I appreciate Steve Bloom and M. Wilbur’s continued engagement with orthodox Marxism’s democratic republicanism and, as I’ve argued and they’ve disputed, its applicability to the United States in the 21st century. As I explained in a recent debate on this topic, the question of what to do about the Constitution is the most important issue facing the left. This letter includes my responses to both authors. While an individual response could be tailored to each person, I see some areas of overlap that warrant one letter.
Wilbur sees a difference between Marx’s invocation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the democratic republic. In all seriousness, maybe Steve can tell M. Wilbur what led him to realize there’s no difference between the two, as stated in his original article. People can change their ideas. Lord knows, at one point I also thought (though not as ardently) that democracy was bourgeois, human rights were bunk, and representative systems were anachronistic. That one holds these ideas is less a commentary on the individual and more a reflection of the power the example of the Bolshevik Revolution has exerted over our thinking for more than a hundred years.
I can only point Wilbur toward all the other articles that Gil Shaeffer and I wrote,1 along with the work of Bruno Leipold,2 and Ben Lewis.3 All necessary references to Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Luxemburg, and Hal Draper are included. If Wilbur and I don’t see eye-to-eye about the meaning of the source material, then I don’t know what to say: maybe we agree to disagree.
A few points in Wilbur’s article can be quickly cleared up beyond disagreements over the source material and the relevance of particular historical events. Wilbur writes that in denouncing the Constitution and its twenty-four-seven illegitimacy, I sound like “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and company.” I’ll tell you what: on the day prominent Democrats start denouncing the Constitution, I’ll turn off my computer and take a week-long vacation. The ball will have started rolling, and seven days on the beach never hurt anyone. The same offer stands if “liberal ideas or movements” ever begin taking up the demand for a democratic constitution. (Also, I suggest this article if Wilbur thinks the Popular Front questioned the Constitution).
Jokes aside, what if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other liberals do start criticizing the Constitution? It might happen sooner than we think. Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky were only a few of the first to express what a growing number of liberals understand: Donald Trump gained power not despite the Constitution but because of it. Democratic policies have majority support, and Democratic candidates garner a majority of Senate votes. Yet, the Constitution ensures disproportionate Republican power. It’s not rocket science: someone in the Democratic Party will put two and two together and say something. Some may do it out of sincere conviction (David Dayen already has), others out of opportunist calculations. But a critique is a critique, and we must prepare to push any critique as far as it will go and then some. Concretely, this means creating ideological unity around democratic republicanism and establishing a media organ focused on disseminating our constitutional perspective.
Any movement for democracy necessarily reflects the political aspirations of the working class. Therefore, the fight for democracy and the struggle of the working class are synonymous. Also, a “liberal” movement that took up the demand for true democracy couldn’t be described as wholly liberal — at least, not in the stilted manifestation liberalism currently presents itself. Real liberals, like Dayen, should support a democratic constitution because that is the only way traditional liberal values, like freedom of speech, freedom from unwarranted surveillance and search and seizures, and voting rights, can be secured. As Jean Jaurès understood, under no circumstances should socialists turn up their noses at the liberal rights that have been won.
Wilbur says I get tied in knots if I’m in no hurry to map out what will happen when we have a revolutionary movement. Here, I disagree with Wilbur, Steve, Joseph, and others. Marxist Unity Group’s problem isn’t a lack of theory; the theory train has a life of its own and will, happily, never stop chugging along. These folks like to think! The theory of democratic republicanism is solid. Instead of worrying about flaws in the demand for democracy, MUG should focus on advertising the demand for a democratic constitution to everyone who will listen.
However, many people don’t want to take this approach. In fact, I hear several of them in Wilbur’s statement that “we cannot put on a mask of democracy to nudge the masses into our camp” and “Socialism is our movement. We can’t conceal it, we must confront its problems, bring it to the originally hesitant masses, and convert them to its fiercest advocates.” Many people, like Wilbur, think democracy and Marxism are antithetical. Many believe that socialists should tell people about socialism, not democracy. Again, I don’t know what to say; articles have been written, and everyone has read the source material repeatedly. One can only have the same conversation so many times.
