Bernie
Sanders and the road to a mass workers’ party
Bernie Sanders’ 2016 bid
for the presidency shook up US politics. Attracting hundreds of
thousands of people around a radical programme, it showed the potential
for a working-class-based alternative to the two main parties. TONY
SAUNOIS reviews an account of the campaign, drawing the lessons for the
2020 presidential contest now under way.
Crashing the Party: from the Bernie Sanders
campaign to a progressive movement
By Heather Gautney
Published by Verso, 2018, £9.99
Heather Gautney, an executive
director of ‘Our Revolution’ and lecturer at Fordham University, New
York, had worked for Bernie Sanders as a legislative fellow in his
Washington DC office before the 2016 presidential campaign. She also
served as a volunteer organiser during his bid for the presidency. Her
book gives a valuable insight into the central political issues that
confronted his campaign, his programme and objectives. As Gautney points
out, she is an academic not a gossip columnist and this book is free of
the personal tittle-tattle found in some accounts of major political
battles. It is an illuminating account of this epic struggle, raising
crucial issues of programme. However, the underlying weakness in her
analysis lies in its lack of perspective and what Sanders and his
supporters should do now.
The mass movement that
developed around Sanders in 2016 was one of the most important
international political developments for the working class and
socialists. It reflected the first stirrings of the awakening giant, the
US working class, following on from the Occupy movement, the mass
strikes in Wisconsin, and other upheavals. That millions were touched by
the campaign was potentially a historic turn, reflecting their total
alienation from the capitalist ruling class. They were looking for an
alternative to the political caste or dynasties at the head of the
Democratic and Republican parties.
This is a reflection of the
social and economic crisis that has ripped through US society. It is a
consequence of the declining position of US imperialism globally, even
though it remains the most powerful capitalist power. In this it has
some comparison with the social and political turmoil that shook British
capitalism at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th,
which gave rise to revolutionary upheavals and the birth of the Labour
Party.
The massive social
inequality, seething anger and rise in poverty among swaths of the US
population is illustrated throughout the book. Sanders managed to tap
into it. Gautney relates the enthusiasm for Sanders’ demand for
universal healthcare at a town hall meeting in McDowell County, West
Virginia. There, 35% live in poverty, nearly half of them children. Less
than 66% graduated high school, and the average life expectancy for men
is 64 – in the world’s most powerful imperialist country.
She correctly explains the
role of the Democrats in applying neoliberal policies in the 1980s and
1990s as the party swung further and further away from Keynesian
policies. Gautney really exposes the hatred that existed, and remains,
towards the Democratic elite represented by the Clintons and others.
Hillary Clinton was known for her contempt of the working class and the
poor. This was shown in her dismissal of Trump voters as "the
deplorables", and dubbing areas to avoid during the campaign as
"fly-over states".
Divisive separatism
From the outset, Gautney lays
out four key themes with which to understand the movement around
Sanders. In 2014 she wrote an essay in the New York Times discussing
whether he should run, arguing correctly that "social class would be the
major axis on which the new US politics would emerge". She argued that,
should Sanders throw his hat into the ring, he would take up the class
issues. While "Hillary’s appeal to identity politics would rally
corporate feminists it would do little to unite and empower America’s
disenfranchised or move the dial on social inequality".
In her account of the
election campaign the pernicious role of identity politics is central,
and how aspects of it are used by the ruling class to detract and blur
issues of class by fostering ‘separatism’. Identity politics is a vital
issue that revolutionary socialists need to confront, especially in the
US where academia is in overdrive churning out supposedly new ideas
based on it. These ideas have penetrated the workers’ organisations, and
sections of the working class and youth. Of course, socialists must
intervene energetically in all struggles defending the rights of women,
opposing discrimination based on gender, race and sexual orientation,
and champion the rights of all oppressed peoples.
The vicious attacks under
Donald Trump on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights have made these particularly
explosive issues. The recent decision in Alabama to ban almost all
abortions is a measure of the vicious attacks under Trump. The
Republicans hope it will provoke a legal challenge opening the door for
a Supreme Court ruling that it should be applied across the country.
This is likely to provoke mass protests which socialists and all workers
need to support and intervene in.
Yet it is vital that these
struggles are linked to and become an integral part of a united struggle
of the working class against capitalism. The divisive trap of
separatism, in all its forms, which will only split the working class,
needs to be combated and energetically opposed. The experience of the
Sanders campaign in dealing with this question is full of lessons.
Socialists need to skilfully expose the threat posed by identity
politics to the working class of all genders and races.
