Rev Left Radio - Thinking Through Electoralism: Bernie Sanders and Class Struggle

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

Michael Carter from the NY DSA joins Breht to discuss how Marxists should think about the electoral strategy, the Bernie 2020 Campaign, and what happens if Bernie wins, loses, or is robbed.  Follow Michael on Twitter @_Michaeltcarter  Rosarium is a volunteer-run production company made up of filmmakers and activists who stand for people over profits: https://www.rosariumproductions.com/#Work   Here is the link to Jon "TheLitCritGuy" Greenaway's Guides on Marx, Jameson, and Gramsci as mentioned in the intro: https://twitter.com/TheLitCritGuy/status/1234098100521840641 Or find him on Insta @TheLitCritGuy Outro music 'Stigmata' by Grandson ------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective: @Barbaradical Intro music by DJ Captain Planet. --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, FORGE, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. On today's episode, we have a really fun one, a challenging one, an interesting one. Hopefully this is a conversation that you really can't find in a lot of other places. I have on Michael Carter from New York DSA to talk about the electoral strategy, basically from a Marxist perspective, defending some element. of supporting like a Bernie-style candidacy, some of the contradictions within electoralism broadly and just a lot of really interesting ideas

and some, you know, breaking through some of the black and white thinking that occurs on the topic of electoralism, some of the simplistic thinking one way or the other that you can find on the left. And we end this long discussion with basically playing out a few different scenarios. And I think it's really interesting that we do that. we one of the scenarios is what if bernie goes on to win what obstacles will he face one of the scenarios is what if bernie is robbed either in the primaries or let's say he goes on to win and actually gets some sort of internal sabotage or coup against him or what if bernie wins the primaries goes on to get defeated handedly by trump right all these different scenarios michael and i play out and think through and so i think this sort of thinking um strategic thinking on the left is really important is going to be only more

important in the months to come. Before I get into that episode, though, I do want to give a shout out to a friend of the show, multiple-time guest, the Lickrit guy, John Greenaway. He has produced three guides, basically guides on Marks, Jameson, Frederick Jameson, and Antonio Gramsci. Really great introductory sort of walkthroughs of these thinkers and their thoughts and their ideas. And I think it's a really wonderful resource that, you know, he's done by himself to help people sort of educate themselves on these things and have an accessible way into these sometimes very complex and deep thinkers. So if you're at all interested in that, you can obviously contact him through Twitter at the Lick Crick guy. I'll link, though, in the show notes

of this episode, the sort of the link that you can go to get those things that's really cheap you can buy one two or all three for i think under ten dollars um if you can buy all three for under ten dollars right so i'll link to that in the show notes if you're interested on on these sort of guides uh walking through the ideas of marks freder jameson or ntonio gromshy definitely go check it out it might be a great resource for cadres or organizations or study groups specifically or just individuals who want to learn more so again that will be in the show notes if you're at all interested definitely go support him i follow him on instagram i see how long and how deeply he worked on these things and he's really putting out a lot of labor to help people understand

and teach people these crucial, crucial thinkers. So shout out to him and definitely go check that out if you're interested. All right, without further ado, let's get on to this show with Michael Carter on the strategy of electoralism and thinking through the implications of Bernie's campaign. Enjoy. Hello, my name is Michael Carter. I'm a professional political organizer. I'm a started doing my work with working as a field organizer for Bernie 2016. I was an actor living in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and I got involved canvassing. My comrades there were DSA members, but I still did not fully identify as a socialist. Due to my work there and some luck, Bernie 2016 hired me as a field organizer, and I worked in New York City and Los Angeles for the campaign and attended

the 2016 National Convention. After Bernie lost the primary, I worked in the New York State Senate for a centrist for a year, then left to be the second person hired on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's primary campaign in 2018. After we won, I went down to Florida to help Andrew Gillum's campaign, then came back up to New York afterward and started working for Democratic Socialist Julia Salazar, who now represents the area of Bushwick that I initially had started organizing it. My experience overall is that the Democratic Party establishment as it exists right now is incredibly weak in terms of its ability to actually mobilize voters and people because of decades of voter suppression. I'm a Marxist-Leninist who also engages with the legacy of Mao. The best label

I would apply to myself is Democratic communist, with Democratic being not limited to the electoral forms of democracy, but also including non-electoral forms of working class democracy. Wonderful. Well, it's an absolute honor to have you on and to talk through this important issue, because I think on the left that when it comes to the question of electoralism, there's a lot of black and white thinking. Either people are sort of naive about its limitations and say, of course that's the way to go, where people are very suspicious of it,

and in a lot of cases, rightfully so, but then overly dismiss every aspect of it. And so, like, you know, I hope people think of Rev Left as the sort of platform and program that we can actually have these discussions in a nuanced and complex way and think through the implications. So whether you're somebody coming to this episode having totally negative views of electoralism or somebody coming to this episode having totally positive views of electoralism,

I think you'll be challenged in one way or another throughout this conversation. So I appreciate you coming on. You did describe yourself politically, and I think it's important to keep in mind that you're coming to this discussion from that sort of Marxist and Marxist-Leninist perspective, and that will provide, I think, some interesting insight to this. conversation overall. So I know you mentioned a little bit how you got involved in electoral campaigns. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about that and talk about your experience since then and up until today. Yeah. So in terms of how I initially got involved, it was basically just the

situation where, you know, I was a young person. I wasn't super solid in my career or I didn't have like a long-term relationship. I was kind of living in Brooklyn after. graduating college, sort of searching for something to do, you know, auditioning for acting things and sometimes getting them, sometimes not. But when you have that kind of, that kind of lifestyle, you end up having a lot of time on your hands. And also, it's easy to get kind of discouraged with that endless pursuit and to look into other things that you can do with your time. And I just honestly fell into it. There was a group called the Bush Berner's that started in my area and that I started organizing with in terms of electoral

organizing. One of the first conversations had about socialism in the context of electoralism happened in like those spaces because there were some socialists running around. Not everybody was, but some were liberal, some were socialist, some were kind of curious about it. And a lot of those people who I started doing work with ended up, you know, basically joining the Democratic Socialist of America. I was there during the period where the Brooklyn branch fit into one auditorium, one room, and now we have three branches, one in North Brooklyn, one in Central Brooklyn, and one in South Brooklyn. The New York City DSA is the biggest chapter in the entire organization, and it has, I believe, 4,000 members in the New York City area. Now,

