In this pres­i­den­tial sum­mer of our dis­con­tent, the rad­i­cal left has been fight­ing hard — not chiefly against cap­i­tal­ism and its gal­lop­ing calami­ties, it seems, but against… Bernie Sanders. Scarce­ly a day pass­es with­out an omi­nous recita­tion of Sanders’s man­i­fold polit­i­cal short­com­ings — Sanders exposés seem to have become a thriv­ing cot­tage indus­try for the far-left commentariat.

Sanders’s far-left detractors merely reinforce the political isolation that they seem to brandish as a badge of virtue; in reality it is a symptom of political debility, a fatal estrangement from the tactical challenges and possibilities of the moment.

It should come as a star­tling rev­e­la­tion to no one that Sanders is not and has nev­er aspired to be the next Lenin or Trot­sky or even Bob Avakian. We read­i­ly con­cede that his record will not pass every lit­mus test of anti-impe­ri­al­ist and rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­bity — no need to bela­bor this point any fur­ther. But then what are we to make of Syriza, Podemos, Jer­ry Cor­byn, or even Jill Stein — and oth­er assort­ed left­ish fla­vors du jour—all of them seem­ing­ly quite palat­able to these same ide­o­log­i­cal arbiters of the rad­i­cal left? These oth­er exam­ples and Sanders are cut from essen­tial­ly the same polit­i­cal cloth: left social democ­rats or demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ists inclined to chal­lenge entrenched cor­po­rate inter­ests through estab­lished polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions rather than over­throw­ing them from with­out. Then why the rad­i­cal cheers (how­ev­er mixed and mut­ed in some cas­es) for these oth­er left­ish types and the jeers for Sanders, even though they all rep­re­sent essen­tial­ly the same polit­i­cal impulse?

The answer lies in a hal­lowed, invi­o­lable prin­ci­ple of the U.S. far left, in fact its most revered first com­mand­ment: thou shalt not sup­port, endorse, or even smile at a Democrat.

This pro­hi­bi­tion is not mere­ly a mind­less ide­o­log­i­cal reflex — it aris­es from the hard truth that the nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is as much a sub­sidiary of the cor­po­rate class as the GOP. Obama’s crass sub­servience to the inter­ests of the one per­cent has erased any doubts about this insti­tu­tion­al feal­ty except among hard­ened neolib­er­als, trib­al Democ­rats and the entire on-air line­up of MSNBC. And there is no doubt that past left-talk­ing pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry chal­lengers such as Jack­son and Kucinich have func­tioned more as safe­ty valves than cat­a­lysts for pop­u­lar unrest, dis­si­pat­ing it and re-chan­nel­ing it into the man­age­able con­fines of the two-par­ty are­na of mock com­bats. The ques­tion, then, is this: Is there some­thing dif­fer­ent about the Sanders cam­paign that war­rants sup­port from rad­i­cals who have right­ly spurned pre­vi­ous for­ays into the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party?

This key ques­tion imme­di­ate­ly begs anoth­er, even more fun­da­men­tal one: How to awak­en tens of mil­lions of peo­ple from the entrap­ments of mass hyp­no­sis, pros­tra­tion and indif­fer­ence and into the first halt­ing steps toward recog­ni­tion and self-eman­ci­pa­tion? The quandary is as old as the para­ble of Plato’s cave — that myth­ic nether­world of dark­ness and illu­sion inhab­it­ed by us fal­li­ble mor­tals. The solu­tion — the way out of the cave into the lib­er­at­ing light of knowl­edge — is as stub­born­ly elu­sive now as it was then. But sim­ply nam­ing the prob­lem of the ​“false con­scious­ness” that stymies the oppressed — as end­less­ly and vehe­ment­ly reit­er­at­ed by the legions of the far left for a small eter­ni­ty — does not by itself yield a solu­tion, as the long his­to­ry of left­ist impo­tence and iso­la­tion attests.

It is under­stand­ably frus­trat­ing for the left­ist sects and sages to have all the answers except that most impor­tant one: how to lead the ​“mass­es” out of the dark­ness of igno­rance and ide­o­log­i­cal decep­tion into enlight­en­ment. The left­ist groups — with their obscure tomes of the­o­ry, their blogs, their con­fer­ences and meet­ings, their tin­ker-toy bureau­cra­cies, their streams of man­i­festoes and cri­tiques, their insu­lar feuds and splits and fiery exco­ri­a­tions of left, right and cen­ter — are self-declared lead­ers with­out fol­low­ers, gen­er­als with an invin­ci­ble plan for bat­tle who lack only one small detail: an army.

