Can Socialists Govern a Capitalist State?

Since the 2016 combination of Donald Trump’s election and Bernie Sanders’s breakthrough campaign, efforts to synergize grassroots organizing with electoral engagement have become a priority for both longstanding and new radical formations. The dominant strategy is for socialists and progressives to run as Democrats aiming to both block MAGA’s drive toward US-style fascism and to win a measure of Left “governing power.”  

In the last year, such efforts have yielded impressive results. Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is mayor of the nation’s largest city. Abdul El-Sayed, an outspoken advocate for Medicare for All and Palestinian rights, won the Democratic nomination for US Senator in Michigan. More than a dozen sitting Congressmembers are champions of Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, or Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and their number is likely to grow following the midterms. A serious conversation is underway about the broad Left rallying behind a movement-identified candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. That person (AOC is the most-talked about choice) would run not just to promote radical ideas or influence the eventual nominee, but to win. 

It’s a promising start, and prospects are good for its momentum to continue. But it will take orders of magnitude more wins for this radical insurgency to match the strength of either MAGA or the longstanding Democratic Party leadership, much less exceed it.

Portions of the Left think this is a mistaken path. Some critics think electoral engagement is worthless. Others believe that fighting on Democratic Party terrain for any goal other than breaking off to form a workers’ party as soon as possible inevitably leads to compromises that undermine the working-class movement. 

But these critics are on the defensive. Insurgent campaigns in Democratic primaries have clearly contributed to the spread of anti-capitalist ideas and the growth of radical and socialist organizations. Left-wing electeds — Mamdani in particular — have produced gains for (and mitigated harms against) workers and the popular majority while promoting immigrant rights, anti-racism, and opposition to US support for Israel’s Gaza genocide. 

In contrast, electoral abstentionism and third-party-ism have failed historically and currently to gain mass traction or provide a practical way of getting MAGA out of power. The critics therefore lack an attractive alternative to offer. 

Still, there is unease about pursuing a “governing power” strategy among some whose practical work meshes with it. For activists who have decided that only replacing capitalism with socialism can bring about a world of peace and justice, the recent hard-won electoral wins are gratifying but leave unanswered questions. For good reason, there is doubt that electoral victories, even when backed by powerful grassroots-based organizations, will get us to socialism. Isn’t the very structure of the capitalist state a barrier against working-class power? Don’t we need to dismantle, rather than govern, the US state? How does what we are doing today give us a North Star we can follow to a socialist horizon?

There are no ready-made answers to these questions. For more than a century, dedicated revolutionaries have grappled theoretically and practically with how to get to socialism in a capitalist country with a developed economy and electoral system. No one has succeeded. Anyone who says “this is the way” is over-promising.

The modern state is an instrument of class rule, but it is simultaneously a terrain of class struggle.

Still, much has been learned about which approaches hold the most potential. There is overwhelming evidence that the fight for governing power within capitalism is a stage of struggle that cannot be skipped. Rather, it is necessary to develop a working class–led movement broad enough, rooted enough, savvy enough, and positioned well enough to bring about a “revolutionary rupture” that dismantles the capitalist state if and when conditions to do so (a “revolutionary situation”) arise. 

I make a case here for that perspective and point toward some resources that help us both navigate this stage and gain a clearer sense of what we will confront in the next one. 

An underlying contradiction

The first step in making this argument is squarely facing the complicated dilemma that faces those of us pursuing a “governing power” strategy, even if we are only beginning to experience its concrete manifestations. 

That dilemma is aptly characterized in a recent Jacobin article by Peter Frase, “Zohran Mamdani and the Contradiction of Democratic Socialism.” Frase points out that there is a contradiction “between Mamdani as a product of DSA, an organization at least nominally aiming to overturn the capitalist mode of production, and Mamdani as a politician attempting to operate the machinery of the capitalist state apparatus.” 

The piece describes different Left approaches to navigating the Mamdani-in-office terrain. These vary from activists “who see the task of DSA as defending Mamdani’s policy agenda and building the base of popular support for it…. [to] those more concerned with calling out compromises or betrayals that separate the new mayor’s actions in power from the principles of a democratic socialist organization.” The debate between these poles persists because, as Frase points out, it is rooted in a contradiction that must be understood in “a Marxist sense: an antagonism that cannot be resolved without overcoming the larger system that gives rise to it, such as that between capital and labor.” 

Given the messiness of that debate and, more fundamentally, the inherent problem of uncomfortable compromises, alliances, and governing policy dilemmas it reflects, there is an understandable desire to bypass the problem by refraining from participation within any component part of the capitalist state. But giving in to that temptation in a country with even a relatively weak electoral system (much less a rooted one like the US) is self-marginalizing. 

