Communism isn’t just a theory. It’s a practice
by P. K. Gandakin
September 4th, 2025
Image source: Zohran For NYC
Everyone seems to have a ready answer for the question as to why communism in the United States hasn’t yet ‘won.’ The most popular one is the idea that the proletariat is uneducated and unorganized: communism is certainly the solution to the masses’ problems, if only they were aware of it. In its most extreme versions, this line of thinking openly calls itself a ‘gospel’ (or ‘good-word’) socialism—but in any case it depends on the idea that people lack the subjective knowledge of their social position and the nature of capitalism that would guide them to believe in communism.
Marx, on the other hand, rejects the idea that this break with social ideology takes the form of an intellectual ‘enlightenment’ or change in subjective political position. For him, a communist does not “see through” the lies of bourgeois society to the socialist ‘truth’ behind it. Rather, to be a communist is understood by occupying a certain political position within a living class struggle. This materialist position puts emphasis on the practical, not the intellectual, aspect of social practice.
Communism, in other words, is not an idea to counterpose to the idea of capitalism but a social practice that upends capitalism from within. And ‘within’ refers to the institutions and ideologies that already characterize the capitalist form of society: the state-form or even the party-form itself, organizations such as unions that both strengthen the position of the working class while remaining in the formal logic of the boss-worker relationship of capitalism—even the proletariat itself, a social class which is both the product and engine of capitalism and also its gravediggers.
In fact, it is precisely because the proletarian is logically internal to capitalism that s/he plays the pivotal role in fighting against bourgeois domination. Neither the proletariat nor the communist have a superior ‘alternative’ to capitalism in hand with the idea of socialism. Marx never considers communism an ‘option’ , even a superior one to choose,, but a movement of social dissolution resulting from the inner tendencies of the capitalist mode of production. Communism will not ‘replace’ capitalism—capitalism is killing and replacing itself. Or, to be more precise, the practice of the people who live under capitalism is increasingly incompatible with capitalism as a form of social organization.
The belief that overthrowing capitalism is a matter of education and that communism is a superior mode of social organization is critiqued by Marx under the name of ‘ideology.’ This is because Marx identifies this project of intellectual enlightenment with the specific historical trend of the ‘ideologues,’ who coined the term ‘ideology’ originally to refer to a systematic set of ideas that could educate an individual to be free from (largely political) prejudice. In the view of the ideologues, the main obstacle to social liberation is a ‘false consciousness’ possessed by the masses and produced by the elite as a means of social control. While this ‘false consciousness’ was originally identified as ‘priestly deceit’ and ‘religious opium,’ the concept remains vital today in the form of concepts of the capitalist elite or government ‘building consent’ or utilizing ‘Red Scare propaganda’ that is supposed to have misled the people from their true, progressive interests.
For Marx, ideology isn’t simply a set of lies to be exposed; it is the lived reality of class society itself. Communism, then, cannot be an intellectual alternative to capitalism but is instead the real movement of people acting within and against the contradictions of capitalist society. It arises not from superior arguments but from the practical struggles of the masses, which already contain the seeds of capitalism’s dissolution.
A. What is Ideology?
‘Ideology’ today refers to any sort of system of thinking or worldview, and is usually used derogatorily. In contrast with the modern, loose sense of the term ‘ideology’, however, Marx’s critique of ideology refers to the original term as coined and defined by French social reformer and aristocrat Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836).
De Tracy was an Enlightenment thinker and advocate of Republicanism who saw the lack of education among the masses as the key obstacle to the formation of a democratic and just government. Larrain describes De Tracy’s attitude in The Concept of Ideology, writing:
De Tracy’s school of ‘idéologues’ follows the tradition of the French Enlightenment in its belief that reason is the main instrument of happiness. After the years of revolution it wants to educate the French people and, above all, the young people, so that a just and happy society can be established. (27)
Naturally, this liberating education must be of a specific type: this is what De Tracy originally meant by what he termed “ideology.” Removed from its current pejorative connotations, De Tracy’s ‘ideology’ is the “the rigorous science of ideas” free from “metaphysical and religious prejudices” (L, p. 28). De Tracy is only extending the Enlightenment trend, advocated by thinkers such as Helvetius (1715-71) and Holbach (1723-89), of taking the basis of the good state as education in contrast to fear (Hobbes) or wily administration (Machiavelli). For these thinkers and De Tracy, man could only “be changed by educating him” (L., p. 25).
