The Rise of Bernie Sanders - When Reality Triumphs over Propaganda

The Rise of Bernie Sanders
When Reality Triumphs over Propaganda
After centuries of a frenzied campaign to build a strong antisocialism paradigm, the rise of Bernie Sanders signifies the fall of the tyrannical socialism myth. Although Sanders doesn’t run on a socialistic policy program, he does run on socialist agenda. He is unlikely to win the presidency,´-or-even the democratic presidential nomination, yet the record crowds he draws mark a turning point in U.S. history-;- socialism is no longer a political liability. McCarthyism is finally declining, and red is not scary any more.
The anti-socialism long-time propaganda has created fear and hatred against socialism. It has been fueled by the ongoing media which are strongly dominated by capitalists. They use them to manipulate public opinion. All the media from the so-called progressive to the ultra-right do not cross the line of attacking capitalism, and the farthest they can go is to advocate for the reformation of its systems. Democracy is a concept that capitalists use only to advertise capitalism, but the fact remains that, democracy in a capital system is, as Michael Parenti describes, a “democracy for the few.” Democracy and capitalism are incompatible-;- while democracy means majority rule, social and economic equality, capitalism is a system that embodies injustice. The capitalist wage-labor relations are based on exploitation of the working class, and through their underpaid labor the capital multiplies.
Capitalists have spared no effort to portray the breakup of the Soviet -union- as a failure of socialism. They ignore the fact that the Soviet -union- collapsed after it had switched to capitalism. The reality is that, turning towards capitalism has had catastrophic consequences for the Russian economy, and it has had disastrous negative impacts on the working class and on the society at large. Poverty, corruption, disorder and even organized crime are absolute characteristics of capitalist societies that could never have featured in the socialist society of the Soviet -union-.
But, capitalists cannot continue manipulating public opinion forever. They cannot fool all of the people all of the time, using distorted´-or-fabricated facts, to whitewash the ugly face of capitalism. Experience overwhelms propaganda, and the facts stand for themselves: Poverty is on the rise, the poor are increasingly becoming poorer, and wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few. Minorities struggle with persistent economic insecurity that results from extremely low wages and the relentless rise in unemployment, from which they suffer more than others. The middle class is shrinking, and people are going from the middle class to poverty. The myth of the American dream doesn’t have its glittering influence on people-;- it is no longer everyone’s dream. Karl Marx says about capitalism, “The social problems it creates in its wake of boom and bust—of unemployment and under employment, of poverty amidst affluence will continue to mount. The vast majority of people will fall into the lower classes-;- the wealthy will become richer but ever fewer in number” (Capital: 11665-11681). Though the United States is ranked first in the world GDP ranking, the poverty rate is 15%. The contradiction between these complementary situations emphasizes the extreme inequality in wealth distribution. One of the basic capital contradictions is that the profit goes to a few people while it is created by a huge mass of workers, who are left in terrible hardship.
Collective production and individual appropriation form a fundamental dialectical contradiction of the capitalist relations of production. This fact stands out for the workers, who see that the product of their labor belongs to others. Even that they are not ideologically-educated about this extreme oppression, they would sense the alienation from their humanity. This situation develops a self-understanding among the laboring class, and a sense of spontaneous class consciousness begins to develop. The technical progress of the means of production makes the workers more productive, but wages have been stagnating since 1970. The apparent gap between labor and capital, and the gap between labor productivity and real wages, accentuates the exploitation of labor, and the capitalist oppressive relations of production. The class conflict grows when capitalists implement policies that increase their profit, pressing down wages, when the workers are looking for ways for improving their working lives. When class division and exploitation of one class by another reaches its peak, frustration progresses into a united struggle, and consequently, the spontaneous consciousness starts to grow. Class conflict becomes more aggressive during times of economic crisis, when the lower class suffers most. As the crisis mounts and the mass of misery and oppression grows, the exploited become more progressive, and the spontaneous class consciousness arises. As Marx says, “..but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself” (Capital: Volume1).When the cyclical crises of capitalism are fast-paced and more intense, people experience its impacts on their everyday life, and this is how spontaneous class consciousness arises and develops.
In the last three decades the U.S. has experienced five recessions: 1980, 1981-1982, 1990-1991, 2001, and the great recession of 2007-2009. There is absolutely no remedy´-or-way out of this disastrous situation because crises are an intrinsic feature of capitalism. Capitalist competition inexorably leads to economic crisis, because business cycles are the -dir-ect result of profit maximizing actions in the market. Competition creates excess of production capacity, which leads to a period of a rapid economic growth (economic boom), which tends to be inflationary and unsustainable. The business cycle reaches the peak phase, where the economic expansion slows and it starts to stagnate´-or-decline. The faster the profit-maximization, the closer will be the periodic crises that result from the capitalist business cycle.