The modern state is an instrument of class rule, but it is simultaneously a terrain of class struggle. Messy as it is, the Left must find a way to navigate the contradictions built into fighting for and winning a measure of governing power — including at the federal level, where the contradiction is especially sharp, since the US state remains an anchor of an imperialist system even in its period of decline. 

With the state, against the state, beyond the state

A core component of this argument is that the fight for and deployment of governing power includes but is broader than contesting elections and winning office. It is a full-spectrum struggle that must include battle on the economic, cultural, institution-building, and narrative (ideological) fronts to build sufficient strength of the popular classes outside the state to drive the process. 

The components of a comprehensive governing power strategy can be captured in a phrase taken from the South African Left: “with the state, against the state, beyond the state”:

• With the state: Contest elections. Become a force in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government at the local, state, and federal levels. Pursue a “co-governance” approach to create an ongoing and generative dynamic between elected officials and the social base that put them in office. By wielding accumulated strength inside and outside the state, deliver material gains, expand democratic space, minimize harm, and gain a deep understanding of what policies work in a complex society with a tremendously diverse working class.  
• Against the state: Continue to make demands on the state and fight for them, which sometimes will mean pushing officials we support and sometimes opposing them. 
• Beyond the state: This component has a double meaning. First, it means that building the organized, institutional strength of workers and all the oppressed outside the state (trade unions, community organizations, a media apparatus, narrative and cultural power, etc.) is indispensable. Second, it means that the most conscious portion of the popular insurgency understands that holding governing power in a capitalist state creates a contradictory and unstable situation. At some point it will be resolved either by the progressives and socialists being driven back or by a radical rupture that dismantles the existing state structure and puts a new structure in place. 

A corollary to both of these meanings is that every possible step is taken to weaken the state structures that are most tied to maintaining capitalism, whatever amount of governing power the Left holds at a given time.      

Purely outside will not work

The above is a bare-bones outline that needs a great deal of fleshing out as the Left gains experience in its practical application. At the moment, fighting for Left governing power in ways that facilitate building a front broad and strong enough to oust MAGA is a prime concern. If we succeed in pushing US fascism back, the challenges of fighting for and deploying governing power in a period more favorable for Left advance will come to the fore. 

We need to expect setbacks. But there are several reasons to pursue this course even at moments when we are confronted with how difficult it is.

The first is that attempting to overturn a developed capitalist state solely by acting outside the state is extremely unlikely to work. That course has been tried by substantial portions of the Left in the US and elsewhere over the last 100 years and never came anywhere near success. Such efforts have never gained as much strength as projects that have fought for influence inside as well as outside the capitalist state. 

There is a structural reason for this: the effect that substantial electoral systems have on the dynamics of mass politics. These systems offer a route to changing the conditions of life and expanding the democratic rights of workers and the oppressed. That is why movements for workers and oppressed peoples have fought for universal suffrage and fair elections since Marx’s time. In the US, the fight for Black voting rights in the arc from abolitionism to Reconstruction, and then, in the 1950s-60s, the Second Reconstruction, has been among the most bitter, violent, and consequential in the nation’s history. 

Having champions in legislative bodies, from city councils throughs state legislatures to Congress, makes a difference. An even larger difference can be made if progressives or socialists can capture the executive.

Most socialists, while participating in these fights, have concluded from their theoretical reflection and historical analysis that socialism will not be achieved via elections. But the mass of the working class and its allies learn that lesson through their own experience; that is, through traveling the electoral route and pushing it to its limits. Left propaganda plays an important role in driving home the point, but that role is secondary to the direct experience of millions in struggle. 

This stage of mass engagement may be long or short, and it is possible that a moment of decisive confrontation with capital may come before the popular bloc attains all the governing power within capitalism that it aims for. But the point is, this stage of struggle cannot be skipped. 

Social welfare programs via the state

An additional factor that pulls mass struggles into the quest for governing power is the evolution of the capitalist state since the debates over works such as Lenin’s The State and Revolution shaped the modern socialist movement. At that time, the operational components of capitalist states overwhelmingly if not exclusively consisted of the military, the police, and a bureaucracy for tax collection.

The modern state has expanded with many additional functions, including large-scale oversight and delivery of “welfare state” programs. Such programs are taken on by the state because it is pressed to do so by the struggles of workers and their allies. These struggles are ongoing; working-class movements almost universally demand the protection and expansion of such programs and introduction of new ones. This is a way for the mass of workers and the poor to win benefits that, even if they could be gained from specific employers, would only accrue to a limited number.

For example, today one of the most popular demands of the progressive movement is Medicare for All. To win Medicare for All as well as protect existing programs whose budgets are on the Right’s chopping block, there is a groundswell of energy going into electing its advocates to Congress. The drive to gain and protect social welfare programs (or to have a pro-union National Labor Relations Board, an Environmental Protection Agency actually concerned about climate change, a Justice Department that enforces civil rights, regulatory agencies that check untrammeled corporate power, etc.) exerts a strong pull toward contending for power within the state as well as building mass protest outside of it. What is the logic of demanding Medicare for All but refusing to fight for advocates of that program who can lead its implementation?

