“Militarism is our most deadly enemy and the best way of waging the struggle against it is to increase the number of social democrats among the soldiers.” — Karl Liebknecht

The recent and rapid expansion of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the tens of millions that voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, and the “positive view” of socialism shared by tens of millions of Americans increasingly raise questions about the possibility of socialist change in the United States.¹ Strategies necessary to expand the support and involvement of the working class within socialist organizations, the type of relationship socialist parties should have with the Democratic Party, and how central a “rank-and-file” strategy should exist within organized labor should be and are continuously debated between and among different socialist parties and movements. Of course, questions like these have been, in one form or another, at the center of the anti-capitalist movement since organized socialist parties were actively working to help bring about a socialist transition in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States.

Surprisingly, one factor that is key to the political progress of anti-capitalist movements has received scant attention in contemporary discussions — the role of the armed forces. Benjamin Kunkel, in his review of Bhaskar Sunkara’s The Socialist Manifesto, reminds us of the substantive obstacles facing a future socialist transition in the United States when he writes: