It's basically a cliché at this point, but socialism is rising. Proud proclamations that it was an ideology of the past which littered the 1990s and 2000s have transformed into the beginnings of a new red scare offensive, a solid indicator of where the ruling class thinks the situation stands. As a fringe movement in modern American politics, this is closest that we've been to the mainstream in a considerable amount of time. If post-Cold War generations continue their relative interest in socialism and their disdain of the present political system, conditions for socialist organizing should continue be generous compared to the past. This said, it's incumbent on socialists to figure out how take advantage of a burgeoning 'political revolution' to strike at the roots of our current power relation.
This means going beyond social-democratic theories of the political economy and of political change and social-democratic strategy. A new way needs to be forged that breaks with presupposed truths derived from the 20th century, a time increasingly becoming irrelevant to present 21st century conditions with every neoliberal multi-national trade agreement, every 'sharing economy' app developed, and every advancement in self-driving technology. Social democracy is myopic, seeing only as far as the next election and the next round of poll numbers, generating no proactive vision of the future to narrate, pursue, and actualize. This is where we can win; we need to foster new understandings the political economy, expand the scope of progressive political action outside of spellbound electoralism. In this spirit, here are three premises that a new American socialism should take to heart.
There's no public or private sector
One of the most irksome lines of disinformation going around is that socialism means government services. People For Bernie, a grassroots organization in support of the Democratic Presidential candidate, even released an infographic that equated socialism to the military. The problem isn't just that socialism isn't the sum total of government services, isn't just the public sector, the problem is that there's no such thing as the public sector. At least as a neat entity that's binary with the private sector. There's no such binary. The existence of the private sector is willed by the jurisprudence (body of law) of its sovereignty (supreme authority); the nation-state sustains the private sector through legal mechanisms such as incorporation charters and property titles — both entities that define the form and further evolution of the state.
In contradiction, sovereignty, as defined as dominion of authority, is partially 'extra-judicial' as individual capitalists, markets, and neoliberal international law have come to define the priorities and constrain the possibilities of action for the principle actors of the jurisprudence. Meaning to say that the state has structurally made itself a managerial body rather than directive one, it does not have supreme authority and is frequently leveraged by the entities external to its direct control. This means that sovereignty is diffuse and contained in a complex network that is both and neither the public sector and private sector: the (capitalist) political economy. It's all one immanent, heterogeneous system wherein boundaries of differentiation are porous. Essentially, as far as our present political economy (with its private property relation), all things are public-private. Political economies that fail to sustain common ownership are innately undemocratic because they diffuse sovereignty beyond a popular and deliberative control of the jurisprudence.
What's the point of having control over a public body when it itself has minimal control on the course of arbitrary, immediate human events and has degraded to mere regulation and oversight of forces beyond itself? How is even a public body and not a mere organ of a greater, authoritarian body? The point of socialism isn't to toy with the 'public sector' of the capitalist political economy by nationalizing things and expanding access to the ballot box, it's to construct an entirely new one that sustains actual democracy.
Electoralism matters — as one component
Of course, the ever-looming question is 'how is that done'? While the state and its orifices are only one component of the capitalist political economy, it still has monopoly over the means of legal production, which is crucial. However, sovereignty can't be reduced to the nation-state in the present system which is the chief frustration amongst anti-electoral leftists. What's the point of activity within a chamber that has its hand tied around its back? How is that the best usage of time and energy, the currency of political action? Often in popular discourse however, there's the presupposition that electoralism stands in contradistinction to direct action tactics, mass unionism, and other tools for political change. And of course, one or the other is a disastrous binary.
Neither provide a way to true power: domination over sovereignty and jurisprudence. Both strategies for change have to be used in a new electoralism where socialist political parties define themselves not by tactics for achieving optimal ballot box returns but by the totality of activities across the political economy to leverage control of power in order to reconstruct both, i.e. enshrine a new constitution. After, politics isn't just the leadership class and its culture, it's about society and how it structures itself. Usually revolutionary socialism reduces the idea of leverage to that of physical violence but there are other violations of political boundaries that can result in change far more readily than violence. Especially in the modern age of militarization and extreme surveillance.
The idea is for there to be a reconstructive socialist party that entertains neither reformism nor popular definitions of revolution. The British Labour Party is well-known for having a structure that binds labor unions with the electioneering apparatuses that've come to define the modern political party, along with having official affiliate group. Of course in the hands of social-democratic theory, this potentially radical skeleton for a political party has been misused. But nevertheless in its most abstract form the idea of a political party as a unifying platform for unions to wield and leverage power is potent. Especially when considering other affiliate groups that could perform tasks little different to that of the Black Panther Party and its social programs. The reconstructive socialist party doesn't depend on the legislature for change in the political economy and reduce all its activities to legal production, but seeks domination over the means of legal production in order to finally break from the present intranational political economy with a new constitution. Of course, to grow to a point where such an idea is feasible requires a constant engagement with electoralism, but not a mindless one for its own sake or one in contradistinction to other political activity. This is why it is reconstructive: it lucidly determines to reconstruct the nation-state and align sovereignty and jurisprudence together in a new political economy through broad social political practices, without 'revolution' as it is known, while still engaging in reforms when possible.
The Precariat is the new 'Middle America'
'Class' is a word with different definitions. The common usage brings up the easy and simple three class system: rich, middle, poor. The Marxist usage is that of a conflicting system between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. An abundant amount of confusion exists when speaking of class and not defining the class system of which one is speaking. This is why socialists will sneer at the term 'classism', used in modern liberal feminist rhetoric to speak of the privileges that those with money have over those who don't — they speak of the social and cultural externalities of the Marxist class system, which actually describes the system of oppression instead of its symptoms. However, as capitalism has advanced into its neoliberal era, class in a Marxist sense has changed as financialization and fiat currency have become the driving engines of economic activity and work has gradually declined, producing a new conditions for the proletariat where debt plays a uniquely predominant, almost feudal, role in economic exchange and the lumpenproletariat is naturalized and incapable of being differentiated from proletariat when examining the course of a proletariat life. The best term for this new, broader class is the precariat as they can not necessarily be reduced to their interactions with wage labor, which are fleeting and increasingly precarious as simple labor-power continues its devaluation.
This precariat is the emergent new face of America, with trillions of household debt binding millions and no escape in sight for many. Even occupations that once produced a notionally middle class life for a proletariat person now merely pays the credit card bills and the rent. People don't work in careers but juggle two part-time gigs and some under the table odd-jobs, as interest increases and credit scores decline. As Marxist connotations of class have been modified a little by capitalism’s advance, liberal notions of social class have been decaying. If there was a time for unapologetic class warfare in modern America, it's now. A reconstructive socialist party might appeal to, address, and aid the precariat, firstly, through a conflict-charged narrative of the future of the economy, where there's only more precariatization through automation and international pressures forcing a race to the bottom that can't be fixed with reforms. Secondly, through debtors's and tenant's unions that can build into major shifts in the leverage of power in the political economy — especially the debtors union. And third, through party-delivered social programs that help them as individuals survive the harsh economy outside of state-based social programs and any reforms the party may make legislatively. By speaking to the economic anxieties and objective material declines that 21st century is producing and making the case that a socialist political economy is the only way to achieve stability and safety, socialists can put their foot in the precariat door in ways that other ideological groupings may not be able to.