On June 13, 2019, Marjorie Cohn writes on Truthout.org:
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders delivered a full-throated defense of democratic socialism in his June 12 speech at George Washington University. Sanders quoted FDR’s 1944 State of the Unionaddress: “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”
Sanders, like FDR, proposed an Economic Bill of Rights, including the rights to health care, affordable housing, education, a living wage and retirement.
“Economic rights are human rights,” Sanders declared. “That is what I mean by democratic socialism.”
Sanders cited figures of vast wealth disparity in the United States, where “the top 1 percent of people own more wealth than the bottom 92 percent.” He said there is higher income and wealth inequality today than at any time since the 1920s. And, Sanders stated, “despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, the average wage of the American worker in real dollars is no higher than it was 46 years ago and millions of people are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive.”
He also noted, “in America today, the very rich live on average 15 years longer than the poorest Americans.”
Economic Rights Are Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets forth two different categories of human rights: (1) civil and political rights, and (2) economic, social and cultural rights.
Civil and political rights comprise the rights to life, a fair trial and self-determination; freedom of speech, expression, assembly and religion; and freedom from torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detention. Economic, social and cultural rights include the rights to health care, education and social security; the right to form and join unions and to strike; and the right to equal pay for equal work, unemployment insurance, paid maternity leave, and the prevention, treatment and control of diseases.
These two types of human rights are enshrined in two international treaties — the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
The United States has ratified the ICCPR, but not the ICESCR. U.S. policy since the Reagan administration has been to define human rights only as civil and political rights, excluding economic, social and cultural rights from the realm of human rights.
The ICESCR, which has been ratified by 169 countries, guarantees the rights to work with favorable conditions, to the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health, to education, to housing, to an adequate standard of living, and to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and cultural freedom. It protects the rights to form and join trade unions, social security and social insurance, equal rights for men and women, and protection and assistance to the family.
Cuba, whose human rights record is frequently criticized by the U.S. government, puts the United States to shame with its recognition of economic rights. Cubans enjoy universal health care, universal free education including higher education, the right to form and join unions, and government-subsidized abortion and family planning. Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the U.S., as well as a relatively small ecological footprint due to low energy consumption.
Democratic Socialism vs. Corporate Socialism
Trump and his fellow oligarchs oppose democratic socialism, Sanders said, but “they don’t really oppose all forms of socialism.” Indeed, “they absolutely love corporate socialism that enriches Trump and other billionaires.”
Sanders cited the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street in 2008 by the Treasury Department “after their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior created the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression — with millions of Americans losing their jobs, their homes and their life savings — Wall Street’s religious adherence to unfettered capitalism suddenly came to an end.”
He also mentioned tax breaks and loopholes for fossil fuel companies, pharmaceutical companies, Amazon, and the Trump family who “got $885 million worth of tax breaks and subsidies for your family’s housing empire that is built on racial discrimination.”
As Dr. King observed, the United States “has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”
Embracing Socialism Is a Winning Strategy
Sanders noted that FDR and his progressive coalition were successful, and their legacies continue to flourish in programs and protections like Social Security, regulation of Wall Street and unemployment compensation. He pointed out that Roosevelt aimed to go further.
“In 1944, FDR proposed an economic bill of rights but died a year later and was never able to fulfill that vision. Our job, 75 years later,” Sanders said, “is to complete what Roosevelt started.”
He then set forth his vision of a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights, which would recognize that all Americans should have:
- 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
Sanders listed Democratic presidents vilified by the oligarchs of their time for their programs of alleged “socialism.” Lyndon Johnson was attacked for Medicare, Harry Truman’s proposed national health care program was dubbed “socialized medicine,” and Newt Gingrich called Bill Clinton’s health care plan “centralized bureaucratic socialism.”
Although none of the other leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates has embraced socialism, the party’s base has. Candidate John Hickenlooper, former governor of Colorado, was roundly booed at the California Democratic convention earlier this month when he said, “If we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer.”
Indeed, Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, argues, “Without a strong egalitarian-internationalist platform, it is difficult to unite low-education, low-income voters from all origins within the same coalition and to deliver a reduction in inequality.”
