Paul Le Blanc: The Third American Revolution

Paul Le Blanc: The Third American Revolution -- How do we get from the capitalist present to a socialist future?


More articles by Paul Le Blanc can be found HERE.
By Paul Le Blanc
[A revised version of the following essay will appear in a visionary anthology, Imagine: Living in a socialist USA, to be edited by Michael Steven Smith, Debby Smith and Frances Goldin and due to be published in September 2013.]
May 23, 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- How one can get from the capitalist present to a socialist future can be clarified through what one means by socialism and by how one understands the actualities of capitalism today. The revolutionary pathway must obviously connect with both.
Socialism means rule by the people over the economic structures and resources that we need to keep ourselves alive and healthy, to engage in creative activity, to maintain good relationships with each other, to be able to have good and meaningful lives. The economy would be socially owned, democratically controlled and planfully utilised to meet the needs of all. It could be described as economic democracy.
This is a revolutionary goal – a fundamental change from an economic dictatorship (ownership and control of the economy by a relative few for the purpose of maximising the profits of that capitalist minority) to an economy owned by all, democratically controlled by us all and utilised in a coordinated manner to meet the needs and provide for the free development of all.
What socialism is not – and what that means for how to get it
This revolutionary goal that we desire gives an insight as to how we can get from the capitalist “here” to the socialist “there”. There is a serious misconception that we need to clear away in order to draw out that insight. This misconception sees socialism as a benevolent state that takes care of us like an affluent and loving parent. If that was socialism, then -- one way or another -- a relatively small number of very smart people would need to take control of the state and use it to take care of us. Perhaps this benevolent minority would come to power through a violent upheaval, establishing a so-called People’s Republic ruled by a revolutionary party that would oversee the far-reaching and positive changes. Or perhaps the benevolent minority would be elected and bring into being an accumulation of positive changes that would gradually add up to an elaborate conglomeration of governmental institutions that would oversee resources and policies to shape our lives in better and better ways.
Who decides what is “positive” and what is “better” -- and how do “they” (whoever they are) actually decide this? How were these benevolent educators themselves educated and why would we trust them with our lives and future? In fact, some of the worst crimes in history have been committed by people who exercise power over others in the name of “socialism”. (This is not just true of so-called “socialism.” Similar crimes have been committed in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” and “the people” and innumerable religious creeds.)
If democracy and freedom are at the heart of socialism, if it involves people taking control of their own lives, shaping their own futures and together controlling the resources that make such freedom possible, then this will need to emerge naturally from the way that we struggle to bring the hoped-for society into being. It will come to nothing if it is not a movement of the great majority in the interests of the great majority. Humanity needs no condescending saviours. People can only become truly free through their own efforts.
Three American revolutions
Another challenge as we try to figure out how to get from the capitalist “here” to the socialist “there” is to find in the here-and-now, in our present-day capitalist society, already-existing realities that can make socialism and the transition to it genuine possibilities.
It may be helpful if we give attention to previous revolutions that unfolded on American soil – the American Revolution of 1775-1783 and what some historians have called the Second American Revolution of 1861-1865. The first ended the rule of kings over the thirteen colonies, forging them into the independent United States of America, a republic within which many people would continue to struggle for a realisation of the revolutionary democratic ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. The second ended the institution of human slavery in this would-be democratic republic, re-emphasising (for example, in the Gettysburg Address) the revolutionary ideals proclaimed at the founding of the republic. In each revolution there was a fundamental power shift, ending the rule of certain powerful and privileged classes (the British upper-crust and monarchy in the first case; the wealthy plantation-owning slavocracy in the second), a power-shift brought about by masses of people engaged in momentous struggle.
Many US socialists have argued that we must move forward to a Third American Revolution that would end the economic dictatorship of capitalism and establish rule by the people over our economy, to be brought about by the great majority of the people themselves.
