Demand Democracy: A Socialist Program to Radically Expand Democratic Rights

We are in the midst of the largest national debate around voting rights and democratic institutions in the United States since the civil rights movement. This debate is fueled by Republican attempts to suppress the vote and how close Trump came to, again, winning the presidency despite losing the popular vote. It’s also fueled by a deepening politicization of the multiracial working class, who are pushing against obstacles to popular power erected by the “Founding Fathers” and generations of ruling-class warfare on democracy in the years since. The historic voter turnout of the 2020 presidential election—67%, the highest in over a century—is an expression of this mass politicization.

Trump’s attempts to steal the election are failing because a strong majority of the ruling class prefer Biden’s reliably conservative, neoliberal approach over Trump’s chaotic politics. But working people shouldn’t take much solace in this. The Supreme Court helped Bush steal the 2000 presidential election from Gore, reflecting the preferences of a big section of capital, which leaves us to imagine what would have happened if Sanders was the Democratic nominee instead of Biden. As we saw in the primaries, broad sections of the ruling class would have united in a frenzy to block a Sanders presidency, even if it meant backing Trump.

We can’t rely on the Democratic Party and the good, liberal defenders of capitalist democracy to oppose a growing right-populism, even when some sections have a limited interest in doing so. Although in this case much of the ruling class opposed Trump’s campaign to steal the election, they would have even more strongly opposed an organized popular movement against a coup—had this proven necessary—like mass strike action, because it would threaten to spill into a wider uprising of working people against capitalist institutions.

The failure of our political system to democratically deliver popular policies, which polls show to be favored by solid majorities, is now dramatically on display. At the time of the election, a Fox News voter poll showed 72% in favor of single-payer healthcare, 71% support for upholding the Roe v. Wade decision, and 72% support for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Florida, which went to Trump, sweepingly passed a $15 minimum wage. And yet, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, mass unemployment, and economic paralysis, we still don’t have affordable healthcare, reproductive rights for all, well-funded social programs, or economic relief. Our police and military budgets remain bloated, jails and prisons full, schools and hospitals understaffed, while popular policies to address these problems are blocked by a corporate-controlled political establishment.

Popular anger with our undemocratic institutions is not going away. And with Trump appointees dominating the courts at all levels, the GOP controlling almost three-fifths of state legislatures, and corporate Democrats controlling the rest, establishment elites are set to further entrench their minority rule. 

Sharpening DSA’s Program for Democracy

There is a huge opportunity for the Democratic Socialists of America to help shape this debate. The explosive growth in DSA membership over the past four years reflects a mounting dissatisfaction with life under capitalism, and as the largest socialist organization in the US we have a unique responsibility to point the way forward. A starting point would be for DSA to adopt a bold program to radically expand American democracy, from voting rights to deeper-going structural changes; and from there to urge unions, community groups, and every DSA candidate to endorse and champion this program. 

Many important reforms, especially around voting rights, can be won through simple votes of state legislatures or voter referendums—and, at the national level, votes of Congress. Other crucial reforms, like abolishing the Senate and electing Supreme Court justices, will require constitutional amendments. 

Achieving radical democratic reforms may seem far-fetched at present, given Republican control of most states and the Senate (unless both of Georgia’s GOP Senators lose in January), and the Democratic Party’s opposition to more than piecemeal democratic reforms. However, we are entering a period of mass radicalization and political tumult; both major parties are deeply divided, and their leaderships face a crisis of legitimacy. There have been many moments of dramatic shifts in consciousness in US history, suddenly making possible reforms that just yesterday seemed out of reach. 

But while the crisis of US capitalism may open big new opportunities to win radical democratic reforms, effectively seizing these opportunities will require socialist leadership and mass working-class political organization. DSA should begin championing a radical program of reforms today, linked to a wider program of socialist transformation and full, democratic, working-class control of our economy and society. We think that program should include the following demands:

Remove All Barriers to Voting

One of the most basic features of a functioning democracy is universal suffrage—something which has never been a reality in the US. The Constitution initially granted states the power to set voting requirements, and in most cases the right to vote was restricted to property-holding white males, who represented about 6% of the population at the time. Every expansion of voting rights since then has been forced by the pressure of mass movements, and every concession offered by the ruling class has been followed by erosive attacks on voting rights, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and onerous voter registration requirements. 