Wilbur writes, “The Constitution is the manacles that bind our wrists, while the weight of the bourgeoisie is the chains that hold us down.” I previously noted a version of this argument that appeared in Steve’s original article and Joseph’s response: the economy is the true source of social power, and, therefore, we can’t rule out the possibility of taking over the economy before or at the same time we “take state power.” So, build the mass strike! Again, I disagree. Only when the state is in the hands of the working class can we begin to make inroads into the economy. Because the state wields determinate power, I focus on agitation to democratize that institution.
Wilbur notes that “Slavery, sexism, poverty, and structural violence” existed before the creation of written constitutions. I don’t dispute it. But unlike Wilbur, I think it’s worthwhile to struggle over the laws governing capitalist society. Marx and Engels didn’t look at the American Civil War and conclude that the struggle to abolish slavery and establish universal suffrage meant “nothing.” Rosa Luxemburg didn’t ignore the Dreyfus Affair or the struggle for Prussian suffrage reform. Lenin saw the drafting of 183 students into the Russian army and demanded the working class organize to defend the “human dignity” of the young intellectuals. He also wrote about religious folk harassed by the Tsarist government.4 In so doing, Lenin explained that the working class must “give an impetus to every democratic movement” and that “The political demands of working class democracy do not differ in principle from those of bourgeois democracy, they differ only in degree.” Many so-called socialists criticized Lenin for concerning himself with the church’s plight and, in so doing, abandoning their (stilted) version of the “class point of view.” Lenin marked their words; anyone who downplayed the struggle for democracy was his enemy.5
Then again, Wilbur isn’t a Lenin fan, and these examples are from before 1917. If Wilbur thinks the Russian Revolution transcended prior history, we disagree for a third and final time.
My response to Steve is shorter. I wrote a longer response to his original article here. In his original article, Steve said that focusing on the democratic republic has “a negative impact on [MUG’s] thinking about both immediate tasks — especially programmatic tasks — and long-term political goals.” Steve, please explain what you’d like to see in MUG’s immediate tasks and long-term political goals. You’ve mentioned the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions. What should MUG learn from these events regarding the United States? My questions are sincere. At the same time, I can’t hide my disbelief; am I really to believe that the United States has something in common with these countries as they existed before and during their respective revolutions? Just because something has happened at some point doesn’t mean I need to find it applicable to my particular place and time.
If I should find relevance in the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban Revolutions (and the alarm around a “negative impact” implies I should), please explain the relevance and how it should shape my contemporary actions. Until then, your proposals sound eclectic: a bit here and there, with little unity besides an underlying assumption that agitation around various issues will lead to a mass strike; some Soviets here, some Third World there, and not too much of one thing lest it become “schematic.” If that’s your Modus operandi, fine. However, many sections of the left, mainly of the Trotskyist persuasion, have been saying something similar for generations. I don’t think it will work on the seventh or eighth attempt. I agree with Jean Allen: the left needs a unifying demand — a strategy. The democratic republic (notice, not the democratic socialist republic) is it.
Political actors in the United States have attempted everything under the sun over the last hundred years in a valiant effort to socialize the economy and abolish class society. Anarchism, council communism, Trotskyism, focoism, Maoism — name some other -ism, it’s been tried; everything, that is, except centering the struggle for a democratic Constitution. Democratic republicanism has been absent for a century; it’s the only new thing around. At a time when our political institutions are widely despised, and even Bill Maher can’t help shaking his head at the Senate, the demand for a democratic republic is more relevant than ever. Marxists are rediscovering their roots, and that’s a good thing.
Marxist Unity Group has done plenty of explaining over the past two years. The onus is not on us to prove that agitating for a democratic constitution is the right strategy in America. In the U.S., any battle for political power inevitably runs up against the minoritarian Constitution. Our own Civil War and Civil Rights Movement, in addition to the strategic conclusions of classical Marxism, are all the proof needed to conclude that the fight for a democratic constitution is the slogan of our time. What strategy do Steve and M. Wilbur think is correct?
Respectfully,
-Luke Pickrell
- Gil’s work; Luke’s work.
- Citizen Marx (2024); Cosmopod interview (2024).
- Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism (2020).
- Luxemburg (1899); Lenin (1901); Lenin (1902).
- Lenin Rediscovered (2008).