Editor’s Note: A PDF copy of the article is attached at the bottom of the page.
SCENE:
The United States. “Amerikkka”. The Evil Empire. You know where we are.
TIME:
When else but now? 2026 since the Year of Our Lord. ((1447 if you happen to be a heretic) 14.4 Billion Years if you’re an Atheist)
SETTING:
A dreary sight to behold. Sat in the middle of the room is a table. Around the table are several chairs. In each chair sits an [ORGANIZER]. This room could be anywhere: the living room of a friend’s apartment, the basement of a “progressive church”, the secluded back office of a book store. The air is tense. The mood is sour.
AT RISE:
Four [ORGANIZERS] sit huddled together. Tones are hushed. [ORGANIZER 3]’s head is stuck in his notebook as he scribbles down random musings. [ORGANIZER 2] gets up and paces around the table. [ORGANIZER 1] sits calmly with a cup of (something). [ORGANIZER 4] wields the communal laptop. The previous conversation resumes.
[ACT 1]
[ORGANIZER 4]
So what do we do?
(SHE PULLS OUT HER PHONE AND GLANCES AT IT QUICKLY BEFORE PUTTING IT AWAY)
We’ve been at this for how many months now?
[ORGANIZER 2]
A few at least.
(HE BEGINS SCRATCHING HIS HEAD AND A SLIGHT FROWN IS NOW NOTICEABLE)
I’m not sure why we don’t have more people. How are our socials doing?
[ORGANIZER 3]
Our impressions are fine. Everything’s better than last month. And the month before that. People just don’t seem to be interested I guess.
[ORGANIZER 1]
(INTEJECTING)
We need to meet the people where they are at. We need to INTEGRATE ourselves into the masses. Join community orgs, go to neighborhoods. Ask people what they need. Join our Unions. Attend local –
[stop]
You get the point…
INTRODUCTION
Mass Politics is the central theme of the current moment. Both the Left and Right of Capital are rushing, en masse, to recruit and proselytize the nascent masses into their cults (of progress and reaction, respectfully). Even on the fringes of the ultra-left (which we would consider ourselves a part of) the same conversations are still held as the one played out above. One central question is seared into everyone’s mind:
How can we create, or influence, the mass movement?
This is, of course, no small question. It’s a question that has divided the movement for the past century, if not more. The role of the mass movement, and where we fit in, is critical to the understanding each sect has in regards to its most basic ideological and practical principles. However, what if everyone was thinking of mass politics wrong?
Mass politics implies, at a core level, a distinction between the masses and the revolutionaries. There exists a space for the “authentic and genuine” revolutionaries to coalesce their forces and power (usually organized along the lines of the party form), at which they will use said power upon the masses to steer its political “development”. You can see the problem here, right? The current understanding of mass politics not only separates the masses and the revolutionaries, but it actively sets them up as antagonistic and contradictory forces. Instead of being one with the class, the faux-revolutionary seeks to gain dominion over it. Mass politics can hardly be said to be “mass” orientated in its current state. Decisions are made in backrooms and among “leadership”, not on the streets. To this end, mass politics doesn’t exist. All those fighting for this ideal are caught in the trap of chasing the specter of mass politics.
A FALSE DICHOTOMY
In the very genesis of political pseudoscience lies the quest of mass distinction. The idea that there is the individual, or the elite individual, and the hordes of beastly vermin whose loyalty must be bought, sold, and wagered. These germs are all of the remnants of society which cannot be trusted with economic decision making, and thus must be isolated from this process through political mediation. Unidentifiable as a single class and of mass interests, the “masses” cannot be codified or bribed to one specific principle, language or ideology. They sell their labor and goods side by side, warring and cannibalizing their rival mass. Most critical to understand is that they lack a unified social function: The remnants of the indecisive entails the inclusion of the many. And this is a fundamental contradiction inherent to the mass politic. The rugged individuals, being the mass politicians, are clear about this every moment they think and act as an atomized campaign. What is sacred is “the people”, “the nation”, or any containment jar which can fit all the robust categories and social remnants. We emphasize that the position of the mass politician is a pseudoscientific-albeit politically pragmatic-grab for power.
