STATE & COERCION: THE REVOLUTIONARY NECESSITY OF BOTH
Image description: Vice President Harris met with President Xi Jinping during the APEC 2022. Office of the Vice President of the United States. Wikimedia Commons.
The state, even in a capitalist environment, contains within it spaces of contradictions and opportunity for furthering revolutionary struggles. By rooting ourselves in the Marxist tradition and in what actually existing socialist countries have been able to produce, the U.S. socialist left must move beyond a reductive view of state power that can prove counterproductive to what we hope to achieve, which are higher living standards for the oppressed and exploited, and a cessation of power and influence by forces aligned with colonialist and capitalist interests. One could consider this intervention as a healthy reminder of a nuanced critique of state control and coercion that recognizes the value in government and its capacity to regulate and impose standards across society, for today and for years ahead.
Introduction
In 1976, feminist iconoclast and scholar, Audre Lorde, had visited Soviet Russia and its surrounding region, touring local communities in the hinterlands as well as major cities, concluding that the U.S.S.R. was a positive well of inspiration for radicals worldwide. Although she still had her critiques, identifying some of the internal dilemmas surrounding gender parity in higher positions of authority, Lorde was very much complimentary to the core elements of the communist state, crediting it for having resolved the “breadconcern” problem that plagued the U.S. The Soviet state, according to Lorde, did provide a standard of dignified living, through subsidized programs and state distribution of goods and services, that seemed utopian in comparison to the poverty and inequality pervasive in other parts of the globe. Even in the hinterlands of the U.S.S.R., just beyond its major cities, Lorde was witness to a staggering growth in infrastructure and a vibrancy in terms of the peasants and workers gathering, celebrating together, able to enjoy a type of life that the average worker in America could only dream of. “Everything looks massive, bigger, in Russia. The roads are wider, the trains longer, the buildings bigger. The ceilings are higher. Everything seems to be on a larger scale.”
In her assessment of Grenada after the island’s socialist turn, Lorde was increasingly supportive of the new government’s willingness and capacity to modernize, stating, “During the People’s Revolutionary Government, all roads were widened and reworked, and a functioning bus service was established that did more than ferry tourists back and forth to the cruise ships lying at anchor in the careenage.” What Lorde had experienced, as did some of her contemporaries invested in similar struggles over anticolonialism and socialism, was the positive role that state power could play in bringing dignity and revolutionary potential to the masses, something that random individuals without state institutions could not necessarily do as effectively. State power, all in all, could not be dismissed, even according to someone as understandably skeptical of the “master’s tools” as Lorde had been.
Such lessons are relevant to our movements and struggles for socialism in the U.S. today. Of course, the U.S. state is not the same as the U.S.S.R., however deeply flawed as the Soviet state once was. The U.S. state is far from revolutionary in any real sense of the term. Yet, within its network of structures and rules, contradictions still thrive. One side of the state is yes, purely oppressive, as demonstrated by the ICE disappearances of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and friends, a pure distillation of Lenin’s own definition of state power and overreach as nothing more than groups of “armed men”. But this level of state power used at the behest of monsters and predators coexists with state power that can be seen as life-affirming rather, and reinforcing certain levels of care for marginalized populations even. Social security, a government program under constant attack by government itself, has been essential in keeping senior citizens alive. “Without Social Security, 22.0 million more adults and children would be below the poverty line [...].”
The era that Lenin spoke of generations ago when he began to formulate his conceptions of state power and control was far simpler in many ways than what we and our communities have learned to endure since then, with state power being a force of demonstrable harm and hate, all the while also something that has the capacity, and proven as such, to lift people out of intense poverty like in China’s last thirty to forty years of government planning and investment in public health. It would be reductive to simply adopt a homogenizing view of state power, let alone conflate all aspects of what constitutes the state with only a few of its competing elements and institutions.
What this article, therefore, aims to do is first, explore the concept of state power itself and what consists of the state apparatus, especially in a neoliberal death trap as is the U.S. Secondly, it will then transition to what elements of state power can and should do in terms of elevating humanity beyond the type of rat race that causes body and soul under capitalism and colonialism to deteriorate. Not to mention the role of the state in truly sustaining revolutionary momentum against enemies of progress. Finally, there will be a short section discussing how as socialists must we present our concept of state power to the masses we strive to organize for revolutionary power.
