Well, it takes more than just organizing outside the capitalist
electoral system. The class dynamics have to be right too. The class
struggle ebbs and flows and it is hard to predict the exact right time
to strike. You have to be ready for it when it does happen.
---
Carl Sagan
“ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ”
― Carl Sagan
On 6/29/2019 9:43 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Yes, but people have been trying to organize socialism outside of the system in
the US and they also consistently fail. They've managed to organize unions and
strikes and they've managed to pressure the two party system to make changes
that will help working people, and those changes work for a time. But we've
never gotten large socialist parties in the US, the size of those in Europe.
We've had well regulated capitalism for a while, and white working people truly
benefited from that in the late 40's through the late 60's. We've had a tiny
number of well known socialist leaders. I can only think of Eugene Debbs and
Norman Thomas. And we had tiny socialist parties with local success way back.
But this country has a settler colonial mindset, deeply embedded in the
culture. When I was a child and a teenager, we had factories in New York City,
and many of the workers were Jewish and Italian. A lot of them had been part of
the socialist workers' tradition. But here on Long Island where there've been
one or two military contractors for years, the white workers are virulently
anti-socialist. They've always been Republican. A majority of Long Islanders
voted for Trump. At one point, several years ago, there was a white woman who
cleaned my apartment and drove me places occasionally. Her husband was a
maintenance man in a New York City school. She worked part-time as a waitress
in an inexpensive chain restaurant where she earned $4.25 an hour plus tips.
She was one of the most politically reactionary people I've ever met.
I'm not disagreeing with your goals. It's just that given what I've experienced
and observed, I don't think that it's going to happen. If I were younger,
healthy, and functioning, I'd be pragmatic about how to volunteer my efforts.
I'd want to do something that would make life better for some people as soon as
possible. It seems obvious to me that humanity isn't going to be on this earth
for very long, given the fact that there's basically only talk, and no truly
meaningful effort at changing how things are done in order to save our climate.
We need to change our energy system right now. Instead, we're all concerned
because Venezuela and Iran are being robbed of the proceeds from their oil. I
know why we're concerned, but really
! Socialists talk about open borders so that labor can move across borders as
freely as capital does while in the US, we have people who think they are
progressive, who think that only people who are seeking asylum should be
allowed in. So I'll take whatever positive change is possible in whatever way
it comes. I won't quibble about whether people want to take over the Democratic
Party or organize a new party or whether they call themselves Socialists or
Social Democrats or whatever.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, June 29, 2019 8:40 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Sanders's Speech Presents a Conundrum for New
Left's Socialist Strategy
The answer to your question is that you just go ahead and organize that
socialist party outside of the existing power structure. The question, however,
seems to be assuming an incorrect idea of what should be done with that
socialist party organized outside the capitalist electoral system. First,
running socialists inside a capitalist party defeats the whole idea of
socialism. How is it going to bring about socialism to work for and ensure that
a capitalist party continues in power? Then, since the electoral system is
rigged to ensure that only capitalist parties ever get elected then what is the
point of running candidates who will compete for votes with the capitalist
parties? If a socialist party, socialist in reality and not just in name, runs
candidates the whole point in running them is to get a platform to get out
socialist ideas. That is, take advantage of those cracks in the system to turn
it against itself. The main goal of a real socialist party, though, is to
encourage and help organize strikes, marches, demonstrations and other forms of
mass action. Again, when you try to change the system from within the system
you are the one who gets changed, not the system. That has been proven over and
over so many times that it is amazing that anyone still tries to change the
system from within it. But people still do and they just keep failing.
---
Carl Sagan
??? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. ???
??? Carl Sagan
On 6/26/2019 9:48 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
This article makes Roger's case for him. There are some problems like,
in America, how could you convince people to vote for open borders
and, given our election laws, how do you actually construct a powerful
working socialist party outside of the existing structure?
Miriam
Sanders's Speech Presents a Conundrum for New Left's Socialist
Strategy
Sen. Bernie Sanders delivers remarks at a campaign function at George
Washington University Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie
Sanders delivers remarks at a campaign function in the Marvin Center
at George Washington University on June 12, 2019, in Washington, D.C.
Sarah Silbiger / Getty Images
By Ashley Smith, Truthout Published June 25, 2019
In the U.S., the failures of capitalism are being refracted in the
race for the White House, just as they were in 2016. On one side,
President Trump is rallying his predominantly middle-class voters to
re-elect him based on his program of economic nationalism and bigotry
that has wreaked havoc at home and abroad.
