Noah and Charles debate role of Democratic Party in US class struggle

Charles The American national tradition Marxist must focus on today is that of the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society / War on Poverty / Civil Rights Act and Barack Obama and Obamacare.

The ultra-left purity fetish anti-Democratic Party dogma prevents the Left from fighting for the US working class reforms . An accumulation of reforms is the US road to socialism , All American Socialism or socialism with American characteristics.

Noah: “It is in this friendly spirit, I'd like to address Charles. My friend, the premise of Marxism is motion. It is history. To understand the USA and its history, we must understand development over time and how it is the material reality that creates everything.” ///

Charles : Thank you Comrade Noah for commenting on my comment.

Yes I agree we must understand the development over time and how it is the material reality that creates everything.

In this case , the critical material reality that created changes in the state power of the US is the class struggle between the Working Class and the Bourgeoisie. The New Deal was a historic victory for and BY our class , the Proletariat, in the class struggle in the nation _and in the Democratic Party_ . The New Deal put into the laws of the state power radical reforms ( not revolutionary) . Included were legalization of trade unions , unemployment insurance, Social(ist) Security; and others , including the 40 hour week , which was the famous demand of the Haymarket martyrs, which we Communists around the world famously celebrate on May Day (!). ///

Noah : “The Democratic party of FDR was still a Bourgeois party, but forced into a progressive role in the world struggle against fascism by a militant working class movement.” //

Charles: I agree . The important point being that it was the 99% who won the New Deal . This meant that the Democratic Party was no longer a Bourgeois Party , but a Party in which a _genuine_ class struggle now existed . //

Noah : “As time went on, that ceased to be the case.” //

Charles : On this we have a critical disagreement. As time went on , there continued genuine class struggle in the DP , whereas the Republican Party was controlled by the Bourgeoisie, no class struggle.

Over the years , sometimes the Working Class won and sometimes the Bourgeoisie won the class struggle in the Democratic Party .

In the Truman years , the Bourgeoisie won some counteroffensives in the DP : Taft-Hartley weakened trade union rights ;the anti-Communist and therefore anti-Working Class Cold War weakened us ; the criminalization and delegitimization of the Communist Party USA ( started by Truman) was a severe blow to the Working Class movement.

With the Johnson administration, the Working Class won more reform victories through the DP with the Great Society, War on Poverty ( the Low Incomed are a major section of the Working class) and the Civil Rights laws . White supremacy is the main division of the US Working Class preventing it from accomplishing its world historic mission of socialism , so the Civil Rights laws are a major Working Class victory .

Clinton’s administration, Reaganism in the DP, turned out to be another victory for the Bourgeoisie in the DP. Reaganism through the Republican Party was of course a major Bourgeois victory. It was rooted in pandering to white supremacy among white workers ( I’m an expert on this living in 85% Black , industrial proletarian central Detroit ; living through decades of “Reagan Democrats “ in our suburbs and out state ).

With Obama , the DP began to halt the direction of Reaganism , and a return to FDR/LBJ Liberalism with Obamacare and defending social(ist) programs , an explicit Keynesian “Stimulus “, against the Republicans. Obama emphasized “ from the Bottom Up”, or the 99% in the drivers seat .

Bernie Sanders has led ( on behalf of the Working Class) a movement toward fully universal affordable healthcare; he has moved the whole DP to marching toward that victory. All the while the Republicans fighting it.

Biden has just exposed the Republican covert efforts to destroy Social(ist) Security, Medicare/Medicaid (Proto -Socialized Medicine).

All US Working Class historic reforms in the last 90 years have been through the Democratic Party. This has not been a straight line but a zig-zag , as I’m sure you know is a characteristic of _dialectical movement _. ////

Noah : “But I want to focus on the laws of the Dialectic, because in Marxism, I don't think it's possible to say that reforms all pile on top of each other to create change. “ ///

Charles: Au contraire , Comrade . You are no doubt familiar with the standard tool for teaching dialectics - boiling water . Quantitative change transforms in to qualitative change at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. This is precisely accumulation , “piling up” of heat Add in the example of a frog in the water; make the frog the Bourgeoisie. The frog is gradually cooked until the qualitative change of death .

Actually, the Bourgeoisie through the Republicans do realize they are being cooked through the accumulation of reforms . That’s why they are calling Dems Communists and still trying to repeal Social Security and other aspects of the New Deal ( passing Right-to-work-FOR -LESS) . On this the Bourgeoisie understand what’s going better than the Left . It’s not that Dems are Communists, but that the US road to socialism is through accumulation of reforms ; Democrats are unconscious instruments of capitalism's objective tendency to socialism . Marx emphasizes the tendency of the laws of capitalist development toward socialism in Chapter 32 of_Capital_ I.

