The Left has always had a special interest in revolutions, at least since the time of Karl Marx. That’s because Marxian socialists believe that the scope of the changes needed for socialism will require a revolution in which the working class and its allies forcibly seize state power from the capitalist class and its political representatives. The working class, in this scenario, would transform the state into a genuinely democratic and participatory institution and also use state power to wrest control of the means of production from capitalists. There have been debates about whether this revolution could occur nonviolently, how quickly the transition to socialism should proceed, and whether socialism could be constructed in just one country at a time, but the need for a working-class movement to take control of and fundamentally remake state institutions is axiomatic for many people who favor public ownership of the means of production and a radically more democratic and egalitarian society. Without a working-class revolution, the expropriation of the capitalist class and the creation of a democratically controlled economy cannot take place.

Today, however, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than a workers’ revolution in a wealthy capitalist country.¹ Nothing like a workers’ revolution has occurred in the richer and technologically developed capitalist countries since the German Revolution of 1918–19, which saw the defeat of the revolutionary left. And nothing like a socialist revolution has occurred since the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979, a half century ago, a revolution that ultimately crashed and burned — thanks in large part to unremitting US hostility. Marx had many brilliant insights into the nature of capitalism, but his prediction that capitalism would produce its own gravediggers was not one of them. The specter of communism has not haunted Europe for many decades, never mind the United States, where most of the working-class vote recently went to a right-wing billionaire. Today the specter of fascism is more threatening.

How are we to make sense of all this? Why has the working class, and the Western working class in particular, failed to seize power in the way Marx expected? Have socialist revolutions disappeared for good? Could a socialist revolution occur in an advanced capitalist country? For many on the Left, the problem has been the working class’s lack of class consciousness — or at least of class-conscious leaders — that is, the absence of an understanding that workers’ interests are fundamentally opposed to those of the capitalist class and the capitalist system. Because of the “ideological hegemony” of capitalists, workers consent to their own oppression. Their “false consciousness” leads them to regard capitalism and the state as basically legitimate, if not always perfectly fair. This leads them to seek reforms, not revolution. If this false consciousness could be eroded, however, and workers could develop class consciousness, then socialist revolution would be back on the political agenda.