Discussions of the state are in fact, quite necessary and relevant, as working people are consistently losing access to basic resources, feeling overwhelmed by the rising costs of living. As socialists striving for power, we must engage with the realities of people desperate for answers to the hardships they are forced to endure. This means moving past a homogenous view of state power and returning to a more rooted perspective and analysis that accurately identifies government, and the development of government institutions as a critical node in the struggle for power against capitalist and private colonialist interests that diminish our shared humanity.
THE SCOURGE OF PRIVATE POWER
An important and especially relevant priority of Marxist analysis has been its assessment that the predominant concern of state power in capitalist societies is to burnish or to preserve the disproportionate power that capitalists and colonialist interests hold after decades of expropriation and rampant violence against us. The state cannot be separated from this core base function that looms from decade to decade. “The structuralist thesis, as summarized by Ernest Mandel, is that the function of the state is to protect and reproduce the social structure of capitalist societies (i.e., the fundamental relations of production) insofar as this is not achieved by the automatic processes of the economy.” This is the fundamental thesis that socialists must still adhere to, especially within an empire as corrosive to the human soul and violent as we have in these settler states of the United States, irrespective of how state functions have altered during the rise and fall of the New Deal order, an order often associated with some measure of progress for segments of the domestic working class in particular regions of the country.
But another aspect of Marxist theory on the state is its insistence to not simply trace its power to public institutions, or what is conceptualized as explicit forms of government. What is considered state power must be conceptualized as a network of public and private institutions that have an inordinate amount of influence shaping the lives of most people, and in capitalist societies, that type of power is usually connected with the power and influence of privately owned and operated businesses. It was Marx himself who described the looming presence that privately owned centers of industry had on the average workers’ life, many of whom consigned to a lifetime of spending nearly every waking hour under the domain of a private industrialist who pays them their diminished wage, only to have to spend that wage on privately owned goods and services, for food, for shelter, and even for entertainment. The Orwellian impulse to conflate all of state power to government is naïve and new formulation of the state that neither speaks to reality nor the theoretical traditions of Marxist thought.
Since the ascent of neoliberal capitalism, which emphasizes ever more privatization of the remnants of the public sector, far more of our daily lives have returned to the purview of private business and business owners, much the same way as was the case prior to the New Deal. It’s worth mentioning here that government power hasn’t truly shrunk in any real way but rather has expanded but for the purposes of preserving and helping to expand the “free market”, by funneling more of taxpayer’s money into militarized policing, a public function but nonetheless, wielded for the explicit purposes of protecting private property of the most affluent. Much of peoples’ lives are guided by the whims and motives of private businesses as government programs, the political crumbs that had been won during the codification of the New Deal order, have either been warped into means-tested programs, or have been completely gutted.
As noted as early as the rise of industrial capitalism in the Western world, within capitalist societies, private ownership has been a worthy adversary against government authority, to such an extent that government itself is oftentimes reliant on the largesse and activity of such private individuals in charge of these large multinational companies. In the neoliberal era, with the federal government haven’t mostly given up on expanding welfare and government support, local governments are often desperate in appealing to large private developers and other private investors to avoid mass layoffs or disinvestment that can lead to forms of economic disarray and unemployment. “Capitalists routinely exert leverage over governments by withholding the resources — jobs, credit, goods, and services — upon which society depends. The ‘capital strike’ might take the form of layoffs, offshoring jobs and money, denying loans, or just a credible threat to do those things, along with a promise to relent once government delivers the desired policy changes. Government officials know this power well, and invest great energy and public resources in staving off fits by malcontent capitalists.” This is possible since much of what people need to live and survive remain concentrated in the private sector, making it a formidable force against government control and some forms of regulation.
In the neoliberal era, there has been no competing horizon against the tide of mass privatization and the disavowal by both parties for public oriented solutions to what are issues and problems that require federal intervention rather than the free market to intercede. This was made explicitly clear during the Covid-19 pandemic when most people had no option but to rely on private retailers such as Amazon and Walmart for basic supplies, including masks. There was no government source of production that could meet the spiraling needs of the population. Those same retailers saw their profits balloon in a time of great need and crisis. “There are few scenes more sordid than the surging wealth gains of the world’s billionaire class during an unprecedented pandemic when millions have lost their lives, health, and livelihoods. As the US heads into another wave of Covid-19 infections, the wealth of 650 American billionaires has increased by over $1tn since mid-March, the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns,” it was written in the immediate aftermath of a global shutdown.
