Sweet Dreams of Marxist Unity

Dani Lotand

The Marxist Unity Group have been keeping a dream journal on behalf of the masses. They''re very pleased to inform you that last night the masses finally dreamt up something good: a program. Last night, in fact, "millions of people in this country" had "one unspoken dream that we will wear on our chest." Although this dream is a little long for a sweatshirt, we''ll do our best to parse it.

This dream, was of course, "the dream of a socialist revolution in the United States," a dream in which a "vast ecosystem of socialist-allied institutions", "a decisive section of the military rank and file," "the federal government as a bully pulpit," and "a democratic majority mandate for socialism" have led to the calling of a "a majoritarian constitutional convention" on behalf of a new "continental republic", At this continental convention, our dream citizens, newly endowed with "direct, universal, and equal suffrage" by their "authentic popular democracy," will decide to establish "a truly universal welfare state," universal conscription for a "people''s army" (which, when not providing "genuine public safety" will be democratically "carry[ing] out public projects"), and "a popular, unicameral assembly elected by proportional representation." And with this new constitution out of the way, "the working class will finally have the power" to "move closer every passing year to communism... a free association of labor."

Like most good dreams, the one so dutifully recorded by the Marxist Unity Group operates on a kind of woozy dream-logic. In this dream, a "popular mandate for revolution" is cultivated by "running militant socialist candidates for public office, while simultaneously organizing... party-affiliated media, community services, mutual aid and defensive organizations." Manifesting works more or less like Oprah tells you: "we become a party by acting like one." Through the newly mass DSA running "militant socialist candidates for public office" (perhaps not going so far as to say communist), establishing a newspaper (think L''Humanité), and setting up the odd brake light clinic, the people will come together to deliver a "democratic majority mandate" for a democratically-run organization with a "democratically-adopted platform" of bringing about "democratic socialist republic" in which we will be able to finally build "democratic economic planning." Democracy begets greater democracy begets the greatest democracy of all: that being the democracy which was, like the schemes of Eugen Dühring, "constructed in [the] sovereign head" of the Marxist Unity Group, "pregnant with ultimate truths." While the small-minded have been setting up folding tables & checking Slack, the Marxist Unity Group have been listening to the masses so attentively that they know what the democratic decisions of the DSA will be before the DSA has learnt about them, they know when Americans will democratically elect their mass-party in DSA costume, and they know that when they do it will bring about a convention so democratic that all the people will find themselves in favor of the annexation of Mexico and the corvée.

At this point the sectarian Marxist might inquire—although it is more than a little unfair to engage in this kind of critique of the goings-on of dreams—how the demands of Marxist Unitarians are distinct from those Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Program called "the old democratic litany familiar to all: universal suffrage, direct legislation, popular rights, a people''s militia," "demands which, insofar as they are not exaggerated in fantastic presentation, have already been realized." The answer is that the SPD merely suggested as demands what the Marxist Unity Group can speak of as self-evident fact: our tribunes of the people are able to speak of what they will do "immediately upon taking power," the policies "our republic will launch." The mechanism which connects running candidates for the House of Representatives (the Senate is insufficiently democratic) under the aegis of a social-democratic pressure group, "principled agitation in the halls of Congress," and a "popular mandate for revolution" is too obvious to require spelling out: the issue is that the DSA have held themselves back from "lifting [themselves] out of parochialism by hiring more staff" and "forging socialist representatives into disciplined blocks [sic]." One gets the impression that, as was commonly thought to be the case when the Gotha Program itself was written, revolution is so near on the horizon that it''s only being held back by its lack of a ballot line.

In this, the Marxist Unity Group declare themselves "particularly inspired by the Marxism of the Second International." In fact, their admiration goes so far that they have written the script for a collective reverie where the Second International succeeded rather than systematically falsified the adequacy of those tactics for revolution. Their strategy amounts to the aspiration to create a party more or less as extensive and ambitious as the present-day French Communist Party, under the ballot line of a loose-knit social democratic pressure group that currently functions as the Democratic Party''s equivalent of the Fabian Society, but with the understanding that this time the strategy should succeed rather than fail. Every tactical question communists have for the DSA is begged (on what grounds one can justifiably think that marginal socialist representation in legislature is a recipe for a "popular mandate for socialism" given in just how many other countries it has happened according to their script and failed, why one would expect "base-building" running up against the asymptote of actually "vast" Second International trade-union halls and workers'' schools to do better than theirs did considering over the past century those spaces have been filled by the state and market). Every substantial question which left-liberal anti-communists (Kautskyite "liberal professors" committed only to "pure democracy") might have for communists is begged too (what does this sort of naïve "democratic planning" do that the market doesn''t besides sit at ERP dashboards in retrofuturistic chairs, why is "authentic popular democracy" communism rather than Habermas, on what grounds is this big welfare state but with a short working-day and more co-ops not a rose-tinted Keynesian vision of Fordist social democracy). It is as simple as saying that democracy, the property that makes a particular political arrangement good, will deliver the various institutions the Unitarians have realized are good, by dint of its being good.

However noble you may consider both democracy and communism to be, there is not currently a democratic mandate for communism. There is no reason to think this would change were the leading American social democratic pressure group to embrace a litany of proposals to attempt necromancy on the Second International, which it is also not inclined to do. There is no reason to think that were the DSA to make like the PCF that the DSA would find itself on the verge of rewriting the Constitution in the image of a "democratic socialist republic." There is no reason to think that the Unitarians'' Pure Democracy, commodity production with Marxist values and republican virtues, would find itself oriented towards bringing about communism. The principle of learning from the past failures of their tactics has not changed their tactics one iota: it has been used as a ready-made reason why we can say before argument, let alone evidence, why these tactics will work better than the last time they were tried. This should not concern communists, because communists are not voting against the defense budget until they have "a democratic majority mandate for socialism." Communists do not need social-democratic coattails to ride on and a tidy revolution. They are not taking lessons on civic virtue. The concern of communists is communism, and they are not content to dream.