We need orders of magnitude more power

All versions of capitalism rest on exploitation. But they vary considerably regarding the conditions of life and levels of democratic rights of the subaltern classes. And what gains can be won within a capitalist system does not depend only on outside-the-state pressure; the capacity to battle inside the state is a major factor as well. 

The US Left is at an early stage of learning how to navigate these challenges. But there is experience to draw upon for lessons, from that of the Harold Washington and Zohran Mamdani administrations and from the still-young national effort to elected district attorneys who advocate deep-going reforms

Having champions in legislative bodies, from city councils throughs state legislatures to Congress, makes a difference. An even larger difference can be made if progressives or socialists can capture the executive. On the local level, the experience of the Harold Washington mayoralty in Chicago, and what Mamdani has been able to deliver in just a few months, illustrate this point. 

A governing power strategy aims to take this process as far as it can go. A particular change high on the agenda is eliminating the many undemocratic features of the US electoral system. That means restoring the Voting Rights Act and then going further to abolish the electoral college, prohibit both racial and partisan gerrymandering, and mandate multi-member districts with proportional representation. Winning even some of these requires changes in the political complexion of all three branches of the federal government; that is, as WFP national director Maurice Mitchell puts it, “to get enough power inside a rigged system to unrig it.” We have a long way to go before achieving that level of “inside” power. 

Police, prisons and the military-industrial complex 

Even as the functions of the capitalist state have expanded, it remains true that “a standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power.” Dealing with the repressive arms of that state — the police, prisons, prosecutorial bodies, and the military-industrial complex which enforces Washington‘s will abroad — is where insurgent electeds face their biggest challenge.  

And our problems on this battlefront are not limited to our relative lack of political power. The progressive movement lacks a compelling platform speaking to the working class’s concerns about public and personal safety. 

There is all-but-universal agreement on the Left that the US justice system is permeated by racism, human rights abuses, and an obscene level of incarceration. But that understanding does not automatically translate into a set of policies concerning law, law enforcement, crime, and prisons that actually benefit, and can gain the durable support of, the multiracial US working class along the way. Formulating, implementing, and building support for such policies is both important in itself and indispensable for eroding the current strength of police unions, “law-and-order” demagogues, and the racist right in general. (The same we-must-learn-more approach applies to numerous other policy areas.)   

The US Left is at an early stage of learning how to navigate these challenges. But there is experience to draw upon for lessons, from that of the Harold Washington and Zohran Mamdani administrations and from the still-young national effort to elected district attorneys who advocate deep-going reforms (Larry Krasner in Philadelphia). Another source of lessons is the experience of Black communities after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which led to the first election of a Black Sheriff in the South since Reconstruction and a substantial drop in racially biased arrests nationwide. And there are radicals exploring new frameworks for a public safety platform such as  “law of the weakest” and “carceral minimalism.”

Further, anti-capitalists who have captured substantial governing power at the local or state level will almost certainly face situations where the government they lead takes repressive measures against the social forces that they represent. But this road must be travelled because two other things are simultaneously true: One, it is more possible to erode the power of these bodies if a radical movement has champions within the state as well as outside of it; and two, every step to weaken the repressive apparatus contributes to harm reduction and to increasing the space available for insurgent movements to organize for power. 

Empire and the military-industrial complex

Dealing with the military-industrial complex and the related components of the capitalist state that enforce Washington’s goals abroad is similarly complex. But the extent of policy differences even between administrations that are not progressive shows how much room exists for an internationalist force with strength on both the inside and outside to make a difference in the conditions faced by peoples around the world. Cases in point: the difference between a period when the JCPOA nuclear weapons deal negotiated during the Obama administration was in force vs. one where Trump has torn up the deal, or between an administration expanding use of fossil fuels vs. one making even inadequate efforts to fight climate change.   

There will be no easy victories on this battlefront. But every bit of progress we do make can alleviate the main source of economic bullying and threats of violence that currently afflict the nations of the global South. And the outpouring of bottom-up resistance to ICE, the unprecedented upsurge for Palestinian rights, and the unpopularity of the war against Iran has spurred a wider openness to fresh ideas about the US role in the world than at any time since the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War. 

Add the growing sophistication of progressive and socialist electoral engagement, and it is possible to envision an administration that would have enough popular backing to abolish ICE, substantially cut the military budget, and take other initiatives that stem from a very different sense of what constitutes genuine security. 

Vital for the fight against fascism

Pursuing a strategy of fighting both inside and outside the terrain of the state is also vital to stave off the threat of fascism. 

