this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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i keep regretting donating to this guy's campaigns more and more every year.
Do you consider the great Bernie Sanders to be a liberal too?
It's not really arguable, of course he is a liberal. He supports capitalism and its ideology.
He confuses people by saying that socialism is when you have universal government-funded healthcare and points to places like Norway, which is a capitalist country.
I see that as him stooping to their level to convey the idea of a better system using the concepts they understand.
As for him advocating Harris, party disunity can be a global win if the electoral system uses some kind of proportional representation, but in a FPTP system party loyalty is important before an election. The progressives should start to criticize their government once that government is in power (not a given right now), not before.
Bernie isn't playing a strategic game to offer a socdem vision. One could maybe argue that when he was getting the spotlight during his presidential runs. But after 4 straight years of being a sheepdog for the Democrats that are currently committing a genocide to prop up its settler-colonial asset in the Middle East, we know better. Bernie is to the right of basically anyone currently reachable with his 2016/2020 platform and literally nobody is hearing him provide such a vision because he isn't talking about those things. There is no plan.
As for him advocating Harris, party disunity can be a global win if the electoral system uses some kind of proportional representation, but in a FPTP system party loyalty is important before an election.
The Democratic Party is a liberal party. Being in unity with a liberal party makes you a liberal. The voting system is totally independent of this. There have been non-electoral liberal parties and non-electoral socialist parties.
What you are describing is that Bernie thinks of his alleged principles as subordinate to liberal party interests.
The progressives should start to criticize their government once that government is in power (not a given right now), not before.
If they want any pretense at influencing the political class they need to build and use leverage. Criticizing politicians is part of leverage, it is creating a way in which people could consider not voting for them if they don't change the thing that was criticized. In American bourgeoois electoralism, agonizing over individual votes is the only thing commonly understood as something akin to leverage.
Your logic here is the complete reverse. You are saying to not criticize or make demands when you have leverage (a vote you could cast in way you want) and to only try to push after you have given up your leverage (voted).
There's also plenty of recent history showing how Dem politicians, particularly presidents, 100% do not care what you think once they are in office. They don't have to, do they? You're going to hold your tongue, hold your nose, and vote for them anyways! All they need us to trot out the same PR lines every 4 years and stack up enough cash for campaigning or, in this election, not be noticeably senile.
I still see his actions as rational.
It's a two party system. If you want to get into a position where you can enact change, you pretty have much have to be subordinate to one party or another.
If your party is guaranteed a landslide victory (or hell, guaranteed no victory), then by all means feel free to state your true beliefs in a bid to drag them back to the left.
But this is going to be a close call election. Better to sleep with a tired donkey who might let you have a voice later, than a deaf elephant who will let you have no voice at all.
It's a two party system. If you want to get into a position where you can enact change, you pretty have much have to be subordinate to one party or another.
That us how the fairy tale goes, yes. The more accurate way to describe it is that if you want to join the political class as a member of one if the two major parties (which makes it easier to do so), you must not cross their red lines and you must fall in line.
There is more that could be said about that, but Bernie was elected as an independent and has a safe seat. As such, he could provide a vision and build a movement if he wanted to. Instead, he supports genocide. There is no strategem. It is just an old liberal supporting the system he has supported since the 80s.
If your party is guaranteed a landslide victory (or hell, guaranteed no victory), then by all means feel free to state your true beliefs in a bid to drag them back to the left.
This is the same false logic I addressed in my previous comment.
But this is going to be a close call election. Better to sleep with a tired donkey who might let you have a voice later, than a deaf elephant who will let you have no voice at all.
The opposite is actually the case. It was far easier to advocate left ideas under Trump than under Biden. Liberals go to sleep between elections when their party is at the helm. They become the defenders of the status quo rather than "the resistance" (lol).
The things you are saying are lines handed down by PR strategists hired by the party over decades. They are not true, just common and often repeated. Their purpse is just to keep you a reliable voter despite them not delivering for you.
If you are elected into a position where you can enact change, those who elected you have expectations of you based on the policy you supported during the election.
If, then, you turn around and do something completely different your actions no longer reflect the will of those who elected you, and you are not behaving in a representative manner and thus in an undemocratic way.
So ignoring anything specific to the American system, class interests, etc., it is a losing battle to try and be anything different from the status quo and getting elected by aligning yourself with the status quo.
A communist who gets elected by siding with a fascist is no longer a communist. A liberal cannot be a liberal if they denounce capitalism and side with socialists. They are fundamentally different ideas of who the political economy is designed for, completely contradictory ideas about hierarchy, property rights, human rights, and even what constitutes truth (liberal ideas are often utopian, like the "rational economic man", and socialist/communist ideas are often based in the reality of the current and past material conditions, like believing people need homes and food, and a wealthy society should be able to provide these for itself, so people get homes and food. In contrast a liberal society would let the "market" provide these things in whatever way is profitable.
Sanders is a capitalist?
Unless you’ve heard Sanders call for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, yes, he is a capitalist. At best he’ll say It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism. He’ll never call for an end to it, only mitigations of it.
He is a liberal, a supporter of capitalism.
You ask like this is your first time here :not-sure-if-serious:
People always tell me that Biden is a communist and Bernie’s way left of him so I’m trying to figure it out myself.
