I didn't say that. Read again, what I said. Human nature is complex. Each
person is a unique individual. You can have several children in a family and
they may become very different kinds of people with different sets of values.
What I don't believe in, is economic determinism. The economic system is very
important, but I think that it is only one of the factors that influences human
behavior. And human beings are first and foremost, animals, and self
preservation is an extremely important motivating factor. But then, people
choose different methods of self preservation. One may choose cooperating with
others, while another may choose competition, fighting, war.
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 25, 2020 9:33 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Demise of Bernie Sanders
Coincidentally, I happen to be reading another textbook that I downloaded from
Learning Ally right now that covers those very points.
It is entitled Child Development. But if human nature is the capacities and
propensities that we are born with interacting with the environment then that
means that human nature can be changed by changing the environment. Don't
assume that human nature is immutable.
___
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
On 3/25/2020 9:08 PM, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
When I talk about human nature, I'm thinking about what I learned in graduate
school about the development of human personality. We're born with
biological, neurological capabilities which we've inherited and these
interact with the environment into which we are born so that as we grow and
develop, our personalities develop. People have varying capacities for love,
cooperation, intellectual pursuits, aggression, etc. That interaction between
the biological and the environment is very complex because the environment
includes the maternal care and close family relationships which nourish the
child, and these are influenced by the culture of the wider society. One of
the variables within those cultural factors is the economic system. It's very
important because it determines much about the society, but it's one of many
factors.
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 25, 2020 8:25 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Demise of Bernie Sanders
What gets to me is that when people are forced into certain actions by the
system under which they exist and they have little or no choice but to take
those actions it is called human nature. What is human nature anyway? I am
sure that humans do have certain instincts just like any other animal, but
most of what is called human nature has very little to do with that. Put
humans in a situation in which they depend upon cooperating with each other
for survival and you see them doing so. They cooperate in procuring food,
shelter and other necessities and what is a acquired is acquired for the use
of the whole community and not kept by certain individuals for themselves.
That is a mode of economics so pervasive both geographically and historically
that it probably is a matter of human nature. If it was not human nature to
cooperate then human civilization could never have developed in the first
place. We would still just be lone animals wandering in the wilderness
providing for our individual selves and only coming together for mating. I
rarely hear anyone say that mutual cooperation is human nature though. But
put humans in a social order that has existed for only a small fraction of
the time that humans have ever existed, an order in which people are forced
to compete and step on others in order to ensure their own survival or to
even become comfortable and that behavior is constantly called human nature.
At the least it is social myopia. But it is an attitude that is encouraged by
the very few who benefit the most from such a social order. Keep people
thinking that such behavior is the natural order of things and keep them
telling each other that it is and it is a lot easier to control them.
___
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
On 3/25/2020 5:28 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
And, as the old song said, "You gotta accent the positive, eliminate
the negative, latch onto the affirmative, and don't mess with mister
in between".
Of course the question could be, how much has been a change of
Communism or Socialism or Capitalism, and how much is due to how these
forms have been presented to us?
As a child, the history books always presented the USA as a democratic
Republic, or just as a Republic. But in truth it has always been an
Oligarchy.
Of course that Oligarchy has modified. What was originally a
government of White Males, mostly owners of vast lands and great
individual wealth, has been modified to include a smattering of non
whites, a number of women, and corporate persons.
But the Private Club has been maintained down trhrough the IUnion's
history. Just as violant and ruthless as it was when the first colony
was settled. Some insist that it is "Human Nature". Perhaps, but
it's a Human Nature that carried over from those old, Survival of the
Fittest days, and like other human practices it can be modified and
even eliminated.
Anyway, Capitalism, along with our definitions of all other social
systems, only changes as the mixture of those in power changes.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/25/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
That's true. And what is most depressing, is that if you take any
model, given human nature, the ideal which might have influenced that
model to begin with, will most probably be degraded. The capitalism
that we have now is not the model that we learned about in school.