A member could be a lot of things. It could be someone who's very, very involved and does things all the time. It could be somebody who is a paper member and just like donates every month. It could be someone who is Marxist-Leninist. It could be someone who's Trotskyist. It could be someone who's a basically a liberal or a social Democrat. So, you know, I've definitely found that using that structure as a kind of organizing platform has been really, effective here in New York City, which is the center of the capitalist world system in a lot of

ways. It's the center of American imperialism in a lot of ways. It's a very symbolic place, and it's a place where, I don't know, I have found, and we have found that the population is sort of already on board with social democracy, and I think could be convinced and could be exposed to successfully ideas like socialism, ideas like communism, because there's just this huge disparity between the people who run New York City and the people who live in New York City. Absolutely. Are you involved in any current electoral campaigns? Are you working for the Bernie campaign as of right now? I'm not working for the Bernie campaign as of right now. Right now I work for State Senator Julia Salazar working for her campaign, which she actually represents the

same area of Bushwick that I started out in. You know, I like her a lot as a boss and as a person. One of the things that I think Marxists may not understand about the importance of having some people in government is that we're able to pursue reforms that create the groundwork for future organizing. What that means is that what initially got me involved with this work I kind of say I fell into it, but really it was about housing. When I first moved into my apartment in Bushwick, 18, Doddworth Street, it was a vibrant community. There was a cookout every year. There was like a local step team that would perform at the cookout.

There was free, like, food for people. There were bands that were sort of rooted in the community. And within one year, it was like night and day. the next year's block party was dead nobody was there there was a graffiti on the wall saying don't cry because it's over smile because it happened it's stark when you move into these neighborhoods how much the capitalist class is able to both use you as a sort of what you would call like a gentrifier or someone with more ability to move to different places and taking advantage of the people who already live in the neighborhood that you're moving to.

Because the other thing about it is the way that they've made the system work in New York City is there's a lot of people who want to move to this city of all kind of economic, social classes and of all different backgrounds. And the idea that they have sort of come upon is to use those people and make them move around every year and move gentrification further every year. while also being completely disempowered. So now this is a long way of talking about what I think is the most significant result of Julia Salazar

being elected to the state Senate in coincidence with the tenant movement going on in New York right now, which is a huge package of housing and rent reforms which passed last session in New York that led to an immediate decrease of 20% in evictions in New York City. the reason why I find that important as an organizer and why I think Marxists should be cognizant of that is a few things. One, this law removed barriers that had existed from organizing outside of New York City. Tenet unions are starting to form in places like Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, and they're starting to win a little bit.

And the thing about a long protracted struggle, a kind of Gramscian war of position, is that you can't keep going without a few initial wins. And the thing about the tenant movement in this state is that it had zero influence for decades. And now there's somebody who's on the inside who, without that movement, would be able to do nothing. without the tenants, you know, getting up to Albany, without the tenants, organizing amongst themselves, without people doing things like organizing rent strikes, none of this could have happened. But since it is happening, it was very helpful to have at least one person on the inside ish, who was able to drive strategy for that movement and also kind of represent that movement's demands on a larger stage because historically it's it's been completely disconnected and the thing

about the housing reforms which are definitely a starting place and definitely not sufficient and definitely still leave capitalism in place in New York State is that they structurally change the power dynamic between a landlord and a tenant in such a way that it makes it a lot easier for tenants to organize. We have another bill coming up that's more about not requiring a reason to evict someone. You don't actually need a reason in New York. You can just say, I don't like you anymore, get out of my building. And if you are under that threat every single day of losing your housing in a place that's undergoing a historic homelessness crisis, you are going to sit down, you are going to shut up, you are not going to do anything to jeopardize your ability to continue to live.

and to continue to provide for your family. The only way, really, to create the conditions for revolutionary change for working people, at least in New York City, is to remove some of the barriers that have been put up by the capitalist class. If we already had a strong kind of tenant union movement in the United States, this would be maybe less important because we could, you know, do things like rent strikes. We could have more direct organizing. we could use the power of tenants sort of more directly. But because we've had so long of just landlords having all of the power in Albany and all

of the power in Washington, like there are decades of laws that have accreted that make it really, really difficult to do anything strong on housing. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's incredibly well said and insightful and important for people to keep in mind because I do agree that those barriers need to be broken down before any more activity can take place that can push against the ruling class or the landlords or open up the way for social movements to make progress. I do want to talk a little bit more about just your experience within the electoral campaigns. Specifically, I want to ask you about, in your experience at least, like what the class dynamics and class compositions involved in campaigns broadly are. What's your experience with that?

So my experience with that, it varies somewhat from campaign to campaign, although there's a lot of aspects that are very similar. The primary kind of cleavage that I emphasize for people is whether the work that you do is coded as working class or as professional class. So in a political campaign, usually the communications and the fundraising staffers have a lot of influence because they're the people who are more likely to be wearing suits. They're the people who are more likely to have college degrees. They're the people who the things that they do for the campaign are sort of valued more by society and culture more broadly.

So what my emphasis has always been when working on campaigns and the emphasis that has led to the success of the Democratic Socialists of America in New York City is a field-first mindset. So Field is the word we use to talk about direct contact with voters. So what that means is things like door knocking, having conversations with people, things like calling people on the phone, even stuff like texting people can count as field. And historically, or at least in my experience, that aspect of campaigns is usually criminally under-resourced.

