The Slogan of Our Time

This article by Luke Pickrell originally appeared in Cosmonaut at https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/06/the-slogan-of-our-time/

I began writing a short response to comrade Henry De Groot’s reply to Marxism and the Democratic Republic and quickly reconsidered my approach. Here, I realized, was an opportunity to write a longer piece incorporating contemporary debates on the democratic republic, economism, the transitional program versus the minimum-maximum program, workers’ councils, the relevance of critiquing the Constitution, and the basis for party unity. Pull a thread, and the whole sweater unravels.

In my last article, I provided an overview of Marxism and the fight for a democratic republic as the dictatorship of the proletariat. I hinted at the lost history of the democratic republic in Second International social democracy and the broader lacuna between the Paris Commune in 1871 and the Russian Revolution almost half a century later. I concluded that the left needs unity around a minimum-maximum program that, like its forebears, centers the democratic republic as its immediate aim.

Here, I am primarily concerned with two points. First, the assertion that MUG’s political intervention has been anything but that of traditional revolutionary social democracy: the demand for a democratic republic to “win the battle of democracy.” There is no other “political dimension of socialism.” Second, the assertion that a hostile but disinterested attitude toward the Constitution is anything close to adequate. Dismissing any aspect of bourgeois society – let alone one as central as political democracy and the rule of law – is a dereliction of duty that any principled socialist would (and did) castigate. “Fight the Constitution, demand a democratic republic” is the slogan of our time. 

I’m using De Groot’s letter as a launching pad to touch many topics. He may object to being lumped into particular categories, and his objections may be warranted. But if De Groot doesn’t fall into every category – for example, if he isn’t a proponent of government by workers’ councils – then others do. 

Economism

I define economism as prioritizing the labor struggle to the exclusion of providing the working class with a political alternative to the existing state and generating education and propaganda pointing toward that political alternative. De Groot says I divide the economic and political terrain, and he’s correct. Marxism is a project for the political emancipation of the working class. In addition to that primary objective, it is a way to understand commodity production and extraction of surplus value through wage labor. Capitalism is a system of relationships between humans, and social relations are political. 

The necessity of taking state power doesn’t mean socialists shouldn’t engage in union struggles. But they engage primarily as peoples’ tribunes, not to provide expert skills, exceptional energy, or talk about socialism. Lenin explained our primary task when comparing his newspaper, Iskra, to the rival Rabocheye Delo. Whereas Iskra served as a tribune of the people, Rabocheye Delo acted as a trade union secretary. The trade union secretary calls the masses “to certain concrete actions,” “formulates the urgent demands of the proletariat and shows means for their implementation,” “present the government with concrete demands promising tangible results,” and narrows one’s sphere of activity to a “close and organic link with the proletarian struggle.”1

In contrast, the people’s tribune engages in the “revolutionary illumination of the whole system or its partial manifestations.” They provide “the propaganda of brilliant and self-sufficient ideas” through an “organ of revolutionary opposition, denouncing our institutions and particularly our political ones, insofar as they clash with the interests of the most various strata of the population.”2 The tribune responds “to each and every manifestation of abuse of power and oppression, wherever it occurs, whatever stratum or class it concerns.” They “generalize all these manifestations into one big picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation” and use “each small affair to set before everybody his socialist convictions and his democratic demands and to explain to each and all the world-historical significance of the liberation struggle of the proletariat.”3

De Groots says I “go too far in dislocating the trade union struggle as the key organizing terrain of the socialist party.” He is correct that the rank-and-file strategy is economistic in leaving the political terrain to liberals and reformers. But his call to “raise a clear socialist policy in the labor movement” raises more questions than answers. De Groot’s vagueness, coupled with his take that MUG’s position on the democratic republic is “absurd,” pins him as one of many who think talking about “socialism” and “state power” is a political intervention. I can only suppose that he doesn’t have a political alternative for the working class. (If the answer is workers’ councils, see below). Lastly and most obviously, De Groot talks about dialectics only to say that it’s his preferred sphere of activity – the trade union struggle – that should be on top. In one sentence, he disavows economism and pulls himself back in. It’s a déjà vu-inducing twist. 

Strategy 

The primary Marxist strategy is an independent political party dedicated to establishing a democratic republic. To this end, socialists unite around a program for political democracy and seek to win the majority of society to that program by advertising it for all to see and understand. The message is concise: democracy is needed and only the socialist party – the only party dedicated to the democratic republic – can bring it about. In the political arena, the party’s tribunes agitate for the program’s minimum demands and expose the various undemocratic machinations of its opponents. No political event or abuse by the ruling powers is left unexplained or free from scorn. 

