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Two weeks into the Biden administration, the call for a Third Reconstruction appeared again — this time in its proper place — from a voice of establishment liberalism. https://twitter.com/lulubrigante/status/1320375245245734913
The expected notes are struck. It pleads for bourgeois democracy in its imperialist senility to summon a distant heroic stage. It recites liberalism's trade jargon: defend "the republic" and strengthen "our experiment in democracy". https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2021/02/03/the-case-for-a-third-reconstruction/
Repeating themes raised elsewhere (in "Why Kamala Harris Matters to Me", "Amanda Gorman's success stirred a bleak undercurrent", etc. etc.), the highest liberal ideal is posed: "equality before the law"; its lack of attainment recognized: "an ideal we still struggle to achieve".
In one passage, the professor lets herself dream: the Electoral College must be abolished ("in the long run"!). And so, forward we go in the snail-like process of perfecting bourgeois democracy, from the Virginia Declaration onward, 245 years and counting.
The hypocrisy beneath this vapid sloganeering is apparent on its own terms: included as an aside in her proposals is the annexation of Puerto Rico ("long overdue") — this following an election with the highest turnout for pro-independence candidates in more than 60 years.
When the degenerate bourgeoisie exalts its past, Marxists should not follow them. We can look instead to the time of youth of our own movement in Germany, France, and Belgium, when the delineation with bourgeois democracy was being realized in thought.
See, for example, Engels in 1843 already overcoming the republic – monarchy antithesis (that is, the politics of the 18th century) and advancing a critique of 'the premises of the state as such'.
From "Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy," the early and "brilliant" essay later recalled by Marx in the 1859 Preface.
What are the 'premises' of a Third Reconstruction? Capitalist relations of exploitation. Wage slavery. What is its essence? A cosmetic updating of US imperialism in its rivalries and struggle for domination.
