Jonathan Turley, in the article linked below, has drawn attention to something that deserves more serious consideration than it has received: the increasingly explicit revolutionary language being used by parts of the American socialist Left. There is no evidence of a coordinated plan for armed insurrection, and it would be absurd to pretend otherwise. What does exist is a political culture in which talk of destroying existing institutions, abolishing capitalism and preparing for armed conflict can now be heard at respectable political and academic gatherings.
At a Marxism conference in Chicago, UC Santa Barbara historian Butch Ware reportedly told his audience that the Democratic Party "must be destroyed." More significantly, he argued that people could not seriously describe themselves as revolutionaries without discussing weapons training. Mocking activists whose political experience consisted largely of working on computers, Ware warned that they were not prepared for "a war in the streets" and should "get ready for both kinds of war."
The significance of such remarks lies partly in who is making them and where they are being made. Ware is not an anonymous internet radical. He is an academic at a major American university. His comments were delivered in a political environment in which revolutionary socialism is increasingly presented not as an historical curiosity but as a legitimate response to contemporary American society.
Other speakers expressed the broader ideological position from which this rhetoric emerges. CUNY professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore attacked capitalism as a system that produces and reproduces racial, sexual and other forms of inequality. Other activists and candidates have spoken of eliminating capitalism, borders and even the nation-state itself. Hasan Piker and others on the socialist Left have openly discussed removing moderates from positions of political influence.
None of this means that the Democratic Socialists of America are preparing an armed revolution. Most DSA members participate in ordinary electoral politics, organise tenants, campaign for candidates and pursue conventional legislative objectives. It would be a serious mistake to confuse revolutionary rhetoric among some activists with the intentions of the entire American Left.
It would be an equally serious mistake, however, to dismiss the rhetoric as meaningless. Political movements are shaped not merely by what their median members believe but by the ideas that become acceptable within their intellectual and activist institutions. When discussion of weapons, street conflict and the destruction of existing political structures becomes respectable at conferences, the boundaries of acceptable political discourse have shifted.
That historical point does not require exaggerated comparisons with 1917. Revolutionary movements rarely begin with majority support for everything they eventually become. They usually develop through smaller factions that reject the existing political order more completely than their allies do. The important question is therefore not whether most American socialists presently support political violence. They plainly do not. The question is whether a movement increasingly comfortable with revolutionary language will continue to regard constitutional politics as the final authority when constitutional politics frustrates its objectives.
This is where Turley's argument becomes a criticism of the Democratic establishment as much as of the socialist Left. Democratic leaders such as Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Gavin Newsom have political reasons to accommodate an energetic movement on their Left flank. They want its voters, organisers and enthusiasm while assuming that the institutional Democratic Party will retain ultimate control over policy.
That calculation may prove correct. American political parties have absorbed radical movements before, moderated them and incorporated portions of their programmes into ordinary politics. But there is an obvious tension when one side regards the arrangement as an electoral coalition while activists within the other speak openly about destroying the institutions with which they are temporarily cooperating.
The disagreement over capitalism illustrates the problem. Criticising contemporary capitalism is hardly revolutionary; politicians across the ideological spectrum complain about corporate concentration, falling living standards, housing costs and economic insecurity. The rhetoric changes character when reforming markets gives way to abolishing capitalism altogether and replacing existing economic institutions with political control over production and distribution.
The same distinction applies to criticism of the Constitution, the Supreme Court and other American institutions. Constitutional structures are not beyond criticism, and American history is full of movements demanding institutional reform. The danger arises when institutions are regarded as legitimate only for as long as they deliver the desired political outcome. At that point constitutional government ceases to be a set of rules binding everyone and becomes merely another obstacle to political transformation.
Ware's reference to "both kinds of war" is therefore difficult to dismiss as ordinary political hyperbole. In context, one kind of struggle appears to be electoral and political, while the other involves the possibility of physical confrontation. A professor telling self-described revolutionaries that they should think seriously about weapons training deserves scrutiny regardless of whether anyone present has the slightest intention of following his advice.
There is also an important distinction between taking such rhetoric seriously and assuming that every socialist activist represents an imminent threat. America has no shortage of revolutionary language from people whose practical political activity consists of attending meetings and posting online. Treating every Marxist academic as a potential Lenin would be as foolish as pretending that explicit references to weapons and street warfare have no meaning whatsoever.
The more reasonable conclusion lies between those extremes. A small but increasingly visible part of the American Left is comfortable using language that rejects capitalism and existing political institutions rather than merely seeking to reform them. Within that milieu, some figures are prepared to discuss political conflict in terms extending beyond elections and demonstrations. At the same time, the mainstream Democratic Party believes it can benefit electorally from the energy of the socialist Left without adopting its most radical objectives.
That arrangement contains an obvious political risk. The Democratic establishment sees the socialist movement as one constituency within a broad coalition. The revolutionary Left contains people who regard that coalition as temporary because their objectives ultimately extend beyond the Democratic Party itself. Each side may therefore misunderstand the other.
American constitutional government was deliberately constructed to frustrate sudden concentrations of political power. The separation of powers, federalism, an independent judiciary and the elaborate machinery of representative government were intended partly to prevent temporary political passions from becoming immediately sovereign. Those restraints inevitably irritate movements convinced that fundamental transformation is urgently necessary.
The question raised by the present rhetoric is therefore not whether America is on the verge of socialist revolution. There is little reason to believe that it is, just yet. The more interesting question is what happens when a growing political movement regards existing institutions as fundamentally illegitimate while a major political party believes it can harness that movement without being transformed by it.
Ware's comments matter because they make that tension unusually explicit. When political activists begin speaking publicly about weapons training and war in the streets, the appropriate response is neither panic nor studied indifference. It is to listen carefully to what they are saying and judge the movement by the political ideas it is increasingly willing to entertain.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/you-better-get-ready-war-socialists-call-war-streets-end-capitalism