Bernie Sanders is by no means an unprecedented phenomenon in American politics. In fact, progressive politics has a long and storied history, beginning in the 19th century and marked by remarkable successes that we all enjoy today.
Among these successes are workplace safety and hygiene, workers' compensation, pensions, women's suffrage, the minimum wage, prohibition of child labor, the 40-hour workweek, pure-food laws, a living wage, the breaking of corporate trusts — and the list goes on. All these were conceived and spearheaded by progressives, and they eventually became realities in America. Imagine life today without them.
And all these ideas were ferociously opposed by conservatives and so-called moderates. The progressives were beset on all sides by the forces of the conservatives and moderates — the protectors of the status quo — and suffered prison and even death during their struggle for the rights of ordinary people.
Theodore Roosevelt ran for president as the Progressive Party candidate in 1912. He had been blacklisted by the protectors of the status quo for his progressive social and economic policy proposals. T.R.'s speech at the Progressive Party's convention in Chicago in August 1912 is an excellent summary of progressive ideas championed by him, the labor movement, the women's movement, farming communities and industrial workers.
Roosevelt referred to the protectors of the status quo as the centers of power and privilege in America "sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege and reaction," not addressing the "vital issues of the day" in any meaningful way. Sounds like the Democrats and Republicans, doesn't it? We talk for decades about inequality, education, infrastructure, health care, poverty and affordable housing, etc. — climate barely even mentioned — and nothing ever happens. That is because the two parties can frame the issues and questions only from the perspectives of power and privilege.
Sanders has a vision and a different perspective. All his Democratic Party opponents are agents of power and privilege and are arrayed against him. Listening to them and the media of power and privilege, it seems they'd rather Trump than Sanders.
Sanders has generated lots of discussions about socialism, the word usually used pejoratively. Pure socialism is not practiced anywhere on earth except maybe in religious cloisters. Socialism arose as a reaction to the abuses and failings of capitalism. Consider the roots of the words themselves — "social" meaning community and people on one hand, and "capital" meaning money and assets on the other.
Individual people use capital to serve their needs and those of their families and maybe their communities. However, in our national free-market economy, it works the other way around. People find themselves serving capital, creating ever more capital for the centers of power and privilege. This has even gone so far as to refer to human capital as if people were inanimate capital assets to be used to amass wealth.
Democratic socialists believe some humanity needs to be injected into our capitalism. Because it is capital-focused, free-market capitalism is not able to solve our really big social problems — solutions would require capital be expended on social concerns and diverted away from capital serving capital, an anathema to the centers of power and privilege.
Some people spoke against Obamacare as socialist. Actually, it was about the opposite, a huge, taxpayer-funded subsidy for insurance companies as evidenced by the stock values, earnings and profits of those companies skyrocketing after Obamacare went into effect. A little bit of socialism would have used all those billions and billions of dollars to provide health care for people rather than fattening bank accounts of a few individuals and corporations while more the 30 million people are still without care.
I'm a white guy, 73, a retired chemical engineer and veteran, and I stand with Sanders.
Steven Boyer writes from St. Paul.
