Socialist Progressives

at this stage, at least.

I think the political revolution has to be the first step. That doesn't mean just replacing the personnel. It means changing the process by which the personnel are determined. And that means uniting the working people, all colors, genders, jobs, to make the Democratic Party into a real labor party.

Of course, labor parties can be bought off, as in Britain. Come to that, Communist parties can be bought off, as in the USSR (remember them?) and China. The movement cannot stop with a labor party, but it has to start there.

The reason is that, as the OP quotes, the capitalist system has to be replaced with a system that serves the working class. But that cannot be done overnight. There has to be time for trial and error and growth. All of the parties I mentioned above made mistakes, and only some were corrected.

To Upaloopa: this process would be bloody and violent only if the bosses make it so by staging what Marx called a "pro-slavery rebellion." That did happen in Spain in the 1930s. As a Fabian socialist, my first priority would be to avoid civil violence if possible, and it seems to me that the way to do that is first, to defend majority rule within our routine political process, and second, to move gradually toward a socialist system by making the changes that reduce the threat of violent conflict while moving toward a society without class distinctions.

To Bluejazz -- if we have to go outside the routine political process, historical experience tells us that nonviolent revolution is more likely to achieve its objectives than violent revolution. Your "pipe dream" of the Social General Strike was the granddaddy of nonviolent revolutionary movements. In practice, though, the successful nonviolent revolutions have been nationalist, rather than social. What the threat of a social general strike can do is to serve as the second line of defense of majority rule through a labor party. The first line, of course, is at the ballot box. Love your screenname, by the way.

To Maedhros: The trouble with "tough love," particularly in 2016, is that it is likely to result in a movement in the direction of fascism that will make violence more likely. The Republicans are that bad. So I think we need to address our fellow democrats not with a threat but with a promise: with us they can win.