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
