To: The People of the United States, April 20, 2020
Democrats and Bolsheviks
By Mark Albertson
There was a time when Democrats formed the party of the Working Man. More than a generation has passed since Blue-Collar representation has given way to corporate fealty. Which invariably leads to the question, just how democratic are Democrats?
Many cavasses and polls have been conducted to show that Americans generally are in favor of a single-payer health insurance; or if you will, perhaps Medicare for all. Yet corporate Democrats like Schumer and Pelosi would not even allow such expectations to get a proper airing, let alone be seriously considered as bills; except, perhaps, Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation, S. 1804, which was read and then shelved. Obama, when he occupied the Oval Office, eschewed the War Powers Act to involve this Nation in the Libyan venture so as to subject Muammar Gaddafi to regime change; a course of action criticized by fellow Democrat, Jim Himes of Connecticut’s Fourth District. This writer, in 2016, personally witnessed Mr. Himes, in his effort to be reelected, reprove the lame duck president for not even consulting Congress on the aforementioned action in North Africa. Hardly a surprise when many in the Fourth District, who voted for Chicago’s favorite son, would hardly lend the War Powers Act a passing concern let alone that Congress has the power to declare war, not the president.[1] Same has been conveniently bypassed by the American Corporate State. And since the Korean War, presidents, be they Democrat or Republican, have seen fit to avoid this essential in a document to which they swear an oath; another glaring example of America as a political failure, since the Nation no longer follows its Constitutional precepts to the degree required to even be considered a functioning Republic, let alone have a functioning system of Representative Government.
During the 2016 quest for the Oval Office, a candidate reputed to be a Democratic Socialist attempted to run as a Democrat. Since Bernie Sanders understood quite well that running as a third party candidate would disqualify him from participation in those carefully arranged prime time extravaganzas billed as presidential debates—which are little better than superficial forums orchestrated to insure a narrow menu of choices for a dumbed-down electorate, all produced and directed by Democrats and Republicans for the Corporate State and brought into the Nation’s living rooms by corporate-controlled media which has its part to play in this tour de farce.
Sanders’ platform, a progressive agenda which included such goals as the shrinking of the mega-banks, Medicare for All, addressing the crushing dilemma of student loan debt . . . was at odds with the corporate benefactors of the Democratic denomination of the Corporate State. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then Democratic National Committee chair and corporate valet de chambre, was charged with the task of making sure that Obama’s chosen successor, a Wall Street maid servant named Hillary Clinton, emerge the party standard bearer for November 2016. The DNC arranged the deck chairs to insure the desired result, so as to maintain that gravy train of gratuity from those corporate wallets they service. After all, such is the overriding concern on either side of the aisle. Witness Lindsey Graham, who, during the budgetary proceedings in December 2017 to get the Republican Tax Bill passed, warned, “If we do not get this done, our donors will dry up.” And in 2020? Again the DNC closed ranks to freeze out Sanders from any chance of getting the nomination for November 2020. Buttigieg, Klobachar, Booker, Warren, and other panderers to the Corporate State, dropped out of the quest for the nomination to throw their lot to a candidate who is, in actuality, Hillary Clinton without dress.
The Democratic denomination, then, is hardly democratic, and as a denomination of the Corporate State, like its Republican counterpart, cannot be so. Yet it is interesting to see how parties in other countries shed their democratic tendencies. And since it is the centennial of the Russian Civil War, Lenin’s Bolsheviks deserve a look here.
Lenin was not a democrat, at least not in the generally accepted sense of the term. But Democratic Centralism was, at one point, the basis of his Proletarian Party. Democratic Centralism permeated the lowest organs of the party. And it was from such organs that membership filled the higher echelons of the party; while at the same time, those same lower organs of the party were subservient to those same higher echelons they came to staff.
Democratic Centralism also embodied the right of the individual within the party to bring forth ideas, discuss and even criticize competing notions for policy. But once the party came to a decision on policy, the rank and file was obliged to support that policy.
Yet, between 1917-1921, factionalism developed within the Bolshevik Party. And with the Tenth Party Congress, the “On Party Unity” resolution was passed; what with the declining economic fortunes of Russia and civil war, party cohesion was seen as required to hold on to power. “The “On Party Unity” resolution was to be a temporary measure; however in 1922 Joseph Stalin had attained the Secretariat of the Party. And the days of Democratic Centralism remaining as a hallmark of the Communist Party were numbered and, proved unable to survive the totalitarian state of the Georgian Chieftain.
Likewise the DNC, stage-managed the primary victory of the Goldwater Girl over the so-called Democratic Socialist from Vermont, showing the denomination to be what it actually is . . . a fraudulent entity in the control of its corporate paymasters. And since this is so, the party leadership was willing to sell out much of their rank and file, even at the risk of its presidential preference losing to a pompous land-developer from Queens, so as to maintain their donors and thereby, insure corporate control. And like the Bolsheviks before them, Democrats gave up being the party of the Working Man. And in 2020, Democrats have continued their decades of fealty to the Corporate State at the expense of the Working Man.
Endnotes
[1] Refer to the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8, paragraph 11, where the powers of Congress are listed, “To declare war. . . “
Bibliography
Robinson, Kirk Ward and Eaton, Christopher, Founding Character: The Words & Documents That Forged a Nation, Roan Alder Publishers, Nashville, Tenn., 2003.