The most sweeping method of voter suppression today is felony disenfranchisement, a policy which barred over 5 million people from voting in the 2020 presidential election due to felony convictions. Coupled with a brutally punitive legal system that disproportionately targets BIPOC communities, this policy results in disenfranchisement for almost 8% of Black adults nationally. In about thirty states, the restoration of voting rights after a felony conviction is dependent on a person’s ability to pay legal fees. 

Other barriers to access are more tediously disguised, like thinly-spread ballot boxes, eight-hour lines outside polling centers, rejected absentee ballots, unreliable mail service, and racist voter registration requirements. This network of disjointed and inconsistent voting procedures across the US represents its own challenge, but the effects are consistent: in a 2020 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center that examines disenfranchisement measures state by state, each bureaucratic obstacle is shown to disproportionately bar BIPOC, immigrants, and poor populations from the right to vote. 

In this period of rapid politicization and mass popular engagement in the voting process, socialists must support a package of radical reforms that represent a real expansion to voting rights. We should fight for voting rights for prisoners, people with felony convictions, and all long-term residents (not just citizens), as well as automatic voter registration for all. The voting age should be lowered to 16. We need universal mail-in balloting, in which all votes cast by the end of Election Day are counted, and a federal overhaul to standardize voting procedures, including equal and abundant access to voting sites in every community and a paid holiday for Election Day. 

Abolish the Electoral College

The Electoral College was designed for the express purpose of preserving minority rule. It was conceived at the Constitutional Convention, which was made up of 55 propertied white men who feared that a popular vote might be used to express the popular will. As James Madison noted, the electoral college also guaranteed southern states’ “influence in the election on the score of the Negroes,” at a time when enslaved people made up 40% of the southern US, and strengthened their enslavers’ representation in Congress under the Three-Fifths Compromise. Today, the Electoral College still offers inflated representation to voters in whiter, less populated states.  

This poses an issue not only for ordinary people, who want democratic expansion to fight for their own interests, and whose ability to express their political will is threatened by the Electoral College; for the ruling class, it represents a threat to the legitimacy of US democratic institutions. The fact that Bush won the White House in 2000 while losing the popular vote, and that Trump did the same in 2016, has deeply undermined popular confidence in US democracy. Because of this, even sections of the ruling class, fearing a decisive delegitimization of their system, are open to getting rid of the electoral college. This is reflected in the growth of National Popular Vote Inc., a group which lobbies states to sign on to a compact in which they pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote.

The president should be decided by popular vote, and the Electoral College abolished. Short of a constitutional amendment, this can essentially be achieved if the National Popular Vote Compact goes into effect. So far 16 states have signed onto the NPVC, controlling 196 electoral college votes; to take effect, it will require more states signing on until at least 270 electoral votes, or half the total, are committed to backing whichever candidate wins the national popular vote.

Although more far-sighted defenders of capitalist legitimacy within the ruling class may authentically want significant reforms, they are not prepared to wage the kind of struggle that will be needed to win against the short-sighted sections of their class who fear the popular will, or, in the case of Republicans and the firmly-rooted GOP capitalists, fear their narrow partisan electoral interests being undermined. This is a crucial distinction. Unlike the liberal capitalists, the logic of working-class struggle will not limit itself to methods that don’t threaten the wider capitalist order, tending instead toward mass politics, protests, and a broad set of radical demands alongside abolishing the Electoral College. 

Abolish the Senate

The Senate is another institution that functions as a check on public interests, and is consequently unrepresentative. As a concession to the less-populous slave-holding states, the framers of the Constitution gave each state two seats in the Senate, regardless of population. Until 1917, Senators were appointed by state legislators, not chosen by the people.

Today, this means that voters in the least populous states (which are also the whitest and most politically conservative) have a disproportionate amount of control and representation in the Senate, allowing for the current Republican Senate majority to exist despite getting a minority of the national vote totals. The concrete implications of this are serious, as outlined in a November 6 Vox article, “America’s anti-democratic Senate, by the numbers”:

Among other things, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were all nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half of the country. If the United States chose its leaders in free and fair elections, none of these individuals would serve on the Supreme Court — and it is likely that Democratic appointees would have a majority on the Court. 

