I agree with you, Miriam.
The fact is, no matter how objective we attempt to be, we can never be
certain of the mind set of the people back in history. Our culture is
so far from that of 1865 that we can only guess, despite all that has
been written. But I have read that the American slave system was the
most cruel of all known slave systems.
But then, I've never been more of a slave than I currently am.
Hopefully at some distant time people will read about our wonderful
democracy and shake their heads at how stupid the slaves of 2000 AD
really were.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/12/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Our formal system of slavery ended because of the civil war and the reasons
for that war had to do with the economic interests of different sectors of
our country. Whether or not the war was fought to end slavery, seems to be
up for debate. The slavery ended, but the racism didn't. Yes, there were
share croppers in the South, but when African Americans migrated to the
North, there were no efforts to integrate this rural, under educated
population into the mainstream, as there were efforts made to integrate
immigrants from other countries into the mainstream. There were settlement
houses for the immigrants. There were jails for the African Americans. There
are a lot of historians who've written about this and they agree about some
things and disagree about others. I have to admit that I haven't read
anything, aside from what I was required to read in college, about how the
Roman empire ended, about what slavery was actually like then, about the
circumstances of its ending. It was a very different society, a different
culture. I'm sure the nature of the slavery was different from what we had.
It's not so much that I think of what has happened as being random. But I
think more of socio/cultural issues along with economics. One of the things
that becomes more and more evident to me as I read more and more articles
and books, is that each piece of written information has been filtered
through the perspective, the beliefs, and at times, the economic self
interest of the writer. So not only do I have to understand the material, I
have to understand the point of view of the writer. For example, I
discovered that Media Matters, which produces a lot of articles that are
supposed to provide objective information about slanted information in the
mass media, is run by someone who also has a position as an important
operative in the Democratic Paarty. So Media Matters will probably give the
point of view of the Democratic Party on issues that are covered in the
media.
Think Progress, is a publication of the Center For American Progress which
is run by a Democratic lobbyist who worked in the Clinton administration and
whose brother is a lobbyist for politicians, both Republican and Democratic.
So I know that articles from these two sources may support the present
administration and or Hillaary Clinton. Or look at The WSJ and Fox Ndews,
owned by Murdock, and you know what point of view those publications will
favor. And I have to ssay that I know, almost before I read any of them,
what the articles from The Militant or The Socialist Workers' Party will
say. So I read a lot of things that sound reasonable to me, and then I try
to come up with what seems to me to be close to the truth.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
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[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2015 9:45 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ pol
The trouble with the way you are describing it is that you seem to be
assuming that historical events are just random events that happen now and
then with no causes. You speak of the comparison of slavery under capitalism
as an analogy to slavery as the main economic system as if any similarities
are just coincidental. Again, if you just look at the events isolated from
each other you would tend to make such assumptions and if you look at the
long view of history without considering the dialectical dynamics you see
coincidences. Of course, there are differences. The very fact of slavery
being practiced under a much further advanced system as capitalism causes
differences by itself.
Nevertheless, when similar economic systems over human history separated by
vast geographical distances and centuries of time play out in a very similar
way over and over I would think that you would become suspicious that there
might be common causes. Well, the further back an event is the spottier the
historical records are, but the historical records do still exist. You can
look at them and look for similar causes. The similar causes are there for
the finding and the studying. It is not just randomness. The ruling class
might want you to believe that it is just random events because that will
serve to squelch any desire to change the current system, but you really do
not have to slavishly view history from the perspective of the people who
want to preserve an oppressive system. If you want to change the existing
system there are a lot of lessons to be learned from struggles to change
oppressive systems in the past.
On 12/12/2015 9:58 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
OK. Immutable was the wrong word. And I can see the analogy of the feudal
system in europe with sharecroppers in the US. There are similarities.
But there are also vast differences. Sets of circumstances occurred at
two different times in history in very different societies and cultures
that have similarities, but that doesn't seem like a law or pattern that
we can depend on to predict what will happen next or what sorts of actions
we need to take. It is a way of viewing phenomena. It reminds me of
Freudian theory. A great deal of human behavior can be explained by it.
When I attended graduate school in social work, I learned a lot of
psychoanalytic theory and it influences how I see human behavior to some
extent. One can, and people have, explained almost everything in terms of
psychoanalytic theory, including history. If one is intelligent and works
at it, one can make almost everything fit. It's valid in many instances.
