My problem with this very good argument is that it deals in absolutes, in
blacks and whites. It absolutely negates subtleties. One can try arguing point
by point, but it's useless. Capitalism isn't just one monolithic thing. It has
taken different forms and how harmful it is, has depended on the form it has
taken and how much it is regulated. The same goes for socialism. And each of
these systems looks different in different countries because cultural
traditions vary widely. If one's ideology blinds one to the differences
between the effects on average Americans of a Trump administration, versus what
they would have been under a Clinton administration, then we have no basis of
communication. I'm as angry at the Democratic Party leadership as anyone could
possibly be, and that includes Obama. I am particularly aware that the parties
differ less in foreign policy than they do in domestic policy. And given the
fact that New York, because of the electoral college, will vote for Biden,
regardless of what I do, I can express my rage and disaffection by throwing
away my vote, by giving it to a candidate who stands for what I believe in, who
has no chance of winning, and who won't hurt a Democratic victory. But given
what I know about how Republicans choose judges, about their record in terms of
racism, economic choices, and immigration, if I lived in a swing state, I'd
vote for Biden and then go home and vomit.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 11:14 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Capitalism vs. Socialism
https://socialistaction.org/2020/03/16/capitalism-vs-socialism/
Capitalism vs. Socialism
Socialist Action / 2 days ago
A critique of “lesser-evil” politics
By NICK BAKER
Right-wing columnist George Will recently wrote that in American elections “the
question is not whether elites shall rule, but which elites shall, so the
perennial political problem is to get popular consent to worthy elites.” This
is the American capitalist electoral strategy in a nutshell, stated openly in
Will’s syndicated column published in hundreds of newspapers. Over 100 years
ago Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin said that in a capitalist democracy “the
oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular
representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in
parliament.” George Will says Lenin was right.
While the Democratic Party forces today coalesce to push former Vice President
Joe Biden to the fore, many—including most vociferously Senator Bernie
Sanders—are proclaiming the importance of backing whomever emerges as the
Democrat’s presidential candidate. Sanders railing against the “billionaire
class” and the “billionaire Washington establishment” notwithstanding,
billionaire Michael Bloomberg was included in his pledge!
In January, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Leslie Cagan, Norman Solomon, and
other prominent writers and activists published an open letter to the Green
Party denouncing its decision not to follow a “safe state” strategy in the
November election. Traditionally, the Greens tell their supporters to vote
Green in “safe states” that are already guaranteed to go to either the Democrat
or Republican, but to vote Democrat in “contested states,” where votes for a
Green candidate could prevent the Democrat from beating the Republican. The
letter proclaims the “special danger of Trump” and chastises Greens for the
“price that millions and even billions of people will pay for Trump winning” if
they “spoil” it for the Democrats.
The writers say, “We are told, ‘Greens want to get Trump out as much as
anybody’ but how can that be if Greens would vote for a Green candidate, and
not for Sanders, Warren, or any Democrat in a contested state knowing that
doing so could mean Trump’s victory?” [emphasis added]. I suppose you would
call this “Trump-shaming.”
For Chomsky, this simply continues his election-year tradition of telling
people that the moral choice is to vote for the Democrat as the “lesser evil.”
In an interview on the Al Jazeera television network’s show UpFront in January
2016, Chomsky said that this strategy is “exactly what I’ve said in every
previous election,” when he announced that he would “absolutely” vote for
Hillary Clinton, already the presumptive nominee at that time, against whoever
became the Republican candidate.
When asked by the interviewer, Mehdi Hasan, to describe the difference between
Clinton and the yet-unsettled Republican nominee of either Donald Trump or Ted
Cruz, Chomsky cited Cruz’s desire to carpet bomb Syria and the horrors of
carpet bombing. Clinton, who throughout the campaign called for a massive
increase in U.S. troops and bombs in Syria and a “no-fly” zone (where only the
U.S. could fly), was therefore Noam Chomsky’s moral choice, apparently because
Clinton didn’t go as far as carpet bombing. When Donald Trump became the
Republican nominee, the New York Times ran an article saying that of the two,
it was Clinton who was the hawk on Syria, not Trump.
