More Thoughts on Bernie Sanders and Capitalism
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In Further Up the Organization, Robert Townsend says
that there are two types of people in meetings: those that give
you their best reaction immediately, and those who need a day or
two to think it over before getting back to you. I recognized
myself as one of the latter. Part of that is that I actually do
give fairly serious consideration to anything new I hear, and
often to old things with new evidence and/or arguments. It takes
a while to honestly evaluate anything new. I mostly run it through
various models I've developed about how the world works, keeping
open the possibility that the models are also open to revision.
I'm not a strong believer in anything but my most closely held
moral principles, and even those I'm more likely to defend on
utilitarian grounds (taking the word literally, and not as the
"ism" distilled by Bentham, Mill, and 24). I ask myself
does it work? And being an engineer, I ask could it work better?
Of course, those things are rarely absolutes (though absolutely
doesn't work occurs pretty often).
Hence, when I publish something, I usually find that I have
more thoughts coming the next day or two. My
recent post on the Bernie Sanders book, It's OK to Be
Angry About Capitalism, almost immediately led me to think
of a "more thoughts" piece. Part of this was because I had a
section from that book I wanted to write more about, but left
out as I figured I had already gone on enough — but also
because it needed to be put into some kind of context. So I
outlined a bit of what I was thinking in a August 26
Music Week post, but didn't get back to it until now, a
couple weeks later.
A thumbnail history that brings us to Sanders (and Trump)
I may have lost a thread or two along the way, while coming up
with a couple more. I thought I'd write a paragraph on context here,
then the main section on policy, and possibly some conclusions. But
I jumped ahead and wrote the policy section, then circled back to
hear. Feeling that I've already written enough, and that my thoughts
on context really need their own post to stretch out, I'll just
compress them into bullet points here.
I've been thinking about revolutions. I used to think about
them in classic leftist fashion, as revolts against decrepit powers
that sweep away the old regimes to make way for a more equitable,
just, and progressive future. Now I'm more inclined to think of
them as failures of the old regimes, too hard and brittle to adapt
to change, which in their wake allow emerging forces to run amok
until their own limits sideline them in a ditch somewhere. Whether
anything resembling progress occurs is incidental, even if clearly
intended by the revolutionaries. (A fuller discussion of revolutions
would show they can either go left or right, and be followed with
reactions that can be more disruptive than the initial revolutions.
But in most cases, even without a reaction or restoration, the old
nation tends to revert to its pre-revolutionary form, as Russia did
a decade or so after 1917 and again after 1993. It would also show
that while autocracies tend to be rigid and brittle, and as such
prone to revolution, democracies are usually more flexible, allowing
them to absorb movements that might crack an autocracy.) While revolutions are rare, revolutionary moments, where
masses of unhappy people desire radical change, are much more common.
The US has had a number of these, with 1776 producing a revolution,
1860 a civil war that was effectively a second revolution, and 1932
peacefully produced major changes. Other elections, often during or
following major recessions, showed revolutionary potential but with
mixed or ambiguous results, with some falling short (Bryan in 1896),
some turning reactionary (Nixon in 1968, Reagan in 1980), some
backing away from the change they promised (Clinton in 1992, Obama
in 2008). In the latter cases, the energy that elected Democrats
turned against them two years later, flipping Congress and ending
any real chance of change. In the 1950s, Krugman's "Great Compression" never seriously
challenged Mills' "Power Elite." The deal was that corporate powers
would be the stable centers of progress, while liberals sacrificed
labor unions to anti-communism and the global spread of capital
protected by American hegemony. That compromise, especially with
the Vietnam War, discredited the liberalism that had built America,
freeing corporate power to gravitate toward ever more predatory
capitalists. Nixon in 1968 and Reagan in 1980 rode to power in
reaction to scandals by Democratic presidents, then used their
wins to secure even more corporate power. (As did Bush in 2000:
the Clinton scandal was mostly propaganda, but he alienated a
lot of people, enough to make a difference. Eisenhower in 1952
could also be chalked up as anti-war reaction.) Major political parties can be somewhat simplistically
viewed as consisting of four constituent groups:
- The sponsors (or in capitalist terms, the owners), who provide
the money, and have personal and/or class interests they expect to
advance politically. The basic problem here is that sponsors have
weak partisan ties, often engaging in both parties, which only adds
to their allure. (For similar reasons, uncommitted voters get more
attention than reliable ones, whose commitment can be assumed and
taken advantage of. But votes are much less valuable than money --
to party elites, that is -- and numbers dictate that sponsors get
personal attention, while voters get propaganda.)