Keith A. Spencer, writing at Salon, cites Piketty for the proposition that “nominating centrist Democrats who don’t speak to class issues will result in a great swathe of voters simply not voting.”
Moreover, a 2018 Gallup poll determined that a majority of young Americans have a positive opinion of socialism. According to a recent Axios poll, 55 percent of women ages of 18 to 54 would prefer to live in a socialist country.
Sanders said the U.S. and the rest of the world face two different political paths. “On one hand,” he noted, “there is a growing movement towards oligarchy and authoritarianism in which a small number of incredibly wealthy and powerful billionaires own and control a significant part of the economy and exert enormous influence over the political life of our country. On the other hand, in opposition to oligarchy, there is a movement of working people and young people who, in ever increasing numbers, are fighting for justice.”
After his speech, Sanders told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, that real change is generated by mass movements. He cited the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay movement and the labor movement.
“It is time for the American people to stand up and fight for their right to freedom, human dignity and security,” Sanders affirmed. “This is the core of what my politics is all about.” He clarified, “the only way we achieve these goals is through a political revolution.”
https://truthout.org/articles/bernie-sanders-proposes-new-economic-bill-of-rights/
Gary Reber Comments:
Bernie Sanders Can Win The Presidency By Empowering Every Child, Woman, And Man To Become A Productive Capital Asset Owner
Revisiting Donald Trump’s rallies and press conferences following his primary wins in 2016, he stressed that he OWNS this and that business or real estate property, and that these productive capital assets are debt-free. Of course, anyone with a sense of how businesses operate knows that this is an attribute of a successful business. Trump has not and does not use his own money savings to finance his ever-expanding business interests (the accumulation of productive, wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets), but instead uses capital credit loans, which are paid back by the earnings produced by the investments, or if not, he files for bankruptcy protection for any particular failed business venture. If his past savings are used at all it is as collateral to guarantee the bank loans, should an investment fail to produce the anticipated earnings to be used to pay off the loans. As such, in the event of failure, his assets can be confiscated. This is the logic of corporate finance, in which investments must pay for themselves — by earning profits, which are first pledged to pay off a capital credit loan, and once paid off to produce an income stream to the owner(s). This is how people in business get richer and richer and how the already wealthy capital ownership class continues to monopolize the ownership of virtually ALL FUTURE wealth-creating, income-producing capital asset expansion.
In the same 2016 election period, Hillary Clinton was increasingly advocating for companies to “profit share” with their workers. This is not actual ownership but a tax credit carrot to encourage corporations to share their profits with their workers. Of course, because the workers do not actually gain ownership of the companies that employ them under this approach, the profit sharing can be arbitrarily suspended at any time and the workers still have no legal or effective say in the management of the companies that employ them.
Neither Trump nor Clinton, or for that matter none of the present crop of presidential candidates, have EVER advocated for workers to OWN the corporations that employ them or more significantly, for every child, woman and man to be a capital OWNER in the corporations, both established and viable start-ups, that are growing our economy. As is the usual case, their focus is on JOB creation or, as in Bernie Sanders case, on a guaranteed job that pays a living wage and a secure retirement, which does not mean capital asset ownership creation for the vast majority of Americans. In the case of Sanders, even with his statement that “the top 1 percent of people own more wealth than the bottom 92 percent,” he has not come to the realization that what makes the top 1 percent wealthy is because they OWN productive capital assets, the result of progress in the technologies of production.
The reality is that all government economic policies are argued or justified in the context of how many JOBS will be created or saved, completely ignoring that those who already OWN the corporations receiving tax breaks and incentives are empowered by the system to continually enrich their personal ownership of capital asset wealth.
On the other hand, Bernie Sander, in the past, has made it clear he is an advocate for employee ownership of the companies that employ them and for so-called worker cooperatives in which the workers own and operate a business. Unfortunately hardly anyone knows this about Sanders’ position. Instead, this economic policy position is left on the pages of his declared platform and is virtually unknown except to those who actually read his platform positions. (See the following references at http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/?p=14903, http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/?p=14435, http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/?p=14951and http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/?p=14992.