Again, this represents not only a crisis of democracy for working people, but another fault line in the perceived validity of democratic institutions controlled by the capitalist class – and with that, another opening for socialists to put forth clear demands. 

A mass movement for democratic expansion should include a call to abolish the Senate. The makeup of Congress should be determined in a way that reflects the real balance of opinion across the US, with every voter having an equal say, not undemocratically skewed to give voters in whiter, less populated states more control. This will require a constitutional amendment, and for the working class to wage a determined and protracted struggle to achieve it. We should also remember that it wasn’t until 1917 that senators were even elected by a popular vote, and this only changed through a constitutional amendment, won by the pressure of a mass movement. 

Democracy for US Territories and Washington, DC

Our demands for democracy must include the people of Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. The US should not hold territories, and should immediately cancel their debts. Alongside Washington, DC, all territories should be offered a choice of independence or full statehood, including representation in Congress, but it must be up to the people of each “territory” to democratically decide whether or not to accept such an offer.

End Corporate Corruption of Elections

In the 2010 Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court ruled that political donations by corporations are protected by the First Amendment and are not subject to restrictions, striking down a previous ban on independent campaign expenditures by corporations and unions. In effect, this legalizes corporate political bribery and total corruption of our elections. When General Motors and Exxon are financing political campaigns, we can continue to expect laws and policies that are more favorable to the world’s super-exploiters than they are to the people or the earth. 

As socialists, we know there are a million threads connecting the unhindered accumulation of capital to our institutions of governance—Super PACs, revolving doors between industry and government bodies, deregulation of business and industry. This makes it all the more urgent to wage a collective struggle around concrete demands that will restrict political bribery and make visible the dark currents of corporate and private finances that flow through our elections.

We must organize a mass movement to relentlessly expose and challenge all politicians who accept corporate money, and to demand the Supreme Court overturn the Citizens United decision, among other decisions that legalize corporate political bribery. Private financing of elections should be fully transparent and strictly regulated, banning all PACs funded by unlimited donations from business and the wealthy. Instead, only small donations from individuals and workers’ organizations, alongside public financing of elections, should be allowed.

Elect the Supreme Court and All Judges

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in the midst of a highly polarizing and contentious presidential election, brought renewed attention and scrutiny to the Supreme Court. While the collective sense of precarity was heightened by the timing of RBG’s death, the predictably dangerous right-wing agenda of Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett, and her rushed and anti-democratic confirmation process, the stage was ultimately set by the form of the institution itself. The narrow, archaic structure; the life-long positions, hand-picked by the president; the outsized amount of power wielded by justices—all are features of an institution designed to preserve minority rule and act as a bulwark against the people’s interests.

Now more than ever, big business is using the legal apparatus of the courts to throw huge amounts of money toward advancing their interests, because the policies that help big business (like restricting voting rights, attacking labor rights, deregulating industries, and weakening the role of the civil jury) find very little support in the public arena.

At Barrett’s confirmation hearings, Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island gave a 30-minute presentation charting the flow of dark money through the courts—a vast, creeping, $250 million project which the Washington Post describes as “a conservative activist’s behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the nation’s courts.” This includes the Federalist Society, the Judicial Crisis Network, and Donor’s Trust, three anonymously funded groups which have respectively taken over selection of judicial nominees, produced campaign ads for Republican judicial nominees, and served as an identity-scrubbing device for right-wing donors. This apparatus creates very favorable conditions for big business to influence policy directly, while masking the identities and vested interests of donors in pushing their package of right-wing, pro-corporate policies through the courts.

It’s not only at the level of the Supreme Court that right-wing interests are tightening their grip. Trump spent his entire term filling judgeships at lower levels, appointing over 200 judges to federal and appellate positions, packing the courts with reliably conservative justices. This represents almost a quarter of all active federal judges in the US, and 20% more judges appointed (on average) than the past five previous presidents at the same point in their presidencies.

The same legal system that upholds the supremacy of big business also facilitates the racist criminal justice system and brutality of mass incarceration, which is responsible for the world’s largest population of people behind bars. While there’s no simple reform for such a rotted system, we should and must use every tool we have in the fight for our democratic rights. Calls to pack the courts vary widely, with centrist Democrats suggesting an additional two Supreme Court seats, and more radical proposals ranging from six to ten. We must demand a radical expansion of the Supreme Court, of at least six additional justices, and consider expansion of the lower courts as well. Judges of all levels, especially Supreme Court justices, should be elected democratically, subject to impeachment and term limits.