The other leading industries in the U.S. are the private healthcare conglomerates, such as UnitedHealth Group. “The Fortune 500, in its 71st year, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue. In total, Fortune 500 companies represent two-thirds of U.S. GDP with $19.9 trillion in revenues, and they employ 31 million people worldwide. Last year, they combined to earn $1.87 trillion in profits, up 10% from last year—and a record in dollar terms.”
Image description: Gary Cohn, president and COO, Goldman Sachs; James Dimon, chairman, president and CEO, JP Morgan; Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO, JP Morgan Asset Management; Dina Habib Powell, global head of corporate engagement, Goldman Sachs. Wikimedia Commons.
Of course, the government at the federal level is complicit in all of this, relinquishing public control over major resources to the private sector. Capitalists themselves can be rather catty and unorganized themselves since they must compete for market share. It was the Nixon administration, after all, that encouraged leading capitalists to form stronger associations to confront what was viewed by them as a rising tide of socialist and radical unionism. Still, what matters here is that state power is not homogenous and does not follow a typically insufficient and naïve Orwellian analysis that seemingly ignores the vested power and control of private institutions, especially capitalist, have in modern capitalist societies such as ours.
At some level, the state apparatus contains within it a myriad of contradictions, and therefore, openings for alternative politics to gradually seed and emerge. But any analysis of state power must incorporate the role and responsibility of private business, and private spaces, in terms of how it shapes our daily lives.
As highlighted by more liberal scholars, since the late 1970s, the amount of influence private employers have on our wellbeing has only intensified over the decades. Without a job, usually in the private sector, most working people have very few government resources exist to supplement lost income, often leading to homelessness or worse. “Workers are forced to perform in oppressive environments, are deprived of many freedoms, and are given practically no say over working conditions. Even in their nonworking lives workers are frequently subjected to employer scrutiny and sanction. And the legal framework and economic realities surrounding employment are such that exit is viable for only a small minority. Anderson calls such employer rule ‘private government,’ by which she means ‘government that has arbitrary, unaccountable power over those it governs.’”
Private power, therefore, is a ruling force that implicates much of what state power has been in the capitalist context. Not paying heed to this and simply relating all state aggression to government functions is anti-materialist and only performs to reinforce strategies of liberation and anti-hegemony that would prove insufficient in tackling state control and power. In the U.S., privately owned industries are at times far more influential than even local and statewide governments in how working people lead their lives daily. The so-called free market oftentimes reigns supreme.
CONTRADICTIONS & AVAILABLE OPPORTUNITIES
Although the Reconstruction era following the end of formal chattel slavery in the Confederacy was not as radical as it needed to be, itself a reflection of twin pressures of the federal government seeking to once again legitimate itself and maintain its control over a burgeoning capitalist economy all the while extending limited political rights to a broader populace of freed Africans, it nonetheless was a step forward toward a more progressive future, until it too was cut short by white supremacist coups. For the 10-15 years after the Civil War and for the first time in U.S. history in the South (African Americans did have voting rights in the North until that too had been stripped away during the Andrew Jackson era), African American males could participate in formal procedures of democracy throughout much of the region. For the first time in the history of the U.S. south, African Americans, who had been previously reduced to property, could form political associations and civic groups. Soon, elected black officials were sworn into office across various states, to the chagrin of whites. New majorities, however, began to flourish, a combination of African Americans and some white Republicans aligning with them.
W.E.B. Du Bois explored this period, situating it as a revolutionary time for the country at-large and pivotal one too, citing instances of land redistribution in parts of the south, as well as burgeoning political movements for ever more political and economic rights, a unity of African Americans with governmental power behind them. In the end, the progress that was made, however frail as it were, had been a product of twin factors, government institutions and bottom-up pressure. In regard to government or vestiges of state power, such things as the Freedmen’s Bureau had been sustained, another historical first in terms of providing universal schooling as well as healthcare services. “The Freedmen’s Bureau was the most extraordinary and far-reaching institution of social uplift that America has ever attempted”, Du Bois would state, adding, “It was a government guardianship for the relief and guidance of white and black labor from a feudal agrarianism to modern farming and industry.” It was also the military occupation of the region that created the necessary space for African American political associations to emerge more confidently. It was a coercive element of state control that provided breathing room for a majority of people to enact their newly won freedoms against a persistent tide of white supremacist gangs and terrorism. It would be the retreat of federal authority that was a reason why formal Jim Crow would replace democracy arisen and take hold of the region as it did. It was federal authority that civil rights activists themselves called upon decades later, demanding government institutions that would respond to their daily needs, including the smashing of the barrier of private versus public that had allowed white-owned businesses to profit from a labor market where a majority of black people were trapped as consumers and as workers in terms of having to spend their money at establishments that belittled them and to work inside private institutions that were fascistic in everything but label. As Cedric Johnson discusses in his own work, After Black Lives Matter: Policing and Anti-Capitalist Struggle, it was coercion on the part of federal government in terms of withholding federal aid to parts of the south, and some utilization of law enforcement, and the threat of arrest, that aided in some of internal combustion of formal Jim Crow.