The socialism that we've seen practiced in Russia, China, even Cuba,
is not how Communism is supposed to work according to Marx. The state
is supposed to wither away. But given circumstances and human nature,
it never did. Or, look at the Catholic Church. I know the Church is
not something that either of us aspire to, but think about how it's
supposed to work, and then think about all those priests molesting
children. So when you talk about how the working class should rise up
and prevent politicians and corporations from stealing from it, it's
important to remember that the working class is composed of human
beings with the same capacity for good and evil as the wealthy elites or
the church hierarchy.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 4:02 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Demise of Bernie Sanders
Miriam,
Understood. But in agreeing that it does make a difference in who is
in office, it is only a slight difference within the allowed boundaries.
Bernie Sanders, while no Radical, was too Progressive for the
Establishment to accept. Like Ralph Nader or Henry Wallace, the
Ruling Class felt threatened. Joe Biden does not threaten the Ruling
Class. In fact, the Ruling Class has worked very well with Joe, as vice
president.
The Working Class has allowed itself to be reduced to the level of
on-lookers. Organized Labor has been thoroughly trashed and either
bought off, or ignored. While some resistance still flares up, for
the most part only the public employees unions still have any backbone.
So while the people elected do have some impact on my and my family's
well being, the USA continues unchecked on it's slide toward Third World
Status.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/25/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
I think that you're saying that Bernie Sanders was never a Communist.
He most certainly was a member of the working class because his
parents were working class people living in Brooklyn. He was a
supporter of socialist governments throughout the world, as a young
man. He never formally joined the Democratic party and remains an
Independent to this day. His politics at this time are akin to those
of European Democratic Socialists or of FDR's administration. As
for having a dog in this fight, I think that the appropriate way to
describe that, is that you have no control over the government that
is supposed to represent you and there is no political party with
power in this country, that is representing your interests. But you
and your family certainly will be profoundly affected by which
people are elected to power and by the policies that they put into
effect. It is, (you should excuse the expression), Communist
propaganda to say that it makes no difference who gets elected if
the people who are elected are not socialists. There are differences
among politicians. There are different kinds of Democrats. You can
hate the late stage capitalism that is engulfing us. But to then
refuse to see the differences, to choose something good if it's
there, to even choose the lesser of two evils, is like choosing
suicide for the people you care about. Within the rotten system that
we have, it matters which judges are appointed, what kind of
financial assistance legislation is passed, whether or not abortion
clinics are closed, whose vision for fighting the pandemic, (regardless of
how faulty the competing visions are), is adopted.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 3:02 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Demise of Bernie Sanders
As I've said before, " I don't got no dog in this fight". The
political playing field has always been the property of the
Establishment, and you have to be a member in order to play. While
Bernie Sanders espoused his support for many of the issues near and
dear to the Working Class, he was never a Working Class Socialist.
Still, Bernie might have turned a corner or two, like a poor man's
FDR, but if he goes down, which appears to be where he is headed,
and he tosses his support behind Joe Biden, then his value to the
Working Class is done.
Carl Jarvis, sitting in the bleachers looking at the two teams of
the Establishment, and wondering what it matters as to who wins.
On 3/25/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://socialistaction.org/2020/03/24/the-demise-of-bernie-sanders
/
The Demise of Bernie Sanders
Socialist Action / 21 hours ago
(Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images) By JEFF MACKLER
Bernie Sanders, face to face on March 16 with his often-proclaimed
“friend” Joe Biden, could only assert that “Joe,” voted for the
2003 Iraq War. True! Sanders scored a debater’s point that a
well-scripted and lying Biden brushed off in a few words. Sanders left it
at that.
Television debates are rarely meant for historical clarification of
events long past, even if the subject is genocidal war.
Following Biden’s “mistaken” vote, the U.S. imperialist war machine
and its deadly sanctions murdered 1.5 million Iraqis. That, too,
Sanders left unmentioned. Nor did he note that Iraq’s President
Saddam Hussein never had “weapons of mass destruction” that he was
supposedly planning to unleash against the U.S. This demonizing and
manufactured pretext, deployed with the entire corporate media in
tow, was employed to launch the most intensive bombing in world history.
That the U.S. continues to occupy Iraq today also went unmentioned.