On the other side, Democrats are in a battle for their party's
presidential nomination to challenge the bigot billionaire in 2020.
Predictably, the party has banded together, at least for now, around
the establishment's favored candidate, Joe Biden, who defends the
existing capitalist order, albeit with minor reforms.
His challengers, however, have moved to the left, adopting (however
honestly or dishonestly) much of the program Sen. Bernie Sanders put
forward in 2016, while at the same time, rejecting Sanders's
self-proclaimed democratic socialism. They all know, including Sen.
Elizabeth Warren, that to win the party's support if Biden stumbles, they must
toe its pro-capitalist line.
Worried about Sanders and the growing popularity of socialism, Trump
and bottom-dwellers for the Democratic nomination like Colorado Gov.
John Hickenlooper have red-baited Sanders, trying to discredit his
politics by associating him with Stalinist regimes. Recently, Sanders
took his detractors head-on in a landmark speech at George Washington
University.
He argued that the threat from authoritarian oligarchs like Trump
cannot be defeated by centrist neoliberals like Biden and
Hickenlooper, but only by democratic socialism. He defined that as an
extension of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal through a new
economic bill of rights that would include a right to a decent job, health care
and secure retirement.
Sanders also integrated the fight against climate change and all forms
of bigotry as essential parts of the struggle for socialism. He
underscored that he could not win any of this on his own but only as
part of a political revolution in which millions of people join the
political process, take over the Democratic Party and win control of
the government to transform the priorities of U.S. society.
Predictably, the establishment in the media and both parties brushed
off the speech. The Washington Post's Robert J. Samuelson called
Sanders a "refugee from the 1930s." Senator Warren - who recently
proclaimed she's "capitalist to my bones," perhaps an electorally
foolish mistake that may alienate Sanders's supporters - reacted with laughter
when asked about his speech.
Some on the left have also dismissed the speech as merely Sanders's
attempt to woo radicals back into the Democratic Party. Others
breathlessly celebrated it as the most profound and transformative
speech since those delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. and rejected
criticisms of Sanders as missing the forest for the trees.
The left should not reduce its role to cheerleading Sanders's speech
and gloss over its weaknesses, because what's at stake is the
politics, aims and strategy of the new socialist movement.
But these responses on the left fail to grasp the contradictory nature
of the Sanders campaign, his electoral strategy in the Democratic
Party, and his conception of democratic socialism. In contrast to
Sanders's ultra-left detractors, radicals must appreciate that, for
the second consecutive presidential primary, an open advocate of
socialism is in the running for the Democratic nomination.
Of course, those who credit Sanders for creating the new socialist
movement are exaggerating his impact; his popularity was made possible
by the Great Recession, the capitalist parties' bailout of banks, and
the popular resistance to austerity and scapegoating. Nevertheless, it
is important to recognize that Sanders has encouraged this resistance
and given a name to its politics - socialism - and helped fuel the
rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
We should celebrate his attacks on "unfettered capitalism," the
oligarchic billionaire class, authoritarians and fascists, as well as
his full-throated defense of socialism as means to achieve freedom for
workers and oppressed people.
Moreover, Sanders's proposed economic bill of rights raises the stakes
for all of us to fight for an agenda that puts people before profit.
That a mainstream candidate is putting forth such demands should be
grasped as an opportunity and used to advance social and class
struggle in order to achieve them.
At the same time, though, the left should not reduce its role to
cheerleading Sanders's speech and gloss over its weaknesses, because
what's at stake is not Sanders per se, but the politics, aims and
strategy of the new socialist movement. His speech exposed three key
problems we must overcome in order to win the systemic change we so desperately
need.
The Democratic Party: The Graveyard of the Left
First, Sanders's strategy of pursuing a political revolution through
the Democratic Party, however much it may raise the profile of
socialism, is a trap. As everyone from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to
many (if not most) members of DSA recognize, the Democratic Party is a
capitalist and imperialist party, not a labor party rooted in unions
like that led by Jeremy Corbyn in Britain.
The Democratic Party is a capitalist and imperialist party, not a
labor party rooted in unions.
It is tightly controlled by a bureaucracy and elected officials, both
of which depend on the bosses for funding. That does not mean it is no
different than the Republican Party, which has historically been the
capitalists' "A Team" that openly serves their interests and espouses
conservatism.
The Democrats are the ruling class's liberal "B Team" that appeals to
workers and oppressed groups by promising change within the system.
