Graham Platner, Democratic Socialism, and Rehabilitating Imperialism

This week, more evidence that Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner committed acts of sexual violence has surfaced, and his campaign has been put on hold. Democratic socialists, who had been Platner’s greatest defenders, have rushed to distance themselves. But criticisms of Platner’s past have been openly discussed for quite some time. Why chose Platner as the standard bearer of their deadend electoral path to socialism?

The answer is that imperialism is in terminal decline, and its support among the US working class is evaporating. In order to maintain the capitalist-imperialist world order, imperialism must first be rehabilitated. Platner’s campaign was an attempt to do this by masking the contradiction between imperialism and socialism.

Rehabilitated Imperialism

Democratic socialists seek to reconcile the irreconcilable – imperialism and socialism. Imperialism is the form capitalism takes when its drive for exploitation has reached an advanced and acute stage. The result of imperialism is constant warfare to open new markets and export capital. Socialism is the control over the means of production by the working class by deposing the capitalist class. The result of socialism is the use of surplus value to serve the needs of society.

Democratic socialists aim to reconcile the contradiction between imperialism and socialism by stripping socialism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., keeping the means of production in the hands of the capitalist ruling class. Democratic socialists propose that the wealth extracted from the rest of the world be distributed more fairly between the capitalists and the working class by taxing billionaires and creating more social programs. 

However, this is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. After exploiting surplus value, capitalists invest it into new business ventures to exploit yet more surplus value. This process is continuous. Therefore, at any given time, a large portion of any given capitalist’s money is tied up in various investments that have yet to seen a return. 

Another way of framing this is that capitalists always have substantial debts. With their money tied up in investments, they need a constant inflow of new money to deal with the unexpected business costs and setbacks which invariably arise. If capitalists were to divert new surplus value away from the investment cycle, unanticipated expenses would lead to the collapse of firms, and, as a consequence, entire industries. Therefore, there will never be a long-term equitable distribution of surplus value so long as imperialism is allowed to exist.

Obscuring the Contradiction

If the contradiction cannot be resolved, then democratic socialists must obscure it through propaganda and the spectacle of ineffective electoral campaigns. Figures like Graham Platner are extremely useful in this regard. Platner’s working class rhetoric, combined with his personal history of volunteering for repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a private mercenary, makes him the living embodiment of the obscured contradiction between imperialism and socialism. His profile in The New Yorker makes this explicit:

“[A] group of mostly millennial Democrats… many of them Bernie Sanders campaign alums, had been scouting the state for a candidate who could unseat Collins. These Democrats thought that the five-term, seventy-two-year-old Republican senator was vulnerable: her approval ratings were down, and Kamala Harris had won the state in 2024. After they saw a video featuring Platner—this one made by the local Frenchman Bay Conservancy in 2020, to stop a commercial salmon farm from building in the bay—they decided that he was exactly what they were looking for: a working-class guy with a military background and a deep connection to Maine.”

It should be noted that Platner, as a small business owner, represents the perspective of the petit-bourgoise, not the working class – but that is yet another concealed contradiction.

What is Intolerable?

Many democratic socialists who aggressively promoted Platner and shouted down left-critiques of his candidacy – Ryan Grim, Emma Vigeland, Hasan Piker – have renounced their support and begun castigating themselves. They have stated, correctly, that Platner’s sexual violence is intolerable. 

But this sudden, swift condemnation of Platner for raping a white woman in the US only highlights that democratic socialists were more than willing to tolerate his murder of people of color in the global south (during multiple tours). 

Examine the responses from prominent democratic socialists and progressive liberals. For example, Emma Vigeland apologised deeply while Ken Klippenstein did not. But neither mentioned Platner’s time as a marine or mercenary. This is deliberate. They are revealing their hand. They intend to push future candidates who advocate for the welfare state at home, while promoting imperialism abroad. If unrepentant violence on behalf of the state becomes a disqualifier, the entire project is hobbled. Platner is being cut loose so that his acts of sexual violence do not taint the greater project of rehabilitating imperialism.