by Gregory Lebens-Higgins
On July 14, 2026, the national body of the Democratic Socialists of America released Workers Deserve More, a program outlining the organization’s goals and values. Workers Deserve More was drafted by a committee consisting of members of the National Political Committee, leaders of other national committees, and rank and file members following a process outlined by a resolution passed at DSA’s 2025 National Convention.
Upon its release, Workers Deserve More received significant attention in mainstream media. The coverage has provided free advertising for DSA’s popular demands such as universal healthcare, improved working conditions, and replacing the two-party system with a multi-party democracy. Appearing on Fox News, DSA Co-Chair Megan Romer was pressed on the earnestness of these demands. Host Shannon Bream projected DSA’s proposals on screen and asked a series of true/false questions – Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them? “Yep,” replied Romer. Abolish ICE? “Absolutely.”
Among these demands, the call to abolish the Senate has been met with a particularly strong reaction. On newspaper opinion pages, in exchanges with the public at chapter tabling events, and across the family dinner table, it is greeted with a tone of disbelief: “No, seriously, democratic socialists want to abolish the Senate,” exclaims USA Today. As Red Star contributor Jean Allen recently noted, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of America’s undemocratic institutions.” Our indoctrinated attachment to American institutions and the mystification of their undemocratic nature limits our possibilities for creating something better.
James Madison, architect of the Constitution, wrote clearly of his antidemocratic intent. In the tenth of The Federalist Papers, a series of arguments published to support the ratification of the Constitution, Madison considers the problem of “control[ling] the violence of faction.” It is not mere difference of taste or opinion to which Madison is referring, but opposing class interests. “The most common and durable source of factions,” he writes, “has been the various and unequal distribution of property.” Madison continues,
“Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.”
The “principal task” of the Constitution is to suppress the struggle between these opposing interests, or at least to ensure the property-holding faction is never on the losing side. The task is achieved by dissipating the popular will and by impeding the ability to reform entrenched power structures. The Senate carries out both of these functions.
The United States Senate website (Senate.Gov) explains the “Idea of the Senate” by adopting the remarks of British Liberal politician and later ambassador to the United States James Bryce, from his 1888 work The American Commonwealth. Bryce explains the purpose of the Senate as fivefold: (1) to reconcile the independent spirit of the states by giving them equal representation; (2) to create a council to advise and check the President; (3) to “restrain the impetuosity and fickleness of the popular House, and so guard against the effects of gusts of passion or sudden changes of opinion in the people”; (4) to create a body of experienced men as an element of stability; and (5) to establish a court of impeachment for abuses of power by the executive. The Senate has failed on each of these counts.
The equal representation of states in the Senate was reached as a compromise between large and small states at the Constitutional Convention. This arrangement leads to wildly undemocratic results, with most senators representing more empty land than people. A majority of senators (fifty-two) from the smallest twenty-six states represent only 21% of the United States population. Though California holds sixty-six times the population of Wyoming, both are entitled to only two senators. The subversion of democratic will to states rights should have been decided by the Union defeat of the Confederacy, yet it remains enshrined in Article I of the Constitution.
Bryce’s “body of men [with] greater experience [and a] longer term of membership” has failed to guarantee stability for the country, but has cemented itself as a ruling class. With six-year terms and no recall process, senators are rarely held accountable for selling out their constituents. By amassing wealth and political connections, incumbents in the Senate are reelected at a rate above 80%, and about one-third of senators are currently above seventy years old. As for meritocratic qualification, it is impossible to view Senate press briefings and sustain the belief that America serves up the best and brightest leaders.
The Senate is an instrument of obstruction. Its most important tool is the filibuster, requiring sixty votes to end debate and bring most legislation to a vote. Thus, policies with majority support are unable to become law. Since the end of Reconstruction, the procedure has frequently been used to kill Civil Rights legislation and anti-lynching laws. More recently, the Senate filibuster has stifled bills on election integrity, LGBTQ protections, workers rights, immigration reform, climate change, healthcare affordability, and more. Constitutional checks and balances more often subdue challenges to power than restrain the powerful.
The inability of the Senate to pass legislation has further empowered the Presidency, which now enacts change rapidly through a flurry of executive orders. The Senate has ceded its role in holding the President accountable. Party loyalty transcends inter-branch responsibilities, and the high bar for impeachment and removal (two-thirds) makes it a toothless and undemocratic remedy. The Supreme Court has also taken on the task of legislating, issuing sweeping rulings on matters that Congress has failed to resolve.
Abolishing the Senate is not something that will happen in a vacuum. It is a maximalist demand for achieving a working-class democracy. To reach this horizon, other significant measures must be implemented. These include getting money out of politics by breaking the lobbying power, overturning Citizens United, and publicly funding elections. It includes creating a more representative Congress by implementing proportional representation and ranked-choice voting, and ending gerrymandering to create fair districts. It also includes expanding democracy by protecting voting rights and ending voter suppression. Each of these demands is contained in Workers Deserve More.
These changes will help transform Congress into a deliberative body that is more responsive to the democratic will. In this context, the concept of an upper house responsible for checking democratic decisions would seem even more ridiculous. The failures of American institutions arise not from too much democracy, but too little. It must be the mission of all democracy-minded activists to throw off the vestiges of upper-class rule embodied in the Senate.