It's one of the few aspects in terms of research that we can tell. works to move people, but you can't make any profit off of it. A consultant comes in and says, I can design you a field program. They're only going to make, you know, 2%, 3% off the top. When they come in and they say, I'm going to design you a mailer, all they have to do is open up Photoshop, do a mailer, and then charge you $20,000. So basically, the same capitalist kind of industrial influences that happen in corporate America, corrupt and corrode electoral campaigns, including progressive, you know, democratic socialist and social democratic campaigns, because after all, we all grew up in a

capitalist society, and it's not particularly easy to undo that conditioning. And the other aspect of this is that field organizers are usually seen as kind of expendable. They aren't really given the opportunity to build strong skills traditionally and, like, traditional campaigns, they kind of, it's like you're the intern and you make calls and you actually talk to voters, but when the campaign is done, thank you for your service, but you're not going to be in the administration. And the weird thing about that is that the actual talking to voters is the thing that actually has been shown to work on some level. On the left, there is a, and in this case, I mean the broader like quote unquote left, including liberals,

there's a structural reason why Democrats lose all the time. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting. I mean, I think it's absolutely true and worth stating that the professional consultant class oftentimes is such a grift. I mean, you talk about charging 20K for putting together little mailers or whatever, and there is like an entire class of really mediocre professional class managerial people who fill that role and fill their pockets doing the sort of. of absurd things like that, whereas the people on the ground knocking on doors and actually coming face to face with human beings and members of our class are the ones that don't get

the attention. Is there any difference at all in your experience between normal liberal campaigns and like maybe the campaigns of Salazar, AOC, and Bernie when it comes to this question specifically? Yeah, I think that all of them are a lot better on this than electoral, than traditional liberal campaigns. I think in terms of my experience with Alexandria, I was lucky enough to be able to kind of shape how that campaign worked from the start, not the start, but kind of close to the start. And I emphasized a field first mindset from the beginning. It was a much more kind of communal experience. Our positions were written on post-it notes, and we would sometimes rearrange the post-it notes when we needed to do that. There was a

kind of democratic decision-making that was expected on some level, it still existed within the capitalist system. And there were, I'm certain, certain aspects that could have been done better if we were able to transcend our conditioning. It's definitely better. It's not all amazing, but it's definitely better. And on Bernie's case, like, I think that He has done an okay job of at least rhetorically and on some level elevating field, but I don't think that they're doing so on the scale necessary to execute the political revolution that they say that they want. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think we'll get more into that concept of political revolution as we dive deeper into some of these questions. I do want to ask, though, as someone who holds explicitly revolutionary politics like yourself, what elements of

electoral campaigning, do you find sort of most in line with your broader political views, most at least susceptible to them? And what elements do you find most intention with them as somebody with radical political views operating within the electoral context? Certainly there have to be, you know,

tensions there. So I was hoping you could answer sort of both sides of that question. Yeah, so I think field organizing as I laid out, especially canvassing but not limited to canvassing as inherently revolutionary potential. The act actually getting up and calling, texting, or visiting someone is the building block of solidarity

in a community. We are encouraged in the society to isolate ourselves to just our friends and family. Engaging in these activities creates bonds among the population and begins to politically awaken people who may have been like an every four years type of voter or someone who was a voter before but never a volunteer organizer or organizer or not yet a radical. The tension for me comes when people mistake the importance of voting for the sufficiency of voting. counter people who act as though the active voting gives them a gold star and that it represents the limit of participation in politics. I prefer to think of it as a starting point or a jumping off point to deeper engagement with people. What aspects of the U.S. electoral system broadly, so not just individual campaigns as we've already talked about, but the overall electoral system,

do you think are particularly vulnerable to more revolutionary-minded energies within like campaigns of the sort that you're talking about? Like, is there anything about the system overall where you see maybe a weakness that can be exploited through this sort of strategic engagement? Yeah, I actually think that there are some unique weaknesses in the U.S. capitalist imperialist state as a result of just accidents of history. One thing that I think is important is the unusual amount of control that localities have in the United States relative to the central government. for instance, in France or in the UK, the central parliamentary government has much more direct control over what happens on the ground, whereas in the United States, in theory, if you had, say, a state like Vermont with a governor who was a socialist and a legislature that was socialist and an organized working class movement, which didn't happen to be clear in Vermont yet, but you could. do a lot on the ground there, and it would be difficult on a legal level for Washington to prevent you from doing that. So that's not to say extra legal means would not be used, but I think it's actually really important that if the capitalist state is going to break

its own rules, that we sort of force it to do that. So the other aspect that's important is that it's not a parliamentary system. So one of the classic issues for left parties around the world is that most countries, most bourgeois capitalist democracies use a parliamentary system, either a Westminster system or something like it, where to govern, it requires coalitions of multiple parties. For instance, Podemos in Spain is in coalition

with the majority kind of technically socialist, but not really socialist liberal party there, right? Sariza in Greece had to be in coalition with other parties in order to govern. Even if labor had won this last UK election, they would have had to coalition with other parties. And the thing about a coalition structure and a parliamentary structure is that parliamentary political parties have a lot of control over their members. They operate as one slate, for instance.

Like when you, if you're in charge of, let's say, the Labor Party's candidate recruitment, you have a list of people all the way up and down the ballot that both gets your endorsement, that gets your resources, and that it has your blessing. Whereas in the United States system, for all the many problems that it has, it's a lot less centrally controlled. The party, while it has power, and we saw that power in the 2016 primary, we also saw that it was unable to exert it sufficiently in the 2016 primary. The fact that we even have like a Bernie candidacy that's doing fine as well as he's doing

shows that the stranglehold that the elites have happened on the party historically is not holding. And that's true on the right wing side as well. You can see this with Trump completely taking over the Republican Party despite the best efforts of all of the Republicans before this. So that's one aspect also. And that's not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It's just like a thing that exists and that as socialist, as materialists, as people who look at the situation where you are and then exploit it, we should be thinking in those terms. One other aspect, and, you know, part of it too is you don't have to, parliamentary systems require by necessity,

compromise, because in the past, when socialists have been in coalition governments in places like Germany with the SPD, they have had to compromise with the liberals they're in coalition with. And in theory, perhaps not in practice, we have a fairly majoritarian form of government. And if you were able to get a big enough majority in all of the different levers of electoral power, that wouldn't accomplish any kind of revolution on its own, but you could get a lot more done in a short time than you could, I think, in the average parliamentary system. The other thing is, there's really unusual freedom of speech standards. Like, you know, in the United States, Nazis are allowed to organize, but so can socialists and

communists. Historically, that has not really always been true because the government. government kind of has these double standards and the police are obviously on the side of fascism, at least on a rhetorical level, it's very difficult for the United States to prevent socialists and communists from winning elections by saying that they're not allowed to say the things that they say, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Yeah, and I really like the point you made about the electoral system versus parliamentary system where you have to form coalitions, which necessarily involve compromise.