But it isn't the one and only way to analyze human behavior just as
marxist theory isn't the one and only way to analyze human behavior.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2015 12:25 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy]
Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy]
‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
Well, if we are talking about economics you really should think of the
economic system that is being talked about. Slavery is an economic system
and feudalism is an economic system. Slavery tends to transform into
feudalism and even so, both can exist at the same time and as subsets of a
broader economic system. It should also be realized that the
transformation does not just happen at random. Under a slave system slaves
do not want to be slaves and the slave holders do want them to be slaves.
As the slave struggles to become free the slave holder resists the
struggles of the slave. When the struggle advances to a certain point the
slaves do free themselves, but because of the resistance of the slave
holders the freedom is not complete. The slave holders may want to
maintain slavery, but the time comes that it becomes clear that to
continue to maintain that slavery will more likely result in one's own
death and so some concessions have to be made while every effort is made
to hold onto as much power as possible. That is how feudalism comes about.
That is exactly what happened to slavery in more modern times too. The
struggle came to a crisis point with the American civil war.
When the war was over the slaves had become sharecroppers, that is, feudal
serfs. The whole time this was playing out under capitalism and capitalism
has its own contradictions. What I am describing is the dialectics of
history. Without analyzing the dialectical dynamics you will be able to
see a pattern in history, but you will not have the basis for a law of
history. With an understanding of the dialectical dynamics you can start
talking about laws. However, this is not a law in the same sense as
Boyle's law of gas behavior. In that case every time you try to apply it,
it works. That is probably because there are a hell of a lot more gas
molecules than there are humans to work with. If you only dealt with mere
millions of gas molecules the behavior would probably be more erratic too.
The laws of history are more accurately tendencies. There are sidetracks.
There are regressions. There are differing rates of speed. Nevertheless,
though, if you take the long view of history you can see the patterns and
you can work out the dialectical dynamics. This is a long way from saying
that these laws are immutable. That comment about the immutable laws of
history is another one of those straw man arguments. If Marx had ever said
that each stage of history progresses in a specific way and that the way
isi immutable then, of course, he would be wrong. Arguing against him as
if he did say that is arguing against something other than Marx. I think
it is actually arguing against certain kinds of fortune tellers.
On 12/11/2015 9:55 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I never even thought about slavery in relation to the Roman Empire.
Sorry. All I thought about was military conquest and the crucifixion of
dissenters. But I should have because I read that wonderful book by
Howard Fast about the Roman slave whose name everyone knows, but which,
of course, has slipped my mind.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger
Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 8:08 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy]
Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
I don't know where you get this stuff about immutable, but I am
interested in something else you said. Do you really believe that a
transition from slavery to sharecropping, even a brutally enforced form
of sharecropping, was not an improvement? What do you think the freed
slaves would say to you about that?
On 12/11/2015 6:01 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
You need to know that I have no idea what you mean by "the laws of
history", but I assume that your talking abouthow Marxist theory
describes changes over time, dialectic something or other? I know I read
all this in college, but I surely didn't focus on it. I gather that you
believe that there are immutable laws in history, sort of like in
physics except that because we're talking about the social sciences,
individual activists can kind of help things move along. I suppose that
the problem is that the imperfections of human nature keep messing up
each system that has developed. Feudalism was not an improvement on the
Roman empire, just a change. Communism, as it developed in Russia and
China, wasn't better for people than American capitalism. I do like the
social democracies of Scandanavia and Great Britain and France were OK
for a brief period of time, as was the US for about 30 years. But things
go on changing - those immutable laws of history, I suppose, and they
seem to get worse, not better.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger
Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 3:40 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy]
Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics
from Trump to Sanders
It was followed by feudalism though. Do you think that the Roman Empire
was immune to the laws of history? If so, then what do you call the
economic system that replaced it if not feudalism?
On 12/11/2015 3:31 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I don't know about the laws of history, but I do know about the
political character of the US population And I also know that climate
change is moving at such a rate that its consequences will eliminate
human life unless immediate changes take place in how we live. I don't
see the US moving toward socialism. When the Roman empire imploded, it
wasn't followed by peace and equality throughout the world.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger
Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 3:04 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
Can you think of any reason that the US would be immune to the laws of
history?
