The following is a transcript of remarks delivered by Jacobin founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara at Victorian Trades Hall in Melbourne, Australia, on June 1, sponsored by the SEARCH Foundation.

Victorian Trades Hall is the oldest continuously operating trades hall in the world. And even before it was constructed, in 1856, the stonemasons and building workers of Melbourne downed their tools and marched for the eight-hour day — eight hours of labor, eight hours of recreation, and eight hours of rest.

I mention it not to flatter you but because that slogan — eight, eight, and eight — is still relevant today. It wasn’t a basic reformist demand; it was a revolutionary claim about what a human life is for. And I want to argue that the whole socialist project is, in the end, a fight over that question.

Historically, our socialist movement could be said to have done three things within a broader workers’ movement. First, it gave an agitational account of the crimes of capitalism and imperialism, to remind people about the daily realities of the system we were confronting. Second, it gave us a vision of a world after capitalism. And third — the part that set the socialist movement apart from our anarchist comrades — it provided a compelling account of how to get from here to there.

I want to make a few arguments tonight: I want to explain why social democracy is at an impasse it can never fully recover from. I want to explain why, paradoxically, the collapse of reformist socialism has been a catastrophe, even and especially for the revolutionaries who have always stood to its left and predicted its impasse. And I want to explain what a viable third road would look like and why this third road cannot dodge the question of rupture, however much we’d like it to.

For the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, our upcoming print issue examines the past and future of American democracy.

While the rebellion of 1776 expressed Enlightenment principles of liberty and equality, the democratic experiment it sparked remains woefully incomplete. Today, the United States is far less democratic than patriotic mythology suggests.

In this issue, we evaluate the institutions that limit democracy, from the Senate and the Electoral College to our federalist system and the Constitution itself, a document that functions as a “charter for plutocracy.” But we also chronicle the strands of the American tradition that inspire ongoing struggle. We highlight the often overlooked radical figures of the American revolution, review the tragically unrealized potential of Reconstruction, arguably the country’s true democratic foundation, and much more.

This issue is more than 150 pages of must-read writing and beautiful design, so subscribe today at a discount to get your copy directly from the printer.

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