There's this notion, of course, of bipartisanship, quote, unquote, in the U.S. political system, but we know, obviously, the limitations and absurdity that that has turned out to be. But it's very difficult to get the executive branch, the judicial branch in both houses of Congress. But if you could or even just get maybe the executive, the House, and the Senate, you get big majorities in those places. You really are pretty unfettered in what you can accomplish. You don't really have to worry about compromising with the fucking Republicans. if you can get that big of a majority, hard to do,

but at least has some possibility of allowing the left or Bernie Sanders type movement. If he were able to get that much majority power, allow them a lot more room to operate than in European parliamentary systems. It's interesting, and I never really fully kind of thought that through. That's worth thinking about for sure. So let's move on to the next question. We've talked about some of the possibilities,

the vulnerabilities within the system, some things that radicals can sort of poke and prod at or push against, but, you know, there are obviously limitations and dead ends inherent in electoral works. So what are some of the criticisms of electoralism and the electoral strategy overall that you think are legitimate and valid and worth thinking about? Yeah. So I believe that electoral power alone without a social base is toothless and is not a way that we can execute any kind of revolutionary change. I also believe that electoral work has a tendency to attract opportunists into the movement for hopes that they will get power under the existing system.

That, however, opportunism is not limited, however, to electoral work, but also happens in other kinds of organizing. I mean, you look at the history of the Bolsheviks in Russia or the history of the Chinese Communist Party. There are certainly opportunists running around. I think, that the electoral system has a ceiling because of the fascist forces in society and culture, but we haven't even gotten close to that ceiling. If you talk about dual power in terms that someone like, you know, Lenin might talk about dual power. You need power outside of the state, but you also need at least some that's inside of the state. It's not single power. The one thing that I really react against is that so many socialists may believe in Marxist

economism, which says that the revolution can be accomplished through social democratic reforms. I do not believe this. The purpose of reforms in my mind is completely the opposite of that. I think that these reforms are necessary to remove the guardrails from American political life and make a revolutionary break more possible. Reforms are not in and themselves the revolution, but the removal of structural barriers to revolution inherent in the American white supremacist capitalist state. So we need to, before the state will wither away on its own, we're going to have to deform it because it's been built to stick around.

It's not going to go straight from where we are with Nazi baby president to kind of a multiracial working class coalition movement that has never happened before in American history and will just spring from the ground fully. forms. Yeah, no, I like that. I like that, um, that sort of thinking through the process and that need for, um, you know, hands on levers outside and inside the system. I think of movements like the, a symphane in Ireland where you have this above ground, um, you know, sort of electorally minded organizing, um, you know, formation, but you also have this underground

militant, um, you know, among the masses, guerrilla movement called the IRA in the Black Panther party you had a little bit of that with like bobby seal running for office but you also had on the underground the black liberation army where people like assata secur were fighting in a more militant underground fashion and so this dual sort of structure where you have an above and underground element to your overall organizing apparatus has proven in some cases at least to be really effective and i do think that that the left in this country could learn a lot from employing that sort of approach to gaining power and advancing the ball for our class. So I think that's an important point for sure.

Now, I want to move on to talk about imperialism a little bit because a big criticism of working within the electoral system in the United States comes from an anti-imperialist perspective, which rightfully understands the entire U.S. state, to be a bloody empire. I've seen some people on the left sort of shit on Bernie for precisely this reason, saying that he either won't or simply can't make any significant changes to the inherent imperial nature of the U.S. state. So what are your thoughts on sort of this

critique from an anti-imperilist perspective and Bernie specifically? Because I think this will, I mean, I would definitely, you know, agree with this critique in its entirety when 99.9% of Democratic politicians, right? But the question basically is, is Bernie different? Could Bernie make a difference here, et cetera? Yeah, that's really the biggest question in terms of our movement in Bernie. I would say in terms of Bernie personally, I think it's actually fairly clear that while Bernie may have to acquiesce to American imperialism and has done so in the past, his presidency would at least lead to significant harm reduction for colonized peoples under U.S. control and has the potential to significantly undermine the military industrial complex. He's the only candidate publicly saying that America overthrew

the Chilean government of Iande. It's the only candidate who was immediately unequivocal about the fascist coup that overthrow evil Morales in Bolivia. He's the only candidate who I personally could trust would never invade Venezuela. It's a huge sea change in American politics that the Democratic frontrunner rejects the imperial legacy of Henry Kissinger, for example. I want to speak more broadly, though, about revolutionary defeatism and pursuing change in the American context. I actually think that the United States position as the dominant imperial power means that we as Americans on the left have a unique opportunity and responsibility to undermine the American Imperial Project. I do not believe that capitalist white supremacy will simply give up

when defeated at the ballot box, but this has never happened before in American politics, and we may never have a chance to do so again. You can see this in the high interest people in other countries have in our politics and culture. We unfortunately have a huge and outsized impact on people around the world. The left in the U.S. will not be able to wind down the foreign policy establishment with Bernie alone, but a rebalancing away from naked imperialist aggression would be a good thing overall for the world and the people the United States is murdering, imprisoning, and brutalizing worldwide. As American leftists, I think we should aim for nothing less than the utter failure of the American Imperial Project and an unwinding

of imperialist social relations like the status of American territories and the status of reservations. This can never happen without activism from the populations involved, but also, but also, will require a certain amount of deformation of the structures that keep these states of affairs going. Bernie will not and cannot save us, but some of his policies may create an opening for oppressed people's worldwide to liberate themselves. I like that answer a lot. And honestly, it really aligns with my own thoughts on this exact topic. I think a lot of times people on the radical left, they sort of think of these things in terms of sort of a zero-sum game. You know, you'll hear people be like, Bernie is just going to make the imperial death machine have a friendly face,

and maybe give people health care, so they stop worrying about it as much. But I think, you know, that really sort of negates or ignores the fact that there is meaningful degrees of difference between somebody like a Trump and a Bernie. And hell, somebody like a difference between Obama and a Bernie, right? Obama, Hillary, Biden, there's no way that those people have any interest in pulling back the imperial death machine, no matter what they talk about on stage. with Bernie, I think it's really hard to argue that he would not make a difference here. Like, you know, do we really believe that he would not make a meaningful decrease in imperial aggression, that there wouldn't be countless lives saved under a Bernie presidency? Like, would he be drone bombing people in the Middle East?

