At its recent Congress, Marxist Unity Group discussed the importance of political agitation and the creation of a committee to create and produce propaganda for a democratic Constitution. After the discussion, a friend showed me Tony Chamas’ YouTube video about the “deep-seated, undemocratic nature of the American political system.” The video is smart, catchy, and a breath of fresh air. It invokes the spirit of MUG’s Winning the Battle for Democracy and the work of Daniel Lazare.
But Tony misses an opportunity in his recent Cosmonaut article to incorporate the Constitution into the Marxist discussions about the state. He writes that “The capitalist system and its consequences (inequalities, exploitation, encroachment of democracy, etc.), which so many people want their government to address, will persist so long as the fundamental structures inscribed into the capitalist state and mode of production are left unchanged.” But generalities aren’t needed. These “fundamental structures” are the creation of the very Constitution described in Tony’s video.
Tony concludes the article by invoking Lenin but doesn’t use the great revolutionary’s authority to critique the U.S. Constitution. After all, it was Lenin, following the same democratic republicanism found in Marx and Engels, who spent most of his life defending the necessity of a democratic republic and a constitution that would include “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” — precisely the opposite of what exists in the United States.
Too few people on the American left recognize the Constitution as the main obstacle to realizing a democratic republic and the unique project facing socialists in this country. With an election looming, popular discourse is saturated with references to “democracy” and the sanctity of the Constitution. Joe Biden and the Democrats are running against Donald Trump and the Republicans based on “the threat to our political institutions, to our Constitution itself, and the very character of our nation.” But the democracy versus tyranny dichotomy quickly falls apart after considering the Constitutional structures that make for a very undemocratic political system that empowers the minoritarian far-right and excludes the working class from making laws. Resources like Tony’s video on the Constitution can help build a movement for political democracy and socialism in this country. But returning to Poulantzas and Milliband cannot.
-Luke Pickrell
