-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 3:24 PM
To: 'Roger Loran Bailey' <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Bernie Sanders, Naomi
Klein and More Launch “Progressive International”
Perhaps your definition of social change is different from mine or their's. For
me, social change means that life gets better for a majority of people, that
they have access to safe homes and nourishing food and opportunities for
education and recreation, that countries agree to cooperate and divide the
resources of the world among them, that we end war, that we find ways of
changing existing systems so that the aforementioned goals can be achieved.
But given how complex the world is, how complicated the systems are, ant the
nature of humankind, I'm happy to accept any steps in the right direction that
are taken, and I understand that in order to work together, people have to make
compromises and to welcome all allies who have good intentions. If people
insist on being doctrinaire, then what we end up with is a lot of fragmented
groups, sniping at each other over innumerable details and our true enemies,
the people who are clearly interested only in their own wealth and domination
and who see the rest of us as dispensable, will continue to win.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 3:04 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Bernie Sanders, Naomi
Klein and More Launch “Progressive International”
Somehow I just don't seem to understand how it is the pragmatic way to effect
social change when you support the candidates who are opposed to social change.
___
Carl Sagan
“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder
and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to
nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will
prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront
the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the
Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will
penetrate its deepest mysteries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
On 6/9/2020 12:59 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I think that this is a naive analysis of the intellectual and political
spokesman whom the author is criticizing. People like Sanders are not
supporting Biden because they support the Corporate Democrats or even
Capitalism, they are doing so because they believe, (whether or not one
agrees with them), that this is the pragmatic, most effective way to effect
social change at this point.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 11:07 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein and More Launch
“Progressive International”
Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein and More Launch “Progressive International”
https://socialistaction.org/2020/06/08/climate-and-social-democrat-cel
ebrities-launch-progressive-international/
June 8, 2020
By GARY PORTER
On May 10, climate activists, social democrats, anti-imperialists, left-wing
commentators and critics launched a new international project.
In September, the sponsors will meet for the inaugural Summit of the
Progressive International (PI) in Reykjavik, Iceland. It will be hosted by
the Prime Minister of Iceland and the Left Green Movement. This new project
occurs in the context of a raging viral pandemic, economic depression, an
escalating nuclear arms race, and rapid global warming that puts humanity on
the verge of catastrophe.
Billionaires force workers back to work, without protection from COVID-19, by
cutting financial support. “Essential” workers who, it turns out, are often
low-paid racialized workers, sicken and die, as unemployment skyrockets.
Hospitals, stripped by 40 years of neo-liberal cuts, cannot handle the sick.
Imperialist drones, bombs, brutal economic sanctions and assassinations by
special forces never stop.
The contradictions and crises of capitalism multiply and magnify like gaping
wounds, leaving open sores across the landscape. Witnessing all of this,
billions of people are desperate to find a way out, including those who are
forming the Progressive International.
But the list of 64 members of the PI Council posted on its website does not
include radicalizing youth, the poor or very many workers. Most are
intellectuals and professional politicians. The rise of authoritarian
governments, violence, anti intellectualism, hostility to science and
experts, and the decline of civilized discourse, strand these intellectuals
and parliamentary figures in darkness and fear. None of them look to the
power of mobilized workers and farmers, or even consider that a serious
possibility. PI appears as an effort to bolster resistance to the tide of
crude ignorance, chaos and destruction represented by Trump, Johnson,
Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Duterte, et al.
Who are these people? From Canada, there is author Naomi Klein of The Leap
Manifesto and Green New Deal fame, together with her media-savvy partner Avi
Lewis. While supporting the BDS movement against apartheid Israel and for a
green transformation of society, including the elimination of inequality and
the creation of ‘more democratic’ state institutions, Klein and Lewis offer
no clear analysis of class society.
They stipulate no clear commitment to fighting for workers’ power, to replace
the capitalist state, and to institute workers’ control of the means of
production in order to meet human needs, rather than deliver profits to
billionaires. NDP MP Niki Ashton, another council member from Canada, holds
similar views, though she is somewhat clearer on the importance and potential
power of the unions.
The biggest names from United States are Bernie Sanders from the capitalist
Democratic Party, now a Joe Biden campaigner, and Noam Chomsky, a long-time
critic of the imperialist role of America in the world, who happens also to
be a Democratic Party-Joe Biden supporter.
Yannis Varoufakis, a former Finance Minister for the Greek social democratic
SYRIZA government, is a member of the Council. To this add a long list of
ministers and legislators from across Latin America, Europe and Africa. They
profess to be on the side of workers and oppressed peoples, but their record
is one of neo-liberalism and support for global corporations and capitalist
state institutions. Liberal and social democratic journalists and cultural
figures round out the 64-member council.
The PI has no program at this stage. Presumably, that will be considered at
the conference in Iceland.
Where will they stand on the rule of profit over human need? Where will they
stand on imperialist economic and military domination of the third world and
indigenous peoples around the world for the purpose of super exploitation and
robbing them of their resources? Where will they stand on the need to
establish workers’ power and build a new workers’ state based on the complete
destruction of the legislative, legal, bureaucratic and repressive apparatus
of the capitalist state.