Coercion itself can be found in the regulatory laws and procedures that governments require even when it’s done in the name of progress, like taxation for public goods and services. In an ideal state, corporations would not exist, but the threat of violence or punishment, an element of coercion, is part of the interim tool when it comes to regulations and tools that can, at the very least, offer up some daylight on the side of working people. When we speak of regulation, to make sure food isn’t filled with toxins, or that people, workers and managers in very essential fields, do not give into some of their worst impulses to cut corners, that is coercion. One either complies, or risks a fine, or a more extreme punishment. Public welfare is the priority.
These are just some of the necessary contradictions emblematic of suturing a future or even an intermediate reformist period that can lead us toward a revolutionary situation. That within the successes of radical change are seeds of government control and the coercive apparatus known as law and regulation. Here we’ve already covered the fact that the state itself is an amalgamation of institutions that have the power to shape broader society, and thus, this would include not only government but rather, private business institutions. At times, even in capitalist societies, one can be pitted against the other, coercive mechanisms in tow. The privately owned white business giving into some measure of federal control for the betterment of society for everyone, but especially for those marginalized by such private fiefdoms.
Even in capitalist societies, a certain legitimacy by government actors, especially in an era where formal restrictions have slowly been removed in terms of accessing basic political rights like voting in bourgeois elections, must be earned to a degree. Of course, the ultimate goal of these legitimating functions in government is to secure a particular form of “peace and order” that would allow for investments to be made and remade, for business to be carried out as usual. At the same time, since the dawning of the modern labor movement and the ending of explicit forms of white supremacy institutionally, there are government institutions that are developed and forced to not always perfectly align with the most extreme goals of capitalists. Take for example, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Up until the last few decades, tax rates on the ultra-wealthy were at 90% when it came to the income they earned after a certain point, a function of growing anger among the rabble. This wasn’t the same as radical redistribution but was something that many leading capitalists, especially Koch Industries would continue to oppose, with money being funneled into various think tanks on the right that associated high tax rates with inefficiency, and welfare, earning some anti-tax support (i.e. the estate tax being reconceptualized as the “death tax”) among non-elites, particularly among some white workers and the white middle class. Similar forces have been focused on dismantling what’s left of the public education system, a system that Du Bois lauded as part of the Reconstruction era government policies that finally made education a universal right, at least briefly. Again, the overriding purpose of education in the U.S. will be the shaping of young people into durable workers. That is the longer-term goal even in times of progress. Yet, within the public education movement are those, including teachers, who correctly envisage the right to education as a public right, as something that all people deserve and need. This creates contradictions that can’t be easily explained through a simplistic model of the state as a wholly homogenous creature destined to consume all areas of life for capitalist and colonialist investments. There’s been a joint interest across both political parties, on behalf of extreme corporate interests, to privatize education in this country instead. Language surrounding this campaign to privatize has included targeting the teacher unions themselves, perceived as lazy and arrogant, and in a more honest way, as a last line of defense against private business interests who only perceive dollar signs above everyone’s heads, whose main interests are to find ways to make more profit or to align rights with a conceptualization of rights that perfectly connects to their profit-motive doctrine. The Trump administration, a neoliberal’s wet dream, has been explicit in cutting down the Department of Education’s reputation, accusing it of “imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children,” referring to schools being open to inclusion regarding race & gender-identity. It bears mentioning too that it was under President Obama that teacher unions themselves were being attacked with Arne Duncan also encouraging the creation of charter schools, and “school options”, taking away further authority from the Department of Education itself. “While some liberals dislike charter schools, Duncan has been a strong supporter of them and presided over a huge growth in students attending charters in cities like Washington, D.C. and New Orleans.” All of which is tied to capitalist and corporate interests who view public spending and government institutions as “wasteful.”
