliamentary road to socialism? Or is revolution the only mechanism from which socialism can result in this time and place? Is revolution even possible in these societies? Why or why not?

Just because a reformist strategy may have success in one place, doesn’t mean it will everywhere, and vice versa. However, reformists would have people believe the parliamentary road to socialism is equally applicable in every advanced capitalist economy, with seemingly no regard to the dearth of democratic levers in one state as compared to another.

If anything, an impartial assessment of the settler-colonial regime in the United States indicates that the prospects for reformism here may be perhaps even more limited than in the social democratic welfare states of popular imagination.

Eugene Puryear has provided a brief but relatively comprehensive historical sketch of the establishment of the capitalist regime with a focus on the origins of the United States as a society constructed upon the bodies of the indigenous people, slaves, and women. Puryear rightfully skewers the supposedly uniquely “self-reforming character” of the government.

Even a cursory overview confirms that the supposedly “representative democracy” is neither representative nor a democracy. People live under the rule of a regime which lacks any sort of direct oversight over its judicial branch, eschews proportional representation in favor of a system originally designed to preserve the power of rural slave-owners, sets up a “representative” system in which the number of constituents per elected official is completely out of proportion to the actual population in order to further empower a declining white petty bourgeoisie, allows politicians to gerrymander districts to their liking, and entrusts an arcane entity known as the “electoral college” to choose its chief executive (when indeed the latter is not chosen directly by the Supreme Court). That is when the entire edifice does not for long periods of time, shut down entirely. Worse, the mechanisms for changing the constitution throw up nearly insurmountable hurdles to making any alterations to the rules of the game.

Democratic socialists are of course aware of these flaws, but nevertheless prefer to follow a strategy which confines itself to the narrow framework of bourgeois legality and constitutionality. Chris Maisano writes in The Call that “many (but not all) [democratic] demands could be won within the current constitutional framework, and if implemented would mitigate a number of its most anti-democratic aspects” of the regime. Yet Maisano is forced to acknowledge that far-reaching structural changes would be nearly impossible thanks to the effective minority veto — by which, as arch-conservative Antonin Scalia pointed out, less than two percent of the population can block any proposed amendments. Indeed, Maisano goes on to state that, “given the egregiously high barriers to calling a constitutional convention or amending the current constitution, a demand for a wholly new constitution would be utopian.”

Thus the reformists turn back before even reaching the limited horizon of bourgeois legality. Instead, these comrades urge socialists to tinker around the edges while maintaining loyalty to the regime, even when the means of radical change are permissible under the current system. This is likely because Maisano and others recognize that any new constitutional convention — if it weren’t dominated by reactionaries intent on tearing away the few hard-won rights they’ve managed to secure — would most likely result in a full-blown civil war.

To avoid or delay this possibility, democratic socialists posit a “preference for peace.” This is endorsed either on its supposed feasibility (see the above passages) or based on the argument that the working class would never be willing to resort to force of arms in order to defend its rights and livelihood.

But as Marxists and students of history, people recognize “the chronic lag of ideas and relations behind new objective conditions, right up to the moment when the latter crash over people in the form of a catastrophe.” Simply because the working class would prefer to make change peacefully and through pre-approved channels doesn’t mean the ruling class will grant concessions, much less a transfer of power — indeed, certain changes may not even be structurally possible given existing state forms. Nor does this “preference for peace” guarantee that the working class will simply sit still during a time of continuously declining standards of living or political unrest.

After nearly a hundred and fifty years of muddling along following the rapprochement between the federal government and the remnants of the southern aristocracy following the termination of Reconstruction and the end of the Great Sioux War, the constitutional mechanisms of the United States are understood even by many far outside of the socialist movement to be breaking down under the pressure of the continuing profitability crisis in the advanced capitalist economies.

If people extrapolate current economic and political trends into the future, it is fair to ask: is it at all certain that the capitalist regime of the United States will maintain its tenuous hold on legitimacy with the population indefinitely? And if the aspirations of the masses cannot be met through recourse to a democratic, peaceful path, what then?

People’s evaluation of the balance of forces and particularities of the American state leads many to conclude that rather than undertaking a strategy of “reclaiming the state,” to achieve socialism in North America it will be necessary to smash the old regime and implement a vigorous program of decolonization in order to establish some form of cooperative commonwealth.