Sanders may very well be a Democratic Socialist, philosophically. But he
made a decision that he wanted to have an impact on the 2016 campaign. We
don't know if he actually expected to win the nomination, but we know that
at least, he wanted to have a public discourse on economic inequality. The
only way to have his discussion covered by the mainstream media was to run
as a mainstream party candidate. There's all sorts of evidence for this.
Note what Chris Hedges ssaid about how hundreds of people have been arrested
for demonstrating at the Capitol and the media aren't talking about the
demonstrations or the reason for them. Ironically, the demonstrations are
about economic inequality and money in politics, precisely what Sanders is
talking about. But just as, for months, Sanders was barely covered by the
media, not until he could accumulate votes and donations, these
demonstrations aren't being covered because the corporate media doesn't
really want to publicize the reason for the demonstrations. In an interview
with Margaret Flowers, the Green Party candidate for the Senate in Maryland,
Hedges complained that Sanders had sold out. He'd been an independent for so
many years. Hedges said Sanders ran as a Democrat and caucused with the
Democrats in order to enhance his career. Hedgs and Flowers agreed that
voting for a corporate party candiddate can't change anything, and that the
only change that will come, will come from revolution in the sgtreets,
organizing, etc. Perhaps that's true. But all the little Communist parties
have been doing that for years. They organize, have meetings, put out
literature, have candidates, and so has the Green Party. But no one with
whom I have contact, aside from folks on this list, knows who the Green
Party is. No one ever heard of Jill Stein, and most haven't heard of Ralph
Nader. So it seems to me that it is counterproductive to criticize Bernie
for choosing to run within the system, in order to attempt to educate people
and make things a bit better. Given the powers of Corporations and banks and
the military, I don't know that any of us has the answer.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2016 3:20 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Wheres the socialism in
the Sanders campaign?
This is what I was trying to get at when discussing Labels and the negative
impact they have.
Sanders puts himself forth as a Democratic Socialist. But again and again
his campaign positions show him to be a Democratic Capitalist.
But regardless of what he believes himself to be, Sanders could not move the
Empire toward socialism if he were president. The incoming president will
be president of a Corporate Capitalist system. An Empire that is in fact,
an Oligarchy.
Talk about the lack of Freedom around the world. This government has such a
tight grasp on its political process that there is absolutely no choice
allowed.
Sure, we can quibble and scrabble over those issues that are not important
to the Empire, appearing to win some concessions here and there. But in the
long haul, the working class is losing ground.
Sanders may really believe that he can head up a drive toward a more
equitable government, but it can't happen as long as it is the government of
the Corporate Elite.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/16/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/04/16/pers-a16.htmlClinton.
Wheres the socialism in the Sanders campaign?
16 April 2016
In the campaign for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination,
Walter Mondale, citing a then-popular advertising tagline, reproached
his chief rival Gary Hart for empty platitudes and lack of substance,
asking him repeatedly, Wheres the beef? In the 2016 campaign, a
similarly blunt question could be posed to Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders: Wheres the socialism?
Sanders rocketed to prominence last summer as a self-proclaimed
democratic socialist, striking a pose of intransigent opposition to
Wall Street and the domination of American politics by the
millionaires and billionaires. He has capitalized on the growing
popularity of socialism among millions of students and younger
workers, winning more than 7.5 million votes and posing a substantial
challenge to the Democratic frontrunner, former secretary of state Hillary
decisions.
His identification with socialism has been critical to Sanders winning
support among the younger generation of working people, who have seen
capitalism produce nothing but economic decay, financial crisis and
never-ending war. One recent poll showed that voters under 30
preferred socialism to capitalism by a sizeable margin, 43 percent to
32 percent, despite the nonstop media demonization of socialism.
But aside from the label, which Sanders now rarely uses, his socialism
is invisible. He has not called for a single industry to be placed
under public ownership and democratic controlnot the oil companies,
not the arms manufacturers, not the utilities, not the Wall Street
banks that plunged the US and world economy into the deepest economic
crisis since the Great Depression.
The completely vacuous character of Sanders socialism was on
display in his debate Thursday night in Brooklyn with Hillary Clinton,
when Sanders was questioned about his call to break up the biggest US
banks, bailed out by the federal government in the 2008-2009 Wall
Street crisis. CNN journalist Dana Bash asked why he proposed to let
the banks themselves decide how the breakup would proceed:
Sanders: The point is we have got to break them up so that they do not
pose a systemic risk and so that we have a vibrant economy with a
competitive financial system.