Image description: Vito Marcantonio (right) with W. E. B. Du Bois (center) and Paul Robeson (left). Wikimedia Commons.
Another government institution that doesn’t perfectly align with the interests of business has been the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As socialists, we understand that pollution and toxins will never ever be truly contained until private businesses have been totally abolished, or severely contained. Industry shall remain but in the hands of workers and the government institutions that represent them, not in the so-called “free market” that relies so much on the freedom to be exploited, both as people and as broader social and natural environments. Nevertheless, the EPA, even in its limited form, has run counter to some of the laisse-faire behavior that corporations enjoyed for generations, from companies dumping chemicals wherever they liked, to not having to adjust waste standards so that certain toxins do not leak into the soils below. “Pollution had gotten bad enough to be undeniable, and science had become advanced enough to make the reasons why clear. In 1963, smog had killed 400 New Yorkers, and Lake Erie’s oxygen content had become so depleted that the center of the lake sustained precious little life.” Government, as seedy and intertwined as it’s always been with private industry, doesn’t necessarily want all people to suddenly die of dangerous air, especially in an area of an expanded electorate, which would contradict some of the interests of the leading industrialists and polluters. As John Light writes, “It was the EPA’s job to deal with these problems. The Clean Water Act of 1972 charged the agency with cleaning up America’s waters, and provided billions of dollars to do so. Among other responsibilities, the EPA was tasked with laying down minimum standards for wastewater treatment before cities could release it. The EPA was also responsible for regulating city sewer systems so they didn’t overflow, spilling sewage into the streets during heavy rains.” No longer have rivers been catching on fire like they once did, which one could argue also helps create a healthier environment for investment. And yet, some of the most basic elements of the EPA, like its ability to review the level of chemicals, have been consistently attacked. “For decades, Republican lawmakers and industry lobbyists have tried to chip away at the small program in the Environmental Protection Agency that measures the threat of toxic chemicals.”
Image description: Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division Jonathan Kanter (left), European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager (middle), and Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan (right) meet for the third U.S.-EU Joint Technology Competition Policy Dialogue in March 2023. Wikimedia Commons.
There is a level of “ungoverning” that A) speaks to the necessity of collective institutions that care for people in ways that masses of people are not always able to do (such as measuring chemicals in the soil or regulating health safety in food and other products) and B) caters to the wealthy and most powerful at the expense of working people and the viscerally colonized. Yes, there are layers of government when removed, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), would to lead healthier, safer lives. But then, there are institutions worth preserving at the very least, or expanding, however mangled as they currently have been. Relating one to the other would be a tremendous mistake. Freedom isn’t simply institutions withering away, forcing one to make our medicine in bathtubs or in one’s garage. Freedom is more than stepping aside and allowing the tides of history to carry oneself ahead, with the streetlights malfunctioning, or buses missing their routes. “Ungoverning is not a rational response to the inertia that afflicts existing policies, programs, and agencies. Indiscriminate attacks and degradation of the administrative state—as in the two-for-one Trump deregulation policy or the ‘eliminate four agencies’ slogan—will not make government more efficient, only more chaotic.” In the current context, a retreat of government regulation often means ceding more power to an already robust and inefficient private sector that works as the true vessel of state power for many trapped within the formal bounds of neoliberal imperial America.
Hence, it is imperative that either social movements that profess to be socialist, legislators, and bureaucrats must champion the expansion of government power when it comes to the regulation and safety of peoples’ most basic needs. An expansion of public welfare must be part of the overwhelming strategy. Standing aside as government institutions like the Department of Education and even Medicaid services are taken apart or several reduced will only lead to ever more desperation. As Antonio Gramsci had understood in a time as chaotic and unpredictable as now, immiseration does not necessarily yield revolutionary results.
