Somehow I just don't seem to understand how it is the pragmatic way to
effect social change when you support the candidates who are opposed to
social change.
___
Carl Sagan
“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder
and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to
nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will
prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront
the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the
Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will
penetrate its deepest mysteries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
On 6/9/2020 12:59 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I think that this is a naive analysis of the intellectual and political
spokesman whom the author is criticizing. People like Sanders are not
supporting Biden because they support the Corporate Democrats or even
Capitalism, they are doing so because they believe, (whether or not one agrees
with them), that this is the pragmatic, most effective way to effect social
change at this point.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 11:07 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein and More Launch
“Progressive International”
Bernie Sanders, Naomi Klein and More Launch “Progressive International”
https://socialistaction.org/2020/06/08/climate-and-social-democrat-celebrities-launch-progressive-international/
June 8, 2020
By GARY PORTER
On May 10, climate activists, social democrats, anti-imperialists, left-wing
commentators and critics launched a new international project.
In September, the sponsors will meet for the inaugural Summit of the
Progressive International (PI) in Reykjavik, Iceland. It will be hosted by the
Prime Minister of Iceland and the Left Green Movement. This new project occurs
in the context of a raging viral pandemic, economic depression, an escalating
nuclear arms race, and rapid global warming that puts humanity on the verge of
catastrophe.
Billionaires force workers back to work, without protection from COVID-19, by
cutting financial support. “Essential” workers who, it turns out, are often
low-paid racialized workers, sicken and die, as unemployment skyrockets.
Hospitals, stripped by 40 years of neo-liberal cuts, cannot handle the sick.
Imperialist drones, bombs, brutal economic sanctions and assassinations by
special forces never stop.
The contradictions and crises of capitalism multiply and magnify like gaping
wounds, leaving open sores across the landscape. Witnessing all of this,
billions of people are desperate to find a way out, including those who are
forming the Progressive International.
But the list of 64 members of the PI Council posted on its website does not
include radicalizing youth, the poor or very many workers. Most are
intellectuals and professional politicians. The rise of authoritarian
governments, violence, anti intellectualism, hostility to science and experts,
and the decline of civilized discourse, strand these intellectuals and
parliamentary figures in darkness and fear. None of them look to the power of
mobilized workers and farmers, or even consider that a serious possibility. PI
appears as an effort to bolster resistance to the tide of crude ignorance,
chaos and destruction represented by Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Erdogan,
Duterte, et al.
Who are these people? From Canada, there is author Naomi Klein of The Leap
Manifesto and Green New Deal fame, together with her media-savvy partner Avi
Lewis. While supporting the BDS movement against apartheid Israel and for a
green transformation of society, including the elimination of inequality and
the creation of ‘more democratic’ state institutions, Klein and Lewis offer no
clear analysis of class society.
They stipulate no clear commitment to fighting for workers’ power, to replace
the capitalist state, and to institute workers’ control of the means of
production in order to meet human needs, rather than deliver profits to
billionaires. NDP MP Niki Ashton, another council member from Canada, holds
similar views, though she is somewhat clearer on the importance and potential
power of the unions.
The biggest names from United States are Bernie Sanders from the capitalist
Democratic Party, now a Joe Biden campaigner, and Noam Chomsky, a long-time
critic of the imperialist role of America in the world, who happens also to be
a Democratic Party-Joe Biden supporter.
Yannis Varoufakis, a former Finance Minister for the Greek social democratic
SYRIZA government, is a member of the Council. To this add a long list of
ministers and legislators from across Latin America, Europe and Africa. They
profess to be on the side of workers and oppressed peoples, but their record is
one of neo-liberalism and support for global corporations and capitalist state
institutions. Liberal and social democratic journalists and cultural figures
round out the 64-member council.
The PI has no program at this stage. Presumably, that will be considered at the
conference in Iceland.
Where will they stand on the rule of profit over human need? Where will they
stand on imperialist economic and military domination of the third world and
indigenous peoples around the world for the purpose of super exploitation and
robbing them of their resources? Where will they stand on the need to establish
workers’ power and build a new workers’ state based on the complete destruction
of the legislative, legal, bureaucratic and repressive apparatus of the
capitalist state.
Are they reformers of capitalism, albeit perhaps radical reformers, or
supporters of the end of exploitation by a worker-led revolutionary overthrow
of capitalism and the struggle for socialism? In the end, do they support
capitalism or workers’ power? The record of the individuals involved is not
encouraging.
The idea of PI was born in December 2018, when the Democracy in Europe Movement
and the Sanders Institute in the US issued a call proclaiming “it is time for
progressives of the world to unite.”
On the launch of the group Monday, May 10, Chomsky in an interview with the
Guardian said that the urgency created by the COVID-19 crisis has caused a
deepening of economic inequalities and the rise of the far-right.
