Run It Back
Our interview with Rashad X needs an encore. By Luke Pickrell
About two weeks ago, I interviewed Rashad X, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) and Marxist Unity Group (MUG). Recently, I edited the transcript for length and content to share across internal DSA platforms. Halfway through the editing process, I realized everyone could benefit from revisiting what Rashad said. The interview is our most viewed post over the past four months.
My ideas often contradict the majority MUG position on democracy and the Constitution (this debate captures some of those differences). However, Rashad and I agree on several points: democratizing the U.S. means changing the political structures outlined in the Constitution; the presence of limited political freedoms doesn’t mean we live in a democracy; terms like “bourgeois democracy” and “socialist democracy” are convoluted and confusing, and don’t make for solid political agitation; people don’t have to be socialists to understand the U.S. isn’t a democracy; changing political consciousness means talking about the Constitution regardless of popular consciousness (see Lenin’s comments in May Days in Kharkov about a lone worker demanding a constitution); and DSA members should center FORC’s demand for a democratic constitution.
Luke: Please tell us about the DSA tweet on July 15th and the advertised FORC program.
Rashad: The For Our Rights Committee (FORC) was created as a result of a resolution or a piece of legislation at that convention. The purpose of that program was for the committee to design a program that presented an independent alternative to the two major parties during the election season. The committee was National Political Committee (NPC)-appointed and came from a bunch of different tendencies. We worked through a couple of months of really iterating and hashing out those political debates and ultimately getting to the point of synthesizing the final product. The NPC has already approved a preliminary version of that program and is working to approve the final version by the end of July. The committee's work now is oriented towards figuring out how to ensure that the program is not just a piece of paper but is embedded in our campaign work, recruitment work, and broader propaganda.
What’s most important about the tweet is that it was created because Marxist Unity Group (MUG) has two NPC members. This allows us to initiate the debate around statements like the one you read. We figured out how to win a majority of NPC members to make this position DSA's position. How is MUG on the NPC? To me, it's because we really apply the theory of the merger theory to DSA, the merger of the socialist movement and the workers movement.
When it comes to DSA, it's different from some of the historical socialist movements. Those socialist movements were already hegemonically committed to the democratic republic and winning the battle for democracy. We're in a different situation. DSA is still more akin to a socialist workers' movement organization. It's still socialist but not necessarily hegemonically committed to winning the battle for democracy. MUG is the leading social democratic force committed to winning the battle for democracy. We intervene in DSA as a caucus to win a majority support for our politics. That's really how the tweet came about: an underlying strategy of the marginalized community group, not just being our own organization but embedding ourselves into this mass party, participating in the internal democratic processes, and ultimately doing the work of winning a majority of membership to our politics.
Luke: What discussions took place within the NPC around the tweet? The 2021 Political Platform mentions the Constitution. Local chapters, including San Diego and Cleveland, have organized events and passed resolutions, but I haven't seen many statements from the national level about the Constitution.
Rashad: A majority of DSA convention delegates have said this statement represents DSA's politics. However, we can implement our platform but never talk about what I would argue is the most crucial line: the U.S. is not a democracy, and we need a democratic constitution. This is why it's important for us to pursue executive seats as a political formation within a mass party. Even if we win people to our politics in terms of a resolution, that doesn't necessarily translate into the needed executive action. Our comms statements, like the tweet, depend upon winning over a majority of people on the NPC.
In terms of the conversations about this particular statement, it wasn't too controversial. The most controversial part you'll see is the language of judicial review. MUG and Red Star voted to keep language about ending judicial review and to not replace it with “ending judicial supremacy.” This debate showed that we can be committed to winning the battle for democracy as a slogan while still struggling to clarify what that means. We pushed a line saying that ending judicial review is very much in line with popular sovereignty of the people through elected representative bodies. Bodies like the Supreme Court: their entire project is to figure out how to do things that are compatible with the already undemocratic constitution.
We're pushing a line that, by extension, would also mean the abolition of the Supreme Court. Now, there are people in DSA who believe that the way to support democracy is a better or reformed Supreme Court. We have to struggle with those ideas. How do we even talk about the fact that we want a democratic constitution or win the battle for democracy? We have to keep fighting for the type of specificity that we would want in winning people over to those politics.
Luke: What does “winning the battle for democracy” mean to you, and how do you think other people in DSA see it?
Rashad: People understand that phrase in different ways. On one end of the spectrum, winning the battle for democracy is about expanding political freedoms but not necessarily changing the actual governing structure of the United States. I think winning the battle for democracy means changing the governing structure of the United States. The democratic constitution is one step towards creating a democratic socialist republic as the form of our working class rule and beginning the transition to socialism.
Winning the battle for democracy isn’t just about universal, equal voting rights and the right to proportional representation - though those are core parts. It's about ending institutions like the Supreme Court, Senate, and the standing military (to be replaced by a process of democratically arming the people through things like people's militias).
