Ashton Rome analyzes the Biden administration through the lens of Gramsci and his category of passive revolution.
Though it appears that Biden has pulled off a revival of centrism amid an ‘organic crisis’, his honeymoon period will likely be short-lived as there is a crisis of legitimacy of the ideas, institutions, and coalitions that undergird U.S. capitalism as well as a marked lack of independent, organized working class strength. During moments of organic crisis like this one, the ruling class may attempt what Gramsci called a ‘passive revolution’ – implementing symbolic or limited change from above without fundamentally transforming social relations – to restore its hegemony and stave off challenges to its position within society. Key parts of this process include the co-optation of demands from below, the forming of new political coalitions, paying lip service to the goals of leading figures of the underclasses, all done while keeping the underclasses in a subordinate position. Passive revolutions have been successfully implemented a number of times throughout U.S. history. Learning to recognize the strategy’s features will help the left determine a strategy of our own to circumvent it and independently build our forces.
For some figures and groups on the political left, Biden’s victory and the Democrats’ tenuous control of both houses provide the socialist movement with unique opportunities. AOC at a recent virtual town hall stated that “the Biden administration and President Biden have definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had.” According to journalist Zeeshan Aleem, socialists could ride into office on the coattails of Biden and the anti-Trump mood and be positioned to enact “policies that protect the poor and communities of color.” There’s a general feeling amongst some on the left that the Biden administration has presented us with an “Overton Window”– and that reforms like a $15 an hour federal minimum wage, Medicare-for-All, Abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other popular progressive reforms have a chance to be wholly or partially enacted. Biden’s executive orders highlight to some that even though Biden is a moderate, he represents a step in the right (or rather left) direction.
Others who favor breaking from the Democratic Party believe that there is an ongoing “civil war” in the Party between its insurgent progressive wing and corporate establishment, which may grow more profound in the coming period. Since the Democrats hold the Presidency and both Houses and have made significant gains in local legislatures, the Party will have little excuse in the eyes of their social movement allies and working-class base not to implement a progressive agenda. If/when the Biden administration fails to deliver, so the argument goes, they will face their wrath. Socialists with this perspective typically follow an ‘inside-outside strategy’ – supporting and running progressives like the Squad (the inside) and independent progressives and building social movements (the outside) to heighten the contradictions within the Party. Whether this happens or not depends on how much the Democratic Party is able to co-opt the progressive wing of the Party.
But these optimistic scenarios are simplistic – all too similar to previous certainties about the collapse of capitalism and ignore the lessons of the history of leftists’ failed efforts to transform the Democratic Party. When the left has failed to maintain its political independence it has resorted to operating within coalitions with bourgeois parties or attempting to build the left within bourgeois parties themselves. This has verifiably and constantly led to outcomes where the left have had to forswear or abandon working-class militancy and independent political organization in order to work within established Party structures and with organizations that are aligned with the Party. It had to moderate its politics and political aims to work with and within bourgeoisie parties. History does not give any evidence that working within or supporting Democrats offers any real concessions to working-class power or leads to a boon for independent politics. On the contrary, all major concessions have come as a result of militant mass movements on the streets – outside the Democratic Party.
Within the socialist tradition, optimism about the revolutionary potential of periods of crisis was embodied in the 1st through 3rd Internationals. All saw socialist revolution as the inevitable consequence of capitalism’s economic structure and the unfolding of contradictions at the heart of the system. The unfolding of these contradictions would result in left political consciousness leading to socialist political power. Though decades of capitalist crisis and revival since the early 20th century have tempered these beliefs, they still exist for some on the left who fail to consider how even during periods of organic crisis, the two-party system and political hegemony of the bourgeoisie can remain stable and the ruling class can resist or prevent opposition from forming.
During this current period of organic crisis, the key challenge for the Biden Administration and the ruling elite is to address parts of the crisis that constrain capital’s ability to reap profit while containing the development of counter-hegemonic challenges from below. Whether cyclical or organic, crises have a resetting characteristic to them, often spurring innovation and reducing the tendency towards overaccumulation and leading to the development of more ‘appropriate’ ruling coalitions and forms of social control and governance. Key to rebuilding hegemony during this period is absorbing individual figures of the social movements or whole opposition parties or organizations into governance as well as the movement’s discourse and political aspirations. Because organic crises are crises that occur at all levels of society – economic, social, political, and ideological – they demand the construction of new practices, coalitions and ‘norms.’
