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  • Three Conferences and a Postscript

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    Dan La Botz’s description of the Future of the Left/Independent Politics Conference makes another introduction redundant. Instead, I’ll add my own observations. I come from the other side of this discussion: I hold with the `inside/outside’ approach to electoral politics, as pushed by the late Arthur Kinoy, a radical lawyer who led the National Committee for Independent Political Action in the 70s and 80s. Putting it simply, I supported left independent Barry Commoner for president in 1980, and Democrat Harold Washington for mayor of Chicago in 1983. This year, I support Kshama Sawant and Bernie Sanders. I see no contradiction – in fact I think it’s the only approach that makes sense.

    In Chicago, I saw what I expected – a meeting concerned primarily with electoral work outside, and in opposition to, the Democrats. Not just Centrists and Blue Dogs, but the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and fusion parties like the Working Families Party. Those who work in Democratic campaigns, even social movement activists or self-proclaimed socialists, are viewed as strays or worse. However, not everyone there held a hard line on this, and for some participants, it barely entered the conversation.

    The Chicago meeting gave this non-participating observer a good idea of the progress being made in creating a left political opposition in a number of distinct population centers. Just a small gathering, in the broader scheme of things, but full of lessons and insights. The group as a whole was serious about sharing opinions and experiences, and while there were low points, for the most part the discussants kept it at a mutually respectful level.

    I actually witnessed three conferences. One was a fascinating and enlightening array of talks about campaigning, organizing and governing. Participants networked, and the sessions explored some of the important questions. In many ways it fell short – there was very little discussion of the rise of the far right, the issue of third parties as “spoilers” aiding the Republicans, or the unmistakable rise of populism as a political vehicle for both the far right and the far left. On the positive, there was special attention given to Fight for $15 and Black Lives Matter, non-electoral social movements that have a direct impact on the left agenda.

    There was a distance – not really a division – over the importance of turning that agenda into a program. Leaders of the Richmond Progressive Alliance made the case that full blown programs not only do not win elections, but fail even as an educational tactic. The choice of candidate, and determining the issues that are immediate and pressing for the base, take priority. This is in contrast to the traditional left third party approach of running up a flag and expecting voters to rally. RPA, without touching on the `inside/outside’ question, argued effectively for an approach based on full appreciation of local conditions, careful coalition building, and making appropriate moves in response to shifting political relationships. They now dominate city government in Richmond CA, a working class suburb of Oakland, having handed a major defeat to Chevron Oil, which called the town its own for decades.

    Organizers and strategists from other local efforts gave detailed testimony, and the responses were mostly congenial. But it was hard to tell what was really absorbed by the attendees, and what was just politely applauded.

    The second, simultaneous conference was an experiment in united action between Solidarity, the conference initiators; International Socialist Organization, the largest socialist group in attendance; Socialist Alternative, the one socialist group that could actually claim a win in its own name (Sawant’s seat on the Seattle city council), and left Greens. Solidarity pushed networking and sharing experiences. ISO has taken on the role of proselytizer for the `’no to Democrats” line, to the point of denouncing fusion parties like Working Families and opposing the campaign of Jesús `Chuy’ García for mayor of Chicago. Socialist Alternative was in on the discussion but mainly concerned with drumming up support for Sawant’s uphill reelection campaign. Greens were thinking ahead to the 2016 presidential race.

    It was not remarkable that each party had their own reasons for being there, or their own approaches. That’s par for the course in politics. The surprise was the lack of tension or bickering. The groups were represented by members who knew how to work with outsiders without muting their messages. This should not be a big deal, but with the fragmented state of the left, it is.

    It should be noted, though, that important electoral coalitions were not present. I can’t say if the organizers knew of New Haven Rising, Florida New Majority, or Virginia New Majority, or others taking an `inside/outside’ approach; or if those groups knew about the conference. But I would say that the organizers just skimmed the surface of the growing left electoral movement.

    Meanwhile, a third conference was also playing out. Early in the weekend someone raised the Sanders campaign, and moderator Joanna Misnik “solemnly” declared, “The elephant has entered the room.” Sanders had just declared, and the issue was argued out but not resolved. My estimate is that most of the attendees consider Sanders’s campaigning as a Democrat a deal-breaker. Others, including those who supported Chuy and the various left aldermanic candidates who ran in the Chicago runoff, were excited by the news. The largest local party there, Vermont Progressive Party, has long-standing ties to Sanders, and does not consider his current move in any sense a betrayal.

    Sanders sent a message to the conference via the VPP, which said in closing:

    “I concluded that running an effective 50-state campaign, as a third party independent, was neither feasible nor the best way to raise, before the broadest possible audience, issues and problems that our mainstream parties routinely ignore.

    “I strongly believe your efforts . are still very complementary to the national electoral campaign that I just announced this week. And I hope that the spirit of cooperation reflected in your meeting agenda will extend to our mutual ability to work together, now and in the future.”

    A response was circulated after the conference closed:

    “As participants in the Future of Left and Independent Politics conference held in Chicago May 2-3, we sincerely appreciate your declaration of support for our efforts. Nonetheless, we must express our regret that you have chosen to forgo independent political action and instead enter the primaries of the Democratic Party, which is entirely beholden to Wall Street and the corporate interests you have fought throughout your career. And while we do appreciate the support you have offered to a few independent campaigns in Richmond, Madison and Chicago, we cannot condone your indirect funding of corporate Democrats such as Sens. Mary Landrieu, Mark Begich and Kay Hagan, or your failure to criticize Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin’s recent betrayal of the campaign for single-payer health care in your home state of Vermont.

    “Nevertheless, we look forward to welcoming you and your supporters back into the movement for independent political action after the Democratic primaries are over and Hillary Clinton or another corporate Democrat is nominated. Such a return to your green and socialist roots and to your earlier anti-war politics will be the most principled resolution of the false and contradictory situation into which you have placed yourself and your supporters by joining the Democratic Party and – as one of our conference speakers noted – serving as the `sheepdog’ to herd progressives and activists back into the two-party system.

    “Conference participants Mark Lause, Fred Murphy, John Halle, Louis Proyect, Matt Hoke, Margaret Flowers, Kevin Zeese, Howie Hawkins, Paul Street, Linda Thompson, Joanne Landy, Dan LaBotz, Bruce Dixon, Thomas Harrison, Michael Pugliese”

    This letter did not speak for the conference. None of the signers are associated with either Socialist Alternative or ISO. In fact, since the conference, Socialist Alternative expressed support for the Sanders campaign.

    So the spectre of Bernie is still in the air. The announced result of the conference, as La Botz notes, is a network of activists with plans to keep in touch and organize another conference. I expect that the strengthened alliance between socialists and left Greens will play out at the next Green Party convention, and in the 2016 race, which will probably see Jill Stein, an enthusiastic conference participant, leading the Green ticket.

    At least some of the participants will take on the problem of unity as de-fragmenting the left through political alliances, and not, as the letter signers put it, “sheepdogging” the movement.

    *Ethan Young is one of the moderators of Portside. He lives in Brooklyn and works with Left Labor Project and People for Bernie Sanders.

    This article was originally published in Portside and is republished here with the permission of the author.

     

  • Electoral Guide 2016

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    Any discussion of this subject needs to be based on the understanding that, at present, voting is carefully designed to, in Chomsky's words "reduce the population to apathy and obedience", putting us in a position where we are forced to demonstrate our fealty to the corporate state by actively endorsing one of its two anointed representatives.

    It doesn't have to be that way: Greek voters had an alternative to vote against neoliberal austerity and they exercised it putting Syriza in office. Same with the upcoming elections in Spain where Podemos will offer a similar alternative. And, of course, over the past two decades, voters in Latin America had real choices and made the right decision in electing Morales, Correa, Chavez, Kirchner and other populist left candidates, to the great displeasure of the U.S. State Department.

    We are not at that point and so we need to be doing the on-the-ground work which is necessary to get us there. That work involves

    1) strongly supporting mass protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, Fight for 15, System Change Not Climate Change and the remnants of OWS the consolidation of which could eventually evolve into an electoral alternative at some point in the future.

    and

    2) strongly supporting viable local third party campaigns such as those of Kshama Sawant and the candidates from the Richmond Progressive Alliance helping these scale up to statewide and eventually national organizations.

    In the meantime, it does no good to pretend that running marginal national candidates is a substitute for 1) and 2). Only once we have satisfied ourselves that we have done the work can we begin to play the rigged game which is the party primary system and the national "electoral extravaganza" in November 2016. We should do so, in my opinion, via one of the following four paths.

    Path 1) Support Sanders in the Democratic primaries.

    Caveat: Those exercising this option need to be fully aware of Sanders's likely "sheepdog" role. They should make clear to others involved in the campaign that they plan to return to the fold of independent activists once Sanders is obliterated by Clinton, rejecting DP operatives and Sanders's own efforts to herd left voters into the toxic Clinton campaign and the graveyard which is Democratic Party Politics.

    Path 2) Support Jill Stein, the likely Green Party nominee.

    Caveat: The Green Party lacks a sufficient level of organization where it can mount a credible campaign and even achieving ballot access will require a substantial investment of activist energy which (arguably) might be better channeled into option 1 or 2 above. A possible poor showing (Stein received less than 500,000 votes in 2012-down from Nader's 2,882,995 in 2000) will marginalize rather than legitimate the politics we are trying to advance.

    Path 3) Not voting.

    Caveat: Lack of participation will be perceived as indicating that the public is satisfied with both corporate options. We know otherwise, of course, but we will be unable to get that message out.  Staying uninvolved and uncommitted also prevents the development of organized networks of supporters which can become the nucleus of local campaigns and activist organizations, as happened in the wake of the Nader Green Party 2000 run.

    Path 4) One of the above and then voting for the lesser evil in November.

    Caveat: This option should only be exercised in a swing state and even then some leftists will regard voting for what may turn out to be not the lesser, but the more effective evil, as indefensible. What's important is that we should not allow the Sanders issue become yet another left circular firing squad of mutual recriminations and personal animosity-as the Democrats are strategizing that it will. We might not agree with lesser-evlism, but we shouldn't demonize those who do. Nor should lesser evilists condescend to those who refuse to be constrained by the worm's eye, world weary pragmatism of those who have resigned themselves to the Democratic Party as our only hope for change-a dangerous delusion as we should have learned in 2008 and 2012.

    We need keep all that in mind to get the best possible results from the fatally compromised, corrupt and cynical electoral system in 2016.

     

  • The Only Article You Need to Read about the 2016 Election

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    This is the latest in a series of articles discusing the pros and cons of a Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party. Scroll down to find other articles. – Ed. 

    In the general election, the Democrats need the left to be silent about how bankrupt and corrupt the party is so it can gloss its rush to the right in a veneer of progressive rhetoric.

    If you’re progressive or on the left, here’s your cheat sheet on how to participate in the 2016 presidential election, which is just 18 months away. If you live in one of the first states in the Democratic primary process, like Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, vote for Bernie Sanders. You can also sign an online petition for him, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you chance upon one of his campaign rallies and have nothing better to do, join the crowd.

    But don’t do anything else. Don’t become a campaign volunteer, do phone banking, door knocking, get the vote, and certainly don’t send him a dime of your money.

    During the general election, if you live in a swing state where polls show a razor-thin margin between Hillary Clinton and whatever crazy the Republicans nominate—and that will be a few states at most—flick a lever for Clinton, if you are inclined. Otherwise, don’t do a thing for her campaign or send her a penny as she and Bill will be raking in $2 billion from their network of plutocrats.

    Anyone with a shot of winning the presidency knows they have only two interrelated jobs: CEO of the American-led project of capitalist globalization and Commander-in-Chief of its war machine.

    At the presidential level, the two parties are aligned on the big issues like free trade, monetary policy, deregulation, welfare, education, and entitlement “reform,” war, surveillance, and policing, borders, and prisons. There is slight to modest contrasts on actual policies (not rhetoric) concerning immigration, health care, LGBT and reproductive rights, climate change, and labor issues.

    So I am not of the opinion there is no difference between the two main parties—there is a very big one. When a Democrat is president, it spurs left opposition to the whole system. When a Republican sits in the Oval Office, it results in a partisan movement that splits the left and liberals.

    Under both Clinton and Obama, the base realized a Democratic White House pushes the same policies as Republicans, but they offer only breadcrumbs in return like a bump in food stamps, more Pell Grants for low-income students, or weak and conditional immigration reform.

    This helped create the conditions for independent organizing like the global-justice movement, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. When Reagan and the Bushes were in office, the left poured its energy into campaigns to elect Democratic presidents.

    So why not work to get the Democrat elected, like much of the left poured their energies into Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign? Because the Democrats don’t need the left’s support.

    In 2004 I participated in strategy meetings about how the peace and social justice movement should respond to the Republican National Convention coming to New York City. In the room were leaders of the antiwar, feminist and labor movements. In one session, they each listed how many canvassers they were devoting to John Kerry’s presidential campaign. For most groups it was a handful. One national feminist organization sent a few dozen organizers into the field. When it came to the representative from organized labor, they said unions were going to put thousands of organizers in the field—just in Ohio. It dawned on me that the left can never compete with organizations that have long-standing ties to the Democratic Party.

    What the Democrats really want is the left’s silence. The left, as disorganized as it is, is the source of ideas, energy and passion for a party that is an empty vessel of corporate sloganeering.

    The left spawns the movements and ideas—LGBT and reproductive rights, income inequality, national healthcare, climate justice, police and prison reform, antiwar—that both form and motivate the Democratic base. That’s where the Democrats draw their votes from, but the party needs money from corporations and plutocrats to run its machinery and to play its part in what is projected to be a $5 billion presidential campaign. More than that, the Democrats are one wing of the party of Wall Street, so they will never fulfill any social-justice demands without a powerful push from below.

    In the general election, the Democrats need the left to be silent about how bankrupt and corrupt the party is so it can gloss its rush to the right in a veneer of progressive rhetoric.

    The role of Progressives for Obama in 2008 was to push as many leftists into the campaign as possible and then attack those disinclined to support a candidate who supported more war, bailouts with no accountability for Wall Street, and wanted to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to pay for the financial catastrophe.

    After Sanders tossed his hat in the ring for the Democratic presidential nominee, there was the predictable Sanders-is-the-real-progressive-in-this-race column from the usual quarters. And there is already “The People for Bernie Sanders” working to corral the left into the Democratic Party. It’s easy to forecast how this will end.

    In July 2016, at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, after Sanders’ team meets with Hillary Clinton’s senior strategists but not the nominee herself, his campaign manager speaks to the media: “We are proud of all we accomplished, the millions of Americans who cast their votes for the Sanders 2016 campaign, and the issues we raised about economic inequality, the struggling middle class, and an economy rigged for the benefit of a few billionaires. Senator Sanders may not be the nominee in 2016, but the concerns he championed are front and center.”

    When asked about the closed-door meeting and Clinton’s $2 billion in campaign contributions from Wall Street and wealthy donors, Sanders’ manager says, “What we got from the Clinton campaign was a commitment to begin the process to talk about reducing income inequality. We've moved. They’ve moved. It’s truly unity in that sense. We are fully behind Hillary Clinton as our party’s presidential nominee for 2016, and are our only focus for the next 100 days is to make sure she is elected to that office. Thank you.”

    I’m not making this up. The above quote is paraphrased from the Dennis Kucinich 2004 campaign. He ran on opposition to the Iraq War, but by the convention Kucinich backed the nominee, John Kerry, whose position was to escalate the war, in exchange for vague promises.

    Every time a progressive challenges the mainstream Democratic candidates, such as Kucinich, Jerry Brown in 1992, Jesse Jackson in 1988, Ted Kennedy in 1980, even John Edwards in 2008, there is a pattern. If the insurgent campaign catches fire, it raises progressive hopes that the Democrats might finally have a presidential nominee more on the level of the party’s grassroots than C-suite executives.

    But the campaign is overwhelmed by money pouring into the coffers of whichever Wall Street Democrat clinches the nomination. Because the progressive standard-bearer ran in a process that is impossible for a real left-wing candidate to win, they were defeated before they ever began.

    But the progressive serves an important purpose. They energize the activist base and raise hopes that the Democratic Party is open to progressive ideas, even though the money, use of super-delegates and drawn-out primary limit the victors circle to establishment candidates.

    Sanders’ campaign will help divide the left and bind many of them to the Democratic Party. Over the next six months expect a stream of articles praising Sanders as the people’s, progressives’, the left’s champion, or attacking anyone who disagrees.

    Short of a mile-wide asteroid smacking into the earth, Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party nominee. She needs challengers to enliven a primary that is more coronation than contest, and she needs the sparring to keep her in fighting shape for the general election. Plus, having a left-wing candidate allows her to appear as the responsible moderate who stakes out corporate-friendly positions slathered in progressive blather.

    By the time the convention is over, those progressives who hopped on board the Sanders train to nowhere will have reconciled themselves with supporting Hillary, whatever their misgivings. It’s basic psychology. Like investors who throw good money after bad, it’s hard to admit after spending more than a year of your life advocating for a candidate that lost, that maybe it’s time to stop investing in the Democratic Party.

    But if we step back and take a look at just the last few years, it’s non-electoral organizing like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, immigrants’ rights, and low-wage worker organizing that is actually making social change and forcing the Democrats to the left.

    So go ahead and vote for Sanders and Clinton, but that’s all. Spend the rest of your time, energy, and money on building militant grassroots activism. Because while elections are about moving candidates, social movements move the whole system.

    This article was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
    http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Only-Article-You-Need-to-Read-About-the-2016-Election-20150507-0030.html. It is republished with the permission of the author.

  • Bernie Sanders Calls for Political Revolution Against Billionaires: Campaign Needs to Build Independent Political Power

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    This is the latest in a series of articles discusing the pros and cons of a Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party. Scroll down to find other articles. – Ed. 

    Boldly calling for a “political revolution” against the “billionaires and oligarchs” who have hijacked the political system, Bernie Sanders has launched an insurgent campaign for President. The only self-described socialist in Congress, Sanders explained his decision to run to ABC News, saying “We need a political revolution in this country involving millions of people who are prepared to stand up and say ‘Enough is enough,’ and I want to help lead that effort.”

    Contradicting the cynics who say Americans are hopelessly apathetic and conservative, his announcement has been met with a tremendous wave of enthusiasm. In the first day of his campaign 100,000 people signed up to get involved on his website and 35,000 people donated $1.5 million, more than any other presidential contender raised in their first day. By the fourth day of his campaign, an incredible 75,000 people had donated $3 million at an average of $43 per donation. Over 99% of contributions to Sanders were for $250 or less.

    This campaign can gain a big echo among the millions who are disgusted by corporate politics that are making the rich richer while living standards for the rest of us are increasingly lagging behind. This is why first the Occupy movement and now the Fight for $15 have won such support across the country. It is also why there is increasing openness to the idea of a “third party” and explains how Kshama Sawant won almost 100,000 votes in 2013 when she was elected as a socialist to the Seattle City Council.

    Unfortunately, despite Sanders being an independent member of Congress for the past 25 years, he has declared he will be seeking the Democratic Party nomination, a move Socialist Alternative has argued against over the past year.

    Sanders is calling for taxing the rich and big business, a trillion-dollar public works program to create 13 million jobs, a $15 minimum wage, single-payer universal healthcare, stopping the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other pro-corporate free trade deals, strengthening union rights, and closing the gender pay gap.

    His campaign stands in sharp contrast to the waffling and empty rhetoric of Hillary Clinton and other establishment politicians. He was one of the few members of Congress who voted against the Patriot Act in 2001 and calls for dismantling the NSA’s domestic spying programs. He stands for bold action to address climate change, demanding a rapid transition away from fossil fuels towards energy efficiency and renewable energy.

    Sanders highlights his opposition to corporate power and the 1%, calling for overturning Citizens United and saying that his campaign is devoid of billionaires. On the campaign’s website, underneath the requisite disclosure phrase “Paid For By Bernie 2016” proudly stands the addition: “Not The Billionaires.”

    Sanders’ Politics

    Socialist Alternative welcomes Sanders’ decision to run for President to help create, as he says, “an independent voice, fighting for working families” to “bring the fight to the Koch brothers, Wall Street, and corporate America.” His campaign will give Hillary Clinton a much-deserved challenge and will widen the spectrum of political discussion, injecting some working-class reality into the increasingly surreal and narrow parameters of official debate.

    Given the overwhelming disgust with status-quo politicians and the weakness of independent left-wing forces, Sanders’ campaign has the potential to rally millions against the political establishment and their billionaire masters.

    In our view, however, Sanders is making a fundamental mistake by running in the Democratic Party primary. Instead, we have argued that he should run as an independent to help build a political alternative to the corporate-owned political parties. There is a glaring contradiction between Sanders’ call for a political revolution against the billionaire class and attempting to carry that out within a party controlled by that same billionaire class.

    This contradiction will be posed starkly when Sanders loses the Democratic primary. Sanders has said he will endorse the Democratic nominee, which is very likely to be Hilary Clinton or – if Clinton stumbles badly – another safe pro-business Democrat. This will mean that those mobilized by Sanders will be told to support a pro-corporate Democrat, the exact opposite of a “revolution” against the “billionaires and oligarchs.” This could result in the demoralization of those mobilized by the idea of fighting corporate power and the loss of a historic opportunity.