The socialist class point of view is not limited to union struggles or “working class issues.” It understands that all social issues – regardless of what class is involved – concern the proletariat as the future political leaders of society. The socialist and advanced worker can identify, learn from, and assimilate the progressive elements of bourgeois society.4 Jean Jaurès said it well in his comments on the Dreyfus Affair regarding socialists and law. Here, an innocent man was getting the shaft. Though he was a soldier of the bourgeoisie, Jaurès and Rosa Luxemburg5 (against Jules Guesde) argued that socialists had a stake in the trial and should defend Dreyfus. Jaurès explained that 

There are two parts to capitalist and bourgeois legality: There is a whole mass of laws aimed at protecting the fundamental iniquity of our society, and there are laws that consecrate the privileges of capitalist property, the exploitation of the wage earner by the owner. We want to smash these laws, and even by revolution if necessary abolish capitalist legality in order to bring forth a new order. But alongside these laws of privilege and rapine, made by a class and for it, there are others that sum up the pitiful progress of humanity, the modest guarantees that it has little by little conquered through a centuries-long effort and a long series of revolutions.6

The actual “class point of view” demands an understanding of bourgeois society, including its laws and orders. Leave reductionism to the economists. Luxemburg added 

We can’t act as indifferent witnesses to what goes on in the interior of the bourgeoisie, unless socialism could be realized outside of bourgeois society, for example through the foundation in each country of a separate colony. But since we haven’t thought of emigrating, as it were, from bourgeois to socialist society, but on the contrary of overthrowing bourgeois society by means created within that same society, the proletariat must make an effort, in its forward march to victory, to influence all social events in a favorable direction. It must attempt to become a power that weighs ever heavier in the balance in all the political events of bourgeois society. The principle of class struggle not only doesn’t prohibit, but on the contrary, it imposes the active intervention of the proletariat in all the political and social conflicts of any importance that take place inside the bourgeoisie.7

The Dreyfus Affair provided an opportunity for political exposure. As such, it was a crucial moment for socialists to seize, examine, and propagandize. Democratic rights were under threat, and the bourgeoisie would not mount a vigorous defense even for one of their own. They played footsie with political and social reactionaries: they were interested not in a decisive victory but in smothering class conflict under the banner of “The Republic is in danger! Defend the Republic!”8 The bourgeois republic was nothing but a monarchy with a president as its crown. Only a democratic republic could expand democracy and wipe away the scourge of conservative reaction. 

De Groot calls for a “political, Bolshevik strategy.” I agree. The demand for a democratic republic was the RSDLP’s political strategy. It was front and center in the RSDLP’s famous 1903 program, with the first demand calling for “Sovereignty of the people – that is, the concentration of supreme state power wholly in the hands of a legislative assembly consisting of representatives of the people and forming a single chamber.” The second demand called for “Universal, equal and direct suffrage, in elections both to the legislative assembly and to all local organs of self-government, for all citizens and citizenesses who have attained the age of 20; secret ballot at elections; the right of every voter to be elected to any representative body; biennial parliaments; payment of the people’s representatives.”9 De Groot calls “absurd” the very thing the Bolsheviks championed with unparalleled tenacity. 

In 1912, Lenin addressed the RSDLP Duma representatives, saying, “Wherever a Social-Democrat makes a political speech, it is his duty always to speak of a republic.”10 Representatives were critiqued for legitimizing the (false) democratic possibilities of the Duma and praised for castigating the duplicity and trepidations of the (supposed) liberal opposition. In so doing, they followed Marx’s dictum that “Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organization to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power – ie, the political power – of the ruling classes, it must, at any rate, be trained for this by continual agitation against and a hostile attitude towards the policy of the ruling classes. Otherwise, it will remain a plaything in their hands.”11 The Duma officials could stand in opposition because the program contained a clear political alternative.

Unlike its mentor in Germany, the RSDLP, and primarily the Bolsheviks, talked the talk and walked the walk of uncompromising opposition. Friedrich Engels was seemingly on to something when he critiqued the newly-legal SPD for failing to mention the democratic republic in the original draft of the Erfurt Program. He urged that the question of the slogan of a republic “be debated in the party before it is too late.”12

Luxemburg, who began her German political career lambasting the SPD’s equivocations on colonialism and the “civilizing” character of capitalism,13 split with Karl Kautsky over precisely the question of political democracy during the Prussian suffrage movement of 1909-11.14 Now, she argued, was an opportune time to emphasize a demand that had been relegated far too long. Kautsky demurred and referenced Marx and Engels out of context to “defend” his position. He expressed concern that Germans would confuse a democratic republic with the bourgeois republic on display in France. Nonsense, Luxemburg retorted: 

