First, assuming that NPR's reporting on the Sanders campaign is accurate is, I
think, an error.
Second, although the ultimate result may be that many Sanders supporters, vote
for Clinton, having listened carefully to what Ssanders does and does not say,
I don't believe that, that has been his plan or his reason for running. It
seems apparent to me that he has run in order to reform the Democratic Party,
to move it to the left and to attempt to force it to represent the interests of
working people. He's stayed within the Democratic Party because he felt he'd
have a better chance of being heard by more people and thus, influencing them.
Third, using labels can be misleading. I am not sure that the Green Party is a
pro Capitalist party, although many of its members may not be adherants to
socialist theory. And I'm not sure that all of the people who say they favor
socialism or identify themselves as socialists, know what the word means. It
seems to me that it's much more productive to focus on the actions of parties
and individuals and on the effects of these actions.
Fourth: Ralph Nader isn't the Green Party. I know he has an impressive history
of social action. However, I've been listening to his interviews on Democracy
Now for several years now and there's something very strange and stilted about
his communication. I have this feeling that his functioning is somehow impaired.
The point of the article seems to be that the SWP is the only virtuous and true
socialist party. Everyone else has been corrupted in some way.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey ;
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 11:05 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Sanders, socialism and the U.S. left in crisis
https://socialistaction.org/2016/05/12/may-2016-sanderssanders-sociamay-2016-sanderslism-and-the-u-s-left-in-crisis/
Sanders, socialism and the U.S. left in crisis
/ 18 hours ago
May 2016 Sanders
By JEFF MACKLER
U.S. primary election math pundits are now calculating that Bernie Sanders
cannot win the Democratic Party presidential primary contest.
His impending demise, and indeed his Democratic Party candidacy itself, has
sparked a wide-ranging discussion and debate in the U.S. socialist movement,
and in broader circles, that reveals an extraordinary level of confusion and
disarray. The spectacle of most U.S. socialist organizations’ supporting, in
one form or another, an open Democrat is a sure sign of a left in crisis.
Including 53.5 percent that he won on May 3 in Indiana and his 51.4 percent in
West Virginia, in which he actually lost ground in his race with Hillary
Clinton, Sanders now needs more than 65 percent of all remaining pledged
delegates for a pledged convention majority and 82 percent of all remaining
delegates—including super-delegates. The latter have been handpicked by the
Democratic Party hierarchy and pledged long ago to vote for Clinton. Any
illusion that these lifelong professional ruling-class politicians will accede
to the “popular will” and shift to Sanders is absurd. But promoting this
illusion is Sanders’ current bait-and-switch tactic.
It is not the math of the matter, however, that motivates Sanders to “fight
on.” He clearly explained his views in a recent KQED National Public Radio
(NPR) interview: “I think we are perpetuating the political revolution by
significantly increasing the level of political activity that we’re seeing in
this country. I think it is good for the United States of America and good for
the Democratic Party to have a vigorous debate, to engage people in the
political process” (emphasis added).
NPR reported that by staying in the race, Sanders believes he is “energizing
voters” and, therefore, “boosting the Democratic Party to victory in November.”
He contended that Democrats do well and Republicans do poorly when turnout is
high. “So I’m going to do everything I can to stimulate political discourse in
this country and get young people, working people, involved in the political
process.”
Following four primary contest losses to Hillary Clinton in late April, Sanders
insisted that even if he lost the nomination he would fight for his delegates
to have substantial convention representation on the Democratic Party’s
“Platform Committee,” where party leaders supposedly would hammer out the
program to be implemented should Clinton win. Only the most naïve in politics
believe that ruling-class policies are decided by a handful of delegates
cloistered in the backrooms of party conventions. Sadly, however, most of the
U.S. socialist left believe that the Sanders campaign represents some sort of
“political revolution”
that merits their support—in one form or another. We shall review this almost
bewildering phenomenon shortly.
Sanders, despite his protestations to the contrary, has been a welcome addition
to the periodically orchestrated “lesser evil” sham employed by ruling-class
leaders and their ever calculating and sophisticated think tanks. They know
full well that capitalist elections are essential to maintaining the myth of
democracy, on the one hand, and to dissipating the anger and hatred at its
inherently anti-working class, racist, and sexist policies into safe electoral
channels, on the other.
Well before Sanders proclaimed his “democratic socialism,” national polls—the
Pew polls of three years ago, for example—indicated that socialism was on the
minds of millions. In a recent Pew poll, 49 percent of youth 30 years old and
under preferred socialism over capitalism.
Three years ago, the figure was 46 percent who preferred capitalism over
socialism. The figures for the Black population as a whole were higher, with a
significant majority, 55 percent, preferring socialism—in their view a more
egalitarian and less predatory society, in which human solidarity and social
welfare trump the greed of the elite one percent.