Meanwhile, the frantic masses-especially the working masses, the class-are clear about their incompatibility. Through the social function of the petit-bourgeois small landlord who leaves their properties in routine neglect, they declare war against the service sector proletarian everyday. Through the immense accumulation of time theft, city workers offer their management apparatus a translucent middle finger. These and many other contradictions are obvious, and thus only the most ambitious of politicians can sift through the accumulation of all these characters. Therefore, the contradiction of the mass politic is the contradiction of the mass: This utopian idea of the mass is not only lazy, it does not really exist in class society, and it can hardly act in unison without immense bloodshed and violence to temporarily grease the chain.
The false dichotomy we discuss above is relevant to the communist especially. As communists, we understand that our movement can only be championed by the proletariat. We believe that while history is not linear, to seek a qualitative change in terms of class rule, the international proletariat is the only class which can possibly dethrone the bourgeoisie. Thus when weaponized by the communist, the “mass politic” posits an irreconcilable hypothesis that rather than the proletariat, abstract masses of hostile social groups can come together for a communist revolution.
There is a further dichotomy which we as communists must address as well: The idea of severance from the masses. We often posit that we are activists, or revolutionaries, but in the very essence of our activity we reflect what is already within the class. To isolate ourselves from class activity is to commit an act of grave pseudoscience, where we are atomized individuals unfettered by any historical social relation. That we simply came into being and presented our wishes. No, we are the materialization of our class backgrounds, and our activity contains that kernel of contradictory rebelliousness within the greater society. That contradiction represented by our activity is most resemblant of that of the proletariat, and therefore we must re-emphasize this class basis in our activity. To turn to the mass politic at this point would highlight one thing larger than an abstract betrayal, then. It points to the petit-bourgeois, mass-democratic limitations of our real class background. What we are is what is in the class.
THE ANTI-MASS NATURE OF MASS POLITICS
If the mass politic is anything when wielded by the communist, it is remarkably anti-mass. By this, we consider that in meeting society where it is most infectious and reactionary, the communist actually loses sight of the mass itself and falls behind it. The greater the scope of their rhetoric, the more classes it includes, the more the communist alienates itself from the real movement to abolish classes. Likewise, the less it distinguishes itself from the political liberals, whose pole is both more radical, all-encompassing, and convincing. Therefore, the communist will draw in but few murmurs of support. Let us elaborate.
It can be argued that our era is the era of the counterrevolution, that in the wave of the defeats of the 20th century we have never been more atomized and sorely broken down by capital. Whether or not this is tenable, we must understand that in this age, communism is an ugly delinquent on the political field. In the United States especially, it has no ideological proponents. Its name continues to be tossed around and avoided like a political Black Death; Those with the strongest stature feign ignorance and recirculate it the most frequently. Thus even if it is in the tendency of the proletarian to struggle against the total supremacy of capital, it is also the tendency to deride the undesirables as communists. On another plane, many of the great American communists have never recovered from the deindustrialization of American society, leaving those precious few with little to theorize about. In the place of the domestic project they now make leaps in support of “anti-imperialism” and the national projects of other nations! Yes, Communism is a dead man’s comfort.
Thus, when communists search out for the masses, it is because of a chasm at their current vantage point. They are as isolated as ever, with few ties to the remaining great trade unions or the like. Their cries in the night ring out to no ears, and at the long last of so many a political project, our dear communist realizes they will never be embraced as such. Just as the bourgeoisie continuously morphs into something more demonic, the communist must become ever more gracious and holy. Impending salvation for all believers.
