Commenting on the political process of another country is a perilous thing. However, as Canada is profoundly impacted by our largest neighbour and trading partner, I can’t help but be interested in U.S. politics. Indeed, most Canadians are.
However, it’s not mere interest that prompts me to write this, but the fact that I’m captivated, even riveted, by the drama unfolding south of the border. Amidst the bleak sea of “politics as usual” and status quo-ism that normally defines North American elections, there is something unlikely, even magical, on the horizon – the prospect of real progressive change.
The vehicle for this change is the campaign to elect Bernie Sanders, a political movement championing the most progressive social reforms since the New Deal: healthcare for all, tuition-free college education, a Green New Deal, a $15 minimum wage, improved trade union rights, bringing troops home from needless foreign wars, and ending oligarchic control over the media and economy. While there are other solid candidates in the race, none of them can come close to the scope of Bernie’s progressive vision or to the power of his movement base.
That Bernie is a genuine progressive is rare enough, but the fact that he has a real shot at gaining the Democratic nomination, and then the presidency, is incredibly exciting. Despite well-documented media blackouts and anti-Bernie bias, Sanders has begun to surge in state and nation-wide polls. He now either beats establishment candidate Joe Biden, or else is runner-up. In addition, poll after poll shows that Bernie would wipe the floor with Trump. Bernie has also been racking up important endorsements from progressive luminaries like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilan Omar, and Michael Moore, and from organizations like the Centre for Popular Democracy Action and the National Nurses’ Federation.
It seems like the long-awaited progressive revolution has finally arrived on American shores. However, if this all sounds a bit too easy, it’s because it likely is.
Cue the Reaction
In November, conversations with Barack Obama finally revealed his opinions on the Democratic nomination race. No candidate received a coveted Obama blessing, with the resulting popularity bump that would entail. Rather, the past president made a not-so-veiled threat to wade into the race in order to prevent a candidate from winning. And the candidate dangerous enough to incur Obama’s wrath?
Bernie Sanders, of course.
Admittedly, this opposition to Sanders is not surprising given Obama’s eight-year record as President. In two terms he presided over a $16 trillion bank bailout that represents the single largest transfer of wealth from working people to private corporations and executives in American history. He also continued to militarily occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, to pursue regime-change in Honduras and Libya, and to expand a drone program that made the U.S. government the largest perpetrator of extra-judicial assassinations in the world. While statesmanlike and not nearly as radical an oligarch as Trump, Obama was always, at the core, a company man.
Despite his dismal policy record, Obama’s name still carries significant weight. The fact that he would throw this against Sanders and the other progressives in the Democratic Party is perplexing. What about party loyalty? What about the need to take down Trump at all costs? In an excellent episode of The Hill, journalist Krystal Ball unpacked the implications of Obama’s threat against Bernie, noting “not just Obama, but many of the elite preservers of the status-quo in the Democratic Party, would rather see Trump reelected than Bernie as president.”
With that usually unspeakable truth uttered, Ball then laid out the real stakes of a Sanders presidency in a monologue refreshing for it’s on-the-chin honesty:
“Do you really see all the Bush-era neocons and Clinton acolytes and national security blog mouthpieces that fill out the ranks of the “liberal” networks these days standing by while Sanders claims the nomination? Instead, be ready for every form of dirty trick, smear, and cheating to be used… Bernie Sanders is an existential threat to business as usual, and both parties’ ability to cash in as perpetual winners in the oligarchy. And they’ll use every means, fair and unfair, to protect their position. So, to those of you dedicated to upending business as usual, in case you had any illusions, Obama’s comments prove that you better be prepared for the fight of your lives.”
It is rare indeed that a journalist clearly strips away one of the cherished myths of American democracy – that their are fundamental differences between the Democratic and Republican parties. There are differences, to be sure, but these tend to be a matter of degree, not of actual policy. What doesn’t differ between the two parties is their commitment to unfettered neoliberal capitalism, to an imperialist foreign policy, and to a political status-quo that effectively disenfranchises the great majority of citizens. This “bipartisan consensus” is what really drives U.S. politics, and as Ball astutely notes, the oligarchic class it serves will defend it at all costs.