The experiences of these earlier revolutions are part of the reality inherent in our society today, providing intellectual and moral resources for shaping the next phase of our history. But just as the earlier revolutions emerged from the complex and conflicted social realities of their own time, so is this case with the Third American Revolution. Just as historians have provided immense researches on the social, economic and political realities that resulted in the Revolution and the Civil War, so must we give attention to social, economic and political realities that can result in the fundamental changes of the future. Here we can only provide a sketch – the filling in of the sketch (conceptually and in life) is a collective process that will involve much more space than we have here, much more time, many more people and considerable struggle.
Possibilities of socialism in the here-and-now
Just as in the pre-revolutionary situations in previous times, there is a fantastic and actually-existing potential that is inherent in the realities today. There are economic resources and technologies which currently are being utilised to maximise the profits – over and over and over again in what has been called “the capital accumulation process” that drives capitalism forward – providing greater and greater wealth and economic power for the one or two percent of “top” Americans, those who own the economy. Utilised less wastefully, less irrationally, more democratically, such resources can provide the material basis for a better society in which each person could live a life of dignity, community, creativity and freedom.
Another potential in the here-and-now is the fact that the functioning of the economy is dependent on a socially organised labour force, drawing together the elemental life-force, the strengths, the abilities, the knowledge, the skills, the expertise of many millions of people without whom nothing would be possible. It is the diverse mass of individuals in this socially organised, interactive labour force that keeps our economy running.
To understand the meaning of this reality, it may be helpful to set aside the fuzzy-minded concept of “middle class”, those who are not rich and not poor, but somewhere in the middle. The stark realities of economic power are better captured by the slogans of the recent Occupy Wall Street movement regarding the wealthy and powerful 1% existing at the expense of the other 99% of the population. The math may be slightly off – one could argue that the top levels should be seen as 3%, with another 5% or so as their very loyal and very highly paid managers, advisors and assistants. Those who are left – be their payment high or low (whether blue-collar, white-collar, “professional” employees in the private and public sectors) – constitute the force whose labour makes it possible for our society to exist and survive.
In fact, this massive labour force could be even more massive and productive than it already is. Many people are unemployed, under-employed, or poorly employed because those who control the economy have concluded that it would be unprofitable or less profitable to have things otherwise.
The members of this working class, which includes those family members and dependents supported by the working-class wages and salaries, constitute the great majority of people in our society. Because of their numbers and their role in our economy, together they have immense potential power and they also have an obvious capacity – given their social organisation as part of our present-day economy – to provide the basis for a socially-owned and democratically controlled economic system.
Despite such potentialities as these, there is no pathway to socialism if a majority of the people do not will that it be so. This is especially true if the capitalist minority that has immense economic power in its hands uses that power (as it does) to secure power over our government (including both major political parties, over the military and police, over the ways our laws are shaped and understood), over our news media, educational systems and culture and – in innumerable other ways – over the day-to-day lives of the great majority of people. This adds up to an immense amount of power in the hands of those who would be opposed to the economic democracy of socialism.
The impressiveness of such capitalist power is highlighted by the following obvious fact: since the coming of the industrial revolution to the United States, since the 1820s, there have been many eloquent socialists and militant labour insurgencies in this country and sometimes they have had significant impact – but they have never been strong enough, no matter how much they appealed to the great working-class majority, to replace the economic dictatorship of capitalism with the economic democracy of socialism.
The power and weakness of capitalist ideology
A key to the power of those who want to maintain the capitalist status quo can be found in the working class itself. This working-class weakness involves the frequent violation of the old adage: “United we stand, divided we fall.” The working-class majority consists of at least 80 percent of our people – hundreds of millions of individuals. There are men and women, young and old and in-betweens, native-born and immigrant, with many different ethnic groups and a significant degree of racial diversity. As the great US poet Walt Whitman once said, we are “a nation of nations”. And speaking of Whitman, another form of diversity involves differences in sexuality and sexual preference. There are also many religious differences (including some who have no religious preference at all). This is all interwoven with great varieties of regional cultures and of cultural tastes and more. Such differences have generated frictions, intolerance, fear and a hateful de-humanisation between different groups.