When they make their inscription on society, it is typically a moral-political-economic tone that can collect all of the classes in its pocket. The movement toward communism becomes cloaked in what is just, as the communist now theorizes not a movement of classes but a movement of ideas, towards a movement of classes. In this, we consider that rather than take to the project of immediate class struggle, communists indulge themselves in lengthy diatribes over the ideals and moral judgements they believe will move the most people. They infer, incorrectly, that we can begin a period of class/mass struggle with the imposition of an ideal. If only the petit-bourgeoisie would be so kind as to join our struggle, once they have heard our ideas! But fear not. These tidings will nurture a new wave of great reformers, hawkish priests, and desensitized youths, and when our numbers finally swell, we will carve up the dominion of the bourgeoisie, storm their palaces, and maybe even consolidate political power. It would all be so beautiful, if only the masses recognized our original mass politic as a means of placation.
The sheer inability of the communist mass politic to turn contradiction to momentum is astounding. It so turns out that no matter which bent of ideology, communism cannot be cloaked in Enlightenment without becoming disfigured under the shroud.
From Crimethinc to PSL to DSA to the ultra milieu itself, our most obvious criticism is that the mass politic is so outwardly reformist that it offers no such pole to really congregate from. This criticism was of course inspired by variants of the aforementioned organizations, yet surprisingly birthed via a conversation with ultra-leftists around pole-setting. The overwhelming dream within the anti-ICE movement was to set a line along “Feds Out of Chicago”, due to the mass reach of such a position. An ultimate play in mass politics. What these comrades dismissed, however, is the overwhelming anti-mass nature of this very tendency. By seeking to go for all the marbles, these mass politicians have only done a favor to the real mass politicians, who are currently gathering around the slogans of “Reform” and “Abolish” as we speak. Wholly more advanced than the ultras, and wholly more attractive to the activists and migrants alike. What this means is that we are actively allowing the bourgeoisie to cause a shift in our ultimate ambitions, in defence of the status quo and a return to the sacred. We are politically out maneuvered.
Furthermore, the anti-mass nature of a communist mass politic is intertwined with the tendency of capital to accumulate. As it congeals toward the monopolization of society, the bourgeois representatives have become tighter knit in capital’s defense. Political language itself monopolizes, in the form of a handful of Parties which offer markedly similar visions of mass society. In America there are only 2, and they share agreement on every critical deficit in society. Their resources accumulate at a grand scale, and on the back of the State this monopoly will surely propagate its pole better than a few communists: The Spectacle guarantees it. What made the communist subversive was its anti-formist, revolutionary position, and when that is whittled away, they are nothing more than a liberal coalition member. If there is truly nothing the communist offers that the bourgeoisie cannot, then of course, the latter will always appear as great liberators. Hence the intensity at which we must struggle against opaque moralism and ceaseless calls for reform. In the following section, we analyze what is really anti-mass: The mass line itself.
AN EQUATION AGAINST MASS LINE
- If we are serious about instituting a mass line, this necessitates we meet the masses where they are most ideologically mangled by capital, to assure them that in some form the bourgeoisie bears inherent truth about their situation. This betrayal will only stoke flames later in which the proletarian-or abstract mass we politic-must sincerely revolt against the mass line.
- We are not in favor of meeting the masses where they are. We are not in favor of sympathetic humanists amongst the bourgeoisie, we deny the rights of the petit-bourgeoisie, and we are not to cast a blind eye toward a proletarian’s racialism, nationalism, allocationism, xenophobia, or any other product of capitalist society. If this places us as an outward minority amongst the social scape, we can mourn that, but nonetheless have no interest in political games. In times of crisis, we must drag the proletariat to us.
- When we set our pole for the proletariat to see, we have to be incredibly decisive about our rhetoric and intent; We cannot straddle on the edge of reality all alone nor can we falter in political debris. Thus we must do the work of imagining what communism looks like. If this image contains, even reifies critical functions of capital (such as the State or Value form), then we have only ourselves to blame when the revolt against the mass line attacks the Communist movement itself. As it stands many of the most radical communists are tacitly in favor of this societal retention. Furthermore as the bourgeoisie finds the communist cheerleaders the most repulsive, regardless of their opportunism these comrades will be readily hung by the masses. In times where great illusions break, they cannot hide from their own truths or lies. They are communists masquerading as a liberal, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
- Communism is not a line nor a compromise. It is a scope beyond our comprehension as capitalist subjects, we cannot pretend to know what is assuredly next. But we can fashion ourselves in a manner that is revolutionary, that breaks with the prevailing logic of how we understand the world at once, to sever ties with interpretations and wholly change it. Communism is the realization of this and the willingness to imagine new possibilities.