Would he be drone bombing weddings? Would he be helping Saudi Arabia blow up school buses of children? Or, as you said, helping stage and carry out coups against Venezuela or Bolivia, etc. It's really hard for me to believe that he would do that. And in fact, a big part of his entire sort of health care and Green New Deal funding mechanism is going to be taking a huge chunk of the money, the hundreds of billions of dollars that goes to the military industrial complex every single year, taking that and putting it toward improving the lives of the most downtrodden here in the U.S., which has the dual benefit

of helping working and poor, struggling people here in the U.S., while also taking away at least some chunk of the money that goes to fund all this slaughtering across the world. And in a situation where the U.S. Imperial Machine has less money, has a commander-in-chief, not at all interested in imperial plundering, and pulls back the militarism and ends the endless wars, well, that's going to mean that the overall imperial apparatus that operates around the world and suppresses people's movements all over the world will be less able to do so, which will create, as you said, I think, opening for people around. the world to rise up without having the American beast immediately come and smash it into the

ground. And so I think, like, thinking about the degrees of difference here, I think is really important. I totally agree with you. It's, electing Bernie is not going to be the end of U.S. imperialism. We understand imperialism as what capitalism does on the international stage. As long as there is capitalism, there will be imperialism. But I think that to the people who would not be murdered under a Bernie regime compared to a Trump or a Biden regime, that certainly makes a lot of material difference in their life, right? And I really think that we should, of course, not put all of our eggs in the electoral bag and say that Bernie's going to end imperialism. Of course, he won't. But he will take the pressure off the people around the world and create openings

for them to rise up against their own tyrants locally and maybe even form, you know, solidarity across different movements as well. So again, I really think people should think critically about this. If Bernie getting in means that there will be a 25% decrease in innocent human being slaughtered around the world, is that not worth it? Is it not worth it to pursue that? I mean, I think it is. I think every life saved, every bomb not dropped matters.

And, you know, we can only get so far, as you said, this strategy has a ceiling. but I think it's really foolish to just say there's no difference at all between a Bernie Sanders presidency and to Trump or a Biden or a Buttigieg one. I mean, I think that is just insane, you know? Yeah, I mean, it certainly matters to the person being bombed.

Right, exactly. I mean, that's like what bigger material impact in somebody's life than not dying? I mean, that does matter. And I think a lot of people around the world are hoping, like, if they had to pick, I mean, I think they would want somebody that will drop less bombs

that will end fucking these. wars that will pull troops out, shut down bases. We'll see how much Bernie does that. But the thing that makes Bernie a little different is because he eschews the donor class, because he goes against the Democratic establishment, he's not as beholden to the forces that somebody like Obama or any other Democratic candidate would be beholden to. He funds his campaign solely through small donation, union stuff. And so ultimately, he's not beholden to big corporations and billionaires and super PACs. He's beholden to the people who undergird his campaign, and that's regular people. And if we put pressure on him to pull back the imperial machine, he'll be much more open to that

than any other, I think, President, Democrat, or liberal ever has been in our lives, at least. I mean, and I think ever in the history of the United States, to be honest. Agreed. Yeah, I think of like an American president who has anywhere close to an anti-imperialist perspective. Right. And you could argue that Bernie has shown that at times. Absolutely. Yeah. Again, not perfect, but a meaningful, meaningful difference.

So let's move on to another big critique, because I want to kind of tackle these two big ones, because these are I think the big ones you hear, the anti-imperialism argument, and then this one I'm about to raise. So another critique of electoralism is that it often co-ops otherwise radical energies and funnels it back into the Democratic Party establishment, stripping those energies of their revolutionary potential in the process. On the other hand, people who support Bernie would argue that he's fundamentally different than past attempts to do this, like, say, Obama, who clearly did have this effect to some extent,

as he is not a Democrat or even beholden to the Democratic establishment, as I just laid out previously. So what are your thoughts on this idea of co-opting revolutionary energy, and what should the relationship between revolutionary social movements and this progressive electoral campaign be, in your opinion? Sure. So there are two questions here, right? One is the extent to which Bernie is beholden to the Democratic Party establishment. As you say, this appears to be much less than other politicians, other Democratic politicians, but is not precisely speaking zero. He still has to, on some level, kind of kowtow to their power. Another is whether working within Democratic primaries leads leftists and their radicalism to moderate because of contact with the electoral

system. I think the first question is important to ask because Bernie is going to have to work together with some slimy characters to win the presidency. He's going to have to rely on Democratic governors to make sure the vote is fair, Democratic-leaning interest groups like Emily's List, the foundations, business unions, et cetera. This means that a Sanders presidency will probably end up being somewhat less radical than Sanders himself, especially once his policies go through Congress. We know this as leftists and planned for it. Kate the Bernie administration is a count as it can be. One example from the other side of the aisle. The Nazis who support Trump know he isn't going to be a Nazi, but they support him anyway because he advances aspects of their

program. I do not believe in my experience is not that leftists who work on electoral campaigns go on to become loyal Democratic foot soldiers. In fact, my experience suggests the opposite is true. My girlfriend Simone, for example, who's been on this show, she went from being a completely politically detached Democrat, a voter every four years to supporting Bernie and AOC, becoming a democratic socialist, to becoming a communist. A friend of mine in DSA who did data work for AOC's campaign is now one of the central figures in the Queen's dual power working group and is working at Amazon in order to organize workers there. C. O'Weaver, a comrade I met through NYC DSA, is basically a full-time tenant organizer that was one of the key figures that could

help mobilize the statewide movement that led to the rent laws I was talking about earlier, that led to a 20% decline in evictions. Involvement in these structures shows you just how weak, venal, and stupid our rulers actually are, and how elected officials do not drive change. On a basic level, it starts you on the path to understanding that the government will only respond to organized people and nothing else. It makes it clear that the system, as it exists now, is sick, and that voting new politicians into office can help somewhat, but will never be sufficient. When you knock on someone's door and ask for their vote, and they start talking to you about how they can't afford their insulin, or how their housing is unaffordable, or how they can't

care for their aging parents, you see the limitations of electoral work without movement work firsthand. And I would add to those great points, the fact that because Bernie doesn't have the democratic establishment at his back, like an Obama did, because he has these establishment figures and institutions that will not be in support of him at all. The only way that Bernie has any chance of implementing some of the big ideas that he wants to implement is through a grassroots bottom-up sort of pressure put on the system and put on strategic politicians to help force through some of this stuff, right? Like if Nancy Pelosi, like, you know, I think Boots Riley talked about.