Conditions for the Biden Honeymoon
The opening for Biden to enter office is linked to the failure of the ruling class to stem the effects of the 2007/8 and the anger at the Trump presidency. The collapse and bankruptcy of the neoliberal political center has increased the political polarization and attractiveness of ideas of socialism and authoritarian populism. The failure of the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, and anger over the far right that he whipped up have caused a large degree of skepticism to the authoritarian right populism he represented. Without a credible left political alternative and for fear of a second term of Trump, a middle ground alternative looked attractive since the 2020 election. This has led to a movement to the center in the sense that Biden and the establishment are still in power in the party and have the consent of the left in the party. Due to the crisis, Biden can not govern as a consensus-based neoliberal like Obama.
This is because Biden also has to contend with a progressive wing of the Democratic Party which was elected to push the Party to the left – which in actual terms would mean confronting the ruling class funders of the party and their most trusted representatives like Senator Chuck Schumer and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. Because the neoliberal politics that Biden has represented throughout his political career lacks legitimacy, Biden needs the progressive wing of the party to make it appear as if his compromise politics represents an alternative to the status quo. Though Obama is still popular, the consensus politics of his age is not. Biden and the Progressive wing of the Party are in a way a ‘Caesarist’ type of compromise (moderate-conservative) politics. They are a part of a heroic movement from above seeking to build consent during the crisis period using a combination of concessions and compromise from above.
The ruling class sees Biden as the last hope for neoliberalism precisely because of his decades-long loyal service to capital and because of the support he has from the leadership of labor and social movements and intellectuals from the working class. Those leaders will attempt to negotiate bargains with the administration and capitalist class and present them as reforms and discipline their constituencies to stay within the constraints imposed by the crisis. In addition, Biden and the capitalist class have an army of intellectuals to promulgate his ideas within civil society.
So far they have been successful at ‘selling’ Biden to the U.S. working class. David Axelrod, political consultant and Senior Strategist for Obama’s 2012 campaign, stated that Biden’s “tone and tenure reassure moderates and his agenda thrills progressives.” The poll numbers seem to reflect this. A NBC poll found that 44% of registered voters saw Biden as “very” or “somewhat” liberal, while 42 percent see him as “moderate.” On April 27th, Biden’s approval rating was approximately 56% according to Gallup, with 96% approval amongst Democrats and only 11% among Republicans. This represents an 85 point gap between registered Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on Biden. The ‘Biden honeymoon’ has so far only existed for the ‘left’. Despite controversial views on immigration detention and recent support of Israel there has been little grass-roots organizing against his agenda.
Biden, like Trump, has relied on theatrics to excite his base – signing 62 as of April 23rd, 40 within his first 100 days and revoked 39 executive orders. These acts seemingly demonstrate that Biden is getting things done for the underclasses. Seemingly following the same script, some socialists have been claiming since the passage of the Covid stimulus and introduction of a $2.25 trillion infrastructure proposal (already compromised down to $1.7 trillion to find “common-ground” with Republicans), that Biden represents a long-awaited break from neoliberal capitalist orthodoxy and even a return to Keynesianism.
The intellectuals affiliated with the Democratic Party and elected members of the Party can justify and minimize Biden’s decision for not pushing for campaign promises like a $15 an hour federal minimum wage et al. by citing the intransigence of Senator Joe Manchin and other conservative Democrats. The ‘left’ of the Party has recently also pushed for ‘bold’ legislation that they know will not likely pass like DC statehood and H.R.842 – Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021. These theatrics are fundamentally all geared to make the hollow case that the Democrat Party is pushing for a bold working class agenda and intend to prevent a left electoral alternative outside the two-party system.
The Role of Civil Society
For Gramsci, civil society is composed of institutions like media, political parties, think tanks, etc that serve to contribute to the formation of social and political consciousness as opposed to the state institutions like the military, police, courts, etc that rule primarily by force and coercion. Intellectuals contribute to the maintenance of hegemony by promulgating the perspective, ideology, and interests of the ruling class throughout society while the state serves to discipline those that don’t consent.
Gramsci distinguished between traditional intellectuals and organic intellectuals. Gramsci described traditional intellectuals (for example teachers, lawyers, state bureaucrats) who perform functions independent of the immediate political and economic needs of the capitalist class, while the organic intellectuals play an explicitly political role – promulgating the ideas of a given class within society to establish consent. They establish consent mainly by influencing culture, morality, ideology, political practices, etc. These intellectuals are tied organically to the economic and political needs of the dominant class by the fact they are from that class and tend to represent their interests.
