It ’s Ok ay to Be Angr y About C apitalism

By Bernie Sanders Allen Lane, 2023

Reviewed by David Vallely

Bernie Sanders’ t wo runs for President of the United States as a self- described democratic socialist played an impor tant role in rallying millions of workers, youth, and oppressed people to a radical platform of social and economic justice just to Unionist par ties, but to British imperialism Labour was publicly declared as Unionism’s greatest threat As a result, O’Connor notes, the 1920 expulsions in par ticular were driven by an especially high level of collusion between the gangs and the Unionist political leadership

This shows the vital impor tance of working- class unity in Ireland. It still poses the greatest threat to the capitalist system, because it ’s our greatest chance at over throwing it An impor tant tale in this book, however, is the utter failure of the labour leadership to build upon peaks of industrial action, and to forge an independent working- class political voice –independent of both the right-wing nationalists and Unionists – that could hold the class together. It is also a vital reminder that simply ignoring or wishing away divisions in the working class is not enough to overcome them; it only allows them to fester and be built upon in times of crisis by right-wing political forces, as was the case with these expulsions.

To conclude, this book is a really impor tant work with plenty of novel insights into this vital era However, it is not-without the pessimism of hindsight. O’Connor notes that Baird, like the near-revolutionar y years of 1917-1923 in Ireland generally, was forgotten because he only represented a brief and unusual blip of radicalism in our past.

First of all, this is not true. From the Outdoor Relief Strikes (1932), to the actions of the labour movement in countering sectarianism during the Troubles, to modern day : our histor y has many examples of militanc y and cross- community politics. The reason they are forgotten is not due to an irrelevanc y, but because the histor y we are taught, and the histor y that is promoted, is shaped by the interests of the ruling class. As Mar x famously said, “If you can cut the people off from their histor y, they can be easily persuaded ” This is exactly the motive of the sectarian and establishment par ties in hiding this period of histor y from us, nor th and south.n

A new book by Sanders – It ’s OK to be Angr y About Capitalism – promises to be “a progressive takedown of the uber- capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the work ing class, and a blueprint for what transformational change would ac tually look like.” But, is it?

First off, it is ver y refreshing to see someone with a platform like Sanders speak so clearly about the work ing class and about the “class war ” being waged by the rich against ever yone else. Sanders clearly remains deeply affec ted by the injustices of life under capitalism in the US Page af ter page lists a litany of the hardships endured by ordinar y people.

However, co -written by John N ichols, the book bears little resemblance to Sanders' impassioned speeches which inspired so many on the campaign trail in 2016 and 2020 I nstead, it reads as a stale defence of work ing with the machine now, rather than against it.

The book star ts with a chapter recounting the 2020 Democratic primaries Sanders won the first three primar y states, the first time any candidate had ever accomplished this feat.

This ter r ified the US ruling class That momentum had to be blunted, and the D emocratic establishment moved with might and main to ensure this happened. S anders recounts the “debacle” of the Iowa pr imar y where the D emocratic organisation appeared incapable of counting the votes and the media were able to por tray Pete Buttigieg as the winner. Then there was the choreography around “Super Tuesday ” where a slew of candidates dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden in order to catapult Biden into the lead.

Sanders dropped out of the Democratic primaries and the presidential elec tion just as the Covid pandemic took hold At the ver y moment that his demand of ‘Medicare for All’ was of the most critical impor tance, with 87 million Americans facing into an unprecedented health emergenc y uninsured or underinsured– he instead endorsed the establishment nominee, Joe Biden.

Sanders of ten begs us over the course of the book to think big, but he himself is guilt y of think ing too small, for example when arguing that “today, we have a strongly entrenched and well-funded t wo -par t y system Could that change in the foreseeable future? Maybe But not tomorrow That means that, if we are going to bring about the k ind of change this countr y desperately needs… we need to completely transform the Democratic Par t y – from the bottom on up ”

Sanders likes to say how, as President, he wouldn’t just have been the Commander-in- Chief, but the “Organizer-in- Chief ” . But beyond expressing solidarit y with strik ing workers on pickets, he does little to outline how he would organise Even now, imagine the resources Sanders, with his base, would be able to commit if he took a similar position to Socialist Alternative and Seattle councilmember Kshama Sawant who have launched the nationwide Workers Strike Back rank-and-file organising campaign? How might this forge the outline of a new work ing- class par t y in the US?

Sanders' conception of a “political revolution” is seemingly to return to the politics of the New Deal or LBJ ’s ‘Great Societ y ’ . While the book title refers to capitalism, throughout the tex t he always describes the system as either “uber- capitalism” or “unfettered capitalism”. I t ’s as if he holds out hope of returning to a better, more humane capitalism.

But this is to profoundly misjudge the nature of the system, and also the political environment then and now openness to an alternative to capitalism is clearly growing. Sanders is able to connec t the growth in inequalit y and the weak ness of the US labour movement to Reagan’s smashing of the air traffic controllers’ union, PATCO, in 1981 But what was the spur for this offensive by the Reagan regime? Was it simply bad politics or a reflec tion of the political imperatives that flowed from the crisis of profitabilit y capitalism faced in the 1970s?

Capitalism had to make the work ing class pay to maintain the system, so it had to tr y to smash the organised work ing class This wasn’t simply a US phenomenon, as neoliberalism spread throughout the world. The first t wo chapters of this book are ample evidence that the Democratic Par t y is firmly held in hock to this ideology by big business and the superrich who fund them

I t ’s enough to quote Sanders in conclusion:

“ The sad truth is that, if you boil it down, the essence of the Democratic message in recent years has been: ‘ We’re prett y bad, but Republicans are worse So vote for us. We’re the lesser of t wo evils!’ Given the realit y of the Republican Par t y today – their growing attacks on democrac y and women’s rights, their abysmal record on climate change and the environment, their suppor t for tax breaks for the rich and cuts in programs for work ing families and the poor – there’s more than a grain of truth in that message

“[But] it doesn’t recognize that, when the oligarchs and the corporate world are waging class war against work ing Americans, the work ing class needs a par t y that will fight back And win ”

On this point we can agree, but the verdic t we draw from Sanders' own experience is that that par t y cannot be the Democratic Par t y n