this on Twitter like you know Nancy Pelosi might not be for Medicare for all because of her donor base but if there are huge strikes let's say by unions who support Bernie in California who put pressure on her and say hey we'll end this strike if Pelosi throws her weight behind Medicare for all this is just one example of course but you know those things could do some real interesting those could have some interesting results and it will require this sort of grassroots bottom up pressure and who better to help lead those campaigns those protests those marches, those disruptions, strikes, and direct actions, then the already on the ground organizers of the radical left who make up most, you know, real radical organizing and grassroots movements.

So it will depend on that in a way that other presidencies never have. And I think there's at least an opening there for the radical left to push beyond the limitations of just the Bernie campaign, push beyond the limitations of peer social democracy and sort of institutional mechanisms of change and actually put some real pressure and learn through that process right like we will we will learn a lot if burney gets in we'll learn a lot about how this system actually operates how it responds to the pressure being put on it from the burney campaign up top as well as from these bottom up movements who are literally at this point just fighting for stuff like fucking health care and livable wages and i think once people see the

amazing amount of sort of mask off hatred in and disdain that ruling elites in both parties have for them. And after they experience having to get involved in politics beyond just the ballot box, I think that itself will be a radically educational process for a lot of people. Absolutely. I mean, it's been my experience that getting more involved in things really does show you the extent to which the narrative that you're told as a young, person about democracy and the U.S. system and sort of its inherent integrity and it's goodness and how, you know, your representative represents you is really not followed through in practice at all. In fact, there are lots of influences and lots of people and stuff like

the consultants I was talking about earlier that can have huge impacts on policy, but we're never elected by anyone ever. And so, you know, someone like Tom Perez, he's one, one election in his life, but he still runs the party. So when you when you see it, like firsthand, I mean, the other thing about it that's really got that revolutionary potential is there aren't that many ways to engage with other working class people or other people in general in society right now that are kind of socially acceptable. What are you going to do, join a bowling league and like radicalize them like

what's your strategy for growth in terms of the society we live in right now I mean it's not the only way to kind of bring people together but if there were a leftist communist

Marxist whatever you call it movement in the United States that had mass support that had tens of thousands of members that was growing and was was had a genuinely revolutionary outlook, I would say, yeah, like, join that organization. That sounds great. But it doesn't exist. And the closest thing to it, in my view, which may be biased because I'm a member, is like DSA is kind of like one foot in that and one foot out of that.

And people on the left criticize DSA being like, oh, you're just liberals who like to do electoral work. Like, what differs you from a normal Democrat? And it's like, like scoreboard you know like you can't and and it's not to say that it's the only way to go forward but I want I desperately want people to tell me or show me if there is an effort that they support that is winning and that is working because I would join it yeah or just is reaching as many people as this campaign is reaching I mean you know I mean all the wonderful work that left us do across the spectrum in their community communities is wonderful, but because Americans are so sort of taught to engage with politics

through elections, right? Most Americans are doing that. And with the Bernie campaign, at least he is talking about these things. He's expanding people's political imagination. He's calling out who the enemies of the working class are. And this is, again, just a step in the right direction. It's a means. It's not an ends. But I think we do a disservice to our class if we don't engage with that broader movement and you know we'll think through some scenarios here in a second but regardless of what happens it's going to be a radically educational process for lots of people and you know people will be not just satisfied with merely voting for the democratic party after they see it sort of unmasked itself for what it is they're going to see how hard it is even when you get a politician

in that wants to do the thing that you want medicare for all or whatever how hard it is to get that done and how necessary political organizing outside of the electoral system is going to be. And I think that is an important thing that we should be there and help people think through and educate them on the limitations of and fight side by side with them to see where we can take this thing. If this is just one step, well, let's see if we can make the next few steps, right? Let's see if we can push forward in various ways. And yeah, so I think we kind of agree on that.

I do want to move now and talk about some possible scenario. because sometimes I think there is a sort of short-sightedness with some people who might, you know, fully be on the Bernie train, which is like, you know, get Bernie elected. And once Bernie's elected, then, yeah, thumbs up, we're good to go, the political revolution, all of that. And I definitely don't think it's that easy. And I don't think you do either. So I laid out two or three scenarios and just, I just want to hear what you think will be the fallout of them. So scenario number one, I did a whole episode on this. but you know what if bernie wins like what happens if he wins the primary goes on to beat

trump what are some of these structural challenges he will face i know we've touched on some of them but what are some more of the challenges he'll face and what can or can't he actually accomplish do you think a lot of it is going to depend actually all of it is going to depend on these organized social movements we're talking about but let's say that he is successful in creating enough pressure on the capitalist state to do at least one thing. If he can only do one thing and that thing is Medicare for all, even if it's not Medicare for all, if it's card check for unions, that's still a more productive, quote, democratic administration than any that we've had so far except for FDR.

And we know that FDR was being pushed by the radical left in order to do those things. I think that if you were to get Medicare for all, that would be a huge sea change. It would be, you would take a industry that was previously private and you would make it public, which is not something that Americans are used to. It is not something that has been the trend in the United States for the past 30-so years of neoliberalism. If you can do that with the health care system, hopefully successfully, and hopefully in a way that's not, you know, catastrophically disrupted. you can do it with any industry.

And a lot of his policies are talking about that kind of thing, talking about public ownership of utilities, talking about, okay, if we can do this in the health care system, what other aspects of our society could we change? It really opens the imagination of the American electorate and the American people overall to think that we could do this. Now, there are definitely barriers, right? One of the biggest barriers, I think, is the risk of a capital strike in the United States.