For Gramsci, bourgeois organic intellectuals, (for example thinkers, commentators, editors, writers, broadcasters) utilize their positions to convince sections of the ruling class and dominated classes that the interests of the ruling capitalist class are in their interest. Gramsci saw working-class organic intellectuals as the revolutionaries from the working class who serve a counter-hegemonic role. Working-class organic intellectuals pose a threat to the system that the ruling class seeks to neutralize. That can be done by corruption and incorporating them into institutions that reinforce the status quo. If they can’t be co-opted they can face persecution, imprisonment, or death, such as Gramsci himself.
Especially during times of crisis maintaining hegemony is difficult for the bourgeoisie. It’s not enough for the dominant class to win and hold control over the state and resources in society, what Gramsci called the ‘war of maneuver’, but also to legitimize its control in the eyes of the dominated classes, ‘the war of position’. As part of the legitimation, the ruling class has to at times make concessions. For example, though neoliberalism and the coercive regime that it requires has lost much of its support and has been facing challenges by the new black freedom movement, the ruling class can bring in elements of the movement into its coalition, and or take up its political discourse in hopes of ending challenges that the movement brings. The goal of the ruling class isn’t to further the aims of the movement but to use newly deployed and arranged political forms of representation to build active consent to restore its hegemony.
Because of the trust that ordinary people have in public institutions, some nominally reformist nonprofits, union leaders, and liberal politicians, civil society is an essential part of the ruling class strategy for keeping power while its hegemony is in tatters. They ‘sell’ or legitimize the passive revolution despite its inability to fundamentally alleviate the misery experienced by the dominated classes. Fortunately for Biden and the ruling class, the progressive Democrats in office and intellectuals do not rely on building a mass party movement and direct action to turn a pleading proletariat into a fighting proletariat.
Gramsci used the term trasformismo—“transformism”—to describe the process where the subaltern’s (actual or potential) leadership is incorporated into the restoration process to prevent the formation of a counter-hegemonic movement. This is the moment when the political opposition is incorporated individually or as a group into a compromise political solution – a moderate coalition. It is the restoration of the old through the appearance of constructing something new. These often called “progressives that get things done” occupy a political role where they are meant to compromise with the establishment (and give it legitimacy) instead of radicalizing the underclasses for a fundamental social transformation. The chief contradiction of the passive revolution is that it unifies reform and restoration in the interest of the already dominating class. It is as the old adage says “the more things change, the more things stay the same.”
This process occurs while the underclass is kept in a subordinate position and as the ruling elite attempts to forge a resolution without popular challenges from below. Therefore, a passive revolution is a restoration of class power with new forms of governance and representation done in a more or less ‘peaceful’ way. Significantly, in the context of today, passive revolutions recognize that the subaltern does not have the organization and leadership to resolve the crisis on the basis of a transformation of the system. It is mainly preventative in effect.
Furthermore, nationalism (with a ‘woke’ redemptive script) is essential in this period because it allows the ruling class to identify its own interests as the interests of the whole and depoliticize questions of economic and political aims. It can use the symbolism, discourse, and vision of subaltern movements like #metoo and #blacklivesmatter to win them to the ruling class’s restorative process. Organic intellectuals can help popularize these narratives. The seeming ‘popular frontism’ against Trump, fascism, and the far right is an example of this. The anti-fascism of Biden consists of forces nominally against Trump – from George W. Bush-era establishment Republicans to social democratic politicians, tasked with ‘restoring American values.’ Most importantly, its discourse leaves untouched questions of the conditions that brought Trumpism in the first place. Or when questions do come up about those conditions, organic intellectuals argue that they are meant for a later day – after the right is defeated.
A History of Passive Revolutions in the U.S.
The ruling class has responded to various crises through passive revolutions: the Great Depression, the end of the Golden Age of Capitalism, and the 2007/8 crisis. In response to the Great Depression, the existence of the Soviet Union, and the organizing efforts by socialist and communist activists, FDR and a section of the ruling class attempted a ‘revolution from above.’ The Democratic Party opened its ranks and built what came to be known as the “New Deal Coalition” – a coalition primarily of northern and midwestern industrial workers and their unions and white southern farmers. As the Democratic Party took up some of the demands from the left, labor dramatically increased donations to them and bolstered affinity to the Party. This ended up curtailing a serious attempt to push forward the organization of the working class by building a labor party like those that were developing in Europe. For example, FDR took up demands to regulate child labor, and grant pension benefits and legal union rights from the Socialist and Progressive Party platforms. He also broke to a limited extent the nativism and racism to construct a broad coalition. The result were new practices in management like Fordism, welfare systems, and a more regulated capitalism.