Democratize Our Economy

Under capitalism, democracy ends the moment you set foot in the workplace. But, as Marx was first to point out, every serious struggle to expand democratic rights for working people will inevitably uncover the lack of real division between political and economic democracy. At the most basic level, socialists should connect the fight for voting rights with the call to radically expand union rights. A starting point could be Bernie’s “Workplace Democracy Plan,” which his campaign linked to the call to “double union membership within Bernie’s first term.”

But, especially in this moment of economic crisis, socialists should go much further. We cannot allow massive corporations like Amazon or General Motors to blackmail entire cities by threatening to leave or eliminate jobs, in order to avoid being taxed fairly or having to pay a living wage. From the shop floor to city council, working people must develop forms of democratic worker and community control over the wealth we produce, and refuse to allow our lives to be run by the narrow drive for profit.

On an even larger scale, multiplying ecological crises pose existential questions about who gets to make the life-and-death economic decisions that will determine the future of our planet. As long it remains profitable to burn fossil fuels and rainforests, we can expect powerful economic interests to corrupt governments and to block or defy regulations. In the final analysis, there is a fundamental contradiction between the profit-driven needs of private capital and the democratic desire of most of humanity to avoid ecological catastrophe. 

From the energy industry to the healthcare industry, big agribusiness to big tech, there is growing space for socialists to emphasize how the public interest is completely at odds with private ownership. Linked to our call for a radical expansion of democratic political rights, socialists need to patiently but persistently raise the call for economic democracy: for public ownership of all major industries, under the democratic control of workers, communities, and society as a whole. 

What Will It Take?

In moments of mass radicalization and political upheaval, the popular imagination stretches and the realm of possibility expands. Previous amendments to the Constitution came in waves, as sets of progressive popular demands that were pushed into being by the force of mass movements. In the current moment, the US working class is faced with the compounding crises of capitalism, deeply discredited institutions of democracy, and increasing political precarity.

This year saw sustained mass protests against racist police violence that sparked widespread scrutiny of police budgets and the institution of policing itself, and which resulted in popular demands across the country to defund (and abolish) the police. Fresh experiments and demands around community care and alternatives to policing sprung up, including the demand for democratic oversight of the police. This is just one example of working people pushing back against our undemocratic institutions and actively searching for alternatives; the growing trend of teachers’ strikes, rent strikes, and workers’ struggles against corporations like Amazon point to an atmosphere of rising intolerance for life under capitalism—and real opportunities for revolutionary change.

The capitalist class, which dominates both the Democratic and Republican parties, will never be a fighter for democracy and will work to roll back every reform we win. We will need a political mass movement of the multiracial working class, with socialists pointing the way forward, to win these radical reforms.

With organized and determined mass movements, it is entirely possible to win sweeping reforms that can provide working people immediate relief and offer more favorable conditions for class struggle. But if the underlying economic and social system of capitalism remains intact, the fundamental conflict remains: the interests of private ownership, relentless accumulation and consolidation of wealth, and entrenched minority rule will always oppose the interests of democracy, human rights, and a habitable planet. Because of this, all winnable democratic reforms are temporary and fundamentally unstable under capitalism.

Our institutions reflect an embedded requirement of capitalism, which is the fierce preservation of minority, capitalist-class rule, and the thinly veiled suppression of democracy. As socialists, we know that there are hard limits to meaningful democracy under capitalism, but this doesn’t mean we abandon the fight for democratic reforms.

There is, however, a crucial distinction between democratic reforms within a capitalist framework, and a socialist conception of democracy. While the former seeks to amend the most undemocratic features of our political system, it draws a hard line at economic democracy and leaves the fundamentally conflicted relationship of worker and capitalist, exploited and exploiter, intact. The latter, by contrast, sees political and economic democracy as inextricably linked.

The working class is the most consistent and reliable force for democratic rights, and our historic objective has always been in the interest of democracy. We produce all of society’s wealth, provide all essential services, and make up the vast majority of the population—we should have full democratic rights over our communities, workplaces, and major industries. Fighting for this program of reforms, and building the mass political movement it will take to win them, will open up new opportunities for further expansion of our democracy and for a socialist transformation of society.