There are some such differences among the top one or two or three per cent of the population that owns and controls and profits fabulously from our economic system – but they often find ways to tolerate such differences, especially if such unity will help them to work together to protect their economic and political power. At the same time, significant currents within this powerful elite have proved quite adept at nurturing deep and multiple antagonisms around such differences between various sectors of the working class – “divide and conquer!”
There are also certain notions prevalent within the working-class majority which embrace and celebrate the power and greed of the wealthy capitalist minority. Some workers embrace capitalist ideology. “That’s what I’d do if I was rich like that” is how many put it, seeing in this a justification for the behaviour of someone accused of being, for example, a greedy “Robber Baron”. The less powerful often feel admiration for the more powerful, a vicarious identification with them, also a hope that someday it may be possible to rise into the ranks of the wealthy. Related to this is the conviction that those who are smart enough and work very hard can, in fact, do precisely that – with the implication that the rich are rich because they are smart and hard-working and deserve their wealth and that those who are not rich are generally stupid and lazy and deserve their economic hardships.
Yet over time, such notions ring hollow for many in the working-class majority. There are perceptions and insights, based on experience, regarding the existence of stupidity and sloth among the rich and the powerful. Those who are wealthy (in their great majority) inherit their wealth; those who are not wealthy may hope to become wealthy, but such hopes are rarely capable of being realised. Most who work hard and are smart end their lives with accumulated weariness and wisdom, perhaps, but not with great riches. The hard knocks of reality persuade significant numbers that while some may be fortunate to find a job that provides a decent living, not all people can rise into the top one or two or three per cent no matter how hard they work. Ronald Reagan (after working his way up to his own perch of wealth and power) made the appropriate point in commenting on the plight of the lower classes: “Whoever said that life is fair?” Among the many smart and hard-working people for whom Reagan’s own pathway is closed, there is an increasingly clear understanding that such unfairness is a fundamental truth of capitalist society.
More than this, there are certain elemental qualities in the consciousness within our diverse working-class majority which naturally go in the direction of socialism. There is a general and deep-held belief that ours should be a society animated by “liberty and justice for all” and that we should have “government of the people, by the people and for the people”. There is a general belief that governments are legitimate only if they enjoy the consent of the governed, that all people are entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and that there should be “equal opportunity for all”. There is a gut feeling of identification with the genuine Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” There is a gut feeling of disgust over the reality behind the joke that the Golden Rule really means: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
It is an indisputable fact that politicians of both major US political parties, across the political spectrum, have found it necessary over many decades to give considerable lip-service to these radical democratic ideals and values in order to be elected. Policies contradicting such values must be clothed in the rhetoric of the very same values in order to gain any popular acceptance.
The problem for capitalist ideology was alluded to by Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Another way of putting it is: reality trumps hype. The actual dynamics of real-world capitalism erode the belief in this economic system which functions to enrich the few through the exploitation of the labouring majority, a system which may have created many wondrous advantages for society but whose negative qualities naturally pollute our culture and our environment and which periodically intensifies “austerity” and hard times for the majority of the people, even as the rich get richer.
How gains are made and consciousness changed
Among those in our diverse working class who have come to the conclusion that capitalism is not fair and all too often fouls things up, there is the powerful notion that there is nothing we can do about it.
But the history of our country shows that this is not true. The problem is that so much of our history is not available to most people. What passes for “history” adds up, all too often, to collections of trivia having little to do with the actual lives of real people. Or, in some cases, it is made up of tedious recitations of partial truths and pseudo-facts designed to buttress the status quo. Those whose wealth gives them predominant influence in our cultural and educational systems prefer to keep it that way.