The question is this: Is the economy immune from future re-emerging crisis? The Department of Labor has concluded that, “that crisis has left lasting scars that will take years to repair” (U. S. Department of Treasury: December, 2011), emphasizing the long-term effects of the last recession. The slow growth that follows the recession makes the economy even more vulnerable to crisis risk, and the impacts of recessions both trigger further crises and pave the way for them. Also, the widening income gap makes the economy more vulnerable to crisis, and this is one of the contradictions of capitalism that cause recurring crises. It is the contradiction between production and consumption. This is comprehensively explained in Vladimir Lenin’s words, “The contradiction between production and consumption that is inherent in capitalism is due to the tremendous rate at which production is growing, to the tendency to unlimited expansion which competition gives it, while consumption (individual), if it grows at all, grows very slightly-;- the proletarian condition of the masses of the people makes a rapid growth of individual consumption impossible” (Lenin Collected Works: Volume 4). Precautions are unworkable, and the government’s interventions are-limit-ed, as the decisions dominance of capitalists ties its hands. Structural changes conflict with the capitalists’ interests, and so they use their dominating power to bend the acts of government towards an economic restructuring that endorses general economic fairness. So, the government cannot set the rules that promote the interests of the working people. The economic crises are inevitable in a capitalist economy. No reforms can work, and a final ending of the economic crises takes a complete reconstruction of the economic system-;- a complete change in the mode of production, into relations of production that prioritize the interests of the working class. It is worth mentioning that the global capitalist economy is currently going through a deep crisis. The persistent impacts of the 2008 world economic crisis and the enduring weaknesses in the major developing economies are raising alarms about a looming crisis.
But even though they are mounting, contradictions of capitalism and social antagonisms alone cannot lead to class consciousness, and it doesn’t mean that we are on the eve of revolution. Though the objective conditions are the basis of change, the subjective factor is essential for the formation of a revolutionary situation. The revolutionary consciousness is a consensus between the objective and subjective conditions. Sanders’s enormous rallies, and before it the Occupy Wall Street movement, for which the focal point was income inequality, represent the beginning of a spontaneous upsurge, which Lenin claims is, “consciousness in an embryonic form” (What is to be Done 1902-1902). Economic struggle is a political character and a strong factor that polarizes the political struggle, but it is only the revolutionary consciousness that would blow up the purely economic struggle into a political struggle. As Lenin says, the social democratic consciousness has to be brought from outside the struggling class. This is how the economic struggle can transform to a political one. It is when the involved parts of the movements are aware of the comprehensive sphere of the whole social struggle, and not just their own adversities. But, there are different ways through which the struggling class can acquire the subjective means.
Technology has been developed by capitalism to maximize its potential opportunities, but capitalism cannot hinder the technological developments from serving the liberation of mankind. Nowadays, obtaining, and communicating Information are out of the capitalists’ control. So, the Internet is a very effective method that plays a great role in raising class consciousness, and what is most important is that it is a free environment for unification. The Internet provides the outside “sphere” from which the masses have obtained the political knowledge.
Then, and always, comes the importance of the revolutionary organization that would help the class to become class conscious, to unite and assemble the revolutionary forces, and to organize and lead the struggle. The revolutionary organization should be capable of setting a systematic plan of actions, and ready to change tactics whenever necessary. The mass movements can die without the organization of political agitation. The Occupy Wall Street movement was a social movement that should have worked, had it been led by a strong skilled organization.
The masses around Sanders are not promoted by a revolutionary political consciousness. These crowds don’t differentiate between socialism and reformism. But, the significant turning point is that Sanders describes himself as socialist but he nonetheless draws a huge mass of support. So, let’s put aside our purist measurements and be a little bit flexible in assessing this movement. Sanders is an independent socialist, thus these supporters are the supporters of the different schools of socialism,´-or-they are the supporters of socialism in general. It is a shift in the Americans view of socialism.
It is not a kind of a political opportunism to use Sanders candidacy to build support for raising the minimum wage, pay equity, reversing climate change, and providing healthcare for all. Not to forget that most of Sanders’s agenda is shared by the socialist movement: growing the trade -union- movement and taking on Wall Street. The progressive forces can realign for a tough fight for the demands raised by the masses and supported by Sanders. His rise is a shift signifying that a new stage is being set for the work of political organization and agitation. The question is this: Is the rise of Sanders an opportunity for building a base for a new united left in America,´-or-at least coordinating the struggle?
Is it just a coincidence that the rise of Bernie Sanders coincides with that of and Jeremy Corbyn, a bold socialist elected as the leader of the UK Labor party,´-or-is the world is moving towards socialism?

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