This passive revolution helped bring about the ‘Golden Era of Capitalism’ from 1945 to the early 1970s until its legitimacy was challenged significantly by the war in Vietnam, youth radicalism, and Black Power movements. These movements, which linked themselves to the national liberation movements in the peripheries, helped discredit U.S. capitalism and shift the balance of forces to the left during the late 1960s and early 70s. The U.S. ruling class initiated a two-part response: the stick of COINTELPRO, the War on Drugs, resulting in mass incarceration and the carrot of black capitalism, integralist policies, economic opportunity to youths in general, and appeasement to the aspiration of the black middle class of the movement in particular.
The latter resulted in more “black faces in high places” and funding for nonprofits, who provided social services that the state once did while also capturing political opposition to neoliberalism. The spending contained in the Great Society programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson (later expanded under Nixon) was a means to counter Black political militancy and move Black Power politics into more official and acceptable channels. The liberal, middle-class elements of the movement popularized a framework that linked demographic representation in media, television, and politics with social justice and political parity. Systemic critiques like socialism that sought to address class, race, and gender inequality were replaced by bourgeois politics and diversity practices.
As Mario Candeias demonstrated in “Organic Crisis and Capitalist Transformation,” the transition to neoliberalism included the integration of trade unions and their political representatives into the project while keeping the subaltern in a subordinate position: “The first transnational wave of the neoliberal transformations weakened the power of workers, trade unions, social movements, and Social Democracy; the second wave integrated their representatives into a social-democratic-neoliberal power bloc…; the third wave was an authoritarian turn, both with regard to international and to internal relations. The consensus faded away, but yet there is no visible alternative.”
When social democracy and the Labour Party were brought into government it didn’t mobilize the masses or generate a shift in wealth and power to the subaltern classes. It instead acted in a mediator and disciplinary role – incorporating representatives of the working class into negotiations and making sure that demands from below did not disrupt other stakeholders – industrialists, finance capital, etc. Their failure to transform conditions and the contradiction of them serving as the representatives of the state and of the working class created the basis for a new power bloc around Thatcherism. Stuart Hall in his brilliant article “The Great Moving Right Show” explained how the working-class anger at the economic crisis of the 1970s and the failure of the ‘socialist’ Labour Party to transform the conditions and instead work within the crisis’s political and ideological boundaries provided the backlash necessary for the rise of Thatcherism and a neoliberal ‘common sense’.
The 2007/8 Crisis, the second crisis of the 21st Century, brought with it a period of polarization and radicalization through which we are still living. It also brought an end to a decades-long passive revolution that utilized politics of representation and funding for nonprofits to quell social movements. The radicalization of this crisis period was expressed in Occupy and the Black Lives Matter movement of which the latter included wings that saw the link between neoliberalism and the prison industrial complex. Some saw the need for prison abolition, which was a demand given a wider hearing during the subsequent BLM wave last summer.
As Chris Harris and William Robinson showed in “Passive Revolution and the Movement against Mass Incarceration”, a section of the black community voted for Obama to help end the economic disenfranchisement and mass incarceration politics pushed during the neoliberal period. The liberal ruling class saw in Obama an opportunity to contain the popular anger at the political establishment after the economic crisis and someone who could restore faith in neoliberalism and U.S. hegemony abroad. This was important, as in Europe the anti-austerity protests were leading to crises of representation that eventually led to the creation of political parties like SYRIZA and Podemos. When challenges to his neoliberal politics emerged, like those from BLM, he opened the ranks of the Party to the movement as well as consenting to corporate foundation funding of BLM-associated organizations.
Some Thoughts on a Left Political Strategy
Gramsci’s concept of the passive revolution is important because it shows how opportune conditions for the growth of the forces of revolutionary socialism can come to pass unfulfilled or how leaders of revolutionary movements can be co-opted into the project of restoration of capitalist rule. Passive revolutions and the reforms granted in their course do not just imply a weak ruling hegemony but also a weak subaltern movement.
