If Bernie Sanders is a socialist, why does he want to preserve the middle class?

[Fire]

So maybe I am a complete ignoramus but..

If Bernie Sanders is a socialist, why does he want to preserve the middle class? I thought that socialists were about eliminating class. He is also all about supporting small businesses and entrepreneurship, essentially small time capitalists. I would think that a socialist would be backing the workers or worker owned cooperatives instead of business. Small businesses aren't saints, they aren't the angels that American culture presents them as, often they can be just as bad as the big ones and can even get away with a lot of things the big ones can't because they are under the radar of tort lawyers who might otherwise sue them for wage theft and exempt from certain regulations.

I like Bernie Sanders, I'll probably vote for him but I have no expectation that voting will bring about any meaningful change, whether or not he wins, what we need is a paradigm shift and a revolution.

[Futility Personified]

Well... he isn't. He's a social democrat, a believer in a fairer capitalism, with stronger unions and a better welfare system, a large amount of things state run. I think things would improve for the american working class if he got in, but it is telling that they campaign on making things better for the 'middle' class. That said, his foreign policy is supposed to be horrendous. The comparison that is easy to make is with Corbyn, whom he is firmly on the right of.

The eventual debate is between reformism and outright revolution, of capitulation or acceleration. Accelerationism is the idea that as things get worse, the fight back will get better, which is great if you aren't suffering immediately. The flipside is it also allows the ruling classes to become more entrenched. The reformist argument is that we can make things better steadily, and increase class consciousness, and chip away at the bourgeois state, though once immediate concerns are met, people tend to demobilize. The revolutionary argument will probably be interpreted as about 5 different things if this thread runs the typical revleft course.

[reviscom1]

The main things that both Sanders and Corbyn have achieved/will achieve are symbolic.

They have demonstrated how right wing our political culture (or at least political establishment) has become, in that even S and Cs' mild policies are portrayed by establishment mouthpieces as totally outre.

The right are always complaining about political correctness but there is in fact an equally dominant strain of right wing political correctness, as the reaction to these 2 gents demonstrates.

They have also shown up how right wing the "liberal" centre has become in our two countries (naturally, as the centre will always move in the direction of the dominant ideology of the day). The panicked reaction of liberals in the UK towards Corbyn has been hilarious because he has really forced them to think about the substance that lies behind their easy profession of progressive values. And they don't like to be forced to think about it. They have really tied themselves up in knots trying to sound progressive while at the same time pouring scorn on Corbyn, and their contradictory newspaper articles are hilarious to read.

Finally, Sanders & Corbyn have just made a moribund, self-satisfied, intellectually bankrupt establishment cough and splutter in befuddled outrage and this is always a treat to watch.

Whether they will ever achieve much more than this symbolism is open to question. Nevertheless I have found it satisfying.

[khad]

If you want to get a sense of what Sanders actually means to do about capitalism and financialization, get a whiff of the actual details of his so-called Wall Street Tax. In particular, pay attention to the vast gulf between his proposed tax rates of securities vs. derivatives. Downright sneaky and nefarious, I'd even say. It's an open question as to whether he actually believes what he's preaching or if his campaign is just banking on the economic illiteracy of his fanbase.

Anyone who thinks reformism can do anything to alter the bases of the capitalist economy is deluded.

He sure talks up a populist game, but let's be real here - populism != socialism