The actual history of the United States has been shaped and punctuated by struggles for freedom and social justice. To the extent that we have any freedoms at all and to the extent that there has been dignity and wellbeing for our people, it has only come about through the dynamics so perceptively described in 1857 by Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave who became a great spokesperson and organiser in the anti-slavery struggle:
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. ... If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
This was true not simply of the struggle against slavery, but also the struggle for independence and the innumerable struggles to make the new republic increasingly democratic. It is true of the early struggles of the working class for better wages, better working conditions, a shorter work day and even what we now call “the weekend”. It is true of the struggle for women to have the right to vote and to overcome many forms of degradation to which they were once subjected. It is true of the struggle to resist and overcome the racist segregation laws and practices of African Americans that were the aftermath of slavery for more than a century. It is a vibrant part of the history of immigrants in our land and of many others, who successfully fought to overcome oppressive realities.
None of these gains fell from the skies or were granted through the benevolence of the upper classes, or simply crystallised through the workings of the market. They came about through a continuation of struggles waged by highly organised social movements, which were able – with great persistence against immense obstacles – to work profound changes in popular consciousness and at the same time to mobilise popular pressures and bring together great social forces that forced those who had power to give way, causing the powerful to say “yes” when they would have preferred to say “no”.
If one looks seriously and carefully at the movements that shaped the history of the United States in the course of the twentieth century, one finds in their central leadership and among their most dedicated activists men and women who were influenced by and committed to socialist ideals. This can certainly be seen clearly – and has been documented – in regard to the labour movement, the civil rights movement and the movement to end the US war in Vietnam. The organisational know-how, the sense of history, the analytical skills and the broad social vision of organised socialists who helped to build effective social movements resulted not only in the important victories for those movements, but in the stimulation of the thinking and shifts in consciousness among growing layers of people involved in the mass struggles that brought social change.
Nellie Bessons-Hendrix, an autoworker who was involved in the successful union struggles of the 1930s, including the Women’s Emergency Brigade during the Flint sit-down strike, later commented:
I know there was a Socialist Party and a Communist Party helping to organise. Although I never belonged to a Party, I feel that had it not been for the education and know-how that they gave us, we wouldn’t have been able to do it.
One of the revolutionary socialists who helped to lead the successful Minneapolis general strike of 1934, Vincent Raymond Dunne, explained:
Our policy was to organise and build strong unions, so workers could have something to say and assist in changing the present order into a socialist society.
In this way, among those in our diverse working class who have come to the conclusion that capitalism is not fair and all too often fouls things up, there comes into being the powerful notion that there is something we can do about it. Such developments can contribute decisively to the development of a mass socialist movement that will be capable of bringing about the Third American Revolution.
Much ink, hot air and key strokes have been expended, over the years, pitting “reform” and “revolution” against each other. Reform means changes for the better within capitalist society, while the replacement of capitalism with socialism would constitute revolutionary change. The actual approach of the revolutionary socialist movement – not only in the United States during the 1930s, but the whole wide world around, over more than a hundred years – has seen these as part of the same process. As Rosa Luxemburg once put it, the movement understands “the struggle for social reforms as its means and the social revolution as its aim".
A movement of the great majority, for the great majority
Over the years there has been the development of a considerable amount of experience and efforts to generalise from that experience, involving such important concepts as the mass strike, united fronts, transitional demands, revolutionary internationalism and more.
But sorting through all of that has little meaning if one loses sight of the basics indicated here: that socialism and the working class cannot move forward unless they are interconnected and this through the actual struggle for democratic rights and social justice for the multi-faceted working-class majority. Inseparable from that central notion is the understanding that freedom (understood as self-determination, control over one’s own life) cannot be fully won except through one’s own efforts – only the working class can bring about the liberation of the working class and this can only be achieved fully by replacing the economic dictatorship of capitalism with economic democracy.
This is in contradiction to liberalism, which is inclined to favour political democracy and social reforms, but which also embraces the economic framework of capitalism. While socialists have made common cause with liberals in a variety of social struggles, if they are to be true to the orientation elaborated here, they are unable to see the pathway of liberation as involving support for reform-minded candidates of one or another pro-capitalist party.
Experience has shown, over and over again, that being tied to such candidates will necessarily involve the dilution and trimming away of the radical content and mass action orientation that distinguishes the socialist from the liberal. The obvious pressure on any supporters of a liberal candidate would be to do nothing to undermine the electability of any liberal candidate who wishes to remain in his or her pro-capitalist party and to secure necessary financial support from big-money donors.
