Did you watch Bernie Sanders' speech that was live-streamed last night?
Obviously he is preparing to toss in the towel and throw his support to Hillary Clinton under the guise of defeating Trump and the Republicans.
But, why do we want to defeat Trump? Isn't the reason because we don't like, nor want, Wall Street's thoroughly reactionary agenda of wars abroad paid for with austerity measures shoved down our throats?
Well, Hillary Clinton is offering the same agenda... no more benign than Trumps.
Now, let us face reality. Bernie Sanders has built no movement. He would like us to believe he will take a stand in defense of his very dubious twelve point program and platform at the Democratic Party's National Convention but how will he do this with only a few delegates who will be vastly outnumbered?
This is no movement... not a movement capable of winning reforms; certainly not capable of ending these dirty imperialist wars nor stopping new ones from being started by Trump or Hillary. There is no movement for socialism which is required here and now in order to save the planet and improve the lives of working people and working class families caught up in this "Cost-of-Living Crisis" neither Sanders nor his "movement" nor Hillary Clinton have broached.
There is no talk about legislating a "21st Century Full-Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" along the lines advocated by Congressman Wright Patman nor William Winpisinger, the socialist trade union leader, that would necessitate "beating swords into plowshares" so we could put millions to work solving the problems of the people like a National Public Health Care System which would create some twelve-million new jobs or the badly needed National Public Child Care System creating over three-million new jobs both publicly funded, publicly administered and publicly delivered without the greedy hands of private profiteers in the public trough.
We need an anti-monopoly/anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and pro-socialist people's party based in the working class motivated to solve the problems of working people and with the intent, not to regulate Wall Street, but challenge Wall Street for political and economic power.
Our class and all humanity along with our planet cannot survive under capitalism in the near term so let us stop talking about socialism as if it is something many years down the road--- we must get our country onto the socialist road now, not later. This is a question of survival.
Working people require many reforms in order to solve pressing problems but socialism should not be tabled in order to wage a struggle for reforms--- the struggles for reforms are urgent and the struggle for socialism is urgent. There is no need to fight for one or the other when we should be struggling on both fronts simultaneously. Anyone advocating anything less is confusing and misleading people while putting us at risk.
I wouldn't expect the well-heeled muddle-headed upper middle class intellectuals who don't have to suffer the pain of a toothache because they can't afford to go to a dentist to understand any of this.
Only when grassroots and rank-and-file working class activists experiencing these pressing problems take the initiative to organize real movements for the kind of change we need in our neighborhoods, where we work and where we go to school will we begin to empower the working class... class action power is what this struggle is all about.
