Is Bernie Sanders really a socialist?
In
the latest Democratic Party debate Bernie Sanders talked the talk
which we have gorwn accustomed from hearing from him.
“...how
come nothing really changes? How come for the last 45 years wages
have been stagnant for the middle class? How come we have the highest
rate of childhood poverty? How come 45 million people still have
student debt? How come three people own more wealth than the bottom
half of America?" The answer, Sanders said, is that "nothing
will change unless we have the guts to take on Wall Street, the
insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the
military-industrial complex, and the fossil fuel industry. If we
don't have the guts to take them on, we'll continue to have plans,
we'll continue to have talk, and the rich will get richer, and
everybody else will be struggling."
But does he really walk the walk?
Americans
have permitted themselves to be convinced) that electing a new
president will change things. “It's gonna be different this
time.” But it won’t be. Even if Bernie Sanders were actually
to become President of the United States of America, it would hardly
matter, for his freedom of action is too restricting and he would
have very little option but to accommodate the capitalist class and
their agenda. If he was elected there would be a number of cosmetic
changes but the fundamental problem, capitalist property relations,
would remain essentially unchanged.
Bernie
calls himself a “socialist” and “calls himself” is the key
phrase. If “socialism” means that a society’s means of
production are social, not privately or state owned — then Sanders
is no socialist. Elizabeth Warren advocates very much the same
policies as Sanders yet she continues to describe herself as still holding
capitalist beliefs.
But credit where credit is due, even if Bernie
doesn’t mean the same as we do when he talks about socialism, he
can be at least thanked for at least bringing the term back into
vogue, particular in America where it had disappeared from popular
discourse since the times Eugene Debs ran for the presidency.
Genuine
socialists won’t be jumping on Sanders’ band-wagon anytime soon.
Nevertheless, it has been a long time that an aspirant for the
presidency of the United States has been talking about “socialism”,
no matter how vague his interpretation of it is. To be fair, Sanders
also appears to see himself more as a vehicle for re-emergent class
politics as his motivation. No such movement, however, is currently
on the horizon. If Sanders succeeds in getting the idea of socialism
back in peoples’ minds, he may well be sowing the seeds of thought
that will someday take hold in a more constructive way and that would
be very welcomed even if he really means something else by the word.
Sanders
considers the Scandinavian countries as models to emulate, all
capitalist, albeit with strong social safety nets, but where the
wealthy still enjoy a preponderance of economic and political power.
These countries have little in common with the socialism envisaged by
Marx and Engels where the working class itself would be in control.
What Bernie Sanders means by ‘socialism’ is something more akin
to capitalism with a human face. But this is not what socialism is
about. The Scandinavian model has managed to achieve certain social
welfare objectives, but they never involved fundamental alterations
to capitalism’s underlying property relations. Neither would
Sanders reforms. Scandinavian reformists thought the benign hand of
the state would replace the merciless invisible hand of the market
but today the reformers have their hands full just trying to keep
hold of what they can from the gains of the past.
The
Democratic Party (or as we like to describe them, the Damnocrats) is
a party that embraces capitalism. It calls for the reform, not the
abolition of capitalism. Sanders routinely supports Democrats when
they run for office. He, in other words, is only a reform capitalist
candidate. He stands on the other side of the class line dividing the
working class from the capitalist class. When socialists speak of
working class independent political action, we think in terms of
class independence. In other words, a political party entirely under
the control of working people, representing their interests and their
interest alone.
One
basic question rarely raised is who asked Bernie to stand for
president? Sanders’ campaign does not rest on any anti-capitalist
principle or working-class movement. The Sanders’ campaign is about
him getting elected and doing things for working people; he is not
encouraging working people to do things for themselves. There was no
thought given to constructing a real working-class movement but
simply to encourage the unions and working people to remain an
appendage to the pro-capitalist Democratic Party. The goal is not to
create a socialist society for the working class but to
encourage the working class to build socialism for itself. Using
the words of Eugene Debs, “If you are looking for a Moses to
lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where
you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could,
because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out.”
Neither
Sanders nor any other politician can lead us to the alternative new
society we fight for. We must build it for ourselves. America badly
needs a vigorous socialist party. America is a plutocracy, which
means a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
Everything supports that fact. The American working class have been
fooled into accepting the concept of common interests wherein the
problems of the capitalist class and the state machine are theirs
also. The suggestion is that people in the US all belong to one of
the world's mightiest military and industrial powers, sharing equally
in the glory; so let's all work still harder to increase the arms and
wealth of the rulers. The belief that there exists a community of
interests from which we all derive common benefits is a mistaken one
but nevertheless held strongly. Two crucial political fallacies
permeate American workers thinking. First, that the present system
can be so organised that it will operate in the interests of the
majority, through a process of applied reformism, and second, that
“proper leadership” is an essential requirement. However, neither
of the foregoing will ever remove any of the major social evils and
the socialist mission is to demonstrate that fact.
Without vibrant
grassroots movements changing reality, the richest people in power
will keep on trampling upon the working class. We need BOTH activism
on the streets demonstrating against specific grievances AND we need
effective electoral action for social change. A powerful socialist
party should be the conduit for change. Protests have often been
aimed at the wrong target. A socialist party is an organisation which
can connect the dots between issues and movements -- from winning
justice for workers to fighting for immigrant rights to interacting
with global social justice movements. We cannot afford to choose
between the fronts upon which we must battle.
If
you’re taken aback by the number of socialist, anti-capitalist and
otherwise radical-left parties in the United States and ask why when
America is already blessed with a multiplicity of so-called
left-wing, socialist parties, why we added another with the World
Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) to increase the
confusion? The answer is there is no way of challenging and refuting
the confused theories and spurious programs of the parties which
promise to reform capitalism except by building up from the ground an
organisation of socialists working only for socialism.
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