The end of Sanders’ campaign deepens crisis in Democratic Socialists of America

By -

The end of Sanders’ campaign deepens crisis in Democratic Socialists of America

By Eric London
11 April 2020
In the aftermath of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ abandonment of his campaign, many members and supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America now see through the DSA’s cynical and duplicitous role as an accomplice of the Democratic Party.
For years, even preceding the 2016 election, the DSA trumpeted Sanders as the fearless leader of a “political revolution” that would transform the Democratic Party into an instrument of far-reaching social change.
Bernie Sanders [Credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr.com]
But Sanders has slunk out of the fight for the nomination in a manner that invites contempt. There was nothing of an old fighter’s last hurrah. The aged senator did not even offer his supporters a last harrumph. Rather, he meekly accepted the verdict of the Democratic Party machine and sang the praises of his “old friend” Joe Biden. And so, Sanders’ political revolution ended not with a final roar of defiance, but with a whimper of unctuous flattery.
With anger building among a substantial number of disillusioned and disgusted DSA members over the prospect of endorsing a Biden candidacy, Jacobin, a journal affiliated with the DSA, held an online forum last Wednesday titled “What Bernie accomplished and where to go next.” It featured Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara, contributors Michael Brooks, Meagan Day and Matt Karp, as well as Amber Frost of Chapo Trap House.
The primary purpose of the forum was to answer the question “Where to go next?” with a definitive: “Nowhere, stay in the Democratic Party.” No speaker at Wednesday’s forum challenged the article published in Jacobin Wednesday morning by Eric Blanc that stated, “We’re not yet strong enough to stop using the Democratic ballot line any time soon.”
During the forum, Sunkara asserted: “I’m not talking about a new socialist party or anything.”
Despite the unrelenting opposition of the Democratic Party to Sanders’ candidacy, Jacobin is relying on increasingly stretched arguments as to why those who consider themselves socialist should stay within this reactionary organization.
“We shouldn’t allow ourselves to draw too simple of a conclusion that the institution of the Democratic Party was too smart for us or too strong for us,” argued Day. To those who are upset over Sanders’ defeat, Day suggested, “work on some electoral campaign or something like that.”
Amber Frost stated her agreement with Day and added, “There is a certain amount of luck, and you should definitely analyze your mistakes, but… you can’t actually overestimate the Democratic machine… Clearly, they are not very confident, they did get kind of lucky and we did get kind of unlucky.”
These statements are desperate attempts to resuscitate the illusion that the Democratic Party can still be reformed from within. If Sanders merely suffered from “bad luck” in 2016 and 2020, why not try again in 2024? And what about the past century of failed efforts at reforming the Democratic Party? According to the DSA, everyone from William Jennings Bryan to Jesse Jackson apparently suffered from just a bad roll of the dice.
More than any past event, the efforts of the DSA and Jacobin to justify remaining in the Democratic Party were aimed at counteracting the growing influence of the World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party, whose criticism of and opposition to the Sanders’ campaign are well known to DSA members.
Day worriedly noted that “there’s a lot of chatter online right now about where [discontented Sanders supporters] will go. People are looking for a place to go next.” Later in the program, she elaborated: “We hear a lot of grumblings” from those “who tell us that Bernie Sanders is not a socialist and they would like to disabuse us of that notion. This is a running theme, and it’s obviously kind of obnoxious, because whatever is in Bernie’s heart this is obviously the exact way that a socialist should behave in the beating heart of global capitalism.”
Day appealed to “non-sectarian socialists” to unite, while Sunkara explained the futility of breaking with the Democratic Party in opposion to “good sectarians” who “know they are small and marginal.” Frost similarly noted concern over “smug gloating from the armchair revolutionaries.”
When Sunkara and company refer to “sectarians,” they mean individuals who are not cynical, opportunist agents of the Democratic Party. The DSA uses the term “sectarian” as an epithet against Marxists who are politically hostile to and independent of the Democratic Party.
Leon Trotsky wrote in 1935:
Reformists and centrists readily seize upon every occasion to point a finger at our ‘sectarianism;’ and most of the time, they have in mind not our weak but our strong side: our serious attitude toward theory; our effort to plumb every political situation to the bottom, and to advance clear-cut slogans; our hostility to ‘easy’ and ‘comfortable’ decisions which deliver from cares today, but prepare a catastrophe on the morrow. Coming from opportunists, the accusation of sectarianism is most often a compliment.
Trotsky was writing under conditions in which the Left Opposition faced a relatively smaller readership compared with the Social Democratic and Stalinist parties. In recent months, however, the World Socialist Web Site’s readership has grown to far exceed that of Jacobin, both worldwide and in the United States.
Despite significant institutional support and free advertising in the bourgeois press, Jacobin has suffered a substantial decline in readership, indicating a growing revulsion over its opportunist politics among healthier elements among DSA supporters. Sunkara knows his claim that the WSWS is “small and marginal” is false.
Jacobin and the DSA are aware of the critical role they play as a facilitators of Democratic Party politics.
The Washington Post recently referenced Vermont Democratic Congressman and Sanders confidant Peter Welch, stating that Welch “sees Sanders as central to Biden’s chances of winning support from a ‘progressive left who don’t particularly support the Democratic Party as an institution but whom we need to get out to vote.’”
The Post also cited Washington Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, noting, “Sanders’ greatest contribution may involve demonstrating the importance of what she called ‘inside/outside politics.’”
Genuine socialism is based on the struggle to develop a movement of the working class that is organizationally outside of and consciously hostile to all political parties of the capitalist class. Only in this way is the working class capable of realizing and unleashing its social power.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/11/sand-a11.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"MSM Already Using Capitol Hill Riot To Call For More Internet Censorship" by Caitlin Johnstone

