A March Cosmonaut letter takes up Marxist Unity Group’s demand for a democratic republic in the United States. The letter’s author makes several assertions. First, the United States is “certainly more like a democracy than any other form of government.” Second, "bourgeois democracies” are, in fact, democracies. Third, the “democratic characteristics of bourgeois democracies” produce “reactionary phenomena.” The author asks how MUG accounts for these outcomes, and how a democratic republic would avoid them. I appreciate the interest in democratic republicanism. The demand for democracy was crucial to classical Marxism, and has been overlooked by the American Left for far too long.

The letter asserts that the United States is “more like a democracy than any other form of government.” This doesn’t check out. Whether it’s selecting the president through the Electoral College, going to war by executive decree, overruling legislation through judicial review, or navigating the comically malapportioned Senate, it has never been clearer that we are tyrannized not by the majority, but by a minority. We didn’t need to ask, but the academics tell us anyway that public opinion has a “near-zero” impact on legislative outcomes. The Constitution denies universal and equal suffrage and ensures that “we the people” don’t have final say in what becomes law.

The United States doesn’t fare any better on the international stage. Presidential systems tend to concentrate power in the executive, and our Constitution is particularly monarchical. As Robert Dahl noted, America’s constitutional issues—many of which have only become more pronounced since Dahl’s time—are unique. Some countries, particularly the Nordic ones, have political systems built around unicameral parliamentary supremacy and universal, equal suffrage. Others, such as the United Kingdom, have parliamentary supremacy and universal suffrage but not equal suffrage. The working class in these countries faces its fair share of obstacles, but navigating a constitution built around minoritarian checks and the denial of universal and equal suffrage is not one of them.

What about the letter’s claim that the term "bourgeois democracy” adds something to the conversation? I define a democratic system as one with a single and sovereign representative assembly with members elected by universal, equal, and direct suffrage. This is the classic democratic republican definition of democracy as expressed by the Levellers of the English Civil War, Tom Paine and other democratic republicans during and after the American Revolution, the left of the French Revolution and the wider European Revolutions of 1848-1851, the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction, the English Chartists, and Social Democrats beginning with Marx and Engels and ending with Debs and Lenin. All of these figures and their respective movements oriented themselves around this vision of democracy as a unicameralism combined with universal and equal suffrage. It’s also the definition of democracy put forward in DSA’s new Workers Deserve More program, which calls for a “democratic socialist republic” with an “executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

After the defeat of the 1848 Revolutions, Marx and Engels concluded that the working class was the only social force dedicated to democracy and needed programmatic independence from all bourgeois parties—or, as Lenin put it, “only in the working class can democracy find a champion who makes no reservations, is not irresolute and does not look back.” At no point did the bourgeoisie throw their weight behind winning the democratic republic described above, and at no point will they in the future. When the cards were down, the working class had to go in alone.

The term "bourgeois democracy” is historically disingenuous. It also obscures the primary task of the working class in the United States, which is to wrest state power away from the bourgeoisie by leading—and then winning—the struggle for a democratic constitution. For as much as the Left talks about abolishing class society, the “first step” (Marx) and “fundamental condition” (Engels) for working-class political power haven’t been realized.

Finally, the “reactionary phenomena” supposedly created by the U.S. political system. I am not overly concerned with the working class using "bourgeois democracy” to make “reactionary” decisions. I’m far more concerned with the ways America’s wealthy, racist—and now we know pedophilic—overlords have enforced their agenda through the Electoral College, the Senate, and ever-expanding executive powers. We have too little democracy, not too much. The Constitution has always protected the interests of a minority of Americans—first slaverholders, then Jim Crow Southerners, and now industrial and financial capitalists. America has plenty of skeletons in its closet^[1]—and new atrocities are being committed daily—but they must be understood not as the expression of some reactionary democratic will, but as the detritus of a funhouse-mirror-style political system.^[2] We’ve never really had a say.

Looking around, I see a bunch of pissed-off and unorganized people who—if not structurally—at least intuitively understand their lack of political power. More and more people are looking for an alternative to the two-party duopoly. They can be reached through the demand for a democratic republic and universal and equal rights. The left has a responsibility to educate the working class about the Constitution, explain how it stands in the way of meaningful change, and unite them within a party and behind a program for change.

It should also be clear that the democratic republican version of majoritarianism is grounded in inalienable human rights and the belief that equal rights imply a duty to respect the rights of others. The Declaration of the Rights of Man explained that “liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights.” The Social Democratic Party of Germany upheld this principle in fighting for “the abolition of class rule and of classes themselves, for equal rights and equal obligations for all, without distinction of sex or birth.”

Using a majority process to infringe on individual rights would be a violation of the principle of equal rights. People could (and surely would) organize to push back through speech, assembly, and elections. That process may present its own set of difficulties, but justice would not be structurally blocked by a constitution that empowers a minority over a majority. If democratic methods proved insufficient, individuals would be morally justified in breaking the law to defend their inalienable rights.

The United States is not a democracy. The problems faced by our immensely diverse working class stem first and foremost from an undemocratic constitution that entrenches the political and economic power of a wealthy elite. This undemocratic political system—not "bourgeois democracy”—is the greatest source of reactionary politics. The democratic constitution is the central point in MUG’s programmatic strategy for attaining and keeping working-class power. Post-revolution, the struggle to expand democracy further into the political and economic realm will continue. Freed from the minoritarian checks of the President, Senate, and federal courts—and with the working class organized into a political party with a winning track record—the struggle for socialism will continue, but this time on immensely more favorable terrain.

Luke Pickrell

East Bay DSA & Marxist Unity Group

1. Take lynching, a uniquely American phenomena in two respects. First, for its sheer depravity. No civilized society mutilates and burns people for spectacle. Second, for how long it took for the government to take action despite popular support for federal intervention. In 1937, 72% of Americans, including 57% of Southerners, supported anti-lynching legislation, But black Americas were still effectively disenfranchised across the South, and Southern whites controlled just enough the Senate to kill every federal anti-lynching bill. The first federal anti-lynching law wasn’t passed until 2022.

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2. Some say that the United States is a democracy because Donald Trump won the popular vote in 2024, unlike in 2016. But the outcome of the presidential elections does not change the fact that the United States does not have a political system based on universal and equal rights. Furthermore, there is no way to separate the 2024 elections from the rest of the constitutional structure. Many Americans were frustrated by the Democratic Party’s inability to pass meaningful legislation during Biden’s term. Biden’s agenda aside, it was the Senate, with the help of Democrats Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, that killed the Build Back Better Act and has blocked progressive policies for generations. The Senate breads dissatisfaction, discontent, and cynicism—the perfect vibe for a self-proclaimed “political outsider" like Trump. It was also the Senate, and not the opinion of a majority of Americans, that saved Trump from being successfully impeached.

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