bourgeois politics

Sanders Supporters: It’s Time to get Disillusioned

By J.E. Karla

The word ‘disillusioned” has a negative connotation in our society, implying that illusions are good for us. In a life-or-death situation, however, illusions are fatal, and the fantasy that capitalism will give us the tools we need to destroy it threatens billions of lives. The oppressed of the world need actually radical Bernie Sanders supporters to snap out of it, right now. The rest of this essay is addressed directly to these earnest, disappointed supporters.

Your greatest illusion is probably the belief that Bernie Sanders somehow advanced the left over the last five years. He did not. Mass political energy rising up in the Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock and other mass movements got pushed into this campaign, now with nothing to show for it. This is an empirical fact, with vote counts and delegate totals to prove it. Even after tens of thousands of dedicated volunteers and hundreds of millions of dollars raised, Bernie regressed badly since his last failure in 2016. 

Yes, the coronavirus wreaked unforeseen havoc, but why should a crisis of capitalism work against an allegedly anti-capitalist campaign? It’s because Bernie’s style of opportunism is an open compromise between the ruling system and mass demand for change. When this contradiction erupts, the opportunists have to choose between either their imagined aims or their concrete collaborations with the class enemy. 

Bernie chose the latter, standing down in order to protect the system. The ruling class needs immediate unity behind the state in the broadest sense — not just the government, but the entire apparatus of capitalist power — if it is to survive this crisis. Bernie immediately fell in line, just like a US Senator is supposed to. Now his supporters can choose to follow this lead or to denounce this surrender. Which will you choose? 

If you believe that the exploited masses have the power to rise up and set ourselves free — i.e the basic idea of all revolutionary politics — then the question becomes which choice validates that concept: advancing Joe Biden’s ambitions, or refusing to further play the capitalist game? Bernie’s primary political objective is now the election of Joe Biden as president. Sticking with him out of a sense of reflexive loyalty is a clear betrayal of the masses.   

This is also the answer to the “lesser of two evils” logic Bernie and his allies in the Democratic Party are trotting out, now for the umpteenth time. For a child in a Palestinian refugee camp, a woman working in a Sri Lankan sweatshop, someone toiling in a coltan mine in Central Africa, or a Yemeni family praying that the drones miss them again today, the US elections change nothing. Not only is there no difference between Biden and Trump, there was no hope even in Bernie Sanders after all. 

Indeed, when it comes to key questions like the struggle against NATO, the IMF, WTO, and the US dollar, Biden may actually be to the right of Trump. This looks topsy turvy until you get good and disillusioned. Marx and Engels say in The Communist Manifesto that communists “are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only… in the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.” We either take this materialist perspective, or fall into the same opportunist trap over and over again. 

If you’ve spent any time over the last five years enthralled by the Bernie campaign, you’ve seen the consequences of this error. All of your work and money has been handed over to a befuddled rapist hack for the credit card companies and military industrial complex. The only way out of this hole is to stop digging. It’s time for you to give up on this illusion, once and for all.

The good news — kinda — is that we’re in great collective shape for a period of study. Start with the great dissector of opportunism — Vladimir Lenin. Read State and Revolution, and then Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. For a great look at how those dynamics have developed into our present age give John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century a read, followed by Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik’s A Theory of Imperialism. Get some disillusioned former Bernie supporters together and study as a group — it will help you stay accountable. 

It may feel less “active” than what you were up to with Bernie, but remember that you would have done much less harm if you’d done nothing at all. If there’s any hope of a silver lining in this experience it will be folks like you turning this heartbreak into a spirit of real resistance. Follow that spirit the next time a mass movement is urged to go electoral, and remind them of your one-time folly.  

We know that this will come up again sooner or later because no one comes out of this system without thinking a lot of very destructive things. Bernie supporters often point out the isolation and self-absorption of much of the left. You’re right; we have our own illusions we need to snap out of too. But the same system that worries about you being “disillusioned” tells you that it’ll help you slit its throat if only you play by its rules. Remember what you’ve learned, and don’t believe it again.

Bernie Sanders and "Playing the Game" of Bourgeois Politics

bernie1978.jpg

Bernie's raw assessment of the US in 1978 was right on. Bourgeois politics are a funny thing. As someone who has become a career senator of this very state of "poverty, wage slavery, and mind-destroying media and schools," you have to wonder how much he has either (1) compromised his principles, or (2) changed his views to maintain this career. 

Is he the best of the rotten bunch? Clearly. Does he still seek some justice for the US working class? Of course. Does he hammer away at corporate corruption and excess? Absolutely. But what price has he paid and continues to pay along the way? Enabling and supporting imperialism, endorsing a power-hungry crook like Hillary Clinton, inevitably endorsing a belligerent Joe Biden, backing the racist & classist Democratic Party, calling Hugo Chavez a dictator, belittling Cuba as an evil dictatorship, playing into the Russiagate nonsense, etc.

Is he playing the power game? Perhaps. Are these "necessary evils" the price of admission? Probably. But at what point does playing this game start to mock the importance of principle and integrity? What does it say about someone who is able and willing to play this game? And what effect does this spectacle have on the much-needed formation of a class-conscious proletariat?