Sanders centres his message on the class issues. This is of course the missing element in the normal 'liberal' democrat critique of racism in the US. It also frontally attacks the great myth of the 'American Dream', that getting rich and being rich is a realistic prospect for the average American citizen. Since the 1980s the US has been the least or near the least socially-mobile country in the entire western world. (Most years it competes for this 'honour' with the UK.)
'If Americans want to live the American dream, they should go to Denmark.' (Richard G. Wilkinson at a 2011 TED conference on economic inequality.)
Sanders rightly attacks US politics for the condition of his country. He describes modern American politics as 'bought and sold' by the big corporations. The only US President since WW2 to denounce these forces that lord over American society was Republican President Eisenhower, who coined the sinister phrase 'the industrial-military complex' when he was describing who really had come to rule the US. Since then no president from either party has done anything but praise and promote the real rulers of the 'land of the free.'
Hilary Clinton goes further in this direction than most of her fellow Democrats. She is on the extreme right of the Democratic Party when it comes to US foreign policy. Part of it is her fear that she will be tarnished with same brush that painted Obama 'weak' and 'conciliatory'. Another part is her sponsorship from, and her deep links with, the very industrial-military complex that Eisenhower denounced. Hilary has not even repudiated the generally accepted disaster of the invasion of Iraq for fear of undermining her campaign for the presidency among this group.
Sanders proposes the overthrow of the political power of the 'industrial-military complex', of big capital, in the US. That is part one of his political revolution; the proposal that those who rule politics should be turned out and replaced. Part two is his absolutely clear understanding that such a measure would rest for its success on the mobilisation of the American people.
'If somebody like me, or me, became president, there is no chance in the world that anything significant could be accomplished without the active, unprecedented support of millions of people' he said last September. He is right of course. The failure of the Obama regime to mobilise his electoral base in the battle he waged with a right wing Congress, meant his presidency has failed in his own terms. Sanders sees this and, without fear, proposes to call the people to be active in the politics of their country and remove their current political rulers.
Bernie Sanders is not calling for a social revolution. That is to say he is not suggesting the overturn of the social and economic systems of society. He certainly wants deep reform especially in health and education, but he is not proposing that the corporations or that the military be reorganised and reordered with the aim of creating a new way of running economics or a new way of building society. His political reform would be a revolution in American affairs but there are not yet additional political reforms proposed so that the working class and the middle class as a whole would move from the overthrow of the their political controllers to a position whereby they ran the political life of the nation. In Bernie's world, capitalism and the market stay, Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency stay, albeit tamed in the first case, and freed from influence and lobbying in the second.
Political Revolution is now much more than a theory developed by Leon Trotsky (as it is described in the Wikkipedia entry.) Trotsky used the term as a summary of his strategy to overthrow the tyrannical Soviet bureaucracy, under Stalin. A revolution, a rising of the population (and parts of the army) was required, but its objective was the destruction of the ruling caste and not the overthrow of the dominant property relations. The means of production etc, should stay in the hands of the state. (Such a policy of political revolution would not, for example apply to modern China, where capitalism and the market are the dominant social and economic principles albeit under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese model would better be described as a form of State Capitalism as both its rulers and their economy and society would need overturning if the majority of the Chinese people were to truly run their own society.)
Political revolution was first used by Marx describing French events where different factions of the competing ruling classes used revolutionary means, i.e. the mobilisation of the population, to win central power. In 1968 in France, then in 1969 in Italy, in 1974 in Portugal and then in 1974 in Spain, despite the 'pre-revolutionary' phraseology used at the time to describe what was going on, a series of political revolutions broke out across Europe. Ancient fascist orders fell in the Iberian peninsular, but so did De Gualle in France. New sectors of the ruling class seeking modernisation and reform, mainly expressed through Social Democratic parties and the burgeoning power of the European Common Market forced the old order out. They needed revolutionary movements in the population to do it. The European political revolutions of their day were successful in that limited sense, but have not managed to sustain the minimal reforms distributed to the population as a whole at the time and mean little today to the mass of the insecure and exploited. They instead, under constant attack, have had to search for, to find and to build new instruments to defend and promote their own interests.
In today's context and in the USA, the most powerful nation on Earth, Bernie Sander's political revolution does not face the fragility of ancient fascism or a worn out autocracy. But its power as an idea, as a necessary, indeed desperately required change for the country is already formidable and growing. It will create new thinking and new action. It is pointless to speculate on whether such a political revolution would be forced by the circumstances to 'go all the way' or be snuffed out by the tremendous reactionary reserves that the US rulers could call on. What is essential is that new leaders are needed to give shape to new directions for society, which is turning, even the previously most prosperous places in the world, to barbarism and workcamps.