Capitalists send them onto the field only when the "A Team" has played
badly and are in danger of losing.
The Democrats' function in the political game is two-fold: to co-opt
the left and prevent it from building a workers' party; and to confine
class and social struggle to tinkering with capitalism instead of
replacing it with socialism. That's why Marxists have always called
the Democratic Party the graveyard of social movements and the left.
Every attempt to use the capitalist's "B Team" has backfired, from the
Communist Party's popular front during the Great Depression, to
Michael Harrington's realignment strategy that tried to turn it into a
labor party in the 1960s and 1970s, to the Maoists' similar effort in
Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition during the 1980s. Each time the left
was co-opted, movements demobilized in support of a party that then
took them for granted and moved to the right, betraying their promises in the
process.
Today, the Democrats are in a stronger position to co-opt the new
socialist left. As Kim Moody documents,
The party has become a well-funded, professionalized, multitiered
hierarchy capable of intervening in elections at just about every
level. It selects candidates, provides funding, furnishes
endorsements, offers media relations, and supplies computer and
digital campaign and get-out-the-vote services. In Congress and most
state legislatures, its leaders impose a high level of party
discipline, such that for the last two decades 90 percent of floor votes in
both houses have been along strict party lines.
Sanders's run in 2016 exemplifies the ruling class's stranglehold on
the party. Although he electrified a new generation with his call for
socialism and did better than he or anyone expected, he was, in the
end, stymied by the bureaucracy, elected officials and capitalist
funders. While they treated him politely in public, they ensured that
their anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton, won the nomination.
The Democratic establishment is even more prepared to neutralize
Sanders this time. Now backing Biden, it has encouraged a host of
pro-capitalist progressives to split Sanders's vote and greenlit Hickenlooper
and others'
redbaiting. The party will try to persuade voters desperate to kick
Trump out of office to play it safe, take no risks on Sanders's
socialism, and vote for Biden or some other "electable" candidate who
is moderate enough to win over conservative voters.
Even Anita Hill, who suffered the worst sexist discrimination from
Biden and has every reason to oppose him, has accepted this logic,
telling reporters, "Of course, I could" vote for him. These tactics
have successfully driven down Sanders's poll numbers over the last
couple of months with Warren in particular gaining at his expense,
proving yet again the difficulty of advancing socialism in a capitalist party.
Socialists, regardless of their position on Sanders's campaign, must
unite to organize an exit from the Democratic Party and build a new
independent socialist party.
While DSA has endorsed Sanders, its left wing understands that the
Democratic Party cannot be taken over, but rather must be replaced.
Instead of backing third parties now, though, one of its most
prominent caucuses, Bread and Roses, supports a dirty break strategy of using
the Democrats'
ballot line to run socialist candidates, project its program,
encourage class struggle, win office and build an organization within
the Democrats to eventually split off and set up a new workers' party.
While this strategy has led to some stunning breakthroughs, like the
election of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress, as well as
candidates for state and city council offices, Sanders does not
support it. Instead of advocating taking over the party, he has
already promised that if he loses, he will campaign for whichever
Democrat wins the nomination in the general election.
The left must challenge his argument, especially because he has the
greatest influence over the trajectory of our new movement. To avoid
the fate of our left-wing predecessors, socialists, regardless of
their position on Sanders's campaign, must unite to organize an exit
from the Democratic Party and build a new independent socialist party.
Socialism Not Liberalism
Second, as part of his accommodation to the Democratic Party, Sanders
- who used to extol Eugene Debs's Socialist Party as his model - now
explicitly associates socialism with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New
Deal. While he may do that to reach a popular audience, as some on the
left have argued, it both sows illusions about Roosevelt's program and
limits the horizons of socialism to, at best, reformist management of
capitalism.
Let's be clear: Roosevelt was, as he declared, "the best friend the
profit system ever had" and the "savior" of "the system of private
profit and free enterprise." FDR's aim was not to institute socialism
through the New Deal, but use government programs to revive the
system, stabilize it through social reform, and co-opt a workers'
movement that threatened to break with the two-party system and challenge
capitalist rule.
As much as Sanders raises expectations for social reform, he narrows
the vision of democratic socialism below even that of social democracy.
Even FDR's call for an economic bill of rights, which Sanders
resuscitates, never threatened to nationalize capitalism's means of
production. That's why
169 capitalist countries - including Germany, Australia and France -
ratified the U.N. version of it called "The International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights."
