Bernie Sanders’ bid for president: What would Eugene Debs think?

t’s clear why fed-up voters are attracted to their presidential candidates. IBernie Sanders. He rails against the billionaires and calls for a U.S. political revolution. Who His function in this election is the same as left- doesn’t want to end the rule of banksters and identified Democratic presidential contenders CEOs? Who doesn’t want to stop the corporate like Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, and others harvesting of all things profitable at the expense before him. It is to bleed off protest against the of people and the planet? Who doesn’t want to two-party chokehold over U.S. politics and to hear the needs of working people promoted for make sure that unionists and progressives once a change?

Sanders’ self-professed hero is U.S. revolutionary socialist Eugene V. Debs. As a Socialist Party candidate, Debs ran for president five times in the early 1900s, twice gaining over 900,000 votes. But Debs understood that workers and the poor need a party independent of the duopoly of power. In a 1904 speech, he said:

The Republican and Democratic parties … are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principle.

With either of these parties in power one thing is always certain and that is that the capitalist class is in the saddle and the again vote — against their own interests — for a working class under the saddle. Democrat acceptable to big business.

… The ignorant workingman who supports And what about Sanders’ actual record? It’s either of these parties forges his own seriously at odds with his image. fetters and is the unconscious author of his own misery. Wall Street — Sanders promises to reform Wall Street. But this can’t be done through tweaks In contrast, Sanders is running as a Democrat; such as taxing certain financial transactions, as he has chosen to hitch his wagon to the Sanders proposes. Given the devastating power overlords in the saddle. He has promised to they wield over people’s lives, the banks need support whoever wins the Democratic primary. to be nationalized under workers’ control! Also, In Congress, he votes with the Democrats 98 Sanders aims his anti-corporate fury almost percent of the time, and he consistently supports entirely against Republicans, while giving a pass

-over- to Democratic friends of finance capital. Sanders is headed in the opposite direction. He excels at rousing populist oratory, but War — Sanders accepts the U.S. role as considers Hillary Clinton, warmonger of U.S. World Cop. In Congress, he has voted to fund foreign policy, his “good friend.” Sanders nearly every imperialist military action by the is the man for the job for the beleaguered U.S., from Iraq and Somalia to Afghanistan Democratic Party in these times of growing and Yugoslavia. He refuses to denounce anger and dissent. Not as president, mind Israel’s war on Palestinians, and endorsed you, but as the latest in a series of perennial the sanctions that killed over a million Iraqi false hopes for a kinder, gentler party — and civilians. social system.

Labor — Sanders’ version of defending U.S. On the socialist Left, there are groups, workers is of the jingoistic, “America First” like the Socialist Alternative of Seattle City variety. He points to immigrants and foreign Council member Kshama Sawant, who give workers as the source of job loss, rather than Sanders direct or indirect support, ignoring or the bosses’ policies of speedup, automation, downplaying the ugly parts of his record and and the global “race to the bottom.” But, wishing away his longtime collusion with the internationally, an injury to one truly is an Democratic Party. This is no way to build a injury to all! Even when it comes to U.S. movement for lasting fundamental change. workers, Sanders hasn’t stepped up to the plate when it counts. Earlier this year, he What would be productive is left didn’t resist when the Democratic governor cooperation rather than competition on of Vermont, his ally, pushed through a budget the electoral battlefield. By joining forces, it that meant cutting hundreds of union jobs. would be much more possible to give people opportunities to vote for bold, honest, radical Civil rights — The Vermont senator has opponents of the profit system and its ravages supported racist federal legislation, like Bill at home and abroad. Clinton’s Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which props up the prison- A big part of any joint anti-capitalist effort industrial complex. He has not championed would have to be challenging the tangle the Black Lives Matter movement or other of state and federal laws that keep Left and groups aimed at ending police murders and independent labor candidates off the ballot. the criminalization of youth of color. And a possible outcome of such an effort could be the launch of a new national party In his campaign speeches, this supposed to defend working people and the oppressed. socialist generally has refused to pinpoint The Freedom Socialist Party is for a national capitalism as the problem and socialism as conference that could discuss these ideas and the solution. While more and more voters are get something moving. And the sooner the identifying their affiliation as “independent,” better! U.S. voters need relief!

Issued by Freedom Socialist Party

Seattle: 206-722-2453 • [email protected] 5018 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118 www.facebook.com/FSPseattle

National Office: www.Socialism.com • [email protected] • 206-985-4621

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