The Dilemmas of Democratic Socialism

The Dilemmas of Democratic Socialism

To transform the world to more closely align with our principles, we must think and act politically.

This essay will elucidate four interrelated concepts—principles, objectives, strategies, and tactics—that often feature in democratic socialist political discourse in the United States and elsewhere. Despite their common usage, there is not a common understanding of what each concept entails or how each relates to the others, let alone to political power. Elucidating these concepts will allow us to think more clearly about our political work and the choices we make in it; in turn, this will better situate us to build and use political power for progressive change.

Our Principles

For democratic socialists, our politics are ultimately based on principles: values that give us both our vision of a better world and our motivation for engaging in political activity. Solidarity—our dedication to and action for the common good—is one of these foundational principles, and the one that most distinguishes us from the political perspectives of the right and center. Any list of democratic socialist principles would also include values we share, at least in part, with other democratic political philosophies, such as equality and liberty, as well as respect for human life, dignity, and well-being. Yet democratic socialists have more expansive conceptions of such principles. For example, our understanding of democracy is not limited to support for the institutions of representative government, as important as they are, but extends democracy to the workplace and the community, with a focus on giving a voice to ordinary people in the decisions that impact their lives. We are democrats, but we are radical democrats.

Much of what we think of as central to democratic socialism—such as our commitments to working-class empowerment, anti-racism, feminism, and LGBTQ rights—follows from these foundational principles. Still, there are real challenges to honoring these values. Our actions are often fraught with dilemmas simply because the world rarely presents us with unambiguous moral choices.

To begin, our principles can come into conflict with each other. For example, equality and liberty can generate competing claims in controversies around how to define, regulate, and police “hate speech” and incitement to violence against marginalized communities. Balancing these claims demands a thoughtful approach that honors both our deep commitment to free expression and our unequivocal opposition to racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. That is only possible when we have fully developed understandings of what should and should not be permissible, both under the law and in civil society.

We also often face complex situations in which there are wrongs on all sides, or where goods fall short. Sometimes the choices are far from equivalent, and we need the moral and political judgment to know when to focus on the defeat of the “greater evil” or the victory of a “lesser good,” even when the results do not fulfill all our principles. Such is certainly the case with the Trump and MAGA campaign in the 2024 election. In other instances, the wrongs are especially grievous, taking the form of brutal crimes. At such times we must resist the temptation to surrender to the violent passions of the moment, lest we end up apologizing for one set of crimes in the name opposing others. Such a posture is, unfortunately, something we have seen from parts of the U.S. left in response to the horrific attacks of October 7 in Israel and the ensuing war of “collective punishment,” with massive civilian causalities, in Gaza.

Yet perhaps the greatest challenge for democratic socialists lies in what is generally required to realize our moral principles in this world. The crux of the problem is that, while our principles provide a general moral guide (think of the classic maxim of solidarity, “an injury to one is an injury to all”), they are not grounded in any one political moment, but are instead timeless injunctions. So, while they can tell us that solidarity is important, and that we should struggle together for the common good, they cannot tell us how to effectively support solidarity in our given time in history. We have to figure that out for ourselves: there is an unavoidable distance between the general claims of our morality and the context in which we live.

Moralism

Some do their best to ignore this distance, believing that to be authentically moral, we must realize our principles directly and immediately in the world. I call this outlook moralism. Pacifism, which has always been a current among socialists, gives us an insight into moralism: to honor the principle of respect for human life, pacifists contend, demands a total prohibition of participation in and support for violence and war.

As this example shows, moralist discourse is centered on various forms of absolutism, which admit no exceptions or compromises. The idea that nonviolence is most often just and preferable, yet there are still circumstances where the use of violence is regrettably necessary to preserve and protect human life on a greater scale, or to redeem other principles such as liberty, is simply unthinkable for pacifists. As a consequence, they do not wrestle with defining those circumstances, or how we can and should limit the use of violence in them: for pacifists, war and violence can never be just.

Accordingly, antiwar protests by pacifists tend to take the form of “moral witness” and direct actions intended to demonstrate, often through brave personal sacrifice, that a particular use of military force is morally wrong. (And, of course, the use of military force is often unjustified and counterproductive.) Less common is pacifist participation in political action, even that directed at making the world a safer, less violent place. The work of politics inevitably involves organizing, negotiation, compromise, consensus building, and contestation for electoral power, all of which make it difficult to maintain an absolutist position on a moral principle.