Winning the battle for democracy isn’t just the expansion of some of the limited political freedoms that we currently have under our anti-democratic system. It’s also about changing the political system of the United States. And, broader than that, it’s a global vision of an international democratic social republic. We don't have universal and equal representation of nations within bodies like the U.N. We don't have proportional representation in the U.N. The I.M.F. and the World Bank play an outsized role in governing our global system compared to any sort of democratic body, like the general body of the U.N. (which is still subordinated to the U.N. Security Council, which is akin to our Senate).
Winning the battle for democracy goes beyond the expansion of political freedoms. We have to change the overarching political system in which those freedoms exist. Take SCOTUS: Do we want a better reformed court? Or do we want a new kind of governance?
Luke: The Socialist Party of America pointed to those larger structures - the structural provisions - in a lot of their demands. Critiques of the Constitution can take different forms; not all of them highlight a structural perspective of how decisions are made and who makes decisions. Some critiques focus on getting particular things into the Constitution. It’s important to think about what rights people are guaranteed, but that can also miss who gets to make decisions at the end of the day. These are some of the inconsistencies that I see in how the DSA talks about democracy and the Constitution, and I think that’s to be expected. As you said, there are a lot of folks in DSA. It's one of the things that makes it wonderful - a lot of folks trying to figure things out. The FORC Program calls for a new democratic constitution, but then doesn't quite have the political demands that would bring that about. Do you see these same inconsistencies? How do you work with them?
Rashad: The FORC program states that DSA's mission is to win the battle for democracy. This is a humongous win, considering that the resolution that created the committee had the framing of defending democracy. That was one of the first battles. We had to change the framing. That led to us saying that our mission is to win the battle for democracy, and our ultimate goal is a democratic constitution. We then define some of those core features, like universal equal suffrage, proportional representation under a single federal legislature, and ending the role of money in politics. We also point out that the purpose of doing these things is to facilitate a transition towards a socialist future. Now, the battle is always going to be providing more and more clarity because the big thing missing is how do we get there, how do we even bring about the things that would precipitate this democratic constitution happening? It's a continued political struggle. I think we've won that battle of “win versus defend” democracy.
This program was not meant to be a rewrite of our platform. It was meant to be a synthesis of the most important points that we want to talk about in 2024. Huge win! Of all the things that we could talk about within DSA, we are choosing to center within this program the demand for a democratic constitution. The next step is providing further clarity around what that means and how we get there.
Luke: How were you able to change the framing to “win the battle for democracy”?
Rashad: Political struggle in the For Our Rights Committee. Two members of MUG had to do the deep organizing work of whipping people and also understanding where they were coming from. We faced some hurdles. Some people are hesitant to say the U.S. isn’t a democracy. Some say it’s a “bourgeois democracy.” I argue, OK, we can have political freedoms or limited political freedoms, but that does not mean that we live in a democracy. The fact that the U.S. is not a democracy reveals itself every day. A lot of the time it's about SCOTUS or legislation getting blocked by the Senate. We routinely see the imperial executive do imperial executive things.
On “bourgeois democracy.” Why are we taking a word that we should claim as our own (democracy) and giving even an ounce of it to the bourgeoisie, who obviously do not have any interest in democracy? Terms like “bourgeois democracy” and “socialist democracy” are agitationally and propaganda-wise much more convoluted and much more complex. If this is “bourgeois democracy,” then really what we need is socialism instead of capitalism. But that doesn't really help us understand that we can't have socialism without democracy. It's much cleaner to say, “We don't live with democracy and we can prove that.” I have not found it difficult to talk with people this way. When we say the U.S. is not a democracy and we want a democratic political system, that lands, that clicks. This is a confirmation of people's experience. I was talking to an old friend from college the other day. He is not a socialist. I said the main problem is that we don't live in a democracy. The connection was instantaneous: “Oh, yeah, no, for sure. I absolutely agree with you.”
People can change their minds. I don't think people are set in stone just because they may have the framing of “defend democracy.” It's the art of persuasion. Our most important task is persuading people toward our ideas, and that has to come from first understanding where people are coming from. We have to allow people to reveal those contradictions themselves. “If you just said this, would you still call the U.S. a democracy?” We can help facilitate people changing their minds, but at the end of the day, people have to come to the belief on their own.
Luke: I find it more difficult to talk about democracy or the project of creating democracy in the U.S. if one uses the label of bourgeois democracy. It leads folks into some complicated positions. It is a lot clearer and a lot more effective to just talk about the absence of democracy and then the fight for democracy. I have also found that folks, regardless of if they call themselves socialists, react to that positively. There is this understanding that perhaps what we're commonly told the U.S. is in a democracy is not the case, that something is amiss and could be made better. Like you, I acknowledge particular political freedoms that we have, and then ask, “But do these things amount to the ability for people to be involved in the decisions that impact their lives? Do we actually then live in a society where the majority gets to come to political conclusions?”
What other sticking points have you encountered when talking with folks about the Constitution or democracy?
Rashad: Quickly on political freedoms. There are voting rights in the U.S. That creates a great opportunity to ask, “Does that actually mean that you have a say in what happens in institutions?” And often, the answer is no. I can then ask, “Why do you think that happens?” Oftentimes, you get an iteration of “politicians don't listen to us,” and we have to get them to listen. Sure, but I look at the structural problems, and the undemocratic nature of our system. I also think about the necessity of imperative mandates and recall mechanisms.
