Just as he did during the campaign of 2016.
Bernie Sanders defines his vision for democratic socialism in the United States
When we talk about oligarchy, let us be clear about what we mean.
Right now, in the United States of America, three families control more wealth than the bottom half of our country, some 160 million Americans.
The top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 92% and 49% of all new income generated today goes to the top 1%.
In fact, income and wealth inequality today in the United States is greater than at any time since the 1920s.
He says he is going to tell us what he means by "oligarchy" and then he does not.
To claim this word means anything else than what it actually means is just lying.
noun, plural ol·i·gar·chies.Taken literally, every government in the world today is an oligarchy, including any republic, no matter how benign.
- a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class orclique; government by the few.
- a state or organization so ruled.
- the persons or class so ruling.
But historically the word has usually been understood to mean government by a minority not itself subject to any legal, constitutional, or political control.
In short, absolute or despotic government by a few.
And that is not what Bernie is ranting about and we in America do not live under any such government.
He is ranting about capitalism.
He begins by reciting statistics about income and wealth inequality, both of which are inescapable under capitalism and have never been actually escaped under socialism.
"Wealth inequality" as he uses it is another label for private ownership of the means of production, the defining feature that differentiates capitalism from socialism.
He continues, quoting more statistics, many truly disturbing, in a like tone of furious rage.
And when we talk about oligarchy, it is not just that the very rich are getting much richer.
It is that tens of millions of working-class people, in the wealthiest country on earth, are suffering under incredible economic hardship, desperately trying to survive.
Today, nearly 40 million Americans live in poverty and tonight, 500,000 people will be sleeping out on the streets.
About half of the country lives paycheck to paycheck as tens of millions of our people are an accident, a divorce, a sickness or a layoff away from economic devastation.
While many public schools throughout the country lack the resources to adequately educate our young people, we are the most heavily incarcerated nation on earth.
After decades of policies that have encouraged and subsidized unbridled corporate greed, we now have an economy that is fundamentally broken and grotesquely unfair.
Ignoring history, pretending somehow we should have expected quite the opposite, he complains.
Globally, the situation is even more shocking with most of the world’s wealth concentrated among a very few, while billions of people have almost nothing.
Today, the world’s richest 26 billionaires now own as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people on the planet – half of the world’s population.
Only after this savage denunciation of the object of his lifelong hatred does he address politics.
Across the globe, the [fictitious - PV] movement toward oligarchy runs parallel to the growth of authoritarian regimes – like Putin in Russia, Xi in China, Mohamed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary among others.
These leaders meld corporatist economics with xenophobia and authoritarianism.
They redirect popular anger about inequality and declining economic conditions into violent rage against minorities — whether they are immigrants, racial minorities, religious minorities or the LGBT community.
And to suppress dissent, they are cracking down on democracy and human rights.
He continues with a by now commonplace and absurdly hyperbolic comparison of our own time to the 1930s.
This authoritarian playbook is not new.
The challenge we confront today as a nation, and as a world, is in many ways not different from the one we faced a little less than a century ago, during and after the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Then, as now, deeply-rooted and seemingly intractable economic and social disparities led to the rise of right-wing nationalist forces all over the world.
He extends the comparison over several paragraphs and then returns to the demons of the present, according to him.
Today, America and the world are once again moving towards authoritarianism — and the same right-wing forces of oligarchy, corporatism, nationalism, racism and xenophobia are on the march, pushing us to make the apocalyptically wrong choice that Europe made in the last century.
Today, we now see a handful of billionaires with unprecedented wealth and power.
We see huge private monopolies — operating outside of any real democratic oversight and often subsidized by taxpayers – with the power to control almost every aspect of our lives.
They are the profit-taking gatekeepers of our health care, our technology, our finance system, our food supply and almost all of the other basic necessities of life.
They are Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and giant agri-businesses.
They are the entities with unlimited wealth who surround our nation’s capitol with thousands of well-paid lobbyists, who to a significant degree write the laws that we live under.
Today, we have a demagogue in the White House who, for cheap political gain, is attempting to deflect the attention of the American people away from the real crises that we face and, instead, is doing what demagogues always do — and that is divide people up and legislate hatred.
This is a president who supports brutal family separations, border walls, Muslim bans, anti-LGBT policies, deportations and voter suppression.
It is my very strong belief that the United States must reject that path of hatred and divisiveness — and instead find the moral conviction to choose a different path, a higher path, a path of compassion, justice and love.
It is the path that I call democratic socialism.
And yet what he calls for is far from that, and this champion of Eugene Debs knows that very well.
So why does he call it that?
God knows.
But the fix he calls for is not far from what the first Roosevelt, TR, himself urged in 1912.
Today, in the second decade of the 21st century, we must take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion.
This is the unfinished business of the Democratic Party and the vision we must accomplish.
In order to accomplish that goal, it means committing ourselves to protecting political rights, to protecting civil rights – and to protect economic rights of all people in this country.
