The “class-struggle social democracy” of Bernie Sanders is exceedingly difficult to pull off. If he wins, he'll face structural pressure to compromise: administering a capitalist state requires maintaining corporate profits. We'll need to create our own pressure through strikes and protests.
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Quite simply, despite the promising revival of socialist ideas, despite the recent growth of the Democratic Socialists of America, despite the popularity of left-wing leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, we’re in an almost unprecedented state of weakness. But we can’t just wait for street movements to appear out of nowhere. We need to contest elections, to use the opportunity to communicate our message to millions. More than that we need to actually win those elections and “exercise power” today, laying the groundwork for more radical change in the future, while at the same time depriving the Right of strength.
We need, in other words, a Bernie Sanders presidency. Sanders advocates social-democratic demands. But they represent something far different from modern social democracy. Whereas postwar social democracy morphed into a tool to suppress class conflict in favor of tripartite arrangements among business, labor, and the state, Sanders encourages a renewal of class antagonism and movements from below.
To Sanders, the path to reform is through confrontation with elites. Rather than talking about an entire nation struggling together to restore the US economy and shared prosperity, and rather than seeking to negotiate a better settlement with business leaders, Sanders’s movement is about creating a “political revolution” to get what is rightfully ours from “millionaires and billionaires.” His program leads to polarization along class lines; indeed, it calls for it.
Sanders was trained as a student in the Young People’s Socialist League and through trade union and civil rights organizing. His worldview was formed by this unusual background. He doesn’t represent a moderate alternative to more militant socialist demands, but a radical alternative to a decrepit liberal center.
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Our solution is a vague one, but it involves creating some pressure of our own. Street protests and strikes can discipline wayward candidates for not going along with a redistributive agenda and force businesses to make concessions to reformers once they are elected. Elected officials, too, can push measures that make it easier to undertake these actions.
