2016 and Beyond: Bernie Sanders, American Labor, and the Left

Official Statement - Madison IWW, September 3, 2015

Many labor activists and progressives are taking heart from the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. Some even fantasize that the corporate- and Wall Street-dominated Democratic Party might allow him to actually win the presidential nomination.

Others hope that the popular outpouring for Sanders will at least push the Democratic Party and Hilary Clinton (or whatever corporate Democrat gets the nomination) to the left.

There is a long history of progressive and populist Democrats running for president in primaries, drawing disaffected progressives back into the party and then inducing them to support "lesser evil" Democrats in general elections.

Meanwhile, in recent decades the Wall Street-run Democratic Party hasmoved steadily to the political right, following only a few steps behind the Republicans in union-busting, offshoring, financial deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, governmental austerity, militarism, imperialism, etc.

It is time for Wisconsin progressives to understand that it was this dependence on the Democratic Party which hollowed out and neutered the Wisconsin labor movement and left it unprepared to mount an effective direct action response to Walker in 2011 or since.

American labor's dependence on and absorption into the Democratic Party has pointed it away from more systematic and thorough-going grassroots education about the structural problems of the corporate economy and the need for working-class direct action in the workplaces, in the communities, and in the streets.

Those who imagine that the Wall Street-run Democratic Party will be seriously pushed to the left need only look at how its corporate funders and managers are currently ramming though the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other "super-NAFTA" treaties against the vociferous opposition of the entire progressive base of the Democratic Party. Despite Bernie's large rallies and polling numbers, who will really retain the power in the party in 2016 and beyond?

The Industrial Workers of the World's traditional policy of not endorsing political candidates or parties and of educating and organizing for direct action is the only effective antidote to a political system so morally bankrupt it must now offer a "democratic socialist" to attract many disaffected progressives and independents back into the CAPITALIST POLITICAL FOLD.

While advancing some laudable domestic demands (we leave aside here Bernie's less-than-progressive stances regarding militarism, Israel etc.) and inspiring a new generation of millennials, the Sanders campaign is simultaneously sowing illusions about the possibility of achieving major change through the Democratic Party and the capitalist political system.

Perhaps the best that the left can hope for is that the disillusionment which progressives will experience in 2016 may fuel a more radical direct action mass movement in the years to come as economic, ecological and social conditions worsen.