It seems already there is a growing rift in the Bernie Sanders camp and the burgeoning Andrew Yang camp. This kind of makes me feel frustrated and conflicted. Both candidates are excellent and have good policies that would help people, but the two groups seem to be taking jabs at one another over policy and ideology, with some of them demonizing the other to an extreme extent.
The Bernie Sanders crowd seems to be a bit more malicious over it. I know the Bernie crowd has high standards and skepticism of a lot of candidates, and with good reason, but it frustrates me to see them bash Andrew Yang and refer to him as a "trap." They act like he's some closet libertarian who wants to destroy the government and make people worse off by taking welfare away from them. Yang himself stated he's not interested in taking welfare away from people, merely giving people more options. While there are some legitimate complaints from the Sanders crowd I already covered on here including a handful of his policies, he seems to have good intentions, and is not seemingly malevolent like I would suspect other candidates of being, he's not bought out.
The big complaint seems to come, though, from the fact that Yang isn't a "socialist." He does not want to seize the means of production, and rather, provide a more humane form of capitalism, and to many of these people that's a deal breaker, for them, it has to be socialism, and they often attribute a lot of Sanders' policies as forms of socialism....when they don't appear to be.
The Yang camp seems a bit more open to the Bernie people, but at the same time I'm also detecting some hostility there on policy. Once again, the big problem seems to come from the idea that Bernie is a "socialist". I know Yang appeals to a very diverse crowd, including people ranging from "Bernie bros" like me to literal alt right 4channers and everything in between, so it's no surprise some are turned off from left wing policy other than UBI, but honestly, I feel like we're eating our own over labels. Bernie, at least on the campaign trail, isn't so much a socialist, but a social democrat, and the way I see it, if you like Bernie, you should at least somewhat like Yang, and vice versa. Yes, their visions are different, but only in the details, the two candidates both support a transformative vision of the economy and will bring about change that will help millions of people in significant ways. I'm not trying to underscore the policy and ideology differences here, but I would think most Bernie supporters should at least like Yang somewhat, and Yang supporters should at least like Bernie somewhat. We might have our preferred vision at the end of the day, but I don't see openness toward each other as a zero sum game. People seem to have this weird all or nothing mentality toward each other, and seem turned off and alienated by the other side over ideological differences. I can understand this given my pickiness in 2016. Sometimes the differences are just too big to reconcile and you have to draw the line somewhere. For me, HRC was on the other side of that line. Sanders and Yang? I'm cool with both. Sure, I like Yang better ideologically but I'm not exactly gonna say no to Bernie.
What is the source over this major disagreement? Well, it seems to be over the "S" word, dreaded "socialism." A lot of the Sanders crowd I discuss politics with seem to be socialists. Full fledged socialists. They see capitalism in and of itself as fundamentally broken and needs to be changed, and some of these guys seem to be calling for "decommodification" of basic needs and nationalization of many industries...which I personally find to be a turnoff. Then you have the capitalist Yang supporters who think that Sanders represents nationalization of industries and 20th century luddite solutions (I can't say I disagree with the second assessment to some degree) and that his views are bad. Both of these perspectives seem to miss the mark and grossly misinterpret what Sanders is about.
Bernie Sanders, despite calling himself a "democratic socialist", is basically channeling FDR, the new deal, and Nordic social democracy in his platform. Yes, he speaks fiery rhetoric about the corporations, the 1%, etc. But ultimately, medicare for all exists in Canada, free college exists in Europe, high minimum wages exist in much of the industrialized world, and the "green new deal" is just a modified version of FDR's new deal from the 1930s. Heck, this is exactly what Sanders invoked when asked what "socialism" means. He explicitly rejected the government owning the means of production, which is a smart move. This means that he supports....*gasp*, a form of what Andrew Yang would consider "human centered capitalism"! They're not much different. Both are supporting variations of social democracy! They just have different ways of getting there. Both sides need to stop acting like Sanders is gonna be inaugurated while waving red flags and singing the Soviet national anthem, both the people who want that and don't want that need to chill. Bernie isn't going to herald in an age of "socialism" for better or for worse. The dude is basically FDR.
So what do I mean by basic income or socialism? Well, there is a form of socialism I'm okay with, and that's the worker cooperative model for businesses, which Sanders also supports. Such a model would maintain the market system, but also change who owns the means of production in a decentralized manner. This maintains all of the good aspects of capitalism like competition, freedom, markets, while eliminating the fact that businesses are like mini dictatorships in which ownership of wealth becomes concentrated at the top. Yang does not explicitly support this, but Sanders does, so I guess Sanders is "socialist" in this sense, but this does not seem to be what his advocates seem to want in entirety given the rhetoric of nationalization of businesses. I don't think that this "socialism" is an end all though. As I discussed a few years back, socialism of this kind does not fix issues with the market, it does not fix work culture, it does not eliminate the need for labor laws or safety nets or even basic income. I personally believe we should have both. Basic income on the other hand, does not fix who owns property and the means to create more wealth. This will lead to inherent long term issues involving wealth being concentrated at the top, despite concerted efforts to avoid it. This is one aspect in which the "socialists" are right.
Honestly, we need both. Basic income provides a safety net that would make millions of peoples' lives better, and I prefer it over a rehash of 20th century ideas like Sanders supports. Not that I have a particular dislike of Sanders' ideas, I like that the dude wants to make peoples' lives better, even if I disagree with how. Socialism, in terms of a decentralized worker cooperative model for businesses, would likely solve the core issue with "capitalism" that socialists complain about, while maintaining virtually all benefits of capitalism itself. Honestly, it's hard to say if I'm even a capitalist or a socialist. This ideology makes me too moderate for most socialists, but also more extreme than most capitalists. Either way, can we all just agree that all of these solutions are better than the crap Clinton offered in 2016, and the republican solutions of the past 40 years? Please? I believe the two camps have way more in common than what separates them.
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