Actually, Bernsteinism , evolution to socialism, which you mention _is_ correct for the US . In short , this is because the Russian Revolution served as a sort of “vaccination “ against socialist revolution by direct assault so that we are in a war of position a la Gramsci; the Russian Revolution warned the US Bourgeoisie. I am sure you see the dialectic in the US Road to Socialism turning into the opposite of the Russian, Chinese , Cuban, Vietnamese, Nicaraguan, etc. roads . In fact , Venezuela’s road is an accumulation of reforms road without immediate expropriation of the Bourgeoisie. All of the Revolutions in Latin America now are taking electoral/ reform accumulation roads - the American roads to socialism. ///

Noah : “This was the evolutionary, not revolutionary view of Bernstein, and it trended towards idealism, rather than the material movement of the Proletariat. It removed class struggle from the equation and revolution from the equation, ending in a determinist, pre-Hegelian view more similar to Kant.” /// Charles : see my response above . My method is historical _materialist_ ; not idealist at all . As you say , things change ( that’s dialectics ) . Things in the US 1930 -2023 have turned into the opposite of Bernstein’s Germany of the early 20th Century, such that Bernstein was wrong then but a version of evolution to socialism applies now in the US. ////

Noah “In the 2020s, I also do not think it is dogmatic or ultra left to view the notion of working with the Bourgeois parties, who actively steal from the American working class to prop up finance capital, whom they serve, who are more than willing to employ doctrinaire neo-Nazis to accomplish their goals, and who just passed a resolution in Congress to condemn socialism using the most absurd and easily disproven lies, as no avenue of class struggle and instead an avenue of right opportunism and class collaboration. Neither of these parties are popular in the working masses.” //// Charles: Of course , the DP has to continue to oppose socialism as the Working Masses still have substantially anti-Communist and anti-Socialist consciousness from the extraordinary brainwashing of the Cold War , fall of the SU , etc. But see above on how the Democratic Party’s program is _objectively_ toward socialism as it will have to come about in the US. Independents are way more unpopular with the working masses than the Dems and Reps . Over the last century, US Working Masses have shown that the only way they will move to Working Class reforms is through the Democratic Party . //// Noah : Moreover, the lack of revolution, for me, misunderstands what the state is, which is an apparatus of class power, with various institutions built to serve a particular ruling class. /// Charles : Yes a la Engels in _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the STATE _ , and Lenin _The STATE and Revolution _ , but the socialist dialectical take on the Bourgeois state is , of course , to make it serve Working Class interests ; to _move_ toward the Working Class becoming the ruling class. We don’t think of the state as in a fixed condition as you describe it above . ////

Noah : If we are marxist leninists, we must conclude, in understanding the general laws of development, two things, the first from Marx and the second from Lenin

1. That the Proletariat must organize itself based on its material interests and become a class for itself, building a state and institutions that serve our interests, which can finally fulfill the promise the Bourgeoisie made over 200 years ago of a government of, by, and for the people.

/// Charles: Yes but the US working class has not organized itself as a conscious class for itself , working class conscious . So What is to be Done ? as Lenin asked . We must focus on the rational kernel of Working Class history over the last 90 years , that is the Working Class reforms won even without working class consciousness; and build and expand them til we boil the frog. ///:::

Noah : They have had a very long time to fulfill that promise. Marxism teaches us that they will undevelop as we develop, and only WE can fulfill that. To do this, allying with their organizations and using their institutions is not possible according to marxism.

/// Charles: This is not true . Marx and Engels in the First International were using bourgeois electoral institutions . Lenin famously told Communists to work in reactionary trade unions ; and Lenin was elected to the Czarist Duma. Marxism does not disdain struggling for reforms in Bourgeois institutions. This is an important error on your part . ///:

Noah : A temporary alliance is one thing, but we do not have the power of the old movement alongside the Soviets to command anything in negotiations, and we end up simply being subsumed and falling into right opportunism, doing the bidding of the Bourgeoisie, which is at the same time harming the Proletariat.

2. Seeking out semi-Proletarian elements whose material interests can be fulfilled by the Proletariat and its movement as we build it. In Lenin's era, this was the peasantry. In our era, this is the re-Proletariat, the children of the destroyed middle classes who are now also unable to accumulate any forms of stability and are therefore thrust into action alongside us. ///

Charles in our concrete situation 99% of the population are Proletariat-WAGE-LABORERS -EARNERS . So-called Middle Class and the “Lower” Class ( implied as lower by the term middle) are all Wage-Earners or Proletariat. 99% of the population benefit from the reforms won through the Democratic Party of the last 90 years as I mention above . ////

The Bourgeoisie and it's institutions are overwhelmingly hated by the working masses in our era. Now is the time to struggle vehemently against class collaboration and to distinguish ourselves as worthy of and capable of leading a revolution. ////

Charles : I wish this were true . Unfortunately, many, many workers admire the Bourgeoisie or don’t think in class terms , certainly not class struggle terms .

No progress without struggle-Frederick Douglass

The struggle continues; more victories are certain. Freedom is a constant struggle, especially electoral class struggle. Campaign for Democratic votes everyday some kinda way like your life depends on it because it really does . Abolish the Republican Party as We , the Majority, know it ; vote them out .