So that's when capitalists decide to withdraw their assets from a given place because it's seen as sort of a little bit too left, a little bit too liable to having their assets redistributed or seeds by the people. I think we're starting to see this like just a little tiny bit in New York City right now. A lot of the real estate industry people are kind of threatening the capital strike. I welcome it because then the people can just live in the buildings. But I think that that would be a serious issue for a Sanders presidency, which would probably cause, you know, something like a recession, which would be really hard to govern through. But again, if in that turmoil, in that suffering, in that destruction caused by the capitalist class, he was still able to get through Medicare for all, then I feel at least that I think it would be worth it.

And show people what's happening. Like, show this is what they're doing. This is why they're doing it. And that would be, you know, wildly educational for people as well. I think you make a really good point to sort of remind people that with a presidency, whether it's four or eight years, there's only so much he can get accomplished. And sometimes this gets obscured when people are talking about the costs of all Bernie's plans because they're taking like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, student loan forgiveness, all these policies that he supports and sort of adding them together. And it's like, oh my God, it'll cost $60, $70 trillion. But reasonably, it will not be that.

He won't be able to do everything. He'll have to put a lot of his political social capital into one or two strategic areas. Maybe that's Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. And so I think that's something that people should think about not only with regards to the conversation about cost, but also your expectations with what can possibly be accomplished with even a social democratic or very progressive presidency. And then on top of the threat of capital strikes, which I think is really important. I'm glad you brought that up. I think we should also think very deeply about what the reaction of the Senate and the Supreme Court would be and the role that the filibuster would play in really shutting down and preventing as much as can possibly happen.

So if the Republicans maintain not even complete majority in the Senate, but even just above the 40% mark, right? Because to break a filibuster, you need 60 of the 100 senators to go in your favor, right? It's not just a simple majority. You have to get a super majority to break the filibuster. filibuster was used against Obama. He barely squeaked it out just to get the Affordable Care Act pushed through by convincing a few Republicans to turn to the other side. But that will be a huge, huge problem. And the Senate is a bastion of ruling class reaction. And we've seen Trump stack the Supreme Court. If Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, dies in the next several months, you could

have another Republican on the Supreme Court. And when a lot of these things are constitutionally like sort of challenged and brought to the Supreme Court. You have conservative activist judges that will do everything in their power to push back and shut down anything that Bernie advances. So I think it's really important to think tactically about what the structural obstacles that a Bernie presidency will face. And that will just put more pressure, I think, on grassroots, bottom up movements to pick up the slack where the sort of institutional obstacles start to shut shit down. We will have to put extra pressure on the system overall to get any sort of headway and move beyond those obstacles if we if we can at all so uh things worth thinking about for sure let's go on to

scenario number two um this is a maybe a bleak scenario but let's say bernie wins the primary and then he goes on to lose to trump right like um maybe even he loses bigger than uh like you know Hillary won the popular vote but the electoral college got it for trump right like I think this is kind of far-fetched because I think Bernie will do much better than Hillary. But let's just say Bernie wins the primary, goes on and gets beat sort of solidly by Trump. What's the fallout of that, in your opinion? So I think that's definitely the worst-case scenario. And that's the scenario that I've been actually pushing with people who I know in the political world to be considering.

Because I think that as the left, we should be kind of looking at the worst-case case. scenario and trying to prepare for it for the long term. It will discredit democratic socialism and socialism in general for a generation in certain quarters. I've had times where people who I would not normally expect to support Bernie sort of start to be like, oh, it's kind of interesting. Like, oh, socialism. Like, what's that? It doesn't seem so scary now. But if he loses big to Trump, then I think it's just, it's going to be bad overall for the left. I think it will help us identify opportunists because they'll head for the exits immediately. But beyond that, I don't think it's, I think it's something that we should really try to avoid

both on the, you know, basic harm reduction stuff we're talking about and in terms of the rhetorical impact. Because the thing with the capitalist press and the capitalist system is that they, have the ability to frame that narrative in almost any way they want. So if that happens, if that happens, whether, you know, maybe the truth is like, oh, well, this interest group or this governor or this person made a deal with the Republicans, or, you know, this union endorsed, but they didn't put boots on the ground or A PAC put a bunch of money into Trump's campaign.

That may be the real story. But from the capitalist press's perspective, you know what the narrative is going. going to be, and they're going to be able to push that throughout the entire electorate. Corbin 2.0. Yep. It's like it's McGovern all over again, and then they'll just, they'll just red bait us. And, you know, hopefully it won't get as bad as it did previously with that. But I think that that's something that we have to really take seriously, especially because

of what I'm talking about with the structural corruptions within political campaigns generally. yeah i totally agree with that worst case scenario for sure they will dance on bernie's grave they will dance on the grave of the uh burgeoning socialist movement um they will set the narrative of they will you know inform everybody on why it happened and that's because of the politics and because we didn't do the centrist thing like they told us to um the only silver lining there would be that no matter what happens to burney right the radical energy that undergirds the Bernie campaign will still be there, and maybe that would turn a lot of people off to the electoral system that had this, you know, glimmering hope because of Bernie, and maybe that they would

funnel then into left-wing organizations and, you know, start doing more work like that. Maybe, I don't know, there's a little silver lining there, but definitely that's the worst-case scenario. And we should prepare for it. And we should be able to, at least with the little media outlets, we do have pushed back on the corporate narrative that will inevitably come out as you said so i don't know worst case scenario we should think about it um and then the final scenario i want to think through this is sort of it could happen one of two ways right uh the more extravagant way is that bernie gets in actually is the most anti-imperialist and pro working class president of all time um which results inevitably in some sort of internal sabotage or outright coup where he's

disposed or I think the more likely possibility here is that he's just robbed by the Democratic Party in the primaries through some sort of contested convention, right, keeping Elizabeth Warren in and then at the contested convention, everybody goes against Bernie, shifts their delegates to whatever establishment candidate they want and robs him sort of in plain sight. And either he's robbed by the ruling class when he gets in or robbed by the Democratic Party before he even gets that far. What's the fallout of that scenario in your opinion? So it's obviously bad. It's sub-ideal. But on some level, it unmasked the system for what it is. It reminds me of the DNC rigging last time. They successfully pulled it off, but everybody saw them do it. Our entire, you talk to almost any voter who isn't sort of monetarily dependent on the DNC, and they will admit and they will say that it was rigged. And everybody, he saw them do it in public. If Capital successfully disposes of Bernie, the movement behind him

