Henry De Groot argues against the “ultra-political” tendency that forefronts agitation for the democratic republic.
On Absurdity
I am grateful to Luke Pickrell’s engagement (“The Slogan Of Our Time”) with my letter (“Words Won’t Slay the Hydra of Capitalism”) critiquing the tendency raised by MUG which raises the slogan of the democratic republic. I believe that this back-and-forth will help onlookers to begin to examine the theoretical and historical roots of the slogan being raised by MUG and also its implications, none of which are immediately evident from the slogan itself.
I will begin by clarifying my main critique of the slogan and the tendency it represents, as I do not believe my main point has been adequately understood or addressed by Pickrell’s piece. What is absurd is not the slogan itself; as I wrote, I support critiquing and replacing the constitution, and I also believe that having a clear political demand for a fundamentally different system is important for a socialist program, although I would prefer the term Worker’ Republic. What is absurd about the line of thinking is the attempt to raise the call for a democratic republic as a central organizing tool for the DSA, and the way that comrades have scoped out (or failed to scope out) how such a demand could be pursued through various means, namely a constitutional convention. Pickrell in the article does himself reject the call for a constitutional convention as unrealistic, but then merely kicks the can down the road by saying that instead what we need is a constituent assembly. Even if we accept that a constituent assembly is superior to the Soviet model (discussed below) this does nothing to solve the problem of how the socialist movement actually achieves such a thing, that is to say, how raising the demand for a constituent assembly leads us to securing the convening of a constituent assembly.
In my letter, I contrasted this approach with Marxist work within the trade unions and briefly sketched out how the fight for the domination of the unions and the leadership of the unions in the class struggle leads directly to the acquiring of enough material power in order to actually overthrow the bourgeoisie. This strategy develops through transforming strikes into political strikes and then finally into an armed insurrection.
This isn’t to say that raising critiques of the political system or proposing an alternative system are not key parts of this work, or that this movement won’t also have to deal with constitutional questions after seizing power. But these questions can only be actualized as part of a power strategy. My point is that a workers’ revolution ultimately looks more like general strikes, mass demonstrations, insurrection and ultimately civil war than the orderly convening of a constitutional convention.
Pickrell writes that
Millions will gather around the banner of democracy because millions understand that our political system is a sham.
I absolutely agree that calls for a new political and social order will resonate with millions of working-class and also middle-class America. But where will they gather? As voters? Party members? In the streets? And how does their gathering strengthen our movement?
We do need voters and party members, and electing socialists to office is absolutely a key strategy. But without highlighting and centering the gathering of the working class into unions and also the uniting of socialist workers within those unions – and then drawing out how we transform the reformist trade union struggles into a revolutionary confrontation with the state – we are just on the Democratic Path To Socialism which has widely and rightly been rejected by Marxists for a century.
Deeper Roots of Disagreement
The discourse between Pickrell and myself is helpful because it works to tease out deeper political questions about the nature of Marxism which are being raised as more DSA comrades seek historical and theoretical answers to underpin their perspectives on the path forward. In his response, Pickrell nakedly lays out a perspective on Marxism which I believe will leave most Marxists scratching their heads.
Much of this discourse grows from the Politicals vs Economists debate which is taken up by Lenin in What Is To Be Done. I have entered this debate myself against what I see to be Economistic tendencies in our labor work, but now I believe it is necessary to “bend the stick” the other way, coming out against a tendency that could be called “ultra-political” for its all-but abandonment of the trade union struggle as a key part of our work.
This tendency is most clearly expressed by Pickrell when he cites a quote: “At socialism’s heart is the aspiration to workers’ control of production” and then replies in response that “Centuries worth of revolutionaries must be rolling over in their graves. No one, least of all Lenin, died for this.” Now, I would not say that the desire for worker control over the means of production is the only key component of Marxism – of course, there are other desires including full political freedom for humanity – but to argue against such a quote displays a stark rejection of what is undoubtedly a key component of Marxism, and thereby a one-sided focus on political over economic demands, or better said, political-formalistic over political-economic demands.
For Marx, the key issue was not simply having both political and economic demands, but rather the understanding that the two were intimately bound together – that to have only political and not economic freedom was not to have total freedom. For example, see Marx’s critique of the limits of political freedom in On The Jewish Question, and a wider thread within Marxism about the necessity for economic freedom to attain real political freedom. The false separation between these two, and the opposition of one to the other dichotomously, rather than the uniting of them dialectically, is a move away from Marxism.
What separated Marx and Engels’ scientific socialism from earlier utopian socialism was precisely their emphasis on the working class and the economic struggle. It was in fact Engels who while living in England witnessed the general strike of 1842 known as the Plug Plot riots, and thereby came to understand both the necessity of proletarian revolt stemming from the capitalist business cycle, and the potential of that proletarian revolt to transform into proletarian revolution. We see this strategy played out in the 1905 revolution, where demands over an 8-hour day evolved into a simultaneous political-economic confrontation with the Tsarist regime and the Russian capitalists, and also in 1917 when the economic demands of “peace, land, and bread” were tied with the political-institutional demand of “All Power To The Soviets.”
The Marxist strategy is thereby not so much convincing workers to struggle – it is rather convincing them to extend the struggles they are already engaging in towards a revolution and the establishment of a workers’ government. As Pickrell rightly identifies, this is the model of the transitional program. This is entirely different from the conception put forward by Pickrell where the primary recruiter to the cause is the call for a democratic republic. Pickrell in no way draws out how the success of the socialist movement grows out of the already-existing contradictions of capitalism.
Pickrell’s division of politics and economics takes an extreme when he writes that “There is no other ‘political dimension of socialism’’ than winning the “battle for democracy,” that is, raising the call for a democratic republic, and lampoons me as “one of many who think talking about ‘socialism’ and ‘state power’ is a political intervention.” Apparently raising the need for socialism among the workers is… not political?
Lenin’s critique of economism condemned the lowering of the political work of the RSDLP to only trade unionism. In contrast, Lenin calls for a restoration of this political work, but not for a lowering of trade union work. But for Pickrell, socialists in the labor movement “engage primarily as peoples’ tribunes, not to provide expert skills, exceptional energy, or talk about socialism.” This false dichotomy is in contrast to Lenin’s call in WITBD where he writes that “we should ‘go to all classes of the population’ as theoreticians, as propagandists, as agitators and as organizers.” Lenin writes in 12 Years in 1907
on the question of economic struggle and the trade unions. My views on this subject have been frequently misrepresented in the literature, and I must, therefore, emphasize that many pages in What Is To Be Done? are devoted to explaining the immense importance of economic struggle and the trade unions.
It is precisely through providing “expert skills” and “exceptional energy” throughout the labor movement that we win the authority to raise our broader political vision to workers within the trade union movement beyond a narrow layer of disgruntled radicals. Again, the economists downplay the tasks of socialists to be the “tribune of the people,” but the “ultra-political” tendency downplays the tasks of socialists to be the “trade union secretary.”
Furthermore, Pickrell does not recognize how the political and economic tasks of establishing workers’ political rule and economic rule are inseparably intertwined, instead adopting a stages theory where first the political rule is established and then later socialism is achieved. Now, I am not here arguing that socialism will be fully implemented on the first day of a workers’ government. But it is capitalism itself that every day is socializing production, making the possibility and necessity of immediately taking socialist economic measures all the greater in 21st-century industrial America than in 20th-century agricultural Russia. The workers’ government will immediately need to do two things:
1) secure the basic needs of society including food, power, water, and transportation
2) Mobilize resources against the inevitable counter-revolution.
Soviets, the Constituent Assembly, and the Democratic Republic
The discourse has also revealed that the call for a Democratic Republic contains hidden within it an argument against the Soviets as a form of government, and instead for a unicameral parliament elected by 1 person 1 vote.
Pickrell ties the political degeneration of the USSR with the Soviets, writing that
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.
But Pickrell does not at all prove, or even attempt to prove, that it was the soviet form of government that was the cause of this political degeneration.
The question of the political degeneration of the Soviet Union is not only a question of history but will also undoubtedly face any socialist movement which finds success among the masses. Workers will want to know “what went wrong?,” and they deserve an answer. But we are best served by explaining the economic basis for the political degeneration of democratic life in the Soviet Union, as Trotsky does in Revolution Betrayed. The problem with this of course, is that if you are not a Trotskyist it is odd to use his explanation. But do we really believe that Stalin’s counterrevolution would have been stopped by a constituent assembly?
