Political socialism

"Some on the left see Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Mr. Biden as a betrayal of progressive values"

 A reader of this blog (yes there is one) read my “Bernie won” post (Aug. 22) and asked why Sanders has been “less prominent” of late and if I thought his supposed victory had actually made things better for American workers.

Part of my response was to say that Bernie is more of a pragmatic politician than his socialist label and his refusal to join the Democratic Party would suggest.

It would be hard to show that any of the concessions he won from Biden and that have resulted in legislation during the last four years has had a significant impact on the life of workers. And of course his “victory” doesn’t represent an ultimate triumph of socialism, but a socialist might be pleased. 

Sanders is not one of those socialists that Bernard Crick says are “grossly unrealistic, often in too much of a hurry” and often “impatient of political means.” (If you don’t know who BC is, I’ve explained it here). “Great changes can only come in stages,” Crick writes, and politically oriented socialists should pursue “short-term tactical reforms within the system to build a basis of popular confidence for advance.”

It is not selling out to work within existing institutions, contrary to what AOC’s vociferous critics (eg, like DSA) are saying about her.  Bernie Sanders did not abandon his larger goals by endorsing Biden, and now Harris, and refraining from loud criticism of the administration.

As Crick says, socialists (and you might say this about any ideologues without representation among viable political parties) can push for incremental reforms within the current system and simultaneously work on “long-term persuasion” that might “change the climate of expectation,” leading to more dramatic changes down the road. FDR’s New Deal, for example, led to a sea change in Americans’ expectations of what the government would do to assure prosperity.

Sanders seems to have nudged the Democrats away from neoliberal policies toward more worker-oriented policies or at least poses, like Biden walking on a picket line, which might change voters' expectations for future policies.

Crick’s political socialism is informed by the failure of past revolutions that failed. He concludes in his note to impatient socialists:

From a base camp established amid representative or parliamentary institutions, the time needed for the establishment of a socialist society may appear desperately long. But the built-in political necessity of socialist governments having to carry with them an enfranchised public opinion, as well as an already organized trade-union movement, guarantees that each move of the camp further and further up the mountain will be on solid ground, less likely to slip backwards or simply to get stuck… great changes can only come in stages.

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(Crick quotes: 241, 239) 

Source of the quote under the picture: New York Times

There were a lot of unrealistic and impatient socialists after Bernie lost the 2020 Democratic nomination.