Bernie Sanders seeks to derail growing working class opposition to capitalism
17 January 2018
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders issued a call, published Sunday in the Guardian, for a global effort to overcome mounting economic inequality. It cites evidence of gross disparities in wealth, but offers not the slightest prospect for a genuine struggle against the economic system that has produced such levels of social inequality. Indeed, it is aimed at preventing such a movement.
What is most remarkable about the statement issued by Sanders is that in the course of nearly 1,200 words, there is not a single mention of either capitalism or socialism.
Sanders notes that “the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population—3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1 percent now have more money than the bottom 99 percent.”
He continues: “[A]s the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and—horrifyingly—some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.”
Sanders goes on with a litany of the terrible realities confronting working people on a global scale. But what does he propose to do about it?
Sanders offers the emptiest of abstractions: “a new and international progressive movement” that will be committed to “tackling structural inequality both between and within nations.” It must aim at raising living standards for poor and working people while seeking to “rein in corporate power.”
Who will join and lead this international progressive movement? What role will existing parties, trade unions and political leaders play? Sanders does not say.
There are myriad political forces claiming to be…