- If we believe our movement to be real, then we must practice against enticing mediatory forms. In the streets with proletarians, we cannot pretend to be their urban heroes. We must decisively break with all those forms of coercive language, not only to encourage the proletariat to move beyond us, but to ensure that we do not betray them in our conservatism. This means that we are the movement against borders and nations and the bourgeoisie, until the proletariat is the movement against the proletarian condition, upending all that is sacred.
- Even heaven cannot bear the monsters it has created. We are not instituting a political equation that can rein in the proletariat or catch their interest, as we are not interested in retaining their condition. We seek their violent expression, and to ascribe a language against popular languages.
FETISHISM OF THE QUANITATIVE FORM
We are fairly certain the masses move history, so one can be forgiven for what is assuredly a ludicrous proposition: The Communist fetish is one of numbers. Rather than take any introspection in our condition today, we have sanctified the concept of the many. The proletariat en masse are our nightriders who will awaken on our behalf, sword and shield in tow. In this view, every foul idea is a thousand proletarians away from the next uprising.
As communists typically take up the herculean task of building infrastructure, we stumble toward this grand assessment of the quantitative form. Its essence is part and parcel of what we believe: Not of the Great Men, but of those Great Many who will decide their own destiny. The issue arises when we view our respective activity as a numbers game in its entirety. This always implies not that the dejected project is a meek representation of our strength, nor that the performative nature of parliamentarism is flagrantly reactionary, or even that our own community defense projects are conservative in scope. No, the issue is that there are not enough people following through these mechanical motions, not enough people protesting, voting, or defending their “community”. The fetish of the quantitative form forgoes thought for boldness, introspection for raw energy, both projected at nothing at all.
When building a pole, the fetishistic nature of the mass politic becomes so obvious. We are enticed not to think and act, but to act then reflect on the quantitative production of our actions. If something is not working, it is because it is not accessible enough to the dejected worker, and it must be more accessible through a myriad of tropes and concessions. If something is working, it is because thousands of people have responded to it positively, taking up their own roles in the process. Yet it remains to be said that none of this will resolve the initial contradictions, which are internal to the birth of such an effort. A case study can be found in a community defense/infrastructure project of our own, where in light of consistent local support we toyed with a neighborhood canvas. This canvas idea undoubtedly promises more mass energy towards the project, more outreach and more eyes, but unless it threatens to change the content of the project, we are simply a petit-capitalist scrounging around for more inputs. What we must realize is that all the same, the rate of profit will decline, no matter how much cheaper we can procure our bulk for. The content of the project itself must no longer seek the defense of localized, block-by-block capitalism, and begin taking stabs at it. The content of each and every action a communist takes must be reckoned with and turned on its head. Let us consider another example.
When uprisings broke out in 2020, what was not elusive was the mass of numbers; The greatest demonstrations of the epoch were rather triumphant. They managed to paper over cracks in class society, bringing together revolutionary black youths and white petit-bourgeois and treacherous nonprofits and even some of the bourgeoisie themselves. The quantitative form was on full display in every city and suburb, streets lined with protestors week in, week out. Out of this bubble, some Socialists profited immensely, such as those with PSL, FRSO, and DSA. They managed to swing from the mass energy a new wave of quantitative inputs, and plug those into their next campaigns of reform. The usage of new recruits in this way only solidifies the initial contradictions, forcing them to buckle once labor dries up. This can be seen in FRSO’s nationwide hand in the “National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression” (NAARPR), and the recent backslide in creative or communist capacity within the organization. Regarding their pole, we are sure we would love whatever community control of the police is supposed to mean. Sincerely. But more than that, to break with the urban military itself, we cannot sit idly by for public show trials in which the State brings no fist down on the State itself. Hence the Alliance, taking the side of the police in every street ordeal, now has to reckon with the fact that the banner it hoists is no more than an extension of Democratic initiative. Our masters have handed us the reins to conduct community control of police through accountability sessions, and we are no more living creatures than devilish monstrosities. The fetish of the masses gave birth to this renewed push from NAARPR, as much as it has deliberately tightened the rest of our leases.