    Notwithstanding his mistaken decision to join the Democrats, there will be another path open to Sanders when the Democratic machine blocks him. Sanders should continue running in the general election as an independent to provide working people an alternative to Hillary Clinton and the right-wing Republican. Such a step could open up a completely new chapter in U.S. politics, acting as a huge impetus towards the building of a new political force to represent the 99%.

    Such a step would go against Sanders’ stated intention and his general political approach, but it cannot be excluded. It will be influenced by how events unfold and how much pressure Sanders comes under from his own supporters demanding that he continue running in the general election rather than endorse Clinton.

    Sanders’ platform points in the right direction, but as socialists we would go further. For example, Sanders calls for breaking up the huge Wall Street banks, a radical reform which we would support. But far better would be to bring the big banks under democratic public ownership.

    While Sanders limits himself to a program of reforming capitalism along the lines of Western Europe, we stand for a fundamental socialist transformation of society. While the European workers’ movement won huge reforms during the post-war period, capitalism was not overthrown. Under intense pressure, the European capitalist classes made big concessions in order to maintain their social and political power, but since the end of the post-war boom they have carried out an unrelenting neo-liberal offensive to roll back these reforms.

    In relation to more immediate political issues, Sanders needs to speak out clearly in support of the Black Lives Matter movement against racist police brutality and mass incarceration. Also, while Bernie honorably opposed both the Patriot Act and the invasion of Iraq, he has, on numerous occasions, voted for military appropriations. Regrettably, he did not oppose the war in Afghanistan and failed to oppose the recent Israeli massacre in Gaza.

    Despite these political shortcomings, Bernie’s campaign stands out as fundamentally different from those of all the other business-as-usual politicians running for president. To much of the population which has come of age over the past 25 years, he is “still the most radical politician from the Left they have ever seen.”

    Building Mass Movements is Key

    To achieve the demands Sanders is campaigning on will require building powerful mass movements of working people. To carry out his platform, Sanders’ campaign needs to be strategically orientated towards helping to strengthen movements from below.

    Bernie made similar points in an interview with The Nation’s John Nichols when he argued “a campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected. It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that, we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are … Washington and Congress will look very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with.”

    Sanders also pointed out that “We can elect the best person in the world to be president, but that person will get swallowed up unless there is an unprecedented level of activism at the grassroots level.”

    Therefore, from a socialist standpoint, strengthening the struggles for economic and social justice will be more important than who is elected president in 2016. The key will be to use the 2016 election to help raise the level of organization, confidence, and consciousness of workers and social movements.

    The experience of Kshama Sawant’s election is an example of what is necessary to build the forces to run the strongest possible campaign and to win its demands. Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative organized a grassroots force that elected the first socialist in 100 years. Once Kshama was elected, the momentum from her victory was used to build 15 Now, a grassroots organization that mobilized hundreds of activists across the city and worked in coalition with labor unions to push through the highest minimum wage in the country at that time.

    But experience has shown again and again that the Democratic Party is the graveyard of social movements. In recent times we saw this when the Occupy movement was brutally repressed by police forces under the direction of primarily Democratic mayors with the assistance of an FBI operating under the Obama administration. Even worse was how the Occupy movement was politically demobilized by elements tied to the Democrats with their appeals to support Obama against the Republicans in 2012. In 2004, the anti-war movement was systematically undermined by the rallying behind the pro-war campaign of the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry.

    The Black Lives Matter movement, the Fight for $15, and Occupy Wall Street have greatly altered the political terrain on the issues of racism and economic inequality. By comparison, much of the left poured tremendous energy and resources into electing Barack Obama and the Democrats only to see them advance the agenda of Wall Street.

    Joel Bleifuss, editor of In These Times, argues that “a Sanders candidacy offers American progressives the chance to build the infrastructure for future progressive electoral campaigns … Unlike the 1988 Democratic primary, in which Jesse Jackson carried 11 states only to have his campaign organization disappear into the political ether, a Sanders campaign is set to build a movement with future electoral capacity. Sanders understands that the organization that coalesces behind him must survive the campaign itself and endure.”

    We agree that this is needed and possible, but Bleifuss’s wishes will not be enough to bring it fruition. To avoid Sanders’ campaign “disappearing into the political ether” will require that he continues running all the way through the November 2016 election and does not make the mistake, as Jackson did in 1984 and 1988, of endorsing the Democratic nominee once he loses the primaries. This is the clear lesson from Jackson’s shipwrecked campaigns, and we must fight to avoid the same mistake being repeated with Sanders’ campaign.

    Left Primary Challengers and the Democratic Establishment

    Activists need to be realistic in recognizing that the Democratic Party establishment opposes Bernie Sanders and will make sure he does not win the Democratic primary. If necessary, they will use all the tools at their disposal, including their access to big money, the mass media, the authority of prominent politicians, and their control over the party structures.

    The history of anti-establishment Democratic Party primary challenges underscores this. The Jesse Jackson campaigns of 1984 and 1988 were the strongest left Democratic primary campaigns in recent history. Jackson’s radical, populist campaigns garnered huge support – more than it appears likely Bernie will be able to mobilize – and at one stage appeared to be within reach of winning the Democratic primary. Exactly because of this, the Democratic establishment moved decisively to defeat him.

    As Ron Jacobs pointed out in Counterpunch, “Anti-Palestinian and big business donors and media commentators took a private comment made by Jackson out of context and splashed it across the pages and television screens of America. Racial code words began being heard in relation to Jackson’s name. Soon, his chances of winning the Democratic Party nomination were gone. Instead, the party limped out of San Francisco that summer with the Cold War liberal Walter Mondale as its loser candidate [in 1984].”

    More recently we saw how key sections of the Democratic Party establishment acted to break the rise of the populist anti-war campaign of Howard Dean in 2004, instead ramming through the pro-war candidate John Kerry to run a failed campaign against George Bush in 2004.

    These examples illustrate how the big-business Democrats who control the party are far more determined to defeat anti-corporate insurgents than they are to stop right-wing Republicans.

    On the other hand, as long as Bernie does not stand a serious chance of winning the primaries, he will be welcomed and even encouraged. Even Hilary Clinton recognizes that Sanders will bring enthusiasm and attention to the Democratic primaries and provide them with a progressive legitimacy. Clinton calculates that by Sanders shifting the political debate towards the huge concentration of wealth it will also help to undermine the Republicans electorally.

    After Sanders is defeated in the primaries, if he goes on to endorse Clinton (or whoever is the establishment pick), the energy behind his campaign will be directed into “safe” channels which represent no threat to Corporate America. In this way, Sanders’ campaign would be used as a convenient “left flank” by Clinton to draw in support from union members and activists who are fed up with corporate politics.

    It would be tragic if Sanders’ campaign ends up playing this role. Unfortunately, he has indicated he will support whoever wins the Democratic primaries. But there is another path available, which Socialist Alternative will be urging Bernie to take and discussing with those supporting his campaign.

    We believe Sanders should not limit himself to the narrow framework of the Democratic Party. Rather than endorsing Hillary Clinton he should continue running in the general election when the majority of workers and youth are paying the most attention.

    But to even seriously challenge Hillary Clinton in the primaries, Sanders will need to build up an independent base of support. This means building a campaign based on those people not represented by the corporate politicians: organizing people fed up with Congress, building campaign committees rooted in neighborhoods, workplaces, unions, and social movements like Black Lives Matter and the Fight for $15.

    Sanders’ campaign could play a key role in bringing together these elements into an organized force that can democratically discuss and debate what policies best represent working-class interests and how to advance those struggles. Such a force would be necessary to continue campaigning in the general election and beyond, or else the momentum created by Sanders’ campaign will disappear “into the political ether.”

    In this way, Sanders’ campaign could play a critical role in helping to lay the basis for a new political party, a third party, to provide an alternative to the increasingly unpopular Republican and Democratic parties. A broad left-wing or working-class party would be an organization which brings together different struggles and generalizes from them a common set of interests, a political program.

    Bernie himself pointed to such an approach when he told John Nichols “there is no question that the Democratic Party in general remains far too dependent on big-money interests, that it is not fighting vigorously for working-class families … The more radical approach would be to run as an independent, and essentially when you’re doing that you’re not just running for President of the United States, you’re running to build a new political movement in America—which presumably would lead to other candidates running outside of the Democratic Party, essentially starting a third party.”

    Spoiler?

    Some on the left object that such an approach would end up weakening the Democratic candidate and help the Republicans to win the presidency. The fear of another Republican president is real and understandable. Socialist Alternative wholeheartedly agrees that the Republicans need to be opposed and we in no way want to see them elected.

    But the danger of an independent left-wing candidate tipping a close election to the Republicans is far outweighed by the more important need for working people to begin to build their own political voice to represent themselves.

    Further, the big-business Democratic politicians have proven themselves incapable of defeating the right-wing policies of an increasingly unhinged Republican Party. Let us not forget that despite the “hope” and “change” of Obama’s 2008 campaign, once in power Obama’s pro-business policies prepared the ground for Republican victories in 2010 and 2012 by demoralizing progressives and allowing the Tea Party to demagogically tap into anger at the Democrats as the party in power.

    Sanders pointed this out when he told Nichols: “[M]ost people have given up on the political process … They think there is no particular reason for them to come out and vote … [Hillary Clinton’s] centrist politics … That is not the type of policy that we need. And it is certainly not going to be the politics that galvanizes the tens of millions of people today who are thoroughly alienated and disgusted with the status quo.

    “One of the things that I find most disturbing … is that the Democrats now lose by a significant number the votes of white working-class people. How can that be? When you have a Republican Party that wants to destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., etc., why are so many people voting against their own economic interests? It happens because the Democrats have not been strong in making it clear which side they are on, not been strong in taking on Wall Street and corporate America.”

    We need to break out of the cycle of Democratic disappointment leading to Republican gains, and begin to build a working-class political alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. If not now, when?

    Over the next year the main arena for discussion and debate on anti-corporate politics will be within and around Sanders’ campaign. All those forces which recognize the vital need for independent left politics need to orient towards the large audience that will likely gather around Bernie.

    Sanders’ campaign is heading for a political crisis in 2016, when he will need to choose between supporting the Democratic nominee or continue running in the general election. Socialists need to build the strongest possible base among Sanders supporters in preparation for this debate. A strong left current can mobilize Sanders’ supporters to demand Bernie continues running, or lead as much of the campaign as possible away from the Democrats if Bernie insists on endorsing Clinton.

    Historic Opportunity for Left Politics

    The political system in the US is bankrupt. Even pro-capitalist strategists like the editorial boards of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Economist agree their political system is dysfunctional. According to Gallup the approval rating for Congress averaged just 15% in 2014, close to an all-time low. Record numbers are registering as independents.

    Sanders points out “there is profound disgust among the American people for the conventional political process … the frustration and disgust with the status quo is much, much higher … than many ‘pundits’ understand.”

    There is a historic opening for independent left-wing politics. One sign of this was in 2013, when Kshama Sawant was elected as a Socialist Alternative candidate with almost 100,000 votes to the Seattle City Council. At the same time, another Socialist Alternative candidate, Ty Moore, came within 229 votes of being elected to the Minneapolis City Council. This opening is shown again with the enthusiastic grassroots support for Sawant’s re-election campaign this year (see www.KshamaSawant.org).

    In 2014 Howie Hawkins received nearly 5% of the vote for Governor in the highest vote for a left candidate in New York State since 1920. The 2015 Chicago mayoral elections also showed the openness to challenge corporate politics. Tragically Karen Lewis, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union who had filed as a non-partisan candidate, was not able to run due to health problems. She could have defeated “Mayor 1%” Rahm Emanuel. Nevertheless, a real debate in the Chicago labor movement opened up about what kind of representation workers need. The election showed the potential for labor unions to play a powerful independent role rather than their current position of surrendering to corporate Democrats.

    There are millions of people in the U.S. who are ready for a “political revolution” that rolls back the tide against big business. Instead of dividing these forces by channeling some of those who want far-reaching change back into the Democratic Party establishment and thereby alienating a another section completely fed up with both corporate political parties, an independent campaign behind an unapologetic working-class fighter could create the kind of unity needed to challenge the capitalist oligarchy that is strangling our society.

    Sanders running independently could help to open the floodgates. Our movement is not strong enough to elect an independent candidate like Sanders in 2016, but more importantly an independent Sanders campaign could change U.S. politics forever, laying the basis for a new third party that could give millions a powerful tool to begin organizing against Wall Street.

    If you agree, join Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative to make sure this historic opportunity is not squandered. We will be campaigning with Sanders supporters against the corporate politicians while politically arguing for Sanders to run all-out through the November 2016 election, as a step toward building an independent political alternative for working people.

    This article originally appeared in Socialist Alternative and is reprinted with permission.

  • Bernie Sanders is a thoroughbred—why call him a stalking horse?

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    Voltaire wrote that “the best is the enemy of the good," but he cited it as a foible and not a redeeming practice.  Within hours of Bernie Sanders announcing his candidacy for the Democratic Party presidential nod on April 30th, in some warrens of the radical left, the long corrective knives were already out for the only socialist in Congress. Why? Because Bernie is just not good enough, they said. Criticism ranged from his being a faux socialist, a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton whose backing by the left would be a practical waste of a year that could be better spent building a movement. Politicking for a candidate who can’t win the nomination and who would be destroyed by corporate America and an avalanche of corporate funding if somehow he did was seen as a mug's game.  

    They would be wrong.

    Take this example: in his incisive report on the recent Future of the Left/Independent Politics Conference in Chicago, Dan La Botz cites remarks made by Bruce Dixon of the Georgia Green Party to the effect that “Sanders is a sheep dog whose job is like that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Congressman Dennis Kucinich in earlier elections, to round up folks who had strayed to the left in response to the Democratic Party’s retrograde domestic and foreign policies and to bring them back to the Party.” At least Dixon didn’t say Judas goat, leading lambs to the slaughter, but it’s still early in the campaign, and the cat-scratch phase hasn’t kicked in yet.

    Others, including those who think a socialist run is worth it for educational and propagandistic reasons alone, fault him for not rigorously attacking U.S. imperial interests and the glut of military spending, for sitting shtum on the spate of police massacres of people of color in Missouri, New York, Baltimore and elsewhere, or his refusal to support the highly justified boycott, divest and sanction campaign of Israel, let alone embrace the Palestinian national liberation fight.  He might not even attack Hillary—he’s said he won’t run a negative campaign—so much as run a parallel, issues-based campaign.

    All true. All regrettable. All beside the point. Because this is the moment socialism unadulterated can get a broad public hearing. Sanders has argued that the country deserves a real debate about policy issues, suggesting that such a conversation won't happen without a contested nomination process. It might not happen with a contested process, either, but it’s worth the time and effort.

    Writing in Jacobin, Ashley Smith thinks it’s not. He ends his laundry-list of Bernie Sanders’ sins where the piece should elaborate. He writes, “We need to win the new left born out of Occupy, public-sector union struggles, and the Black Lives Matter movement to break with the Democratic Party and build an electoral alternative as a complement to struggle from below. Sanders’s campaign inside the Democratic Party is an obstacle to that project.” It’s that last sentence, with its one-dimensional bravura and disconnect from the actual Sanders effort that makes we wonder if Smith is any more grounded in politics than the type of uncritical and star-struck Sanders supporters I’ve encountered at meet-ups and on-line. They’re Bernie’s Amen Corner. Their strengths stop at well-meaning.

    Writing in countercurrents.org, David Swanson agrees that Sanders and movement-making are at loggerheads; one cancels the other. Instead of working for Bernie, Swanson counsels, why not 

    “join the movement that's in the streets of Baltimore opposing police murder, that's in the halls of the United Nations pushing to abolish nukes, that's blocking mountaintop removal, divesting from Israel, advancing renewable energy, and struggling to create fair elections through steps like automatic registration in Oregon, and pushing legislation to provide free media, match small donors, give each voter a tax credit to contribute, or take the power to establish plutocracy away from the Supreme Court.”

    A good agenda as far as it goes. Is there nothing in labor-law reform, in ending voter suppression—itself a fraud—in upending election laws that privilege the main parties, in anything (beyond his tax credit initiative) that would actually take political action to achieve? That, a Sanders race could help catalyze. And even if Swanson eschews political action, how would the Bernie campaign detract from movements such as Black Lives Matter or the Fight for $15? How would these fights do anything but benefit from an articulate national figure banging away on racism, a militarized state and rampant inequality, adding his strident voice to help build those movements?

    Swanson also thinks the money it would take to make the Sanders effort threaten the coronation of Hillary and the GOP juggernaut in the general election—he estimates hundreds of millions of dollars—would be better spent in

    “creat(ing) a television network dedicated to peace and justice and democracy from here on out. Or we could open a counter-recruiting office next-door to every military recruitment office in the United States. Or we could organize and bus people in for the largest and longest march on Washington against racism, militarism, extreme materialism, and the corruption of our elections ever seen, complete with food supplies and bail funds for as long as it takes. Instead of a march for nothing, how about an occupation for no more Bushes or Clintons or anyone like them?”

    More good things from Swanson to do. But his misses the point. With money like that, the left would also have the corresponding number of bodies to do that work. We don’t have it now. The advantage of a Bernie campaign is to radically alter the political discourse, just as Occupy did, but without Occupy’s reluctance to name names or advocate the overhauls Swanson would want to see.

    Swanson also thinks that the Bernie effort would “take a year away from policy-based principled activism” to wage  a doomed campaign in which “the media monopolies that Clinton’s husband facilitated have demonstrably grown more powerful than ever, and elections have grown more corrupted by money—just ask Hillary who pretends to oppose it.” He closes with “The real question is not whether the next President will be a walking disaster [he’s generously not talking about Bernie here for once], but what sort of popular movement will have been developed to resist it.”

    Whatever we think of Bernie’s pedigree as a socialist or deftness as a political leader, nothing of his use in making “socialism” a viable watchword for the growing disenchantment with capital justifies saying his campaign is an obstacle or counterposed to movement building.

    When Bernie says “I believe we should break up the big Wall Street banks. If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big to exist,” that’s something Hillary won’t or can’t say. Bernie does in every whistle-stop. It’s not co-optable. Nor can she  match his staunch opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and fast-track authority.And if the trio of themes he says he’ll pursue—campaign finance reform, climate change and income inequality—are done with the vigor and intelligence he brings to most issues, well, to me, it’s win-win.

    The Huffington Post sums him up this way: “In the Senate, Sanders has focused on a range of issues, from reforming health care for veterans to addressing the threat posed by climate change. He has also been a strong advocate for a universal, single-payer health care plan nationwide…” though to be fair he missed the boat on advocating Medicare for all, the genuinely socialist alternative.    Today, when Bernie speaks on socialism, he speaks for millions,  And if he sticks to that script, it will be worth the effort. But when he speaks about supporting the eventual primary winner, he speaks for himself. He may not be Eugene Debs, but neither is he the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Or a stooge for the corporate-funded Democrats.

    It may very well be that Hillary Clinton needs a goad from the left to appeal to the Democratic base, but is there any evidence that Bernie is playing her useful idiot let alone part of a conscious effort to fool the public, as Smith implies without quite using the word “pawn”?

    Does the Sanders campaign by nature compromise the ages-old radical dream of a militant, rank and file movement creating durable counter-institutions of dual power? Is principle throttled in pursuit of publicity? Nothing so dire, or romantic. People compromise on tactics, as Smith should have learned from his own comrades who wisely didn’t break with the Chicago Teachers Union’s Karen Lewis after she announced what for health reasons soon became aborted plans to challenge the incumbent Clintonista leg-breaker mayor as a Democrat. Even the exemplary Welsh class warrior Nye Bevan broke with his own left parliamentary caucus in 1957 by stepping away from endorsing the growing disarmament movement. As Owen Heatherly writes in The London Review of Books, he opposed disarmament “in what is usually put down to a compromise incumbent on him as shadow foreign secretary.”

    Sounds shabby at first reading, but this is the same militant miners’ leader and founder of Britain’s National Health Service who could say “It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically.” Even Bevan wasn’t above trimming his sails, though on this one I’ll go with the all-sails-unfurled Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s Bertrand Russell.

    My point: the principle of democratic socialism from below can’t be an absolute prohibition on an anti-corporate election campaign that could reach tens of millions and attract them to a radical movement, even if it’s in the ostensibly wrong party.

    Yes, even tactically it’s not all brainpower perfectly attuned to willpower in the Sanders initiative.  Before even announcing Sanders was quoted as saying “I'm not running to attack Hillary Clinton. I'm running to talk about the issues that impact the working class of this country and the middle class.” Decrying “vicious personal attacks on candidates” that “the American people are sick and tired of,” Sanders boasted “I’ve never run a negative ad in my life. I’ve been in many campaigns, and if you ask the people of Vermont, they would tell you Bernie Sanders has never run a negative ad.”

    He added, “I believe that, in a democracy, what elections are about are serious debates on serious issues.”

