| IT'S OK TO BE ANGRY ABOUT CAPITALISM Bernie Sanders with John Nichols New York: Crown, February 2023 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-593-23871-4 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-593-23871-0 | 293pp. | HC | $28.00 | |
Ask most any Republican, and he or she will tell you the United States of America is a capitalist country. But is this correct? I maintain that it is correct only in the most general sense. The reason is that true capitalism requires a level playing field, and that is not what we have in America today. Instead, what we have is greatly increased monopoly conditions in critical industries and regulatory capture of government at the federal and state levels.
If you doubt this, look up the amounts spent on lobbying by those industries. Look at the decline of labor union influence over the past five decades. Note the results of a 2014 study cited by Robert Reich in Saving Capitalism: "The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."1
These changes have come to pass because of a long game the Republicans are playing. Think of the maxim Ronald Reagan, elected 1980, incorporated into his first inaugural address: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem." Reagan crushed a strike by air traffic controllers, leading to an era of strikebreaking that left the labor movement greatly diminished, management of large corporations holding substantial influence over government, and massive amounts of money "trickling up" to a small coterie of wealthy elites.
This, in a few words, is what Bernie Sanders is on about. It is not only Republicans who oppose him; he faces opposition from the leaders of his own party as well.
Eventually Chuck Schumer warmed up to the idea and joined me on the floor of the Senate to demand a vote on the $2,000 direct payments. To his credit, Schumer pressed the issue, and in short order we had the entire Democratic Caucus on our side. McConnell was furious. He didn't just object to the procedural move. He made the ridiculous claim that $2,000 direct payments for working-class families was somehow "socialism for the rich." You can't make this stuff up. The same Republican leader who had led the charge to hand over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the rich and to multinational corporations, in the uber-capitalist orgy of Trump's first two years in office, was suddenly claiming that $2,000 direct payments to working-class Americans was "socialism." McConnell's argument was absurd, and it put him in opposition to the 78 percent of Americans who supported the idea. For me, the fight for those $2,000 payments became an opportunity to highlight how far McConnell and his allies were willing to go in order to redistribute wealth upward. I seized on the opportunity, making note of the fact that—after Trump's tax bill was signed into law—McConnnell had been more than happy to see energy tycoon Charles Koch pocket a $1.4 billion tax break. He had no problem with Amazon, one of the most profitable corporations in America, receiving a $129 million tax rebate check from the IRS after paying nothing in federal income taxes. But, suddenly, in a harsh winter for millions of Americans, he was "very concerned" that someone making $75,000 a year might receive a $2,000 check to help pay their bills. The hypocrisy was off the charts. – Pages 67-68 |
Every candidate promises fundamental change: a restoration of prosperity to the poor and middle class, wider availability of affordable health care, a new birth of freedom — relief from whatever problems poll the highest at a given time.
It is another thing entirely, however, to deliver fundamental change. Bernie Sanders is one of the few who can muster the political strength to do so.
The crowd of 27,000, the largest of the campaign to that point, welcomed me warmly when I took the stage. I knew that we had passes the test. And let me say this: It was an indescribable feeling to stand on a stage and look out, as far as the eye could see, at a crowd of supporters from every conceivable background who had come out on that fall day to carry forward a campaign for fundamental change. – Page 30 |
American society, however, has seen very fundamental changes over the past 70 years — and not always in ways that benefit ordinary Americans. Let me lay out a few of them here.
It's time we change that.
The reason is the huge costs of running a successful campaign today, and the loosening of rules about who may donate that money and whether the donors must identify themselves. The Supreme Court cleverly clouded the picture when it declared that money is speech, effectively giving corporations with huge war chests the loudest voices in the room. Naturally, operating under the Libertarian ethos, they used these "loud voices" to get their way.
Let's be clear. While the middle class continues to decline, the system we have today is doing extremely well for the people who own it. These oligarchs have enormous wealth. They have enormous power. In fact, for the 1 percent, things have never been better. They have their mansions all over the world, their private islands, their expensive art, their yachts, their private jets. Some of them have spaceships that, someday, may take them to Mars. These oligarchs like the way things are going and, with unlimited resources at their disposal, will do everything possible to defend what they have and maintain the status quo. Yes. We live in a "democracy"—but they own that democracy. They spend tens of billions of dollars on campaign contributions to both major political parties in order to buy politicians who will do their bidding. They spend billions more on lobbying firms to influence governmental decisions at the federal, state, and local levels. That is why, over the last fifty years, we have consistently seen public policy that benefits the very rich at the expense of everyone else. – Pages 4-5 |
You can see this play out in Chapter 3, "The Fight to Build Back Better." This concerns the struggle to pass measures you may have heard about — a $15 minimum wage, paid parental leave, negotiated caps on the prices of prescription drugs, coverage of dental, hearing, and vision care, and more. Follow Bernie through "A last chance to get it right" (page 92-95) and watch his amendments fall with only single-digit vote tallies in favor.
After fifteen hours of debate and votes on twenty-eight amendments, the reconciliation bill was passed by a vote of 51-50, with the vice president casting the tie-breaking vote. – Page 95 |
It was a bill that had been whittled down to a fraction of what was needed, but it passed. In my opinion, the excuses for weakening the bill so drastically do not bear close examination. But that's water under the bridge now. The question is what we do next. Bernie puts it this way:
I'm not interested in making excuses. I don't tell people to be satisfied with what they get—or to accept that some things will never be gotten. I tell people to demand more. And so, with this history told, It is time to talk about what more we should be demanding. It is time to look forward—to present an agenda for upending uber-capitalism and point toward that North Star future where economic and social and racial justice are not just a promise but a reality. – Page 95 |
The rest of the book is devoted to explaining what he wants to do. His agenda, in my opinion, is practical in the best sense: It consists in what promotes the general welfare, not in what will merely slip under the fence erected by the oligarchs around their privileges. America will not be a power in the world, nor a nation the world looks to for justice, unless her citizens are empowered and unless they are treated justly. Bernie tells us how to get there.
I've tried to present what he advocates in tabular form, but I can't do that based on what is in the book, which is mostly in narrative form rather than statistics. But if you read this book, which you should, I believe you will understand why Bernie Sanders has the ideas that will best serve Americans in the years to come. I give the book top marks and rate it a must-read. It is not a keeper because it lacks an index, and because the political environment changes too fast for it to be more than a general recommendation for his positions.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.