Sanders and Socialism

 The World Socialist Party of the United States does not mourn the fact that the progressive Bernie Sanders has lost the Democratic Party nomination to run for president. Neither do we celebrate that it will be a corporate-friendly Democrat who will challenge Trump.

This article by Victor Wallis on the Counterpunch website proves to be instructive reading.

“...The dominant tendency in US political rhetoric is to view socialism not as the dissolution of capitalist class-relations, but rather as an expansion of the scope of government. A favorite strategy of those – like Bernie Sanders – whose proposals are attacked as being socialist is to respond by denouncing billionaires as benefiting, via government subsidies, from so-called “corporate socialism” or “socialism for the rich.”

Socialism is thus equated with government subsidies rather than with an alternative vision of society. While the privately owned banks and corporations are attacked for their hypocrisy and their special advantages, there is no assertion that such icons of capitalist power should cease to exist.

Similarly, the target of attack, in Sanders’ rhetoric, is not the capitalist class but rather the “billionaire class.” Capitalism as such escapes the blame.

At the same time, full socialism (i.e., dissolution of the capitalist class and socialization of its holdings) is attacked as being inherently undemocratic. In this sense, when Sanders calls his socialism “democratic,” what he’s telling us is that it remains embedded within basic capitalist institutions…”

“...Sanders thus treads a fine line between advocating and denouncing the fundamental change that a fully socialist program would entail. On the one hand, he tells us that there should be no billionaires, but on the other, he implies that a system that would preclude those billionaires would be undemocratic and therefore unacceptable.

But the problem with a system that generates billionaires is not only that it entails vast inequality and poverty. This system – the rule of private and corporate capital – also fosters the permanent economic expansion that is driving the planet to environmental breakdown…”

The author sadly still appears to confuses socialism with the state-capitalist regimes of the likes of Cuba.