Let’s start with an argument. It’s a general argument about electability, but that’s no fun. Instead, I’ll use the more provocative case of Bernie Sanders. The motivating claim is that electability stands in tension with systemic change. Or, to put it differently, that not being a threat to the capitalist system is a prerequisite to attaining electability. Replace ‘Bernie Sanders’ with any other candidate and it works roughly the same. With other candidates, it’s usually so obvious it approaches triviality.
Here’s the argument.
1. Either Bernie Sanders is electable or he isn’t.
2. If Bernie Sanders is electable, his presidency isn’t a threat to capitalism.
3. If Bernie Sanders isn’t electable, his presidency isn’t a threat to capitalism.
4. Therefore, a Bernie Sanders presidency isn’t a threat to capitalism.
A Note on Triviality
I said earlier this argument is trivial for most candidates. You can probably see why. Replace ‘Bernie Sanders’ with ‘Hillary Clinton’. Or with ‘Joe Biden’. They’re obviously not threats to capitalism. Among the candidates not named Sanders, none – despite some of the campaign narrative – presents even a minimally plausible threat to capitalism.
But Sanders is a bit more provocative. Lots of people think his presidency would be a threat to capitalism. We know he was a socialist back in the 1970s. Jacobin thinks Sanders is still a socialist, albeit one who advocates a social democratic route to socialism. Both think Sanders represents a threat to capitalism, whether in the short or the long term. But the above argument contradicts all this.
The Electability Dilemma
I’ll look at the argument in more depth, and at each premise in turn. I think there’s a lot we can learn from it.
1. Either Bernie Sanders is electable or he isn’t.
So this one looks straightforward enough. He is or he ain’t, right?
Maybe. Some people argue electability is a myth of some kind or another. People often center this claim particularly around specific candidates, such as Joe Biden. Others argue the electability of certain types of candidates, like white men, is a myth.
But these claims don’t threaten the ontology of electability, so to speak. They’re arguments that people make bad decisions about who’s electable, not that there’s no such thing as electability. Other arguments do threaten that ontology. Kate Manne, for example, argues that ‘electability’ is a social fact we create. There’s no such thing as a candidate who’s more or less electable before the pundits start punding. Once people frame the issues, candidates become electable. There’s a rich philosophical literature around this, particularly Ian Hacking’s book The Social Construction of What? As well as my own book Classify and Label.
I suppose there’s an even stronger view that that ‘electability’ simply doesn’t exist, whether as a construct or not. Sherrod Brown sometimes talks like this. I’ll set this view aside because I think it’s extremely implausible.
The point is it’s more complicated than it looks. But for present purposes, I’ll assume electability exists in some form. Probably a form close to what Manne describes. And that each candidate either fits into the box or doesn’t.
2. If Bernie Sanders is electable, his presidency isn’t a threat to capitalism.
I guess this is the big one, right? Jacobin, Sunkara, some of the DSA Caucuses, et al., mean to deny it. And I’m not exactly going to endorse this premise, though I do find it powerful. Here’s why.
Elections serve a certain function in the capitalist system. At the risk of oversimplification, I’ll say this function is to shape the contours of discussion and action. They do this through allowing (limited) public input into the operations of the state. They allow this input up to levels safe to the overall system, and the system is elastic enough to open and close input as needed for its own sustainability.
And so, let’s say we have a Eugene V. Debs here or a Communist candidate there. They bring new ideas into the system, push them in, and the system filters those ideas through various processes. The capitalist system defangs those ideas and gives them an institutional structure. We can draw a line from, say, the Socialist Party of America, through ideological and practical filtering, to mainstream programs like the New Deal aimed at sustaining capitalism.
3. If Bernie Sanders isn’t electable, his presidency isn’t a threat to capitalism.
This is straightforward in at least one sense. You can’t enact policy if you don’t win. I mentioned Eugene V. Debs above, right?
But might even an un-electable (or just un-elected) Bernie Sanders help build a movement threatening capitalism down the road? Sure, it’s possible, but it’s unlikely. At the very least, I’ll say a Sanders campaign can’t be (and shouldn’t be) the core of such a movement. If we want to talk about elections, better the campaign emerge from the movement than create the movement.
We’re a bit far from the point, so let’s get back to it. If you look at campaigns like the 2016 Sanders campaign or the 1988 Jesse Jackson campaign, the main function of these campaigns is to serve as a pressure valve in the capitalist system. They bring new issues, and later new voters, to the attention of the Democratic Party, its officials, and some of its constituents. They ultimately help the Democratic Party become more responsive to public demand.
Sanders, in particular. By pushing the Democratic Party to adopt the Sandersista Trinity – single-payer health insurance, a $15 minimum wage, and free college – Sanders put the Democrats on better footing for the future and he drew a number of voters to the 2016 Clinton campaign. Maybe he does something similar with his newer policies, like a robust Green New Deal, student debt cancellation, sector-wide wage boards, et al.
“So what’s the point, Matt?”
OK. OK. I’m getting to it. These Sandersista policies would leave us better off than we are now. Much better in some cases. But the endpoint of all this social democratic electoralism, divorced from strong broader movements against capitalism, probably isn’t socialism. Norman Thomas, perennial Socialist Party presidential candidate, once noted that FDR appropriated socialist ideas for decidedly non-socialist purposes. And even Sanders frames his message in very FDR-friendly terms.
Sector-wide wage boards are a pretty good example here. In most cases, particularly the European social democracies the policy’s SEIU defenders cite, these are tools for class peace, not class war. The point of sector-wide bargaining, in most cases, is to preempt the need for the use of strikes. This is why Matt Dimick, in a recent article in Catalyst, called it a ‘counterfeit liberty’. And this is, of course, why Pete Buttigieg endorsed the idea. Unlike the obviously milquetoast Buttigieg, Sanders does have a plan to make it easier to strike. But this is all pretty dangerous territory without a plan to transition it to a prolonged, sustained fight against capitalism. It doesn’t naturally go in that direction. We have to push it there.
An Evaluation
The argument doesn’t quite work. It’s too strong. There could be a genuine electoral threat to capitalism, and we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility. But the argument pushes us to think about why such a threat is very unlikely. For an anti-capitalist candidate to both threaten capitalism and maintain electability, we’d need to see a lot of changes to society.
Elections don’t often offer threats to the system, nor effective avenues for popular change. And it’s because that’s not their function. We often talk about electability and whether ‘good candidates’ are electable without this background in mind. That’s a mistake.