At their best, moralists highlight injustices that might otherwise escape public attention and, in so doing, motivate others to use political power to address them. At their worst, moralists indulge in discourses of outrage, accusing those with whom they disagree of corruption and betrayal, while claiming moral superiority for themselves. Much discourse on the sectarian ultra-left takes this latter form, directed against others on the left who in their estimation are insufficiently pure in their pursuit of principle—to the point that any measure of success in winning political power to achieve one’s goals is seen as a sign of the abandonment of principle. Ultra-left moralism is sand in the gears of democratic and socialist politics. Rather than looking for common ground with needed allies, it looks for moral failings in others; rather than building consensus, it focuses on isolating a morally pure vanguard from the body of the morally fallen. It is a politics of “scarlet letters.”

One useful way of conceptualizing democratic politics is to see it as the processes by which a community arrives at a common purpose and takes collective action, however provisional, in the face of inevitable disagreements. In this respect, moralism is at root an apolitical discourse, insisting upon the purity of its principles, rather than submitting principles to the crucible of political debate and decision-making, where they might take a compromised form.

Yet if we are to meaningfully advance our moral principles, we must act politically. We must identify and pursue concrete political objectives—ends we want to achieve that align with and strengthen, even when they do not fully embody, our principles.

Our Objectives

Objectives in democratic socialist politics take two general forms. First, there is the enactment of laws, government policies, and social compacts that advance our principles. Second, there is the organization and mobilization of working people and marginalized communities, the building of institutions (such as political organizations and unions), and the winning of elections, all of which develop the political power necessary to achieve these advances. The second set of objectives are the indispensable means for achieving the first set.

It is important that we choose objectives that are not only aligned with our principles, but also attainable here and now. Organizing a labor union is an example of an objective in service of solidarity and the empowerment of working people, one that can be achieved under current conditions, even if success is by no means assured and often requires intense struggle. Organizing a political general strike of all workers with the goal of ending the system of “wage slavery” and ushering in worker control of the means of production is an objective far beyond our capacity in this historical moment, and well into the future—even if one thinks the syndicalist theory of change embedded in this objective makes sense. (I do not.)

Similarly, mass incarceration can be ended with a package of criminal justice reforms: eliminating cash bail, decriminalizing most victimless offenses, making sentences proportional to crimes, increasing opportunities for parole, providing robust mental health and substance abuse services, and offering educational and vocational programs to the incarcerated. Such a program would require a sustained political effort that takes on racially coded fears of crime and the special interests invested in the status quo—but it is possible. By contrast, the abolition of prisons in the name of solidarity and liberty is an objective that has never been seriously attempted, much less achieved, in any modern society; it is not attainable in any foreseeable time frame.

These contrasts highlight one of the primary ways that socialist political discourse goes awry, which is a focus on unrealizable, utopian objectives. Promulgated by Thomas More, the term “utopia” combines two classical Greek words, which together could be rendered as “no place” or “no land.” Utopias stand outside history, in the eschatological space of end times and the coming of the Messiah, when the saved finally enter paradise. The socialist movement inherited features of this millenarian outlook from its origins in radical versions of European Christianity. Utopian themes loom large in it, with grand visions of the victory of the working class in the “final conflict” of class struggle bringing into being a “new Jerusalem” of socialism. In its ultimate expression, this utopian vision of socialism as “paradise on earth” is a world without economic exploitation, markets, and classes; a world without a state, or the armed forces, prisons, and police that are part of it; a world without violence and war; and even a world without human conflict, prejudice, and alienation. To this day, these utopian themes are quite influential among some socialists. Even those who criticized other socialists as utopian, such as the self-described “scientific socialists” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, retained important elements of utopianism in their own thinking.

Some socialists argue, in broad philosophical terms, that these utopian themes are necessary for a compelling vision of a better world, beyond the cramped confines of the present order. More often, however, socialists draw on a utopian vision to make a case against what they call reformism, or the pursuit of what I have described as achievable objectives. The complaint is that by themselves, these reforms leave the political and economic order intact and may even strengthen it. What we need, this argument insists, is revolutionary change to overthrow the entire capitalist system. Revolution is necessary to destroy the current economic hierarchies and concentrations of political power, and to introduce a socialist system that can end economic exploitation, class society, and the state.