A Crisis of Oligarchy
The bipartisan attack on Sanders reveals another uncomfortable truth about American democracy (and Canadian democracy for that matter): that it isn’t really democratic at all. In practice, the U.S. functions more as an oligarchy. There is the pageant of elections, the de jure existence of checks and balances (executive, congress, senate, judiciary), yet all of these institutions succumb to de facto control by wealthy elites. Big money buys the politicians that create the laws and appoint the judiciary.
I’ve previously studied how oligarchies emerge and the effect they have on societies. Typically, the oligarchic class that runs political and economic institutions is internally competitive, with various factions vying for control. In this struggle oligarchs differentiate themselves on small matters of public policy, while never daring to threaten their fundamental position of exploitation and domination in relation to those they rule. While the facade of “politics as usual” plays out, oligarchs are content to battle for control of the machinery of power. However, when actually threatened by a challenge to this system, the oligarchic class will close ranks and unite against the threat, doing everything in their means to destroy it.
Another characteristic of oligarchic societies is that the intensifying demands of predatory elites lead to constant crises – social, political, economic, and ecological. Income inequality, climate change, endless wars, and ecosystem collapse are today’s oligarchic crises, and their intensification is leading to a broader crisis of legitimacy in the oligarchic system itself. In America and world-wide, people are waking up to their exploitation and to the destruction of the biosphere, and they are mobilizing to confront the oligarchs.
When faced with upheaval from the exploited citizenry, elites tend to either back politicians who are “reformers” such as the Clintons or Obama, or else those who are authoritarian. Reformers ameliorate some of the elite class’ worst excesses and lull the populace into a state of complacency. Authoritarians instead crush popular uprisings, using surveillance, police violence, incarceration, and punitive legislation. Trump may be a pale, buffoonish version of this latter tendency, but history provides us more devastating examples – Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Pinochet.
This political shell-game can stretch on for centuries, with oligarchs able to manage social and ecological crises through cosmetic reforms, repression, and divide and rule politics. However, eventually the crises mount to where society itself either collapses, or a political revolution breaks out. In the rare latter moments, the underclass are able to mount a serious challenge to oligarchic power, and threaten to overturn the entire order. All signs point to the U.S. presidential race being such a moment.
Sanders as Existential Threat
In her monologue, Krystal Ball called Sanders an “existential threat” to the American oligarchic class, even though his policy recommendations are far from radical when compared to similar countries like Canada, Eurozone members, Australia, or Japan. Despite campaigning under the label of “democratic socialism”, Sanders’ policies are really an American version of old-fashioned social democracy – the politics of FDR updated for the new millennium.
From another perspective though, one could argue that in today’s America, social democratic reforms are genuinely radical. Although falling short of socialism, they would decisively shift the country’s trajectory from it’s current neoliberal, ecocidal dead-end, and toward a progressive, sustainable future. In this sense, Bernie represents a near-perfect marriage of popular movement and progressive leadership, akin to when King, Kennedy, Mandela, Lula, Chavez, and similar figures have been able to translate the will of marginalized groups (in Bernie’s case the diverse American working class) into political change. The real threat of Bernie’s candidacy is that it reveals the class struggle at the heart of America’s political crisis, and affirms that only an organized and militant working class movement has a chance of winning decisive victory against the oligarchs.
Sanders knows that it is movements that make sweeping progressive change, not individual leaders. His call for a “political revolution” is evidence of this crucial insight, and is something that sets him fundamentally apart from other Democratic candidates, Like Gabbard, Warren and Yang, that have real progressive potential. Only Bernie knows that a mass movement can get him elected president. Only Bernie knows that this same movement will become even more important when he tries to enact any of the policies he is running on.