    But no attacks on Hillary is problematic, bordering on the daft. Giving Hillary a free pass is a peculiar thing for a veteran politician to do and bizarre in extremis.  Hillary is his likely opponent; his traction lies not just in raising class issues but in faulting her for representing the wrong class. And given that she will drop any pledge she makes in the primary to hug the middle ground in the general election, what does Bernie lose by daring  her to radically push the envelope? He said as much on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, that “There's so much to be discussed, Ed, and we're not in this country about anointing anybody for a nomination.” That’s a point that could be made by radicals inside the campaign where it has salience and where his liberal supporters would never raise.

    Arun Gupta, yet another critic, has it exactly backwards when he writes “When a Democrat is president, it spurs left opposition to the whole system. When a Republican sits in the Oval Office, it results in a partisan movement that splits the left and liberals.” In fact, when a Democrat is in the White House or campaigning to be, the movements—Occupy being the exception in more ways than one and United for Peace and Justice the saddest example—historically and needlessly avoid confrontations with the state. Compare the timid response of the broad peace movement to every Clinton administration adventure with its strident reactions to Bush 1 and Bush 2’s  homicidal assaults on Iraq or UFPJ’s tent folding during the Kerry campaign.

    What Gupta could have said is that a failed Democrat in the White House has the potential to expose the contradictions in the system better that a GOP sabre rattler who evokes criticisms of policy. But which one offers better opportunities for a fight-back is a wash, unless class-conscious radicals are committed socialists and already leaders of that movement.   

    Even here, a democratic socialist like Sanders running for office even as a Democrat has the potential to expose the corporate links that make the two parties bipartisan on class issues, so why not encourage Sanders to, as veteran Third Party campaigner Ted Glick writes, “Run Bernie, Run.”

    But when Gupta writes that “In the general election, the Democrats need the left to be silent about how bankrupt and corrupt the party is so it can gloss its rush to the right in a veneer of progressive rhetoric,” he’s of course right. That’s why the test for me will be getting Sanders post-primary or post-convention not to shake hands with the “liberal” nominee but shake fists at her and her corporate backers. Again, you gain that influence on Sanders by being visible in his primary race, not by acting Hamlet or Mencken or the sideline spit-ball king.   

    To restate: what’s common to Bernie’s radical critics is the assumption that Hillary’s feints left in response to Sanders is a shadow play that won’t survive past the August 2016 coronation, all the while that the Bernie effort hoovers up support that would be better used elsewhere. Well, it is a short-lived shadow play. While it makes sense for him to attack the Democratic frontrunner, it makes little sense for her (or him) to attack Bernie as it did for Michael Dukakis in 1988, when his campaign team allowed Jesse Jackson his say, featuring him on prime-time at the Democratic national convention, then let him fade away. But is it likely that the sheer numbers of Sanders volunteers would be used elsewhere, as in movement building? Those backing Bernie would not in the main be doing something else except working in local campaigns. I’d like them to be year-round ubiquitous activists, too. It won’t happen by blasting Sanders or analogizing him to a sheepdog. Why? Because he has no radical sheep to shepherd. As Jason Schulman observed in a letter to me and similarly on line responding to Dixon, “If there was already a quasi-mass movement for a left third party then, yes, Sanders' campaign in the Democratic primary would be wrong. But there isn't, so he isn't.”

    It is also troubling how anyone would ipso facto assume that founding a new class-conscious party and orchestrating a socialist push in the Democratic presidential primary are zero sum gains. La Botz notes how Sanders sent a congratulatory note to the conference, but that

    “even those who opposed endorsing Sanders suggested that advocates of independent political action should maintain a friendly attitude to Sanders supporters. When the seemingly inevitable nomination of Hillary Clinton occurs, it may be possible to win over many of these people to an independent, left, third party perspective.”

    Good trick! How will they do that by alleging that Sanders is a stalking horse for Hillary and the Democratic Party elite?   

    It’s one thing to say, as did Salon commentator Bill Curry, a former Bill Clinton White House counselor, that “Clinton loyalists welcome Sanders’ entry because they know she needs a contest, or at least a tune-up” and that “Some call him a perfect foil; a lesser threat than Warren, yet enough of one to provide progressives with some catharsis while bestowing Clinton with the legitimacy that comes only from competition. “

    I’m sure that is Hillary war-room thinking. It doesn’t merit labeling it a conspiracy and justify we lefties positing Bernie as either a naïf or a witting tool of neoliberalism’s primo candidate.  

    Bernie may indeed be playing the monkey to Hillary’s organ grinding, but the act is something we Reds benefit from. The social movements need representation in elected office and officials need a movement not only to keep them honest, but to see that demands in the base are reflected in policy. Sure, a huge extra-parliamentary opposition would in itself put pressure on governments to act, or at least to freeze governments from doing harm. It also appeals to my syndicalist DNA—a movement in the streets can’t help but batter the two-party neoliberal consensus—but if that movement isn’t reflected in a party or a coalition of parties in an electoral front, it won’t have the tactical flexibility to deal with changing circumstances. Simply put, ruling out any electoral opposition leaves the ruling class as the sole players in a critical political field. 

    In the meantime, our clever thinkers cum Bernie critics will have alienated the left from doing what little it can do—propagandize for socialism at the point when the base of Democratic voters is paying attention. These voters are in fact to the left of mainstream politicos—the low-turnout of Democrats in 2012 on its own attests to that—but Sanders at least has the capacity to move discourse and energize voters who won’t abandon the only choice they have on 2016, but gin up support for local electoral insurgencies. We don’t have the luxury to reject the good and insist on the better—and so far criticisms of Bernie strike me as fastidious and bookish if not faith-based to a fault.

  • Mexican Police, Army Attack Hundreds of Striking Farm Workers in Baja California

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    In another attempt to break a strike and keep agribusiness products rolling north into the United States, the Mexican Army and State Preventive Police again attacked hundreds of striking farm workers in the San Quintín Valley of Baja California who had blocked the Trans-Peninsular Highway on May 9. Workers blocked the highway to protest Governor Francisco de Lamadrid’s cancellation of a promised meeting between his government and farm worker leaders.

    Farm workers went on strike on March 17 over higher wages, carrying out a brilliant but brief strike and highway shutdown before being attacked by the police at that time. While several hundred have continued various marches and protests, many other farm workers returned to work and employers claimed that production had returned to normal.

    Workers reported that on May 9 police and the military invaded their homes, attacked and beat them with clubs and shot them with rubber bullets. Several farm workers and a few police officers were injured badly enough to be hospitalized and dozens farm workers suffered less serious wounds and injuries. The police claimed that workers had set fire to fields and burned two police cars and police station.

    Spokesmen for the Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations, the coalition of indigenous organizations that is leading the strike, called for the removal of governor de Lamadrid of the conservative, pro-business National Action Party (PAN) for his repeated and violent attacks on workers.  

    The Mexican government’s use of the military and police to break the strike for higher wages by tens of thousands of farm workers in the San Quintín valley of Baja California represents only the most recent expression of the government’s use of police and military force to crush strikes, break unions, and prevent the development of an independent labor movement. San Quintín’s farm workers will need solidarity from other Mexican workers and U.S. workers if they are to win their demand for higher wages. While there have been expressions of solidarity from unions on both sides of the border, there is not yet a movement big enough to beat the growers and their Baja government.  

    *Dan La Botz is the editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis and a co-editor of New Politics.

  • Bosnia – Sarajevo: The Women’s Court in the former Yugoslavia – Secularism is a Women's Issue

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    The Women’s Court on war crimes against women during the war in the 1990ies formally started in Sarajevo, Bosnia on May 7.

    Women came together from all the corners of the former-Yugoslavia to participate in the Women’s Court in Sarajevo, to demand justice for the crimes committed against them during the wars and the enduring inequalities and suffering that followed.

    The impressive composition of the organizational committee speaks for the unity and solidarity of women across the national divides that came with the partition of the former Yugoslavia : from Bosnia & Herzegovina: Mothers of the Enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa; Women’s Forum (www.forumzena.org), Foundation CURE (www.fondacijacure.org); from Croatia: Centre for Women’s Studies (www.zenstud.hr), Centre for Women War Victims – ROSA (www.czzzr.hr); from Kosovo: Kosovo Women’s Network (www.womensnetwork.org); from Macedonia: National Council for Gender Equality (www.sozm.org.mk); from Montenegro: Anima (www.animakotor.org); from Slovenia: Women’s Lobby Slovenia (www.zls.si); from Serbia: Women’s Studies (www.zenskestudie.edu.rs), Women in Black (www.zeneucrnom.org)

    This, in and by itself, is a huge achievement, at a time when Europe is plagued with the rise of nationalisms, of extreme right forces that divide peoples along ethnic and religious lines; at a time when attempts are made to homogenize nations and to exclude minorities and diversity; at a time when even citizens of one country are further separated by the construction of antagonistic “communities.” 

    Moreover, the organization which has been coordinating this project for the past 5 years is Women In Black-Belgrade, in other words an organization from “the aggressor” country. WIB ‘s leadership and members are welcome as family members and praised throughout the former Yugoslavia for the constant support they extended, at great risks for themselves, to women from other national and ethnic identities, both during and after the wars, till now: the vibrant applause and cheers for WIB-Belgade at the opening ceremony of the Women’s Court was a living testimony to this strong solidarity bond, and an acknowledgment of the dedication of the organization to the Women’s Court.

    The fact that women came together from all the nations of ex-Yugoslavia is not just a powerful show of solidarity across boundaries. It is also a political stand, defying the destructive extreme right forces at work in the region and in the whole of Europe.

    The Women’s Court in the former Yugoslavia is deeply different from any other women’s Tribunal that existed so far: its preparation took five years, during which an impressive ground work has been done; it aims at giving back the ownership of the process to victims and survivors; nothing was spared to allow concerned women to define for themselves the format of this tribunal and the aims it should achieve. Hundreds of meetings were held in towns, cities and villages with groups of women victims, so that they would shape and appropriate the process. WIB-Belgrade ‘s monthly reports of activities, available in their web site, shows the pace at which these meetings took place. At no point was a pre-determined blueprint imported from previous exemples of women’s tribunals applied—top-to-bottom—on victims and survivors in ex-Yugoslavia. This is quite a unique model of an extremely respectful and deeply empowering process for victims and survivors.

    In the past two years only, the organizing committee organized/produced 11 regional seminars, 10 trainings for the public presentations, 102 public presentations, in 83 towns in the region, 25 documentaries about this topic, 15 meetings (working consultative meetings of OC members, the meeting of the members of The International Consultative Board), five regional feminist discussion circles, to deepen their knowledge about the topic, 10 publications (brochures, readers, peace agendas), and numerous leaflets in all the languages of the region (Albanian, BCMS, Macedonian, and Slovenian) .

    The Women’s Court will deal with the violence committed during the 1990s, as well as with the violence committed after the wars, as the preparatory work showed that there is a continuity of the injustice and the violence, which connects the war and the post war period. It will cover ethnically based violence—by the state and in the society—militaristic violence in the war against civilians (as opposed to the classic concept of “civil war” in which citizens are taking side, the concept of “war against civilians” was coined by Algerians citizens during the 1990 armed conflict in which they were caught between violence by Muslim fundamentalist armed groups and state repression, and targeted by both sides, in order to create terror; this concept is now been used in the former Yugoslavia.). The Women’s Court will specifically look into gender based violence: war crimes of rape including for nationalistic purposes, male violence against women, and political repression of women human rights defenders. It will also make the link with economic violence against women that followed the wars.

    Dilemmas and challenges have emerged during the preparatory process of the Women’s Court, mainly around issues of responsibility and accountability: nationalism with its ensuing transfer of responsibility to the «other» and the minimization of war crimes committed “in our name” is an obstacle to a just peace that women committed to fight for.

    The subtitle of the Women’s Court, “a feminist approach to justice,” is key to understand that this Tribunal will not pronounce verdict and sentences: it will name the crimes and the perpetrators, it will denounce the links between the different forms of violence that women suffer till today in the former Yugoslavia, as a consequence of wars, it will demand justice and, relying on «the power of internationalist women’s solidarity», commits to monitoring the responses from the concerned authorities.

    To this effect, women have been invited from various countries in which similar crimes occured: we already noted the presence of women from Algeria and Argentina (the well-known Mothers of Plaza de Mayo), and women from India, Palestine, Congo are announced.

    Formally opened on May 7 with a huge march across Sarajevo and with street performances, the Women’s Court will proceed with the first hearings today May 8. It will certainly be a powerful event. The judgment and conclusions are expected on May 10.

    This women’s tribunal is, to my knowledge, the first of its kind. I hope it will serve as an inspiration for the women’s tribunals to come, in other parts of the world.

    * Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist, founder and former International Coordinator of the ’Women Living Under Muslim Laws’ international solidarity network. Marieme is also the founder of ’Secularism Is A Women’s Issue’ (siawi.org) where this article originally appeared.

  • Run, Bernie, Run!

     

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    This is the latest in a series of articles discusing the pros and cons of a Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic Party. Scroll down to find other articles. – Ed. 

    “If you had a President who said: `Nobody in America is going to make less than $12 or $14 an hour,’ what do you think that would do? If you had a President who said: `You know what, everybody in this country is going to get free primary health care within a year,’ what do you think that would do? If you had a President say, `Every kid in this country is going to go to college regardless of their income,’ what do you think that would do? If you had a President say, `I stand here today and guarantee you that we are not going to cut a nickel in Social Security; in fact we’re going to improve the Social Security program,’ what do you think that would do? If you had a president who said, `Global warming is the great planetary crisis of our time, I’m going to create millions of jobs as we transform our energy system. I know the oil companies don’t like it. I know the coal companies don’t like it. But that is what this planet needs: we’re going to lead the world in that direction. We’re going to transform the energy system across this planet-and create millions of jobs while we do that.’ If you had a President say that, what kind of excitement would you generate from young people all over this world?”

    -Bernie Sanders, from the November, 2013 issue of The Progressive

    I support a Bernie Sanders campaign for President. I support it whether he decides to run as an Independent or within the Democratic primaries. I support it no matter what criticism he receives from more radical leftists for particular positions he has taken. I support it because I’ve believed for months that Bernie Sanders is easily the one person who, by running for President in 2016, can do the most to excite and inspire tens of millions of people in this country, give the kind of leadership needed to generate an independent and progressive, multi-issue mass movement for systemic change.

    And it looks like a real possibility! For the last few weeks articles have begun to come out indicating that he is taking this idea seriously. In an interview with Politico just a few days ago, he said, “[The] major issues of this country that impact millions of people cannot continue to be swept under the rug. And if nobody else is talking about it [running for President], well, then maybe I have to do it.”

    My first direct contact with Bernie Sanders was about 30 years ago when he spoke at a fund-raiser I helped to organize for the National Committee for Independent Political Action. At the time he was the mayor of Vermont’s largest town, Burlington, elected on a third party line and as an open socialist. Soon afterwards he was elected to Congress, where he has been ever since either as a House member or a Senator.

    In that role he has been a consistent voice for low-income people, working-class people, the middle class and our threatened ecosystem. Earlier this year he co-sponsored with Senator Barbara Boxer a major piece of climate legislation, a “fee-and-dividend” bill described as a “gold standard” type of bill by The Nation magazine.

    In comments made by Boxer at the press conference announcing the introduction of this bill, she referred to Bernie as a straight shooter, someone who didn’t play political games. I remember thinking at the time that for Boxer, immersed as she has been for so long at the highest levels of a pretty corrupt two-party system, that was high praise indeed. It was as if Bernie had been an inspiration to her.

    This strength of Sanders as an outspoken champion of the oppressed and beaten down, at the same time that he has shown his ability to navigate and have some impact even on Capitol Hill without being corrupted, is an additional reason why he really is the progressive left’s best option for 2016.

    Is the fact that he is an open socialist a potential political problem? Well, there’s no question but that this fact will be used by Fox News and the right-wing smear machine to try to discredit him, but the fact that he has been elected as an open socialist to the House and then the US Senate is going to make it hard, it seems to me, for those attacks to stick, with the exception of the usual 25-30% of the electorate that is ideologically on the far right. And Sanders has plenty of experience in dealing with this kind of stuff.

    And how many of us are aware of a poll released by the Pew Research Center at the end of 2011 which found that 31% of the American people say they have a positive view of the word, “socialism,” with 49% of young people ages 18-29 having a positive view? It’s hard to believe that those numbers wouldn’t go up when there is a campaign led by popular US Senator Bernie Sanders which articulates what a socialist approach to the major issues is all about.

    Should Bernie run as an independent or in the Democratic primaries? As someone who has been a member of and sometimes leader in efforts to form a progressive third party since 1975, up to the present day, I’m open-minded on this question. It is a fact that, as things now stand, Sanders running as an Independent would mean he has no chance of winning and could, instead, make it more likely that Chris Christie, Jeb Bush or, God forbid, Ted Cruz is elected President. Sanders has said that he is not interested in that kind of campaign.

    But the Presidential election is three years away. A lot can happen in three years.

    I would say that the key question as to how Sanders should run has to do with what is going to bring together a critical mass of the constituencies which must unite if we are to have a chance of winning against the corporate rulers’ hard (Republican) and soft (centrist Democrat) candidates. If significant sectors of labor, community-based and people of color groups, the women’s and lgbt movements, immigrant rights and farmer/rural groups, climate and environmental groups, small businesses and others are willing to support an Independent candidacy, that could well be the best route to take. Remember, Abraham Lincoln was elected with a plurality of votes, 36%, because there were four substantive Presidential candidates in 1860. A three- or four-party race seems unlikely right now for 2016, but the political situation is very fluid, with severe divisions within the Republican Party that could see a Tea Party third party effort, and we need to remain open to all possibilities.

    Finally, and very importantly, is the issue of a Sanders campaign being run in such a way that it creates a democratic organizational network that continues past 2016.

    Some of us still alive and still active politically had experience with this critical, strategic question back in the 1980’s when Jesse Jackson decided to run for President in 1984. A number of us who were supportive of Jackson, and Jackson himself back then, felt strongly enough about this that, by 1986, a National Rainbow Coalition was formed. By 1988 this effort was growing in organizational strength. State Rainbow conventions were being held in various parts of the country, with the electoral success of Jackson’s 1988 Democratic primary campaign fueling this development. And Bernie was connected to this. His campaign manager for the 1988 Bernie Sanders campaign for Congress was also a leader of the Vermont Rainbow Coalition.

    If Sanders runs for President, it is critical that something like that ’86-’88 Rainbow Coalition phenomenon be created alongside of a Sanders electoral operation. Bernie needs to support it and help to lead it, but it also needs its own collective leadership not totally dependent upon Bernie or any one person. It needs to be a 21st century version of that late ‘80s Rainbow, with more participatory democracy, internet- and social media-savvy, a combination of from-the-top and bottom-up leadership, all about popular education and leadership development, etc.

    As important as Bernie Sanders is right now, as much as he is the right person to lead us at this point in time, history teaches us that movements dependent upon one individual, even someone with credentials like Bernie’s, are like a house built on sand. It may last for a while, but it will eventually be swept away.

    It’s time, it’s way past time. Our suffering peoples and destabilized and polluted ecosystem are in desperate need of leadership in the national electoral arena that can truly bring about change we can believe in. Bernie Sanders is the guy. Run, Bernie, run!!

    *Ted Glick has been a progressive activist, organizer and writer since 1968. Past writing and other information can be found at http://tedglick.com, and he can be followed on twitter at http://twitter.com/jtglick.

  • Letter from Ireland: That Other Referendum

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    On May 22 this year, people in the Republic of Ireland will exercise their democratic right by going to the polls to vote on two proposals to change the constitution. The first proposal is to allow same sex couples the right to marry each other. It is a proposal that has created much debate across the nation but one in which many favour and looks set to pass comfortably. The second proposal is one which has sparked less of a debate and it is worrying.

    Beside the marriage equality referendum there is also a referendum to lower the age of candidates eligible for a crack at the Irish presidency. But for some reason it seems to be sidelined as a non-event.

    The role of the president in Ireland is nothing more than a ceremonial one. He or she simply represents the country overseas; they cut ribbons on new infrastructure and serve out their seven year term without interfering too much in the political process.

    At the moment if you want to get a chance at winning a seven year stay in Ireland’s version of the white house then you have to be over the age of 35. This other little known referendum proposes to lower this age to 21 and while equality is the name of the game in the marriage referendum, where is the equality in denying those aged between 21 and 35 the chance to become president of this supposed nation of equality?

    To stand for election to the Irish parliament a candidate must be at least 21, which means a government minister or even the prime minister can be in their twenties or early thirties and make important national decisions, a power which I have already noted as being nil in the office of president. In France, the nation which inspired our republican ideals here in Ireland, you can stand for its highest office from the age of 18 and it is a role that holds much more power and responsibility than the one in Ireland.

    The job of Irish president may be an easy occupation once you get it, but it is not an easy candidacy to attain. The road to the Irish presidency is a long one: a candidate must swim the murky waters of the political party nomination process, raise truckloads of money and have a squeaky clean back round. If anyone aged between 21 and 35 can achieve that then surely that shows they have the determination and experience to hold such a prestigious office.

    To state that a person under the age of 35 is too young to become head of state is a statement built on flimsy foundations. Think of recent Irish history and a certain statesman called Michael Collins. He never reached his 35th birthday but in his 31 years he had become a member of the Irish parliament, a minister for finance, commander in chief of the national army, a director of secret intelligence and chairman of the provisional government. All of this while conducting a war against the imperialist forces of Britain! Yes they were different times, in fact they were dangerous times but there is no such predicament like that for today’s president which makes the job for him or her even easier!

    So on May 22nd when Irish people will vote to grant gay couples equality, hopefully they might think of that other referendum and give those aged between 21 and 35 their equality and right to run for the highest office in their land.

  • Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016

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    “The sheepdog is a card the Democratic Party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for re-election.”

    Spoiler alert: we have seen the Bernie Sanders show before, and we know exactly how it ends. Bernie has zero likelihood of winning the Democratic nomination for president over Hillary Clinton. Bernie will lose, Hillary will win. When Bernie folds his tent in the summer of 2016, the money, the hopes and prayers, the year of activist zeal that folks put behind Bernie Sanders' either vanishes into thin air, or directly benefits the Hillary Clinton campaign.

    Don't believe us? Then believe Bernie himself interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC News “This Week” May 3.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: So if you lose in this nomination fight, will you support the Democratic nominee?

    SANDERS: Yes. I have in the past.

                STEPHANOPOULOS: Not going to run as an independent?

                SANDERS: No, absolutely not. I've been very clear about that.

    Bernie Sanders is this election's Democratic sheepdog. The sheepdog is a card the Democratic Party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for re-election. The sheepdog is a presidential candidate running ostensibly to the left of the establishment Democrat to whom the billionaires will award the nomination. Sheepdogs are herders, and the sheepdog candidate is charged with herding activists and voters back into the Democratic fold who might otherwise drift leftward and outside of the Democratic party, either staying home or trying to build something outside the two party box.

    1984 and 1988 the sheepdog candidate was Jesse Jackson. In 1992 it was California governor Jerry Brown. In 2000 and 2004 the designated sheepdog was Al Sharpton, and in 2008 it was Dennis Kucinich. This year it’s Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. The function of the sheepdog candidate is to give left activists and voters a reason, however illusory; to believe there's a place of influence for them inside the Democratic Party, if and only if the eventual Democratic nominee can win in November.

    Despite casting millions of voters for the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other sheepdogs, those leftish Democrat voters are always disregarded when Democrats actually win. Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA, a vicious “welfare reform,” no peace dividend or push for DC statehood, lowered unemployment but mostly in part time and low-wage jobs, and mass incarceration of black and brown people. President Obama doubled down on bailouts of banksters and GM, and immunized them from prosecution but failed to address the most catastrophic fall in black household wealth in history. We got health care for some instead of Medicare for All, the Patriot Act renewed instead of repealed, a race to privatize public education, drone wars and still more mass incarceration of black and brown people. And if President Obama gets his way, we may soon have a global job-destroying wage-lowering NAFTA on steroids, with the TTP and TTIP.

    The sheepdog's job is to divert the energy and enthusiasm of activists a year, a year and a half out from a November election away from building an alternative to the Democratic party, and into his doomed effort. When the sheepdog inevitably folds in the late spring or early summer before a November election, there's no time remaining to win ballot access for alternative parties or candidates, no time to raise money or organize any effective challenge to the two capitalist parties.

    At that point, with all the alternatives foreclosed, the narrative shifts to the familiar “lesser of two evils.” Every sheepdog candidate surrenders the shreds of his credibility to the Democratic nominee in time for the November election. This is how the Bernie Sanders show ends, as the left-leaning warm-up act for Hillary Clinton.

    Intent on avoiding the two-party “lesser evil” trap this year, about two hundred activists gathered in Chicago last weekend to consider the future of electoral organizing outside the Democratic and Republican parties. Many of the participants were Greens, including former presidential and vice presidential candidates Jill Stein and Rosa Clemente, the former Green mayor of Richmond California, and many others. There were also representatives from Seattle, where Socialist Alternative's Kshama Sawant won election to Seattle's city council, as well as Angela Walker, a black socialist who received 67,000 votes for Milwaukee County sheriff in 2014, and many others, including some who took part in the recent Chicago mayoral election.

    There was trans-partisan interest in a 50-state ballot access drive to put the Green Party's Jill Stein on the presidential ballot for 2016 presidential race. Currently the law keeps Greens and others off the ballot in more than half the states. Precise details vary according to state law, but if a third party candidate after obtaining one-time ballot access receives about 2% of total votes, a new ballot line is created, granting ballot access to any potential candidate from school board to sheriff to US congress who wants to run as something other than a Republican or Democrat. That, many participants agreed, would be a significant puncture in the legal thicket that now protects Democrats against competition on the ballot from their left. But a nationwide trans-partisan ballot access campaign to create a national alternative to the two capitalist parties is something left activists must begin serious work a good 18 months before a November election, essentially right now.

    Whether or not a national ballot access campaign is undertaken by Greens and others, a Bernie Sanders candidacy is an invitation to do again what's been done in 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2008. Bernie's candidacy is a blast toward the past, an invitation to herd and be herded like sheep back into the Democratic fold, to fundraise and canvass and recruit and mobilize for Bernie, as he warms up the crowd for Hillary. Bernie is a sheepdog.

    The question is, are we sheep?

    Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a state committee member of the GA Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

    This article originally appeared in Black Agenda Report. Thanks to Bruce A. Dixon and to Black Agenda Report for permission to reprint.

  • Bernie Sanders's Presidential Bid Represents a Long Tradition of American Socialism

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    This article is republished here with the permission of the author, Peter Dreier, and of American Prospect.

    Now that Bernie Sanders has entered the contest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Americans are going to hear a lot about socialism, because the 73-year-old U.S. senator from Vermont describes himself as a “democratic socialist.”

    “Ever since I was a kid I never liked to see people without money or connections get put down or pushed around,” Sanders explained in making his announcement. “When I came to Congress I tried to be a voice for people who did not have a voice—the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor. And that is what I will be doing as a candidate for president.”

    We can expect the right-wing echo chamber—including Fox News hosts, Tea Party politicians, and Rush Limbaugh—to attack Sanders for espousing an ideology that they’ll likely describe as foreign, European, and un-American.

    But Sanders’s views are in sync with a longstanding American socialist tradition. Throughout our history, some of the nation’s most influential activists and thinkers, such as Jane Addams, John Dewey, Helen Keller, W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, Walter Reuther, Martin Luther King, and Gloria Steinem, embraced socialism.   

    Of course, America’s right-wingers say there’s already a socialist in the White House. For the past seven years, Barack Obama’s opponents—the Republican Party, the Tea Party, the right-wing blogosphere, and conservative media gurus like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh—labeled anything Obama proposed, including his modest health-care reforms and his efforts to restore regulations on Wall Street, as “socialism.”

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    In March 2009, two months after Obama took office, the ultra-conservative National Review put a picture of the new president on its cover over the headline, “Our Socialist Future.” In 2010, Newt Gingrich authored To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine. Stanley Kurtz, a regular contributor to conservative publications and frequent guest on Fox News, published Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. These are only a few of the many right-wingers fulminating against Obama’s alleged socialist views.

    Obama joked about this in his recent speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. “I like Bernie. Bernie’s an interesting guy,” said Obama, referring to Sanders. “Apparently, some folks want to see a pot-smoking socialist in the White House. We could get a third Obama term after all.”

    President Franklin Roosevelt faced similar allegations. His conservative enemies, including some members of Congress, consistently called him a socialist. In a speech defending his New Deal goals, FDR said: “A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it ‘Fascism,’ sometimes ‘Communism,’ sometimes ‘Regimentation,’ sometimes ‘Socialism’. But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.”

    When big business and conservatives attacked FDR as a radical, FDR boasted: “They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred.”

    Labeling someone a “socialist” has long been conservatives’ convenient way of attacking anyone who espouses even liberal views. In Sanders’s case, however, the label fits. He is a socialist. But don’t expect him to call for government ownership of banks and drug companies. His views fall squarely within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, similar to those of his Senate colleagues Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Barbara Boxer of California and the late Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. 

    In fact, times have changed. Most Americans, even if they’re not socialists themselves, don’t have the same knee-jerk, vitriolic hostility to the idea that was widespread during the hysteria of the Cold War. 

    A Pew Research Center survey  recently found that while only 31 percent of Americans had a positive reaction to the word “socialism,” barely 50 percent of Americans had a positive view of capitalism, and 40 percent had a negative response. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement.

    The Pew poll found that young Americans are about equally divided in their attitudes toward socialism and capitalism. Among 18-to-29 year olds, 49 percent had a positive view of socialism, while 47 percent had a positive view of capitalism. Similarly, only 43 percent had a negative view of socialism, compared with 47 percent who had a negative view of capitalism.

    “Many young people associate capitalism with inequality, big corporations, and poverty,” Joseph Schwartz, a Temple University political scientist, told me in an interview. 

    “During the Cold War, socialism was identified with Communism, which meant totalitarianism and dictatorship. It wasn’t a very positive image,” said Schwartz. “But things have changed since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. If people now in their 20s and 30s have any image of socialism at all, it is probably northern Europe, particularly Scandinavia. They know that northern Europe has less poverty, more equality, and more social mobility. And they know that Canada, which has a strong socialist party [called the New Democratic Party], is a more equal and humane society than the United States.”

    Dick Flacks, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, thinks that right-wing attacks on Obama may have backfired, especially among the Millennial generation, which gave Obama 66 percent of its vote in 2008, and 60 percent four years later.

    “Young people generally like Obama, even if they are somewhat disappointed in what he’s been able to accomplish in the face of such strong Republican opposition in Congress,” said Flacks. “So when Republicans and conservative radio talk show jocks attack Obama as a socialist, many young people react by saying, ‘Well, then maybe socialism can’t be that bad,’ and it makes them at least skeptical of those who demonize the word socialism.”

    Still, such lukewarm feelings toward capitalism haven’t led to a groundswell of socialist activism. Few Americans consider themselves socialists. But a majority share Sanders’s outrage about the growing concentration of wealth and income, excessive executive compensation and corporate profits side-by-side with the epidemic of layoffs and foreclosures, and the undue political influence of billionaires like the Koch brothers, the Walton family, and Rupert Murdoch.

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    The Pew Research Center pollsters found that most Americans (77 percent)—including a majority (53 percent) of Republicans—agreed that “there is too much power in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.” (Not surprisingly, 83 percent of 18-to-29 year olds shared that view.) Pew also discovered that 61 percent of Americans believed that “the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy.” A significant majority (57 percent) thought that wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

    In light of those views, Sanders believes he can tap into Americans’ growing frustrations with our political and economic troubles and offer bold ideas to address our declining standard of living and the role of big money in politics.

    He made a calculated decision to run in the Democratic primaries rather than as an independent third party candidate. He does not want to be seen as another Ralph Nader, whose third party campaign in 2000 took crucial votes away from Democratic nominee Al Gore and helped elect George W. Bush. By running in the Democratic primaries, Sanders will be able to debate Hillary Clinton on national television and gain wide exposure for his populist views about the undue political influence of what he calls America’s corporate “plutocracy.”

    Sanders hopes to appeal to liberal Democrats who are dissatisfied with Hillary Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, her reluctance to support strong government regulations to protect consumers, workers, and the environmental from irresponsible corporations, higher taxes on the super-rich, and her support for U.S. military adventures overseas.

    The Vermont senator pledged to run a positive campaign. The former mayor of Burlington (1981 to 1989), who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 and the Senate in 2006, said that he has never run a negative ad in any of his campaigns.

    Sanders won’t have anything close to Clinton’s war chest to pay for TV ads, consultants, and campaign staff. The major liberal constituency groups—labor unions, environmental groups, and organizations promoting the rights of women and LGBT people—are unlikely to pour big bucks into his campaign. As an organized political force, America’s socialist movement won’t be much help. Democratic Socialists of America, the nation’s largest socialist organization, has only 6,500 dues-paying members.

    But within a day after Sanders announced his candidacy, more than 100,000 people signed up as supporters on Sanders’s website; 35,000 made contributions, and the candidate raised $1.5 million. That’s more than Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul raised in their campaigns first 24 hours.

    Sanders knows that his candidacy is a long shot. But his campaign will certainly help inject his progressive ideas into the public debate, influence public opinion and media coverage, and push Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, to the left. In this, Sanders is part of America’s long-standing radical tradition. Since the early 1900s, few American socialists have been elected to office, but their ideas—and the movements they’ve helped organize—have been influential nevertheless.

    When the Socialist Party was formed in 1901, many Americans were outraged by the widening gap between rich and poor, and the behavior of corporate robber barons who were exploiting workers, gouging consumers, and corrupting politics with their money. Workers were organizing unions. Farmers joined forces in the Populist movement to leash the power of banks, railroads and utility companies. Progressive reformers fought for child labor laws, against slum housing and in favor of women's suffrage.   

    Socialists played influential roles in all these Progressive Era movements and gained many new converts. Among them were labor leader Eugene V. Debs, philosopher and educator John Dewey, Francis Bellamy (the Protestant minister from Boston who wrote the “Pledge of Allegiance” in 1892), settlement house founder and peace activist Jane Addams, novelist Jack London, sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois, poet Katherine Lee Bates (who penned “America the Beautiful”), journalist Walter Lippmann, public health pioneer Alice Hamilton, working women’s rights activist Florence Kelley, crusading attorney Clarence Darrow, feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), and “Big Bill” Haywood (leader of the miners’ union). Helen Keller (1880-1968) is best known for overcoming her blindness, but she was also a lifelong radical. She connected the mistreatment of the blind to the oppression of workers, women, and other groups, leading her to embrace socialism, feminism, and pacifism.  

    Other prominent socialists included muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens (who exposed municipal corruption in his articles in McClure’s Magazine, collected in The Shame of the Cities), writer Upton Sinclair (whose 1906 novel The Jungle, about the harsh conditions among Chicago’s meatpacking workers, led to the enactment of the first consumer protection law, the Meat Inspection Act), and Lewis Hine, whose photographs exposed the brutal conditions faced by child laborers to an outraged public. Two socialist newspapers—The Appeal to Reason (based in Kansas) and the Jewish Daily Forward (based in New York)—each reached at least a quarter of a million readers around the country. New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, and other cities had their own weekly socialist papers.

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    In 1912, Debs, the Socialists’ presidential candidate, won more than 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the total. He would have garnered more, but two other candidates—Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Progressive Party candidate (and former president) Theodore Roosevelt—stole some of the Socialists’ thunder, diverting the votes of workers, women, and consumers with promises of such progressive reforms as women’s suffrage, child labor laws, and workers’ right to organize unions.

    That year, Milwaukee voters elected Socialist Victor Berger to Congress; two years later, he was joined by another Socialist, Meyer London of New York. Berger sponsored bills providing the abolition of child labor, self-government for the District of Columbia, a system of public works for relief of the unemployed and federal ownership of the railroads, the withdrawal of federal troops from the Mexican border, and women’s suffrage. Berger also sponsored the first bill to create “old age pensions.” To promote the Socialists’ campaign for direct election of U.S. Senators (who were then chosen by state legislators), Berger called for the abolition of the upper chamber, which he and others labeled the “millionaires’ club.”

    At the Socialist Party’s high point in 1912, about 1,200 party members held public office in 340 cities, including 79 mayors in cities such as Milwaukee, Buffalo, Minneapolis, Reading, and Schenectady. In office, they pushed for public ownership of utilities and transportation facilities; the expansion of parks, libraries, playgrounds, and other services; a living wage for workers, and a friendlier attitude toward unions, especially in time of strikes.

    Milwaukee was the center of American socialism in the early 1900s. Dominated by the brewery industry, the city was home to many Polish, German, and other immigrant workers who made up the movement’s rank and file. In 1910 Milwaukee voters elected Emil Seidel, a former patternmaker, as their mayor, gave Socialists a majority of the seats on the city council and the county board, and selected Socialists for the school board and as city treasurer, city attorney, comptroller, and two civil judgeships.

    In office, the Socialists expanded Milwaukee’s parks and library system and improved the public schools. They granted municipal employees an eight-hour day. They adopted tough factory and building regulations. They reined in police brutality against striking workers and improved working conditions for rank-and-file cops. They improved the harbor, built municipal housing, and sponsored public markets. The Socialists had their own local newspaper and sponsored carnivals, picnics, singing societies, and even Sunday schools. Under pressure from city officials, the local railway and electricity companies—which operated with municipal licenses—reduced their rates.

    Grateful for these programs, Milwaukee voters kept Socialists in office. They elected Daniel Hoan as mayor from 1916 to 1940, under whom Milwaukee was so frequently cited for its clean, efficient management practices that they boastfully called themselves “sewer socialists.” Milwaukee voters elected another Socialist, Frank Zeidler, as their mayor in 1948, and, remarkably, he remained in office for 12 years at the height of the Cold War.

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    In 1932, in the depths of the Depression, Norman Thomas, a Protestant minister, ran for president on a Socialist Party platform that called for old-age pensions, public works projects, a more progressive income tax, unemployment insurance, relief for farmers, subsidized housing for working families, a shorter workweek, and the nationalization of banks and basic industries. Thomas figured that in such desperate times, his message would appeal to voters. But many voters who may have agreed with Thomas’s views did not want to “waste” their vote on a Socialist who had no chance to win and who might even take enough votes away from the Democratic candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to keep Republican Herbert Hoover in office. Thomas had little regard for FDR, whom he considered a wealthy dilettante and a lackluster governor of New York. He believed FDR’s 1932 platform offered few specifics except vague promises of a “New Deal.”

    Thomas did not expect to win, but he was disappointed that while FDR garnered 22.8 million votes (57 percent), he had to settle for 884,781 (2 percent). When friends expressed delight that FDR was carrying out some of the Socialist platform, Thomas responded that it was being carried out “on a stretcher.” He viewed the New Deal as patching, rather than fixing, a broken system.

    Following the success of his popular muckraking book, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair moved to California and ran on the Socialist Party ticket for the House of Representatives (1920),  the Senate (1922), and for governor (1926 and 1930), winning few votes. In 1934, Sinclair figured he might have more influence running for office as a Democrat. He wrote a 64-page pamphlet outlining his economic plan—I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty—and entered the California Democratic gubernatorial primary.

    Much to Sinclair’s surprise, his pamphlet became a bestseller across California. His campaign turned into a popular grassroots movement. Thousands of people volunteered for his campaign, organizing End Poverty in California (EPIC) clubs across the state. The campaign’s weekly newspaper, the EPIC News, reached a circulation of nearly one million by primary day in August 1934. The campaign allowed Sinclair to present his socialist ideas as commonsense solutions to California’s harsh economic conditions.

    Sinclair shocked California’s political establishment (and himself) by winning the Democratic primary. Fearing a Sinclair victory, California’s powerful business groups joined forces and mobilized an expensive and effective dirty-tricks campaign against him. On election day, Sinclair got 37 percent of the vote—twice the total for any Democrat in the state’s history. Sinclair’s ideas pushed the New Deal to the left. After the Democrats won a landslide midterm election in Congress that year, FDR launched the so-called Second New Deal, including Social Security, major public works programs, and the National Labor Relations Act, which gave workers the right to unionize.

    During the red scare of the 1950s, American socialism fell on hard times. Few Americans distinguished between the European social welfare systems and the communism of the Soviet Union or China. Across the nation, universities, labor unions, public schools, movie studios, and other major institutions purged themselves of their left-wingers. 

    But some socialists keep alive their radical critique of American militarism, big business, and racial injustice. In a 1961 article for Mademoiselle magazine titled “Who Are the Student Boat-Rockers?”, Tom Hayden, a leader of the burgeoning student New Left, listed the three people over 30 whom young radicals most admired. All were socialists—Norman Thomas (a principled anti-war radical and labor ally who headed the Socialist Party), C. Wright Mills (the maverick Columbia University sociologist whose many books, including The Power Elite and The Causes of World War Three, exposed America's power structure and warned about the dangers of the Cold War arms race), and Michael Harrington (whose book The Other America inspired President Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson to wage a war on poverty).

    As the civil rights movement gained momentum, Southern racists and right-wing groups like the John Birch Society insisted that the movement was led by Communists, in whose ranks they included Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  On that count, they were wrong; King was no Communist. But he was a socialist. Growing up in a solidly middle-class family in Atlanta, King saw the widespread human suffering caused by the Depression, particularly in the black community. In 1950, while in graduate school, he wrote an essay describing the “anti-capitalistic feelings” he experienced as a result of seeing unemployed people standing in breadlines. In 1964, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, King observed that the United States could learn much from Scandinavian “democratic socialism.” He began talking openly about the need to confront “class issues,” which he described as “the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.”

    “There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism,” King told his staff in 1966.

    Since then, only a handful of elected officials and prominent public figures have identified themselves as socialists, but their radical views continue to influence public opinion.

