Starting Point
Socialists often downplay politics when talking about democracy. By Luke Pickrell
A recent Jacobin Tweet directed me to Ben Burgis’s 2020 article, “Yes, Power Corrupts. That’s Why Socialists Want to Democratize Society.” Burgis rehashes a debate with Stefan Molyneux, who argues against the redistributive principles of socialism because “[h]uman beings cannot in any way, shape, or form handle power.” Burgis agrees that power corrupts, but sees this as an argument in socialism’s favor since “the best guarantee against fallible human beings abusing their power over others is to spread power fairly equally between individuals.”
Equal distribution of power is crucial, and a desire to “democratize all spheres of society” is laudable. I agree with the core of Burgis’s argument: socialists must be committed small-d democrats.
However, what’s striking about Burgis’s discussion of democracy is how quickly he passes over politics to focus on economics. It’s a “blink-and-you-miss-it” treatment of the political system that’s all too common on the left.
Politics has its moment. Burgis calls for limits on “the power of government bureaucrats through constitutional constraints to protect important rights like free speech,” and acknowledges in a general sense that political institutions must change. But the economy is his main concern. “[I]f we’re worried about human beings acting with undue cruelty or selfishness, we have to design an economic order that doesn’t encourage and reward those impulses,” he argues. “As I’ve written before, we want to expand democracy to the economic realm.”
Burgis isn’t wrong to critique the modern capitalist economy as an undemocratic hellhole that “generates horrors ranging from Harvey Weinstein’s predatory treatment of actresses to the backbreaking labor in Jeff Bezos’s warehouses.” But if our end goal is a democratic society, where should we focus our critique? Given our massive goal, where should we start?
As I’ve discussed before, the classical Marxist response was the demand for a democratic republic — the political form through which the working class could lay hold of and then socialize the economy. “Above all, [the revolution] will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat,” wrote Friedrich Engels in The Principles of Communism. “Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.” Some fifty years later, Engels reiterated the centrality of political democracy: “[T]he democratic republic is the only political form in which the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class can first be universalised and then culminate in the decisive victory of the proletariat.”
We have Kautsky’s critique of the French Republic, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party’s 1903 Program, and the Socialist Party of America’s 1912 Platform — plus other non-socialist sources — to demonstrate the content of Engels’s democratic constitution. The classical Marxist position of agitating for a democratic republic is still applicable because the US is not a democracy based on one person, one equal vote. Calls to “expand” democracy to the economy belie the reality of our undemocratic political system. What democracy is there to extend?
It’s in this sense that the US is still in the age of the democratic revolution. The political democracy that Burgis and others are so quick to concede has, in fact, yet to be won.
The call to democratize society is a laudable goal. But as a political strategy and slogan for agitation, it obscures the lack of political democracy and points us away from the classical Marxist demand of winning a democratic republic. Socialists are committed small-d democrats, and that’s why we want a new constitution.