We break with ideas, not the people we seek to revolt alongside. But to do this, we must struggle against our love of labor, of mass inputs and energy, of political projects and mass politics as movers of history alone. Labor as an input is not enough to seal the fate of action.
SOCIALISM AS THE AVANT-GARDE OF THE COUNTER REVOLUTION
Counter revolution is counter revolution, that much is certain. However, amongst the various sections of counter revolution present in our society, there does exist a qualitative difference amongst each. Broadly, we identify three different sections that add up to form the body of the counter revolution. They are: the “Conservatives”, the “Liberals”, and the “Socialists”. Let us investigate each of these further.
Conservatism is the most visible and often the most openly violent form of counter revolution. What is commonly understood as “the right wing” is encapsulated by this conservative title. Their actions and rhetoric are openly reactionary. Their hopes are of an imagined and non-existent past. A great rebirth, a paleogenesis of the nation and state. They are brutal, animalistic, and violent. Look no further than the current acts of ICE, DHS, and CBP (Immigration Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, and Border Patrol). Roving gangs of federalized mercenaries roam the streets lashing out with impunity. Be it man, woman, or child, no one is safe from their wrath. Their terror is passionate, instinctive, and most importantly open. Not only are their murders recorded and uploaded by helpless bystanders, but they broadcast it themselves! The murderer of Renee Good, Jonathon Ross, held in one hand his pistol and in his other a phone. These are the “Conservatives”, who ironically seem to have zero interest in “conserving” much of anything. Their form of counter revolution is often seen as the most dangerous. After all they are the ones pulling the trigger, are they not? However, we would disagree. They may present the most immediate threat, but they are certainly not the most dangerous to our movement.
In contrast to the Conservative stands the Liberal.1 Calm and complacent, the Liberal upholds the status quo and has little much else to say. When Conservative mercenaries lash out at society, the Liberal’s only response is to highlight their illegality and novelty. Their solution lies in the very institutions that propped up and allowed for the most open forms of reaction. Looking back at the ICE murders, the Democrats clamor to “de-mask” the killers, so that when pistols and rifles are thrust in our faces we may at the very least see the eyes of our murderer for hire. Their other grandiose solution is to force ICE to wear body cameras, so that we may see their depravity from yet another angle. Liberals seek to redirect the anguish and discontent of the proletariat. In terms of electoral progress, the Liberals have shown themselves to be the only group in society to have any “success” against the Conservatives. Although, this “success” has yet to lead to any meaningful victory for the workers in ours, or any, country.
All of this leads to our late arrival in the counter revolution party, the Socialist. At first the Socialist seems to stand in complete defiance to the Liberal and Conservative. The Socialist proclaims “class struggle” and revolution. They fight for the rights of workers, the dispossessed, and the needy. Their cause is seen to be noble and just, and it might as well be. However, the Socialist does little to agitate beyond economistic measures. For all their rhetoric of revolution, their plans are hardly different from the Liberals. The State is not a means to an end, unfortunately a belief many of our fellow Communists hold, it is the end. The wage system is not to be abolished, it is made to be more equitable. Private property is not smashed and broken up, it is made “less predatory”. In our world, the wrath of the proletariat is like that of a raging typhoon. As the water level of our discontent surges, each one of these groups acts as a stopgap. The Conservatives are like that of a wall. A hard barrier that directly stops and hinders the movement of our class. Liberals act like a levee, gradually levelling off the movement. Finally, the Socialist is the floodgate. A series of levers that allow for the redirection of our consciousness. Right when our movement is on the precipice of overcoming the great dam that is class society, the masses’ efforts are redirected and their flows are shifted. Through their complicity and action in all the sins our class society has to offer (unionism, statism, workerism), the Socialists have become the avant-garde of the counter revolution. But what do we mean by this?