It is one thing to insist that democratic socialists should fight for more than discrete objectives addressing particular issues—that our political project should be transformative, seeking to build a political and economic order that is more just, more humane, and more democratic. Such a vision can be grounded in the present, with an understanding of how different objectives can be formulated in ways that democratize power structures, creating and institutionalizing greater power for working people and marginalized communities. It is an entirely different matter to insist that the ultimate goal of the democratic socialist movement must be a total, cataclysmic rupture with the status quo in order to yield a utopian vision of socialism.

The problem with formulating our objectives in utopian terms is not simply that we end up fighting for goals we can never achieve, and in so doing make ourselves appear as political actors engaged in mere cosplaying. Just as important, these misguided efforts make it harder to attain objectives that are realizable. Take the political window for substantive changes in U.S. policing that was opened by Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. More than four years after Floyd’s murder, is it not painfully clear that this window has closed without any real policing reform? Is it not also apparent that nothing meaningful was achieved in part because far too much of the movement was centered on utopian slogans, first “abolish the police,” then its ancillary formulation “defund the police”? Despite intense efforts and the investment of significant political energy and resources in campaigns to “defund the police,” all that was accomplished were marginal cuts in police funding in a few cities—cuts that were quickly reversed as the COVID-19 pandemic wore on.

Now, the reform of policing in the United States is a demanding political undertaking under the best of circumstances. Police are well-organized, politically influential, and deeply invested in the criminal justice status quo, and fiercely oppose even the mildest reforms. They have the support of elected officials—primarily but not exclusively on the right—who ratchet up fear of crime to mobilize voters and appeal to “law and order” in their electoral campaigns. In this political context, utopian slogans such as “abolish the police” and “defund the police” are gifts to police and opponents of change, as they suggest the elimination rather than the systemic reform of policing. Even in neighborhoods of working people and people of color that bear the brunt of police misconduct and violence, where the police often act as if they were an occupying army, the prevailing demand is for policing that actually serves and protects the community, not for its abolition.

Again, it is no easy task to reform policing along such lines. The dilemma is that not just one or two aspects of policing need to be changed; the entire policing ecosystem is problematic. The policies and practices that result in high-profile instances of police violence are deeply embedded in and enabled by laws and regulations, the design of institutions, and the culture of policing itself. The elements of this ecosystem reinforce each other. If we engage in “magic bullet” thinking and try to reform policing with a single change, the rest of the ecosystem will adapt and remain fundamentally intact. For example, overhauling recruitment so that police forces are representative of the communities they serve is an important reform; but unless accompanied by other systemic reforms, a more diverse police force will be integrated into the existing system, and the relationship of the police to the community will not really change. The small cuts in police budgets enacted in the name of “defunding the police” were worse than an isolated, defanged reform: they left the policing ecosystem intact without even attempting to change it.

If the problems in policing are systemic, then so too must be the reforms. When different facets of the policing ecosystem are addressed in a coordinated fashion, these changes can increase their impact in a virtuous cycle. To return to our example: if a more diverse police force is combined with significant leadership changes (including, importantly, at the middle management level) and an overhaul of training and ongoing professional development, its positive impact will be much greater. The more positive reforms we add, the more they reinforce and build on each other, and the greater the progressive change.

There are examples of efforts at comprehensive police reform we can study—in post-apartheid South Africa, or in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday agreement—but these have been largely ignored in the United States. The South African and Irish efforts combined systemic reforms to the legal and regulatory framework of policing, recruitment procedures, training, operational structure, management, interface with social services, approach to the community, and discipline and legal prosecution of abuses of power. There is much to learn from them, in both their successes and shortcomings.

