Yeah, this is a conversation we need to have more often. Bernie is basically a modern-day Bernstein. A century apart, but they’re playing the same game, pushing reformism that acts like a political pacifier. It sucks all the energy that should be going toward actually dismantling capitalism and redirects it into these dead-end, “safer” channels.
Bernstein was a big deal in Germany’s SPD, and he fully rejected the idea of revolutionary change. He argued that we could just slowly, gradually reform capitalism into socialism through voting and parliament. He basically tried to write off class conflict as some outdated concept. And in the end, he totally defanged the SPD. Instead of building real power, the working class got distracted with fights for slightly higher wages or limited welfare programs, all while the core capitalist hierarchy stayed perfectly intact. Rosa Luxemburg called this out perfectly saying that it turns socialism into a mild appendage of liberalism, sapping the working class of its transformative agency.
And you can see people like Bernie walking the exact same path. Sure, he talks a big game about inequality and corporate power, but his entire platform is just social democracy 101. It’s policies like Medicare for All, free college, a $15 minimum wage. These are bandaids on a bullet wound. They treat the symptoms but leave the underlying disease of capitalist relations totally untouched. Even worse, his whole project was about winning an election, which funneled what could have been a massive, militant grassroots movement straight into the Democratic Party, an institution that exists to manage and preserve capitalism. All that incredible energy got absorbed into phone banking and voter outreach instead of building real, lasting power outside the system, like strong unions, tenant organizations, and community networks.
Then the moment he conceded to Hillary and then Biden, his base just dissolved into thin air. People got disillusioned or fell back into voting for the “lesser evil.” There was no independent structure to keep the pressure on. It’s a direct parallel to how the SPD got integrated into the capitalist state in Weimar Germany. But even if his entire agenda magically passed, it would still exist within a neoliberal framework. It’s like the New Deal that coexisted along side Jim Crow, imperialism, and violent union-busting. Reforms inside the system are always conditional. They’re only allowed when they’re useful for capital, and their real purpose is to demobilize us.
A real challenge to capitalism needs a long-term strategy that mixes direct action, mass education, and building our own power bases from the ground up. Imagine if, instead of just telling people to vote for him, Bernie had urged his supporters to unionize their workplaces, organize rent strikes, and create mutual aid networks alongside the electoral stuff. Look at movements like MAS in Bolivia for an example of how you build grassroots power that can actually pressure institutions while raising people’s consciousness. But instead, his campaign became all about him, and when he lost, his followers were left with nothing.
The really scary part is how the reformist path actively paves the way for fascism. By channeling everything into parliamentary games, the SPD deprioritized mass mobilization. Workers were told to seek concessions instead of challenging capitalist power, which eroded class consciousness and left everyone totally unprepared to fight the Nazis. When the fascists started gaining ground, the SPD clung to their legalistic strategies and even refused to support strikes or armed resistance against Hitler. Their blind faith in bourgeois democracy made them miss the existential threat, and in a final, infamous betrayal, they ended up allying with the Nazis against the communists.
And now we’re watching the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party follow the same exact playbook. They operate entirely within capitalist constraints, which undermines any chance for radical change and just fuels the right-wing backlash. The Democrats are brilliant at absorbing people’s energy into their campaigns, and their reliance on corporate donors guarantees that they can only pursue watered-down policies that leave people disillusioned. The SPD’s reformism literally enabled fascism by disorganizing the working class and making capitalist violence seem legitimate. In the same way, the Democratic Party’s “pragmatic incrementalism” sustains a system that breeds the reactionary monsters today. Trump is a direct product of these policies. We’re literally just watching history repeat itself as a farce.
Yeah, this is a conversation we need to have more often. Bernie is basically a modern-day Bernstein. A century apart, but they’re playing the same game, pushing reformism that acts like a political pacifier. It sucks all the energy that should be going toward actually dismantling capitalism and redirects it into these dead-end, “safer” channels.
Bernstein was a big deal in Germany’s SPD, and he fully rejected the idea of revolutionary change. He argued that we could just slowly, gradually reform capitalism into socialism through voting and parliament. He basically tried to write off class conflict as some outdated concept. And in the end, he totally defanged the SPD. Instead of building real power, the working class got distracted with fights for slightly higher wages or limited welfare programs, all while the core capitalist hierarchy stayed perfectly intact. Rosa Luxemburg called this out perfectly saying that it turns socialism into a mild appendage of liberalism, sapping the working class of its transformative agency.
And you can see people like Bernie walking the exact same path. Sure, he talks a big game about inequality and corporate power, but his entire platform is just social democracy 101. It’s policies like Medicare for All, free college, a $15 minimum wage. These are bandaids on a bullet wound. They treat the symptoms but leave the underlying disease of capitalist relations totally untouched. Even worse, his whole project was about winning an election, which funneled what could have been a massive, militant grassroots movement straight into the Democratic Party, an institution that exists to manage and preserve capitalism. All that incredible energy got absorbed into phone banking and voter outreach instead of building real, lasting power outside the system, like strong unions, tenant organizations, and community networks.
Then the moment he conceded to Hillary and then Biden, his base just dissolved into thin air. People got disillusioned or fell back into voting for the “lesser evil.” There was no independent structure to keep the pressure on. It’s a direct parallel to how the SPD got integrated into the capitalist state in Weimar Germany. But even if his entire agenda magically passed, it would still exist within a neoliberal framework. It’s like the New Deal that coexisted along side Jim Crow, imperialism, and violent union-busting. Reforms inside the system are always conditional. They’re only allowed when they’re useful for capital, and their real purpose is to demobilize us.
A real challenge to capitalism needs a long-term strategy that mixes direct action, mass education, and building our own power bases from the ground up. Imagine if, instead of just telling people to vote for him, Bernie had urged his supporters to unionize their workplaces, organize rent strikes, and create mutual aid networks alongside the electoral stuff. Look at movements like MAS in Bolivia for an example of how you build grassroots power that can actually pressure institutions while raising people’s consciousness. But instead, his campaign became all about him, and when he lost, his followers were left with nothing.
The really scary part is how the reformist path actively paves the way for fascism. By channeling everything into parliamentary games, the SPD deprioritized mass mobilization. Workers were told to seek concessions instead of challenging capitalist power, which eroded class consciousness and left everyone totally unprepared to fight the Nazis. When the fascists started gaining ground, the SPD clung to their legalistic strategies and even refused to support strikes or armed resistance against Hitler. Their blind faith in bourgeois democracy made them miss the existential threat, and in a final, infamous betrayal, they ended up allying with the Nazis against the communists.
And now we’re watching the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party follow the same exact playbook. They operate entirely within capitalist constraints, which undermines any chance for radical change and just fuels the right-wing backlash. The Democrats are brilliant at absorbing people’s energy into their campaigns, and their reliance on corporate donors guarantees that they can only pursue watered-down policies that leave people disillusioned. The SPD’s reformism literally enabled fascism by disorganizing the working class and making capitalist violence seem legitimate. In the same way, the Democratic Party’s “pragmatic incrementalism” sustains a system that breeds the reactionary monsters today. Trump is a direct product of these policies. We’re literally just watching history repeat itself as a farce.