Socialism (the Left Wing of Capital) ends up as the “Avant-Garde” of the Counter Revolution in that it is the most developed and dangerous form of mediation. Often Socialists stand at the “forefront” of social movements, that is at least in first glances. Socialist organizations, such as the PSL and FRSO, have often lauded their own efforts in both historical and contemporary events. In the aftermath of the George Floyd Rebellion, these groups have spread their revisionist history and often outright lies of the moment. In both the past and now, the various socialist movements have stood in contradiction to the organic movement of the proletariat. At many a historical impasse, the first actors to jump in front of the proletariat and stall their attack on class have often been the Socialists.
The first great betrayal is the one that is the most often known. Few names are as synonymous with betrayal as Judas, Benedict Arnold, and of course Friedrich Ebert. The German Social Democratic Party was at one point the North Star for the global Communist movement. Successful in nearly every metric, the SPD dominated the political landscape. That was until the 20th Century. On the eve of the Great War, the SPD decided to vote in favor of war credits, i.e. they voted to fund Germany’s war effort. Internationalism was cast aside in favor of national chauvinism. Had they stopped there perhaps we might not even bring them up in this article, but their degeneration went even further.
In the aftermath of Germany’s loss in the first World War and the harsh transition to democracy, the SPD had swept up much of the political power centered in Weimar. Anxious to lose their strategic positioning in the fledgling republic, the SPD aligned with the Friekorps (Free Corps). The Friekorps were a wide and various militia movement soldiered by veterans of the Kaiser’s army. Holding nationalistic, xenophobic, and patriarchal views the Friekorps engaged in numerous acts of state sanctioned terror. The Federal Troops, commanded by the SPD government, alongside the Friekorps smothered the infant Bavarian Council Republic in its crib.2 In the Ruhr Valley the situation was no different: SPD government soldiers stood side by side with the Friekorps. Brothers in arms in the slaughter of revolution.3 Of course we all know of the ultimate tragedy, the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and the crushing of the Spartacist Revolt. Carried out by the Friekorps, directed by the SPD. Rather than fight alongside their Communist comrades, they aligned with reaction. So goes the first, and most notorious, example of Socialist counter revolution.
There may be no greater example of Socialist distortion than in France of May ‘68, when a social revolution was on the horizon.4 Sparked initially by a genuine student uprising on May 6th, brief occupation swept into seizure as barricades sprang up around Paris. Brutal days of street fighting followed, where tens of thousands of students ripped Paris’ brick roads apart for street ammunition. With these riots came apprehension from the Socialist to respond, who opted for condemnation of the communist movement.
By mid-May, two-thirds of the French labor force went on strike. Yet through public attacks against student riots and the process of confining-in some cases, quite literally locking inside-workers to their shop floor, leading Socialists were able to take control of the crisis. The French Communist Party even took the road of intermittently calling off the revolution. They worked fervently with the police-State to break strikes, crush the student movement, and leave a river of blood through Paris’ Latin Quarter. In the face of such immense violence, they then turned to the young insurgents and accused them of the social inflammation. This was so aptly concluded by the PCF mouthpiece newspaper L’Humanite, which-successfully-argued that “Leftist groups intervene violently to oppose the will of the workers to resume work”, not sounding altogether different to the peace police we face in the street today. After dislocating the class struggle and bending it to their will, Socialists continued to meet with factory owners and politicians behind closed doors, eking away at concessions before ultimately settling for modest raises.5 Most infamous of all, these foolhardy Socialist mass politicians used the class momentum to foment political momentum, calling for a General Election which they would lose the very next month. For a deeper understanding of the gravedigging role the Socialists played in this epoch, we recommend Daniel Singer’s ‘Prelude to Revolution’, and especially engaging with the sections ‘How to Not Seize Power’, and ‘From General Strike to General Election’.