While Sanders acknowledges the importance of workers owning the corporations that employ them, unfortunately he has yet to advocate his position openly in speeches, interviews, press conferences, debates or political ads. Nor has he expressed any understanding of how this ownership concept can be extended to empower EVERY child, woman, and man to become a productive capital asset owner along with the responsible growth of the economy.
Sanders should realize that the core reason the top 1 percent receives virtually ALL FUTURE income gains is because the top 1 percent are the very people that OWN America, with the bulk of the capital asset owenrship concentrated among the top .1 percent of the American population.
What Sanders needs to do is to aggressively advocate for unrigging the system with reforms that will empower EVERY child, woman, and man to acquire personal ownership stakes in the FUTURE productive capital assets that will propel our economy’s growth. I am not referring to unproven small business or entrepreneurial endeavors, which, however would be significantly strengthened as the overall economy produces an expansion of “customers with money” to create demand. The primary focus needs to be on the already successful businesses growing our economy. I believe that if Bernie Sanders fully embraces this policy direction, as he has clearly targeted concentrated capital asset ownership and its corresponding political power as the cause of economic inequality, he will win the primaries and the presidency, while more effectively realizing the political revolution that is long overdue to put all Americans on the path to inclusive prosperity, inclusive opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.
Sanders does not have to stretch his thinking much farther, as he already is a strong supporter of empowering workers to become owners of the business corporations they are employed by, using the proven financial mechanism known as the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), which provides a pre-tax pay-back mechanism to finance worker ownership (as individuals) without ANY loss of wages or benefits or requirement of past savings, and with the newly issued stock purchase-financing paid for with the full earnings of the investments in a corporation’s growth. (See http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/employee-stock-ownership-plans-esops/)
But we must not limit broadening capital asset ownership to employees of corporations as there are tens of millions of Americans who do not work for a for-profit business corporations, such as workers in small businesses or government positions, or who are unemployed, under-employed or unproductive, on welfare or who are senior citizens with only meager Social Security income, which effectively reduces their life to a struggle to meet day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month demands.
Instead of the OWN the FUTURE or BE OWNED issue being presented, all one hears from both sides of the political spectrum is: “We will provide JOBS and put Americans back to work and raise the minimum wage!” While that sounds good, it is, in fact, terribly shortsighted. With the U.S. population continuing to climb and the rate of job-devouring automation and robotics exponentially skyrocketing, along with the job-destroying and wage-devaluation forces of globalization due to American businesses outsourcing or off-shoring their parts and finished products manufacturing, an individual’s or family’s 100 percent reliance on “JOBS” for subsistence will soon be totally outmoded. This means that your children and their children will be faced with unimaginable economic insecurity in the FUTURE, regardless of educational achievement, if the system is not reformed to empower them to become productive capital owners, and prevent those who already hoard the capital asset ownership of America from monopolizing ALL FUTURE ownership of America’s capital asset growth.
This is not to say that education, and tuition-free public colleges and universities (as Sanders advocates) is not an important mission, but except for a relative few, the majority of the population, no matter how well educated, will not be able to find a job that pays sufficient wages or salaries to support a family and purchase a home or prevent a lifestyle which is gradually being crippled by near poverty or poverty earnings. Thus, education is not the panacea, though it is critical for our future societal development to innovate and invent future technologies of production. Furthermore, younger, as well as older people, will increasingly find it harder and harder to secure a well-paying job — for most, their ONLY source of income — and will find themselves dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare, open or disguised, or concealed.
Our visionary politicians would best serve us by devising plans that involve ownership of the capital asset producing corporations of the United States economy, in particular the large corporations responsible for producing the bulk of the goods, products, and services bought by Americans, without penalizing the wealthy class to do so. The Center for Economic and Social Justice (www.cesj.org) has solutions that make sense and which cross party lines quite easily. One of CESJ’s core policy proposals is to enact the Capital Homestead Act, also known as the Economic Democracy Act and adopt the Unite America Platform. This will empower EVERY child, woman and man to acquire personal ownershi[ stakes in the FUTURE capital asset wealth of the American economy, without the requirement of past savings or ANY reduction in wage earnings or benefits, using insured, interest-free capital credit, repayable with the FUTURE full earnings of the investments in the viable corporations growing the economy. (See http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/). Also see the Unite America Platform, published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/platform-of-the-unite-ame_b_5474077.html.