Sanders is undoubtedly correct in recognizing his role in the past year as
attempting to bolster the credibility of the Democratic Party. He has
consciously taken the assignment of demonstrating that “dissident”
ideas, or perhaps better, “dissident” rhetoric—as with his frequently touted
expression, “political revolution”—is acceptable terminology inside this tried
and true ruling-class institution, the nation’s infamous “graveyard of social
movements.”
Hillary Clinton and her advisers understand shell game politics just as well,
as demonstrated by their efforts to remake one of capitalism’s most heinous
warmongers and racist apologists into the feminist, humanist, anti-racist, and
environmentally concerned politician they are projecting as Clinton’s campaign
image today. As we go to press [May 11] a nervous Clinton has moved another
step to the “left,” according to the New York Times, by embracing in part
Sanders’ single-payer “Medicare for all” proposal.
Political discontent rising in U.S. population
In due time, we will all “feel the Bern,” or better, witness the “fizzle,” when
Sanders, as promised, stumps the nation hustling votes on Clinton’s behalf to
save the nation from the “greater evil”—Donald Trump. Step one in the current
two-stage “lesser-evil” game was Sanders’
shepherding growing and undeniable anti-capitalist sentiments back into the
Democratic Party. Step two now includes Sanders’ making every effort to do the
same with those who have been hornswoggled into his orbit but might yet decide
to quit the electoral shell game in disgust with the thought of voting for
Clinton.
The fact that capitalism’s media pundits felt compelled to lend an air of
legitimacy to Sanders’ fake socialism is an indication of the questioning
nature of our times and the deep discontent that is percolating in the
consciousness of working people.
A New York Times/CBS News poll last November indicated that some 56 percent of
registered Democrats who were questioned said they felt positive about
socialism as a governing philosophy. Twenty-nine percent had a negative view.
This, in itself, goes a long way in explaining why Clinton, and in fact, most
Republican Party candidates, largely refrained from the red-baiting tirades
that have been the usual stock-in-trade of capitalist politics. Attacking
Sanders as a socialist might well have the effect of advancing his credibility,
not to mention socialism’s!
In time, when the inevitable and broad-ranging fightback takes shape in forms
truly independent of and against the twin parties of capital and its liberal
“third-party” middle-class-based variants like the Green Party, working people
will find genuine political avenues and mass organizations of struggle to
express their disgust at capitalist austerity and social regression. This
combination of renewed and massive mobilizations in the streets, in
reinvigorated and democratically led union fightbacks, and in anti-racist,
anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, and pro-environment struggles will undoubtedly
find an expression in the political arena.
But this magnificent and longed for “music of the future,” based on the deeply
felt rejection of the system of two capitalist parties, to be effective—to mark
a clean and qualitative break with the endless variations of “lesser evilism”
that are consciously presented by the most sophisticated practitioners of
capitalist politics—can only be grounded on the foundation of working-class
independence. The desire for political “independence,” however vague this term
might be, is today gaining ground in the United States. A full 43 percent of
the electorate, according to a recent Gallop Poll, is registered as
Independent, with Democratic Party registration at 32 percent, and Republican
Party registered voters at 23 percent.
These facts alone explain why in states like New York, where registered
independents are excluded in the primary process, Hillary Clinton’s margin of
victory over Sanders was quite significant. In states with an “open primary,”
that is, where “independent” voters can participate, Sanders is expected to win
a substantial, but still insufficient majority, as in the June 7 California
primary.
Of course, none of these registered voter statistics tell the full story since
some 51 million voters, about 25 percent of the eligible electorate, are not
registered. Further, the actual percentage of all eligible voters who vote
stands at 55 percent! The vast majority of non-voters are Black, Latino, and
youth more generally, many of whom are consciously excluded due to reactionary
legislation or are disillusioned with the entire electoral charade.
U.S. left collapses before Sanders
There is no doubt that Sanders’ “political revolution” and “anti-establishment”
rhetoric, not to mention his self-proclaimed “democratic socialism,” has
captured the imagination of and spiked interest in the current primary contests
as well as in socialist ideas more generally. Indeed, this is precisely and,
again, the consciously orchestrated Sanders project; the U.S. ruling class and
its pundits are more than capable of appealing to the best instincts and
highest aspirations of working people for a better life for all in order to
once again lure them into their life-extinguishing anaconda-like institutional
clutches.
Tragically, many of those who claim to know better—those who seriously consider
themselves socialists—have been active partisans, if not enthusiastic
advocates, of today’s ruling-class-promoted Bernie Sanders brand of
lesser-evilism.