That's where many on the left are mistaken, confusing liberal
tinkering with actual socialism. Norman Thomas, the longtime leader of
the reformist Socialist Party, was right when he wrote, "What Mr.
Roosevelt has given us is State capitalism: that is to say, a system
under which the State steps in to regulate and in many cases to own,
not for the purpose of establishing production for use but rather for
the purpose of maintaining in so far as may be possible the profit
system with its immense rewards of private ownership and its grossly unfair division
of the national income."
Thus, as much as Sanders raises expectations for social reform, he
narrows the vision of democratic socialism below even that of social
democracy to New Deal liberalism. Classic social democracy, whatever
its weaknesses, at least promised to use nationalization to socialize
and democratize control of the economy, whereas liberalism merely
promises adjustments to capitalism, not its transformation into
workers' democratic control of society, which is the goal of socialism.
Compromising Socialist Internationalism
Third, Sanders's speech failed to uphold socialist internationalism on
today's central questions of immigration and U.S. imperialism. This
failure flows from his collaboration with an imperialist party, as
well as the nationalist logic of social democracy, which has always
put use of the state for domestic reform for workers at home above
international solidarity. It was thus not an accident that he delivered the
speech before a sea of U.S.
flags.
Of course, Sanders rightly denounces Trump's attacks on immigrants.
But he opposes open borders as an idea hatched by the Koch brothers,
and instead supports the Democrats' preferred "solution" to the
"problem" of undocumented immigrants - Comprehensive Immigration
Reform (CIR). At best, this is a lesser evil; it includes increased
policing of the border to stop further immigration, onerous conditions
for legalization, and pro-corporate guest worker programs.
As Lucy Herschel argues, in practice, this policy was responsible for
"a reign of terror on immigrant communities that former President
Obama himself elevated to a high art during his eight years in office.
For the past decade, CIR has required the deportation of more than
100,000 people a year, the detention of hundreds of thousands more in
inhuman conditions and the terrorization of millions of families - all
in exchange for comprehensive legislation that never came and now seems further away
than ever."
Socialists should reject CIR and instead demand amnesty for all
undocumented immigrants and open borders. Our slogans should be those
Jesse Myerson
advocates: "No penalties, no electric fences, no drone surveillance,
no papers, no fear. Instead, universal human rights, consecrated in
struggle, enforced by solidarity. The unification of the world's
workers demands this."
Such internationalism also requires opposition to imperialism -
something Sanders strangely left out of his speech. Socialists must
remember that the U.S. is not just any other state. It runs an
informal empire that reproduces and enforces global capitalism; it is
in competition with other imperialist powers, especially China; and it
oppresses weaker nations throughout the world. Under the misnomer
"national defense," Washington's war machine gobbles up hundreds of
billions of dollars a year on conventional and nuclear weapons, troops, and
over 800 military bases around the world.
Of course, Sanders has rightly opposed George W. Bush's occupation of
Iraq, Saudi Arabia's U.S.-backed war in Yemen, and Trump's threat of war on
Iran.
But he voted for the war in Afghanistan and war budgets that funded
the occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Underlying this mixed record is his mistaken belief that the U.S.,
under progressive leadership, could play a positive role in the world,
especially in forging what he calls an international alliance in
defense of democracy against authoritarian rulers like China's Xi
Jinping, who he explicitly singles out in his speech. Such a position
risks giving left-wing cover for Washington's confrontation with
Beijing, an inter-imperial rivalry driven not by the politics of either regime,
but their capitalist economies'
competition for domination over the world market.
The new socialist movement should instead follow the lead of Martin
Luther King, Jr. who viewed the U.S. state not as a potentially benign
force, but "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
King further called attention to how the massive expenditure on the
war machine killing people abroad drains funds and resources that
could otherwise go to workers and the oppressed at home.
That's why he spoke out against the Vietnam War and argued that the
poor people's movement he initiated near the end of his life had to
oppose what he called the "triple evils of racism, economic
exploitation, and militarism." The new left should heed this call and
build an independent mass movement to confront all of the system's
inequalities at home and abroad.
To win that struggle, we must build a new party of our own, uphold
fierce internationalist opposition to all imperialisms, organize
international solidarity from below, and challenge both parties of
capital not only in the ballot box, but more importantly, in the
streets and in workplaces where we have the power not only to win a
political and social revolution for socialist democracy in the U.S., but
throughout the world.
We don't have much time left.