These proposals clearly demonstrate that most people are wrong to take for granted that the only way to finance new capital asset formation (not risky investment in already-owned stock speculation) — and thus widespread capital asset ownership and control — is through cutting consumption and accumulating money savings, thus assuring that ONLY the already rich can afford to finance new capital formation, and as a result the richer they will get. “Past savings” are by definition, the virtual monopoly of the rich. The solution is saving in the future to finance new capital asset formation now. In other words, we need to switch from financing with money withheld from consumption in the past, to financing with the present value of what is reasonably expected to produce in the future. That way, nothing is taken out of anyone’s pocket now, and anybody who comes up with a financially feasible project should be able to get financing for it.
We don’t need the rich to finance new capital formation. To finance new productive capital using “future savings,” it is only necessary to have a feasible capital project ready to start building. The present value of the project can be put into contract form (a “bill of exchange”) and either used directly as money to finance the new capital formation, or taken to a commercial bank and discounted, using newly created bank promissory notes as new money in the form of demand deposits (“checking accounts”). To make things less risky and ensure a uniform, stable, and elastic asset-backed reserve currency, the Federal Reserve Bank would rediscount such qualified paper, with the central bank’s promissory notes substituted for or backing the commercial bank’s promissory notes.
In other words, all that is necessary to finance new capital formation without the rich is feasible capital projects that can pay for themselves out of their own future earnings, and a banking system to provide media of exchange that are recognized as uniform and stable. Significantly, if new capital asset formation can be financed without using past savings, that means the rich are not needed in order to become an owner of productive capital…and that means that every child, woman, and man — regardless whether she, he, or it has savings now — can use “future savings” to become an owner without taking anything away from “the rich” or penalizing success, while at the same time becoming good “customers with money” to create demand for the responsible and “green” growth of the economy.
Using this method of finance is preferable to form new capital assets using the present value of the anticipated future stream of income and wealth embodied in a “bill of exchange” contract. Present value can be turned into “money” by contract, and this contract can be used to purchase new productive capital that repays its purchase price — “self-liquidating.” This will enable corporations with “feasible capital projects” (meaning they pay for themselves out of their own profits) to grow without having to retain earnings — instead, earnings can be fully paid out to the people to whom they belong: the shareholders. The new capital wealth creation, represented by new issues of stock (directly tied to ownership and control sharing) can be financed to benefit anyone (whether employed or not) without first having saved. This should be an equal opportunity right to interest-free capital credit.
The role of capital credit insurance facilitated with private insurance or a government reinsurance agency (ala the Federal Housing Administration concept) would serve as the replacement for past savings collateral to protect the commercial bank in the event of a failure of the capital project to produce the expected FUTURE earnings that would be used to pay off the capital credit loan. Thus, national capital credit insurance would replace the requirement for pledged security, allowing employees and non-employees (EVERY citizen within the system) to become new capital asset owners simultaneously with the growth of the economy, while eliminating the sole ownership of America by the few.
To win the presidency, Bernie Sanders needs to advocate for the enactment of this proposed legislation that will effectively empower EVERY citizen to become a productive capital OWNER without the requirement of past savings or ANY reduction in wage earnings or benefits.
If our politicians would, for a moment, bury their hatchets and open their minds and examine the ideas outlined by the CESJ, the voters in our country would be getting far more than just jobs and increased minimum wages, or falling into dependency on the State and whatever elites control the coercive powers of government for their economic well-being, and benefit from a long-term policy direction that will provide economic security to EVERY citizen and their heirs, as we build a FUTURE environmentally responsible economy that can support general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man.
For a more in-depth presentation of solutions see “Economic Democracy And Binary Economics: Solutions For A Troubled Nation and Economy” at http://www.foreconomicjustice.org/?p=11.