EFFICIENCY IS REVOLUTIONARY
In this final section, we will now examine the relationship of revolutionary progress as it relates to concepts of efficiency, economic justice, and advancement of the masses of workers and in some contexts peasants. Vladimir Lenin himself warned in the first few years of the Soviet republic that workers and peasants expected services and goods still. Under capitalism, of course, such goods and services were supplied but “inefficiently” alongside “exorbitant prices.” Regardless, the masses could not be simply left to fend for themselves. Instead, institutions had to be put in place, policies interested in material improvements. As Lenin discussed years prior in State and Revolution, he had conceived of running the national economy as a “postal system” with “technicians, managers, bookkeepers as well as all officials” receiving the same wage as the average working person.” It was meant to be more efficient, more holistic, more attuned to how an economy and political system that professes to care for the people should function. After a horrific Civil War, in truth an invasion by capitalist western powers, the Russian economy suffered greatly from having been held back in its development through generations of incompetence and brutality under Tsarist rule. Apart from Tsarist surveillance, government had left many to perish due to poverty and managed famine. It was through the National Economic Plan (NEP), and later, under modernization programs in successive Soviet governments, that the Russian nation and its surrounding region improved to the point that brought awe and admiration to Audre Lorde, and others who’d visit. “During the past year we showed quite clearly that we cannot run the economy,” Lenin had stated earlier on, prompting various government strategies which included state-owned enterprises, clarifying, “That is the fundamental lesson. Either we prove the opposite in the coming year, or Soviet power will be able to exist” had been Lenin’s words during the NEP plan.” Despite internal contradictions and years of mismanagement under Gorbachev and his uninspired ilk, the U.S.S.R. managed to implement government programs and institutions that vastly improved the basic standard of living for the vast majority. “As such, everybody had food, clothes and housing, to go with the substantial social wage—education, healthcare, recreational facilities, libraries, and so on.” (45). After decades of gangster capitalism implemented from the top-down, a growing majority of Russians are nostalgic for the USSR, with older and less affluent people being more sympathetic, missing the strong welfare policies the government once had.
Image description: Deng Xiaoping. Wikimedia Commons.
Socialism, as Deng Xiaoping had once proclaimed, is not about encouraging people to live a “simple” life, free of technology or without luxuries. The system of socialism, rather, is about creating institutions that can service the people in ways that capitalism or any other system never could. “Socialism cannot endure if it remains poor. If we want to uphold Marxism and socialism in the international class struggle, we have to demonstrate that the Marxist system of thought is superior to all others, and that the socialist system is superior to capitalism”.
In the Chinese context, the Communists led by Mao and his comrades won popular support through a combination of tactics, of course involving direct guerilla warfare against Japanese imperialists, but also, tied to providing what people needed for them to not merely survive but thrive in the longer term. This meant such things as institutions governing liberated regions that handled prices of daily commodities, something that most ordinary people could not be expected to overcome. This required a set of experts and networks of support that not every type of worker or peasant had. “Curbing inflation was the most pressing economic concern of the new government.” Preventing further inflation was achievable, therefore, through the maintaining of large industry that could flood the market with goods and services in times of scarcity due to the war and mismanagement under the KMT. State-run enterprises had to be developed that were solely focused on producing basic items, from food to clothing. “The state trading agencies were the army in the Communists’ economic warfare,” Isabelle Weber writes, “Once the Communists had consolidated their control over almost all rural territories and strategic urban industries, the so-called ‘life lines’ (mingmai), the state trading agencies could rapidly expand their market share in essential consumption goods and inputs.”
In much of the Third World, especially in social struggles that were far more committed to wholesale change in how societies were run and not merely in one set of elites replacing another, the strategy echoed much of what the Chinese Communists had done, with a serious emphasis on linking revolutionary momentum to the development of goods and administrative functions. Essentially, a development of a form of state power rather than a complete dismissal of any type of state control and need. In Guinea-Bissau, the PAIGC led by Amilcar Cabral did much to actively combat against the Portuguese fascists who’d been supported by the U.S. and NATO at the time. Guinea-Bissau itself received tremendous support from the Chinese, the USSR, and even more social democratic governments across northern Europe. Money and resources such as expertise were funneled into liberated regions of the country to help install an administrative state that could finally deliver on goods and care that most Africans had been deprived of under colonial rule. “With this in view, we must now steadfastly and determinedly face up to our major concerns: the feeding of the people, the improvement of living conditions for the population, taxes, the exchequer, the new financial life that we hope to establish, the money we will use, etc., as well as the kind of social security to be evolved based on our experience, school curricula, and the forming of new centers for national reconstruction and the building of our people’s progress.” Doses of what could be under total liberation had garnered more support from the people and the world generally, exposing rifts of Portuguese life that would spur its own Carnation Revolution in 1974.