ID politics v working-class unity
Gautney concludes in her
introduction that "class did end up as the fundamental organising
principle of 2016". This was reflected by Sanders and Trump – by the
latter in a distorted or "hooligan" fashion, as she puts it. Gautney
also admits: "What I did not see coming in June 2014, however, was how
establishment Democrats would use gender and racial inequality to
undermine progressive alternatives – and just how badly that strategy
would backfire". Later, in a lengthy chapter on identity politics, she
gives clear examples of how it was used against Sanders by Clinton and
Democrat leaders in the black community. They consciously tried to
remove class from the debate.
Gautney gives example after
example of how Sanders was attacked by some individual leaders of the
Black Lives Matter movement and others. He was accused of being "tone
deaf" to the plight of people of colour despite his attacks on Wall
Street. Black Democratic Party congressmen were wheeled out to endorse
Clinton by playing the identity politics card. James Clyburn from South
Carolina endorsed Clinton. He and Cedric Richmond from Louisiana claimed
that Sanders’ plan for free public higher education would undercut
historically black colleges and universities.
Gautney strongly attacks what
she argues was the "establishment Democrat practice of branding its
conservative class politics as racial justice". She criticises those
claiming to speak on behalf of the ‘black community’ as a whole,
describing this as an "abstract term" because it obscures the "class and
power inequalities among black Americans; since victories in the 1960s
and 1970s, inequality has advanced to such a degree that it is today
much higher than amongst white Americans". She warns: "In capitalist
society, all politics is class politics. Assuming that an essential
unity of ‘community’ exists within particular racial, ethnic and gender
categories risks obscuring class hierarchies and relations of
exploitation among people within such groupings".
None of this means, of
course, that we should not recognise the brutal racial and gender
oppression in capitalism, particularly in US society. On the contrary,
it is essential to fight it. It is also necessary, however, to link it
to a united class struggle against capitalism and to draw out the class
distinctions that exist within racial, gender and/or other groups.
Gautney cites the literary theorist, Walter Benn Michaels, who said in
an interview: "You know you live in a world that loves neoliberalism
when having some people of colour who are rich is supposed to count as
good news for all the people of colour who are poor"!
Gautney argues that the same
could be said for "versions of feminism that exploit women’s sense of
purported biological unity and common experiences of patriarchy in order
to paint an elite woman’s success as a universal win – instead of
fighting for material equality with men and among women". We might add
among men as well. Yet to achieve this it is necessary to break with
capitalism and link all such struggles with the need for a socialist
transformation of society.
![Socialism Today 229 - June 2019](229-cover-4-web.jpg)
The ‘European socialism project’
Heather Gautney also deals
with aspects of Sanders’ programme, but this is the weakest part of her
analysis. The fact that Sanders was identified as a socialist, raising
radical demands that reflected class issues and appealed to big sections
of the working class, was positive, particularly in the context of US
society. Socialism has been put on the agenda for the first time in
generations. However, this positive development is at an early stage and
has limitations which need to be overcome.
In her introduction, Gautney
deals with the question of Sanders’ ‘socialism’ and what is meant by it.
Sanders had asked her to prepare a paper on "universal healthcare,
tuition-free college, public pensions and other aspects of European
democratic socialism". She explains: "The European socialism project
that he proposed to me… involved preparing backgrounds on social welfare
systems in Europe, and Denmark in particular". In other words, for them,
socialism is the welfare state that exists in most northern European
countries. Given the absence of such a system in the US, understandably,
this proposal is tremendously popular and appears very radical.
Moreover, the US, like all
capitalist countries, has been dominated by the neoliberal agenda for
decades. The leadership of the Democratic Party has been a driving force
in implementing it since the late 1970s. Bill and Hillary Clinton have
been in the forefront of this drive. The reforms demanded by Sanders on
health, education, infrastructure investment and breaking up the banking
system seemed particularly radical when compared to the policies
defended by the established leadership of the Democratic Party.
However, the reforms Sanders
campaigned on did not constitute a break from capitalism. Gautney is
quite explicit about this when dealing with Sanders’ call for a
‘political revolution’: "His campaign was not calling for a radical
social and political restructuring of power in the United Sates, like
modern revolutionary movements have done in Cuba or Bolivia and
elsewhere. Bernie did not associate himself with anti-capitalist
politics or seek to nationalise major industries (though he has in the
past). Rather, he advocated for increasing government regulation and
corporate taxation and removing elements of the social system, like
healthcare and higher education, from the market economy. He also
promoted policies to revive public investment and social safety nets…
much like the industrial Keynesianism of the post-war era".
Sanders carried the US
socialist leader Eugene V Debs’ key chain in his pocket. Debs was a
founder member of the International Workers of the World and a leader of
the Socialist Party of America which at its peak had more than 100,000
members and over 1,000 members elected to public office, including two
in Congress. Debs ran five times for the presidency winning nearly a
million votes in 1920. Sanders’ policies amounted to a ‘reformed’
capitalism rather than a socialist break from it – and are a pale
reflection of the programme of Debs!