People don’t know their asses from their elbows. Liberalism has a definition, which Marxists (and still some liberal Europeans) have never forgotten, though thanks to red scare purges and two cold wars, others have forgotten. Now, in Orwellian fashion, “liberalism” and “socialism” are floating signifiers, so we have liberals like Sanders calling themselves socialists, despite never calling for abolishing private ownership of the means of production.
Wikipedia: socialism: Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.
Wikipedia: liberalism: Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.
“Private property,” a.k.a. “the means of production.”
Socialism, democratic socialism, and socialist democrats are related ideas, complex themselves, but not the same thing as usually used in political discussions where labels are thrown around. Same with liberals, leftists, and generally the left. Everyone uses these simplified words in their soundbites, assuming the other people hearing them agree with the meanings used, and usually they are completely different. No wonder we can't agree on anything.
Where does Democratic socialism fit into that, like those shifty Canadians?
Is that a specific political party, or just a term thrown around?
Usually what people in capitalist countries actually mean is social democracy, also known as the “Nordic model”: capitalism with a social safety net.
Democratic socialism means socialism of some form or another, usually one that isn’t Marxist-Leninist. I don’t think it’s a very well-thought out term, since Marxism-Leninism follows democratic centralism.
Michael Parenti: Left Anticommunism: The Unkindest Cut
Thanks for the information, I’ll need a bit of time to read the links before I can make an informed response.
American politicians throw around the word "communist" as an insult because it is an easy way to leverage "communism is bad/the enemy" sentiments built up by propaganda during the cold war. Americans, overall, tend to have absolutely no idea what communism is or what socialism is. The history and definitions aren't taught in school and what is taught is simplistic and incorrect. Despite its pretenses of open investigation, Americans are heavily propagandized.
Biden and Bernie aren't that far from one another, in reality. They both support the oppressive political economic system that drives most misery and deprivation around the world and, as you can see in this post, Bernie falls in line behind Biden/Harris despite supposedly disagreeing with them. He thinks he is on their team and that it would be bad to actually oppose them in any principle, including the current genocide in Palestine that both of them support. He was also screwed over by Biden and the party twice when he ran for president and still does things like this, which tells you how committed he is to subjugsting himself to the political organs of capital.
Communism can be a term that is hard to understand because not only do Americans use it without having any idea what it means, it has been used with meaning in at least three different ways. In terms of Marxist theory, communism is a predicted way of being free of states, class, etc that comes about due to the working class controlling economic production. Communists are a particular brand of Marxists that seek to overturn the capitalist order and elevate the working class via a disciplined party structure and way of understanding the world. Finally, the concept of a communist country has often been used to describe those countries where communust revolutions succeeded and they control the state. Of course, those states cannot themselves constitute communism in the Marxist sense because they are nation-states and Marx's communism has no states.
It may also be helpful for me to talk about the term "liberal". Historically and around the world, liberalism has stood for the dominant political ideology of capitalism and is a product of capitalism. It holds that markets should be created and maintained for capitalism and tends to promote a very specific version of democracy that suits capital's interests and keeps it in control. As the dominant ideology of this domineering system, it is if course very undemocratic, particularly when it comes to destroying other countries. This is what most people around the world see as liberalism and it is what socialists criticize as liberalism. In the US, however, lineral has come to mean "arguably slightly left of center", a goalpost that of course moves around. Though often American " liberals" are very right wing and are even to the right of Republicans on many issues.
But in the usual international sense, virtually every politician in the United States is a liberal.
Though often American " liberals" are very right wing and are even to the right of Republicans on many issues.
I was following you up to this point but I don’t understand this.
Even though the democrats would be considered right of center in many countries, I can’t think of a single issue that the current GOP isn’t further right on.
There are two ways you can think of what I said.
The first is for individual politicians. For example, there is a Democratic House member somewhat near me that is extremely nationslist and anti-China. Their Republican opponent said we need to work with China. The Dem us to the right of the Republican on that foreign policy issue.
More interesting is policies that require coordination, like at the national level. A recent example is Democrats' attempt to outflank Republicans from the right on the border. Republicans prevented the bill from passing, but it was a right wing move and beyond what the GOP has tried to pass in decades. For a successful example of this, look at the rebranding of Democrats as pro-cop. Biden has provided more funding to cops than any other politician since Reagan. The Dems' response to massive protests against racial oppression and racialized policing in particular was to make false promises about reining in the police and then massively increasing their budgets. Another example is foreign policy, where Democrats are now the option for more effective stewards of the American empire. This is why Dick Cheney, the war criminal, is announcing his vote for Harris.
Aside from rightward moves, there is a related point that is important. Virtually every policy that Democrats are "left" of Republicans on is one that they do not fight for and instead use as a campaigning tool. So their "left" stances mean very little. When American Dem voters complain about their politicians not getting things done or being incompetent, they are describing this intentional act of deceit whether they know it or not. For example, Obama's Democrats had a huge majority in Congress and the presidency and didn't force any of their platform through. Obama even announced just 3 months into his first term that codifying Roe v. Wade was not a priority despite the fact that he campaigned on it. Dems are still campaigning on abortion rights at the national level despite doing nothing about it. They didn't even try to build a sustained protest movement. They just sent their politicians to rallies and converted the outrage and enthusiasm into "vote blue", and the liberals heard that and went home.