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Louis Proyect wrote
On 4/8/16 3:41 PM, Ralph Johansen via Marxism wrote:
Why is the Sanders campaign in toto vilified by parts of the left and
regarded as unworthy of active support, while it lasts as a unique
and possibly never-to-be-repeated phenomenon (capital as a metabolic
system tends to close all effective avenues to an alternative) -
unless it can be shown to be, on balance and with the foregoing in
mind, harmful?
For the same reason I and most Marxmailers (except a handful of pro-Castro
fanatics) lambasted Barack Obama in 2007 when he was being hailed as the Second
Coming of FDR. This is not my first rodeo on DP saviors. I remember selling the
SWP "McCarthy Truth Kit" in 1968--not about Joe but Gene. We put an RFK Truth
Kit a bit later. There was the same kind of zealotry around the "peace
candidates" in 1968 just as there would be for McGovern 4 years later. I don't
believe in conspiracy theories but such campaigns function objectively as a way
of keeping the umbilical cord connected to the ruling class's most trusted way
of co-opting the left.
_________________
Well, you’d agree that proceeding by historical analogy has limits,
particularly as to the context – in this case, of ascending and descending
capital. There are large differences. FDR was bailing out capital with the
assent of its capital intensive/financial internationalist sector until capital
could get the global pecking order re-aligned, as finally happened fatefully
and catastrophically with WW2, and with post-war capital expansion; Eugene
McCarthy was part of the Humphrey machine in Minneapolis (I campaigned with him
in the Democratic-Farmer Labor office in the first Adlai Stevenson presidential
campaign); he, the Kennedys and even McGovern were riding the crest of a
productive, expansionary period in the US; their messages were not comparable
to Sanders’s; and while the Korean and Vietnam wars were affecting many
households they were not doing so in a way that seemed systemic and therefore
not at all calling the entire system to account. Capital was in ascendancy.
Barack Obama ran a sort of interim or holding campaign of expectation without
content as many or most are now coming to realize, having been groomed and
anointed through his networking first of all in his editorship of the Harvard
Law Review and then as a compliant senator out of the Chicago Democratic
machine, with the right credentials and an attractive wife and family, to be
bankrolled as the first viable Black candidate.
Capital is manifestly in descent by now, and differing times call up differing
ways of seeing and valuing process.
Sanders on the other hand is naming names, calling out truths and attacking
interests, in ways that none of your examples did, including (just to recite
what may be obvious but helpful to recount) at a time of a collapsing
environment with exposure of the depth of the problem or remediation of even
the most inadequate kind opposed by the powerful energy giants, with no
effective plan possible within the capitalist system; growing inequality; Wall
Street’s increasing control and the corruption and distortion that this
produces in politics and in the economy; the influence on health and
pocketbooks of the medical industry; destruction of the welfare system;
commodification and profit-taking in the educational system; failed, non-stop
wars and insecurity; the attack on people of color on the streets and at the
border, and on the working class generally; and an economy sustained by debt,
force and deceit.
Sanders is recognizing and capturing the resulting climate of resentment and
calling all this out, while all the other candidates can have no response
because the capitalist system itself which they represent has no response nor
can it offer credible solutions. None are available in this prolonged period of
stagnating economy, staggering indebtedness, declining prospects for
profit-taking, wholesale, broad daylight theft and destruction of the human and
natural commons and a centrifugal international climate of incipient revolt
which cannot and will not, despite imperial capital’s vast monopoly of military
force, diplomacy, trade and finance, knuckle under so as to ensure the orderly
ravaging of planet and people .
And Sanders in this context is going about it in such a way that submerged
frustration is being vented in and through his campaign; Hillary has been
forced as a result to atone and cavil but it’s very transparent. They may head
Sanders off at the convention, but he’s giving it a helluva try topping his
45-year largely consistent career on the left of the American political
spectrum. And if by some unexpected turn he should win the nomination and even
the election, that could be a whole new experience, where he might be able to
use the presidential pulpit to continue his attack on capital.
Or more likely, in attempting to manage capital from the left be one more
failed social democrat apologist, which would of course be a mistake.
But I am supporting his campaign, giving as much as I can afford and
volunteering because as I said, let alone the process in which it’s occurring
he is “arousing the sleeping dogs of class struggle” and absolutely no one else
is in the US. Which is sorely needed.
And whatever the outcome of the electoral process this time around the
underlying antagonistic causes and symptoms will not abate, only accelerate,
and the learning curve move inexorably upward. Or so I believe, despite trends
and appearances; because to believe otherwise is to assume our stupidity and
permanent impotence - and to capitulate.
---
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