This is an important starting point for understanding the challenges socialists face today as they attempt to help to rebuild mass organizations and labor unions and help to increase the militancy and combativeness of the working class in order to challenge capitalist rule. Understanding the challenges socialists face, as well as the opportunities and openings they have, is integral to developing a political program, slogans, and a strategy to guide a counter-hegemonic movement from its current consciousness, militancy, and levels of organization to the left’s ultimate goal and historic vision. In order for counter-hegemonic movements to succeed they need organization, ideology, and action.
Though the left faces favorable circumstances in terms of a crisis of legitimacy, the uptick of class struggle from 2018-20 was short-lived. Though we have seen dramatic increases in the membership of independent political organizations like Democratic Socialist of America (DSA), the electoral successes of left Democrats and the rightward drift of the Republican Party has popularized a lesser-evilism, and the realignment strategy within the Democratic Party while the often touted dirty break strategy remains unclear. This does not mean that leftists outside of DSA should orient away from the organization. After all, DSA is where a lot of the debates about independent politics and socialist strategy are happening on the left. We must acknowledge, however, that there is an ongoing process to co-opt the ‘Squad’ and make DSA a trend within the Democratic Party. The continued leadership and lack of left challenges to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer may suggest that the process is very far along.
It could very well be argued that the weak “Biden Honeymoon” on the political left is being sustained by the reformist leadership and intellectuals. An understanding of the Passive Revolution under Biden shows that we have to rebuild the working class’s political organization and utilize united front style politics to expose ‘organic intellectuals’. The subaltern classes’ ability to successfully challenge capitalist hegemony depends on their ability to develop new political practices that challenge and don’t reproduce capitalist social relations. Institutions like an independent political party united around a democratic program are crucial towards this end since they can help organize and unite the subaltern classes in common struggle.
It is also crucial that socialists orient towards and join the spontaneous protests that will arise during this crisis, but our tasks within them cannot be restricted to merely attending protests and/or cheering them on. It is important that socialists agitate for and build democratic spaces and institutions within them to allow ordinary people to determine their course and goals instead of reformist leaders at the top. This can take the beginning forms of mass strategy sessions and “people’s assemblies” as during the Occupy movement. Socialists can find ways of adding to those debates by showing whether particular political tactics will help win the movement’s goals. Above all, however, the revolutionary potential of independent, mass organization (economically, culturally, but especially politically) towards developing effective solidarity of the whole working class in the many diverse working-class struggles must be emphasized. This can be done by bringing to the movement lessons from historical counter-hegemonic struggles and an assessment of the immediate impacts of tactics.
Challenging bourgeois intellectuals and co-opted working-class intellectuals is crucial because although the passive revolution has temporarily calmed a section of the subaltern classes, many are not won over. Organic crises necessarily involve a de-legitimacy of establishment figures and institutions (crisis of legitimacy). Though this can provide openings for the left it does allow right-wing authoritarian populists like Trump to claim to speak for the interests of the “forgotten” against a “corrupt political establishment”. Socialists have to acknowledge the ongoing threat of the populist right in this period, especially since the conditions that brought Trump and his ilk into prominence still exist.
The George Floyd protests last summer provided an opportunity for the subaltern to grow and learn for the coming period. It is also true for the siege at the Capitol in January, which reminded the masses of the threat posed by the far-right and that racism is still a powerful organizing principle of which the police and other elements of the coercive state have a key role in upholding. The radical wings of the George Floyd inspired protests re-popularized powerful anti-capitalist abolitionist critiques that can help provide the basis for a new ‘common sense’ and unite subaltern classes in common struggle in the coming period. Critiques that see mass incarceration and militarization of policing in neighborhoods and at national borders as a way for the ruling class to handle the increased surplus labor, inequality, and political polarization that neoliberalism has a powerful explanatory and unifying quality.
In the struggle for working-class hegemony, Gramsci’s emphasis on organic bourgeois and working-class intellectuals is not amiss. Indeed, as for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the written and spoken word and terrain of intellectual struggle is for Gramsci clearly no less important in the struggle of the working class than its more immediate battles but must be a part of it. Passive Revolutions occur in moments that are full of potential for the socialist movement to grow and confront the ruling class but go unfulfilled. The ruling class in these moments is able to co-opt the intellectuals and leadership of the subaltern movement, weaken militant resistance and win the consent of sections of the movement through insignificant concessions. While capitalism has proven to be an adaptive and resilient system – and we have to be aware of its successes at countering our movements if we are to be successful – the necessary and vital struggle for working-class political independence is one that will continue to organically emerge from capitalist society and will inevitably continue until its eventual demise.