Bash: But Senator, you didnt answer the specific question, which is
not just about breaking up the banks, but why allow the banks to do it
themselves?
Sanders: Because Im not surewhat the government should say is you
are too big to fail. Youve got to be a certain size. And then the
banks themselves can figure out what they want to sell off. I dont
know that its appropriate that the Department of Treasury be making those
fraud.
There is nothing at all radical here. Sanders argues like a
free-market conservative, declaring it isnt appropriate for the
government to make decisions about the sell-off of bank assets. And
this after repeatedly declaring that the business model of Wall Street is
Apparently, the fraudsters can continue their operations unhindered,not a socialist.
just on a somewhat smaller scale.
Sanderss proposal to break up the major Wall Street banks, is not, as
the WSWS has explained, a socialist measure. He does not propose
placing the banking system under public ownership and democratic
control, so that the resources of society can be used for human need
and not the accumulation of personal wealth by a financial
aristocracy. Instead, he advocates maintaining the private ownership
of the banks, only dividing them into smaller units to create what he
called in the debate a competitive financial system.
His call to downsize the biggest banks is, in fact, the position of a
faction within the ruling class and the financial bureaucracy itself.
The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank and its president, Neel Kashkari,
are holding public symposiums promoting the proposal. Kashkari, a
former Goldman Sachs banker and Treasury official in the Bush
administration, was the administrator of the $700 billion Troubled
Asset Relief Program bank bailout.
In his only public address devoted to the question of socialism, last
November 19 at Georgetown University, Sanders presented his policies
as an extension of Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal and Lyndon
Johnsons Great Society, both efforts at liberal reform to save
capitalism, not put an end to it. He declared categorically, I dont
believe government should own the means of production I believe in
private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America.
The policies Sanders advocates on jobs, health care, education and the
like would not have been out of place in the Democratic Party of the
1960s, and are far less radical than those proposed by the Populists
of the 1890s and the Progressive and Farmer-Labor parties of the early
20th century, which called for public ownership of the railroads and
utilities, and the breaking up of corporate monopolies.
What Sanders is proposing now for Wall Streeta self-directed
breakuphas a noxious historical precedent: the breakup of the
telecommunications industry in 1984. Under government prodding, the
telephone monopoly AT&T broke itself up into seven component parts,
initiating a process of deregulation, asset-stripping and mergers that
has produced an unmitigated disaster for the workers of that industry,
as demonstrated by the current strike by telecommunications workers at
Verizon.
Sanders made an appearance on the Verizon picket line and has been
endorsed by the leadership of the Communication Workers of America,
the union that has sold out strike after strike and is preparing a
similar fate for the current struggle. A socialist would raise the
demand that Verizon and the other telecommunications companies be
nationalized under the democratic control of the workers. But Sanders is
Toward the end of the Brooklyn debate, Sanders boasted that he had
brought millions of new voters, both independents and young people,
into the Democratic Party. I am proud that millions of young people
who previously were not involved in the political process are now
coming into it, he said, and I do believe that we have got to open
the door of the Democratic Party to those people.
Sanders is like the rooster who thinks his crowing causes the sun to
rise. Millions of workers and youth are moving to the left, not
because of the senator from Vermont, who is a temporary and
undeserving beneficiary of this process, but because of the crisis and
breakdown of American and world capitalism.
While Sanders seeks to keep this movement trapped within the
straitjacket of the Democratic Party and offers his socialist
persona and anti-Wall Street rhetoric as a means of doing so, it would
be wrong to confuse the aspirations of those supporting him with the
calculations of the senator himself. There is an objective logic to
politics. The support for Sanders is only a transitional stage in a
political radicalization that is placing mass struggles against the
capitalist system on the agenda in the United States.
What is needed is the building of a new political leadership among
workers and youth that can explain what socialism is, why it is
necessary, and how it is to be achieved. That is the task the
Socialist Equality Party will undertake in the course of the 2016
elections and beyond.
Patrick Martin
The author also recommends:
The message of Wisconsin
[7 April 2016]
Is Sanders call to break up the banks a socialist demand?
[12 April 2016]
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