We
have now had the second of the Democratic Party nominees debate where
Biden and Bernie were the main focus. Sanders is a self-styled
“socialist” has frequently cited the influence of Eugene Debs,
the one-time multiple presidential candidate for the Socialist Party
of America. If
Debs was to rise from the grave would he feel pleased at the progress
of his cause? Support
for Bernie Sanders is offered as the antidote to the Wall St elite,
but is it? Sanders is running as a Democrat. Has he talked about the
once thriving active American socialist tradition? Sanders,
instead, describes his socialism as “Scandinavian”, his models
are Finland and Sweden not the presidential electoral platform of
Eugene Debs.
When Sanders, in his campaign to win the Democratic
nomination, says that the United States can learn from the
Scandinavians about having a strong welfare state, socialised health
care, stronger unions, and the like, he is diluting the meaning of
the word socialism which for actual socialists refers to workers’
control of production and the democratic running of the economy by
the people for the common good, not the profits of a capitalist elite
as much as advancing it. Bernie blames the US billionaire class for
the increase in poverty, joblessness, homelessness, and war. It also
makes it clear that Bernie believes the system that created this
relatively minuscule group of billionaires can reform itself given
the right person at the helm with a large popular movement behind
them. Bernie Sanders is no socialist but a progressive left liberal. Sanders
believes that capitalism can work if it is properly tethered and
reined in.
Capital
is still in the private hands of the ruling class. There is not yet
socialism. He would see clearly that America, despite its great
technological advances is spending more money on war and business
subsidies than it spends on education, health and general social
uplift. For Debs palliatives were not the solution. The only
possible cure was to cut off the root of the problem and establish an
industrial democracy. Half-measures as proposed by Sanders cannot
meet such a challenge. Tinkering with and fiscal policy has always
proven bankrupt. Welfare policies will do little to correct the
deep-seated structures of regional and social inequality. Legislative
reforms, aimed at the most blatant abuses of corporate power, will
falter, for the CEOs will hold the government to ransom through their
control of desperately needed investment. So much so that a
reform-minded Sanders government will buckle under this pressure, and
will pass business-friendly legislation, cutting social services and
suppressing the basic rights of workers. It is not speculation but a
conclusion reached by reading actual history. Capitalism has failed,
and so have efforts to reform it. Why return to old policies that
have proved wanting and believe they will now work. For socialists
such as Debs, the needs of people, not profit, are the driving force
of society. The system cannot function if common working men and
women were to take matters in their own hands!
It
is well worth offering the analyse of Debs when it comes to the US
electoral circus.
“...Parties
but express in political terms the economic interests of those who
compose them. This is the rule. The Republican party represents the
capitalist class, the Democratic party the middle class and the
Socialist party the working class. There is no fundamental difference
between the Republican and Democratic parties. Their principles are
identical. They are both capitalist parties and both stand for the
capitalist system, and such differences as there are between them
involve no principle but are the outgrowth of the conflicting
interests of large and small capitalists...”
“...To
the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact.
They, or rather., it, stands for capitalism, for the private
ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation ol the
workers, and for wage-slavery...”
“...As
a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are
Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all
capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones,
are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is
always and everywhere the capitalist class. Whether
the means of production—that is to say, the land, mines, factories,
machinery, etc.—are owned by a few large Republican capitalists,
who organize a trust, or whether they be owned by a lot of small
Democratic capitalists, who are opposed to the trust, is all the same
to the working class. Let the capitalists, large and small, fight
this out among themselves. “
“...The
so-called progressive programs of the Democrats under Bryan and
Wilson and the Republicans under Roosevelt are merely so many
apologies for the crimes of capitalism. The standpat capitalists
under the leadership of President Taft offer few apologies, but
boldly take their stand for the existing order as it is...”
“...Unlike
the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, the Socialist
Party platform is a plain and simple declaration of principles and
policies which all may understand. It was not framed merely with a
view to winning votes. Its utterances are straightforward and to the
point. There is no ambiguity; no evasion of vital issues; no
possibility of double construction. There is no attempt to
compromise with capitalism; no effort to throw a sop to the enemies
of labor; no adherence to the miserable fiction that the interests of
labor and capital are identical. The Socialist Party, in short,
proposes to place the workers in possession of all the wealth they
produce and to insure to every individual full and free opportunity
to labor. The elector who casts his vote for its candidates may do so
with the positive assurance that whenever the opportunity arises
every pledge of the party platform will be carried out to the letter.
The Socialist Party does not disguise the fact that its ultimate aim
is the entire abolition of rent, interest, and profit...”
As
a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sanders does
a disservice to Debs’ legacy and his commitment to working-class
political independence. Sanders is not helping the working class to
organize, speak and act for itself. By trying to get Democratic
politicians to say and do what the left wants them to say and do, the
left has been engaged in a pathetic and hopeless attempt at political
ventriloquism. It is dependent politics, powerless politics. It is
readily admitted by many in the liberal progressive movement that
both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are controlled by
moneyed interests. And as much as Bernie Sanders has identified with
“socialism”, we know that the Democratic Party represents
corporate interests. So no matter what the candidates say or do, they
are still being controlled by the two-party system which is
disempowering.
Frederick
Engels told American socialists when the labor movement in New York
City nominated the non-socialist reformer Henry
George for mayor in 1886, “...The masses must have time and
opportunity to develop, and they can only have the opportunity when
they have their own movement...”
Sanders
may have the rhetoric of inequality down pat, but he is running as a
Democrat – as a member of a political party that is owned and
controlled by a relatively small number of millionaires and
billionaires. Should he become president, he would also become part
of what is derided as “the Washington establishment”
and which kneels before the Wall St corporations. Bernie
Sanders believe it is possible for both capitalists and the working
class to coexist in a system where capitalists can still make lots of
money, but where workers are afforded security and a decent standard
of living. Marxists espouse a theory that poverty, unemployment, and
class oppression are not side effects of capitalism but a vital part
of it. This is the simple harsh reality. It is
something that Sanders’ hero Eugene Debs understood only too very
well.
No comments:
Post a Comment