On 12/11/2015 11:30 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Aside from a few mis statements, this is a pretty good summary of the
situation. The problem is, I feel like it leaves us nowhere. Does the
Socialist Workers' Party or any other socialist of communist party
actually think that there can be a socialist revolution in the US? I
suppose that hope springs eternal for some folks.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
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[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger
Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 10:19 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to
Sanders
http://socialistaction.org/
‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
Published December 10, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Sasha Murphy, of the ANSWER Coalition, leads demonstrators in a chant
during a protest against Republican presidential candidate Donald
Trump's hosting "Saturday Night Live" in New York, Saturday, Nov. 7,
2015. Despite a 40-year history of lampooning politicians while
inviting some to mock themselves as on-air guests, booking a
presidential candidate to host the NBC sketch-comedy show is almost
unprecedented.
(AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
Sasha Murphy, of the ANSWER Coalition, leads demonstrators in a chant
during a protest against Republican presidential candidate Donald
Trump's hosting "Saturday Night Live" in New York, Saturday, Nov. 7,
2015. Despite a 40-year history of lampooning politicians while
inviting some to mock themselves as on-air guests, booking a
presidential candidate to host the NBC sketch-comedy show is almost
unprecedented.
(AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
By JEFF MACKLER
That the leading Republican Party presidential candidate,
multi-billionaire Donald Trump, is a full-blown reactionary caricature
of a capitalist politician is now the common parlance of most major
media outlets. Even the relatively conservative Washington Post
featured a Dec. 1 Dana Milibank column entitled, “Donald Trump Racist
Bigot.”
Milibank, reflecting the general unease at Trump’s virulently racist,
misogynist, and xenophobic outbursts, wrote: “Let’s not mince words:
Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist. … There is a great
imperative not to be silent in the face of demagoguery. Trump in
this campaign has gone after African Americans, immigrants,
Latinos, Asians, women, Muslims and now the disabled…
“It might be possible to explain away any one of Trump’s outrages as a
mistake or a misunderstanding. But at some point you’re not merely
saying things that could be construed as bigoted: You are a bigot.
“It has been more than a quarter century since Trump took out ads in
New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for “criminals of
every age” after five black and Latino teens were implicated in the
Central Park jogger case. The young men, convicted and imprisoned,
were later cleared by DNA evidence and the confession of a serial
rapist—and Trump called their wrongful-conviction settlement a
‘disgrace.’”
“Since then,” Milibank continued, “Trump led the ‘birther’ movement
challenging President Obama’s standing as a natural-born American;
used various vulgar expressions to refer to women; spoke of Mexico
sending rapists and other criminals across the border; called for
rounding up and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants; had
high-profile spats with prominent Latino journalists and news outlets;
mocked Asian accents; let stand a charge made in his presence that
Obama is a Muslim and that Muslims are a ‘problem’ in America;
embraced the notion of forcing Muslims to register in a database;
falsely claimed thousands of Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks in
New Jersey; tweeted bogus statistics asserting that most killings of
whites are done by blacks; approved of the roughing up of a black
demonstrator at one of his events; and publicly mocked the [physical]
movements of New York Times (and former Washington Post) journalist
Serge Kovaleski, who has a chronic condition limiting mobility.”
What is perhaps a bit different in today’s virtually year-round
election hyperbole is the fact that virtually every one of the dozen
or so Republican presidential contenders have remained all but silent
as Trump daily spews out his noxious diatribes. Indeed, until quite
recently, most of the corporate media relished covering Trump’s every
anti-social rant, fearful perhaps that failure to do so might lose
them critical media ratings.
Trump himself has repeatedly affirmed that any coverage, especially
free media coverage—and to date he has by far had the lion’s share of
the latter—could only work to his advantage.
On Nov. 8, Trump delighted in the opportunity to appear on the popular
“Saturday Night Live” television show, where wacked-out comedian Larry
David, who plays the part of an obnoxious liberal racist on his “Curb
Your Enthusiasm” show, took up DeportRacism.com’s offer of a $5000
prize to publicly heckle Trump and call him a racist. David, who has
yet to collect his winnings, did just that—with Trump’s explicit and
prior, if not enthusiastic, agreement. In capitalist America today, a
real live, laughing, racist billionaire is a profitable talent to
broadcast!