The U.S. oligarchy will do everything in its power to keep Sanders from winning the Democratic Party nomination and, if he is successful, from winning the presidency. This is a certainty. However, if Sanders is elected, and this is a real possibility, then the attacks, undermining and sabotage will only intensify. It is at this moment when the American people, led by the movement for democratic socialism, will have to rise up in defense of democracy. This will be a battle for no less than the future viability of the country, and it cannot be lost.
Seizing the Moment
As a leader, Sanders is not immune to critique. His foreign policy is tepid, and doesn’t come close to the level of truth-telling that Tulsi Gabbard routinely demonstrates in this area. He is not a perfect candidate. And yet it is also true that there are no such things as perfect candidates, perfect movements, or perfect moments to realize fundamental change.
What there is with Sanders is a unique historical moment. The movement that has coalesced around his candidacy is the child of numerous other grassroots struggles: the Anti-Globalization Movement, the Anti-Iraq war protests, the Occupy Movement, Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, $15 and Fairness, the Justice Democrats, a resurgent trade union movement, and the Climate Justice Movement. It is born of mass frustration from the housing crisis, the bank bailouts, and the precipitous and steadily increasing wealth gap. It is fueled by an unprecedented crisis in the legitimacy of traditional politicians and corporate media, and a proliferation of alternative media sources and grassroots candidates, like AOC, that are challenging the culture of “politics as usual.” Finally, this diverse and unprecedented movement has been met with an equally unique individual who’s nearly 40 year political career has been consistently steeped in genuine Left politics.
One could wait centuries for such a confluence of forces.
To argue for the unique importance of this moment is not to be uncritical. Nor is it a call for support at all costs. What it is is a fervent hope that Americans will realize what time it is, and recognize that uniting to win this victory will help each of the many movements that gave rise to it. In addition, while the social democratic reforms Sanders is proposing are important in and of themselves, they can also move the country closer to what real democratic socialism would look like. This would be a government that rules – justly and democratically – for the diverse working class. It would be a society that exists in harmony with the biosphere, and that preserves the natural environment for future generations.
A Sanders victory wouldn’t just transform domestic politics. As the world’s largest Imperial power, The U.S. military has repeatedly functioned as a murderous “anti-democracy machine” that has overthrown popularly-elected governments world-wide. If the Imperial boot were to be lifted from the neck of the rest of the world’s countries even a little, then popular movements would experience a global surge that would dwarf that of the 60’s student uprisings, the Occupy Movement, or the Arab Spring.
On a more selfish note, the ripple-effect of President Bernie would also be a shot in the arm for progressive movements in my own country of Canada. In the 1920s and 30’s we saw a democratic socialist movement emerge from among the farmers, industrial workers and progressive Christians of the Canadian mid-west. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) transformed our country, forming the first socialist government in North America and bringing public healthcare, trade union protection, and social security to all.
Canadians had to fight to expand these social goods to the entire country, and have had to fight to preserve them ever since in the face of tireless assaults by our oligarchic class. In many ways we have lost ground, and now need to remember the progressive, popular movement that first gave Canada its social democratic character. Currently, even our “labour” party is hesitant to speak political and economic truth to power, and to rally our country’s citizens behind the Left policies that they genuinely desire. We can learn a lot from the Sanders campaign and the many movements that are supporting it.
History teaches us that moments like this can’t be allowed to slip away. This is bigger than Bernie vs. Biden, or even Bernie vs. Trump. It’s more than just another election cycle in which the political deck-chairs are shuffled on a sinking ship of state. At stake is nothing less than the soul of America, the future of its diverse working class, and the environment that will be left to its children.
As a friend from the north watching this historic struggle unfold, I hope the American people know that the progressive community world-wide is watching. We are with you, and we send you courage for the fight. As the primary season starts, and the presidential contest unfolds, we’ll be here in solidarity, wishing with all our hearts that the American working class can wake up, rise up, and change the course of history.
Kevin MacKay is a Canadian social science professor, labour activist, director of a non-profit sustainable development organization, and author of Radical Transformation: Oligarchy, Collapse, and the Crisis of Civilization, published by Between the Lines Books. Kevin can be contacted at: www.radicaltransformation.