On pushbacks or hesitancies, I'll highlight two vivid debates that happened within the program committee. One was about the claim that people are thinking about the Constitution. Some argue that they aren’t and, therefore, we shouldn't talk about it. I think that's incredibly misguided. I don't go around every day and hear people talking about socialism. I don't even hear them talking about the reforms that we fight for. This is the entire purpose of education and propaganda - to talk about things that we know are in workers' interest but are not top of mind. That's the whole idea of changing consciousness. In fact, if we know it’s needed and we know people aren't talking about it, then that’s an argument for why we should talk about it.
Another argument: people have a harder time thinking about institutions than they do about things that immediately exist in their lives, such as their landlord or their boss. People who've done labor organizing or tenant organizing, know people can be mad that rent is high but not automatically attribute that to their landlord. People may not like their working conditions, but not everybody attributes that to their bosses and tyrannical control over the workplace. There's political education involved in both of those things. Talking about the Constitution is just another form of political education. If we should only talk about what others are talking about, we’d never talk about socialism.
In the same way that our goal is to spread consciousness and awareness of socialism, our goal should also be to spread that awareness and consciousness of democracy and a democratic constitution. Oftentimes you can hide behind the argument of “that's too complicated for working people.” This is a very dangerous argument because that completely erodes the protagonism and the inherent ability of all workers to be worker intellectuals and thinking people. People are thinking all the time. I think all workers are intellectually thinking about something, right? It may not be politics, but there are plenty of other things that you have to critically think about on a day-to-day basis. As someone who believes in the inherent capabilities, intellectualness, and protagonism of all working people, I have no problem believing that people can talk about things that may be initially more complex than they are used to.
It's not actually a question of, “Is this what people are talking about?” It's a question of what we need people talking about. And if we need people talking about socialism, then it's the question of whether can we get to socialism under an undemocratic political system. Can we have permanent reforms? Can we win a majority of seats in this country? Even if we were to get a majority of people to agree with us, can we actually win a majority of seats in every single office? I would say no. You should know what working people are talking about, but that's all in the service of continuing to do the science of persuasion. We want to persuade people of the need to win democracy. Democracy is a critical task of our time. It’s connected to all the things that we care about, whether it be our health care, our rent, our jobs - it’s all tied to political democracy.
Luke: What’s the role of historical knowledge?
Rashad: We have so much history to prove that change is possible. Think about the abolition of slavery. I'm sure there was a time when that felt incredibly daunting. We do not have slavery in the United States. Even the Constitution can be changed. It is possible. We don't need to prove that people can engage in constitutional politics. People across Latin America are showing us all the time that it's normal to engage in constitutional politics. We have something to learn from people in the global South. Think about Chile. It's too late if we just start talking about the Constitution at the moment of a constituent assembly.
History is also important to understand what works and doesn't work. Let's ask people about their perception of history. “Did you support Medicare For All in the past eight years?” Yes. “Did you know that a majority of people in the U.S. also supported it?” Maybe they did. “What happened? What was that mismatch?” Well, Congress didn't pass it. “OK, why?” Etc. We had this good thing, and then it went away. Did a majority of working people want it to go away? No. It's amazing how simple the power of a question can be.
Luke: Where does DSA go from here?
Rashad: DSA is its members. I'm working to help DSA members fulfill the call to action. We need to have real-life, one-on-one, or small group structured conversations about our FORC program. Those conversations don't need to just center the parts about the election. They don’t just need to center the parts about our economic demands, but they should lead and center the part that says DSA's mission is to win the battle for democracy and our goal is a democratic constitution.
Our conversations need to be rooted in social investigation and a back-and-forth dialogue with people. We also need time to reflect, and we need updates and debriefs about what it’s like to talk about democracy and our program. We need to bring what we’ve written to people. Let's see how that lands with people. It will really take the vanguard of the movement for democracy within DSA, MUG, to make that happen. The type of structured conversations we want to have with working people outside of DSA are the same conversations MUG members are going to need to have within their chapters to get people to be willing to talk about democracy, to get people comfortable talking about democracy.
Bring the FORC program to your chapters. Highlight the parts about winning the battle for democracy. The most important thing the next DSA convention can do is pass a permanent program that replaces our platform. DSA needs to be committed to uniting social movement forces, labor movement forces, tenant forces, and other party forces behind the goal of a constituent assembly with majority support and majority participation of elected representatives.
Whether it says democratic republic or democratic socialist republic, we need to clarify the form of governance that emerges from an assembly. I think our goal is a new republic with a socialist character, meaning that there is an explicit mandate for socialism. But at the end of the day, we have to be clear about how we get there. Also, it's not just about the democratic republic within our nation. We want a global democratic socialist republic or a global democratic republic.
Where does DSA need to go next? One-on-one conversations within our communities, unions, workplaces, tenant organizations, and apartment buildings. Let's talk about our program. Let's center on winning the battle for democracy. Let's engage in social investigation. If you're a big believer in that, whether you're in MUG or not, you will have to make that happen. You are the protagonist.