Are they reformers of capitalism, albeit perhaps radical reformers, or
supporters of the end of exploitation by a worker-led revolutionary overthrow
of capitalism and the struggle for socialism? In the end, do they support
capitalism or workers’ power? The record of the individuals involved is not
encouraging.
The idea of PI was born in December 2018, when the Democracy in Europe
Movement and the Sanders Institute in the US issued a call proclaiming “it is
time for progressives of the world to unite.”
On the launch of the group Monday, May 10, Chomsky in an interview with the
Guardian said that the urgency created by the COVID-19 crisis has caused a
deepening of economic inequalities and the rise of the far-right.
So, as autocratic neo-liberalism represents one way, “the other way is to try
to dismantle the structures, the institutional structures that have been
created; that have led to very ugly consequences for much of the population
of much of the world, [and] are the source of this pandemic.”
The activities of the PI initiative are erected on three pillars: the
movement aimed to forge a global network; the Blueprint to develop a policy
for a progressive international order; and the Wire which offers a
communication service to the world’s progressive forces.
Its stated objectives are “to promote the union, coordination and
mobilization of activists, associations, unions, and social movements in the
face of the advance of authoritarianism.” They say they aspire to a
“democratic, decolonized, egalitarian, liberated, united, sustainable,
ecological, peaceful, post-capitalist, prosperous and plural” world.
This compendium of liberal and social democratic values serves as its
programmatic foundation.
What do we know about these people?
Fernando Haddad, the Brazilian PT´s presidential candidate, former Ecuadorian
president Rafael Correa and former Bolivian vice president Álvaro García
Linera, were all part of “progressive governments.” None of them produced
fundamental change in their countries´ economic and social structures, which
continued to be capitalist and dependent, with extremely high rates of
poverty, a growing deterioration of everything public and a retreat
concerning workers´ fundamental rights. This led to their demise, and opened
the door for right-wingers like Jair Bolsonaro, Lenin Moreno and Jeanine Áñez
to come to power in their countries. Some of them declare themselves
defenders of the welfare state and claim to defend public health, but when
they governed, they weakened public health care to pay external debt to the
imperialists. Rather than defend ecology, they maintained extractive and
polluting models of production to guarantee extraordinary profits to
corporations.
Alicia Castro, union leader of the bureaucratic Argentine CGT and
ex-Congresswoman of the Alianza, brought de la Rúa to power. That government
killed dozens of grassroots activists during its downfall.
The same can be said of Bernie Sanders, who generated great expectations by
speaking of socialism in the heart of the empire and raising popular
proposals, like universal health insurance in a country where you can die
without medical attention if you don´t have money. His recent support for Joe
Biden, a candidate for the US economic establishment, a racist and misogynist
leader of the imperialist Democratic Party, completes his record, for the
second time as a Judas goat who leads his young followers to the camp of
blood-drenched capitalist politicians.
So, what are the odds that Progressive International will advocate an end to
usurious debts to foreign capital, the nationalization of banks and
resources, and to put foreign trade under social control, to reverse
privatizations, carry out significant agrarian reforms, or impose permanent
progressive taxes on the wealthy? Isn’t that what an international party on
the side of the working class ought to do? But the record of most of these
people shows that they are defenders of the private property of businesses
and banks, that their model of liberty is the farce of bourgeois democracy,
which they propose to broaden just a bit, at most. They want to put a human
face on the capitalist system, which it is impossible to humanize, and which
is becoming ever more brutal.
Perhaps the rapidly deepening multiple crises of capitalism will push some of
these leaders to the left, toward understanding that the problem is
capitalism, and that workers’ power is the first step to a solution.
That would be a welcome and very positive development.
But this group is not composed of young militants. As a group they are
mature, entrenched, established figures with developed views and many years
of experience. That experience, for the most part, is professing policies to
reform the most exploitative, oppressive and brutal aspects of capitalism.
When in government, they accepted the burdens of indebtedness, the primacy of
profit over human needs, and the duty of exacting neoliberal cutbacks.
Revolutionary socialists already know the source of all our existential
crises is the capitalist system, and that the only force on earth capable of
overthrowing capitalism is the organized, class conscious working class. Only
an educated and experienced revolutionary party, with deep roots in the
workers’ movement, will be capable of focussing the uprising of the workers,
when it comes, against the instruments of state power. We also know that the
struggle is international in scope – it is a war against imperialism on a
global scale.
The Progressive International is not the distillation of these vital lessons.
It is born from the failed and utterly diversionary effort to reform
capitalism, to salvage it from its death agony. The PI may foster some
interesting debates, but its basic mission is dead on arrival.
Related Articles
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record, lower than the Great Depression. We have passed 80,000 coronavirus
deaths.
Should Progressives Work in the Democratic Party?
April 14, 2020
Here we reprint part of a 1959 debate between a revolutionary socialist and a
social democrat. George Breitman, a member of the Socialist Workers Party and
longtime editor of The Militant newspaper, argued the No side.
The Demise of Bernie Sanders
April 9, 2020
By JEFF MACKLER Author’s note: This article was written three weeks before
Bernie Sanders’ April 7 withdrawal from the Democratic Party primary race. I
see no reason to change a word.
--
___
Carl Sagan
“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of
wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who
pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human
beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather
than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and
structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes
and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