- The professionals (or elites): politicians and their high-level
operatives, who spend most of their time raising and spending money,
and whose careers depend on maintaining this system.
- The activists: lower-level people who put considerable effort
into politics, sometimes out of simple partisan loyalty, or often
out of concern for specific issues that align with a party.
- The base, who are mostly reliable voters, including leaning
independents, but who factor into party decision-making even if
they have little real power. It's been said that Democrats despise
their base, while the Republicans fear theirs. The distinction has
little to do with fear or spite, which are plentiful on both sides.
It's that Republicans are more keen to flatter their base with
flattery that caters to their prejudices, while Democrats treat
their base with contempt. Two reasons for this: one is to impress
their sponsors, reassuring that they remain in control and that
the voters' wishes don't have to be appeased; the other is that
no matter how disgruntled the base becomes, they'll still vote
for elite Democrats to save them from even worse Republicans.
Beyond these groups, there are the non-partisan masses, who
are alienated, disengaged, and often uninformed. We could also
slot much of the media into this diagram -- Fox on the Republican
side, mostly as activists (while they can be counted on to follow
whatever line the elites are pushing, they're often out in front,
mostly because their business model is based on outrage, which
fits perfectly with Republican control of their base). When Goldwater ran in 1964, he ran a purely ideological
campaign, which proved massively unpopular. Starting with Nixon
in 1968, Republicans have focused on cultivating and harvesting
discontent, no matter how loosely associated with Democrats.
This became much easier piggybacking on Fox's business model,
to the extent that especially during Democratic presidencies,
Fox wound up calling the shots. Ever since they jettisoned Henry Wallace and embraced the
Cold War -- which started with a purge of communists and "fellow
travelers," especially from trade unions -- elite Democrats have
regarded the isolation and containment of the left to be a key
part of their remit. They had been so successful for so long that
the Sanders campaign in 2016 caught them by surprise, resulting
in them taking desperate measures: especially in 2020, after
Bloomberg's $500 million vanity campaign imploded, they hastily
regrouped behind Biden, preferring an incoherent campaigner to
losing face with their sponsors. On the other hand, Republicans
never have a problem with their extremists. They organize the
fringes, serve as rabid attack dogs, make other Republicans look
normal, and can safely be ignored when business dictates. I've read much carping about "centrist" Democrats as
closet or nascent Republicans (or even Trumpists), but I
think this confuses two distinct groups: on the one hand, you
have ideological neoliberals like Clinton and Obama, who really
do think that their middle path can both raise capitalism to
extraordinary profits and still protect workers and the poor
and even the environment from its worst ravages; on the other,
you have people who are just confused by the Republican media
circus, and who get suckered into repeating their talking points
as if they're serious issues. The latter may otherwise lean left,
right, or with the wind, and may decide close elections, but have
no coherent policy, and therefore no impact. The former, despite
two two-term presidents who are now largely discredited, have no
political base: the rich may give them money but no coattails to
get their reforms implemented; everyone else sees the rich getting
richer, their pet politicians enjoying their luxury, while everything
else that affects their lives goes to hell. Those people are ripe
for some revolutionary pitch, but skeptical of Democrats after the
1992 and 2008 sellouts (especially the latter, where Obama was so
explicit about campaigning for change, then delivered so little).
Anyone who wants to move the Democratic Party to the left needs to
recognize the differences between these two "centrist" groups, and
deal with each accordingly. While Democratic elites risk funding by embracing programs
of the left, which threaten their economic interests, Republicans
can easily accommodate the fevered desires of their agitated base
(at least so far). Hence, while Trump may not have been the first
choice of their sponsors and elites, they can see backing him as
a tactical move: he gets tons of free press; presents himself as a
dynamic leader, with a popular appeal that extends somewhat beyond
the Fox base; he is safely one of the rich, yet can pretend he's
beholden to none other (while being greedy enough to be trusted);
and his followers actually get off on how much he is despised by
the "elites" they have learned to hate. He can, in short, tap into
a revolutionary current without posing any risk to those actually
in power (other than self-destruction due to over-indulgence of
their own misconceptions about how the world should be run). Much
earlier, he would have been written off as an absurdity, but by
2016, the revolutionary current that Obama rode to his win in 2008
was still unrequited, and had fermented into the kind of slop a
Trump could exploit. Some evidence of this desire for revolution was that in 2016
Sanders ran up against a very locked-in Clinton fortress, with no
elite and very little activist support, and ran a very strong race --
much stronger than a purely ideological leftist (say, someone like
Nader) could have run. Part of this was that he figured out how to
raise serious money without becoming compromised. That should have
set him up well for 2020, especially after Hillary shamed herself
by losing to Trump, but the DP elites were even more desperate to
stop him. I've faulted his 2020 strategy for not moving toward the
center, to reach some kind of accord with the party elites, but if
anything he moved farther left, first to compete with Warren, and
possibly to keep on top of the revolutionary groundswell. Perhaps
also because his whole identity was wrapped up in challenging the
system from outside. He was a rare politician who put his movement
ahead of his personal standing. Trump ran as the incumbent in 2020, using tactics that won
second terms for Clinton, Bush, and Obama, but without success.