Meanwhile, the front-running Trump has a dozen Republican challengers,
including the second in the polls—retired surgeon, Christian
fundamentalist, and climate and evolution denier Ben Carson. All
afford Trump virtually free rein in his fear and hate-mongering
campaign, with a few occasionally and cautiously seizing the
opportunity to one-up this racist bigot in order to better capture an
ever greater portion of the Republican Party’s alienated, largely
middle-class, Tea Party-enthusiast voter base.
No doubt Trump’s rants find fertile soil in a small layer of the
overall electorate, but even less in the general population, some half
of which increasingly does not bother to vote.
But Trump’s backwater histrionics are not new to the increasingly
polarized and crisis-ridden world capitalist scene. Overtly far-right,
if not neo-fascist, views are similarly expressed in France, England,
and across Europe. In the former two nations such right-wing parties
have, for the first time in nearly a century, outpolled the
traditional capitalist stalwart parties of the status quo.
Trump is the American reflection of overtly racist and neo-fascist
ideology— if not a conscious experiment with it. His racist rants in
some instances have encouraged the use of violent physical attacks by
his disaffected followers, who find his scapegoating of the oppressed
to their liking.
Democratic Party charade
On the Democratic Party side of capitalism’s electoral charade, this
ruling-class party’s lead candidates take the opposite tack,
portraying themselves as the font of progressive values.
In their first nationally televised debate, all five of the original
Democratic Party contenders, led by “socialist” Bernie Sanders and
matched by Hillary Clinton, enthusiastically decried the “casino
capitalism” of Wall Street.
Their purported vision of the future society is one in which the U.S.
“returns” to the moral values of its much fantasized “small business”
and “hard-working little man” roots, where prosperity awaits all who
conscientiously put in the effort. References to America’s slave-labor
and robber-baron origins are absent in this scenario.
Given President Obama’s significantly declining poll ratings, none of
the present Democratic Party contenders sought his overt political
support. “Mums the word” with regard to Obama’s record of leading the
nation in implementing each and every corporate assault against
unions, workers, and the poor. None chose to identify with Obama’s
unprecedented corporate largess in the form of multi-trillion-dollar
bailouts to the richest sectors of the U.S. ruling class.
Rhetoric aside, Sanders’ Democratic Party voting record stands at 98
percent, while Hillary Clinton’s financial support from corporate
America’s giants, as with Obama before her and Bill Clinton earlier,
topped all contributions to her Republican opponents.
We might add that former Secretary of State Clinton backed to the hilt
every imperialist war effort of the Obama administration from Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Libya to today’s U.S. war efforts in Syria. Obama’s
countless covert and drone wars abroad murdered millions while
stuffing the coffers of the military-industrial complex at home. But
virtually no comment from Bernie or Hillary!
Meanwhile, Obama’s hard-working “legacy” promoters struggle today to
posture the president as a keen environmental advocate, an ally of
immigrant communities, a champion of health care for all, a friend of
the working class, a champion of democratic rights, and a man who is
reluctant to send more troops to fight in the interests of U.S.
imperialism.
Obama has become the media-promoted rational champion of climate
science, currently partaking in the UN-sponsored Paris talks as the
chief “defender” of the earth against the ravages of global warming.
Yet, Obama’s administration holds the modern-day record for increasing
the use of fossil fuels, opening the floodgates to corporate off-shore
drilling, and maintaining the obnoxiously high government tax breaks
for the leading Big Oil polluters.
Obama’s recent squelching of the infamous Keystone XL pipeline
provided his administration a momentary fig leaf of credibility that
immediately vanishes when contrasted to the massive increase of
environmentally destructive pipeline complexes in place or under
construction across the country.
Obama, the “Great Deporter,” with a record two million immigrants
brutally forced out of the country to his credit, gifted $13 trillion
in bailouts over the past seven years to the corporate elite. He
presided over the wholesale shredding of civil liberties (as so ably
exposed by the Snowden revelations). His signature “affordable” health
care legislation gifted $3 trillion over the next 10 years to the
private and largely monopolized insurance, hospital, and
pharmaceutical industries—as opposed to a single-payer alternative
that would have saved $1 trillion in government expenditures over the
same period.
A Dec. 5 New York Times article entitled, “Jobs Report Seen as Strong
Enough for Fed Action” [to raise interest rates on today’s nearly
zero-rate “loans” to corporate America] nevertheless revealed some
bitter truths about the Obama administration’s seven-year record.
