tfast wrote:
>
> Sanders says that he is for:
>
> Single payer state administered health care
> A Wealth Tax
> A minimum wage increase
Anyone can say they are for anything. It butters no parsnips.
>
> These three items are no small potatos and go against the grain of
> neoliberal hegemony which seems to have infected most social democrats. It
> seems to me that these three modest proposals would be a good core set of
> popular policies that all leftists could embrace in the US. If the this was
> all an unreal socialist could accomplish it would put to shame what "real"
> socialists have achieved lately.
But he hasn't accomplished one of them yet -- and (prediction) he isn't going to accomplish any of them. And moreover no _party_ is (a) going to incorporate them into its (real not merely rhetorical) program and (b) win enough power to put them into practice. Put another way, Sanders is _not_ a straw showing which way the wind is blowing. He's a curiosity made possible by the special demographics of Vermont. PERIOD.
There will be _significant_ reforms that make a difference in the lives of masses of people (in the u.s. and in the world out there) when and only when a mass movement for those reforms emerges _outside_ the electoral arena. Then the 'establishment' will adopt modified versions of the demands, and a new cycle of grudging retreat the the left will begin again.
Carrol
Carrol