Comparing Corbyn and Sanders

In response to Paul Berman's three-part series in Tablet on the American left, James Bloodworth takes a look at the differences, as he sees them, between Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. 

As Paul Berman notes in the first part of his perceptive series of essays on the left and the Jews, “there is pressure on the Western left to accommodate, in the name of anti-racism and Third World solidarity, as many Islamist principles as possible, in regard to blasphemy, gender roles, and the iniquity of the Jews.” This is an apt description of the political tendency that Corbyn represents but it does not apply Sanders. Nor does Berman suggest it does but it has become a commonplace among political commentators to conflate the two distinct forms of socialist tradition. In so doing, they obscure a vital distinction in the political choices we face and Corbyn and Sanders have fundamentally different ideas of what politics should accomplish and whom it should serve.  [...]

Corbyn himself is not of a theoretical bent. Yet the Labour leader’s career-long flirtation with militant, religious fundamentalists—so long as they are anti-Western—fits perfectly with the political tradition he was blooded in. For Corbyn, opposing western military action and political hegemony requires soft-soaking the west’s enemies, whatever they happen to profess as their own cause. This is where the New Left and its fixation on the global south blends with the toxic, residual legacy of Stalinism. The lionization of authoritarian regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, and even North Korea, by Corbyn and his allies derives from the notion that any society with nationalised property, however repressive and backward, is a historical advance on the capitalist west. Meanwhile, Corbyn’s reflexive solidarity with ‘national liberation’ movements, regardless of whether they are anti-Semitic or harbor bigots, owes to the overriding fact that they oppose Western imperialism. This extends to movements which do not wish to liberate people but enslave them, such as Islamism.

Sanders’ class-rooted politics has its faults, including an occasional monomania. But historically it has been far better at avoiding the trap of crude anti-imperialism that afflicts romantic Third-Worldists such as Corbyn, who throw any class analysis out the window when it comes to movements that oppose the United States and Israel. On a psychological level the Labour leader seems to share the vicarious attraction certain mild-mannered left-wing men have for the allure of revolutionary violence. Of course, Corbyn may have been on the ‘right side of history,’ as his supporters like to claim, from time to time. But then, if you have opposed everything the West has done for 40 years, you are invariably going to be right occasionally.

There can be little doubt that Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders have each tapped into a widespread disillusionment generated by the failures of free market capitalism. Yet the two men come from distinctive political traditions that, if brought to power, would create very different societies and impacts for the ordinary people who lived within them. Look to the past to understand the present; and look at where today’s socialists came from to understand where they wish to take us.

I think he's right about Corbyn, but I struggle with sentiments such as "it had been apparent for some time that capitalism as we know it is broken". Had it? What does that even mean? Of course there are problems - when are there not problems? - but such a formulation only ever comes from those who envisage a socialist alternative. Like, um, Venezuela, perhaps?

Comments

[Dom]

“The lionization of authoritarian regimes like Cuba, Venezuela, and even North Korea ...”

I only read about Corbyn on your blog. Did he actually lionize NK?

[Mick H]

Yes, that caught my eye too. I can't find anything said by Corbyn which would support such a statement.

Andrew Murray, who's a "special political advisor" to Corbyn, was a former Communist Party member and has expressed "solidarity" with North Korea. But Corbyn himself? I don't think so.