In addition, Sanders’
relatively radical demand for a ‘welfare state’ comes at a time when the
ruling classes in Europe are in the process of dismantling it. This
flows from today’s era of capitalist crisis, in contrast to the period
of post-war economic upswing when these reforms could be conceded by
capitalism in Europe.
Up against capitalist class interests
Nonetheless, Sanders’ reforms
were far too much for the US ruling class and the leadership of the
Democratic Party to accept. The Democrats had swung further to the right
and embraced neoliberalism. Faced with revolutionary convulsions and a
mass movement, the capitalist class may be compelled to introduce some
reforms temporarily. However, the introduction of sustained reforms is
something that the system cannot afford at this time of crisis.
When Sanders launched his
2020 bid for the nomination in Iowa, he made a blistering attack on the
horrors of US capitalism. He exposed the pharmaceutical industry, banks
and big corporations, and the tax avoidance of Google, Amazon and other
companies. Healthcare for all, a $15 minimum wage and other demands were
promised should he win the presidency. He correctly argued for massive
investment in infrastructure. He also warned that the major corporations
would use their immense power to oppose these policies, and he
threatened to stand up to them. But the question is how?
Unfortunately, Sanders made
no reference to taking these massive corporations into public ownership
under democratic control. His programme was left at the utopian
aspiration of trying to regulate capitalism in the interests of all
rather than breaking from it and introducing a democratic socialist
alternative. This echoes what existed in Europe soon after the second
world war. In recent decades, however, the capitalist class has
abandoned such policies in favour of neoliberalism and its programme of
deregulation and privatisation. Even with greater state intervention,
the current era of capitalist crisis and the prospect of deepening
recession would lead to further attacks on the working class. Any
temporary reforms conceded would be taken back again. A return to
post-war upswing and long-lasting reforms is wishful thinking today.
The CWI recognised the
tremendous significance of the movement that developed around Sanders
and the radical reforms he advocated. It is essential to engage with the
millions drawn behind it and to fight for those policies. However, it is
also necessary to explain the limitations in that programme and warn of
the consequences if it is not accompanied with a struggle to build a
mass movement and a new party of working people capable of fighting for
a socialist programme. Failure to do so – and, instead, wait until a
mass movement has been built before raising the need for a socialist
programme – will not assist workers and young people to prepare for the
enormity of the tasks ahead in the struggle to defeat the most powerful
capitalist class on the planet.
Trying to save the Democratic Party
It was necessary to explain
this in the 2016 campaign and it is still necessary, as a part of the
struggle to defeat Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
– a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a caucus within the
Democratic Party, elected to Congress from New York – have recently
demanded that a 15% interest rate limit is placed on all domestic loans
including credit cards. This is a crucial issue given the high levels of
domestic debt and will be extremely popular. However, it is necessary to
go much further. Although 15% interest rates will still allow such
institutions to make a killing, the US financial institutions will fight
this proposal tooth and nail, while seeking ways to evade such
restrictions. It is necessary, therefore, to link this call with the
demand for the nationalisation of the banks and financial institutions
under democratic control, rather than simply the break-up of the banks
into smaller companies with a ceiling on interest rates.
Sanders is currently ahead in
the polls for the Democratic primaries running up to the 2020
presidential campaign. But the entry into the race of more candidates –
like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden with a base in the trade union
apparatus – may mean that the battleground is more complicated than in
2016. This raises the important question, touched on in Gautney’s book,
around Sanders’ decision to run as a Democrat in 2016, rather than
taking the bold steps necessary to form a new party and break from the
Democrats. That is posed today as Sanders again attempts to win the
Democratic Party nomination. Gautney defends his mistaken position.
At his launch in 2019,
Sanders made it clear that he was running for the nomination to channel
the newly radicalised young people and workers into the Democrats: "So
if – if the Democratic Party is gonna do well in the future – I think
they have to reach out to those independents, including by the way a lot
of young people, a lotta people of colour, and bring them into the
Democratic Party. And I think I am in a good position to do that".
Sanders is attempting to
repeat in the Democrats what exists in the British Labour Party: two
parties in one. This untenable situation has seen a fifth column of
right-wing, pro-capitalists free to derail and sabotage the Corbynistas.
In reality, there was an element of two parties in one at the Democratic
convention in 2016, and it ended with Sanders ‘reluctantly’ endorsing
Clinton! Unfortunately, Sanders sees his role as saving the Democratic
Party by taking a radicalised layer into it. His 2020 bid for the
nomination is starting from the same mistaken premise on which he ended
his bid in 2016. The Democratic Party is a thoroughly capitalist party.