This educational standpoint recalls the project of socialist Utopianism, also critiqued by Marx. Just as De Tracy believed that teaching people the right set of ideas could result in the creation of a new and just democratic state, the Utopian strategy also centered around ‘demonstrating’ a superior mode of organization—whether that meant the farming commune or the manufacturing cooperative—to society, and expecting the conniving power of that example to lead to social change. In both cases, the focus was on demonstrating to the masses, whether through ideas or practice, a formally superior way of life that they only needed to understand and accept to actualize.
In a similar vein, contemporary leftisms that contrapose socialism to capitalism as a difference between two ‘alternatives’ similarly fall into the trap of conceiving communism as a ‘good idea’ that will win over the people as a more rational, appealing, or even ‘juster’ form of organization. Here we can begin to insert Marx’s critique. Marx rejects the notion that communism can be seen as an idea or an object: instead, communism is a living practice. It is people in motion. As he famously writes in The German Ideology:
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.
For Marx, the ideologues are praiseworthy for their progressive role in history but ultimately fail on both theoretical and practical terms. The intellectual project of ideology and education, in his view, is “unable to discover the real causes of men’s problems and the real solutions to them” (Larrain, 26). De Tracy’s ‘ideology’ conceives of society as an unnatural state of affairs maintained by deception and lies rather than a genuinely productive form of social organization. De Tracy cannot see the logic of capitalism—he can only see the intellectual actions of an elite few.
Reminiscent of many modern ‘cranks’ (and even some mainstream tendencies), the ‘ideologues’ resorted to blaming “external agents in order to both to understand an undesirable state of affairs, and find a way out” (L, 26). For them, religion “remains a conspiracy, an almost groundless deceit propagated by certain harmful agents who are its only support” (Ibid.). But consistent in Marx’s historical materialist method is the basic proposition that it is the masses that make history rather than powerful ideas or individuals. Revolutionary change, in other words, does not come from refuting the dominant ideas or thinking of better ones, but only in the form of actual revolutionary practice by the millions.
Antoine Destutt de Tracy
B. Marx’s Critique of Ideology
How can we apply Marx’s critique of ideology to our own political practice? The emphasis is on refusing to treat communism as an alternative ‘truth’ and as a social logic internal to political struggle (let’s recall that ‘all history is the history of class struggle’). Marx’s critique of ideology clarifies his priority on the mass struggle as existing in a diverse myriad of concrete forms.
This means that ‘mundane’ struggles for higher wages or ‘cultural’ struggles for equality or diversity are not distractions or even supplements to class struggle, but what class struggle actually looks like in the real world. Marx’s premises are over and over again asserted to be “real, active men,” “men in the flesh,” the “practical process of development of men”, etc. His goal isn’t to replace the existing political struggle for an alternative, superior one, but to understand the essence of real political struggle and describe it.
Conversely, the worldview of the ‘ideologues’ sees reality in “camera obscura.” By starting with the idea, no matter how great or well-thought out it might be, the ‘ideologues’ have already closed their eyes to the real movement of real people. For Marx, the revolutionary consciousness is a practical one: its virtue is not possession of a theory, but being embroiled in the real, practical issues that define actually existing class struggle. As Marx puts it:
We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.
Issues such as anti-racism, feminism, political liberty, etc. are not external aspects of communist consciousness but the actual realization of that communist consciousness in temporal history. A communist society is a society free of social domination and fetishism; conversely, because social domination and fetishism takes a variety of forms, so, too, must communism. And in the process of building this future society, these ‘cultural’ struggles—and undoubtedly an assortment of unforeseen future ones—are the real steps of building a fighting and communistic proletariat. They are the actual living and breathing of the concept of class struggle.
This seems to give Marx’s insight a double meaning. The practical emphasis traditionally points to organization and activism, and the critique of ideology can easily be read as a critique of ‘do-nothing’ thinkers like De Tracy who overvalued the contributions of intellectual labor to the social movement. This is an entirely valid reading, and corresponds with Marx’s own criticism of philosophers and the intelligentsia for being trapped in ‘the position of contemplation.’
But alongside this prescriptive element is also a descriptive one: Marx is not only saying that for society to change, we must act; he is also saying that the actions—the social practice—of society is its real beating heart and its meaningful content. Yes, we must act. But we must also understand the world as a collective crystallization of millions of actions that comprise the real content of society. Marx is not only claiming that ideas are insufficient by themselves to change society, but also that the changes of society cannot be understood as a collection of ideas.
The anti-racist movement, for example, cannot be captured with the intellectual concept of anti-racism. It always means something more—it means something new about who we are, who we are becoming, and how we act. Changes in the structure and ideology of racism lead to changes not only how its participants relate to each other, but how all actors engage with each other in a total social system.