It is just because the forty-year labor of Social Democracy has been such a fundamental prophylaxis against the dangers of republican petty-bourgeois illusions in Germany that today we can calmly make a place in our agitation for the foremost principle of our political program, a place that is its due by right. By pushing forward the republican character of Social Democracy we win, above all, one more opportunity to illustrate in a palpable, popular fashion our principled opposition as a class party of the proletariat to the united camp of all bourgeois parties.15

And continued:

In Germany, the slogan of a republic is thus infinitely more than the expression of a beautiful dream of democratic “peoples’ government,” or political doctrinairism floating in the clouds: it is a practical war cry against militarism, navalism, colonialism, geopolitics, Junker rule, the Prussianization of Germany; it is only a consequence and drastic summation of our daily battle against all individual manifestations of the reigning reaction.16

As then, so today. Our strategy remains the creation of an independent political party and the realization of a democratic republic to strengthen and expand the fighting capacity of the working class. Each abuse perpetrated under our oligarchic constitutional system is an opportunity for education, agitation, and further organization.

Councils

It’s worth remembering that before 1917, Lenin had called for a constituent assembly as demanded in the party’s 1903 program. Still, he changed tune following a theoretical investigation into the nature of imperialism and the coming maelstrom.17 World War rang the death toll of capitalism. Revolution in Germany seemed close at hand, while the growing popularity of the Bolsheviks in the Soviets and society at large following the defeat of Kornilov augured well. This trifecta meant that Russia could move quicker than previously anticipated. Instead of a revolution in which the workers and peasants would hold a majority in the unicameral legislature (the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry) and manage economic development,18 the Soviets would take power and direct a rapid transition to a socialized economy in tandem with other European countries.

Yet even in 1917, Lenin was open to a parliamentary-style democratic republic in tandem with the Soviets as a potential form of the democratic dictatorship. In State and Revolution, he wrote that the Bolsheviks would fight “for a democratic republic after the type of the Commune, or a republic of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, for the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”19

De Groot says my original article harbors an “attack on the legacy of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet as a form of government.” I’ll put my cards on the table while cautioning against the tendency to perceive critiques as attacks. The Russian Revolution failed to realize its goal of creating a democratic society and expanding the possibilities for universal freedom. Armed only with loose slogans from Marx about the dangers of bourgeois democracy, the Bolsheviks had little to no conception of what the post-revolution transitional government would look like: so began a several-year period of “improvisation, experimentation, and negotiation.”20 The Soviets could not serve as a suitable basis for a workers’ state during a period of civil war. They failed to account for the necessary division of labor, met too infrequently, and lost too many members to the war and the grind of daily work.21 Nor could they make and enforce laws and plan the nationwide distribution of goods. In short, the Soviets could not play the role of a standing legislative body. When they could not, the Politburo’s influence expanded to complete the necessary work.22 Having failed in Russia, we cannot assume they will succeed in the United States.

The workers’ organizations in Chile, Portugal, Poland, Iran, and France never crossed the Rubicon of revolution. The lessons from these experiences are at least threefold:  the working class must organize itself as a political alternative to the existing state if it has any hope of leading a political break during a revolutionary situation; the majority of society must be won to the aims of the democratic revolution; and the state must be smashed along the lines Marx proposed in his comments on the Paris Commune – the creation of a democratic republic. 

None of this is an argument against councils. The spontaneous organization of workers during revolutionary periods is to be applauded. Councils are a welcome addition to the revolutionary state but cannot be the basis or spinal column of that state. We cannot go around the bureaucracy, but we can and must create institutional forms that subordinate it to the working class masses. Only in this way can the bureaucracy remain subordinate while becoming increasingly superfluous. Saying that councils transcend the democratic republic is actually an argument against a workers’ state and drifts into the camp of anarchism (no state needed) or ultra-leftist (jump immediately to socialism).23

The Transitional Program

Historically, the socialist movement moved through three distinct types of unity.24 First, unity around an individual and their detailed set of ideas. Then, around a short statement of principles. Finally, unity around a minimum-maximum program in which the party’s immediate demands connect to a general account of overall direction. The second period had an immense impact on Marx and Engels. Under the influence of the Chartists in England and the Workingmen’s Parties in the United States,25 the two beards assimilated the lesson that the movement can be organized around a short statement of principles centering on the conquest of political power through expanding democracy.

