"The Sanders Campaign and the Next Stage of Socialist Agitation" Remarks

The Sanders campaign and the next stage of socialist agitation

Click on the above for an interesting article from Liberation News. Below are some remarks about this article:

What's right and what's wrong with this analysis? I think it is certainly correct about the class nature of the forces backing HRC (she represents the interests of the 1% more faithfully than either Trump or Cruz could do) but she is also subject to mass forces from the working class and can be pressured to support progressive reforms and allow more space for left wing political action. It is true that Trump is not leading a fascist movement and the capitalist class is rejecting him because they fear he will arouse more popular resistance than is warranted from their point of view. But the article overlooks the fact that with an unpredictable economy, and another depression lurking around the corner, fascist tactics may be needed to forstall the growth of a serious anti-Wall Street mass fight back. The author discounts the new left forces that have manifested themselves within the Democrati Party due to the Sanders movement and thinks the DP is unreformable. He ignores the possibility that a quantitative change in the base of the DP could lead to a qualitative change in its leadership and positions (this is what has happened in the Republican Party driving it far to the right and out of control of its traditional establishment leaders) or that the left of the DP could breakaway and join with millions of progressive independents and form a third viable political party or fuse with the Green Party making it a truly mass party. His call to break with the DP completely and support a microscopically small Marxist grouping in the coming election is politically unrealistic as there are many Congressional and local races that progressive Democats should be supported in so that truly reactionary Republican politicians can be turned out of office; and while HRC is no friend of the working class she is less reactionary domestically than any Republican running against her and advancing the goals of the working class will easier under a DP administration than a RP one. The duty of Marxists is to give critical support (where warrented) pointing out why she is the best of a bad lot and at the same time independently agitate to organize a progressive class conscious opposition within the DP against the neoliberal consensus of the current party leadership. If we do that we can make leftist lingo mean something even the White House (if not the Oval Office).

Thomas Riggins