So, as autocratic neo-liberalism represents one way, “the other way is to try
to dismantle the structures, the institutional structures that have been
created; that have led to very ugly consequences for much of the population of
much of the world, [and] are the source of this pandemic.”
The activities of the PI initiative are erected on three pillars: the movement
aimed to forge a global network; the Blueprint to develop a policy for a
progressive international order; and the Wire which offers a communication
service to the world’s progressive forces.
Its stated objectives are “to promote the union, coordination and mobilization
of activists, associations, unions, and social movements in the face of the
advance of authoritarianism.” They say they aspire to a “democratic,
decolonized, egalitarian, liberated, united, sustainable, ecological, peaceful,
post-capitalist, prosperous and plural” world.
This compendium of liberal and social democratic values serves as its
programmatic foundation.
What do we know about these people?
Fernando Haddad, the Brazilian PT´s presidential candidate, former Ecuadorian
president Rafael Correa and former Bolivian vice president Álvaro García
Linera, were all part of “progressive governments.” None of them produced
fundamental change in their countries´ economic and social structures, which
continued to be capitalist and dependent, with extremely high rates of poverty,
a growing deterioration of everything public and a retreat concerning workers´
fundamental rights. This led to their demise, and opened the door for
right-wingers like Jair Bolsonaro, Lenin Moreno and Jeanine Áñez to come to
power in their countries. Some of them declare themselves defenders of the
welfare state and claim to defend public health, but when they governed, they
weakened public health care to pay external debt to the imperialists. Rather
than defend ecology, they maintained extractive and polluting models of
production to guarantee extraordinary profits to corporations.
Alicia Castro, union leader of the bureaucratic Argentine CGT and
ex-Congresswoman of the Alianza, brought de la Rúa to power. That government
killed dozens of grassroots activists during its downfall.
The same can be said of Bernie Sanders, who generated great expectations by
speaking of socialism in the heart of the empire and raising popular proposals,
like universal health insurance in a country where you can die without medical
attention if you don´t have money. His recent support for Joe Biden, a
candidate for the US economic establishment, a racist and misogynist leader of
the imperialist Democratic Party, completes his record, for the second time as
a Judas goat who leads his young followers to the camp of blood-drenched
capitalist politicians.
So, what are the odds that Progressive International will advocate an end to
usurious debts to foreign capital, the nationalization of banks and resources,
and to put foreign trade under social control, to reverse privatizations, carry
out significant agrarian reforms, or impose permanent progressive taxes on the
wealthy? Isn’t that what an international party on the side of the working
class ought to do? But the record of most of these people shows that they are
defenders of the private property of businesses and banks, that their model of
liberty is the farce of bourgeois democracy, which they propose to broaden just
a bit, at most. They want to put a human face on the capitalist system, which
it is impossible to humanize, and which is becoming ever more brutal.
Perhaps the rapidly deepening multiple crises of capitalism will push some of
these leaders to the left, toward understanding that the problem is capitalism,
and that workers’ power is the first step to a solution.
That would be a welcome and very positive development.
But this group is not composed of young militants. As a group they are mature,
entrenched, established figures with developed views and many years of
experience. That experience, for the most part, is professing policies to
reform the most exploitative, oppressive and brutal aspects of capitalism. When
in government, they accepted the burdens of indebtedness, the primacy of profit
over human needs, and the duty of exacting neoliberal cutbacks.
Revolutionary socialists already know the source of all our existential crises
is the capitalist system, and that the only force on earth capable of
overthrowing capitalism is the organized, class conscious working class. Only
an educated and experienced revolutionary party, with deep roots in the
workers’ movement, will be capable of focussing the uprising of the workers,
when it comes, against the instruments of state power. We also know that the
struggle is international in scope – it is a war against imperialism on a
global scale.
The Progressive International is not the distillation of these vital lessons.
It is born from the failed and utterly diversionary effort to reform
capitalism, to salvage it from its death agony. The PI may foster some
interesting debates, but its basic mission is dead on arrival.
Related Articles
The “New Normal” and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine May 11, 2020 By MARTY GOODMAN
Today only 51.3% of American adults have jobs – the lowest number on record,
lower than the Great Depression. We have passed 80,000 coronavirus deaths.
Should Progressives Work in the Democratic Party?
April 14, 2020
Here we reprint part of a 1959 debate between a revolutionary socialist and a
social democrat. George Breitman, a member of the Socialist Workers Party and
longtime editor of The Militant newspaper, argued the No side.
The Demise of Bernie Sanders
April 9, 2020
By JEFF MACKLER Author’s note: This article was written three weeks before
Bernie Sanders’ April 7 withdrawal from the Democratic Party primary race. I
see no reason to change a word.
--
___
Carl Sagan
“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder
and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to
nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will
prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront
the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the
Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will
penetrate its deepest mysteries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos