July 30, 2015 -- New Politics, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Last night, July 29, more than 100,000 people attended 3500 meetings in all 50
states and the District of Columbia to watch a video-cast of Bernie
Sanders and to begin to organise his on-the-ground campaign. Some of the
meetings in various parts of the country had as many as 200 people in
attendance.
The meeting I attended in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was
attended by 25 people, most in their 20s, with background working for
social justice NGOs, in media and in the arts, as well as a few
graduate students.
These are young idealist people who are attracted to Sanders because
he calls for a “political revolution” against the billionaires, and
because they believe in public health care for all, free higher
education, and improving the lives of working people. By and large,
those in attendance had no interest in the Democratic Party and a few
suggested it would have been better had Sanders run as an independent.
The organizer of the meeting suggested that we could build a mass
movement and take-over the Democratic Party, but nobody in the meeting
seemed particularly to think that possible or to care.
What has become clear from the Sanders’ rallies and meeting is
that no one is supporting Sanders because he’s the “lesser evil”. After
all, that’s Hillary Clinton. People back Sanders as a protest against
economic inequality and against the power of money in politics. Sanders
is the Occupy Movement’s political expression. Not so much a Democratic
Party candidate as the voice of the underdogs.
Marginal candidate
When in late April Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who had long called himself a socialist, announced that he would run for president in the Democratic Party primary
no one had any idea what the response would be. After all, Sanders is
Senator from the small state of Vermont with a population of just
625,000 (only Wyoming has fewer inhabitants), a state which is virtually
all white (95.2%), and whose largest city of Burlington (of which
Sanders had been mayor) is only a small town with a population of
44,000.
Sanders name was well known only in his own state and in neighboring
New Hampshire. If he had any national reputation, it was chiefly because
he was a strange bird: the only independent in Congress and the only
national public official who called himself a socialist. Only
progressives knew him for his pro-labor voting record. What would happen
if such a marginal figure ran for president?
Huge spirited crowds
The response to Sanders candidacy has been nothing short of
phenomenal. After rallies of hundreds or a few thousand in his home
state, Sanders hit the road. In the historically liberal city of
Madison, Wisconsin on July 1 some 10,000 people turned out to hear
Sanders decry the billionaires and call for greater economic equality.
Perhaps that was to be expected in a city where 100,000 had occupied the
state capitol building to oppose Republican Scott Walker’s anti-union
legislation back in 2011. After all, Sanders was speaking there to
Democrats, union members, and University of Wisconsin professors and
students. And the Sanders rally of about 8000 in Portland, Maine could
be attributed to local support for a New England candidate.
Would Sanders be able to rally support in Republican red states of
middle America as well? Well that question was answered on July 18
Sanders attracted a crowd of 11,000 in Phoenix, Arizona and then again
on July 19 when 8000 people showed up for a rally in Dallas, Texas. The
groundswell continued on July 26 when 4000 turned out in the smaller
city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Everywhere the Sanders’ crowds have been
exuberant By comparison, Hillary Clinton’s largest rally so far
attracted 5500 people to park in New York in June.
Why have such phenomenal crowds appeared to hear a man who appeared
to be such a marginal candidate? There are several reasons. First, many
agree with Sanders fundamental message, that banks and corporations have
taken over the political system and made it serve their interests.
These people are supporting Sanders as a protest against the corporate
agenda of both the Republican and the Democratic parties.
When Sanders typically asks his audiences,
“Why are we living in a society in which for the last 40 years the
middle class in this country has been disappearing and almost all of the
wealth and income are going to the people on top?” They nod yes,
thinking themselves, “Why are we?” The answer he suggests is the
corporate dominance of the United States and the beating down of the labor
movement and the living standards of working people.
Second, many Democrats deeply resent the idea that almost
automatically Hillary Clinton would become the party’s candidate without
any political alternatives being presented. Progressives in the
Democratic Party wanted not another neoliberal Democrat, but someone who
raised their issues of jobs, wages, health care, and education. When
Senator Elizabeth Warren declined to run, Sanders stepped in and became
the champion of all those to the left of Clinton.
Labor for Bernie
Since then, not only has he drawn large crowds, but he has also done
surprisingly well in other ways. While not as popular in the polls as
Hillary Clinton, he has good approval ratings compared to other
candidates in both major parties, and they are rising. He also has a
strong rank-and-file labor following, Labor for Bernie, with some 5000
rank-and-file members and local leaders supporting him as well as the
small Vermont and South Carolina AFL-CIO councils.
Larry Cohen, past president of the Communications Workers of
America and now a volunteer working on the Sanders' campaign says, “Our
strong and growing grassroots movement shows that Bernie shares our
values and beliefs. Workers are fed up with business as usual. This
campaign is about putting a stop to the corporate assault on our kids,
our country and working families!”
When the leaders of
the American Federation of Teachers—whose president Randi Weingarten
hopes to become Secretary of Education—endorsed Clinton without holding
local meetings to consult the members, hundreds of angry teachers
rebelled and signed up with Labor for Bernie. There has been such a
reaction that the AFL-CIO leadership has decided to postpone its
endorsement, which will give Sanders an opportunity to seek greater
labor backing.
In terms of fundraising, Bernie is not nearly as strong as his
opponents, but the favored candidates’ campaigns and Sanders’ are hardly
comparable. Clinton and Republicans such as Jeb Bush have the backing
of big financial donors—banks, corporations, and the 1% of the very
wealthy, while Sanders has received mainly small donations from
individual donors. In the first quarter Republican Jeb Bush has raised
$103 million, Clinton $47.5 million, while Sanders has remarkably raised
$15 million in first quarter of 2015.
Sanders and Black Lives Matters
Sanders initially failed to speak out strongly in favor of the Black
Lives Matter movement and blundered when confronted with black
protesters as the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, Arizona. In his
earliest statements he had tried to be for both cops and black people,
an untenable position. The black movement, continuing police killings
like that in Cincinnati recently, and, one could say, reality itself,
have forced Sanders to move toward the black movement.
In fact, Sanders has an outstanding record as an opponent of racism and an advocate of civil rights
dating back to his participation in the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in
the1960s. In recent campaign appearances he is reasserting his
opposition to racism and police violence. Speaking New Orleans he told
the crowd, “Black lives do matter, and we must value black lives.”
The problem is that Sanders emphasis on economic equality for all
failed to take into account the issues of racism, discrimination,
exclusion, and violence that faced some. His program does not mention African Americans. He did not put black issues at the center of his politics. But he is changing.
In a talk at a reception organized by leaders of the Southern
Christian Leadership conference, one of the historic civil rights
organizations, one could see the impact of the Black Lives Matter
movement on Sanders as he said, “Anybody who saw the recent Sandra Bland
tape understands that tragically, racism is alive and well in America,”
referring to a black woman who was found dead in a cell in a Texas
jail. When an African-American woman gets yanked out of her car, when we
all know that would not have happened to a middle-class white woman, we
know we need some serious change in criminal justice in this country.”
Speaking to SCLC conference as a whole, Sanders talked about “the
need to simultaneously address the structural and institutional racism
which exists in this country, while at the same time we vigorously
attack the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality which is
making the very rich much richer while everyone else – especially the
African-American community and working-class whites – are becoming
poorer.” The SCLC speech—which is well worth reading—showed
the depth of Sanders’ knowledge and commitment to black Americans’
fight for racial justice. These recent speeches and comments show that
in reaction to criticism, he has begun to make a shift, moving black
issues toward the center, though, as sympathetic critics have pointed out, he and his organization still have a way to go.
Sanders the organizer
Vermont labor organizers friends of mine talk not only about Sanders
as a supporter of labor, but as a man who used his office to help unions
and workers to organize, for example, by calling a meeting with unions
to encourage unity and struggle for improved conditions in his home
state. One sees this aspect of Sanders now in this campaign. Speaking with Katie Couric on Yahoo News, Sanders called for students to march on Washington:
My view is that the only we can bring about an agenda that works for
working families is if millions of people are actively involved in the
political process. If a million young people march on Washington they to
the Republican leadership, we know what’s going on, and you better vote
to deal with student debt. You better vote to make public universities
and colleges tuition free, that’s when it will happen.
“We’re already seeing that with the minimum wage. Do you know why the
minimum wage is going up around the country? Because workers are going
out into the street, so we need a political revolution, in my view,
where people begin to stand up and fight and take on the big money
interests. If we don’t have that, no president, not the best president
in the world will ever be able to accomplish anything.
If Sanders supporters want to really build a new social movement for
both economic and racial justice, they will have to find a way to bring
the Black Lives Matter movement and the rank-and-file labor movement
together and to keep them together beyond Sanders campaign. Such a
connection between the labor movement and the black and Latinos
movements is the historic aspiration of the best of the socialist left.
Sanders' foreign policy: a big problem
For those of us radicals on the left, Sanders greatest weakness is
his foreign policy. While it is true that Sanders voted against war to
“liberate” Kuwait (the first Iraq war) and voted again against the Iraq
war resolution of 2002, on the other hand, he supported President Bill
Clinton’s airstrikes on Kosovo and the war on Afghanistan in 2001 and
voted that same year for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force
against terrorists, the law used today by President Obama to attack
ISIS in various countries. In 2003 he voted for a bill that gave
President George W. Bush support in Iraq and in the war on terror.
Sanders has voted for the military appropriations bills about a often as
he had voted against them. In the Middle East he leans toward Israel
against Palestine, though not without reservations.
What this record makes
clear is that Sanders has no consistent and principled position against
U.S. imperialism. While his program calls for reductions in military
spending, he does not call for dismantling the hundreds of U.S. bases
around the world, for ending the war on terror, for stopping the use of
drones, and so on. Sanders’ program makes no mention of the military.
While he calls himself a socialist, Sanders’ foreign policy and
military policy remain in line with corporate capitalism, militarism,
and imperialism. The central issue for those concerned about world peace
is the Middle East region (from Algeria to Afghanistan)—and in that
region his position in support of Israel, rather than with the
Palestinian underdogs, places him on the wrong side. Sanders is not an
aggressive hawk like Hillary Clinton, but he is no dove of peace and no
ambassador for internationalism. Despite these crucial foreign and
military policy failings, Sanders’ campaign poses a challenge to the
left.
The socialist left and Sanders
The Sanders campaign has posed a serious challenge to the thinking of
the far left in the United States. Over the years, a variety of
socialist groups have pursued different strategies to build a radical
political party in the United States. Some left groups, particularly the
Communist Party, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
and Maoist groups such as the Freedom Road Socialist Organization have
historically worked in the Democratic Party and see no problem with
that. They have hoped to build a peoples’ movement both within and
without the party. They may have supported Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow
Coalition in the 1980s or Dennis Kucinch in the 2000s, but these groups
can generally be called upon in the end to support the Democrat’s
nominee against the Republicans, rejecting candidates like Ralph Nader
and parties like Greens. While they are both boosting Bernie now, the CPUSA
and the CCDS are likely to go on to support Hillary—or who ever is the
Democratic Party candidate—in the national election.
The Democratic Socialists of America,
originally founded as an organizing committee by Michael Harrington in
1973, had as its strategic objective the “realignment” of the Democratic
Party. Socialists, Harrington argued in his book Socialism,
would drive the Dixiecrats and the corrupt big city machines out of the
Democratic Party, leaving the labor unions as the dominant bloc and
revealing that the Democrats were in reality a labor party. The DSA
working with officials of the United Auto Workers and the International
Association of Machinists pursued Harrington’s realignment strategy up
to the end of the twentieth century when it was clear that though the
Dixiecrats and most big city machines had withered away, the
corporations not the unions had taken over the Democratic Party. In
recent elections, DSA did not endorse Barack Obama and very likely will
not endorse Clinton. Younger DSA members no longer see realignment of
the Democratic Party as the way forward.
Some other socialist groups, including old-line Debsian socialists such as the Socialist Party USA
and various Trotskyist groups, have generally been opposed on principle
to any work in the Democratic Party, arguing that the Democrats are the
party of the banks and corporations and that working people needed
their own party. The Debsians called for the building of a Socialist
Party. Other socialists of this ilk have historically argued that the
AFL-CIO and other unions should give up lesser-evilism, “break with the
Democratic Party,” and form a labor party.
In 1996 it seemed that after decades of arguing for the “break with
the Democrats” the dream was being fulfilled when Tony Mazzocchi, a
leader of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, brought together
the United Mine Workers, the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union, the American Federation of Government Employees, the California
nurses and hundreds of locals from various unions to found the Labor Party.
The problem was that while those unions wanted to form a party, they
didn’t want to run candidates who might take votes away from the
Democratic Party, so for several years there was an ongoing fight
between the union leaders and small socialist groups over the issue of
elections, paralyzing the party. The party suspended operations in 2007,
though by then there were only a few functioning local chapters.
The Labor Party experiment having failed, some activists went on to join the Green Party
that had been formed in 1984 as a federation of several state Green parties. Between its founding and the 2000 election the Greens evolved
from simply an environmental party to a party that was concerned with
the environmental as well as economic, social, and racial justice
issues. The Green Party’s influence peaked in 2000 with the
controversial campaign of consumer activist Ralph Nader who won 2.7
percent of the vote—leading him to be accused of having been a “spoiler”
who had taken votes from Democratic candidate Al Gore, allowing George
W. Bush to win the election. Howie Hawkins, a socialist, ran as the
Green Party candidate for New York Governor in 2014 winning 5 percent of
the vote. Sanders has for the moment overshadowed Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate for 2016; but as she says, “I’ll actually be on the ballot in November.”
Of all the far left groups, the International Socialist Organization [also see the article below] had been the most critical of and hostile to the Sanders campaign—and
for all the right reasons: his caucusing with Democrats, his foreign
policy, and above all the belief that Sanders will be an obstacle to
building an independent left movement and political alternative. The
issue is whether these principled objections should keep us from working
closely with Sanders’ supporters, while at the same time maintaining
our own political independence.
Where does Sanders fit?
For Sanders' campaign doesn’t fit neatly into the historic categories
of the far left. Sanders is virtually the only person in national
politics who calls himself a democratic socialist and who advocates the
kind of social democratic policies—free health and education, strong
unions, a comprehensive social safety net—such as existed in
Scandinavian nations for decades. The debate over socialism in the US,
which began with the Tea Party attack on Obama’s Affordable Care Act,
has with Sanders’ campaign become part of a broader national
conversation. In a nation once dominated by anti-communism, red-baiting
and the common jeer at leftists “Go back to Russia!,” socialism is now
on the table if not yet on the agenda.
As far as the Democratic Party question, his entire political career
Sanders has been an independent—though he caucused with the
Democrats--never a Democrat until now, and never argued for a strategy
of realigning the Democratic Party. This is quite different, for
example, than the careers and strategy of people like Jesse Jackson and
Dennis Kucinich who systematically worked to reform the Democrats.
Sanders has never suggested that the Democrats could be reformed and is
not now.
And Sanders’ supporters aren’t fundamentally lesser-evilists. They
support Sanders precisely because he appears to be the alternative to
the lesser evil of the Democratic Party leaders’ choice of Clinton. On
the other hand, Sanders has promised to support Hillary Clinton if she
is nominated, thus thrusting his supporters into the arms of the
corporate-controlled Democratic Party that they resent and reject.
Given the Republican alternatives of a rightwing union-buster like
Scott Walker or a racist like Donald Trump, most of Bernie Sanders
followers today will probably cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in the
general election. They will not be doing this because Bernie has tricked
them and rounded them up for Hillary, but because they fear the
Republican reactionaries. They will do that simply because they all
along intended to vote to stop Scott Walker or some other anti-working
class, racist, or anti-women’s rights Republican from winning.
Where do we fit?
Okay, that is lesser-evilism of a sort. But many will be looking for a
way to build a political alternative when the primary campaign is over.
So, some on the far left—in groups like Socialist Alternative and Solidarity—have
decided that they will work among Sanders supporters, while still
declining to either become Democrats or to endorse him. What can such
groups—I myself am a member of Solidarity—do in and around such a
campaign? We can bring into the campaign all of the
issues—environmental, women’s, LBGTQ, black—on which we are working. We
can bring out point of view that while the Bernie Sanders campaign
represents a fundamentally progressive development, but that taking the
movement into Hillary’s campaign would be a mistake. Most important, we
can argue that out of the campaign we must build a movement that becomes
part of a new era of social struggle in the US.
Some Sanders supporters, once money and the media have made Clinton
the Democrats’ nominee, may come out of this experience so disgusted
with the Democrats that they vote for the Green Party’s candidate Jill
Stein or go on in the future to organize the working class alternative
that the far left has dreamed of. Or is it possible to think that
Sanders, now 73 years old and with nothing to lose, might attempt to
launch an independent campaign—hard to do under the 50 different state
electoral laws—or perhaps endorse or join with Stein of the Greens. Who
knows? We can only hope.
What the Sanders campaign may accomplish is to popularize a program
of social democratic reforms, to deepen the discussion about socialism,
to bring together labor, black, female, and LGBTQ activists into a
movement with enough cohesion, energy, dynamism, and excitement to
continue to build something after the election. The Sanders campaign
could contribute to the launching of a new period of social movements
and upheavals with a higher level of political consciousness and if it
does that, it will be a great contribution.
So, while remaining a registered Green and planning to work for Jill
Stein in the election, I plan to work with the Sanders campaign in the
primary period, hoping--like other Sanders supporters--that out of this
experience we can build a new, stronger, left in America.
Connecting Sanders' Audience’s Aspirations to Clear Working Class Political Alternatives
The following document was discussed at Solidarity's 2015 Convention last weekend and approved by a majority vote, with the addendum that our organization also has many members engaged in the Green Party and that we support their work and the Jill Stein campaign. This resolution is intended to outline an approach to the Sanders campaign and his supporters, and not as an evaluation as Sanders himself or his political views.
Solidarity understands the strategic imperative of organizing a mass base for independent working class political action that unites working people, the independent social movements, and organizations of the oppressed in a battle for their common interests against capitalism and its political representatives. Unlike those on the left who continue to see the Democratic Party as a lesser evil that can be influenced from within, we regard the Democratic Party as unreformable, committed to imposing capital’s neoliberal project. History has shown all too many times that the Democratic Party remains the graveyard of social movements. We reject being drawn into the slippery slope of Democratic Party politics.
Nevertheless, any significant advance in independent working class politics requires a fracturing away of the Democratic Party’s mass base. As an austerity-first party, Democratic lesser-evilism has lost much of its allure. We strongly disagree with Bernie Sanders’ approach of running in the Democratic primary and his pledge to support the Party nominee. However, it would be a mistake for the left not to recognize the enormous significance and potential inherent in the millions of people rallying around his campaign looking to fight against corporate America and what they perceive as the highjacking of the democratic process. Despite Sanders running as a Democrat, we appreciate the significance of the mass support he is receiving for his basic message. It is the message of Occupy--the 99% versus the 1%--proving that eight years into the devastating recession and deepened neoliberal austerity presided over by the Obama administration it is very much alive and embedded in the consciousness of big layers of the US population. This is particularly true of young people who are just entering national electoral politics inspired by Sanders’ message.
We should welcome this outpouring of fight back spirit, and seek to work together on the issues they raise while emphasizing that a Democratic Party orientation is a dead end; and instead win them over to the need for independent politics and building movements that can change society. We urge Solidarity members, those we can influence, as well as other revolutionary socialists to find ways to connect with the millions of people who are being drawn to the Sanders campaign, most of whom will have no patience for the Democratic Party establishment, much less see themselves in an ongoing fight to take the leadership of the Party. This is a key audience to connect with and make inroads into if we are to accomplish any sort of breakthrough for independent left politics. Many Sanders supporters are already involved in, or can be won to, organizing ongoing independent anti-austerity and other social movements, to local independent electoral campaigns, and to the Green Party’s fledgling effort to build a national independent party/movement.
We are supportive of the rank and file rebellions within labor, such as the independent, grassroots Labor for Bernie formation, that are developing around this election. They provide an opportunity to discuss what program and objectives should drive labor’s political choices. The rebellion and disgust with bureaucrat driven, transactional, business as usual politics poses the need, and possibility, to build rank and file networks within labor that demand a real democratic process of endorsements, and that fight to hold the bureaucrats accountable to supporting only candidates that actually support union policies. Political endorsements will not "save" our unions or the working class. But a struggle over internal democracy inside our unions such as the one that has erupted in the AFT can build rank and file power.
Our job as socialists in the labor movement includes a strategy of fostering cracks in labor’s slavish alignment with the Democratic Party establishment. A fissure in terms of a Sanders endorsement is a good thing. We are not indifferent to this fight. A mass, independent working class party will not be created in this country without the activity of the labor militants who are supporting the Sanders campaign. This is also the milieu of labor activists that grasp the necessary task of building the political capacities of workers--something far beyond the scope of any electoral insurgency.
We should embrace movements and mobilizing efforts around specific demands that grow out of the Sanders campaign. There is now a call by young people activated by the campaign for a million student march on Washington this fall, building on Sanders’ call to make public universities and colleges tuition free.
We have yet to see the emergence of a large-scale challenge to austerity and a clear working class political alternative at the national level. An effective left politics, one that can win and implement a left program, requires an organizational infrastructure and political culture that does not exist right now. With a lack of ongoing, successful independent left politics, we have to contend with the reality that anger at the corporate control of politics reflects itself in vague populism and often within the Democratic Party.
We recognize that electoral initiatives like those of Kshama Sawant in Seattle, the late Chokwe Lumumba in Mississippi, the Vermont Progressive Party, the Richmond Progressive Alliance, United Working Families in Chicago, Howie Hawkins Green Party campaign, and others, while they have their limitations and problems, represent a challenge to the hold of the Democratic Party establishment. We support efforts to run pro-worker and labor candidates as independents or on the ballot line of non-corporate parties.
We are interested in working with people who are attracted to a campaign that warns that, “The best president in the history of the world …will not be able to address the major crises that we face unless there is a mass political movement, unless there’s a political revolution in this country.” We should emphasize Sanders’ call for building an ongoing movement beyond this election cycle. Yes, we do not expect the Sanders campaign itself to build lasting grassroots organization. The ball is in our, broadly defined, court. We should seize this potential organizing opportunity, reaching out to people excited by the Sanders campaign with the message, “Let’s not waste this moment where folks are coming together around an anti-corporate, anti-austerity program by ending with the whimper of voting for Hillary and calling it a day. Let’s build up our power.” The tragedy would not be so much people pulling the lever for Clinton, but dissipating and disbanding this mass outcry, having nothing to show for our bottom up efforts.
Jesse Jackson, despite winning 8 million votes in 1988, chose to demobilize the ostensibly independent Rainbow Coalition organization after losing the Democratic nomination so no ongoing coalition went on to continue working around issues of economic and racial justice after the campaign ended. This time, the left should urge Sanders supporters to keep the fight going through joining anti-austerity struggles, social movements or building local, multi-racial coalitions, including independent electoral infrastructures, that live on well after the presidential campaign.
We agree with Howie Hawkins when he says: “We should talk about why independent politics is the best way to build progressive power, about the Democratic Party as the historic graveyard of progressive movements, and about the need in 2016 for a progressive alternative when Sanders folds and endorses Clinton. I don’t expect many will be persuaded to quit the Sanders campaign before the primaries. But I do expect that many of them will want a Plan B, a progressive alternative to Clinton, after the primaries.”