The party needs to be formed around a minimum-maximum program that, at its core, presents the conquest of power in a democratic republic as the immediate demand and means by which to begin working towards a more intensive and expansive freedom. As Marx explained, “…the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy” and achieve “political supremacy.”26 Seizing state power is not socialism but provides the means to begin working in that direction. Only from this position can the working class begin to wrest, by degree, all property from minoritarian control. The aim is to “slowly extend the socialized part of the economy so as to finally replace the market and the law of value with conscious planning and production for human need. Socialism will thereby transform the commodity back into a product and make labor directly social.”27

The disappearing demand for a democratic republic is part of the larger story of the disappearing minimum-maximum program and its replacement by the transitional program, or, more accurately, one of its three inevitable deformations. Trotsky’s Our Political Tasks can be read as an early attempt to theorize a bridge between the minimum and maximum demands.28 At the same time, a conception of the minimum program as only a better form of capitalism and not a decisive break with the bourgeois state proliferated. Karl Kautsky exemplifies this transition. In 1905 Kautsky drew direct parallels between the democratic republic and the Paris Commune.29 But that position didn’t last, and under his watch, “the ideas of the democratic republic – in the hands of Marx and Engels the immediate alternative to this state – [was turned] into a synonym for the rule of law constitutionalism.”30 Here was the original sin that Trotsky would later adopt. 

By 1919, everything needed clarification.31 The minimum demands had been turned into bourgeois reformism that left the state intact and superseded by the maximum demands. The maximum demands were likewise distorted into a guide for the immediate seizure of power and mass nationalization. Attempts to find a middle ground between the minimum and maximum demands (now substantially degraded) continued throughout the 1920s. However, the damage had been done, and arguments took place on distorted foundations. The newly-named “Communists” shuffled from opportunism to ultra-leftism and back again until the Second World War. Notably, “Trotskyism” is primarily the theory of the first four congresses of the Third International (including the idea of transitional demands) plus a political revolution in Russia.32

Two years before his murder, Trotsky wrote his Transitional Program to provide strategic orientation for building mass parties under the banner of the 4th International. The work was the product of a volatile period in which he prophesied war would topple Stalin and have international repercussions benefiting the working class. In a period of heightened class conflict, otherwise, reformist demands would have revolutionary connotations.

The transitional demands failed to catch on. Trotsky was murdered before he could revise the program and his followers were left politically rudderless. Still, the transitional program is worth exploring if only because various detractors of the minimum-maximum program and the democratic republic cite its supposed superiority. De Groot doesn’t mention a transitional program in his letter. Still, his statement that our priorities lie in using our “resources” in the labor movement to “increase our political power” and “ultimately use the strike weapon to come into confrontation with the capitalist class as a whole,” along with his dismissal of the primary minimum demand, is proof enough. 

The problem with transitional demands, and thereby any attempt at a transitional program, is that they are what Bukharin called them in 1924: a list of tactics to connect with the masses that don’t meet the criteria for a party program.33 Tactics don’t offer a clear political alternative to the bourgeois republic or provide a basis for long-term unity. The transitional programs of today lack a political anchor, instead opting to trust that the working class will spontaneously develop political consciousness and the class point of view, grow into councils, and understand what form the workers’ state must take. 

The transitional program, because it’s not really a program, is one of three things: a “reformist banality”34 in which transitional demands become whatever is currently popular (or perceived to be popular) with the masses, an excuse for the absence of a program, in which case the thought of an individual (Tony Cliff, David North, Bob Avakian, Jack Barnes, etc.) becomes the substitute program; or a “license for Bakuninism” in which the task is to jump immediately to socialism through some sort of mass-strike. These positions are Marxism in name only and lead us to a dead end. Mass parties can be built around the short, concise, political points of a minimum-maximum program; they cannot be built around transition demands which serve more as campaign points than anything else. 

Trotsky and the Democratic Republic

Trotsky stands out in the pantheon of Marxist social democrats for having little to say about the democratic republic for much of his political career. The reason for his differences with Lenin on the centrality of the demand before 1917 is a mystery to me, but Lars Lih’s description of Trotsky’s political tactics before joining the Bolsheviks may provide a clue.35

After the 1903 congress, Trotsky and Pavel Akselrod set out to counter Lenin and prove that the Mensheviks could chart a new path forward for the RSDLP. Fighting for democratic freedoms was in the interest of the workers, but it wasn’t in their interest alone. Russian social democracy needed a mission suited for a “class party,” something that made it stand out as a party of the working class and not Russian society as a whole. Russian social democracy needed to become a “genuine class party.”

