By Chuck Morse
This pro-Sanders article, which portrays him as far more radical than he really is, unwittingly shows why we don’t need him. Michael Kazin writes: “Sanders is perpetually on the attack, armed with an unvarnished class-conscious message that, until the emergence of Occupy Wall Street, had long been absent from the public square.” . . . .
That’s the point: it was a mass social movement, which was participatory and fought cops sent by Democratic mayors on the streets, that pushed people across the country to start debating the merits of capitalism as such. And that’s what we need more of: mass, revolutionary movements that challenge the social order broadly. We don’t need leftish politicians; we don’t need Democrats, and we don’t need Bernie Sanders.
I don’t believe that there is any way that he’d win the primary. I believe he has zero chance. As for the worry of that not voting at all, or not voting Democrat, will mean the election of a Republican president, remember that trends in the political culture as a whole are far more important to the direction of policy than party affiliation. For example, Richard Nixon was way to the left of Hillary Clinton (on social spending etc), because there was vibrant left when he governed. The only thing that will push things leftward is a LEFT and, in my view, Sanders’s move will not help foster one