Race in particular has been central in the class history of the United States, in various forms. The reason why communism played only a peripheral role in the anti-racist struggles of the 60s is undoubtedly because it conceived itself as the party of the formal laborer first, and the party of national minorities second. But this is an essentially false distinction. In a certain context, the struggle of national majorities is exactly equal to the struggle of the proletariat. Marx fears that in the hunt for ‘alternatives’ to capitalism, we are liable to dismiss the real forces destroying it right now.
C. The Critique of Ideology and Left-Populism
Is capitalism eternal? During the period of capitalist ascension in the late twentieth century , it certainly seemed that way. As Thatcher put it, it seemed to many as if “There Is No Alternative”. Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism gave a name to this phenomena. And the project of leftism in the United States has been conceived for decades as ‘breaking’ the hold of the ‘Cold War/Red Scare propaganda’ that supposedly prevents radical thinking, i.e., it has been conceived purely on ideological lines. In this vein, the litany of tactics have been purely activistic and educational: mass educations, reading group, protests, marches, etc., i.e., motions centering around ‘visibility’ and ‘teaching.’
In 2016, the structure of American politics shifted seismically. Not only was the frail Republican Party resuscitated with a new ideological style under Donald Trump, but, for the first time in decades, an open socialist won a large amount of attention and support and became ‘mainstream.’ Both of these are correctly identified by Mouffe as signals of the death of technocratic neoliberalism (perhaps best exemplified by Obama) and the rise of a modern populist political paradigm.
How does Sanders (or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Zohran) relate to activism? As Zohran exemplified especially in his primary win, all three were able to embody that nebulous and strange position of ‘political representative.’ I say strange because despite their formal and empirical relations to activism or organizations, whether that means the DSA or the DNC, each of these figures exceed these limits and occupy a political position. And so it is that a nobody from nowhere can identify AOC at the drop of a hat but would have difficulty identifying what DNC or DSA even stand for (and if you do not believe me, I find it difficult to believe you are not sheltered from the sentiment of the vast majority of the United States, who does not identify with and infrequently even observes the formal expressions of activism that do not penetrate into mass sentiment).
While Zohran’s ‘ground game’ was certainly impressive and necessary, it does not capture his appeal to the nine million New Yorkers who had been happily turning aside socialist organizers and canvassers for decades. While these organizers are necessary for any successful campaign, Zohran won because he expressed in political terms the social practice of a real section of New York (and, really, the entire United States). Frustrations and anger directed at living conditions and a brutal administration transformed into a sentiment of righteous anger that traditional liberalism was incapable of capturing. As Nik M. writes in his Zohran and the Interregnum:
[Zohran’s campaign] has crafted and articulated an independent vision of socialist politics into mainstream discourse without compromising its core principles. It has proven that the people of New York City are hungry for a bold, transformative vision that they can collectively identify with and be mobilized around.
Zoran’s victory should not be read as a fluke of superior organizing or political opportunity, but an extension of mass political practice that has been transforming the American political landscape for years. In this view, Zohran should be read as “the latest and arguably most mature and confident expression of the left populist project that first formed with Occupy before finding political shape in Bernie Sanders’s presidential runs and further amplified with figures like AOC.” If this is the objective situation, then it means that a relationship with these figures is invaluable for a socialist organization. These politicians should not be conceived as members of a party that does not exist, but as symbols of class struggle and shifts in social consciousness.
Zohran is not a person to judge or control, but a historical event to take advantage of. Questions of political principle or sufficient radicalism are meaningless in this context. Neither is the goal uncritical support in the name of rejecting ‘purity politics.’ Rather, the need is to identify political struggle as the literal field of class struggle, rather than activism or education, and to consequently understand these figures as live expressions of the political struggle. Insofar as they continue to represent real social groups and masses in American society, the role of organizations like DSA is always ultimately subordinate to the political trends that ultimately determine the situation in the ‘last instance.’
Could Zohran have been elected without DSA? Would DSA have grown to its current size and influence without hopping on the Sanders/left-populist bandwagon? Both of these questions are incorrectly framed. DSA is not a party. It plays a specific historical role as an organization, while Zohran and Sanders play the part of politicians. Where these positions are incommensurable, it is silly to try and attribute the primary position to one side or the other.
What Marx forces us to recognize is that the horizon of politics is never defined by the idea or the “better argument.” It is the real practices of millions, condensed into movements, practices and figures that, for a moment, embody that practice on the political stage. Whether in the populist surges of 2016 or in local insurgencies like Zohran’s, the task is not to ask whether these figures are “radical enough” or whether organizations are “doing it right.” The task is to recognize in them the living content of class struggle—contradictory, often disguised, but real—and to act decisively. Communism is not proposal to be sold or a tool that we use to reach conclusions, but a movement of people dead and alive all over the globe that we are only one part of.