Revolutionary Slogans

What will it take to move people forward? By Daniel Lazare

Liberté, egalité, fraternité... we shall overcome... land, peace, and bread — the purpose of a revolutionary slogan is not merely to express a momentary demand in the here and now, but to move people forward. As Trotsky put it in 1938, it should serve as a bridge between “today’s conditions” and “today’s consciousness” and the ultimate goal of socialism, which is to say, “the conquest of power by the proletariat.”

But it’s been more than 80 years since Trotsky laid out the problem in The Transitional Program, so what does it mean for today's fragmented society? The organized labor movement is scared of its own shadow, liberalism is exhausted, while a right-wing authoritarian government is on the verge of outright dictatorship. So what is the slogan needed to point a way out of the impasse?

A number of possibilities loom. "Democracy now!” is one, but it falls short for several reasons. Not only is it vague, but for most people, democracy and the U.S. Constitution are one and the same. Readers of this blog know that a system that violates one person-one vote at every turn is the very opposite of democratic. But most people disagree. For them, the Constitution is a charter of liberty that stands for free speech, a free press, and the right to vote, so that's all they need to know.

Besides, Donald Trump turns out to have been democratically elected. So what does "democracy now" mean in such a context — more power for Trump to do what he says the people elected him to accomplish? If so, then democracy, paradoxically enough, can be construed to mean more dictatorship rather than less. By itself, the d-word does little to solve this conundrum.

Another possibility is “Abolish the Senate,” which happens to be the title of an article I wrote for Jacobin that briefly went viral in 2014. But this won’t do either. After all, why stop at the Senate? Why not abolish the Electoral College since it’s also biased in favor of underpopulated rural states like Wyoming and Vermont? Or how about an unelected Supreme Court that is busy taking away rights that Americans have enjoyed for decades? Shouldn’t “we the people” abolish that, too? Once they do so, moreover, what will take their place? The slogan doesn’t say. Yet the point is not merely to do away with today’s inequitable power structure, but to create something better instead.

Then there is the call for a constituent assembly. This at least points to a mechanism that will enable the people to sidestep the enormous barriers to change that the current power structure creates. Where the Constitution’s Article V says that two-thirds of each house of Congress plus three-fourths of the states must agree before changing so much as a comma — a rule so cumbersome as to effectively rule out constitutional reform altogether — a constituent assembly elected based on strict proportional representation would allow the people to institute change directly via strict majority rule.

That means that if the Second Amendment fails to win 51 percent of the vote, then out it goes. The same holds for an unelected Supreme Court. If it fails to win majority approval, then out it goes too. The result would not only be to create a democratic structure but a democratic constitution that institutionalizes popular sovereignty in the fullest sense of the term, rather than hemming popular democracy in with all sorts of guardrails and restrictions.

But there's a problem here, too: any such slogan is far too technical and abstract. Few people are familiar with the concept of a constituent assembly. Rather than firing them up, it leaves them scratching their heads as to what it means or how it differs from a constitutional convention of the sort that Article V also lays out. (Short answer: where one would be subject to the same complicated ratification process, the other is over the Constitution and is therefore subject solely to the popular will as expressed in free elections.) Besides, people will want to know who will call such an assembly, how it will be elected, and how its decision will be implemented, questions that will lead to them scratching their heads even more. Instead of moving them forward, it will immobilize them all the more completely.

Finally, there’s “For a Soviet America!” For students of the Russian Revolution, this more than does the trick since the purpose of a revolutionary dictatorship is to transform politics, economics, and everything else besides.

But, needless to say, problems arise here as well. Does the call for a Soviet America mean recreating the gerontocracy that collapsed so ignominiously in Russia in 1991? If so, why on earth would anyone want to do that? Of course, advocates will explain that soviets are merely factory councils and that a Soviet America would be one in which workers who produce the wealth simultaneously determine how it’s allocated and used. This sounds fair. But given that the U.S. manufacturing sector employs just 13 million people, which is to say four percent of the population, this immediately leads to the question of what happens to the other 96. Does a workers’ democracy mean that they’ll be left out in the cold? If so, not even factory workers will be in favor.

So what should our slogan be? Here’s my modest proposal:

“Down with the dictatorship! Workers demand a new republic!”

It has many advantages. For one, it correctly lays out the problem, which is a system of one-man rule that is rapidly reducing democracy to the vanishing point. If Trump gets away with sending migrants to Salvadoran prisons and then claiming that there’s nothing he can do to bring them back because they’re under foreign jurisdiction, then it won’t be long before citizens get the same treatment. Indeed, Trump made this all too clear when he told Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele last week: “The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places.” Due process will disappear as political enemies are consigned to Third World hell holes that make the original Bastille seem like a health spa.

The slogan also identifies who must solve it. It's not “the people,” a nebulous concept that includes everyone from the homeless to Wall Street movers and shakers who benefit from inequality and therefore want more of it. Rather, it means the working masses who, whether they work in factories or not, are subject to growing exploitation and oppression and thus long for an end to the status quo. To be sure, popular discontent has so far taken on a rightwing expression. But that’s to be expected in a grossly unrepresentative system that scrambles the political signals in a way that leaves people dazed and confused. But laying out both the problem and who is to change it means mobilizing workers in a collective effort of self-clarification. By calling on workers to take charge of democracy, it calls on them to clear their minds as to how to bring it about.

Then there is the verb — “demand.” Rather than beseeching the White House or petitioning Congress, it means workers calling on themselves and their own power. Could this mean mass demonstrations or a general strike? It certainly raises the possibility.

Finally, there is the call for a new republic. This cuts both ways since it means the overthrow of a hyper-attenuated republic dating from the age of silk knee britches and slavery and, simultaneously, the creation of a new political structure that workers will take the lead in designing. A constituent assembly is thus implicit in the process. This may not mean socialism fresh off the starting block. Instead, it is a transitional demand designed to kick-start a process in which socialism is hopefully the final result.

The goal is to mobilize workers to overthrow Trump and, in so doing, to create a new kind of democracy designed to serve their interests and those of people like them. Rather than turning the clock back to the days of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, it means advancing to something new. It’s still early in the game, so we don’t know whether any such slogan will catch on or how. But at least it points people in the right direction.