Look around the US political blogosphere lately and you’ll notice a fashion for the use of the word “revolution”. As we know, the word usually means a dramatic and fundamental change in social and economic organization that occurs in a relatively short time: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, etc. The last time the word was in any widespread domestic use was in the 60’s in a time of radical movements in the US and abroad. These were real revolutionary movements where, for better or worse, heads rolled on both sides in the venerable revolutionary tradition.
Obviously, the Sanders campaign and its enthusiasts are the source of the present revival. Contrary to what some might think, this revival is not an interesting or refreshing or in any sense a legitimate use of the word. For me, the notion of revolution is sacred; its meaning needs to be defended, if only so we can talk to people about what real revolution could look like and why it is necessary. I am not thinking “Yay, at least someone is talking about revolution!”
As with socialism, this contemporary use of revolution is an example of the confused, lazy, dumbed-down state of political discourse in America. The Sanders campaign, much as I wish it godspeed, is not a revolution, but a relatively tame electoral struggle by welfare state capitalists to take over a party controlled by neoliberal capitalists. That there are some genuinely leftist fellow travelers present does nothing to change this fundamental fact.
If there is anyone in this scenario that could even casually be called revolutionary in the context of contemporary politics, it would be the neoliberals who took over the party in the 90’s during the Clinton administration, tearing it away from the complex of values and policies that decades ago created the New Deal and its sequelae, like the Johnson administration’s liberal (not radical) War on Poverty. If anything, Sanders is the counterrevolutionary in this scenario since he is leading a movement to return to an older version of the capitalist value system.
Sanders’ ideas, erroneously presented as radical or revolutionary, do not present any more of a threat to capitalism than did those of Franklin Roosevelt; less, actually, since we are already living with well established programs like Social Security and Medicare. Sanders is simply trying to return the Democratic party to a contemporary version of the New Deal and curtail the neoliberals’ gross corruption. The threat here is to the corrupt faction, epitomized by the DNC, not to the underlying economic system they use to enrich themselves.
This is more than a pedantic objection to the use of the word revolution being inaccurate or weakened. The sloppy use of the term by either side effectively allows the red-baiting capitalist right and “center” to subvert the notion of real revolution by reinforcing its meaning in the minds of the public as a Refer Madness version of Bolshevism. It is also profoundly demeaning to the memory of real revolutionaries, who inevitably take enormous risks with their livelihoods and lives.
Compared to real revolution, contemporary normative politics is beanbag. Historically, the losers in a revolution don’t have to put up with lying pundits or a bad primary day in South Carolina; instead, they wind up exiled or dead. We are not in the midst a revolutionary situation, to say the least. We are not even in the lead-up to one.
There are no revolutionary actors in the Democratic party.
(Personal note: my apologies to the community for this rather thin diary due to some unexpected family drama.)