Biden, and indeed all the Democrats’ primary contest contenders,
supported that war which they now proclaim was a “mistake!”
Forgive me, readers, but if I, or any serious antiwar activist had
the opportunity to stand on the world stage at that moment, I/we
would have thoroughly shed Biden’s political blood and pilloried
both of capitalism’s parties of war, death and destruction.
And the Vietnam War that Sanders’ Democratic Party “friends” now
admit was also a “mistake?” Sanders declined to comment, not even
to make a debater’s point. The nature of this “mistake” has never
been seriously examined. Silence largely prevails! In truth, it was
the now undeniable fact that after ten years of genocidal slaughter
– replete with napalm carpet bombing, poison gas, agent orange
defoliation and indiscriminate terror bombing of civilian
populations – the U.S.
government lost! That was the mistake! After murdering four million
Vietnamese and countless tens of thousands of Cambodians, Laotians
and Thais, the imperialist war machine failed to impose U.S. rule. “We”
were forced to withdraw! No apologies for the genocide! The U.S.
lost in Vietnam because the courageous Vietnamese would not cease
their national liberation struggle, because the vast majority – 75
percent of the American people – mobilized for a decade in
unprecedented numbers to demand “U.S. Out Now!” and because a demoralized
U.S.
military felt a greater kinship with the Vietnamese people than
they did with the racist warmakers at home.
Sanders’ list of items to score points against Biden included the
latter’s support for the infamous and racist
mass-incarceration-oriented
1994 crime bill the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
The well-coached Biden blithely dodged that debaters point as well
while Sanders declined to drive his point home with an accounting
of the literal millions of poor and oppressed people who have been
herded into the nation’s racist, increasingly for-profit and
privatized prison-industrial complex.
Sanders stands mute on Cuba and Nicaragua
But Sanders silence was not matched by his repeated reference to
his “longtime friend Joe,” to whom he repeatedly pledged his
support should Biden win the Democratic Party nomination, an
increasing certainty at that point in the primaries.
The March 16 televised debate spectacle included Bernie Sanders
failure to counter Joseph Biden’s accusations that Sanders
supported the “authoritarian governments” of Cuba and the
Sandinistas of Nicaragua.
That the U.S. armed and financed the universally hated, corrupt,
Mafia-connected Fulgencio Batista dictatorship was not mentioned.
That revolutionary Cuba, under Fidel Castro, defeated and removed
that government and proceeded to conduct the largest land reform in
the modern era, nationalized capitalist property and used it for
the common good, that Cuba’s literacy campaign and free healthcare
for all system are the envy of the world’s people, were not
mentioned by the “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders. Biden
emerged unscathed because Sanders accepted his “authoritarian”
red-baiting without question. He stood mute on national television
while the imperialist warmaker and Vice Presidential accomplice in
Obama’s seven wars pilloried him for refusing to denounce Cuba and
Nicaragua. Sanders was lost for words when Biden demanded that he
renounce the revolutions that removed these previous U.S.
neo-colonies from imperialist domination.
That Nicaragua’s U.S.-backed Anastasio Somoza dictatorship murdered
80,000 Nicaraguans in its final months in 1979 went unmentioned by
Sanders. That the U.S. invaded Cuba in 1961, introduced dengue
hemorrhagic fever in 1981, and then swine flu that devastated
Cuba’s pig population, and then a plague that devastated Cuba’s
banana crop, went unmentioned.
Sanders’ claimed longtime friend “Joe,” Obama’s
anti-school-bussing, anti-abortion, warmongering VP, was let off
the hook, except for Sanders’ staccato single-phrase recitation of
Biden’s “voting record,”
which the lying Biden denied and the corporate media dismissed as
either irrelevant or long ago superseded by Biden’s more “progressive”
views today. Why dwell in the past?
Democrats and corporate media close ranks
There was no Sanders rage against the iron-disciplined Democratic
Party machine that united to defeat him in 19 of the past 24
primary contests.