By -
Image
  MSM Already Using Capitol Hill Riot To Call For More Internet Censorship The United States received a very small  taste of its own medicine  today as rioting Trump fanatics temporarily  forced their way into the nation’s Capitol building , and now the whole nation is freaking out. I am being generous when I say that America was given a very small taste of its own medicine; unlike the horrific coups and violent uprisings the US routinely orchestrates in noncompliant nations around the world, this one stood exactly zero chance of seizing control of the government, and only  one person was killed . I am also being generous when I say the rioters “forced their way” in; DC  chose not to increase its police presence  in preparation for the protests despite knowing that they were planned, and there’s  footage  of what appears to be cops actively letting them through a police barricade. There was  some fighting  between police and protesters, but contrasted with the  unceasing barrage of pol
Read more

The Deforestation Process

By -
Image
  The Deforestation Process Deforestation is too often reduced to what’s most conspicuous. But deforestation is complex and a lot more than raising beef cattle or growing soybeans. To begin with, despite all the biodiversity especially of plant life, rain forest soil isn’t very fertile. Nope, it’s actually very oxalic. Oxalic soils are acidic. Acidic soils are full of iron, bauxite and other minerals.  So not only are trees in the forest chopped down for their precious hardwood, the soils these trees grow in are mined for minerals including aluminum, zinc, copper, manganese, gold and iron. Do you know where the aluminum in your water bottle came from? What’s one of most electricity intensive things to do? Convert bauxite into aluminum. It’s an electrostatic process to remove oxygen from the alumina (Al2O3). This electricity is also one of the largest costs of producing aluminum. So that’s why hydroelectricity is often used to reduce the costs of refining bauxite to alumina to aluminum.
Read more

Reporter Uncovers History-Changing Manson Family Connections to CIA and Hollywood

By -
Image
Reporter Uncovers History-Changing Manson Family Connections to CIA and Hollywood By  John Vibes The crimes of the Manson family resulted in one of the most famous murder trials in history, but new research has come to light that could totally change the history of the case. Much of what was believed to be true about the Manson murders and the cult that carried them out comes from a narrative that was spun by prosecutor Vince Bugliosi, both during the trial and in his book  Helter Skelter — the best selling true crime novel of all time. Nothing about the murders made any sense. There was a strange cult of hippies that were killing celebrities for apparently no reason, and the young people carrying out the crimes seemed to be under the spell of a charismatic lunatic and failed musician named Charles Manson. Bugliosi created a narrative that Manson and his followers had no personal motive in the killings, but were attempting to instigate a race war by framing the Black Pant
Read more