Among these socialists, and perhaps the most prominent, is Sanders’
supporter in the primary contests, Kshama Sawant, and her Socialist Alternative
party. Sawant is a two-time winner in recent Seattle city-council election
contests, where she ran as an open socialist and against the Democratic Party
machine. Socialist Action hailed Socialist Alternative’s Seattle campaigns, and
the associated Socialist Alternative city council run by Ty Moore in
Minneapolis. Socialist Action enthusiastically participated in these campaigns,
contributed financially, organized public fund-raising forums, went
door-to-door, and otherwise widely publicized this inspiring socialist effort.
This is not to say that we were not aware that Socialist Alternative originally
sought, unsuccessfully, to organize these campaigns as joint efforts with the
pro-capitalist Green Party. But Green Party leaders rejected these overtures,
leaving Socialist Alternative with a critical decision as to how to proceed. To
their credit, they took the high road in working-class politics and ran as
socialists, but their penchant for the middle-class Green Party was never far
from their perspectives.
Today, that high road, the road to independent socialist working-class politics
against the Democratic Party, has been abandoned, with Socialist Alternative
and Sawant actually campaigning for Sanders in all the Democratic Party primary
contests.
In an article published in the May 4 issue of CounterPunch, Sawant gives an
explanation for phase two of their electoral strategy. She writes:
“To endorse Hillary, even with a more progressive platform, would be the
opposite of political revolution and would abandon all the vital energy and
momentum we have built over this historic past year. We simply can’t afford to
make this mistake. That’s why I have launched a petition calling on Bernie
Sanders to run all the way to November as an independent, and to use his
campaign as a launch pad for a new political party of the 99%.”
Sawant immediately continues: “If Bernie’s only concern is that running
independently could open the door to a President Trump, then why could he not
at least campaign in the 40+ states where it’s generally clear the Democratic
or Republican candidate will win? Even in this way, while not putting his name
on the ballot in the 5-10 closely contested ‘swing states,’ he could still run
an historic campaign if linked to building a new party” (emphasis in original).
But Sawant’s “new party” in this case is, again, the middle-class,
pro-capitalist Green Party, which has regularly urged its supporters to vote
Democrat in “swing states” or simply declined to seek ballot status in these
“contested states.” Sawant’s petition calls on Sanders to run on the same
ticket as the Green Party’s presumptive presidential candidate, Jill
Stein—perhaps to replace Stein on the ballot with Sanders.
Here it is important to remind readers that the terms “independent” and “third
party” are not always clear. There are several “third parties”
today, ranging from extreme right-wing expressions of capitalist politics like
the Libertarians and the Constitutional Party to liberal, reformist Democratic
Party-oriented outfits like the Working Families Party, to the pro-capitalist
Green Party.
In the case of the Green Party, let me remind readers that Green Party
presidential candidate Ralph Nader achieved ballot status in six states via
heinous agreements with Patrick Buchanan’s incipient fascist Reform Party.
Nader ran on the Reform Party’s ballot line in return for making reactionary
statements limiting the right of women to abortion and restricting immigrants
from entering the country. (See Nader’s June 21, 2004, interview with Patrick
Buchanan in the American Conservative.)
None of these “third parties” are independent of and against the fundamental
capitalist politics of the Democrats and Republicans. Or, to be precise, none
seek to organize the working class to replace the capitalist system with a
socialist one—in which the private ownership and control of the nation’s banks,
corporations, and wealth is ended, and the vast majority, the 99 percent, act
to reorganize society for the common good. None are based on, financed, and
controlled by working-class organizations like trade unions or other democratic
mass working-class organizations. None, as a matter of class principle, reject
voting for capitalist parties. Indeed, in local elections, as well as national,
Greens routinely endorse “progressive” Democrats, and in races where the
Republican is a bit too overtly reactionary, “not so progressive Democrats.”
Asking Bernie Sanders, a lifelong capitalist politician with a 98 percent
Democratic Party voting record, to run as a candidate independent of and
against the party he has assiduously supported for his entire career is like
asking the proverbial leopard to change its spots. Or better, it’s akin to yet
again playing politics in the ruling class’ institutional party ballpark.
Today, much of the socialist left has made this choice; some, like the
Communist Party and Democratic Socialists of America, have habitually supported
Democrats for many decades. The CP today supports Clinton, while the DSA
supports Sanders—that is, until Sanders drops out.
Solidarity and the International Socialist Organization call on Sanders to run
for the presidency as an “independent” or as the Green Party candidate. The
Workers International League also speaks favorably of an “independent” campaign
by Sanders. Workers World Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation,
both of which have called for votes for left-sounding Democrats in the past,
including Jesse Jackson, are fielding their own presidential candidates this
time around, but nevertheless have called for Democratic Party primary votes
for Sanders.
