MUG's Fight the Constitution: An Informal Review

I was reading the so-called ‘Blue Book’, a cheeky nickname for Fight the Constitution, a collection of essays published by Cosmonaut, the magazine of the Marxist Unity Group, a Kautskyist caucus within the Democratic Socialists of America. Whew. You get all that? Anyway, I didn’t particularly care for it. The essays kept feeling like they were explaining the same concepts over and over again, so they lacked systematic cohesion in contrast to (say) the Little Red Book (which is impressive in that it accomplishes more despite being... littler). I joked with Ènziramire that I was tired of Marxist groups saying they would offer a practical program when instead it just vomited more theory. I don’t know that “We need to recruit more people” is a strategy as much as what you’d want to accomplish with a strategy. It felt less stupid than PSL’s Socialist Reconstruction, at least, but only in as much as it didn’t suggest outright stupid things. But it gets no points for lacking ambition. Ènziramire put it best that it’s like they don’t even want to accomplish anything, instead coping with their relative inaction. At least Maoists put their whole pussy into it.

I had a thought while reading these attempts at reconstituting America that they don’t really do much to make sure that it doesn’t all go to hell. Both MUG and PSL advocate for multi-party democracies, which always makes my eyes roll. Do you really want multi-party democracy on the material foundation of the United States? I don’t know if the structural problems with American democracy come down to there being two big parties; like, sure, they mutually determine and reinforce each other, and both essentially form a bourgeois coalition government, but I think you can say the same of any parliamentary democracy—which, historically, are no less bourgeois. I’ve said before that I’m quite comfortable with the idea of a one-party state because it’s functionally a zero-party state, in the same way that (a certain form of) monotheism functions essentially as atheism. Besides, what issues have differences of opinion that are important enough to justify multiple parties while yet not being something one would want to secure? Welfare? Abortion? Be real.

Barring that—take it or leave it—the big question of democracy is sample size, usually in terms of representatives selected to make decisions on behalf of a population: how many representatives should there be per some population? How much should representatives make for a living? I usually hear two approaches: parliamentary democracy but “better” or good old democratic centralism (that lower levels of representation elect representatives to higher levels, whose decisions are imposed upon lower levels who then execute them). These aren’t great, right? Besides rumors I’ve heard lately of demcent being used to silent sexual assault accusations in certain organizations, I don’t think either method necessarily moves towards abolishing the division of labor (writ large) and both retain a group of non-productive specialists, which is prone to bureaucracy and careerism. Recall and strict term limits are a helpful band-aid solution but they don’t resolve those core structural issues (note: of legislative representatives specifically, not elected officials in general)..

There’s also the historical context that the republican form itself was conceptualized as a countermeasure against democracy. I found it silly that MUG’s book kept going on and on about the dialectical relationship between political power and social organization, saying political power must be attained before social reorganization can be implemented, talking about the anti-democratic structures intrinsic to the United States Constitution—all the while advocating for a more democratic republic. Of course, the word “republic” can refer to any representational form of government, but I hesitate to accept that category readily without wondering whether representation might be the core issue. “But what about the issue of scale?” “Oh here we go: digital democracy.” “I thought you were anti-democracy!” Shush. Shush, shush, shush. What follows is a thought experiment.

Mass Democracy

There’s a couple goals to consider:

1. Mobilize the masses across all levels of decision-making.
2. Don’t overwhelm the masses with bullshit decision-making.
3. Scale and interface between different levels of governance.
4. Ensure a base level of competency and well-informedness.

So, rather than jumping straight for representatives, why not consider something more of a quorum? Select eligible voters at random and make them vote, like jury duty. My state’s legislature has 181 members, about 1 per ~173 thousand people, who meet for 140 days every 2 years. That comes down to 1 week monthly. So, why not instead, pick 181 people in the state once per month to participate in legislative decision-making? If we guarantee no overlap between sessions, the democratic sample size increases 24 times (4,344 total random voters, 1 per ~4.3 thousand). And you know what? Make it nice! Give the people an incentive to give up a week of their time to do boring legislative bullshit.

But a quorum’s just a quorum. Why not open sessions towards any and all eligible voters? In the past few years, I think we’ve all wished we could sit in on a session of congress and have our voices count for something. So: everyone in the quorum must vote, for sure, but anyone else may vote if the issue is something about which they feel strongly. That way—hopefully—one avoids the issue of a minority of freaks making decisions for others based on their own interest or ignorance. Wouldn’t that have been nice?

Also, maybe, prevent people from voting at multiple stages of an issue (locally, regionally, 'nationally') but aggregate the results at each stage. Idk.

I think this method could scale really nicely, if you select voters at different ratios of the total population at different levels of jurisdiction (local, regional, ‘national’). Meanwhile, the openness of sessions means that anyone can follow a decision upwards (assuming that decisions at high levels are first introduced at low levels) if they feel that it strongly impacts them. So, I guess, think of it as democratic centralism with heavy emphasis on the demos to make sure that people aren’t locked out of the process past the first stage, and to encourage everyone to participate in decision-making that impacts them.

Something else handy is that you can probably implement this process prior to becoming the hegemonic power. Again, it’s basically workers’ councils but open… Open councilism? Not familiar with the history of that -ism so I won’t claim it.

Civic Membership

Heckler: How many genders are there?
Joe Biden: There are at least three.
Heckler: Name them.
Joe Biden: Don’t play games with me, kid.

Finally, this is the part that you may dislike, but it was inspired by those lovely citizenship tests that my friends’ parents have taken. So, you know, it’s very American. I promise you. Those tests have a selection of 10 out of 100 possible questions related to civics, besides an interview where they probe you about your political allegiance and willingness to fight for the country during war. Walk with me here: why not impose a similar test upon voters, and rank the value of their vote to their score (minus the years since they had last tested)? History-knowers may gasp at the horror: no, this shouldn’t be a literacy test; it should be more of a competency interview with cadres from the voter’s own community to validate the voter. Question #1 is a freebie, to identify the candidate, and #2–10 are open-ended questions designed to suss out baddies.

The format is also conductive to the composition of a civic catechism, something like The Principles of Communism or The ABC of Communism, to propagate a holistic understanding of the Party’s aims and methods—whose program, in turn, is driven by the process above. Also note that membership to a one/zero-party system does not foreclose membership in what might be called interest groups / caucuses. The problem with parties as competitive organizations is that they require one to buy into a totalistic program, and it’s structurally expected that everyone is a member of one party (even if they don’t vote down the line, which most people do). So, why not smash the multiparty system, as one says, and allow people to join one or more caucuses based on what issues impact them? Caucuses would function as organizations to notify members of issues and drive democratic participation (referring to ‘democracy’ as process here). Simultaneously, a caucus’ efficacy is a function of its members’ civic standing in aggregate.

Conclusion

I’m not a political scientist. To cover my ass, I said all the above was a thought experiment because I really don’t know what would be effective or desirable. My point is more that, like Ènziramire said, so many of these movements pushing for a new form of government have to resort to democratic clichés because they lack a systematic analysis of existing forms and, frankly, any vision whatsoever. I have not read a platform from these burgeoning parties that I totally fuck with, not because they need to be ideologically perfect, but because I don’t see them going anywhere. Plus, you know. Maybe we can do better than a republic? Maybe?

Oh. Book was okay. It kept claiming Lenin for the Second International which is really funny. Like, I don't know, if it was Kautsky rather than Lenin who was more basically responsible for the Russian Revolution, wouldn't we have seen Kautsky's strategies pay off more elsewhere? Blah blah material conditions, but then we can't attribute it to either of them. So why Kautsky? Fuck.