It will be interesting to see how many Sanders supporters throw in
with Clinton, should Sanders lose out in the Primary. That will say a
great deal about the level of understanding of Sanders base.
Stein or Sanders. This article is on target in its contention that
neither candidate is free of the Corporate Capitalist System. Stein
does need to turn to the Labor Unions for support, as well as
advocating their importance in shaping a more equitable future for the
Working Class. Sanders needs to cut the cord that holds him tethered
to the Military/Industrial Complex. Frankly, his vow to make major
social changes will crash and burn if he does not take on the huge
military budget, and denounce the widespread murder the Empire is
going forward with.
But only speaking for myself, I'll still go through the Primary with
Bernie Sanders, and then, if Hillary Clinton is the Puppet of Choice,
I'll switch to Jill Stein. But again, the writer makes a good point.
We need a Working Class Party, steeped in socialism.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/4/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://socialistaction.org/jill-stein-a-green-new-deal/
Jill Stein: ‘A Green New Deal’
Published July 3, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
July 2015 Jill Stein 2
By JOE AUCIELLO
As Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign gains increasing public
support and respectful media attention, physician and Green Party
activist Dr. Jill Stein has announced her own candidacy for president.
Speaking on “Democracy Now” on June 26, Stein, the Green Party candidate
in 2012, vowed to run on a “Power to the People” platform that would
sharply oppose the policies of the leading Democratic and Republican
contenders.
As in the past presidential election, Stein is proposing a “Green New
Deal,” a comprehensive program of social and political reform. Her
platform emphasizes a national shift in resources from fossil fuels to
renewable energy by 2030 and a jobs-creation program to make such change
possible. Stein favors cancelling student college debts today and
providing free college education tomorrow. The Green Party candidate
also supports the $15 minimum wage and single-payer health care.
Stein’s reference to a “Green New Deal,” is an obvious allusion to
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democratic Party “New Deal,” which was aimed at
saving capitalism in the face of the emerging labor-based mass struggles
of the 1930s. In truth, past Green Party presidential campaigns centered
on offering reforms of capitalism on the one hand while not acting as
“spoilers” for the Democrats’ chances in contests where the outcome was
expected to be close. That is, “Vote Green!” only in states where it
won’t usher in a Republican.
Stein concedes that her program shares “many similarities” with the
campaign of Sanders, the “leftist” candidate in the Democratic Party
primaries, though there are differences in regard to foreign relations.
Stein forthrightly denounces the prime minister of Israel as “a war
criminal” and, unlike Sanders, would not sell weapons to the Israeli
regime. Such distinctions aside, however, the overall likeness to the
Sanders program is very much to the point.
The Green Party strategy anticipates that after the power of Wall Street
ensures a Hillary Clinton victory in the primaries, Bernie Sanders will
shepherd his flock into the Clinton campaign. Disappointed followers of
Sanders, so this logic goes, will then become the enthusiastic
supporters of Jill Stein. Further, her campaign would hope to turn these
sympathizers into a new generation of Green Party recruits—that is, a
grouping still in search of an electoral, as opposed to class-struggle,
formula to attract voters to the project of reforming capitalism.
In the parched political desert that is America’s electoral landscape,
the Stein campaign would appear to present a small but refreshing oasis.
Instead, it is a mirage!
This can be seen in Stein’s statement on “Democracy Now” that her
platform is “focused on reforming the financial system—not only breaking
up the big banks but actually establishing public banks” as well as
“nationalizing the Fed” (the Federal Reserve System). To speak of reform
of a financial system based on the rule of the corporate capitalist
elite (the “one percent”), rather than abolishing it, tells us that her
program, no matter how “radical” it might sound, amounts to acceptance
of the system in its fundamentals.
The Greens proudly state that their campaign does not accept corporate
funding, yet their campaign does accept the rule of corporate power.
Stein’s campaign platform differs little from that of the “successful”
reformist Green Parties around the world that regularly participate in
coalition capitalist governments and support their anti-labor policies.
Indeed, the Green Party in the U.S. is little more than an electoral
association of mainly middle-class reformers with no roots in
working-class organizations or mass social struggles. The Greens have no
perspectives, long or short term, of rebuilding today’s trade unions
into fighting working class-based institutions that operate in the
economic and political arena independently of and against the twin
parties of U.S. capitalism.
“Their government is not our government!” Stein exclaims. But if this
idea is more than an applause line, a mere rhetorical flourish, then it
means not only a change in party—a Green Party victory in place of a
Democrat or Republican Party victory—it means building the kind of
organizations capable of leading a challenge for power.
Yes, their government is not our government because it is a tool for the
capitalist class to ensure its wealth and privilege, to guarantee, as
far as possible, the continued existence of their rule and our
exploitation.
The way forward goes far beyond the Green Party’s platform of “New Deal”
reformism. It begins with a class break from all capitalist and
pro-capitalist parties, the Green Party included. The road ahead will
likely include the formation of a trade-union-based Labor Party, based
on fighting unions in alliance with all the oppressed and exploited.
Obtaining a real and lasting victory for workers and oppressed people in
the United States will also require the construction of a mass
revolutionary socialist party aimed at the abolition of capitalism.
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Posted in Elections, Environment. | Tagged Green Party, Greens, Jill Stein.
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