Workers Movement
Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 2017.
To Win Bernie’s Platform and Defeat the Right
We Need a New Party Ty Moore
A
new generation is rising, politically awakened by the horrific social and environmental future capitalism has on offer. Behind the mass anger at Trump’s bigoted billionaire agenda, most people sense that his election was more symptom than cause. The global surge in right-populism is fueled by rising inequality, grinding austerity, and deeply corrupted political systems shaped by decades of capitalist neoliberalism. Unless the left can build a credible working-class political alternative, right-wing forces will continue to grow. This is the historic significance of the movement beginning to gather behind Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. Learning from the failure of Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street-backed 2016 campaign, millions now recognize that Bernie’s appeals to working-class unity and his bold anti-corporate platform offer a far stronger strategy to challenge right-populism. Many of the bold reforms popularized by Sanders in 2016, once considered fringe, now have undeniable mass support. Medicare for All, free college, taxing the rich, and moving to a 100% renewable energy economy are supported by large majorities. Building on this, Sanders’ 2020 campaign has gone further, calling for a Green New Deal, voting rights for prisoners, and an extensive plan to reinvest in K-12 public education and improve teachers compensation. Bernie’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns emerge from a profound
crisis for the U.S. two-party system. His campaign’s challenge to the corporate stranglehold over American politics is creating the conditions for an historic political realignment along class lines including splits in the Democratic Party’s big tent coalition. In every other advanced capitalist country, working people succeeded in establishing political parties that won major gains like the National Health Service in Britain. The American labor movement at its strongest won major gains like health benefits and pensions for sections of the working class but with the retreat of unions, these gains were largely lost. Only in the U.S. was a viable mass workers party never established. This flowed from the historic strength of U.S. capitalism, which was able until the last couple decades - to deliver higher living standards to each generation. From the Civil War up to the present, the American two-party system has been the most stable political system in the world. The promise of the “American Dream” was always more of a reality for some sections of the population than for others. Yet despite the bitter legacy of racism, rising living standards for most workers helped to cohere a social base of support for the ruling class. Despite the strength of American capitalism, there have been missed opportunities to build a viable mass workers party. When the Great Depression exposed the rottenness of capitalism, resulting in a mass labor revolt, or when the mass movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s came up against the end of the postwar eco-