    A few years ago, when a small group of New York radicals took over Zuccotti Park and the Occupy Wall Street movement quickly spread to cities and small town around the country, Frank Luntz, an influential GOP pollster, spoke at a Republican Governors Association meeting.  He warned: “I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death. They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

    Luntz offered tips for fighting back and framing the issues that the Occupiers have raised. For example, he urged Republican politicians to avoid using the word “capitalism.”

    “I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’” Luntz said. “The public still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of ‘Wall Street, we’ve got a problem.”

    On that point, at least, Bernie Sanders and Frank Luntz agree.

     

  • Deflategate: What Does it Tell Us about America?

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    Deflategate has driven virtually every other story off of the news shows and talk shows for several days now. At the center of the controversy is Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patriots, who, a National Football League report says, very likely knew that Patriot employees were involved in deflating several footballs to give Brady and the Patriots an advantage in the American Football Conference Championship Game of the 2014 season. Pundits have called the Brady and his team ”cheaters” and “liars,” though interestingly Governor Chris Christie—also accused of being a cheater and a liar—defends Brady, saying people are just jealous of those whose lives seem so perfect.

    Why do the media and so many Americans find Deflategate so fascinating and become so passionate about the issue? Perhaps the strongest strand of the American ideology of democratic capitalism is the notion of equality of opportunity. We often say that there should be a “level playing field” so that all have a fair change, so no one has to run uphill. And on that playing field Americans believe that everyone should be using a football inflated to exactly the same pounds-per-square-inch. No one should have a ball that’s easier to handle, otherwise the game will not reveal who is really the best. As in football, so in society, Americans believe we should all go down on the field to compete as equals.

    So the Deflategate controversy and the criticism of Brady and the Patriots are really an affirmation of the American ideology of democratic capitalism, but ironically the level playing field and the equally inflated footballs are only for the sports world. In American society, we know, not only the 1% but a much larger percent of prosperous people, go into the game with all sorts of advantages: greater assets, higher incomes, disproportionately lower taxes, better school, more higher education, personal, social and political connections. We are all well aware that the field is titled, that their balls are so soft that you can grab them like they had a handle, while most people’s balls are so hard that one can hardly get or keep a grip on them at all. 

    Would that some of the concern about fairness in sports would spill over into a concern about fairness in American society. Equality of opportunity would be a good starting point for a better society, if not a democratic socialist ideal.

    We as socialists, no fans of economic and social competition, want not only equality of opportunity but also equality of outcomes. Everyone should know that whether or not they are the strongest, smartest, or the wiliest, they will get a fine education, have good housing, and excellent health care, a stable climate and a healthy environment. We should go down on the field of life, not to win, but to play the game and enjoy it, making it a wonderful experience for all who play and great entertainment for all who watch.

    Americans don't criticize Brady out of envy, as Christy suggests. We criticize him and his team because we believe in fairness. Let's see the same indignation the next time we hear about a plant closing and a mass layoff, about home foreclosures and evictions, about the police using racist violence against young Black men. No cheaters, no liars. Fairness. An even playing field and all the balls equally inflated. Let’s start there.

  • Bernie for President

    ImageWe should welcome Bernie Sanders' run, while being aware of its limits.

    "I am not a capitalist soldier. I am a proletarian revolutionist. . . . I am opposed to every war but one.” So said Senator Bernie Sanders in 1979, reciting a speech from five-time Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs for a Folkways Records collection. 

    The language was out of place in a country about to enter the Reagan revolution, where even the modest accomplishments of the American welfare state would come under attack. Yet two years later, Sanders became mayor of Vermont’s largest city. The Vermont Vanguard Press celebrated the “People’s Republic of Burlington” with a special issue. Sanders put up a portrait of Debs in his new office — a portrait that now hangs in his Capitol Hill office.

    Sanders is technically an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. And his own variant of socialism is more reminiscent of former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, a fellow social democrat, than the Bolshevik-sympathizing Debs. Sanders likes to compare the accomplishments of the Scandinavian welfare state with the inequity of American society, highlighting our childhood poverty and lack of affordable health care. His solutions — progressive taxation and robust public services — are not too far out of step with those of his most liberal Senate colleagues, like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

    For Sanders, the socialist mantle is more than anything a nod to America’s rich history of radicals and reformers, those largely erased from the story of national progress by forces of conservatism at home and the Cold War abroad. Sanders’s own voting patterns align closely with progressive Democrats. As Howard Dean said on Meet the Pressin 2005, “He is basically a liberal Democrat. . . . The bottom line is that Bernie Sanders votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time.”

    Rank-and-file Democrats agree. For years they’ve prevented their party from splitting the vote and running candidates against him in Vermont — another sign that the socialist label no longer conjures images of breadlines and gulags.

    Sanders doesn’t offer the sweeping emancipatory vision or principled anti-imperialist politics that we should demand on the Left, but his full-throated defense of the welfare state stands in marked contrast to frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s business-friendly policies. And with Elizabeth Warren likely not contesting in 2016, only Sanders can push primary season to the left — forcing Clinton to make the kind of bold commitments to appease (and later alienate when they go unfulfilled) a disgruntled progressive base.

    Unlike most of Europe, the United States never developed a mass labor party that vied for power and built a generous welfare state. But for most of the twentieth century, many within the Democratic Party were able build the fragments of one within its tent.

    The constituencies that played this role — labor unions, civil rights organizations, and community groups — are still around. But because they lack structural control of a party that fundamentally represents the interests of capital, they are easily tossed aside. As the gap between them and the policies pursued by party leaders like Barack Obama becomes more evident, it’s no surprise they are starting to make their voices heard.

    Hillary Clinton is deeply rooted in the New Democrat tradition, and played a role in creating the set of policies that have become the party’s common sense. New Democrats rallied together under the auspices of the now defunct Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in the late 1980s. Their platform was a direct response to the Reagan-era triumph of conservatism. With tax-and-spend liberalism appearing electorally unviable, Democrats were supposed to promote a leaner and less obtrusive government (even while tinkering with some progressive social policy at the margins).

    The Clintons’s role in transforming the Democratic Party at a national level throughout the 1990s (winning short-term electoral payoffs in the process) is undeniable. After all, it was President Clinton — not Ronald Reagan — who balanced the budget and ended “welfare as we know it.” And it was Hillary Clinton, then the first lady, who strongly supported landmark, DLC-backed achievements like the 1996 welfare reform bill.

    President Obama, despite his promises of change and 2008 primary battle with Clinton, hasn’t deviated from the DLC agenda. Yet most traditional liberals have opposed New Democratic policies, as well as Clinton’s inaction on climate change and aggressive foreign policy that included support for the Iraq War.

    In recent years, the political tides have continued to move against the Clintons, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. A politically engaged and active Tea Party movement on the Right has garnered more headlines, but the Occupy movement, labor insurgencies such as the Chicago Teachers Union strike, fast-food worker activity, movements against police violence, and increased attention to income inequality all point to the incipient reemergence of the American left.

    Electorally, an eclectic mix of personalities has vied to fill the space that grassroots action has opened up, from New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to Senate populists like Warren. But aside from Sanders, none of these figures are prepared to run in 2016.

    Sanders has described his potential run as an attempt to build organization and pressure from the left: “If I run, my job is to help bring together the kind of coalition that can win, that can transform politics.” It would be the most profound attempt to do so within the Democratic Party since the electric Jesse Jackson campaigns of the 1980s.

    Sanders can only dream of mustering the political forces that Jackson drew on, and the reasons why mainstream liberals want Clinton to win the primaries are easy to understand. Nationally, she’s the most well-known and popular Democratic figure in the race, and she can sustain the party’s popularity among women. Quite simply, she’s tough to beat, and a big victory in 2016 could pave the way for a Democratic Congress.

    But polling has indicated that just as Republicans lurch rightward, self-described Democrats are becoming more coherently and uniformly progressive. At the heart of the potential base for a Sanders campaign is the increasing divide between the centrist leadership of the Democratic Party and those voters who still cling to the vision of the Democrats as the party of the New Deal and Great Society.

    Perhaps as a response to renewed fervor on the Right, more Democrats say they’re for an activist government, capable of regulating business and providing social services. This group of liberals sees Obama’s few successes — health care reform, for instance — as insufficient wonkery at best, and wholesale corporate giveaways at worst. The absence of a vehicle like the Tea Party to give these sentiments political articulation opens a space for Sanders to solidify progressives into a coherent voting bloc.

    Meanwhile, as Politico has reported, Clinton is seen by some large liberal donors as too centrist to warrant support. Even those who don’t share Sanders’s social-democratic politics want her challenged from the left, and see Sanders as a potential wedge to drive the Democratic Party back from the center-right.

    Sanders is more likely to alter the tone and substance of the debate than someone like Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio congressman who served as the lone progressive voice in recent presidential primaries but never gained any measure of mass support. Sanders is also taken seriously by voters. He has the credibility, and the baggage, that comes from being a sitting senator, and he’s a forceful voice for wealth redistribution.

    In an era of economic stagnation, frustrations that were once muted can boil over into outright antipathy. There are enough people on the left of the Democratic coalition to create headaches for a Clinton campaign. Plans to move to the center to boost general election prospects as soon as possible will no doubt be derailed a bit by Sanders’s emergence.

    It clearly won’t be enough to win this time. But, seen as an opportunity for movement building, Sanders’s candidacy could strengthen the Left in the long run. The tensions among Democrats are serious and raise the possibility for the realignment of progressive forces on a totally different basis.

    This is a different project than the attempts of Michael Harrington(and others) to turn the Democrats into a more traditional social democratic party by pushing it leftward. Our goal must be to transcend the Democratic Party entirely.

    It’s far from a failsafe plan, but in this moment the best bet for the Left in the electoral arena is to support both independent political campaigns and insurgent primary runs by socialists and other radicals. Having Sanders openly defend socialism, and contest the New Democrat record before a national audience, is a baby step in the right direction.

    To be sure, there are dangers in a Sanders bid for president. Historically, attempts to grow social movements through outsider primary runs — like the 1980s Jackson campaigns — were dead-ends, and possibly even weakened independent political efforts.

    But Sanders’s candidacy doesn’t have to channel left forces into what will likely be a Clinton nomination. Instead, it could be a way for socialists to regroup, organize together, and articulate the kind of politics that speaks to the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of people. And it could begin to legitimate the word “socialist,” and spark a conversation around it, even if Sanders’s welfare-state socialism doesn’t go far enough.

    A vibrant Sanders campaign would be a sign that bleak job prospects and the squeezing of American workers are creating a political constituency for change. When he fails, there’s every reason to believe that radical voices can take his place, carrying the memory of Debs back into the political mainstream.

    *Bhaskar Sunkara is the Editor of Jacobin, where this article originally appeared. He is also a member of the editorial board of New Politics.

  • Bernie Sanders’s Presidential candidacy— an auspicious development for the left

    ImageIt’s all over the news, mainstream and left/alternative alike, as well as social media, and is certainly one of the most important items of political news of recent vintage: after much consideration and testing of the political waters, Bernie Sanders (whom only the staid New York Times refers to as “Bernard”!), Independent Senator from Vermont and self-proclaimed “democratic socialist,” is running for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

    This makes Sanders the first candidate so far to challenge the inevitable shoo-in of Hillary Clinton. (Unless we consider the clown show of declared Republican Presidential candidates, of course.) This is a very auspicious development for the left for a number of reasons I will elaborate on; for I consider the Sanders candidacy auspicious and positive even for those of us of the left (myself included) who feel that “in principle” there can be no truck with the Democratic Party. But, as I hope to show, sometimes we have to “transcend” the rottenness of the Democratic Party when an exceptional individual candidate comes along and gives us a long-awaited opportunity.

    Sanders insists that this will be a serious campaign, and he has a necessary fundraising strategy for this, a strategy as populist, as grassroots advocacy, as he is, and in stark contrast to Clinton and the usual gaggle of big-money donors and aspiring officeholders groveling before them. Rather than rely on such donors (“Billionaires do not flock to my campaign,” Sanders quips correctly [Quoted by Matt Taibbi, “Give ‘Em Hell, Bernie,” April 29, 2015, Rolling Stone]), he wants, instead, 3,000 ordinary individuals who will contribute $100 each. The contrast between his approach and that of the declared Republican candidates, as well as Clinton herself, who is expected to raise $2 billion, is as stark as the difference between twelve o’clock noon and twelve o’clock midnight. And already an auspicious sign that a Sanders Presidential campaign will not go the way of “politics as usual.”

     

    Certainly Sanders’s campaign message will not be “politics as usual.” He has already built himself a base, garnered influence, and made a name for himself as an outspoken and fiery advocate for those of us Occupy called “the 99%.” Not only did he endorse the Occupy Wall Street sit-in and the Occupy movement, he has also spoken out extensively and plainly against the oligarchs and plutocrats who dominate and pillage today’s U.S. politics and economy; he has actively denounced the rampant economic inequality and economic gains of more employment and productivity going only to those at the very top, pointedly noting that 99% of new wealth created goes only to the top 1% of income-holders; he has actively supported a raise in the minimum wage to a livable $15 an hour; firmly supports the rights of labor and unions so much under attack, and has frequently spoken at labor and minimum wage-increase rallies; calls for a single-payer healthcare system and expansion of Social Security; wishes to put people back to work at decent wages rebuilding the country’s devastated infrastructure; and has frequently noted publicly that underneath the often touted “official” unemployment statistics is the “real” unemployment rate hidden in the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which shows an actual unemployment and underemployment rate nearly double the “official” one. He also wants to give relief to students crushed under onerous debt, and calls for a tuition-free four-year college education for all. Sanders is also one of the strongest environmentalists in Congress, has regularly warned of the dangers of climate change and the need for action, and voted against the Keystone XL pipeline. He openly supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights as well. Moreover, he’s in the opposition forefront against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), another spurious “trade deal” that works only for the corporations and against the workers, the environment, and human rights.

    Obviously these are not the “ordinary political fare” of “mainstream” political discourse. Yet these are the programs and issues that Bernie Sanders speaks on widely, directly, and regularly, and with a bluntness that does not fudge, obfuscate, or try to straddle fences—something that clearly marks him as a rare genuine Tribune of the People, a populist champion of the “ordinary person” articulating a clearly left-wing program we who read New Politics can certainly feel comfortable with.

    Matt Taibbi wrote of him glowingly:

    He is the rarest of Washington animals, a completely honest person. If he's motivated by anything other than a desire to use his influence to protect people who can't protect themselves, I've never seen it. Bernie Sanders is the kind of person who goes to bed at night thinking about how to increase the heating-oil aid program for the poor.

    Certainly this domestic political program of Bernie Sanders outlined above, as well as Taibbi’s remarks on the personality and character of Sanders himself, give the left good political reasons to both admire Bernie Sanders personally and support programmatically his understanding of “democratic socialism” in action, an understanding he will raise on the candidate’s podium now that he’s declared himself. One good reason to support Bernie Sanders’s run for the Presidency. His left populist, deeply egalitarian program can now reach millions, and even directly challenge Democratic Presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton and her desired political agenda. In some ways he already has.

    Sanders, who officially announced his candidacy April 30, though it had been unofficially reported a few days earlier, has already garnered endorsements from Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the social-democratic newsmagazine and website In These Times, and several former leaders of Occupy Wall Street, who have set up websites on his behalf, and are committing the Occupy name on his behalf—a first for Occupy, which had previously eschewed involvement in electoral politics. Even the business newspaper Bloomberg View thinks editorially that a Sanders candidacy could be a good thing in sparking political debate! (“What is a Sanders Democrat?”)

    The chief problematic for the left in a Sanders candidacy is his intention to run, not as an independent, but as a Democrat. Sanders has always previously run and won elections as an independent, all the way back to his election as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, then Vermont’s Congressional Representative for 16 years, and now its Senator since 2006. However, he did seriously consider running as an independent, but decided against it—I think for realistic reasons. As a Democratic candidate he will automatically be taken seriously by the media, and will be able to participate in the candidates’ debates, something he could not do it he ran as an independent. He will thus be able to reach millions on his issues, not the mere thousands he would reach solely as an independent. That is simply the reality of having to play by the rules of the “two-party shell game” that is de rigueur as “serious” politics in the U.S. today. And even if certain comrades feel they cannot support the Democratic Party as a party (and that includes a lot of us, including myself), they should certainly consider, as a matter of simple realism, the necessity of supporting certain individual candidates who choose to run as Democrats. Simply because there really is no other realistic choice in most electoral races, and no truly viable left third party exists, nor is likely to exist in the foreseeable future.

    The hapless nature of Jill Stein’s run as President on the Green ticket in 2012 should be a tocsin for us all—try as she might, she could not get invited to any of the “significant” candidates’ debates; the best she was able to do was participate in a “third party debate” that was scheduled in the summer of 2012, a token effort at “inclusiveness” that pitted Stein against such ultra-wingnuts as the Presidential nominee of the Constitution Party, a far-right splinter off the “too liberal” Libertarians! As it was, she was only able to garner 0.3% of the vote, or about 400,000 votes, only a tenth of what Ralph Nader had gotten in 2000, when his 2.7% of the vote cast him as the “spoiler” who made George W. Bush President! But as a Democratic candidate Sanders will be on the ballot in all the Democratic primaries, have to be acknowledged as a candidate at all the Democratic state caucuses and conventions, and be able to debate and confront Clinton and all the Republican challengers on the issues, be heard and listened to, and at least given respect as a “serious” candidate; something that Jill Stein was never able to achieve.

    Not that he’s expected to win the nomination—but he will be a force to be reckoned with in terms of policy and issues. Already Hillary Clinton’s new-found “populism” is a sign of that. The Sanders candidacy will amplify the voice of liberals, leftists and progressives in U.S. politics, and realistically that’s all we can hope for. Despite the new ferment and unrest that’s emerged, first through Occupy, then through the protests that erupted in places such as Ferguson and Baltimore, left forces are very small, and programs and proposals almost nonexistent. Anger and disgust are there, certainly, but they in themselves do not constitute a political force, much less an effective one. We are stuck with the system of two-party dominance for the foreseeable future, and we of the left need to find ways to effectively work with or around it as we can. Sometimes that even means joining “the ranks of the enemy,” as Sanders is doing. Unfortunately, there is no viable alternative.

    All of this is very “Leninist”: “Leninist” as in Lenin’s own admonition to the Bolshevik Central Committee when the Left Communists wished to continue the fight against the invading Germans while the Russian soldiers were “voting with their feet” and deserting en masse. Lenin reminded the members then, “Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but millions.” A theme he also reiterates throughout one of his most important works, “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder. And in the U.S. today, the millions of our fellow citizens are not considering third parties of the left, certainly not in national elections. For better or worse, they are wedded to the Republican and Democratic Parties as the only choices, and only handfuls will even consider voting for an independent or third-party candidacy. More good reasons for the left to look favorably upon the Sanders Presidential run.

    To be sure, Bernie Sanders is not a “perfect” candidate; no candidate who is actually capable of running for and holding office is, is or is likely to be. And there are positions of Sanders which we of the left would take exception. But even here, Bernie Sanders is better than what the “mainstream” proffers as “acceptable;” even when Sanders is allegedly “accommodating capitalism and imperialism,” as certain ultra-leftists would have it. Simply because this “accommodation” by Sanders is still “fringe” by “mainstream” political standards, still generally “too far left” for “mainstream” tastes. For example, though Sanders supports the need for a military, he also wants to drastically cut spending on “defense” and shift the funds to social programs that benefit ordinary people. Even as he supported the establishment of F-35 fighter bases in Vermont, his “accommodation” could properly be seen as a “necessary evil” to bring jobs to his state by one of the few avenues realistically open. And yes, Sanders did support Bill Clinton’s military foray in Kosovo, which gave rise on the left to the notion of “humanitarian imperialism”—but which also caused the left to give a blind eye to the atrocities of “socialist” Milosevic. Yes, he’s supported Democrats over other independent candidates even as he is an independent who but caucuses (until now) with the Democrats, so his “political soul is not pure”—but he is in office and able to get things done! And yes, he supports Israel; but he has also sternly criticized Israeli policies in Gaza as unjustified overreaction, and was the first Senator to declare he would boycott Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress. Which he did. Sanders also voted against the Bush’s war in Iraq, and while originally voting for the war in Afghanistan (shortly after 9/11, let us remember), he also wanted the U.S. out of Afghanistan sooner and more permanently than did Obama.

    So “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders is not the “perfect” socialist candidate. So what? He is still an admirable candidate by socialist standards, advocates for his domestic populist political program as an example of applied socialism, and his program put into action in the U.S. would certainly be a boon to actual workers caught up in the living hell that 35 years of neoliberalism have foisted upon us. And can we actually name a better candidate that would be viable, and not just an ideological token proffered forth out of a senseless devotion to purity? Being politically realistic means working with what’s available, and though Bernie Sanders actually even getting the Democratic nomination is an extreme long shot at best, what he could actually accomplish as a candidate overcomes by far whatever “shortcomings” his Democratic Presidential run entails.