Gone in an instant were the likes of millionaire or billionaire
racists and warmongers Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michael
Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Warren. They had all been
thrown into the orchestrated charade to dilute and undermine Sanders’
potential, only to pull the plug when the time was right to clear
the way for a failing Biden to emerge unimpeded on center stage.
No rage against the kept corporate media that red-baited Sanders at
will in virtually every media outlet across the country. Indeed,
Biden, who repeatedly lied about his record with impunity at every
opportunity – fully cognizant that he had Sanders beaten – extended
the olive branch to his bewildered friend “Bernie,” so they could
unite against Donald Trump.
Said Biden a few days after the debate, “Let me say, especially to
the young voters who have been inspired by Senator Sanders: I hear
you. I know what’s at stake. I know what we have to do. Our goal as
a campaign and my goal as a candidate for president is to unify
this party and then to unify the nation.”
CNN and the New York Times, if not the entire “liberal” media
cabal, similarly switched gears to congratulate “Bernie” for
raising important issues while Sanders repeatedly consoled himself
with remarks to the effect that the trend showed that he had “won
the ideological debate”
while “losing the debate over electability.”
Sanders imminent withdrawal
The 1,991 delegates Sanders needs to win the Democrat’s nomination
at its summer convention are all but out of reach. Biden currently
leads in pledged delegates 1,132 to 817. Sanders’ fundraising
efforts have all but ceased. His aides daily proclaim that he is
“assessing his options.”
Some Sanders’ advisers indicated that he intended to stay in the
race to affect the Democratic Party platform at the national
convention and to continue his “political revolution.” Sanders did
this after losing to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary race. The
Democratic Party’s platform, adopted during its convention
proceedings, is worth less than the paper it is printed on. The
real platform of the Democrats, and the Republicans, is decided
behind closed doors by the direct representatives of the 0.1
percent, who daily hammer out ruling class multi-trillion dollar
budgets, trade agreements, corporate and bank bailouts and
imperialist war strategies. The hodgepodge of delegates who are
sequestered in small rooms during the Democrats’ conventions decide
nothing of substance.
Sanders’ chief campaign strategist, Faiz Shakir, stated that
“Sanders is focused on the government response to the coronavirus
outbreak and ensuring that we take care of working people and the most
vulnerable.”
Ever playing the election time game of one-upping your opponent’s
proposals, Sanders is now calling for a $2,000 monthly payment to
every American until the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Needless to
say, Biden’s advisers will not be far behind Sanders’ paper
proposals, none of which will see the light of day.
Sanders is no socialist
Media red-baiting notwithstanding Bernie Sanders is not now and has
never been a socialist. During the 2015 primary contests and ever
since he has cast himself in the tradition of Democrat President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “New Deal” politics that had the
effect of saving a failing Depression-era U.S. capitalism rather
than abolishing it. Roosevelt’s social reforms were aimed at
countering the deepening radicalization of U.S. workers, half of
whom were unemployed or barely employed part time. FDR’s limited
social measures notwithstanding, he transformed U.S. industry into
a war machine that had no rival on earth.
With an estimated 60 million dead by the war’s end in 1945 and the
infrastructure of U.S. allies and enemies alike in ruins, the
intact U.S. industrial behemoth emerged as the sole world
superpower. Three quarters of a century later, war production stands at
the center of U.S.
capitalism’s “stability.”
In a 2015 speech, Sanders stated that his politics “builds on what
Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed
economic rights for all Americans.” In truth, the rights that
workers won in the 1930s and beyond emerged from pitched battles
with the boss class aimed at the unionization of capitalism’s major
industries (See:
“Labor’s Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936–55” by
Art Preis, Pathfinder Press 1972).
Sanders: “I don’t believe the government should own the means of
production”
Sanders’ 2015 speech continued, “So the next time you hear me
attacked as a socialist, remember this. I don’t believe the
government should own the means of production, but I do believe
that the middle class and working families who produce the wealth
of America deserve a fair deal.
I believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in
America instead of shipping jobs and profits overseas.” (For the
full Sanders speech, see:
https://www.vox.com/2015/11/19/9762028/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialism).