Keenly aware of the rapidly growing interest in socialist ideas generated by
capitalism’s deepening crises and sparked by the Sanders campaign, Socialist
Action branches across the country have sponsored a series of well-attended
public debates where most of the above socialist organizations, as well as
representatives from the Labor for Bennie campaign, shared the platform for
fruitful exchanges. While the “lesser evil” syndrome was undoubtedly at work in
the presentations of these socialist groups, we were heartened to see that the
Marxist-grounded revolutionary socialist ideas of Socialist Action were well
received and that our proud party, a consistent participant and advocate of
independent mass-action united-front mobilizations against all aspects of
capitalist racism and plunder, won new members to the cause of socialist
revolution.
Share this:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) 43Share on Facebook (Opens in
new window)43 Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
May 12, 2016 in Elections, Uncategorized. Tags: Democrats, Kshama Sawant,
Sanders
Related posts
Is Sanders campaign a ‘new movement’?
Socialist Action sponsors election debates
Sanders seeks nomination by Democrats
Post navigation
← Verizon workers fight corporate greed
Newspaper Archives
Newspaper Archives Select Month May 2016 (4) April 2016 (12) March
2016 (14) February 2016 (8) January 2016 (11) December 2015 (11)
November 2015 (9) October 2015 (8) September 2015 (10) August 2015
(7) July 2015 (13) June 2015 (9) May 2015 (10) April 2015 (12) March
2015 (9) February 2015 (11) January 2015 (10) December 2014 (12)
November 2014 (11) October 2014 (9) September 2014 (6) August 2014
(10) July 2014 (11) June 2014 (10) May 2014 (11) April 2014 (10)
March 2014 (9) February 2014 (11) January 2014 (11) December 2013
(10) November 2013 (11) October 2013 (17) September 2013 (13) August
2013 (10) July 2013 (11) June 2013 (15) May 2013 (14) April 2013
(14) March 2013 (12) February 2013 (10) January 2013 (17) December
2012 (7) November 2012 (8) October 2012 (19) September 2012 (2)
August 2012 (27) July 2012 (18) June 2012 (3) May 2012 (19) April
2012 (14) March 2012 (17) February 2012 (19) January 2012 (17)
December 2011 (3) November 2011 (33) October 2011 (14) September
2011 (13) August 2011 (34) July 2011 (24) June 2011 (19) May 2011
(19) April 2011 (15) March 2011 (15) February 2011 (16) January 2011
(15) December 2010 (17) November 2010 (1) October 2010 (6) September
2010 (3) August 2010 (8) July 2010 (7) June 2010 (2) May 2010 (9)
April 2010 (3) March 2010 (8) February 2010 (3) January 2010 (9)
December 2009 (6) November 2009 (5) October 2009 (16) September 2009
(3) August 2009 (2) July 2009 (5) June 2009 (2) May 2009 (7) April
2009 (6) March 2009 (16) February 2009 (9) January 2009 (10) December
2008 (11) November 2008 (8) October 2008 (16) September 2008 (14)
August 2008 (18) July 2008 (12) June 2008 (3) May 2008 (2) April
2008 (3) March 2008 (14) February 2008 (11) January 2008 (11)
December 2007 (8) November 2007 (1) July 2007 (1) June 2007 (1)
April 2007 (1) March 2007 (1) February 2007 (3) December 2006 (11)
November 2006 (11) October 2006 (13) September 2006 (15) August 2006
(11) July 2006 (18) June 2006 (7) May 2006 (14) April 2006 (6) March
2006 (14) February 2006 (5) January 2006 (2) December 2005 (9)
November 2005 (8) October 2005 (13) September 2005 (12) August 2005
(9) July 2005 (16) June 2005 (16) May 2005 (16) April 2005 (12)
March 2005 (14) February 2005 (19) January 2005 (15) December 2004
(14) November 2002 (17) October 2002 (19) September 2002 (22) August
2002 (21) July 2002 (15) May 2002 (21) April 2002 (21) February
2002 (15) January 2002 (15) December 2001 (17) October 2001 (24)
September 2001 (18) July 2001 (19) June 2001 (18) October 2000 (17)
September 2000 (21) August 2000 (19) July 2000 (16) June 2000 (26)
May 2000 (21) April 2000 (22) March 2000 (28) February 2000 (18)
January 2000 (20) December 1999 (20) November 1999 (26) October 1999
(25) September 1999 (18) August 1999 (40) July 1999 (38) June 1999
(24) May 1999 (27) April 1999 (25) March 1999 (26) February 1999
(29) January 1999 (24) July 1998 (12)
Search
Get Involved
Donate to help support our work
Get email updates
Join Socialist Action
View socialistactionusa’s profile on Facebook
View SocialistActionCT’s profile on YouTube
Subscribe to Our Newspaper
Blog at WordPress.com. The Expound Theme.