    It is delusory to think that we of the left must only do “pure” ideological propaganda, only engage in “pure socialist” politics, lest we fool the working people from “seeing the light.” Yes, we of the left must work only to fulfill the magical “long run” of history, something which would somehow be shorted by supporting a Sanders candidacy. But maybe it’s better to recall the pointed but trenchant words of a brilliant “liberal economist,” John Maynard Keynes: “In the long run, we are all dead.” Let’s face it, fellow comrades of the left, we have been waiting for the magical Revolution longer than the protagonists in Samuel Beckett’s famous play have been waiting for Godot! To this writer, Bernie Sanders’s Presidential campaign has so many good things going for it it’s time to be “right opportunist” and positively embrace it (critically, it that’s the way some feel) as an auspicious opening for the left we haven’t had in a very long time. Work on behalf of Bernie Sanders, not the Democratic Party! That’s a way forward for our immediate time.

    George Fish is a socialist writer living in Indianapolis.

     

  • The Problem with Bernie Sanders

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    The upcoming presidential contest was shaping up to be one of the most underwhelming in electoral history. An heir to the Bush dynasty, real estate magnate Jeb, looked like the safest bet to become the Republican presidential nominee, and challenge the anointed frontrunner from the Democrats' leading dynasty, corporate drone Hilary Clinton.

    Few people on the left or even among liberals could manage any excitement or conviction about getting "Ready for Hillary Clinton," the former Walmart board member, regardless of the populist veneer she is trying to put forward as her campaign gets underway.

    Thus, for many, the decision of Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination offers an alternative. For example, Jacobinmagazine's founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara argued, "Sanders' candidacy could strengthen the left in the long run. The tensions among Democrats are serious and raise the possibility for the realignment of progressive forces on a totally different basis."

    Sunkara joined more than 50 activists, mainly from the Occupy Wall Street movement, in forming People for Sanders. Their founding statement says, "[W]e support Bernie Sanders in his bid to become the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. We stand firmly behind Senator Sanders as the strongest progressive possibility in the race right now. His commitment to our values is one of longstanding commitment. Sanders is the bold alternative."

    But in running for the Democratic presidential nomination as the liberal outsider with almost no chance of winning, Sanders isn't very "bold"–no more so than the fizzled campaigns of Dennis Kucinich in past presidential election years. And by steering liberal and left supporters into a Democratic Party whose policies and politics he claims to disagree with, Sanders–no matter how critical he might be of Hillary Clinton–is acting as the opposite of an "alternative."

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    SANDERS HAS positioned himself as a hero of America's downtrodden workers. He doesn't run from the label "socialist," but instead embraces it in his condemnations of corporate greed. He even has a portrait of the great Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs hanging in his office.

    Certainly Sanders will bring all sorts of issues to the Democratic primaries that Clinton would prefer to tiptoe around or avoid altogether. He has promised to call attention to inequality in the U.S., the corporate hijacking of American politics and the imminent crisis of climate change.

    With refreshing bluntness, he told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News' This Week, "We need a political revolution in this country involving millions of people who are prepared to stand up and say "Enough is enough," and I want to help lead that effort."

    But if Sanders really wanted to participate in mobilizing millions to resist the status quo in U.S. politics, he had other options to launching himself into the circus of a Democratic presidential campaign as the designated marginal renegade. And he rejected them.

    For one, he could have set a very different example, with a far greater chance of success, if he ran for governor in Vermont against the Democratic Party's incumbent Peter Shumlin, who has betrayed promises to implement a single-payer health care system, create green, union jobs and much more.

    Faced with a budget crisis, Shumlin and the state's Democrats refused to raise taxes on the rich to fulfill their promises. Instead, they imposed cuts in social services, education, and environmental programs, and laid off scores of state workers. Shumlin even went so far as to call for the banning of teachers' right to strike.

    Sanders is Vermont's most popular politician. With the backing of the Progressive Party, he could have run for governor as an independent and easily defeated both the Democratic and Republican nominees, and never faced the accusation of being a spoiler that is inevitably thrown at any third-party challenger.

    A victory for a truly independent campaign by Sanders would have been even bigger than Kshama Sawant's election to the Seattle City Council as an open socialist. In so doing, Sanders could have built momentum for a national third party alternative to represent workers and the oppressed.

    If Sanders had his heart set on national politics, he could have run for president like Ralph Nader as an independent, opposing both capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans. He would have been appealing for a protest vote, rather than any real chance to win, but Sanders rejected this possibility out of hand for a different reason. "No matter what I do," Sanders said in January, "I will not be a spoiler. I will not play that role in helping to elect some right-wing Republican as president of the United States."

    In other words, Sanders refused to consider an independent presidential campaign not because he had little chance of winning, but because he didn't want to compete for vote with the Democrats' eventual nominee. There's no reason to believe he will be a "bold alternative" at the end of his doomed campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

    In jumping into the Democratic Party primaries, Sanders appointed a quintessential corporate party insider, Ted Devine, to be his campaign manager. Devine has worked for a series of Democratic presidential campaigns, stretching back to Walter Mondale and running through to John Kerry.

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    THE DEMOCRATIC establishment can breathe a collective sigh of relief. It doesn't, in fact, fear liberal Democrats like Kucinich or Sanders, but third-party challenges like Nader's that have the prospect of breaking their stranglehold on votes from workers and the oppressed, as several local and statewide campaigns have shown over the last few years.

    Hillary Clinton certainly doesn't regard Sanders as a threat. She knows that the election business follows the golden rule: Whoever has more gold, wins. Clinton is expected to amass a war chest of more than $1 billion, mostly from Wall Street and Corporate America, to pay for advertising, an army of paid staff and Astroturf support. This will overwhelm Sanders' fundraising goal of $50 million and his underdeveloped volunteer infrastructure.

    In fact, Clinton regards Sanders as an asset to her campaign. He will bring enthusiasm and attention to Democratic primaries that promised to be lackluster at best. He will also help her frame the election on populist terms that have widespread support. That benefits the Democrats and undermines the Republicans, who have little to say about inequality, except that they like it.

    As liberal writer Paul Waldman wrote in the Washington Post:

    Bernie Sanders isn't going to pull her to the left because she was already moving that way. She's talking about issues like inequality and criminal justice reform in terms that she might not have used 10 or 20 years ago…Talking about them in more liberal terms isn't just good for her in the primaries, it's good for her in the general elections.

    No wonder Clinton celebrated Sander's entry into the race. "I agree with Bernie," she wrote on Twitter. "Focus must be on helping America's middle class. GOP would hold them back. I welcome him to the race."

    You can expect that Clinton will agree with Sanders during the campaign, rearticulating some of his themes in a "more realistic" fashion and occasionally chiding him for taking things too far. Sanders can be counted on to concentrate most of his fire on the Republicans, the Koch brothers and their reactionary positions, as he has been doing for years.

    Sanders admitted the truth in what was perhaps a Freudian slip: "If I decide to run, I'm not running against Hillary Clinton. I'm running for a declining middle class."

    At this stage, Clinton is the overwhelming favorite to emerge as the Democratic nominee. If she stumbles in some irreversible way, the corporate establishment that controls the Democratic Party will come up with another more mainstream candidate, like Obama in 2008. Either way, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee will toe the capitalist line.

    However much he disagrees with that candidate, Sanders will agitate for trade unionists and social movement activists to vote for the lesser of two evils. The result is that he will help corral people on the left from taking any steps toward building a genuine alternative to the two-party status quo.

    Thus, Sanders will follow the well-trodden path of other liberals like Kucinich. In the 2004 Democratic primaries, Kucinich excoriated Kerry and other candidates for voting for George W. Bush's wars, implementing neoliberal trade agreements like NAFTA, and supporting the racist death penalty.

    But Kucinich was very conscious of keeping the left and liberals from building a third party. At one point during the campaign, he said: "The Democratic Party created third parties by running to the middle. What I'm trying to do is to go back to the big tent so that everyone who felt alienated could come back through my candidacy."

    Kucinich thus became the bait on the hook for the Democrats to catch their liberal base. After he lost the primaries, he called on his supporters to support the very candidate he had roundly criticized.

    Sanders' campaign will serve the same function. He is already serving that function by luring people on the left, like the Occupy activists who launched People for Bernie, into a Democratic Party campaign when they might have concentrated their energies on politics outside the Democrats.

    This is especially ironic when you remember that the Occupy Wall Street encampments were attacked and cleared on orders from Democratic Party mayors–many of them known for being liberals–from Boston to Chicago to Portland to Oakland.

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    SANDERS' DECISION to jump into Democratic Party presidential politics represents a decisive break from the man he calls his hero: Eugene V. Debs. Debs spent his whole life building the Socialist Party as an alternative to the two capitalist parties. Year in and year out, he insisted that "[t]he differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties involve no issue, no principle in which the working class have any interest."

    Debs understood that his call for working class people to break with the two capitalist parties meant supporting a political alternative that might not win–but he believed this was a necessary challenge to a two-party system that offered nothing to workers. "I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it," Debs once wrote, "than vote for something I don't want and get it."

    Sanders' retreat is based on a liberal strategy of attempting to transform the Democratic Party from within that has failed for generations. Instead of shifting the Democrats to the left, the leftists who join the Democrats get dragged to the right. Sanders himself is, in many ways, a prime example of this process.

    Back in the 1980s, as mayor of Burlington–the largest city in Vermont, known back then as "the People's Republic"–Sanders did genuinely challenge the two-party system. He went so far as to build solidarity with the left-wing Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua at a time when Republicans and Democrats were supporting the Reagan administration's dirty wars in Central America.

    In the 1990s, however, Sanders set his sites on higher office–not by building an alternative party, but by running as an independent who maintained a collaborative relationship with the Democrats.

    Once ensconced in Washington as a member of the House and Senate, he abandoned his principled opposition to the two-party system. As Vermont Democrat Howard Dean–a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination himself–stated, "He is basically a liberal Democrat, and he is a Democrat at that–he runs as an Independent because he doesn't like the structure and money that gets involved…The bottom line is that Bernie Sanders votes with the Democrats 98 percent of the time."

    Since he made his arrangement with the Democrats, Sanders has uncritically supported them in Vermont elections. As a result, when his ally, Gov. Peter Shumlin, declared war on state workers, Sanders didn't even issue a statement in opposition. His silence led many in Vermont to ask: "Where's Bernie?"

    Nationally, Sanders supported Barack Obama in both of the last two elections, despite the president's betrayal of his progressive promises and his record of continuity with many Bush policies, from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the bailout of Wall Street.

    And the Democrats have rewarded Sanders. They instructed their Vermont candidates not to oppose him and sent corporate lackeys like Sens. Charles Schumer and Barbara Boxer to campaign for him. Even worse, Sanders accepted a $10,000 donation from Hillary Clinton's Hillpac back in 2006, during his first run for Senate.

    Sanders, the supposed independent, was a bitter opponent of third-party challenges Ralph Nader's campaigns against Al Gore and John Kerry. In 2004, he announced, "Not only am I going to vote for John Kerry, I am going to run around this country and do everything I can to dissuade people from voting for Ralph Nader…I am going to do everything I can, while I have differences with John Kerry, to make sure that he is elected."

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    WITH HIS slide into becoming a Democrat in everything but name, Sanders became less and less radical on a host of issues, including cherished ones like class inequality. For example, Sanders rightly denounces the minimum wage as a "starvation wage," but he doesn't support the low-wage workers' movement demand for $15 now. Instead, he proposes a more "realistic" increase to $15 "over a period of years, not tomorrow."

    Sanders has similarly moderate positions on many social issues. While he boasts a good voting record on the rights of oppressed groups, it doesn't stand out among most other liberal Democrats.

    In fact, on the decisive issue today of racist police brutality, Hillary Clinton is actually posturing to Sanders' left. She has raised questions about the drug war and ending mass incarceration–though, of course, largely to cover her complicity with Bill Clinton's vast expansion of both. By contrast, in a recent CNN interview, Sanders, after expressing sympathy for cops' supposedly "difficult job," managed to call only for jobs and community policing.

    His foreign policy positions are to the right of many liberal Democrats. Sanders voted in favor of George W. Bush's original Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution that gave the administration a green light to launch the war on Afghanistan. While he did vote against Bush's invasion of Iraq, he repeatedly supported funding resolutions for both U.S. occupations. He is also a Zionist who supports Israel consistently, even after its recent escalations of the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

    Sanders' backing of U.S. imperialism compromises his support for workers' rights. For example, Sanders supports the basing of the new F-35 warplane at Burlington's airport, despite the fact that the fighter-bomber's ear-shattering noise made scores of working class housing unsafe for habitation.

    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    LIKE MANY leftists before him, the Democratic Party has co-opted and changed Bernie Sanders, using him to help hinder the development of a genuine alternative to the capitalist parties.

    His campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination will be, at best, a re-run of Jesse Jackson's primary runs in 1984 and 1988. Jackson's campaigns galvanized an entire section of the left, channeled it toward the Democratic Party and directed its remnants to vote for a succession of corporate candidates like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

    Based on his experience as Dennis Kucinich's former press secretary, David Swanson has drawn the conclusion that the left should not support Sanders. "The best place to put our resources is into uncorrupted, principle, policy-driven, nonviolent, creative activism–including activism needed to create fair, open, verifiable elections," Swanson wrote.

    He's right. As the great socialist historian Howard Zinn argued, "The really critical thing isn't who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in–in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating–those are the things that determine what happens."

    The recent uprising in Baltimore proves this. Without that revolt, the Baltimore state's attorney would never have charged the six cops who killed Freddie Gray. Without more struggle, they will certainly not be convicted.

    At the same time, the left shouldn't abandon the electoral arena to the two capitalist parties. If we do, we create a vacuum that the Democrats will fill, co-opting movement activists, demobilizing unions and social movements, and redirecting their precious time, money and energy into electing candidates who then betray workers and the oppressed.

    We need to win the new left born out of Occupy, public-sector union struggles and the Black Lives Matter movement to breaking with the Democratic Party and building an electoral alternative as a complement to struggle from below. Bernie Sanders' campaign inside the Democratic Party is an obstacle to that project.

    *Ashley Smith is a member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO). This article originally appeared in Socialist Worker.

  • Left, Independent Political Action Conference: Unprecedented Cooperation

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    Some 200 political activists from a variety of independent political organizations, as well as individual activists, carried out a rich discussion and an amicable debate about how to collaborate in the work of building a large political alternative to the left of the Democratic Party. Participating in the Future of the Left/Independent Politics Conference, in an unprecedented spirit of cooperation, national, state, and local candidates and activists, as well as elected officials from the Green Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Richmond Progressive Alliance, Socialist Alternative, and the Vermont Progressive Party discussed the challenges of campaigning and the difficulties of actually holding office while trying to both build movements and push progressive policies. Also at the conference were members of Progressive Democrats of America and the Justice Party.

    A number of the leading figures of independent politics in America participated. Kshama Sawant of Socialist Alternative, a member of the Seattle City Council, spoke to the group via video. Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and former Green Party vice-presidential candidate Rosa Clemente spoke, as did 2014 New York gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins. Other speakers included Gayle McLaughlin of the Richmond Progressive Alliance and Richmond City Council member, Susan Sadlowski Garza, who was recently elected to the Chicago City Council, and Angela Walker who ran for sheriff in Milwaukee as an independent socialist.

    Though not part of the formal agenda, the just-announced campaign of Bernie Sanders, an independent and self-identified socialist who will run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination–and who had sent greetings to the conference–became a topic of discussion in several sessions. While some said they would support a Sanders campaign because it would raise the important issues and contribute to activism, others felt—as Bruce Dixon of the Georgia Green Party put it—that Sanders was a sheep dog whose job was like that of Rev. Jesse Jackson and Congressman Dennis Kucinich in earlier elections, to round up folks who had strayed to the left in response to the Democratic Party’s retrograde domestic and foreign policies and to bring them back to the Party.

    Responding to the country’s pervasive economic and social crisis, to widespread public support for movements such as Occupy, Black Lives Matters, and Fight for $15, and to recent successes in independent left campaigns, the conference expressed a sense of optimism about the possibilities for not only running left candidates, and winning elections, but also for building a larger left political presence while both expressing and helping to organize and expand the social movements. While this was a conference about political action, the organizers made it clear through panels on the Black Lives Matter movement and the Fight for $15 that politics must be about building and giving voice to such movements.

    Robert Caldwell of Solidarity, one of the chief organizers of the event, and Debra Reiger, the chair of the California Peace and Freedom Party and also one of the organizers, told the gathering in a final report that the number of participants, the spirit of collaboration, and the richness of the discussion exceeded the organizers’ expectations. During an evaluation period, many speakers rose to commend the spirit of mutual respect, cooperation, and solidarity that the conference had engendered. Speaking for the organizing committee—which includes representatives of most of the participating parties, together with the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Socialist Alternative, and Solidarity, as well as Black Agenda Report—Caldwell and Reiger announced that a continuations committee would take up the question of now to keep alive the network established by the conference. They also recognized the need for greater diversity, for greater involvement of African American and Latino activists, and for simply casting a wider net and drawing in others involved in such political campaigns.

    Panels and Workshops

    While this was a conference of the American independent left, there was also an international element. Søren Søndergaard of the Danish Red-Green Alliance offered international greetings, while Sascha Nemseff Villagrán, a member of the Spanish Podemos Party, and Alan Akrivos of Socialist Alternative and the Greek Syriza, discussed the challenges facing these two parties which stand at the moment at the center of the fight between capital and labor over austerity in Europe.

    Aware that we are building on political efforts of the past, there were various discussions of earlier movements and their experiences. Lance Selfa of the International Socialist Organization, and author of The Democrats: A Critical History, opened the conference by providing an overview of today’s two-party system. Prof. Mark Lause, a longtime Green Party activist, discussed the history of the Socialist Party and the Progressive Party in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. New York Green Party leader Gloria Mattera discussed the history of the Labor Party of the United States that was founded in 1996, and of the Green Party. Unfortunately sudden illness and hospitalization kept Kali Akuno of the Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement (MXGM) and the Chokwe Lumumba campaign from talking about electoral politics and Black liberation. There were also talks by Bruce Dixon on the Black Panther Party, by Jesus “Chuy” Negrete on the La Raza Unida Party, and by Guy Miller on the Socialist Worker Party campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s.

    Many of the participants brought years of experience in organizing independent political campaigns, so naturally the nuts-and-bolts of organizing were also on the agenda, as were the challenges of actually holding office. Several speakers from various parties talked about ballot access and the fight for inclusion in debate, while others discussed fundraising, field operations, and voter registration. Marsha Rummel of Progressive Dane (County) and Madison City Councilperson and Gayle McLaughlin of the Richmond City Council discussed the difficulties of holding office while trying to fight for progressive change and simultaneously build the movements.

    During the next year and a half, the question of how we relate to the Sanders campaign, which has the potential to reach and involve millions of progressives, will be challenging. Even those who opposed endorsing Sanders suggested that advocates of independent political action should maintain a friendly attitude to Sanders supporters. When the seemingly inevitable nomination of Hillary Clinton occurs, it may be possible to win over many of these people to an independent, left, third party perspective.

    The Future of the Left/Independent Politics Conference represented an important step forward not only for independent politics but also for cooperation on the left. The challenge now will be to find ways for the organizations and individuals involved in this conference to keep alive the network we have founded, while continuing our work in local movements and independent political campaigns.

    Dan La Botz is a member of Solidarity and a co-editor of New Politics, both of which endorsed The Future of Left/Independent Action in the United States Conference. He served on the conference organizing committee.

  • The Elections in Chicago – A View From Chuy’s Base Area

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    This is the fifth in a series of articles about the Chicago mayor and council elections. Scroll down to find others. – Eds. 

    Chicago hasn’t seen such electoral contention since the days of Dick and Jane – and Harold. Even in defeat, the Jesús “Chuy” Garcia challenge brought a familiar spirit back to the city by the lake. No one expected the immigrant from Durango to challenge the abrasive Rahm in a run off. Nor could we have have predicted the surprising synergy that would result from over a dozen insurgent ward campaigns and Chuy’s crusade. In the 12th ward on the Southwest side, we learned that politics is local.

    Following a spontaneous and wildly successful petition drive which netted 62,000 names in less than a month, passion in wards north, south and west threatened to ignite a city-wide blaze.

    To our chagrin, the wind in our city could not propel enough burning embers across the Dan Ryan and the Eisenhower. In the posh areas of the new economy, condo dwellers stamped out the sparks with their tony boots. They rushed to the polls as if panicking in a lakefront fire drill. Municipal employees and pensioners tried to nurture the flame out southwest and northwest. But suspicious property owners turned on their sprinklers in spite of distaste for mayor one percent. Constant TV attack ads paid for with Rahm’s millions were the showers that fell harder on some neighborhoods than others.

    Jesús “Chuy” Garcia awoke long dormant alliances. Young activists stepped forward and exchanged skills with veteran organizers.  Hundreds worked to create new mechanisms for electoral struggle. Aldermanic candidates emerged to give leadership to progressive ward organizations. Terms like “privatization”, “community policing”, “progressive taxation”, “participatory budgeting”, and “the neighborhoods” became familiar topics.

    When the votes were all counted, we were not the kind of movement that could topple Rahm Emanuel’s coterie of global power brokers. We are a populace fragmented by the cunning of the one percent. We rose up to fight back. We lost. And yet we gained a lot.

