> On Mar 12, 2016, at 2:50 PM, Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> wrote: > > On 3/12/16 5:27 PM, Marv Gandall wrote: >> I read your comment above, together with your subject line, as >> effectively saying to Sanders and his supporters, “you’re wasting >> your time condemning these deals and attempting to block them. You >> need to make a socialist revolution, failing which you might as well >> go home and forget about politics.” I’m sure that is how they would >> hear it, notwithstanding your sarcastic claim to be in tune with them >> in theory (“Oh sure, everybody knows I am infamous for supporting TPP >> and other such trade agreements.”) > > You don't seem to get what I am saying. Let me try again. When Sanders > makes a link between NAFTA et al and the declining standard of living, > he is not telling the story that needs to be told. WTO, GATT, NAFTA, TPP > et al have not hollowed out Detroit, Cleveland, Newark, Baltimore, St. > Louis, et al even though they have added to the attack on labor. Instead > it has been the decline of American manufacturing per se.
It’s not the whole story in itself, but you are ignoring that these agreements greatly contributed to he hollowing out by facilitating the flight of manufacturing capital from the core capitalist countries to the new markets opened by technology, the collapse of the USSR, and the Dengist turn in China. In any case, this is precisely the kind of productive discussion you could be having with Sanders’ supporters, provided it were patient, sustained, and respectful of the fact that they are far from having lost confidence in his leadership and, in many cases, in the Democratic Party. They will presently reject open attacks on either from outsiders perceived to be aggressively hostile to their movement. > I have no problem with Sanders attacking TPP and NAFTA, which need to be > attacked, > but his program has little to do with socialism. You say he was a > left-liberal or social democrat. I think it is clear that he is a > left-liberal who mistakenly calls himself a socialist. We’ve been over this many times before - I can recall you more than once enthusing about Canada’s New Democratic Party - but in my view there is not a hair’s breadth of difference between those who today describe themselves as left liberals or social democrats. There hasn’t been any difference since the social democrats distanced themselves from their trade union origins and a program based on public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. But I don’t intend to debate the point with you yet again. > Keep in mind that > the European social democrats were quite open about their opposition to > capitalism as a system until the post-WWII period. They just rejected > revolutionary measures to achieve it. I think that Norman Thomas was a > real social democrat, not Bernie Sanders. Their opposition to capitalism was rhetorical, and the crisis was more severe and the working class more militant in Thomas’ time. Bear in mind also he was competing with the Communist party in a working class culture more attuned to anti-capitalist ideas and could afford to be less constrained because he was farther removed from a serious run for the presidency. Besides, can anyone doubt that were Thomas were alive today, he would not be an enthusiastic supporter of Sanders? If Thomas was, as you call it, a “real social democrat” in conditions of the 30’s, Sanders is a “real social democrat” in a period when the trade union and socialist movement has been decimated to near oblivion and the political centre of gravity is so much farther to the right. In fact, you could say he is an unusually bold social democrat at that, expressing views and inspiring mass support very much like Corbyn, and in a country for whom the term has long been anathema. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