So long as the two parties of capitalism are not literally identical, Chomsky
says that you should vote for the “lesser evil,” as he did in 2016, 2012, 2008,
2004, 2000!
The Left Sinks into the Bernie Campaign
Many on the left insist that Sanders is unlike Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama
and Bill Clinton – neoliberals who unfailingly subordinated workers’ interests
to capitalist profit.
But Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. Some of his supporters
insist that he’s not a Democrat at all, claiming he’s an “Independent.” Yet
Sanders is financially backed by the Democratic Party, is a prolific fundraiser
for the Democratic Party, and a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus. The
Democratic Party has prevented party members from running against “Independent”
Bernie in Vermont. An analysis of Sanders’s congressional votes done in the
90’s showed that he had a 95 percent Democratic Party voting record—well above
the 80% rating of the average Democrat at that time.
Sanders is a capitalist candidate full stop. As we demonstrated in our earlier
analysis of his campaign platform and deeds (See “Anatomy of Bernie Sanders’
Socialism,” December 2019), his politics are nothing more than warmed-over New
Deal liberalism.
Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal, while a genuine improvement in health care
access for American workers, would do little more than socialize the costs of
health care while leaving in place the private, for-profit hospitals and the
extortionary pharmaceutical monopolies where massive profits and price-gouging
will remain the rule.
Sanders’ answers to a recent New York Times questionnaire are revealing.
Asked if he would “consider military force for a humanitarian intervention”
[emphasis added], Sanders gave the answer of every ruling class candidate:
“Yes.”
Claims of “humanitarian intervention” have been the ruling class stock-in-trade
in every imperialist war in history. The current U.S.
imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, are all wars of
“humanitarian intervention,” along with the U.S.’s attempted coup and economic
warfare in Venezuela, its embargo of Cuba, and its endless threats against
China, Iran, and North Korea. Obama destroyed Libya on the basis of a
“humanitarian intervention.” Going back over 120 years, the U.S. has justified
its invasions of Cuba, Haiti, Korea, Vietnam, etc. on the basis of
“humanitarian intervention.”
Sanders response to next NYT question, “Would you consider military force to
pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test?, was similarly
revealing.” Sanders answered “Yes” again.
Is the Sanders campaign a movement to build socialism?
Many Sanders supporters insist that his campaign can be the beginning of a
movement. We hear this more and more from the segment of his supporters who
identify as socialists and who state plainly their belief that socialism is the
only way to that goal, that is, a just society ruled by the working masses in
their own name and in their own interests, for the benefit of all, not the
profits of the few. These “socialists” often acknowledge that Sanders himself
is not actually a socialist. But, they assert, his campaign is or can be the
beginning of a movement, inside the Democratic Party – or inside the so-called
leftwing of the Democratic Party – to build working class power and eventually
socialism in America.
In truth, Bernie Sanders is a capitalist politician operating in a ruling class
party tightly controlled by the ruling rich and always operating in the
interests of capitalism. It is the party that has absorbed so many activists
from the civil rights movement, the Black liberation movement, the women’s
liberation movement, the LGBTQI liberation movement – turning those activists
away from their movement goals while often integrating them into the very
structures of the capitalist system.
That’s why the Democratic Party is known as the “graveyard of social
movements.” It aims and operates to take promising social movements out of the
streets and into the voting booth, into bourgeois elections – the preferred
arena of the ruling class where the wealthy elite write the rules themselves
and choose whether or not to enforce them, according to whatever best serves
their interests. All roads inside the Democratic Party lead to the same place:
the continued domination of the capitalist exploiters.
Socialist supporters of Sanders will soon learn what the class line means. The
Democratic Party is on one side of it and the interests of the working class
are on the other. There is no movement for working class power that can be
built alongside the exploiters of working class labor. There is no socialist
internationalism that can be built inside the party of imperialist war. There
is no anti-capitalism in the party of billionaires. There is no revolution in
the party of the one percent.
If the Democrats ran Lenin himself, we wouldn’t vote for him. Because the
Democratic Party is an instrument of the ruling rich who control it, fund it,
guide its every move, and whose interests it serves perfectly.
Socialism can only arise from independent organizations of the working class,
acting in its own interests. Vote Socialist Action in 2020! Join us!
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March 16, 2020 in Uncategorized.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