“At 62.5 percent,” The Times notes, “the proportion of Americans in
the labor force remains near mid-decade lows. The jobless rate for
African-Americans rose by 0.2 percentage points in November to 9.4
percent, which is more than twice the 4.3 percent for white
Americans.”
“Moreover, The Times adds, “the economy is still 2.8 million jobs
short of where it would have to be to match pre-recession employment
levels while also absorbing new entrants into the workforce. … Even if
the current trend continues, that so-called ‘jobs gap’ will not be
closed until mid-2017.”
Another Dec. 5 New York Times article, “Lawmakers Near Deal on
Billions in Tax Cuts,” notes that the upcoming bipartisan tax-cut
legislation, in almost all cases written behind the scenes and
negotiated secretly by the technocrat specialists of the corporate
elite, amounts to nothing less than a five-year duration transfer of
$840 billion from us to them—from tax-paying working people to the
tax-avoiding richest portion of the one percent that really rules
America.
A general shift to the right
Today’s political/electoral drama, almost always devoid of the crooked
corporate machinations that lead to tax cuts and other perks for the
super-wealthy, can best be summarized: “The Republicans talk the
talk:
the Democrats walk the walk.”
The silky and “progressive”-sounding Democratic Party election-time
jargon is no accident or fluke. It is consciously designed to pose
this wing of the ruling class as the “civilized” representatives of an
egalitarian society that respects, if not cherishes, democratic and
human rights and economic fairness.
Similarly, the Republicans’ election posturing as a racist nut-case
party of almost deranged hate-mongers, climate deniers, and war hawks
is not without its own logic. The extreme verbal political divergence
between Democrats and Republicans lays the foundation for capitalism’s
well-honed election-time lesser-evil scenario, wherein alienated
voters who would more than likely abandon the two-party shell game—a
60 percent majority favor a new third party, according to a recent
Gallup poll—feel compelled to once again allow themselves to partake
in “choosing”
capitalism’s preferred horse in the race.
The seeming Republican Party scapegoating mania combines well with a
generalized disgust with “establishment” politics, and it allows
Democrats to move ever further to the right. Few doubt that President
Obama and his Democratic Party political, social, and economic
policies are far to the right of the most “evil” Republican
propositions of yesteryear.
This generalized shift to the right of ruling-class politics, and the
associated feigned public disputes, never fail to reach resolution in
the hidden congressional and corporate corridors, where “compromise”
solutions, always at the expense of the vast majority, are routinely
arrived at.
The chaotic and crisis-ridden capitalist system itself—in a crisis
virtually equal in magnitude to that of the Great Depression of
1929—best accounts for today’s public partisan discord. Different
wings of the ruling elite are today at odds with regard to how much,
how fast, and with what means—mass repression or “friendly”
persuasion—to most effectively advance their common corporate
interests.
Sanders pledges to support any Democrat
It is in this context, where massive disillusionment with and
alienation from “traditional” capitalist parties and politics has
reached new heights, that one can also understand the rise of
long-time registered “independent,” now “socialist,” Bernie Sanders,
as well as the racist social dissident, Donald Trump.
Bernie Sanders is now an official Democrat, having pledged in advance
to support whoever of his party competitors emerges from the upcoming
election primary contests as the winner. In some recent polls in the
early primary states, like New Hampshire and Iowa, Sanders’ ranking
appears to be in the political ballpark—that is, he could win.
It was perhaps some 50-60 years ago, when I first encountered the
“lesser evil” dichotomy at work—Kennedy vs. Nixon and Johnson (LBJ)
vs.
Barry Goldwater—that I half seriously predicted that the time would
come when the ruling-class elite, when it believed it was necessary to
head off a likely working-class move toward a break with the
capitalist two-party duopoly, would run a “socialist” for president,
under the Democratic Party imprimatur, of course.
That day has arrived, with “Bernie” filling the bill almost perfectly
as today’s central sheepherder of the unwary back into the Democratic
Party fold.
Sanders’ service record on capitalism’s behalf falls well within the
boundaries of ruling-class politics. He supported the Obama
administration’s wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and
Yemen—although he, like most other liberals who feigned opposition to
the Iraq War, including Obama, now claim that this war was a
”mistake.”
