Our North Star

Because once and a while we need a bit of optimism

Two years ago, Aziz Rana published The Constitutional Bind, a sweeping historical investigation meant to aid democratic movements in the United States. How was it, Rana asked, that the relatively vibrant constitutional critique found in progressive and intellectually honest spaces in the early 20th century had been effectively silenced? How had America’s ruling class built a persuasive narrative of “American democracy” and convinced many people—though certainly not all—to “idolize a document that fails them”? Where had the demand for a democratic constitution gone, and how might it return?

In my review of the book, I paid particular attention to Rana’s analysis of DSA’s 2021 Platform, which he (rather charitably) described as a “conscious effort to update the 1912 Socialist Party of America’s legal-political agenda for the present day.” I argued that his words should be taken as a challenge by DSA to actually live up to the SPA’s legacy of pre-WWI constitutional criticism—seen best in its 1912 program advertising Eugene Debs’s presidential campaign—by advancing a bold call for a new constitution based on a sovereign unicameral legislature elected by universal, equal, and direct suffrage. In mid-2024, DSA had yet to offer a full-throated alternative to the minoritarian and oligarchic political system. But the potential was there.

In time, DSA has largely accepted that challenge. Workers Deserve More, a 2024 follow-up to the first platform, said that a “new democratic constitution…based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature” was the organization’s ultimate goal. With a government “by, for, and of the working class,” it continued, “we hope to build a socialist society where people come before profit, basic needs are guaranteed, the largest corporations are put under public ownership and democratic control, peace around the world is secured, and workers around the world join together in common struggle to construct socialism worldwide.”

DSA’s newest program will be released tomorrow, July 14. Folks can tune in here. It’s a much shorter document, and the constitutional demands are much clearer. The preamble declares that DSA is “fighting to transform society: to win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic.” The rest goes on to call for abolishing the Electoral College and Senate, implementing proportional representation and ranked-choice voting, and replacing the current President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary “chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” This is the coherent vision of political power we need.

It’s also a vision that has constitutional loyalists feeling a little uneasy. Mike Johnson gave the program free publicity. Fox News issued a warning: “DSA calls for a ‘new democratic constitution’ that it says would establish civil, political, and democratic rights for all based on proportional representation in a ‘single federal legislature.’” The Democratic Party—as hostile to a democratic constitution as the Republicans—has been silent.

It’s high time the socialist movement returned to constitutional politics. The first step in the working class’s conquest of economic power is to win the battle for political democracy. There’s no “democratic road to socialism” in the United States because there is no democracy through which the working class can realize its agenda. Likewise, there’s no such thing as “bourgeois democracy” because the bourgeoisie has always opposed truly universal and equal rights and the majoritarian power that the attainment of those rights would unleash. All of this considered, DSA’s constitutional positions are a further step in the right direction.

It must be said that progress on the democratic constitution front wouldn’t have been made without Marxist Unity Group. MUG continues to be at the vanguard of the democratic republican struggle within DSA and the American socialist movement more broadly. This should make us quite proud. But we can’t do it alone. The demand for a democratic constitution must continue to expand beyond our caucus. The fact that it now appears in DSA’s program—even at the level of specific terms such as “democratic socialist republic”—proves that this process is already underway.

But we have to keep pushing. The demand for a democratic constitution has to become DSA’s central demand. Even if the Democrats win big in 2028, we still need a democratic constitution.

The call must extend beyond DSA, reaching every corner of our country and becoming impossible to ignore. No politician should be able to pontificate on democracy and equal rights without facing a simple question: What about the Constitution? With MUG and DSA’s support, all of the other organizations and movements stymied by the lack of democracy will take up the demand. After all, democracy has many friends and few enemies. All of us need the light and air of universal and equal political rights.

Much is chaos this July, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Paine’s masterpiece of political agitation, Common Sense. Much danger looms. But there is also good news. The demand for a democratic constitution—one that embodies the Declaration’s idea of universal and equal rights—is growing. It will be our North Star through these trying times.