Just as the PCF “wrapped up the red flag in the national tricolor”, our contemporaries are boastful mass politicians chasing shadows and ghosts6. Of insurgencies today, we have discussed the avoidant tendencies the Socialists showed for police abolition in 2020. Now they have performatively risen to the halls of power, welcomed by the bourgeoisie and granted their own time to speak and debate, yet just like the PCF our Socialist cheerleaders are no more bolstered to the illustrious seat of power. The historical moment they tied themselves to-revolutionary situations in 1918, 1968, or 2020-carried them far along, but they all missed a clinical lynchpin-the communist pole itself-to seal their fate. At that, we must renounce Socialism as our predecessors did Social-Democracy.
Interested in nostalgia and apologetics for the various movements of the 20th century, the Socialist is either unwilling or unable to set the rhetorical pole amidst their supposed class. In lieu of a revolutionary message, it is becoming increasingly obvious that ultras cannot throw their weight and support behind these organizations, and must divorce themselves from the politics of these left wing capitalists.
MASS POLITICAL HERITAGE
The avant-garde of the counter revolution is here, and as we have discussed, these communist mass politicians draw from the work of their bourgeois counterparts. Just as this occurs, the Spectacular bourgeois theater will ring out for all to hear on a deafening scale. They will win, again and again until the end of mass political time. We now immerse ourselves in the world of the bourgeois counterparts, to better understand the Socialist avant-garde.
While moments in history come and go, the everpresent call to the people so thoroughly permeates our epoch. In an apocalyptic wasteland of Recession, Obama rolled out the corpse of “Yes We Can”. Political savvy and mass zeal led to the buy-in of millions of households nationwide. Yet Obama’s only fault as a mass politician was his dedication to lack of principle. Obama sought the approval of every class of every political and cultural persuasion, in order to keep the gears turning as such. Or rather, in being everyone’s politician, he could not cook up an economic program to pair with his mass politic.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was intended to serve as that mass program, uniting all peoples and especially the most numerous class in the proletariat. Yet, as famed bourgeois economist Paul Krugman (yes, the Keynesian who wrote your high school textbook) describes, this was not further from the case.
“For while Mr. Obama got more or less what he asked for, he almost certainly didn’t ask for enough. We’re probably facing the worst slump since the Great Depression. The Congressional Budget Office, not usually given to hyperbole, predicts that over the next three years there will be a $2.9 trillion gap between what the economy could produce and what it will actually produce. And $800 billion, while it sounds like a lot of money, isn’t nearly enough to bridge that chasm.
Officially, the administration insists that the plan is adequate to the economy’s need. But few economists agree. And it’s widely believed that political considerations led to a plan that was weaker and contains more tax cuts than it should have, that Mr. Obama compromised in advance in the hope of gaining broad bipartisan support. We’ve just seen how well that worked.
Now, the chances that the fiscal stimulus will prove adequate would be higher if it were accompanied by an effective financial rescue, one that would unfreeze the credit markets and get money moving again. But the long-awaited announcement of the Obama administration’s plans on that front, which also came this week, landed with a dull thud.
The plan sketched out by Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wasn’t bad, exactly. What it was, instead, was vague. It left everyone trying to figure out where the administration was really going. Will those public-private partnerships end up being a covert way to bail out bankers at taxpayers’ expense? Or will the required “stress test” act as a back-door route to temporary bank nationalization (the solution favored by a growing number of economists, myself included)?.”7
By teetering between a neoliberal world and Keynesian mass cries, Obama’s mass politic set a watery pole between the two. The implications of this are hard to understate: His efforts only intensified a vague spiral toward disaster, characterized by his Party’s inability to characterize anything. As the Republican Party has grown emboldened and subsequently dropped the facade of respect, Democrats have continued to camp out on that bastion of neoliberal-Keynesian madness. If we were their bourgeois political scientists, we would diagnose this a voluntary suicide.
In the 9 years since Obama left the White House, we feel the bourgeoisie may have finally found its answer. While it has not been easy for them, a new type of Democrat has finally entered office. That is, if their Party will let them. Enter the Democratic-Socialist. The child of the Liberal and the Socialist mass zealots.