As FDR stated in his 1944 State of the Union address: “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”
Today, our Bill of Rights guarantees the American people a number of important constitutionally protected political rights.
And while we understand that these rights have not always been respected and we have so much more work to do, we are proud that our constitution guarantees freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, a free press and other rights because we understand that we can never have true American freedom unless we are free from authoritarian tyranny.
Now, we must take the next step forward and guarantee every man, woman and child in our country basic economic rights – the right to quality health care, the right to as much education as one needs to succeed in our society, the right to a good job that pays a living wage, the right to affordable housing, the right to a secure retirement, and the right to live in a clean environment.
We must recognize that in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, economic rights are human rights.
That is what I mean by democratic socialism.
Still, this is true and fair enough.
Let me be clear. I do understand that I and other progressives will face massive attacks from those who attempt to use the word “socialism” as a slur.
But I should also tell you that I have faced and overcome these attacks for decades — and I am not the only one.
Let us remember that in 1932, Republican President Herbert Hoover claimed that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was, “a disguise for the totalitarian state.”
In 1936 former Democratic New York Governor and presidential candidate Al Smith said in a speech about FDR’s New Deal policies, “Just get the platform of the Democratic Party and get the platform of the Socialist Party and lay them down on your dining-room table, side by side.”
When President Harry Truman proposed a national health care program, the American Medical Association hired Ronald Reagan as their pitchman.
The AMA called the legislation that stemmed from his proposal “socialized medicine” claiming that White House staff were, “followers of the Moscow party line.”
In 1960, Ronald Reagan in a letter to Richard Nixon wrote the following about John F. Kennedy: “Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx.”
In the 1990s, then Congressman Newt Gingrich claimed President Bill Clinton’s health care plan was “centralized bureaucratic socialism.”
The conservative Heritage Foundation has claimed that the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was “a step towards socialism.”
Former Speaker of the House John Boehner claimed the stimulus package, the omnibus spending bill and the budget proposed by President Barack Obama were “all one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment.”
In this regard, President Harry Truman was right when he said that: “Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years…
"Socialism is what they called Social Security.
"Socialism is what they called farm price supports.
"Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.
"Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”
If you are the Trump family, you got $885 million worth of tax breaks and subsidies for your family’s housing empire that is built on racial discrimination.
When Trump screams socialism, all of his hypocrisy will not be lost on the American people. Americans will know that he is attacking all that we take for granted: from Social Security to Medicare to veterans health care to roads and bridges to public schools to national parks to clean water and clean air.
When Trump attacks socialism, I am reminded of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”
And that is the difference between Donald Trump and me.
He believes in corporate socialism for the rich and powerful.
I believe in a democratic socialism that works for the working families of this country.
And then he adopts a line taken by liberals at least since Dewey regarding "true freedom".
(Google "persuasive definition" and "No true Scotsman")
What I believe is that the American people deserve freedom – true freedom.
Freedom is an often used word but it’s time we took a hard look at what that word actually means.
Ask yourself: what does it actually mean to be free?
Are you truly free if you are unable to go to a doctor when you are sick, or face financial bankruptcy when you leave the hospital?
Are you truly free if you cannot afford the prescription drug you need to stay alive?
Are you truly free when you spend half of your limited income on housing, and are forced to borrow money from a payday lender at 200% interest rates.
Are you truly free if you are 70 years old and forced to work because you lack a pension or enough money to retire?
Are you truly free if you are unable to go to attend college or a trade school because your family lacks the income?
Are you truly free if you are forced to work 60 or 80 hours a week because you can’t find a job that pays a living wage?
Are you truly free if you are a mother or father with a new born baby but you are forced to go back to work immediately after the birth because you lack paid family leave?
Are you truly free if you are a small business owner or family farmer who is driven out by the monopolistic practices of big business?
Are you truly free if you are a veteran, who put your life on the line to defend this country, and now sleep out on the streets?
To me, the answer to those questions, in the wealthiest nation on earth, is no, you are not free.
. . . .
In 1944, FDR proposed an economic bill of rights but died a year later and was never able to fulfil that vision. Our job, 75 years later, is to complete what Roosevelt started.
That is why today, I am proposing a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights.
A Bill of Rights that establishes once and for all that every American, regardless of his or her income in entitled to:
- The right to a decent job that pays a living wage
- The right to quality health care
- The right to a complete education
- The right to affordable housing
- The right to a clean environment
- The right to a secure retirement
Over the course of this election my campaign has been releasing — and will continue to release — detailed proposals addressing each of these yet to be realized economic rights.
We will also address the attacks that are being launched each day against the civil rights and civil liberties of our people.
At the end of the day, the one percent may have enormous wealth and power, but they are just the one percent.
When the 99 percent stand together, we can transform society.
These are my values, and that is why I call myself a democratic socialist.
At its core is a deep and abiding faith in the American people to peacefully and democratically enact the transformative change that will create shared prosperity, social equality and true freedom for all.
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