Adam Przeworski

I’m reading his “Capitalism and Social-Democracy.” He’s still around, emeritus at NYU. Followers of my substack know I contend that social-democracy and democratic socialism are identical, for all practical purposes. Przeworski (‘AP’; don’t ask me how to pronounce it) makes a compelling case that socialism isn’t happening and will never happen, even though it could liberate the human race. He says that if pessimism is “informed optimism,” he is informed. It will be useful, I hope, to examine his arguments in light of the situation of the only important U.S. socialist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

The book lays out the dilemmas for socialists as clearly as I have ever seen it done, and there’s a lot to hash out. It is illuminating to note that all of the great controversies on the Left were wrung out within social-democratic and socialist parties before World War I.

In that last regard, in my Rutgers Uni English Department could be found a fellow named William Phillips, an editor of Partisan Review (PR, now defunct, then based in New Brunswick, NJ), who had been a leading Trotskyist back in the day. I spent many happy hours reading PR, which offered a combination of political radicalism and literary modernism that was just my jam. Phillips once said that in light of all the challenges posed by the New Left, he had forgotten the answers.

One core question is whether to participate in the electoral process. AP notes that contrary to certain nostrums on the Left, the working class according to definitions favored on the Left was never big enough to form an electoral majority. Anywhere. (Forget for a moment that the U.S. working class has its head up its ass and would not vote for socialism.) Moreover, in its heyday in Europe the working class seldom awarded its tribunes in social-democratic parties more than forty percent of the vote.

This means electoral participation, to be more than symbolic or purely for propagandistic purposes (a view held by some) must take on allies outside the working class, which means engaging with compromises on basic program. It should also be clear that to get to very ambitious socialist goals, a crushing majority is required. These two things are in contradiction. I would grant that a broader electoral majority could be brought behind moderated socialist objectives, also known as social-democracy. This is Senator Bernie Sanders’s project (and mine), one that he has brought closer to the surface in the U.S. than any other politician.

A condition for viable electoral participation is a deemphasis on direct action and rules out insurrection altogether. If you want to appeal to the public to elect you, you have to play by the rules. That rules out heavy-duty “industrial action,” also known as mass strikes. AP claims that such actions were disasters in Western Europe. We have seen general strikes in the U.S. in the 1930s, in Minneapolis, Seattle, and San Francisco. These were not disasters, unlike most such affairs in Western Europe. What was the difference? I have a theory.

The failed general strikes alluded to by AP were for economic objectives. Two that turned out well were for universal suffrage (then for men only). Perhaps the public received demands for suffrage sympathetically, as it did in the U.S. for civil rights protest, while looking askance at efforts to upset economic status seen as natural and inevitable. It’s harder to be a revolutionary when you already have political rights.

The obligation to play ball as the price of participation in the system not too long ago ensnared radical professor Cornel West. He had been invited to join the Democrats’ platform committee, then stalked out and denounced it when he did not get his way. Aside from being self-deluded enough to imagine the party would buy what he was selling, he didn’t realize that in that sort of exercise, you agree to be locked in. You are obliged to provide buy-in for the privilege of participating. Professor West is a brilliant scholar and messenger, but as a political operative he is a putz.

Political rights in the U.S. are evaporating. For one thing, our electoral system is dysfunctional, empowering minorities over majorities. Presidents are not elected by voters, and power in Congress does not reflect public sentiment. College campuses have been locked down against any criticism of Israel. As John F. Kennedy said, sort of, when peaceful revolution is impossible, you get people cheering when health insurance CEOs get gunned down in cold blood.

The electoral participation question bedevils DSA. From where I sit, it has two, dueling doctrines. It supports candidates for state and local government and provides fairly loose support for Senator Sanders, but it abstains from useful participation in national elections for the presidency and Congress. It pretends to be oriented to the working class but seems to think any sort of legislative collaboration with Democrats (and all of its candidates run as Democrats) is poison. It is maximalist on national politics, what used to be derided as the “all or nothing” type of radicalism, but pragmatic on local matters.

In my next post, I will try to talk about wither socialism in the history of social-democracy and in DSA politics.