The class element, Akselrod said, could be emphasized through “campaignism.” In Our Political Tasks, Trotsky described the tactic using a scenario in which workers made demands on the bourgeois Tsarist opposition. If the bourgeoisie met the demands, the workers would see themselves as the vanguard of the democratic revolution. If they rejected the demands, workers would witness the timidity of the bourgeois opposition. 

Instead of the old practice of using articles to speak to the proletariat, campaignism would “represent a decisive forward step in social-democratic tactics” by teaching through “actions” and “deeds.” Under Bolshevik leadership, the party substituted words for actions by focusing on writing. Under Menshevik leadership, the party would prioritize actions that put the workers in opposition to other classes. Lih draws a parallel between the Menshevik’s downplaying of the written word in favor of agitation, and the charges of “writerism” and unnecessary “educational priority” leveled against Iskra by the obscure L. Nadezhdin.36

True, said the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks did organize actions. But those actions were “aimed at overthrowing the tsar in concert with other classes, not at preparing the workers to introduce socialism in opposition to other classes.” The party, explained Akselrod and Trotsky, needed to define itself along class interests. It needed to set the goal of working-class dictatorship in its crosshairs and not confuse the issue by focusing on the anti-Tsarist revolution alone. 

Interestingly, De Groot’s dismissal of theory and written words (the title of his letter – Words Won’t Slay the Hydra of Capitalism – being a case in point) and his comments on class (“petty-bourgeois revisionism,” “a middle-class aversion”) mirror Trotksy’s dismissal of Iskra and his concern to distinguish proletarian activity from that of other classes. Of course, neither De Groot nor Trotsky renounce words as such (De Groot took the time to respond to me, and Trotsky’s collected works span 14 volumes). What they both reject – or have little time for – is spilling ink over the democratic republic and fighting the Constitution. Perhaps the demand for a democratic republic wasn’t “revolutionary” or “working class” enough for Trotsky. Maybe it didn’t seem to do anything (I’m reminded of De Groot’s assertion that “The only limiting factor is our own commitment.”) It’s capitalism or socialism and little if anything in between. 

But here’s the interesting part. In 1934, with workers’ councils nowhere to be found, Trotsky (perhaps reluctantly) called for a democratic republic in France. Echoing Kautsky’s earlier critique of the Third Republic,37 Trotsky called for the abolition of the Senate and Executive and creation of a single assembly combining legislative and executive functions. “This is the only measure,” Trotsky explained, “that would lead the masses forward instead of pushing them backward. A more generous democracy would facilitate the struggle for workers’ power.”38 The French working class would “draw inspiration from the ideas and methods not of the Third Republic but of the Convention of 1793.”39 This Trotsky is worth remembering today – the one that took a clear position on the French Constitution and the democratic republic.

As for Terrorism and Communism, plenty of Trotskyists, including Ernest Mandel, reject his text.40 I can think of no worse book to read if one wants to understand the essence of Marxism and its radical democratic core. Extreme caution should be taken regarding the tendency to make virtues out of necessities, and the turmoil of revolution was and will always be a period of extreme necessity. As Luxemburg noted, “Nothing can be farther from their thoughts than to believe that all the things they have done or left undone under the conditions of bitter compulsion and necessity in the midst of the roaring whirlpool of events, should be regarded by the International as a shining example of socialist polity toward which only uncritical admiration and zealous imitation are in order.”41 If there’s one thing to learn from a study of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War, it’s the importance of planning for the worst possible outcome. 

Furthermore, Trotsky’s prediction that “The British working class … is approaching that stage of its struggle before which the most heroic pages of Chartism will fade, just as the Paris Commune will grow pale before the coming victorious revolt of the French proletariat”42 did not come to pass. Far from fading, the radical republican core of Chartism and the Paris Commune remains eminently relevant. 

Audience 

Comrade De Groot says no socialist he knows talks favorably of the Constitution. Presumably, this personal anecdote is meant to dismiss the Constitution as a meaningful point of discussion. Rain is wet, the sun is hot, and socialists have more important things to discuss. I take issue with this presumption for three reasons. First, it’s not true that socialists universally oppose the Constitution. Second, a lack of pleasantries towards the Constitution isn’t the same as centering the document in our crosshairs as a target of critique. Most socialists dismiss the Consitution as irrelevant – a massive mistake and missed opportunity. Third, it’s wrong to assume we are only interested in what other socialists think about the Constitution. I’ll discuss each point in order. 

The Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) and Communist Party USA (CPUSA) are two contemporary examples of socialist organizations with political lines defending the Constitution. The SWP is insignificant and irrelevant. The CPUSA is less so, given reports of a recent increase in membership. Their relationship with the Constitution is elaborated in their tome of a program.43 They, too, focus on the Bill of Rights as a progressive appendage to the Constitution and, in so doing, abscond from any critique of the foundation. The Constitution is a fact of nature. It stands like Ozymendias’ stone pedestal: kings and kingdoms come and go, but the colossal wreck remains. The Party’s faith in the inalterability of the founding document is demonstrated in their claim that “A Socialist Bill of Rights, enshrined in amendments to the U.S. Constitution, will guarantee all the freedoms we have won over centuries of struggle.”44

The CPUSA demands democratic reforms, such as “liberty and equality; free quality health care and education; living-wage jobs and decent housing; and a healthy environment.”45 These reforms are not bad in and of themselves. But in making democratic demands while avoiding a critique of the entire undemocratic edifice, the Party committed the same mistake as the Lassalians/Erfurtians in 1875 and the SPD in 1892: namely, sowing illusions in the representative capabilities of a vociferously undemocratic regime. Marx didn’t beat around the bush in his Critique of the Gotha Program: the Prussian empire was nothing but a “police guarded military despotism,” and to demand the legal realization of “things which have meaning only in a democratic republic” from a police state amounted to “subterfuge, neither honest nor decent.”46 Nor did Engels hesitate in his Critique of the Erfurt Program: while the SPD’s new program contained fewer illusions in the existing state than its predecessor, it still fundamentally misunderstood the German Reich and its unwillingness to realize democratic change without a revolutionary rupture.47 The CPUSA likewise sows illusions by suggesting that critical democratic changes can be recognized within the confines of the existing Constitution.

While some socialists support the Constitution, most don’t. But a lack of pleasantries isn’t the same as centering the document in our crosshairs as a target of agitation, nor does it imply a genuine understanding of what must take its place. Most are dismissive, taking the “structural reductionist” position described by E.P. Thompson. These critics think that “the rule of law is only another mask for the rule of a class” and that “[t]he revolutionary can have no interest in law, unless as a phenomenon of ruling-class power and hypocrisy; it should be his aim simply to overthrow it.”48

Similar to the reductionist position is what I’ll call the Zinn position, in which the Constitution is seen as essentially insignificant compared to the power of the masses. The iconic historian believed the document “pretends to set limits on governmental powers, when, in fact, those limits are easily ignored” and that “like other historical documents, the Constitution is of minor importance compared with the actions that citizens take, especially when those actions become social movements.”49

Just as it’s a mistake to see the state as only a body of armed men, so too is it a mistake to see the Constitution as only a set of laws. Far from being subordinate to the power of social movements, as Zinn claims, the Constitution renders political cohesion as tricky as possible. As planned, the document created an arena that divides us into “so many sub-units and sub-sub-units that political movements … wind up dashing themselves upon the rocks.”50 No political movement in the United States stands outside the purview of the Constitution. There is no way of organizing for political power that can avoid pushing up against the existing state. And every good fighter knows the importance of understanding the enemy. 

The majority of socialists take a reductionist stand towards the Constitution. In so doing, they renege on their duty to educate the working class on all elements of bourgeois society and miss increasingly frequent opportunities to “make evident the disintegration of bourgeois society”51 and propose the political alternative. 

De Groot errors in dismissing the Constitution and then attempts to cover his tracks by pretending the theoretical debate is settled, writing that “the question is not whether we need a new constitution (and a new social order), the question is how do we get there.” Enough thinking; time to act. 

The Constitution has been a political blind spot for the left for far too long. If De Groot’s position indicates the left’s current understanding of the Constitution and the democratic republic, then much more thinking and debate should be had. Lenin could write about widespread agreement on the democratic republic.52 Today, we can’t say the same. 

The debate shouldn’t be confined to the left. For most workers in the United States, that question is whether we need a new Constitution and a new social order. De Groot may have formed an opinion, but millions of people in this country, including thousands of socialists, don’t know what a new social order would look like because they, too, cannot think outside the confines of the political framework created by the Constitution.

Our job is to help them concretize the future. The left’s ability to present a political alternative to the constitutional regime is crucial when distrust in our political system is low. People are looking for answers, and if we aren’t combatting the cult of the Constitution and the illusion of democracy, then the bourgeoisie will control the narrative.

A Constituent Assembly

De Groot wrote that “others have pointed to calling for a constitutional convention as their organizing strategy. And they call this Marxism.” The United States doesn’t need a constitutional convention, or at least, it’s unrealistic. To rewrite the Constitution on its terms is, by design, essentially impossible. 