Precisely because a focus on utopian objectives produces nothing substantive for the constituencies socialists seek to organize, these millenarian visions often coexist in socialist discourse, uncomfortably and somewhat incoherently, alongside calls for reforms that could provide tangible benefits to working people and marginalized communities, and can therefore be used for actual organizing. In a well-known analysis of American socialism, the sociologist Daniel Bell highlighted this incongruency with a figure of speech he borrowed from Martin Luther. Luther, Bell wrote, saw his church as “in the world, but not of it.” That is, “it lived in the society, but transcended it by making a judgment outside of it.” In Bell’s view, the U.S. Socialist Party of his time was similarly situated: “It was in the world, in that it proposed specific reforms of society and was melioristic in its immediate aims; but it was not of society, in that it refused to accept responsibility for the actions of the government itself.” The Socialist Party did not seek the power to govern in the present, which was essential if it was to accomplish its goals politically; as a result, these goals were left to other political actors to pursue willy-nilly.

A form of the divided consciousness described by Bell can be seen among police abolitionists, many of whom say they are not opposed to substantive reforms of policing, yet appear unaware that their utopian calls to eliminate policing have hampered efforts to formulate, much less campaign for and enact such reforms. A more general expression can be found among socialists engaged in a perpetual quest for a Holy Grail of “non-reformist reforms.” This concept seeks to overcome the opposition between reform and revolution by identifying reforms that have a destabilizing effect on the capitalist system, and thus hasten the moment of revolutionary rupture considered necessary to realize the utopian conception of socialism. But the oxymoronic quality of the term tells us that this quest will be in vain: it reproduces rather than overcomes the reform-revolution antinomy.

When we leave behind utopian dispositions and resolve to act politically, both in and of our world, we are freed to think forthrightly about potential objectives. Do they align with our principles and advance solidarity, equality, liberty, and human dignity? Are they feasible and imaginable in the political moment? Do they empower working people and marginalized communities?

Asking such questions is simple enough, but answering them fully is a more involved exercise, if only because it demands that we make challenging judgment calls. To offer one important illustration: there are often difficult judgments in determining what is politically feasible, as we navigate between the Scylla of accommodation to existing power relations and the Charybdis of veering off into political powerlessness and irrelevancy. But Michael Harrington’s pithy formulation of democratic socialist politics (“the left wing of the possible”) captures the “sweet spot” we should aim for: at once firmly grounded in what is possible at the moment and forever pushing at the boundaries of what is possible, moving the window of what can be achieved politically to align more closely with our principles. In this way, democratic socialist politics can be transformative, building and sustaining a more just, humane, and democratic political order.

Strategies and Tactics

The central issue in determining whether an objective is practically feasible and politically possible is whether we can conceive of a strategy that has reasonable prospects for achieving it. A strategy is a plan of action to take us from where we are to the objective we aim to achieve. It is made up of tactics, discrete actions we take that together create and exercise the political leverage necessary to achieve our objective.

Both “strategy” and “tactics” are concepts taken from early modern warfare. When an army launched a campaign to capture enemy territory or degrade the military capability of the enemy, it would employ an overarching strategy, comprising tactics that involved the deployment of troops and other assets. The army would seek to draw the enemy into battles it could win and avoid battles where the odds were less favorable. Military strategy is based on a careful analysis of the enemy’s and one’s own forces: it seeks to exploit the enemy’s vulnerabilities and circumvent its points of potency, while deploying one’s own strengths to maximum advantage and camouflaging weak spots. This basic link between the concepts of strategy and tactics in warfare and in politics is why some of the deeper political and strategic thinkers among socialists, such as Antonio Gramsci, employ military metaphors to explain political strategies.

The heart and soul of democratic socialist political thinking lies in the art of developing and deploying effective strategies and tactics to win achievable objectives and build political power. One way that moralists show themselves to be apolitical is that they pay little or no attention to strategy and tactics: for the moralist, it is sufficient to assert a moral principle in absolutist terms, demand that others abide by it, and declare them morally deficient when they fail to meet that demand. But if we understand that it requires political power to win objectives aligned with our principles, then the development and deployment of strategy and tactics becomes central to advancing those principles in the world.

To think politically, therefore, we must think within historical time. We must analyze the political field in a given conjuncture, identify foes and potential friends, and establish what—with a thoughtful strategy and associated tactics that unite our forces and maximizes our power—is politically achievable in that moment. Meaningful political action lies in tactics that, when articulated in a historically attuned strategy, deliver sufficient power to win that which is politically possible. When there are opportunities to win a share of the power to govern, consequential and lasting change becomes possible. Precisely because authentic political thinking and political action occur inside historical time, they must be constantly reexamined and recalibrated with changing contexts. Principles remain constant; objectives, strategies, and tactics change.