How much the pandemic/recession hurt him isn't clear -- he had so
many negatives it's hard to factor them out, but he did get a bump
after he got and survived Covid, and that boosted his image as a
defiant and determined leader (as did his "assassination attempt"
survival in 2024). But his outsider, anti-incumbent status was
partly sapped. His loss, defiance, and prosecutions set him up
not only as an outsider but one with a vengeance in 2024, and
Harris played into his hand by embracing a status quo that few
Democrats could be satisfied with. Instead of pressing him on
how the change he promised could possibly help anyone but the
very rich, they sniped at him for his criminality and sniffed
at him as "weird," while shying away from popular programs
promoted by Sanders and other Democrats (even Biden), and vowing
to continue Biden's disastrous pro-war foreign policy. How much this revolutionary current factored into Trump's
win is hard to prove. One common formulation is some kind of
global anti-incumbent trend, which all through 2024 toppled
governments of every hue. What is beyond dispute is that Trump
and his gang have behaved like a revolutionary junta from the
moment he was inaugurated: they are people suddenly thrust
into power with few restraints beyond their own minuscule and
perverted consciences.
That's more context than I intended, but less than the history
seriously deserves. I've seen polling that shows Sanders having the
highest approval rating of any American politician, while Trump is
deep underwater, and the Democratic Party faring even worse (while
the generic Congress polling shows D+3). Clearly, the left-right
spectrum doesn't explain American voting. Sanders has something else
going for him than socialism: most likely traits that are sorely
lacking in American politics, like integrity and credibility.
That's something that Democrats need to work on, and not just
because the corrupt crypto-fascist lane is fully occupied.
But also, while "moderate" and "center" seem like attractive
concepts, their net effect is no different than the economic
agenda of the Republicans -- except perhaps for the very poor,
but means testing cordons them off from the rest of an uncaring
population. Conversely, if you look at problems objectively, you
will soon discover that most practical (and virtually all real)
solutions come from the political left. That's mostly because
capitalism, with its predatory greed and ratcheting inequality, is
at their root, and it's only leftists who see that. If we had a
free press that promoted rational discussion free of hysterical
labeling that would be more widely recognized.
Sanders' value is that he helped crack the illusion that the left
is inconceivable in America. But also because he suggests that free
people could choose to steer America's politics in a more egalitarian
and communitarian direction (i.e., to the left), and that most people
need not be consigned to the faux-populist hell demagogues like Trump
are driving them to.
Sanders' agenda is modest, clichéd, and not visionary enough
Sanders provides many lists in his book. On pp. 265-275, under
the heading "Real Politics Is Smart Politics," he offers a capsule
guide to his real/smart political program -- although "some of what
that agenda and set of principles should include" doesn't make it
sound all that sharply reasoned. What follows are his items in bold,
followed by my notes, often on feasability:
Get money out of politics: The core problem here is
inequality, which extends through most of the list, and underlying
that is capitalism. So sure, the system is rigged to unfairly favor
the rich over working people, and a different system could be more
likely to elect a representative government. But you can't change
the system until you beat it on its own terms, so you have to start
with what you can do and might work. You can't fix the root causes,
but you can discredit the power of money in politics: show who's
buying what, what's for sale, and how that hurts most people, and
screw up the whole system. Once people are aware of that, merely
pointing out that your opponent is owned by moneyed interests can
turn the tables. (Republicans are actually very good at doing this
to Democrats, while almost never being held accountable for their
own corruption.) Guarantee voting rights: Again, you have to win the
rigged game to make it more fair. One start is to expose Republican
schemes to deny voter rights, but you also have to campaign for the
actual voters, no matter who they are. Make the Constitution relevant to the twenty-first century:
The US Constitution is notoriously difficult to amend, a situation that
has only gotten worse in the last 50-70 years. Until you have huge wins,
there's very little you can do here. On the other hand, the people who
argue for a constitutional convention are all on the right, as they're
the ones who figure they have leverage, and they're looking to undermine
rights written into the Constitution (and increasingly ignored by the
packed Republican Courts). Abolish the Electoral College: No chance to change this,
but sure, point out how this skews and debases democracy. It's an
obstacle, one of many. But if you win big enough, it doesn't matter. Rethink the United States Senate: Same thing here.