Simply put, Sanders, in his own words is no socialist! There is no
socialism in the framework of a capitalist society where an elite
handful of multi-billionaires own and control more wealth than the
combined holding of the majority of the population. Sanders’
so-called democratic socialism consists in his campaign pledge to
tax the wealth of the super-rich at the rate of one percent, and
impose this tax only on their wealth that exceeds $32 million!
Sanders proclaims that under his policy “a married couple with
$32.5 million would pay a wealth tax of just $5,000.” Pocket change
for billionaires!! “There will always be billionaires in this country,”
Sanders promises the ruling class.
Sanders’ statement that “private companies that thrive and invest
in America” are welcome as opposed to those that “ship jobs and
profits overseas” is sheer demagoguery. Leaving aside that any
self-respecting capitalist enterprise that “thrives and grows” in
the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, does so at the expense of
its always exploited workers, no serious socialist advocates
pitting foreign workers against U.S. workers. We might add that
even when U.S. corporations return their production to the U.S. it
is a qualitatively new production based on state-of-the-art
factories where robots replace human beings en masse and wages
remain at near-poverty levels.
That’s the nature of the system that Sanders in incapable of addressing.
The entire complex of today’s globalized capitalism, without
exception, and in the context of ever-sharper and intensified
competition, is compelled to operate with the cheapest labor force
and raw materials obtainable, the least government restrictions and
the resulting highest profit rates possible. Those capitalists that
do otherwise are effectively, if not brutally driven from the
marketplace. These irrefutable fundamentals of capitalist
production everywhere are of no concern to Sanders, for whom the
class struggle is to be subordinated to his dreamlike fantasies
where he promises today’s trade unions that he personally – not a
fighting working class in alliance with the oppressed! – will “double
union membership.”
Sanders will tour nation for Biden
Sanders and his “political revolution” are now dead in the water.
His multi-trillion-dollar paper proposals did have the effect of
inspiring a radicalizing generation with bleak future prospects to
question “the system” and to search for solutions that appear to
challenge the status quo. His use of the term “socialism,” however
much his politics have nothing to do with its liberating, humane
and majoritarian class content, served to open the minds of
millions to further investigation.
But like all “good Democrats,” Sanders will soon tour the nation on
behalf of a man whose policies he has long repudiated and whose
ingrained hatred of socialist revolution has been evidenced
throughout his career. Sanders proposed “solutions” were based on
herding the innocent, and the not so innocent groups on the left,
into the graveyard of the Democratic Party where the
“left/progressive” and right/centrist wings are indistinguishable
regarding which class shall rule society.
All are dedicated to the imperialist system and its wars against
working people at home and abroad. It has never been otherwise.
Indeed, Sanders and his supporters, the AOC gang included,
supported every Democratic Party candidate in the 2018 mid-term
elections! They are pledged to do the same in 2020 when Biden will
undoubtedly be presented as the latest of capitalism’s “lesser evils.”
For serious fighters today there is a serious alternative. It lies
in a commitment to organize and mobilize working people
independently and in opposition to the parties and polices of
capitalism. It lies in breaking with the two-party duopoly and
fighting to re-build and transform the present labor movement into
fighting organs of struggle on behalf of the vast majority. Start
today by joining a revolutionary socialist party that seeks to sink
deep roots in all the struggles of the oppressed and exploited!
Join Socialist Action! Donate to Socialist Action’s Jeff Mackler
for president in 2020 national campaign.
socialistaction@xxxxxxx
Share:
Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on
Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend
(Opens in new window)
March 24, 2020 in Uncategorized.
Related posts
Capitalism vs. Socialism
Anatomy of Bernie Sanders’ socialism
Vote Socialist Action in 2020!
Post navigation← From 2008 and relevant again today! The Bailout: A
close-up look at the U.S. ruling class in action Search for
articles Search Search … Get Involved!
Donate to help support our work
Get email updates
Join Socialist Action
Social Media
View socialistactionusa’s profile on FacebookView SocialistActUS’s
profile on Twitter Subscribe to Our Newspaper
Newspaper Archives
Newspaper Archives
Upcoming Events
No upcoming events
--
___
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
