Non-Violent Existential Revolution?

Alright, I guess I should clarify a few things.

I identify as a revolutionary democratic socialist and Sartrean Marxist (Jean-Paul Sartre <3 ), but when I use the prefix "revolutionary" in front of DS, I don't just mean "an advocate of the proletarian revolution". Two reasons ....

#1) Don't get me wrong - I'm all for the proletariat rising up, the seizing of control of the means of production, the socialist revolution, etc! I'm just a little skeptical about the timing of the revolution. I'm a big fan of the dialectic process - and I feel as if we'll never be sure about exactly when the right time is to have the revolution. That's the primary concern that I have with Leninism: I don't think it's wise to surgically insert one's self into the historical process and try to instigate the revolution; rather, it should happen naturally and the proletariat should rise up together, on their own, as a whole, rather than be lead by a group of self-nominated élitist Communist Party members. I'm not going to pretend that I have all the answers about the revolution, but I'm pretty skeptical about anyone saying that "this is the time to have it", because we'll never know if the revolution would have been better historically situated a decade or a generation later. But if a revolution does come along, I'll be there

#2) When I say "revolutionary DS", I'm not just referring to #1 before this, but also "revolutionary" as a synonym for "bold, dramatic, thorough, comprehensive". I guess my own little brand of proletarian-revolution-sympathizing socialism brought about through the democratic process requires extraordinarily bold proposals to be continuously introduced. If we just create a slow gradualist approach, we'll probably end up at best with social democracy and the proletariat will be really complacent and won't fight for anything better. I'm all for the gradualist approach cause I'm not a fan of violence, but I recognize it's shortcomings. If we're going to get things done through the parliamentary process, we can't let ourselves become stagnant and content. We have to hold on to the vision of socialism and never let it out of our sight and never settle for anything less.

Okay, so hopefully that cleared things up a bit? I'm all for establishing a socialist mode of production, but I'd like to see that happen through a democratic and non-violent process, and seeing as working through the electoral process often ends up with a sort of progressive social democracy at best, we need a forceful, bold, unapologetic, openly socialist presence to continuously fight for it.

I mentioned Sartre above. I'm not going to spend the next couple minutes outlining everything that the guy said, but I think that it's important to make this point: he says that people gain definition from the choices, conflicts, struggles, etc in their lives, and every choice that we make helps define us a little bit more.

I'd like to see the transition from capitalism to socialism be a gradualist one, and I think that the extra time it takes to do so (rather than a short and immediate revolution, I mean) helps peoples, parties, classes, etc gain better definition.

Just as people gain definition through choices and conflicts, so does the extended democratic process and all its parliamentary actions help define the proletariat. Nothing is going to be won without a bit of conflict, and the electoral struggle for socialism will define and prepare the proletariat for life under socialism.

I'd like to see us move from capitalism to social democracy, from social democracy to some form of decentralized mostly-planned market socialism, to actual socialism - and I think that a bold, non-sectarian but also non-vanguardist socialist presence that doesn't stop when we hit social democracy might do the trick. If there's a revolution and we hop from capitalism to socialism, awesome - but if we evolve gradually over time, I think that's preferable.

Then again, who am I to say anything about this? Just my random ideas here.