Clearly, the filibuster has to go. Adding D.C and possibly Puerto
Rico might help (although I'd be just as happy erasing their debts
and setting all of the colonies free). Rethink the U.S. Supreme Court: Fixing the Constitution
is probably out of the question, but with sufficient majorities in
Congress, the Court could be expanded, and certain members possibly
(but not probably) could be impeached, which would help restore some
ideological balance to the Court. The lesser courts could more easily
be restructured. Even the present Supreme Court could possibly move
back toward historical norms if the political climate changed made
clear the need to support democratic wishes and/or they felt their
own unique status threatened. (Sure, Roosevelt's plan to "pack the
court" failed, but while his plan faced uphill resistance, it was
really "the switch in time that saved nine" that rendered his plan
unnecessary.) Revitalize American media: This is a big topic, and
he has a longer list elsewhere of what's wrong, but very little
to add here beyond "greatly increase funding for public, non-partisan,
nonprofit media." The media is almost all controlled by the private
sector, and reflects the class interests of its owners. There is
much more that can and should be done here, but the only thing that
can be done now is to rigorously critique the old media, and start
to build up real alternatives. Even so, this will be a long, slow
struggle, and don't expect people who avoid (or simply distrust)
media to catch on. End all forms of bigotry: Sure, but bigotry is learned,
and unlearning is hard and can rarely if ever be unlearned. Easier
is to re-learn, but that tends to be based on other prior learning,
which can be retrained with new information. Another approach is to
make bigotry matter less. As bigotry is almost always an outgrowth
of inequality, work there. Nearly everyone is victimized by some
form of inequality. Consciousness of that demands justice, and
builds solidarity, which is the surest way to get past the common
divides of bigotry. But attacking bigotry head-on, as the "woke
movement" has been lampooned for doing, doesn't work, and (as
we've seen) produces a backlash (ridiculous as we've seen, but
potent nonetheless). Treat workers' rights as human rights: Muddled
terminology here, especially for a point that ultimately doesn't
get much past increasing the minimum wage. We need an expansive
view of human rights, regardless of whether one works or not.
Those rights shouldn't end when one goes to work. Indeed, the
conditions of work should respect additional rights, including
the right to leave work and go elsewhere, and much more than I
can list here. Democratize the future of work: This is even more
muddled. He seems to mean that technology should benefit workers
as well as capitalists. Elsewhere in the book he talks about
actual workplace politics, like unions, worker representation on
boards, and employee-owned companies. These are very important
matters, worth keeping in mind even if fighting fascism is more
pressing at the moment. Health care is a human right. Period: Sure, but how?
First he talks about expanding the Affordable Care Act (which is
a good idea), then his Medicare for All (which is a better one),
then he admits that's not the end, but he doesn't look beyond.
The insurance system has always been the "low-lying fruit" in the
struggle to free the health care system, but the bulk of the problem
is in the private industries that have taken "your money or your
life" as their ticket to ever-expanding riches. Still, the real
key here is to get rid of the ability of the system to discriminate
between people when they enter, so there is no option of denial of
service. Once you solve that, everything else is just a matter of
paying off service providers, which can be negotiated to reasonable
levels. (This, by the way, isn't blue sky: most other nations work
this way, some on the cheap, but others as lavishly as in the US --
and with better results for much less cost). A new business model for the pharmaceutical industry:
This is a case in point, and a far from trivial one. This is actually
the longest section in this list, but he fails to mention the bedrock
of the current system, which is the patent monopoly the government
grants to corporations so they can screw us over. The notion that
patents are necessary for technological progress is a fallacy that
economists have a hard time shaking. I doubt that they even help,
at least as regards technology that is actually desirable. Protect our children: This comes down to a plea for
more spending on education, including pre-school. I haven't thought
much about education since my teen years, when I was very unhappy
with pretty much every aspect of the system. Were I to give it
commensurate thought today, I doubt I'd be much happier. But as
a general principle, sure, invest more in schools, and make sure
it gets to everyone who needs and/or can benefit from it. I'd also
like to see adult education expanded, so anyone who wants to can
study as long as they want, whatever they want. Protect the elderly and disabled: This is very short,
and limited to the expenses of people who can ill afford to pay.