We should instead reiterate that the Soviets were profoundly democratic institutions that not only represented individual workers but also the various sections of the class (and also the soldiers and peasantry) as an organic whole, what political scientists call “corporatism” (not to be confused with corporatism a la crony capitalism). This organic relationship with the class, where the political leadership is tied directly to the factory, was absolutely crucial for organizing forces for the 1917 revolution and then materially organizing the class to defend the revolution.
That the Soviets were later superseded by other forms of government does not at all negate their utility in the period immediately before and immediately after the seizure of power. We must conceive of government forms not as permanent but rather as transitional; those who look to the form of state power ten years after the revolution without addressing the form of state power necessary in the actual revolutionary period are guilty of the worst form of abstract and formalist speculation. And Pickrell does not at all address the military aspect of the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the revolution and then in defense against the counter-revolution, or explain how a constituent assembly would better help to fill this crucial role. This is why I made reference to Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism, which precisely by being a text which deals with the most extreme challenges of proletarian revolution, forces us to think through the extent and limits of democratic forms during a period of insurrection which turns into a civil war.
Pickrell then oddly misconstrues Trotsky as calling for a democratic republic in 1934 France. In fact, a quick perusal clearly shows that Trotsky writes that
The task is to replace the capitalist state, which functions for the profit of the big exploiters, by the workers’ and peasants’ proletarian state…
…[and to call for], in the struggle for a workers and peasants commune,
- Committees of struggle representing the mass itself (embryo soviets);
- Workers’ militia, always united in action, even though organized by various parties and organizations.
So we see that Trotsky calls for soviets and workers’ militias as the forms necessary in the revolutionary period. In the document, he also lays out clear demands for addressing the workers’ daily concerns in order to win their support. Finally, he does call for – as secondary – the defense of the existing democratic forms of the existing French state as against the authoritarian and elitist tendencies, and rightly so. But this is not at all “calling for a democratic republic” and certainly not as the central slogan.
Perhaps this was obvious at the time because the French state was already a democratic republic, that is, a bourgeois republic. It is important to remember that when Engels, Lenin, and others raised the demand of a democratic republic as central, they were writing under the rule of authoritarian monarchical systems. We can talk about how the US is not a real democracy all we want, but when we raise the slogan “For a Democratic Republic” we will still be misunderstood if what we really mean is a dictatorship of the proletariat. Words and their definitions exist socially, and I believe that most people understand democratic republic to mean what we have currently, that is, a bourgeois republic.
As I mentioned above, I believe that to the extent that our program should outline the need for a new political order, the term “Workers’ Republic” is preferable to “Democratic Republic.” If we mean dictatorship of the proletariat (and I’m not convinced that Pickrell’s understanding of what that means is the same as mine or Marx’s) then the slogan “Workers Republic“ is much clearer about the class nature of the proposed regime and its contrast with the existing regime. Hearing “Worker Republic,” a worker may not know exactly what that would look like institutionally, but she will immediately understand that it is in contrast to the current control of our political system by the billionaires and the general political-economic thrust of our goal.
Choose-Your-Own-Leninism
Also at issue is a disagreement over the fundamental questions of Marxism, and transitively the fundamental questions of Lenin’s theories as a defender of Marxism.
I first came across this while attending MUGs convention last fall during a panel on “Lenin’s Political Strategy.” While I have come across many different interpretations of Lenin’s work, this was the first time that I had heard Lenin’s strategy be reduced to primarily calling for a democratic republic.
This tendency to develop a one-sided, ahistorical picture of Lenin is also exemplified by the ceaseless repetition of a few quotes from WITBD while ignoring a large selection of his life’s writings and organizational work. For example in this tendency, it goes against Lenin to highlight the limitations or context of the slogan “democratic republic” but criticizing the Soviets through which Lenin came to power, downplaying Lenin’s role as an active organizer of trade union work, or abandoning Marx’s economic, philosophical, and historical theories entirely is fair game.