will immediately revolt. We have hundreds of local elected officials around the country who will see immense political potential in trying to carry on Bernie's legacy. It's why he has the foresight to emphasize not meet us. Perhaps we will lose that fight, but maybe we won't, and it's no reason to give up before we started. I think he's got that frame because he's safeguarding the movement against that kind of sabotage by presenting himself to the capitalist state as the only person who can channel the energy of the left. Now, I think with that, that, you know, I speak to people all the time and I say things like, oh, well, the CIA is going to just kill Bernie, so don't worry about it. Because, like, if that happens, that is a huge veil lifted on the American system. I mean,

can you imagine the complete societal kind of freak out that that would create and on some on on on the basic level it would be bad because Bernie would be gone deposed through a coup through assassination through something like that but that's no reason not to make them do it like like the fact that they're fighting so so hard against them on every corner from every aspect it that's really really beyond anything else, that's what shows me that it's like on some level for real. Because it's, he's being a, he has all the right enemies. And, you know, maybe they end up winning. But like, that argument to me feels like, okay, well, you know, maybe someday Eva Morales is going to get deposed by, like, the military and the police. So, like, let's just not vote for him and, like, not support the indigenous led movement for Bolivia's liberation. because, like, that's eventually going to happen. It doesn't make any sense.

It's like, you know, it's a scenario we need to think about and we need to talk about and we need to prepare for, just like the previous one. But I do sometimes see people use that as a way to, like, cop out of responsibility. Be like, oh, like, it doesn't matter because, like, you know, the CIA will just reassert itself or the capitalist class will reassert itself. Well, of course they will, but, like, the point is the fight. not necessarily the result. Yeah, completely, completely agree with this. I think this scenario has the biggest potential for backlash. This is complete mask off. This is the biggest radicalization thing

you could do. If you want to radicalize a huge segment of the American population and push them as far left as you can, you would do something like this. I think we should go back and think about, you know, the 1968 Democratic Convention where a similar contested convention thing happened. They gave it sort of underhandedly to Humphrey. There were riots and protests in the street. Eventually that calmed down, but I think a scenario like this, especially an outright sort of coup or assassination, but even a Democratic Party robbing him in the primaries, obviously, would be like the 1968 Democratic Convention on steroids. And it would be a terrible thing, but I think it would be a huge radicalization process.

I think the Democratic Party would completely collapse, especially if it's the one that robs him. the entire sort of facade of democracy would be revealed to be nothing but a lie. And then where we go from there, I don't know, but it's not towards more elections and people just going back to the ballot box. I think you have a real crisis on your hands if either of those things happen, depending on how they happen, how they play out, how much plausible deniability is involved, of course. But it'll be a huge educational process for people regardless. So yeah, those are some of the big scenarios. would love to hear listeners thoughts on these things. At the very least, we should be thinking through what our response as the radical left will be

to each and every one of these possible scenarios. Michael, for the last question, if you basically had to present the best and most succinct argument that you can muster to someone on the left who is still suspicious of Bernie and is not inclined to support or vote for him at all, what would that argument sort of be? There has never been a truly multiracial working class movement in American history, and Bernie is attempting to create that. At the very least, his success provides a recruiting opportunity for whatever left tendency you represent. If you believe that a broad-based social movement with power independent of the state is necessary to achieve liberation, a highly accessible way to get

out of your bubble and meet working people is to canvas or phone bank for Bernie. If you believe his project is doomed to fail, there's going to be a few million people looking for direction after that happens. I would encourage folks to read Boots Riley's statement on this issue. You mentioned him earlier. He is voting for the first time. He never used to vote. The best way to make the case that there's a deeper political engagement out there is to meet people and work alongside them for a time. There are around nine months left until the 2020 election, and if you sit this one out, it's likely we won't get another chance. Absolutely.

Yeah, well said, I have nothing to add to that. Thank you, Michael, so much for coming on. This is a touchy-ass topic, for sure. These are the sort of discussions that you can never really have in any real way on, like, social media. And so, you know, I hope that we've at least provided people food for thought, no matter what side of this particular debate they come down on. So I'm really, you know, thankful that you came on and helped have this conversation with me. Before I let you go, can you let people know where they can find you online,

and any plugs you want to make before we wrap up? Absolutely. You can find me on Twitter at underscore Michael T. Carter, spelled A.E.L. I'm also the founders of a leftist video production company called Rosarium Productions. We're all volunteer at www. rosariumproductions.com. So if you have any videos that you are interested in making about social movements, about candidacies of people, we've done some stuff on the housing movement, in New York and some stuff on some candidates,

but it's definitely not limited to that. Beautiful. I will link to all of that in the show notes. Thank you again, Michael. This has been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Brett. How do you get in my state to kill? How do you get in my state to kill?

I need a film of violence to bust up the silence for real. Traumatized thinking I hide how I feel. The truth is alive and well. It's underground living on the Wi-Fi still. Don't buy all the lies they sell when the black hawk flies head right for the head Put a hole in the back of my head called a suicide Walk up with these holes in my hands from the doubt crucified You decide if you want to ride can't stop us when we unified

I woke up with these holes in my hands from the doubt crucified That ain't all heroes save the day figured to pave the way quicker to save another day away before we got to pay the grave thicker we gotta pay the grave thicker we gotta pay the grave thicker we gotta pay the grave thicker it's all up to us to we're about I walk through the valley where the snakes taste with earth, the rain gets thicker, and the pain disfigures. Who's going to rise when saints pray the sinners? The truth won't die when they can hold that. They put a hole in the back of my head called a suicide. Woke up with these holes in my hands from the doubt, crucified. You decide if you want to ride can't stop us when we humidified. I woke up with these holes in my hands from the doubt.

crucified Big matter! She'll be there and watch me down. I don't care. Pull back trigger I woke up I woke up with the dead crucified if you want to ride

can't stop us when we unified They put a hole in the back of my head going to suicide Dishmada