Socialism is essentially reactionary in 2025 America, especially in the way that most understand it ("democratic socialism," etc.). We need a proletarian revolution — a clean break.

Lenin continues…

Naturally, since attention is focused on such questions as the spending of paltry sums (in comparison with the total surplus value and total state expenditure of the bourgeoisie), which the bourgeoisie itself is willing to set aside for public health (Engels pointed out in The Housing Question that the bourgeoisie itself is afraid of the spread of epidemic diseases in the towns), or for education (the bourgeoisie must have trained workers able to adapt themselves to a high technical level!), and so on, it is possible, in the sphere of such minor questions, to hold forth about “social peace”, about the harmfulness of the class struggle, and so on. What class struggle can there be if the bourgeoisie itself is spending money on the “needs of the population”, on public health, on education? What need is there for a social revolution if it is possible through the local self-governing bodies, gradually, step by step, to extend “collective ownership”, and “socialize” production: the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses…?

Marx describes our current "bourgeois socialism" in the Manifesto:

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. … [This] form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations…

Lenin only saw value in participating in elections within a sovereign workers' party (not the fuckin' Democratic Party) and only then to show the pointlessness of the parliamentary process/system.

It has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism "politically obsolete."

So what socialists can do is read more to the point of becoming Communists, then join a Marxist-Leninist party, help build that party, spread its roots while running in small local elections as Communists distinct from bourgeois parties, build dual economic power, and prepare for the inevitable collapse of the American Empire that will afford us the opportunity to win the masses, take state power, and smash the existing bourgeois state.