One pleasant quirk of Bernie's campaign is the emergence of some of his supporters. Benn and Jerry (of ice cream fame) have just called for support and made a new ice cream called 'Bernie's Yearning'. Sweet.
Hilary Clinton goes further in this direction than most of her fellow Democrats. She is on the extreme right of the Democratic Party when it comes to US foreign policy. Part of it is her fear that she will be tarnished with same brush that painted Obama 'weak' and 'conciliatory'. Another part is her sponsorship from, and her deep links with, the very industrial-military complex that Eisenhower denounced. Hilary has not even repudiated the generally accepted disaster of the invasion of Iraq for fear of undermining her campaign for the presidency among this group.
Sanders proposes the overthrow of the political power of the 'industrial-military complex', of big capital, in the US. That is part one of his political revolution; the proposal that those who rule politics should be turned out and replaced. Part two is his absolutely clear understanding that such a measure would rest for its success on the mobilisation of the American people.
'If somebody like me, or me, became president, there is no chance in the world that anything significant could be accomplished without the active, unprecedented support of millions of people' he said last September. He is right of course. The failure of the Obama regime to mobilise his electoral base in the battle he waged with a right wing Congress, meant his presidency has failed in his own terms. Sanders sees this and, without fear, proposes to call the people to be active in the politics of their country and remove their current political rulers.
Bernie Sanders is not calling for a social revolution. That is to say he is not suggesting the overturn of the social and economic systems of society. He certainly wants deep reform especially in health and education, but he is not proposing that the corporations or that the military be reorganised and reordered with the aim of creating a new way of running economics or a new way of building society. His political reform would be a revolution in American affairs but there are not yet additional political reforms proposed so that the working class and the middle class as a whole would move from the overthrow of the their political controllers to a position whereby they ran the political life of the nation. In Bernie's world, capitalism and the market stay, Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency stay, albeit tamed in the first case, and freed from influence and lobbying in the second.
Political Revolution is now much more than a theory developed by Leon Trotsky (as it is described in the Wikkipedia entry.) Trotsky used the term as a summary of his strategy to overthrow the tyrannical Soviet bureaucracy, under Stalin. A revolution, a rising of the population (and parts of the army) was required, but its objective was the destruction of the ruling caste and not the overthrow of the dominant property relations. The means of production etc, should stay in the hands of the state. (Such a policy of political revolution would not, for example apply to modern China, where capitalism and the market are the dominant social and economic principles albeit under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese model would better be described as a form of State Capitalism as both its rulers and their economy and society would need overturning if the majority of the Chinese people were to truly run their own society.)
Political revolution was first used by Marx describing French events where different factions of the competing ruling classes used revolutionary means, i.e. the mobilisation of the population, to win central power. In 1968 in France, then in 1969 in Italy, in 1974 in Portugal and then in 1974 in Spain, despite the 'pre-revolutionary' phraseology used at the time to describe what was going on, a series of political revolutions broke out across Europe. Ancient fascist orders fell in the Iberian peninsular, but so did De Gualle in France. New sectors of the ruling class seeking modernisation and reform, mainly expressed through Social Democratic parties and the burgeoning power of the European Common Market forced the old order out. They needed revolutionary movements in the population to do it. The European political revolutions of their day were successful in that limited sense, but have not managed to sustain the minimal reforms distributed to the population as a whole at the time and mean little today to the mass of the insecure and exploited. They instead, under constant attack, have had to search for, to find and to build new instruments to defend and promote their own interests.
In today's context and in the USA, the most powerful nation on Earth, Bernie Sander's political revolution does not face the fragility of ancient fascism or a worn out autocracy. But its power as an idea, as a necessary, indeed desperately required change for the country is already formidable and growing. It will create new thinking and new action. It is pointless to speculate on whether such a political revolution would be forced by the circumstances to 'go all the way' or be snuffed out by the tremendous reactionary reserves that the US rulers could call on. What is essential is that new leaders are needed to give shape to new directions for society, which is turning, even the previously most prosperous places in the world, to barbarism and workcamps.
One pleasant quirk of Bernie's campaign is the emergence of some of his supporters. Benn and Jerry (of ice cream fame) have just called for support and made a new ice cream called 'Bernie's Yearning'. Sweet.
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