    At the risk of over simplification, the mayor’s tactic was to arouse suspicion of a Mexican American populist. To whites, the message, encoded in dog whistles, was that Chuy is a nice, but naïve, Mexican boy. His call for audits of city corruption was spun as an evasion of fiscal responsibility. At a more sinister level, the unspoken message called for unity to keep the burgeoning Latino community in its place – at the precarious margins of progress.  Fearful of dire warnings of municipal bankruptcy, many white voters sided with the one percent. Chuy’s biggest strength is his unapologetic compassion and his defense of the undocumented. In the minds of a beleaguered middle class, this roughly translated as “keep them in their place, scrambling at the bottom alongside the Blacks”.

    And to African Americans, many of whom have been pushed even beyond the margin, there was not a deep enough reservoir of solidarity. Competition for jobs and economic opportunity between Blacks and Latinos has created a divide. The rivalry, often downplayed in polite discussion, is nonetheless real. It’s the most recent iteration of the age-old scenario – not unlike the divisions set up at the turn of the previous century when southern sharecroppers were imported as replacement workers in the stockyards.

    More than anything else, the race hinged on race.

    Yet we gave them a scare, flexed some political muscle, won a handful of new aldermanic seats, learned a lot, increased our numbers, and projected an example for similar coalitions and struggles nationwide.

    The key was a grass roots approach. Some purists missed this important dynamic. They stood on the sidelines calling Chuy a corporate neo-liberal in disguise. They predicted that Chuy would enact austerity budgets.  They feared that his campaign was not radical enough to energize those who have lost hope. They jumped on weaknesses in outreach to African American communities as a deal breaker. The campaign’s call for hiring of 1000 police officers was cited as an indication of treachery.

    In the near southwest 12th ward, we didn’t even try to influence the citywide campaign over which we had little control. We felt that, if everything fell into place, we might be able to replicate the minority-led Harold Washington inter-regnum of thirty years ago. But, more realistically, we were fighting for power at the ward level and to defend our people. As things stand, neo-liberal schemes define the political landscape. Rahm Emanuel personifies this perfidy along the predominantly Latino Archer corridor.  Transfer of wealth proceeds apace.

    The elevation of Commissioner Garcia as our standard bearer at first seemed accidental – driven, as it was, by Karen Lewis’ brain tumor and County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s refusal to accept the challenge.

    But it is not random chance that reform’s most credible and trustworthy candidate arose from the Latino political movement.  Commissioner Garcia has positioned himself as an honest independent. He has been steady in opposition to each successive re-incarnation of machine politics. He got his start as a pioneer for Chicano empowerment in the late seventies. The ward organization, which he helped form in Little Village, is the only opposition precinct apparatus which has stayed intact over this span. The man has displayed courage several times in his career – from his willingness to stand in for his assassinated compadre, Rudy Lozano, to his recent acceptance of the torch from Ms. Lewis, the outspoken leader of the teacher’s union.

    Chuy’s campaign meme was that Rahm takes from the neighborhoods and rewards the rich. The gleaming center versus decaying ghettos and barrios was a fundamental metaphor.  Specifics in regards to safety, education, revenue generation, and services were plentiful.  Problems with the mix of issues, the way they were broadcast, difficulties in creating a citywide campaign, and missed alliances do not alter the key point – Chuy was articulating a broad populist message.

    With regard to Chuy’s strongest base of support, critics should own up to their own blind spot. He unapologetically spoke for a large, multi-class base in a Latino community that is marginalized and becoming more so. It is almost too obvious to state that Latinos are overwhelmingly members of the working class. The dynamism of the Latino fabric in Chicago is hard to ignore.

    Correctly and in keeping with his longstanding approach, Chuy subsumed his Chicano politics within a call for class justice. Unions were his financial bedrock. Class was a unifying blanket. Good government was a broad appeal. But the speakers of Spanish, the people whose names end in “ez” and “ño”, the Latinos of Chicago, were his reliable electoral base.

    In our work in McKinley Park, we were struck by the Latino solidarity. Every precinct produced vote percentages coinciding almost exactly with the percent of Latino voters. Of course there are small remnants of the discredited Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO). In my own precinct, there are four reliable Rahm votes in the household of machine-backed, State Senator, Tony Muñoz. And, of course, we know white and Chinese voters who went with Chuy. But the general pattern holds.

    Significantly the Latino community in Chicago supports a relatively vibrant commercial class. Their interest is strongly with the economic well-being and the secure residency status of all Spanish speakers. They along with Latino professionals – both public and private — were totally on board. It was never hard to solicit botanas and comidas for Garcia events. Rahm Emanuel photo ops with Latino elected officials, who called themselves the Rahmtinos, elicited derision in all Southwest side barrios.

    In the run off, Latino turnout, while elevated and enthusiastic, did not cascade to the mighty levels that we experienced with African Americans voting for Harold Washington or Barak Obama. Social and historical reasons prevail. A huge cohort of noncitizens intermingles with many who are not registered or feel culturally and linguistically alienated.

    Similarly, the hoped for re-unification of the Black-Brown alliance of the 1980s, was not spectacular. Emanuel’s money produced saturation attack ads, street level pay offs, misleading promises, and appeals to racial divisions by proxy publicists.  Some lingering loyalty to Rahm as an emissary from President Obama depressed the African American turnout significantly. Rahm pulled down majorities in the mid-50s to mid-60s in African American precincts.

    Long known as a united voting bloc, African Americans were divided and confused. Could the Garcia campaign have said the magic words and repaired a historic divide? Weaknesses in the commissioner’s campaign were a reflection of something broader. He could not create on-the-ground leadership and proof of good faith for such an alliance in a matter of weeks. Stubborn realities of segregation, alternating tactics of favoritism and neglect, gerrymandering, and economic competition have chilled the dialogue among the two communities.

    Chuy’s history is replete with efforts to reach out and champion the Black agenda. He was a swing vote for Harold Washington in council wars.  He has stood against discriminatory landlords and segregated high school boundaries. More so than any current elected official in Chicago, he has worked to create working multi-ethnic and multi-issue coalitions. When he was in the Illinois Senate, he was a member of the Black caucus. In contrast, the incumbent one percenter used guile to fashion relatively cheap and insignificant gestures as a lifeline to African Americans.

    In the 12th ward, Pete DeMay’s aldermanic campaign intermingled with Chuy’s mayoral crusade.  Like Chuy, Pete stepped forward when no one else was willing. He entered a one-on-one bout with machine regular, George Cardenas.

    Pete was an anomaly – a white guy with credibility as a United Autoworkers organizer, fluent in Spanish and with organizing experience in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Tennessee. He was a hard-working and combative campaigner. He united with an existing core of activists in the McKinley Park neighborhood and attracted an expanded following.  His platform centered on education, end to regressive revenue measures, as well as more equitable public safety and ward services.

    It is here, at the deepest level of political activity, that the elections of 2015 are interesting and instructive.  In the precincts, we mixed the battle for local accountability with the broader, city-wide effort. We went toe to toe against a well-funded, entrenched machine. We stood upright in the middle of the ring. We were surprised to see a Latino cheering section for the güero against a man who has a surname evocative of Mexican radicalism.  So effective was the challenge, that Cardenas appealed to a home town referee – Rahm’s Chicago Board of Elections. Ruling on preposterous legal pretexts, the board declared a technical knockout. Pete was stricken from the ballot. We were down for the count before we could finish the first round.

    We’ll never know if Pete’s aggressive campaign could have ridden Chuy’s coat tails to victory against a Latino apologist for neo-liberalism. His spunk and organization touched a nerve. Even without his name on the ballot, we netted an unprecedented 20 to 25 percent write-in count in the municipal general election.

    The use of legal shenanigans to derail Pete’s challenge was as obvious as it was odious. The required number of nominating signatures was 473. We collected over 2100. Of these, 1400 were invalidated in challenges. The majority were stricken based on overly precise requirements that the signatures match exactly with their original applications. One hundred and fifty names were ruled “out of district” by a computer program that was obviously flawed. Each in-district address that was rejected was clearly within the boundaries.

    Then, with a remaining cushion of 300 above the needed level, Cardenas’ election lawyer submitted witnesses and affidavits supposedly proving a pattern of fraud. The alderman’s staff had gone around the ward during work hours to badger signers into recanting their names on Pete’s petitions. On the basis of 47 coerced affidavits and 3 suspect witnesses, the hearing examiner declared all sheets turned in by Pete himself to be inadmissible. Our signature total fell to 407 and we were off the ballot.

    Activists and constituents understood the cynical use of a municipal board to protect a favorite of Mayor Emanuel. The commissioner is a lawyer who has received over $200 million in municipal fees for billable hours in recent years. We made common cause with other campaigns who had suffered similarly egregious rulings. We rallied voters who saw these maneuvers as a sign of weakness by the incumbent and an affront to democracy. The commitment of the core tightened and the drive for write-in votes picked up steam.

    Chuy had surpassed all expectations and held Rahm to only 45%. With none of the five candidates receiving more than half, the mood at our 12th ward election night gathering was mixed. We had brought home landslide numbers in all our precincts for Chuy. We knew that write-in votes were accumulating in astonishing numbers but Pete’s defeat was seen as unavoidable. The obstacles were too great.

    Looking around the banquet room, the majority of Pete’s active campaigners where Latinos. They were union members. They were young people gaining their first taste of politics. They were from each section of a gerrymandered district. We all saw this cause as inseparable from the city wide crusade to “Take Back Chicago”.

    Precincts were the critical unit of geography. The goal was to staff each precinct with people who live there. Typically in our southwest campaigns, the stability of such teams has been uneven. Most often – especially when the turf is larger than a ward — volunteers show up for canvassing.  They are handed walk sheets based solely on the areas that have not yet been covered. In Pete’s campaign – because we had the added dynamism of working in concert with the Chuy mobilization – we had such a large base of volunteers that we were able to approximate the old style machine structure.

    Democratic ward armies of the past have been based on captain and patronage loyalists. These teams are in decline nowadays because of a shift from hiring clout to sub-contracting and privatizing. Our home grown teams were able to match up favorably with the diehards.  We held precinct meetings, put out specific flyers by neighborhood, and were able to allocate crews of watchers, passers, and runners at every polling place. Just as our ward was a battle ground in the mayoral, the precincts were key for Pete’s challenge.

    To grab and hold some power even at the ward level, this must be a continuing emphasis. We forged cooperation by local people of good will – from recreation and cultural leaders, to teachers and librarians, to retired and current union people, to the youth and the unemployed. Links to citywide issues and to the concerns of other neighborhoods are a priority. Of particular importance will be creating unity with African American communities.

    Here in the Latino southwest side, the progressives fought five aldermanic battles in addition to the overarching Garcia effort. Though they were not arrayed as an official slate, there was an informal alliance which benefited each local race and contributed to Chuy’s organizing. The various teams picked up tips from each other. Those which didn’t survive the first round joined in to help out those still in the field and to work side by side in the mayoral. Marching bands from two of our high schools led parades to early voting.

    The teams from various ward struggles and from the Chuy field offices now have an opportunity to forge tighter working unity.  We face stiff challenges as Rahm begins his next four year reign. We expect renewed attacks in ever changing forms.  That’s what it’s all about — learning from electoral efforts, gearing up for the next one, and directing a united front against inevitable attacks. 

  • Ayotzinapa Caravan43 Comes to New York

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    More than three hundred Mexican American community activists marched through New York City from Union Square to the United Nations on April 26, marking the seven-month anniversary of the killing of six and forced disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in Guerrero, Mexico.

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    Led by parents and surviving students from Ayotzinapa, the marchers–mostly New Yorkers, but some from as far as San Diego, California–carried portraits of the slain students and poles bearing paper flowers that had been made by the missing students’ mothers. They marchers carried posters proclaiming in Spanish, “They were taken alive, and alive we want them back.”

    Parents have criticized the Mexican government for its failure to investigate the crime and for the complicity of governmental authorities and the police in the violence. Since September 26 when the killings and kidnappings occurred in Iguala, Guerrero, there have been scores of protests throughout Mexico, many of them large and militant, as well as demonstrations in South America, Europe, and the United States. Parents, surviving students, and community members have taken their cause to the European Union and the United Nations.

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    The New York march was part of Caravan43, a coalition of hundreds of Mexican American community organizations as well as other groups that brought some parents and surviving students to the United States in separate tours on the West Coast, in the Midwest, and on the East Coast. A group of parents of the Ayotzinapa victims are now planning on going on to South America and to Europe to continue to bring their cause before world public opinion. Image 

     

  • Why Marx Matters

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    It is extraordinary how relevant Marxist thought is becoming at a time of lingering financial crisis in the US and abroad. The financial debacle of 2008, and its continuous scourge, has at least meant that the words socialism and Marx are no longer distained but fashionable.  In fact, the conventional capitalist analysis of Marxism that sees it as nothing but totally irrelevant and not applicable to a modern free and liberal social order is now in question.

    To illustrate, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twentieth Century, has suddenly become a fevered topic, especially in America. Having for years dismissed the gaps between the have and have not, Americans, stung by the excesses of Wall Street, are suddenly talking about the rich and the desirability of income distribution.

    Often referred to as the modern successor to Karl Marx, Piketty is best described as a “soft Marx.” Piketty, responding to the gross income inequities, states that income disparities have risen sharply “since the late 70’s”. The most quoted statistic in his work is that “60% of US Income in the last 30 years after 1977 went to the top 1% of earned income.” This trend toward a greater wealth inequality is very likely to continue because returns from capital are apt to grow faster than the economy itself.

    Piketty maintains that this is the central contradiction of capitalism “when the entrepreneur inevitably becomes a rentier and more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor…” In effect the core of his theses is that once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases, “the past devours the future.” This ominous anti-democratic trend is finally finding its way into public discourse and consciousness.

    Piketty, gives evidence of a long-term propensity, in capitalism, to increase inequality. Nevertheless, capitalism’s   leading to inequality is not a new concept. As Marx states “the accumulation of wealth at one pole and at the other pole is the immiseration of agony, toil, ignorance, slavery, and mental degradation.”

    Readers of Piketty’s book who wish it will provide a convincing analysis of why capitalism produces inequality on such a prodigious scale, will be disappointed, even more so those who hope to discover meaningful solutions to our rapacious economic system. Piketty is not however, interested in abolishing capitalism, but merely in reforming it; and moving it politically toward a more democratic form of socialism.

    Marxism, more than any other paradigm in the social sciences, is rich in approaches to studying social formations especially with respect to individual agents in history. It will be recalled how Marx revealed the basic contradictions inherent in the Capitalist system and how these dichotomies impact wages, labor, exploitation and the accelerating practice in capital of outsourcing American jobs.

    It is imperative that proponents of a more applied Marxism, deal with the fundamental contradictions inherent between individual freedom and “free-market” ideology. Consequently, it was the revolutionary implications of Hegel’s dialectic which gave expression to the idea that contradictions denote historical reality in its ever changing modes. Observed reality is changeful because it consists in its innermost the unstable coexistence and resolution (its synthesis) of incompatible forces.

    Marx convolutes Hegel’s earlier romantic idealism of man as a dynamic being by constructing a paradigm of man as a social and economic being dialectally related to nature and society. Premised here, in his dialectic, is the notion that man creates himself in a dialectical relation.  , (man) to a highly abstract condition called the “Absolute Spirit”; Hegel’s final synthesis.

    Marks’s formulation of the dialectic now becomes the development of man determined by external, material conditions. So, when undertaking to produce their means of subsistence, real men enter into definite relations that are indispensable, but dialectally independent of their will. It is at this point that definite classes  emerge  in corresponding to precise stages of a worker’s material powers of production The sum  total of the  relations of production constitute the  economic structure of society , or that society’s distinct Mode of Production. This concept used throughout Marx’s statements on historical change states that all of material life conditions social, political, and intellectual life process in general.

    Within this Marxist construct, relations of production are as they are because they promote economic productivity. The acknowledgement is that under capitalism significant strides were made in producing goods and services to the public. However, these relations change when new technologies arise to which individuals are poorly adaptive.

    Mode of production and its relations represent the seminal core of Marx’s general ideas about historical change. So his vision of the impending transformation of capitalism into socialism, like earlier epical transformations in economic form, from Feudal modes of exchange to Mercantilism, involved a process of “creative construction,” and its eventual supersession to Socialism.  It then emerges from its basis in capitalism’s development to become the new social ethos.

    So capitalism’s very success stimulates changes which facilitate the movement toward the imminence of socialism in new modes of production and its relations.  Thus, it interferes with the optimal functioning of the whole system, by unraveling the status quo that serves to preserve and maintain economic, political and social homeostasis.

    A Marxist model takes a holistic view of the whole capitalist system in promulgating the contention that capitalism is held together by the exercise of power; economic, political and social.  It then becomes necessary, in a good, but complex society, to act in delegitimizing this iron-clad consensus and   its claim to validity.

    History, in this sense, becomes a narrative of how social structures and arrangements adapt to economic and technological change.  Observers contend that Marx was not a fatalist about historical change, despite what people may think.  It is possible that even through politics and rational persuasion that we can crucially determine its direction. .  History changes when thoughts and desires give impetus to the development of productive forces–i.e. ideas.

    In our time, the Marxist project in evolving socialism, never materialized in its rigid deductive, organic structure. However, its contradictions and manifestations are clearly demonstrated in internal economic and social practices. And singularly indicated in today’s world. Imperialism itself is a product of capitalist development is most instrumental in the movement of capital, with no regard for boundaries, across the Globe.  In the Communist Manifesto Marx saw the modern structure of capitalism as the final phase of colonial expansion and domination. In Das Kapital again it is mentioned that imperialism was to be part of the pre-history of capitalist mode of production its primary purpose is economic exploitation Later, Lenin notes how Colonialism created imperialist rivalries.

    The classic formulation of capital penetration and monopolization of global markets centers on Lenin’s central theory in Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism written in 1916, in which he says that the era of industrial capital has ended and economic power has passed from industrialists to the bankers and financial investment groups. The final stage of capitalism is characterized by the end of the “free enterprise system” and the emergence of monopolistic control by cartels and syndicates.

    The most recent example of out- of- control imperial expansion is the  United States…President Obama’s push for fast-track congressional approval of the Transpacific Partnership free trade  accord exemplifies the total control major corporations have in, so-called, global free markets. It is extraordinary, how little opposition, let alone discussion, exists on the content and pernicious implications of this impending legislation. Given its wide impact (twelve nations) will become signatories to TPP as it promises to be the largest free-trade agreement in history. The assurances, made are it will boost economic growth and ensure that American exports will go c

    Of course, what is unspoken by these free trade propagandists is that previous trade accords, NAFTA and GATT (later the WTO) produced massive deficits, job losses and an increasing downward spiral of living standards. Devastating agricultural losses impacted many Third World nations. Mexico being the most harmed.

    This new so-called “Economic Consensus” model will not only reproduce previous economic and social calamities, but will extend special protection for those very businesses who ultimately outsource American jobs. Perhaps the most important chapter in the impending agreement deals with Intellectual Property Rights (IP) would create new rules which cover patents, trademarks and copyrights. IP would potentially produce unprecedented attacks on freedom of speech, individual rights to read, write and publish.

    History shows that, TPP makes unsustainable assurances: such as that it would prevent damage to the environment, protect workers from unsafe working conditions and provide consumer protection for food, drugs and other products.

    Instead of promoting economic prosperity for all, this accord will only serve to enrich wealthier nations and corporations, thus creating worsening poverty in The Third World .The end result was and will continue to be the exact opposite, when safeguards were either opposed or eliminated.

    TPP, like NAFT, will undermine democratic procedures by transferring decision-making from the public sphere, into the hands of a small group of unaccountable wealthy elites. TPP will become, in fact, an instrument that minimizes democracy. Embedded in these arguments is the old and abiding caveat that whoever controls capital and labor has deep seated-interests to protect.

    According to President Obama, unlike past inequities, nations like the United States that participate would have a level playing field for job creation, job protection and the eradication of child labor. There will be rules governing minimum wages and laws providing maximum hours of labor. Additionally, environmental standards would be raised.

    Arguably, in the United States, the prime architect of financial global dominance in an unfettered market system is Milton Friedman. His book Freedom and Democracy became de rigueur in American economic and political thought, with respect to “free markets” and individual freedom. His vaulted ideological paradigm consists of conflating democracy and free markets with a  demand  that government  withdraw from its regulatory commitments so capitalism can organize the economic activity of society without political interference or coercion. This theory that posits individual rationality will encourage individuals to get from the market those goods that best serve their individual self-interest.

    According to Friedman, true choice in the market will be guaranteed when nation-states begin to decentralize their welfare practices. Only then will freedom be advanced. However, it can be shown that coercion in capitalism occurs when individuals choose “not” to be in a market-driven society.

    Dissenters from Friedman’s Doctrine can show empirically, that capitalism is discordant with individual freedom.  Friedman’s definition of freedom is a negative freedom in the absence of the individual right to choose. Moreover, he fails to factor in his thesis the ethical and moral claims of equality and justice. His is an ideological system that punishes individuals who chose not to enter market relations, preventing them from opting out of the system consequently, imprisoning them.