Revolutionary socialism is rooted in the practical and poetic. It is the desire and goal of creating a society that abolishes class distinctions in the traditional sense, as well as heightening the living and working standards of the majority of working people and historically oppressed groups. Capitalism can indeed create a certain standard of living for people, and in some cases, pull them ahead of other systems, such as feudalism and more conservative religious societies, but what it lacks is real ingenuity, efficiency and justice. At the same time, such principles in a socialist future are very much attached to the cultivation of institutions that are public oriented and have a level of transparency to them, otherwise known as government. What separates the socialist or materialist from even elements of other types of leftwing thought, say for example progressivism or anarchism, as Lenin recognized, is our understanding of what people need and desire requires finesse, and in the end, the concept of freedom and progress are not mere abstractions.
Image description: Mao Zedong with female representatives of Democracy Youth League of China (later renamed to the “Communist Youth League of China”) 3rd National Representative Conference, in 1957. Wikimedia Commons.
For the masses of workers and the historically colonized and oppressed to be truly free, they must live in a society by which teachers are still teaching, doctors are still able to test for various illnesses and finally perform preventative forms of care, such as reproductive healthcare. It requires a society where public utilities and industries are still producing high levels of commodities that people need and enjoy, from masks to entertainment systems, and of course, the production of food and medicine. Experts must be trained who can manage the regulations necessary to not only transform society from capitalism to socialism, but in the long horizon of it all, maintain it. Of course, such experts and technicians must be accountable to the people but their expertise is still necessary for things to run smoothly.
Without some modicum of state power in the form of government institutions, how would we expect any kind of transformation, whether that’s true redistribution of land and resources, the paving a way toward historical redress through reparations, the expansion of abortion access (not its limit). Not to mention the suppression of counterrevolutionary forces, which mandates forms of government coercion and oversight.
In China today, the government maintains a balance between care and coercion that proves useful. It has the institutional mechanisms and processes to severely punish those who flaunt the health and safety of the people, such as its recent decision to send to death
its ex-drug regulatory chief over allowing for fake drugs to be approved, a public hazard. At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, while doctors and nurses in the U.S. were forced to reuse masks, the Chinese government immediately had the capacity to pour resources into the constructions of hospitals. “Cabinet meeting called Thursday for “full mobilization” of hospitals including adding staff to ensure their ‘combat effectiveness’ and increasing drug supplies, according to state media. Officials were told to keep track of the health of everyone in their area aged 65 and older.”
In Cuba, a country held under siege and occupation by the U.S., its capacity to still earn the popular support of many can be traced back to its world-renowned healthcare system, the same system that’s also been responsible for sending out doctors and nurses to other countries when requested. “Since its 1959 revolution, Cuba’s infant mortality rate has fallen from 37.3 to 4.3 per 1000 live births—a rate equivalent to Australia’s and lower than the United States’ (5.8). From 1970 to 2016 life expectancy increased from 70.04 to 78.7 years, approaching expectancy in the United States (79.8). Cuba’s leading health care problems—non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke—are typical of much more wealthy countries.”
Image description: Cuban President Fidel Castro (C), poses with Konstantin Chernenko (L) and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev (R) in Moscow in a February 26, 1981 file photo. Wikimedia Commons.
What improves the masses of working peoples’ lives is therefore, a strategic reliance on state power, one that focuses heavily on the development of public institutions that can effectively meet peoples’ needs, as well as shape the society towards a more progressive and prosperous timeline. Again, in the U.S. context, in the extreme short-term, we must fight for a government that has the capacity and willingness to snatch land from the major private businesses that hoard that land and its resources. For the benefit of the indigenous population, and for so many segments of the population that have labored on this continent, government power has a powerful role to play in subverting the arbitrary and brutal rule of corporatists and colonialists. But also, for the long durée, governments are necessary to fill the gaps for when the masses of ordinary people are not as capable nor skilled, or in some instances, willing to take up responsibilities that are dizzying to them. Not everyone can teach a classroom, whether under capitalism or in a socialist society. Not everyone can produce albuterol and insulin that others desperately rely upon. Not every working person even has the technical prowess to run every inch of a major industrial plant that’s engineered to produce safe and durable energy so that we don’t ever find ourselves with rising tides.
Revolutionary change necessitates institutional support, and this must be reflected in how socialist grapple with questions of justice and power, as well as how we present ourselves to the broader public, many of whom are historically exploited, excluded and politically marginalized. When we view the data even, in regard to what various segments of society desire, it’s evident that people align behind some form of institutional support and capacity to care for them and others. Asian Americans, a group often associated with conservative politics (this despite mounting evidence that runs counter to such reductive claims), have professed across various ethnic lines that most want the federal government to be more invested in healthcare as an issue. “Many AAPI adults believe the government is spending too little on a variety of policy areas, with education (64%) and healthcare (59%) topping the list. Similar shares also say funding is insufficient for tackling homelessness (57%), environmental protection (57%), childcare (56%), crime (54%), and drug addiction (48%).”