The United States does need a constituent assembly, in which the entire population, based on one person, one vote, sends representatives to draft a new Constitution to be presented to the population for ratification. Ideally, socialists would be organized into a political party to campaign for, and win, representation in that assembly. As Ben Grove53 points out, socialists would be the most vociferous advocates of democracy at this hypothetical convention. The contention is that democracy leads to socialism. I recommend Grove’s article, not least for its ability to free our minds from the blinders of October Redux. 

Lenin demanded a constituent assembly every year of his political life until 1917. However, the Bolsheviks were correct to dissolve the long-awaited assembly in November. By the time the Provisional Government had been deposed and the assembly could finally be called, the people’s will had changed. It was now, in fact, an undemocratic body because the party lists were obsolete and there was no way to deprive the now substantially less popular Right Socialist Revolutionaries and Menshevik-defencists of their seats.54 The Bolsheviks, explained Luxemburg, “did not want to entrust, nor should they have entrusted, the fate of the revolution to an assemblage which reflected the Kerenskyan Russian of yesterday, of the period of vacillations and coalition with the bourgeoisie.”55

Ultimately, my concern is not what did or didn’t happen at high points of revolutionary fervor but the inability of much of the left to read its history critically. That, that how making a critical observation is interpreted as an attack. Let’s leave all that sectarian nonsense behind. So be it if a few sacred idols get smashed along the way. The world shook when the Winter Palace was stormed and then kept on spinning the same way it had been and the same way it always will. 

Conclusion 

Colin Barker writes in Revolutionary Rehearsals, a staple in the now-defunct International Socialist Organization, that “At socialism’s heart is the aspiration to workers’ control of production.”56 Centuries worth of revolutionaries must be rolling over in their graves. No one, least of all Lenin, died for this. 

At socialism’s heart is the desire for freedom from all manifestations of domination. An anonymous Russian worker in 1900 captured this narrative of universal liberation:

Our historic position as the worker class is such that at the same time that we are working to achieve our own well-being, we are also fulfilling work for society. We are the last class. After us there is no one. The domination of the worker class is universal domination or, better, universal equality of rights, and we should strive to achieve this: only then can we say that we have not lived in vain, and our children will affirm this.57   

Yet all too often, socialism and Marxism are reduced to a crude economism that limits the movement’s scope, vision, and ability to speak to the masses. 

We need unity based on a political project for democracy, not around ephemeral movements, union struggles, opposition to the Democratic Party, or “socialism” and “anti-capitalism.” Millions will gather around the banner of democracy because millions understand that our political system is a sham. The power of the oligarchic constitutional system runs deep, and there’s a lot of work to do. But with each passing day, the bourgeoisie provides us with ample opportunities to expose its undemocratic inclinations. People are asking themselves what Knights of Labor leader Terrence Powderly wondered aloud while observing the maturation of wage labor at the end of the 19th century: “Are we the free people we imagine we are?”58 Those with nothing to say about the Constitution and democratic republic, who think we already live in a democracy, or who keep their opinions to themselves, will be forced to change their tune in the years ahead.

Take the infamous Cop City. In Atlanta, thousands of people from different backgrounds are coming together because of political injustice in their community. They are learning firsthand – if they didn’t know already – that freedom exists only for the police who murdered Manuel Terán. They are learning that the political system is structured to keep them voiceless and that a certain political party with democracy in its name is complicit. Their actions of defiance and opposition to domination are an inspiration and lesson for the rest of the country. Collect the names of the killed and wounded: “Honor their memory and prepare for a new and decisive struggle against the police government for the people’s liberty!”59

“Fight the Constitution, demand a democratic republic” is the perfect slogan for times like these. We dismiss the power of words at our peril.

1. Lih, Lars T. Lenin Rediscovered: What Is To Be Done? in Context. Chicago; Haymarket Book, 2006. P. 747.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Schaeffer, Gil. “On the Class Point of View and the Rule of Law.” https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/05/on-the-class-point-of-the-view-and-the-rule-of-law/

5. Luxemburg, Rosa. “The Dreyfus Affair and the Millerand Case.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1899/11/dreyfus-affair.htm

6. Jaurès, Jules. “The Socialist Interest.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/jaures/1898/socialist-interest.htm

7. Luxemburg, Rosa. “The Dreyfus Affair and the Millerand Case.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1899/11/dreyfus-affair.htm

8. Luxemburg, Rosa. “The Socialist Crisis in France.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1901/socialist-crisis-france/ch01.htm

9. Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. “Programme of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party.” https://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/rsdlp/1903/program.htm