In the US today, the main axis of conflict in the US is between a bloc of white Christian nationalists and oligarchs driving toward US-style fascism and a larger but more politically and organizationally fragmented opposition. The central task of the moment is to unite and galvanize the anti-MAGA majority so that it defeats the MAGA bloc and moves the country to terrain more favorable for working-class advance. 

The elections since 2016, especially the 2024 balloting, demonstrated that it is not possible to do that — or to gain influence for the broad Left within the anti-fascist front — if we only campaign on opposition to Trump and MAGA. We need to advance a positive vision of what we are for as well as what we are against. 

It is a governing power strategy that positions the broad Left not only as the most dedicated and combative opponent of MAGA, but also as a force offering a positive vision of what a post-MAGA government can deliver. And we cannot limit our “positive platform” to domestic issues while only saying what we oppose in terms of foreign policy. Only a positive vision for a transformed role for the US in the world will be compelling enough to sustain broad popular support and bind together movements and organizations whose main focus is “domestic” issues with those focused on peace, climate change, and international working-class solidarity. 

Framing that vision as a Third Reconstruction roots anti-capitalist politics in the particularities of US history, especially the central role of the fight against white supremacy. It also signals that even if we achieve that objective, changing the country will still be a work-in-progress. As with the First and Second Reconstructions, a new round of gains could be thrown back, or a Third Reconstruction government could be a steppingstone toward the radical rupture needed to overcome capitalism.  

We have nowhere near the power needed to usher in a period of radical reform, much less overcome capitalism. But after many years of the US Left being marginal, we have become a force to be reckoned with in mass politics.

It is by fighting for consistent democracy and maximum change within the capitalist system (whether we frame it as a Third Reconstruction or not) that the working class and its allies learn that capitalism must be transcended. It is also how the popular majority gains the experience of wielding power and learns how to rule.  

Fleshing out the bare bones

We are living through the most intense phase of the 60-year backlash against the gains of the 1960s in which the Black-led Civil Rights Movement was the driving force. There is an all-too-real danger of that backlash leading to the consolidation of US-style fascism. But in the upsurge of resistance to MAGA and the longings of millions for a different and better world, there are the seeds of a new cycle of progressive advance. 

Within this positive motion, a political trend committed to galvanizing a front broad and combative enough to defeat MAGA and to shaping a progressive post-MAGA administration is gaining momentum. It has a growing cohort of elected officials (most prominently Bernie, AOC, and Mamdani), radical organizations powering electoral work (WFP, Justice Democrats, and the growing “mass politics” wing of DSA), grassroots organizations rooted in issue-based and sector-based fights (a section of labor, Indivisible, the national community organizing networks, and much more), and a media ecosystem (ranging from The Nation to explicitly socialist publications and lefty podcasts). Its core organizers look to and are learning from the civil resistance of Minneapolis; the electoral sophistication that led to the recent “Mamdani sweep” in New York; the grassroots organizing that produced the Abdul El-Sayed-Donovan McKinney-Will Lawrence trifecta in Michigan and Angie Nixon’s win in Florida, and the internationalist passion of the pro-Palestine upsurge.

As in most early-stage radical awakenings, practical experience and experimentation run ahead of theoretical synthesis. Big-picture clarity is also hard to come by because the rapidly expanding cohort of self-identified socialists are faced with a challenge on which we have no successful models to draw from: how to overturn capitalism in a developed capitalist country with an established electoral system. 

There is much to be learned from others who have grappled with this at other times and places, for example: from Antonio Gramsci’s thinking about hegemony, a historic bloc, and war of position/war of maneuver; from the practical and theoretical attempts by Communists to take Georgi Dmitrov’s advice to “search out forms of transition or approach to the proletarian revolution.” For the US experience, see especially the chapter “Notes on the Revolution and the 1930s” in Al Richmond’s memoir, A Long View from the Left; for a lesson-rich history of the Italian Communist Party, once the most vibrant and deeply rooted CP in Western Europe, see Lucio Magri’s book The Tailor of Ulm. Also valuable is a study of the Swedish Social Democratic Party’s “Meidner Plan” experience in trying to dismantle capitalism; likewise a look at the years Salvador Allende governed as Chile’s elected president and their bloody end at the hands of the Chilean military backed by Washington. 

All these and more offer insights into how to fight effectively for governing power, what to expect if a measure of it is achieved, and how it can serve as a step on the path to socialism. Yet we are still travelling an uncharted path. We have nowhere near the power needed to usher in a period of radical reform, much less overcome capitalism. But after many years of the US Left being marginal, we have become a force to be reckoned with in mass politics. Making further headway will require a great deal of experimentation, and a consistent practice of honest evaluation and refinement — and we will need to harness all the tenacity, flexibility, and broad-mindedness we can muster as we go.