The Saddam Hussein government after all, they have been compelled
to admit, never had “weapons of mass destruction.” The U.S.
slaughter of
1.5 million Iraqis, we are told with a straight face, was a mistake!
“Socialist” Sanders gave his assent to countless trillion-dollar
military appropriations bills, including all congressional measures
that supported Israel in its genocidal drive to eliminate any
Palestinian presence in their historic homeland.
Thus, campaigning for and organizing mass forces to demand the
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from every
nation on earth is not within the Sanders campaign’s calculated
political territory. He knows full well that any real socialist would
view U.S.
imperialism’s wars everywhere as nothing less than the extension and
embodiment of U.S. ruling-class policies at home.
Sanders has indeed disappointed some of his liberal and even
“socialist”
supporters today due to his perceived “weakness” on foreign-policy
issues and his failure to unequivocally challenge and condemn the
ever-increasing brutality and police murder of unarmed Blacks. When
confronted with a Black Lives Matter representative who jumped onto
the stage demanding to know where Sanders stood on America’s deepening
racist attacks, the “political revolutionary” was speechless and
quickly exited, leaving the audience stunned. When he was soon
afterward advised that his well-crafted liberal image had to include a
modicum of support to Black rights, he meekly assented, but only to
the point of not significantly interfering with Clinton’s prior turf
“claim” to the Black vote.
Sanders has also made clear that he is not the kind of socialist that
seeks the social ownership of the nation’s wealth and the
establishment of a revolutionary state that once and for all places
society’s means of production and wealth in the hands of and under the
democratic control of those who produce it, in the framework of a
government of the working class and its allies. Sanders’ “socialism,”
he insists, includes respect for private property—operating, perhaps,
in a bit more humanely manner.
In short, Sanders, like his “socialist” counterparts in France or in
the Scandinavian countries, seeks a “kinder gentler capitalism.” The
fact that he seeks to emulate Europe’s historically bankrupt
social-democratic capitalist model while these nations are engaged in
supporting all of NATO’s wars and imposing the same, if not worse,
austerity measures against their respective working masses is not
unexpected.
In these troubled times “Bernie,” in fact, perfectly fills
capitalism’s needs for legitimacy. His chatter about the need for a
“political revolution” in the U.S. is subordinate to his
quarter-century service as Vermont’s leading elected
official—unchallenged by the Democratic Party.
His current assignment, for which he will undoubtedly be richly
rewarded down the line, is to corral working-class discontent back
into the capitalist framework and, when the Peter Pan fairy dust has
cleared, to back Hillary Clinton.
Santa is in exile!
There is no Santa Claus on Wall Street, dear friends—neither in the
form of Bernie and Hillary nor charitable gift-giving billionaires
like Gates and Zuckerberg. Indeed, the real Santa likely abandoned his
North Pole abode at the first signs of Industrial Revolution
capitalist-caused global warming.
That once pristine ice-capped area, increasingly barren today, is the
domain of happy Obama’s helpers, including the Chevron Corporation,
which seeks to mine the exposed earth for the very fossil fuels whose
continued use spells doom for all human kind. The real Santa likely
moved his helpers to cities around the world to join the fight to
restore his homeland and ours, and to return to the people of the
earth the opportunity to collectively build a joyous world, free from
those who would irrationally destroy it in the pursuit of profit.
Another Christmastime hero, a young Jewish rebel who lived a bit more
than 2000 years ago, may have left us with some insightful words to
ponder. “Drive the money changers from the temple,” he exhorted. Not a
bad holiday admonition! Indeed, the socialist movement of the early
19th century did include followers of Jesus, who believed that
socialism was the modern-day expression of the teachings of the Lord.
Today’s Marxist revolutionaries base themselves on a qualitatively
grounded or materialist understanding of the roots of capitalist
society’s countless horrors. As the gap narrows between workers’
mounting hatred of the dread consequences of capitalist exploitation
and oppression and their reluctance to enter the fray to challenge it
in all its fundamentals, we will see countless millions of new and
clear-sighted fighters break with all of capitalism’s
ruling-class-based institutions of coercion and control.
That day is not far over the horizon. Today, the conscious
organization of a deeply-rooted mass revolutionary socialist
party—aimed at ending capitalist rule forever and bringing forth a new
world dedicated to advancing the finest yearnings for freedom,
justice, and equality—is Socialist Action’s reason for being. Join
us!
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