By A. Shaw

There are countless definitions and visions of a political revolution.

According to Lenin, a revolution, especially a political revolution, is the passing of state power from one class to another. See Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 42-54.

The philistines and other rightist opportunists in recent years dropped Lenin and seek to substitute bourgeois political experts for Lenin.

Some bourgeois experts say bourgeois politics, including revolution, is a passing of state power from one sector of the bourgeois class to another sector of the same class of millionaires.

Today, bourgeois society has plenty of classes — e.g., the bourgeoisie (class of millionaires), the middle class (includes the petty bourgeoisie of small business owners), the working class (includes the aristocracy of labor and unemployed workers), small farmers, and the lumpen proletariat (which steals rather than sells its labor power for wages).

With Lenin, state power actually passes from the the representives of one class to the representatives of another class. In democratic situations, this arrangement is called “representative democracy.”

In a representative democracy, elected representatives are expected to chiefly exercise state power and to exercise power chiefly for the benefit of the class that installed these representatives in power.

The general class character of elected representatives determines the “content” of the state.

In most situations today, it is of course imperative that a class itself elects or picks its own representatives to exercise power.

In USA, the most likely revolution — in the strict and deep sense – is a passing of state power from the representatives of one class — say, the bourgeoisie — to the representatives of another class — say, the working class. This passing of state power marks the outcome of a class struggle in which both the bourgeois and working classes more or less observed the rules of the democratic process and principles of constitutional law.

The state in the USA will then change from a bourgeois state with a democratic form to a proletarian state with the same democratic form.

In other words, the democratic form survives the change in content of the state.

It’s most unlikely that Bernie intends a politicial revolution as we outlined here, where the state undergoes a world-shaking change in content from bourgeois to proletarian at  tthe same time the state preserves its democratic form.

Most likely, Bernie has in mind a change that resembles what some bourgeois experts advocate, as we mentioned above. Bourgeois politics, according to these capitalist experts, is a passing of state power from one sector of the bourgeois class [ say, the moderate-conservative sector]  to another sector of the same class of U.S. millionaires [ say, the liberal-progressive bloc].

In other words, Bernie intends something a bit to the Left of what FDR attempted in FDR’s early terms in office. FDR had to back off of the class struggle within the USA in order to fight Hitler.

That type of revolution worked in the 30s and 40s, but will it work in the 21st century?

It sure sounds like a good idea.