More money would help, but a better solution is to expand the
definition of what one is entitled to by right, and stop with
the means testing and nickel-and-diming of people for what they
need to live their lives out with decency and dignity. Social Security benefits must be increased: I'm not
opposed to more cash, but more help with necessary expenses might
be a better approach. You shouldn't have to go broke before you
can get help for housing, home health care, etc. Provide affordable housing for all: This starts
with 600,000 homeless, but really goes well up the income scale.
I see huge problems in trying to do anything meaningful in this
area, partly because so many Americans view their homes as assets,
making them very reluctant to change a system which systematically
inflates their values. Any attempt to undercut the value of rental
properties is also bound to raise an uproar, as many people -- even
small investors -- see them as a stepping stone to wealth. Then
there's all the NIMBY backlash. Klein-Thompson "abundance" is pitched
to solve this problem, but the problem doesn't exist because people
are stupid. It's the consequence of Adam Smith's "invisible hand,"
which doesn't always work for the better. Break up monopolies: Another good idea that works up
to a point, and certainly should be done where it makes sense, but
doesn't always work. In some cases, it's best to regulate the monopoly,
or even to take it over and turn it into an employee-managed nonprofit.
In other cases, one could erode monopoly power by setting up competitors,
especially nonprofit ones that could drive down the profit margins of
the monopolists. (Lots of opportunities here for open source software.)
In some cases where network effects predominate and the marginal cost of
growth is near-zero, a public-funded alternative could largely erase the
monopolist (e.g., imagine a Facebook alternative that didn't collect your
data, didn't sell you to advertisers, and didn't intrude in every waking
moment of your life; as your friends switched, would you still stay with
Facebook?). Make billionaires pay their taxes: That's just the tip
of the iceberg. Sure, right now, it's especially conspicuous, which
makes it easy to say, but we need a much fairer and more sensible
tax code and system, which shouldn't be hard to devise except for the
insane amount of lobbying that goes into corrupting and/or evading the
current one. Taxes have two purposes: one is to pay for work that the
government does to support and provide for the people, and that's
especially important for things we can't or don't want to sell; the
other is to reduce the amount of inequality the economy generates,
because gross inequality is bad for society (as should be pretty
damn obvious right now). We don't have to be super aggressive in
taxing billionaires to reduce inequality, but we have to start making
actual progress. I'm not a big fan of a wealth tax, but that's one
way to do it. I'd start by really jacking up the estate tax, with
a possible foundation outlet (provided the foundation eventually
dissolves, so it would have to pay out more than it makes each year).
One should note, though, that a lot of what passes for wealth today
is really just ridiculously overvalued stock and other assets, and
that those values will shrink with the number of billionaires (or
whatever the top bracket becomes). How far should it go? Well, if
we neither knew nor cared who the richest person in the world was,
that would be close enough to approximating equality. We must save the planet: One of my all-time most
hated clichés: the planet literally does not care whether it's
populated by people or dinosaurs or just bacteria. We should
focus more on saving ourselves. And we should ask what from?
Capitalism is probably a slight overstatement, but it is a big
part of the problem. Fortunately, we know how to limit and manage
its worst tendencies, and we also know how to compensate and care
for most of its ravages. Unfortunately, the people in power now
are deaf, blind, and dumb on this score, and we lack the political
will power to turn them around.
Although in one section he talks about cutting back spending
on the military, he doesn't make much of a point of it, and he
has nothing to say about American foreign policy. That's a major
omission: it seems like he decided early on that he couldn't risk
crossing the Blob for fear of easily being branded as un- or
anti-American. He's come around a little bit on Israel since then,
but he's still very cautious. This matters because it's impossible
to defend social and economic justice at home without showing some
of the same concern for the rest of the world.
A second critique I have is that while he brings up examples of how
other nations are better at providing social services than the US is,
he doesn't venture beyond those existing boxes. I agree that there are
good examples elsewhere, and at the very least they show that it the
canard that says so-and-so is impossible is false. But there's much
more room for innovation, as I noted when talking about patents and
open source software.
A third thing is that I think we need to be clearer about moral
and political values, and how they can be firmly held as guides but
still cautiously implemented as reforms. Sanders is a very practical,
as well as exceptionally principled, politician, so at some level he
understands this, but even he doesn't have the speech to articulate
this. Nor, really, do most Americans, have the ears to hear it,
including those in the media who should know better.
Still, even with these flaws, had he become president, even if
he was stymied on every item on his agenda -- which is probably
what would have happened -- we would be a helluva lot better off
than we are now. Blame the American people if you must, but know
that the capitalist class hierarchy, the ideologically stunted mass
media, the Republican propaganda machine, and above all the lame
and short-sighted Democratic elites share full responsibility.
As a practical matter, one should start with the latter, as they
at least should be aware of and sensitive to their failings.
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