Everyone loves Zohran Mamdani. The small business owners, the taxi drivers, the Gen Z politigram reels fueled by water-indulgent AI, influencers, blue collar laborers, sections of New York City’s MAGA base, you name it.8 In the masquerade of Spectacular material-spiritualism, we have not felt the cultural zeitgeist entrench itself so thoroughly in a politician since Obama. You simply cannot help but lavish the attention of the Boss who smiles graciously at you, offers you a raise, before opening the door for you to get on your way. This new era of gracious Bosses rings to the tune of 327 DSA-sponsored candidates nationwide in the last decade, as well as the social-democratization of some of the existing political apparatus over the same time period.9 The fact that this new crop of mass politicians claim Socialism is both indicative in the re-emergence of Keynesian hysteria as much as the communist movement itself.
For the first time in our lifetime, there now exists a current which threatens to upend the Democratic ordeal of nothing politics. The latter, which appealed to the masses due to its scope, seems rather dated at this time. Nothing can be acceptable when there is an emphasis on national unity and faith in institutions-or people-to turn around the crisis. But when there is a backslide and rift lasting generations, an opaque dinosaur can only do so much. Obama’s handshakes across the aisle can hardly be repeated by Democrats now, as not only is their opposition more incessant on their demise: The masses themselves demand a generational, qualitative change regardless of civility. About a third of Americans even believe in the justification of political violence to these ends.10 Likewise, the Spectacular is simple: The old guard of political monotony lacks Spectacular savvy compared to this generation of social media magicians. Just as Hilary couldn’t hold a candle to Obama’s zeal in 2008, Mamdani and AOC are head and shoulders above the personability of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Politics are not only more treacherous: They have gone fully parasocial.
Zohran’s time in the spotlight was made possible not only by worsening conditions, but also by the actions of mass-political “nothing” politicians like Obama. From them Mamdani took spirited language, charisma and actually capitalized on an explicit political program with a label. While still remaining a mass politician himself, he offers a different project of national unity: Dependent entirely on smiles and welfare, with a defined ideological bent. This project may be untenable without institutional backing now, but the true threat of this rise is in what is to come. A single mass politician is one thing, but the multiplication of language across the country is another. The electoral space is analogous to one large stew, where the introduction of one or two strong ingredients can carry the flavor of the rest of the pot. The multiplication of flavor in this instance, or language the next, is a rapid frenzy that will surely outpace any opposition to its imposition.
So as DSA continues to spearhead dozens of campaigns a year to take on the “nothing” politicians, they employ the strongest defense of the national project. Soon they will be joined hand in hand by a purposeless political establishment, at this time rivalling the Republicans as the People’s Party. The next climactic battle between austerity and welfare is set.
Can the Socialists acquire the affection of the petit-bourgeoisie? How far of an inroads can they make with blue collar laborers? How long will they have to feign indifference on foreign conquests and colonial holdings? We can’t precisely say. Yet with this new development, it is as clear as can be that the bourgeoisie’s chosen mouthpieces are finally on a path to action. They drift through the wreckage of the misery they are responsible for, salvaging whatever remains and repurposing it in the new mass political movement. If we dare say to mimic them, that is to avoid the mistake of mass politics and project communism itself.
References
Kuhn, Gabriel (2012) All Power to the Councils! A Documentary History of the German Revolution of 1918-1919.
Krugman, P. (2009, February 12). Opinion | Failure to Rise. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/opinion/13krugman.html
More Perfect Union. (2026, January 16). 60,000 Trump Voters Just Elected a Socialist. We Asked Them Why. YouTube. https://youtu.be/ICroxl2r1B8?si=IFvNYWE7oatiPikp
Past Endorsements – DSA National Electoral Commission. (n.d.). https://electoral.dsausa.org/our-campaigns/past-endorsements/
Montanaro, D. (2025, October 1). Poll: More Americans Now Agree Political Violence May Be Necessary to Right the Country. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/10/01/nx-s1-5558304/poll-political-violence-free-speech-vaccines-national-guard-epstein-trump
Singer, D. (2013). Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968. Haymarket Books.