The revolutionary socialist relies on the developing consciousness and power of a mass working-class base, putting pressure on all politicians, being in the hip pocket of none. To struggle successfully for reforms can help pave the way for mass socialist consciousness and a socialist future. The key is to build social movements and struggles that are politically independent of any pro-capitalist politicians. While some members of such movements will, in fact, support such politicians, the movement as a whole will need to remain independent in order to remain effective in being able to pressure all politicians.
It may be that sincere liberals are inclined to rely on “lesser-evil” politicians rather than on the pressure of mass action because they don’t have confidence in the activist potential of the working class.
In a different way, some of the more militant activists in the anti-capitalist movement seem to share this lack of confidence in the potential of the working-class majority. Sometimes scoffing at what they dismiss as “the numbers game”, they reject building mass struggles of working people. Instead they are inclined to engage in their own militant actions in ways that preclude broader participation. Sometimes such actions confuse or alienate broad sectors of the working-class majority.
Such actions on the part of relatively small groups are different from militant actions, non-violent civil disobedience, etc. that are engaged in by large numbers of working people or that are organically connected to broad struggles involving representative strata of the population – there are many examples of this in the labour and civil rights struggles of previous years. But to substitute for such mass action one’s own militant actions (involving, for example, property damage, street fighting, etc.) not only makes activists vulnerable to victimisation by the authorities but can also cut across the need and the possibility, of effectively reaching out to and drawing into the struggle, those whose numbers can actually help to win the struggle.
Potentialities exist in the United States that could crystallise into a mass socialist movement. There is a broad array of forces: working-class Democrats, Republicans and independents who want a fight-back alternative to capitalist austerity measures (whether sponsored by Republicans or Democrats), radicalising trade unionists, Green Party supporters, veterans of the Occupy struggles, assorted left-wing groups, activists against various forms of racism and bigotry who see links between human rights and economic justice, people who are tired of spending on militarism and military adventures drawing resources away from human needs and others who are frustrated and furious over economic injustices that are coming down on them.
This could be the basis for a broad left front, agreeing on certain basic principles (and agreeing to disagree on certain differences). Such developments seem to be crystallising in various countries. As one British activist, Owen Jones, suggests, this is a time in which it might be possible to “link together workers facing falling wages while their tax credits are cut; unemployed people demonised by a cynical media and political establishment; crusaders against the mass tax avoidance of the wealthy; sick and disabled people having basic support stripped away; campaigners against crippling cuts to our public services; young people facing a future of debt, joblessness and falling living standards; and trade unions standing their ground in the onslaught against workers’ rights.”
Activists seeking to prepare the way for a socialist future face the challenge of developing tactics, educational and organising efforts and overarching strategies designed to build a durable mass socialist movement capable of winning meaningful victories in the here-and-now while preparing the way for the working-class majority coming to power, with a transition from capitalism to socialism. There will be a need to discuss, debate and define where electoral activities, street actions and other means toward that end fit into the overall scheme of things.
In coming to decisions of “where we go from here”, there will be useful lessons to learn from movements and struggles that have been part of the historic and recent experience of the United States and of other countries as well. There will be distinctive present-day potentialities and resources that activists will also draw upon in deciding what is to be done. But if there is to be a genuine possibility of a genuinely socialist future, the guiding thread in all such decisions must be how best to build a movement of the great majority that can bring about the triumph of the great majority.
Sources
Eric Foner. Give Me Liberty! An American History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
Paul Le Blanc. Work and Struggle: Voices from U.S. Labor Radicalism. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Rosa Luxemburg. Socialism or Barbarism, Selected Writings, ed. by Paul Le Blanc and Helen C. Scott. London: Pluto Press, 2010.
Immanuel Ness, Amy Offner, Christ Sturr, eds. Real World Labor: A Reader in Economics, Politics and Social Policy. Boston: Dollars and Sense, 2009.
Diane Ravitch. The American Reader: Words That Moved a Nation. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.