Just as revolutionary utopianism stands outside historical time, there are mistaken approaches that treat strategy and tactics as constants, as if adherence to a particular strategy or tactic is a question of principle. We can call the former a utopianism of ends, and the latter a utopianism of means.

Let’s ground this analysis in a practical example. Within the labor movement, there are those who treat the strike tactic as an end in itself, desirable in virtually all times and all places; in their eyes, the “principled” unionist should always promote strikes as a form of working-class militancy and self-activity. When properly organized and executed, strikes are indeed a powerful tactic, with the potential to deliver gains that cannot be won otherwise; the effective loss of the strike tactic in the U.S. labor movement at the end of the twentieth century was part of the decline of organized labor, and the recent signs of its potential revival are most welcome. But precisely because they are high leverage and high visibility, strikes are also high risk. When they are broken, strikes can result in devastating losses not only on the issues, but also to the ongoing organizational capacity of unions and the power of workers. Victorious strikes, like the 1937 sit-down strike of the UAW, can lead to historic breakthroughs for unions and working people, but losing strikes, like the 1981 PATCO strike, can destroy a union and set back the entire labor movement.

To take on strikes that can be won and to avoid strikes that end in defeat, strikes must be understood as more than expressions of worker militancy and tests of worker resolve and solidarity. Strikes are complex operations involving many activities that must be undertaken simultaneously: picket lines, rallies, internal communications, union meetings, media relations, community relations, and negotiations. They must be thoroughly prepared and well-organized. Special attention must be paid to maintaining solidarity among strikers in the face of employer opposition and attempts at division. Given the sacrifices striking workers must make, they will want to know that the strike goals are worthwhile and achievable, that they can’t be attained by less risky means, and that there are reasonable prospects for victory. As a rule, successful strikes are based on a strike strategy, and have identified discrete points of vulnerability and significant leverage that can be used against the employer. There are times and places when a proposed strike can meet these requirements for success, and the decision to strike is the right one. And there are times and places where a proposed strike falls short on these grounds, and a decision to strike is a mistake that can lead to defeat and even disaster.

But if the strike is romanticized as an expression of pure working-class sentiment, and the decision to go on strike becomes a question of fidelity to a timeless principle of working-class militancy and self-activity, we lose sight of the strike as a tactic that may or may not suit a larger strategy to reach a union’s objectives and build collective power.

It is telling that the most forceful advocates of this romantic view of the strike are syndicalist in orientation; they either oppose electoral involvement of any sort or support only third-party electoral campaigns designed not to win, but to propagandize for political positions that well beyond what is politically viable. Either way, they are unprepared and unwilling to engage in electoral work to win the power to govern. In the current moment, with the clear and present danger of national and state governments being captured by a Republican Party in thrall to far-right authoritarianism, they see no need to work to elect Democrats—for them, this would be an unacceptable compromise of socialist principle. Is there a plainer manifestation of being in, but not of society?

Confusing Political Categories

In confusing principle, objective, strategy, and tactic, the utopianism of means leads to muddled political analysis, poorly conceived plans for political action, and the narrowing of the political base of the movement. Some examples will illustrate the ways that this can happen.

First, when the utopianism of means treats a strategy or a tactic as if it were a principle, much-needed political debate about these matters is shut down; substantive discussion of the effectiveness of a particular strategy or tactic, and whether there might be better choices, is impeded. Fealty to dogma takes its place, and the very act of questioning the efficacy of a strategy or tactic can be treated, in moralist fashion, as an act of betrayal. When going on strike becomes a question of principle, as outlined above, discussions of the best tactics in a given moment are preempted and short-circuited.

Second, since the efficacy of strategy and tactics is context-specific, the need to adjust them is inescapable in any long-term struggle. Successful movements are strategically and tactically nimble. The ultimate victory of the civil rights movement over the Jim Crow regime was largely based on its ability to develop new tactics of nonviolent direct action during the 1950s and 1960s. No sooner did the white supremacist power structure adjust to one tactic than a new one was deployed. This tactical flexibility was based on a clear distinction between tactics, which changed, and the principle of full citizenship rights for African Americans, on an equal basis with all other Americans, which remained constant as the north star of the movement. Civil rights and voting rights legislation were objectives aligned with this principle.