While present in Pickrell, this tendency has been taken to the greatest extreme by other comrades in the MUG discord, one of whom spoke at the above panel and openly and entirely rejects dialectical materialism, base-superstructure theory, the labor theory of value, etc., but considers themselves a defender of Marx and Lenin merely because of their defense of the centrality of the slogan “For A Democratic Republic.”
The Marxist theories of dialectical materialism and historical materialism are not for lazy Sunday abstract consideration but rather are crucial instruments for arming our work. In fact, it is precisely through the method of dialectics that we can analyze the extent to which the slogan “democratic republic” is useful and at what point it becomes a break rather than a step forward for the socialist movement.
Words and Actions
While I appreciate spirited discourse, I believe Pickrell approaches bad faith argumentation when he accuses me of a “dismissal of theory.” My critique of “words” in the title of my letter is not a rejection of theory, but rather a critique of the failure to draw out how raising the slogan “Democratic Republic” puts us on a path to winning a democratic republic (or a workers’ republic); in other words, to quote Marx, that “the weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force,” and our slogans should be directly tied to a power strategy of how to affect them.
I am not at all an opponent of theory – I argue constantly that the lack of theoretical development is one of the main brakes on DSA’s development, I am personally reading my way through the entirety of the MECW, and I recently wrote a book, Student Radicals and the Rise of Russian Marxism, which deals to no small degree with the role of theory and the questions posed by Lenin in WITBD in the development of the Russian student movement. What I am opposed to is “theory” which is divorced from a realistic plan of action – abstract speculation – which I believe is foreign to the Marxist tradition and especially to Bolshevism.
On the question of “words and actions,” Pickrell again goes to an extreme which I believe will leave most students of the Bolshevik project shaking their heads. He writes that
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.
Of course, Lenin took theory very seriously, launched theoretical-philosophical polemics against trends such as Bogdanov’s empiro-criticism, and even organized a party theoretical school outside of Paris while living abroad. But the idea that he was somehow substituting words for actions is again an example of bending the stick too far. The Bolsheviks were intimately involved in the organizing work of the RSDLP and the wider movements, helping to organize strikes and unions, leading student protests, and eventually launching insurrections bomb-in-hand.
As Lenin wrote in October of 1905 when the Bolsheviks were working to convert the political strikes into a full-on insurrection,
Schemes, and disputes and discussions about the functions of the Combat Committee and its rights, are of the least value in a matter like this. What is needed is furious energy, and again energy. It horrifies me— I give you my word—it horrifies me to find that there has been talk about bombs for over six months, yet not one has been made!
Squads must at once begin military training by launching operations immediately, at once. Some may at once undertake to kill a spy or blow up a police station, others to raid a bank to confiscate funds for the insurrection, others again may drill or prepare plans of localities, etc. But the essential thing is to begin at once to learn from actual practice: have no fear of these trial attacks.
Does this sound like a group that was only concerned with words?
Again, Pickrell’s dichotomy between words and actions – like his dichotomy of politics and economic struggle – is a failure to employ dialectical logic. For dialecticians, opposites do not remain separate, but rather contradict and then entwine. Against spontaneous, poorly theorized activity we raise the need for theory. But against aloof proposals with no way towards mass struggle, we call for a clear path to action.
I support a call for a new workers’ government as a crowning demand within our program, but the idea that such a slogan will be the main slogan by which we recruit masses to our movement and build the power necessary to actually win a workers’ government, is nothing less than absurd.
Pickrell’s tendency argues that calls for socialism are far more abstract and less easily grasped than a unifying slogan proposing a new constitutional order. But I believe that the slogan “For Democratic Socialism” is readily understandable and broadly applicable, and thereby the superior “slogan of our time.” In the electoral field, “For Democratic Socialism” highlights the need to run and elect socialist candidates and move towards an independent socialist party; in the trade unions, “For Democratic Socialism” calls for the unions to break politically from the corporate Democrats and to evolve the fights over wages and working conditions into struggles for worker control within the workplace and over the economy; in our housing justice, racial justice, immigrant justice, eco-socialist, feminist, and anti-imperialist work, “For Democratic Socialism” points towards the need to for humane responses based on a planned economy to meet the various crises of capitalism. And on the question of our political order, “For Democratic Socialism” points to the need to replace our political system dominated by the billionaire class with a system run by and for the working class.