A clear break from it and the establishment of a new party of the
working class is necessary.
In some other countries,
historically, the process of forming mass workers’ parties included
individuals or groups breaking from capitalist parties. In 19th century
Britain, this involved trade unionists and individuals who were linked
to the Liberal Party but were also involved in the embryonic steps to
form the Labour Party. In Greece in the 1970s, the origins of what
became the mass socialist party, PASOK, are traced to George Papandreou
who broke from the liberal capitalist Centre Union.
This type of development may
be repeated in the process of building a new working-class party in the
US – and would be possible around Bernie Sanders, although he has
actively opposed taking such a step so far. Other initiatives are also
possible, with new parties or groupings emerging from workers, trade
unionists and others oppressed by capitalism, initially at state level.
What is clear, however, is that the social conditions and support exist
– reflected in the battles already taking place – for the formation of a
mass workers’ party.
![Socialism Today 229 - June 2019](229-cover-4-web.jpg)
Rigged Democratic convention
Heather Gautney graphically
shows that the primary system was fixed against the ‘outsider’ Sanders
and his supporters who "crashed the party". The battle at the convention
and her vivid description of events there make this crystal clear. The
radical delegates were treated as gate-crashers by the established party
machine. Many of them were looking for a much more radical stance by
Sanders.
Gautney describes how at the
convention votes went to Clinton from states where Sanders had won a
clear majority in the primaries. Sanders won Michigan yet the convention
votes were 46 to Clinton, 44 to Sanders. He had won the New Hampshire
primary by 60% to 38%, but the convention tally announced 16 each! The
party elite had played the super-delegate card, a double-lock mechanism
on top of the rigged primary system to stop an ‘outsider’. This system
has only been partially reformed, following an outcry at the cynical way
it had been wielded.
At the convention, many
Sanders supporters were enraged, booing the party leadership and the
ideas it represented. Gautney cites Sanders giving instructions to his
supporters not to "disrupt the convention" and to remain calm. He even
launched a follow up ‘unity tour’ with the newly elected and
establishment backed Democratic National Committee chair, Tom Perez. He
was one of those who suggested to Clinton that she use identity politics
to "defame Bernie"!
Gautney justifies Sanders’
endorsement of Clinton as the way to block Trump. However, refusing to
stand independently drove millions into his arms as they were repelled
by Clinton. Trump was able to present himself to sections of US workers
as ‘anti-establishment’, and a defender of the working class. Clinton’s
dismissal of these voters facilitated that narrative. This affected not
only white Americans from the rust-belt states. As Gautney points out,
29% of Latinos also voted for Trump! The lesser evil argument does not
hold water, as millions who opted for Donald Trump could have been won
to Bernie Sanders but were repelled by Hillary Clinton.
Building a real political alternative
Sanders could have used the
platform he had won to break from the Democrats and launch a new party
for US workers. His failure to do so in 2016 was a missed opportunity.
Even if he had not secured victory then he could have amassed the forces
to lay the basis for a real challenge to Trump from the left in 2020. By
adopting the stance he has today he is wrongly herding his supporters
into the dead end of the Democratic Party, at a time when the basis
exists to launch a new party for the workers and young people who are
desperately looking for an alternative.
The idea that it is possible
to transform the Democratic Party may appear more appealing at this
stage, given the electoral victory of some around the Democratic
Socialists of America like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While the party
establishment may have tolerated a few individuals being elected,
however, they would never allow the party to be transformed from top to
bottom. This would necessitate the driving out of those who are wedded
to US capitalism, Wall Street and the big corporations.
Rather than directing his
supporters into the Democratic Party, Sanders should be taking the steps
to build a mass alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. A
convention of his supporters could reach out to the organised working
class in the trade unions, workplaces and community organisations, and
appeal to all those who wish to fight for an alternative to Trump, the
Democratic corporate elite and capitalism. Such a convention could lay
the base for a new party, rooted among the working class of all races,
genders and sexual orientation who are actively participating in the
struggles taking place. It would need to set up a party that is
democratically controlled, with accountable leadership, and acting as
representatives of all working people.
This is the way forward and
the objective conditions to build such an alternative exist now. The
year 2016 represented a political and social earthquake in US society.
Millions rallied behind the Sanders campaign, yet the opportunity was
lost to establish a real political alternative for the working class.
Unfortunately, it seems that Sanders is preparing to repeat his earlier
mistake. Nonetheless, from these struggles and experiences, a broader
layer of workers and youth can begin to see the need to build a new
party with socialist policies. The CWI will continue to assist workers
in the US in drawing these conclusions.