10. August Nimtz. The Ballot, the Streets – Or Both? Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2014. p. 46.

11. Marx. Karl. “Marx to Friedrich Bolte in New York.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/letters/71_11_23.htm

12. Quoted by Luxemburg in “Theory and Practice.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1910/theory-practice/ch01.htm

13. Parkinson, Donald. “Colonialism and Anti-Colonialism in the Second International.” https://cosmonaut.blog/2020/04/18/colonialism-and-anti-colonialism-in-the-second-international/

14. Carl Schorscke’s “German Social Democracy, 1905-17” provides a useful summary of the suffrage debates. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674351257

15. Luxemburg, Rosa. “Theory and Practice.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1910/theory-practice/ch01.htm

16. Ibid.

17. Harding, Neil. Lenin’s Political Thought v2. London; The Macmillan Press, 1983. pp. 16-71.

18. Kautsky and Lenin understood that the future revolution would be unique; neither a bourgeois (the workers’ world lead) nor a socialist (in coalition with the peasants) revolution in the traditional sense. See “The Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution and Its Prospects” (1906), Karl Kautsky.

19. Lenin, V.I. “The State and Revolution.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch06.htm#s3

20. Doud, Laura. Inside Lenin’s Government. London; Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Macnair, Mike. “Revolution and Reforms.” https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1267/revolution-and-reforms/

24. Macnair, Mike. “Program: Lessons of Erfurt.” https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/976/programme-lessons-of-erfurt/

25. Monahan, Sean (2021). The American Workingmen’s Parties, Universal Suffrage, and Marx’s Democratic Communism. Modern Intellectual History 18 (2): 379-402.

26. Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

27. The Communist Party of Great Britain – Provisional Central Committee. “Draft Programme.” p. 34 https://communistparty.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Draft-Programme-of-the-CPGB-2021.pdf

28. Macnair, Mike. “The Transitional Program,” Youtube, September 22, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcZ7TmJQ0SU.

29. Lewis, Ben. “Kautsky: From Erfurt to Charlottenburg.” This article explains the textual evidence for Kuatsky’s changing position on the meaning of a democratic republic between 1905 and 1918. https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/889/kautsky-from-erfurt-to-charlottenburg/

30. Macnair, Mike. Revolutionary Strategy. London; November Publishing, 2008. p. 159.

31. Macnair, Mike. “The Transitional Program,” Youtube, September 22, 2021. 29:00-35:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcZ7TmJQ0SU.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid. 00:00-05:00

35. The rest of this section draws from Lih (2006) pp. 509-16.

36. Ibid. p. 361.

37. Lewis, Ben. Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2020

38. Trotsky, Leon. “A Program for France.” Point 16. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1934/06/paf.htm

39. Ibid.

40. Post, Charles. “Ernest Mandel and the Marxian Theory of Bureaucracy.” https://www.ernestmandel.org/en/aboutlife/txt/charlespost.htm

41. Luxemburg, Rosa. “The Russian Revolution.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch01.htm

42. Trotsky, Leon. “Terrorism and Communism.” Introduction. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/intro.htm

43. Luke Pickrell and Myra Janis. “Socialism with American Characteristics. https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/03/socialism-with-american-characteristics/

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Marx, Karl. “Critique of the Gotha Program.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/

47. Engels, Friedrich. “Critique of the Erfurt Program.” https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm

48. Quoted in Daniel Lazare’s “US Constitution: Hiding in Plain Sight.” https://cosmonautmag.com/2020/09/us-constitution-hiding-in-plain-sight/

49. Zinn, Howard. https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS21/articles/zinn.htm

50. Lazare, Daniel. “US Constitution: Hiding in Plain Sight.” https://cosmonautmag.com/2020/09/us-constitution-hiding-in-plain-sight/

51. Luxemburg, Rosa. “The Dreyfus Affair and the Millerand Case.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1899/11/dreyfus-affair.htm

52. Lenin, V.I. “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Constitution.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/index.htm

53. Grove, Ben. “Fight the Constitution! Demand a New Republic!” https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/03/fight-the-constitution-demand-a-new-republic/

54. Macnair, Mike. “Revolution and Reforms.” https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1267/revolution-and-reforms/

55. Luxemburg, Rosa. “The Russian Revolution.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch01.htm

56. Barker, Colin, editor. Revolutionary Rehearsals. Chicago; Haymarket Books. 1987. p. 230.

57. Lih, Lars (2006). p. 250.

58. Gourevitch, Alex. From Slavery to Cooperative Commonwealth. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2014. p. 438.

59. Lenin, V.I. “Another Massacre.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/may/07.htm