    A new economic, political and social order is needed to challenge capitalist hegemony in both economic and political imperialism. The New “Economic Consensus” which savages labor and the working poor must be jettisoned. The “young” Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, demonstrates his militant humanism, clearly animated by the precept that all social arrangements must serve man’s development. The notion, that man is an end and never a means. Each individual carries in himself all of humanity. Mark begins to see economic problems in their anthropological aspect, and in doing so, he provides an invaluable heuristic tool for judging the moral and ethical content of various economic and political social formations.

    Whether one looks at Mark’s oeuvre or the writings of Luxenburg, Lenin, and Gramsci, one finds an emphasis on the fundamental capacity of the individual to alter the dominant economic and social order and consequently, allow individuals the ability to produce their social world and to self-actualize the “good society.”

    Marxism more than any other paradigm in the social sciences is rich in approaches to studying social formations, with respect to individual agency in overcoming capitalist structures which impede and minimize direct democratic action.

    Definite implications can be drawn from these humanistic postulates when it becomes necessary to focus less on Scientific Marxism and its “hard” deductive conclusions and more on Marx’s ethical and moral imperatives.

    Ethical humanists with a strong propensity for democracy such as Marcuse and De Man, who attacked the narrow and rigid interpretation of Marxism in the 1930’s, began agitating for a moralizing concept that would  eliminate Engel’s insistence on maintaining the uncompromising dictums of “scientific socialism.” In actuality, Marxist thought from start to finish is revolutionary humanist. And it continually serves as a theoretical foundation for the revolutionary struggle for an ethical and moralizing socialism.

    Although Marxist views on democracy remain inchoate, having more in common with classical political philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, he believed that democracy is the way to socialism and that the working classes could achieve power through democratic elections. His assertion is, that people can move beyond the cage of capitalist dogma, and become subjects in their historical evolution, rather than objects of corporate domination.

    At this time, current structural realities of the American electoral system militate against third party movements. Leftist preferences for these movements for a participatory Marxism can be encouraged by the general nature of dialectical thinking where the opposing class forces within capitalism are revealed as nothing more than a set of techniques designed to insure the rule of the powerful elite under the guise of “popular consent.” Therefore, it is a corrupt system of rule Capitalist interpretation of Marxism sees it as totally irrelevant and not applicable to a modern free liberal social order.

    However, many would argue that the Marxist critique of capitalism is still valid. Capitalism still contains massive contradictions, reflected in, seemingly, implacable economic inequalities. Consistent with its attacks labor and its insatiable imperialistic pursuit of profit, is clearly seen in corporate concentration and dominance on a global scale.

    Capitalism’s creative and destructive sides are intimately connected in Mark’s writings. He argues that the idea that industrial capitalism is a necessary precondition to socialism. And socialism cannot exist under poverty-stricken. Capital’s creative elements may be characterized as revolutionizing, universalizing and industrializing in its core.

    Capitalism, in its industrial form, required a “total” revolution in the transformation of all its pre-capitalist economic and social relations. It became destructive of all the traditional and complacent ways of life. The universalizing tendencies of capitalism, developed technology and production, led to the evolution of a world market-characterized by the spread of capital accumulation, development of science and technology, automation and man’s conquest of nature. So, capitalism’s growth, process of investment and capital accumulation stimulated demand for labor, higher wages, employment and consumption.

    Neo-liberal democratic capitalism, still present in the commanding roles of banking, large agricultural, combined with the private mass media, is still predominately bourgeois in political character. Paul Sweezy, in his writings, holds in maintaining that capitalism commands the strategic positions in our society with respect to money, social prestige, bureaucratic institutions and the armed forces of the state.  The channels of communication “are all controlled by capital and will continue to be used vigorously to maintain the position of capital, which all leads to the bankruptcy of reform.”

    Unfortunately, very little remedy exists in defeating capital’s tenacity in mindlessly reproducing itself. Attempts at balancing private ownership and social control are always weakened, as real power is shifted from labor and its associations to the owners of capital. In The Swedish System, as an example, these shifts, coupled with a determined opposition from nonsocialist parties and their allies are effective. Anti-socialist parties, combined with U.S. assistance have, in the case of Chile, for example, overthrew democratically elected President Allende when he adopted policies of nationalization of industries and collectivization. In Venezuela, a very troubled economy is, again, made worse with US involvement.  Nicaragua is one of the very few examples of a socialist democracy that willingly submitted itself to a popular referendum and lost. President Daniel Ortega graciously accepted his defeat.

    Overall, social democracy has mutated into social and political neo-liberalism. The distressing reality is that it has moved from a posture of transforming capitalism, to one of better managing it. The sorry fact remains that, in these systems, the practice of politics as part of a strategic vision of its transition toward a new economic and political order, beyond capitalism has gone missing from democratic socialism.

    The search for a non-authoritarian form of Socialism has been severely hampered by a crucial flaw in 20th century communist thought that power can be willfully exercised in whatever means necessary to bring about Communist regimes.

    However, convincing arguments can be made in formulating a non-authoritarian conception of   the “good” polity, contained in the writings of Marx himself that should serve in creating the right political construct for formulating a conception of a socialist order that, hopefully, will eventually find support for a more effective socialism.

    It can be stated that both liberal democracy and dialectical and scientific socialism have failed, and a new theory of socialism is needed.  If conditions are not such as to permit a party to grasp the reins of power in the old state, then it must work to create those conditions by encouraging the autonomous development of new social movements so people can develop their powers and capacities to the fullest, in a new state.

    * Andrew Raposa is Professor Emeritus, Westfield State University, Political Science, Westfield, Massachusetts.

  • After Single Payer Setback: Union Members Face Multiple Threats in Vermont

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    Liz Nikazmerad is a rarity in American labor: a local union president under the age of 30, displaying both youth and militancy. For the last two year years, she has led the 180-member Local 203 of the United Electrical Workers (UE), while working in the produce department of City Market in Burlington, Vermont. Thanks to their contract bargaining, full-time and part-time employees of this bustling community-owned food cooperative currently enjoy good medical benefits.

    But that wasn’t always the case in Nikazmerad’s past non-union jobs, nor is it any assurance that UE members won’t be forced to pay more for their health care in the future. To curb medical cost inflation and related cost-shifting to workers, the UE has long advocated that private insurance plans be replaced with publicly funded universal coverage.

    Four years ago, a newly elected Vermont governor, Peter Shumlin, took a promising first step in that direction at the state level. His Democrat-dominated legislature passed Act 48, which laid the groundwork for creating a comprehensive public insurance plan called Green Mountain Care (GMC).

    Not all activists deemed GMC to be truly “single-payer,” because of potential legal or political obstacles to the inclusion of Vermonters currently covered through Medicare, the Veterans’ Administration, and even some “self-insured” plans offered by local employers. However, Act 48’s blueprint for getting everyone else into a more rational, cost-effective healthcare system, financed by taxes, was generally hailed as a great breakthrough.

    Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) first required Vermont to operate a private insurance exchange until 2017, when a federal waiver permitting further experimentation might be granted. Despite this unhelpful delay, Shumlin was still re-assuring Vermonters, as recently as last fall, that a brighter health care future lay just a few years ahead.

    By January 8, when the governor began his third term, that promise had dimmed so much that Liz Nikazmerad and several hundred others weren’t there to applaud his inauguration in Montpelier. Instead, frustrated advocates of health care reform staged a sit-in at the state capitol, chanting and singing, unfurling banners and refused to leave in protest against the governor’s abrupt abandonment of universal health care six weeks after his re-election.

    “People had fought for this a long time,” Nikazmerad says. “It was a huge win and to have the rug yanked out like that was very upsetting. People were very emotional about it.”

    Escalating Labor Protests

    By the end of day, the UE leader and 28 others—now known as “The Statehouse 29”—faced multiple criminal charges, including resisting arrest, despite the peaceful nature of their capitol sit-in. The cases against 18 were later dropped; other participants settled by paying a fine or promising to do community service work. Their still controversial reproach to the governor has, since January, become the first in a series of angry labor sorties to Montpelier.

    During the current legislative session, the bitter recriminations over the governor’s health care retreat have morphed into broader controversies about workers rights, contract concessions, and what the Vermont Progressive Party (VPP) calls Shumlin’s “austerity budget.” On April 11, 500 state employees, school teachers and other union members rallied at the state house to protest threatened budget cuts and state worker lay-offs. Among the demonstration sponsors were the VPP, the Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA), and the Vermont Workers Center, which is also building for another big labor gathering on May Day in Montpelier.

    “I’m tired of being asked to give back more and more of my wages and benefits, “ state highway department plow driver Ed Olsen told the crowd. “The state always wants to balance the budget on the backs of hard-working Vermonters.”

    Alison Sylvester, a leader of the Vermont NEA, added her union’s voice to the “Fight Back” rally and hailed public teachers successful defense of their right to strike. After a brief public school work stoppage in South Burlington last fall, Governor Shumlin publicly endorsed the idea of banning such strikes, which have been legal in Vermont for fifty years. It took several months of frantic lobbying by hundreds of teachers to kill this idea, by a two-to-one margin, in a Vermont House vote in early April.

    About Face On Single Payer

    Shumlin’s most publicized betrayal of past labor allies occurred, with little advance notice, on December 17. That’s when he called a press conference and declared that “now is not the time to ask our legislature to take the step of passing a financing plan for Green Mountain Care.” The 58-year old governor, a multi-millionaire former business owner, had already postponed the day of reckoning on how to fund universal coverage for more than two years, until he was narrowly elected for the third time. (In last year’s gubernatorial race, Shumlin greatly outspent his Republican challenger, but won by only 2,500 votes; his 46 percent showing would not have been sufficient without conservative vote-splitting by a Libertarian candidate.)

    The 2015 session of the legislature was expected to take up the challenge of Act 48 financing in January. With the acquiescence of key legislators, Shumlin short-circuited that debate by issuing a highly unfavorable status report of his own, which seemed to validate past single-payer criticism by the Vermont GOP and conservative Democrats.

    According to Shumlin, the latest projected cost of universal coverage would double the state budget in its first year alone, while requiring onerous new payroll and income taxes.

    “In my judgment,” the governor stated, “the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families, and the state’s economy.” The VWC, which helped mobilize statewide support for passage of Act 48 four years ago, countered the governor’s claims by releasing its own plan for financing Green Mountain Care in a manner more equitable than the state’s current market-based system.

    One hundred economists endorsed the VWC approach, which relies on progressive taxation. The VWC also struck back with a clever “whiteboard” video, entitled “The Time is Now: Healthcare Financing for Vermont, Explained in Three Minutes.” But, of course, neither that quick tutorial on health care reform math or the VWC’s full report garnered the media attention—or had the same legislative clout—as Shumlin’s self-demolition of Green Mountain Care.

    From bad to worse in Montpelier

    In his state budget address in January, Shumlin had another surprise for his past labor friends. He presented the 5,500-member VSEA with a choice between re-opening its current contract and agreeing to give-backs or face hundreds of layoffs. These steps were necessary, he announced, to close a fiscal year 2016 budget deficit, projected to be $112 million, which soon become the main preoccupation of his administration and its legislative allies.

    Legislators representing the Vermont Progressive Party (VPP), the nation’s most successful third party formation, urged their Democratic colleagues to raise needed revenue by capping tax deductions for the wealthiest Vermonters and taxing capital gains on the same basis as earned income. (For more on the VPP, see here.)

    Neither the Democratic leadership nor the governor wanted to do that. So  his administration is instead seeking $8.8 million in state worker concessions, and the Democrat-controlled House has already OKed cuts in social programs like heating  assistance for low-income households.

    In 2008-9, VSEA members agreed to a 3% pay cut, followed by a freeze, under Shumlin’s Republican predecessor. When Shumlin ran for governor in 2010, he promised to be more labor friendly and find better ways to pay for state programs, including the projected single-payer-like plan. Now he is scapegoating unions that backed him and health care reform, complaining that state workers’ scheduled pay hike this year is unreasonably high. “There aren’t too many Vermonters who are getting a 5% increase this year, “ Shumlin told the press on April 11.

    The governor’s about-face on Green Mountain Care reflected more than revised estimates of its cost and feasibility. The troubled 2013 rollout of Vermont Health Connect, the state’s ACA-mandated private insurance exchange, adversely affected public perceptions of the longer-term goal of single payer. Among those most upset were lower-income people previously covered by state-subsidized plans who ended up paying more out-of-pocket when insured through the new exchange.

    “Over the last few years, the Shumlin administration hasn’t done anything to give Vermonters confidence that we could handle being innovators in health care,” says Chris Pearson, a Progressive state rep and vice-chair of the House Committee on Health Care. “There were just too many bad headlines about the nightmare of enrolling, computer problems and cost over-runs.”

    As a result, the popularity of Green Mountain Care is not what it was even a year ago. Pollsters working for the Vermont NEA found 55 percent  of those surveyed in favor of the concept then, while 42 percent were opposed. A slight majority remained in favor even if implementation required, as it would, a large tax increase to capture health care system revenue currently coming, in myriad forms, from individuals and employers, in both the private and public sector.

    After the recent flurry of negative publicity about Green Mountain Care—much of it generated by Shumlin’s own disputed cost estimates— 64-percent  of Vermonters polled in February said they supported the governor’s new position, only 20 percent were opposed, and 10 percent were unsure. Even a majority of Democrats polled said they favored his abandonment of single payer, for the time being.

    Inside the state legislature, friends of Act 48 still hope to emerge from this legislative session with an authorized study of the VWC’s financing plan, the governor’s contested findings and a publicly funded primary care plan that has been proposed by some single payer advocates as an incremental step toward Green Mountain Care.

    Organizing Challenges Ahead

    Sometime in May, the legislative wrangling in Montpelier over budget cuts, health care, and workers rights will be over for this year. But the challenges facing Vermont Progressives and labor-community organizers will remain daunting. Chief among them is sustaining a now seven-year-old campaign to make “healthcare a human right” after such a demoralizing setback. While continuing to assist private and public sector workers involved in strikes and contract fights, the Vermont Workers Center plans to do more grassroots organizing around the shortcomings of Vermont Health Connect coverage.

    Within the VPP, its statewide organizer Kelly Mangan has “gotten a lot of member feedback about running a candidate for governor next year.” This is something her third party refrained from doing in the last three election cycles, to avoid putting a Republican in office—who would have opposed Act 48 from the outset or shelved it sooner than Shumlin did.

    Now, the growing estrangement of labor voters from the Democrats could lead to Shumlin’s replacement by a Republican. One likely candidate for the job is Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott, the affable GOP incumbent who defeated Vermont Progressive Party (VPP) candidate Dean Corren last November by a 62 to 34% margin, with no Democrat on the ballot.

    Any backlash against Vermont Democrats next year, though, might be salved by further VPP legislative gains. Last fall, seven Progressive state reps and three senators were elected, creating the VPP’s largest delegation in Montpelier ever. In March, Progressives captured four seats on the Burlington City Council, where the VPP has jousted with a centrist Democrat mayor.

    But, next year, personal health problems may prevent state senator Anthony Pollina, the VPP’s most experienced statewide standard-bearer, from running for governor. (In 2008, he placed second in a three-way race). At the moment, Vermont’s most successful progressive politician, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, seems more intent on seeking executive office higher than any available in Montpelier, where, as governor, he could help get Vermont back on the single-payer road.

    In his not-yet-official campaigning for the White House, Sanders speaks regularly to out-of-state audiences about the need for a “political revolution.” Unfortunately, on his own home turf, the wrong kind of one may be brewing, fed by working class alienation from business-oriented Democrats.

    * Steve Early began writing about Vermont politics in 1968. He is a former New England organizer for the Communications Workers of America and the author, most recently, of Save Our Unions, from Monthly Review Press. That book reports on single payer campaigning and progressive third party building in Vermont. Early can be reached atLsupport@aol.com

  • Court-Sanctioned Corruption and Plutocracy in America

    ImageReview of: Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, by Zephyr Teachout. Harvard University Press, 2014

    Sheldon Silver, the former long-serving speaker of the New York State Assembly and a statewide powerhouse lost his job, his law practice, his political life and possibly his freedom over corruption charges in January. His sins according to the federal prosecutor: using his position for personal gain by covertly receiving jumbo payments from a law firm that specialized in lobbying for cuts in New York City real-estate taxes. The firm was founded by his former Assembly counsel, and its client, in turn, was one of the state’s single-largest political donors. Politics as usual? Not really. Silver’s real crime was making it patently obvious he was engaging in a quid pro quo arrangement, which is how corruption in office is singularly judged today, thanks to a series of Supreme Court rulings dating back to 1974.

    Scattered news reports say the dirt on the speaker came via a string of legislators ratting Silver out in return for reduced corruption charges against themselves. Others say the law firm partners themselves rolled over on Silver.

    “Shelley,” as he was known before his fall from grace, is just the most recent example of a public figure to resign or be ousted over allegations  that he used his public office to help private friends and line his own pockets. If true, he fits the narrowest categories of corruption as understood by the contemporary U.S. Supreme Court: that a direct and palpable quid pro quo (literally: getting something for something) operates.

    For Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham University law professor and Democratic candidate for governor in 2014 who on a shoestring budget took some 35 percent of the vote away from the state’s neoliberal prince in the governor’s mansion, that definition is too constricted. In Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, she demonstrates how that conceit short-circuits what the nation’s founding fathers had in mind when they talked about public office and democratic involvement in governing. It’s not just selling votes or a blatant one-hand-washes-the other or a favor to the spouse’s ne’er-do-well brother-in-law that are dangerous. It includes the unvoiced but no less operational understanding that big campaign contributions (it cost some $2 million on average to be reelected to the U.S. House of Representatives; chump change compared to the Senate, where the average is $10 million) in effect buy favorable attention for desired legislation as well as privileged access to elected officials through professional lobbyists, themselves often former public office holders.

    That fit where money buys compliance, even if unvoiced but simply understood, is something ordinary citizens can’t match. It means the demos — the people and their ability to self-govern or even believe they can self-govern is crippled and too easily gestates democracy into plutocracy. It’s not unlike media critic A.J. Liebling’s quip that, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

    Corruption never had a clear and uniform legal definition, Teachout insists. With state courts ruling differently and the High Court itself imprecise if not contradictory, the vagueness ended when the right-wing-dominated U.S. Supreme Court, in three decisions beginning in 1975, recognized only blatant quid pro quo as a corrupt public practice. Paying a lobbyist $5 million dollars to get an incumbent to vote a corporation’s needs is okay if there’s no demonstrable reciprocity.

    Teachout’s solution is not primarily better investigatory agencies but better hash marks (she calls them “lighted lines”) that indicate what is criminal and act to control for abuses proactively. Examples include uniform federal laws again limiting campaign contributions so that electeds spend less time fundraising and more time with constituents and doing their jobs. More to the point, she favors a return to vigorous trust busting, the kind the GOP’s Teddy Roosevelt once favored, so that corporations have neither the right to invest huge sums in politics nor the capacity to buy politicians through what Jimmy Carter as president once called “legal bribery.”

    With Teachout as a constitutional lawyer and Fordham law professor, she is well suited to tell this story. It runs from the propriety of Louis XVI giving Benjamin Franklin, the then-retiring U.S. ambassador, a gift of a jewel-encrusted snuff box to the 2014 case with which the Supreme Court completed its trifecta of limped anti-corruption decisions that she argues “have seriously constrained public power to pass anticorruption statutes” and “definitively rejected the traditional concept of corruption.”

    The court’s unravelling of how corruption works in practice comes from three court cases, starting in 1976. In Buckley v. Valeo, the court struck down federal spending limits by campaigns as an abridgement of First Amendment rights, but sustained rules limiting campaign contributions from individual sources, strict discloser rules on where the money comes from and public funding of elections was halal. In 2010 an even more right-wing court majority found in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) not only that corporations were now to be considered as people with free speech rights, but that in the court’s opinion ingratiation and privileged access to pols was no more than “donors trying to influence policy through campaign contributions, unless the donors were crass.” It said favoritism and influence were the inevitable part of responsive government, hence of politics.

    In 2014, in McCutcheon v. FEC, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “Congress may target only a specific type of corruption — ‘quid pro quo’ corruption. … Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption.”

    Translation: when corporations use their wealth to squelch opposition, not only must corruption be the smoking gun, but a body with a bullet, in effect defining corruption in its most primitive form, as overt, conspicuous and quantifiable back-scratch deals

    After a thorough and almost agonizingly detailed grand tour of dozens of often conflicting federal and state court decisions differing on the precise legal meaning of “corruption,” Teachout ends up with a book that should become required reading in constitutional law classes. Caveat emptor: given the wealth of detail underscoring her critique, it’s no beach reading. Her style happily is fine; in places ripping. Academics should take note.

    There’s a lot more that is sensible and definitive in Teachout’s dissection of justice gone awry that it’s worth asking, “Why is this woman not the governor of New York?”

     

    Michael Hirsch is on the editorial board of New Politics. This article first appeared in The Indypendent, April 9, 2015, Issue #205.