By contrast, Occupy Wall Street defined itself by a single, invariable tactic: the occupation of visible public space, starting with Zuccotti Park near Wall Street. It refused to even develop a program of reforms that would address the economic inequality which was its focus. This posture amounted to a self-imposed tactical freeze, and when local governments evicted the various encampments from these spaces, it left the movement rudderless and quickly led to its collapse.

Third, the utopianism of means avoids the hard questions of strategy. Strategy mediates tactics, on the one hand, and objectives and principles, on the other. It is the evolving plan to achieve an objective and advance a principle through coordinated tactics. If a tactic is treated as a matter of principle and an objective in itself, then its place in a strategy is never questioned, and the discussion of strategy often never occurs. If a strike is seen as the answer to every challenge a union faces and as an end in itself, for example, the development of a strategy to accomplish the union’s objectives is entirely sidelined.

It is precisely in the consideration of strategy, and of the relation of tactics to objectives, that we are compelled to think politically, inside historical time. When we engage in a utopianism of means that elides questions of strategy, we retreat from political thinking. One especially telling example of this evasion is the slogan “diversity of tactics,” which is deployed in some left circles as a substitute for developing a common strategy that uses agreed-upon tactics for all. In this formulation, “diversity” is a euphemism for allowing some who participate in demonstrations to engage in street fighting with fascists and the police, or in vandalism and looting. The logic employed here is of a “let everyone do their own thing” libertarianism, but it is really a pseudo-pluralism, since initiating street fighting, vandalism, and looting from inside a demonstration invariably places those committed to nonviolent action in the middle of a scrum, against their will. Where this happens, the numbers of people willing to join demonstrations soon plummets. The evasion of strategy in the formulation “diversity of tactics” allows those engaging in such violence to avoid the elementary political thinking that would be required to make a convincing argument that such tactics could actually advance objectives they claim to support, rather than being disastrously counterproductive.

A related problem can occur when tactics are employed to achieve an objective without the development of a unified strategy. When a movement lacks an agreed-upon political strategy, the failure to reach a morally urgent goal can easily engender a cycle of tactical escalation that feeds on itself and ultimately spins out of control. During the anti–Vietnam War movement, this was a problem in parts of the student left. As the war in Vietnam intensified and its human toll grew, activists felt compelled to intensify and accelerate actions in response. If demonstrations and vigils did not end the war, then maybe draft resistance and burning draft cards would; if nonviolent civil disobedience was not enough, than maybe militant street protests and fighting with police would be; if these tactics did not end the war, maybe engaging in clandestine actions to destroy instruments of the war, such as the bombing of the Pentagon and the University of Wisconsin’s Army Math Research Center, would. What made this tactical escalation all the more inexcusable was that a mass antiwar movement existed, with a real impact on public opinion and the capacity to influence government policy: there were plausible strategic options that were not caught up in this tactical escalation. Lives, including those of would-be bombers, were lost in this self-destructive spiral, and very real political damage was done to the larger antiwar movement, with the war itself arguably prolonged.

Finally, the utopianism of means narrows the base of the movement, isolating it from the broad popular forces whose support is needed to move meaningful change. When endorsement of a particular strategy or tactic is made into a litmus test, substituting for the principle itself, many who support the principle but have reservations about the strategy or tactic are driven from the movement.

The last of these effects (political narrowing and isolation) emerges organically from the other effects (the tactical freeze that results from the elevation of a tactic into a principle and the avoidance of discussions of meaningful strategy). It is why the elevation of tactics into principles usually takes an ultra-left form.

Conclusion

The failure to articulate and employ clear concepts of political thinking—principles, objectives, strategy, and tactics—should not be misunderstood as the sole cause of the problematic outlooks I have discussed in this essay, such as moralism and utopianism. A variety of forces and motivations lead people to adopt such perspectives, well beyond the conceptual issues at stake, and clearer thinking cannot simply wipe that slate clean. But if the point is to not just interpret the world or condemn its injustices, but to transform it to more closely align with our principles, we must think and act politically. Having clear notions of what these four foundational concepts entail can be a useful guide in this work.

Leo Casey is a veteran teacher union leader and the author of The Teacher Insurgency: A Strategic and Organizing Perspective.