Latinos, another group that’s been framed in popular media as politically divided, has consistently wanted more government intervention. “Most Latino registered voters say they want government to be more involved in solving the nation’s problems, a view that is reflected in their broad support for raising the minimum wage, government involvement in health care and stricter gun laws [...].”
None of this is to argue that we should simply trail after what is popular among certain groups. Instead, what this is a reminder of is that communism, which in its essence is about such things as meeting people’s needs and finding ways to diminish inefficiencies and meandering alternatives, can find its constituency here in the formal bounds of the U.S. That at the moral, strategic and justice level, masses of people are open to what is at the core of communist progress, a level of efficiency and state power that is for the worker, not for their exploiters.
THE WORKERS WANT POWER—NOT ABSTRACTIONISM
In the end, the people desire some level of government support for their lives, which aligns with how socialist thought and practice has utilized government in the first place. The “ungoverning” or unwinding that’s been taking place over the past several decades has only made life that much more unbearable and has exposed how necessary some level of government intervention is to maintain a certain quality of life. Without regulations or a progressive tax system, let alone a government willing to squeeze out the free market, most people are left vulnerable to sources of private power that relegates them to being a consumer, or someone truly unable to be in control of their own lives.
“Today you must prove that you can give practical economic assistance to the workers and to the peasants under the present difficult conditions, and thus demonstrate to them that you have stood the test of competition.”
So, what does this mean in our current context? Would this suggest we simply need government bureaucrats and elected officials, even those running on the Democratic ticket? Yes and no. We certainly need to encourage more of our own to take up space within government institutions that truly matter, and leave some trail of positivity, such as working in the FDA or in Medicaid and Medicare. At the same time, we do need legislators, local and federal, to be elected. However, these legislators must always announce themselves as fervent socialists or communists, and find ways to build campaigns around the interim goal of government regulation, but never lose focus on the final goal of revolution.
What we need are the development of constituencies that desire government services, and recognize the need for some level of state power to truly improve all of our lives. What we need are leaders speaking to the examples we’ve seen, in Cuba, in China, in Venezuela, and in parts of our country, like Jackson, Mississippi. In Kerala, a southern state within a regressive India at the national level, has seen the rise of a progressive and communist movement that’s been able to sustain levels of popular support by mediating revolutionary ambitions with persistent practical government demands and institutional support.
Finally, the purpose of this intervention is to serve as a reminder to some of us that we are correct in our belief that government intervention and state power are not mere tools to be immediately diminished nor tossed away, or somehow, they infect us and our utopian aspirations for what a better and serviceable world would be. Rather, elements of state power, especially that of government, are required if we want a society that’s truly free and just, which correlates to a society that’s fair and efficient, as well as able to meet peoples’ needs in ways that capitalism cannot and will not. An erasure and active suppression of all institutions of the free market, especially that of private enterprises, is hence, required for true freedom and democracy to bloom, and how else to achieve that without government regulations, and increased government capacity.
Importantly, the purpose of government intervention in the shorter-term is to be oriented toward the cultivation of revolutionary conditions (i.e. making it easier for people to organize themselves under capitalism) and revolutionary momentum. For the longer term horizons, the goal of government institutions is to stabilize society in ways that people cannot do, such as finding and training teachers and doctors and plumbers, as well as enacting institutions that regulate society so that less and less time is devoted to containing the chaotic activity we’ve endured under capitalism and other forms of governance. But how state power will look like shall be expected to change over time, since conditions in the U.S. are still different from conditions in China and our peers.
“The new socialist government needs to be based on the accumulated experiences from inside and outside the United States. We can’t predict and won’t prescribe every aspect of the new form of socialist government. But we premise our proposal on a vision of a new, more inclusive democracy that vastly expands the integration of millions of people into the day-to-day management of the affairs of society. That is the key.”
As much adaptation and balancing between principles is part of this, government institutions and state power will retain its core function in helping improve peoples’ lives in significant ways that cannot be achieved in the society we have now. Any serious attempt at reconstituting better conditions and a better world must reflect upon the usefulness and capacity of state power and control in that process.
ENDNOTE: If you’d like to read a version of this piece that includes all available sources and footnotes, please click here for the expanded copy of this essay.