Sanders Socialism?
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I'm surprised that there has not been a thread created about Bernie Winters…ooops, i mean Bernie Sanders.
After all, despite having no idea what socialism is except for the welfare statism of the Scandinavians he has brought back the word socialism to the mainstream media. Even if Sander has no inkling on what socialism means, for the first time in in about a century, someone who describes himself as a socialist has a chance at the presidency, albeit the odds are very …VERY …long against even gaining the Democrat nomination, much less becoming president.
Over the last several years polls and google hits have shown that socialism and Marxism, again with no clear definition, have gained in popularity. Sanders will no doubt make them even more respectable over the next several months until Corporate Clinton gets the nomination.
So do we applaud him for his promotion and advertising him or condemn him for his diversion and misappropriation of the socialist idea. I for one would like the opinions of our WSM comrades who are on the ground…what they are hearing in the streets and at work.
Anyways to get the discussion going, SOYMB has blogged this view.
http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2015/06/bernie-sanders-is-no-saviour.html
(There is also a follow up discussing the other outsider running in the White House race, Rand Paul http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2015/06/rand-paul-constructing-populism.html )
From the top of my head…since we now established some sort of contact with brother Larry, perhaps we could conduct an interview with him and shamelessly latch on to and take advantage the possible publicity exposure for our magazine …Am i my Brothers' Keeper…Brothers-in-Arms. ……the scope is boundless….just a thought…
Meanwhile the US media are interested in his brother:http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/241425-bernie-sanders-brother-falls-in-british-electionsActually, some of the things he said at hustings in the election, eg about education today being essentially aimed at increasing a person's earning power, were quite good, but we had to point out that this could only be ended in socialism. Which can be said about a lot of the things the Greens advocate,. He used to be in the Labour Party, by the way.
ALB, this is why i do think it might be a useful thing to have an article at least about Larry, even if we don't do a formal interview with selected questions about the differences in their politics…Why he resigned from Labour, why he joined the Greens…whereas his brother refuses to follow suit…Larry, of course will no doubt be very circumspect with answers from family loyalty and probably some shared views but I'm being a spin-doctor, a PR pundit, an advertiser for the Socialist Standard so to boost its ratings and circulation.We should try every trick to increase visitors to our sites. It will produce hits and links when punted around the American "liberal progressive" websites. Certainly, it did the Billy Beer trade a lot of benefit with Jimmy Carter when Billy took advantage of the family name. Just an idea to toss about for your editorial committee. SOYMB has another lengthy post on Sanders …just waiting for the appropriate opening…
Chris Hedges states some home truths about Sanders and all hit home.http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/15/chris-hedges-on-bernie-sanders-and-the-corporate-democrats/Hedges said. “Bernie’s decision to play the game within the Democratic Party and in essence lend credibility to the party and lend credibility to Hillary Clinton is very destructive…"
Not quite all. He says he votes for the Green Party ! I notice too that he endorses Kshama Sawant, the Trotskyist councillor in Seattle. More here:http://townhallseattle.org/event/chris-hedges-kshama-sawant-and-jill-stein/Ironically, she too has been criticised for nob-nobbing with the Democratic Party:https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/25/sawa-m25.htmlI know this is from a rival Trotskyist group (which also likes one of our names) but we know how Machiavellian Trotskyists are here in relation to the Labour Party.There's a defence of her courting support from Democrats here:http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/25/is-kshama-sawant-really-caving-in-to-the-democrats/
I'm offering no defence of Hedges or Sawant's own politics merely agreeing with his criticism of Sanders' politics. As i said on one website before Hedges did:[Sanders] "has said that if he is not nominated he will be a 100% behind whoever is…(Hillary Clinton)…and 100% in support of the Democratic Party, in other words endorsing the duopoly of power. Where is the grass-roots organising of an independent working class movement that he talks about in his speeches? He should be promoting a political party entirely under the control of working people, representing their interests and their interest alone not cheer-leading a party that fully embraces capitalism. He stands, whether he is willing to admit or not, on the other side of the class line dividing the workers from the bosses. There is 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. It is deeds we judge upon, not words. His actions is that of a reformist, not a socialist."
Here's the Trotskyist "Socialist Alternative" (sister party to SPEW in the US) take on Bernie Sanders. It's a bit long. The gist seems to be that they should infilitrate the Elect Sanders campaign hoping that its other supporters will turn to them (or the Green Party candidate, they don't seem to mind) when he lets them down when he endorses whoever is chosen as the Democratic Party candidate. The usual "transitional demand" tactic of leading workers up the garden path in the hope that they will learn by the experience of failure and turn to the Trotskyist vanguard for correct leadership:http://www.socialistalternative.org/2015/07/07/response-howie-hawkins/
Rolling stone asks why sanders isn't more socialisthttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-doesnt-bernie-sanders-run-on-a-truly-socialist-platform-20150722?page=2
A couple of quotes from it."Raising the minimum wage is a defense against capitalists' perpetual imperative to intensify exploitation of labor by lowering wages, not an offense against the structures by which capitalists are able to do this." Quite observant"Running on a platform with a non-reformist reform" – a phrase i encounter with anarchists and trotskyists …which Rolling Stone means a guaranteed job and the government being employer of last resort…(They don't mention it preferring Thomas Paine and MLK but no reference to FDR's New Deal and their federal work schemes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_guaranteeHere's an article all for it which describes it being quite ambitious as a permanent barometer of capitalism's need for labourhttp://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2014/01/27/lets-compare-the-job-guarantee-to-the-alternatives-not-against-some-distant-utopian-vision/
Black Lives Matter interrupt Sanders rallyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkTitIAthjA http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/09/430919017/black-lives-matter-activists-commandeer-sanders-speech-in-seattle
Sanders has this authoritarian streak to protests.In 1999 anti-war activists protesting his approval of the bombing of Serbia were arrested at his meeting. Few years, later people protesting the deployment of F35 aircraft in Vermont were thrown out of his office. And the clip shows a rather uncooperative response to Black Lives Matters, despite the overly emotional demands to speak. He no doubt had a stringent time-table to keep that did not permit a delay in speaking. I have no doubt if he becomes President, he will harden his attitude to the opposition to his policies.
response on reddithttps://np.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/3gf7yb/state_of_the_subreddit_address_august_9th_2015/
Actually, Sander's twitter feeds make pretty good viewing:https://twitter.com/SenSandershttps://twitter.com/BernieSandersYes, not our politics, but, hell, from the US it's pretty out there (from their mainstream, never mind ours).OK, he talks about the "billionaire class" but, that's actually quite clever. Think I may steal that.
Ah, here we go, this is what I heard, he basically trolled the GOP debate: could you get more 21st century?http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1409563
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