Ten parts bel­low­ing grandios­i­ty to zero parts real influ­ence, the far left fails a lit­mus test more impor­tant than any it applies to Bernie Sanders: Marx’s call not mere­ly to inter­pret the world but to change it. So we must ask: at this moment of gath­er­ing dark­ness for our species and plan­et, in this piv­otal pres­i­den­tial cam­paign sea­son, who is mak­ing greater strides toward trig­ger­ing the mass enlight­en­ment that is the key to empow­er­ing the oppressed: Sanders or his left critics?

If pol­i­tics is the art of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, then Sanders must be judged the win­ner, hands down.

In fact, the Sanders cam­paign rep­re­sents a break­through for pro­gres­sive ​“mes­sag­ing” of remark­able scope and impact. Sanders, with his calls for polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion against the bil­lion­aire class, is not just anoth­er stan­dard-issue, forked-tongue, feel-your-pain Demo­c­rat; at each MSM-cov­ered appear­ance he blasts out pierc­ing alarms about the rad­i­cal inequities and irra­tional­i­ties of the sta­tus quo, along with sore­ly need­ed solu­tions — pri­mal truths that would oth­er­wise lie dor­mant and buried in the scat­tered iso­lat­ed islets of far-leftdom.

To dis­miss these cru­cial inroads into mass con­scious­ness as mere diver­sion, to deride his pro­pos­als as mil­que­toast Key­ne­sian stop­gap, betrays the old far-left aller­gy to the com­plex­i­ty and cacoph­o­ny of the large stage of life, a debil­i­tat­ing pref­er­ence for the safe­ty and cer­ti­tude of the tiny left echo cham­ber. Sanders’s cam­paign, what­ev­er its flaws, is thrust­ing front and cen­ter to a mass audi­ence a whole series of prin­ci­pled, crit­i­cal demands and issues (many of which over­lap with those raised in splen­did iso­la­tion by Jill Stein and the Green Par­ty), the real­iza­tion of which would marked­ly advance the mate­r­i­al well-being and future prospects of ordi­nary Amer­i­cans: $15 an hour min­i­mum wage; union card check to expand orga­niz­ing rights; improved Medicare for all; expan­sion (not retrench­ment) of Social Secu­ri­ty; revamped pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion to reduce income inequal­i­ty; a Wall Street trans­ac­tion tax; a rapid tran­si­tion to renew­ables to com­bat cli­mate change; oppo­si­tion to the eco­ci­dal, neo-fas­cist TPP, NAF­TA, and WTO; an end to the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of local police forces; crack­ing down on hate groups; free tuition at all pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges to alle­vi­ate stu­dent debt peon­age; paid fam­i­ly leave; and so on. If real­ized in the aggre­gate, these demands would chal­lenge the neolib­er­al log­ic of the pre­vail­ing order.

As a tac­ti­cal mat­ter, then, the Sanders upsurge is an invalu­able tool for the mass dis­sem­i­na­tion of left themes and solu­tions right now—a price­less ben­e­fit that far out­weighs the realpoli­tik laps­es that pre­oc­cu­py the left-echo-cham­ber Sanders refuseniks.

Now notice that I just used the word tac­ti­cal. Allow me to explain. What­ev­er the rough spots in Sanders’s pro­gres­sive resume, espe­cial­ly on for­eign pol­i­cy, it remains a stub­born tac­ti­cal real­i­ty (and per­haps I will also be for­giv­en for using the word real­i­ty) that it is only through the vehi­cle of the his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign as a Demo­c­rat that these kinds of pro­gres­sive issues and solu­tions can flood the air­waves and touch the tens of mil­lions of des­per­ate but ill-informed Amer­i­cans who most need to think and hear about them — in most cas­es, for the first time. This is the unique and irre­place­able val­ue of the Sanders can­di­da­cy: it is strew­ing seeds of mass con­scious­ness around issues of class and inequal­i­ty and the envi­ron­ment in a way that no oth­er per­son or par­ty could accom­plish right now. Rad­i­cals need to ask them­selves: How is that a bad thing?

What­ev­er the out­come of Sanders’s cam­paign, the sheer scope of the audi­ence for his pro­gres­sive check­list, his slash­ing denun­ci­a­tions of the eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal tyran­ny of the bil­lion­aire class, are green shoots in an oth­er­wise bar­ren polit­i­cal land­scape — and who knows how they might flour­ish in the future? This is a major break­through that has the poten­tial, in count­less mol­e­c­u­lar ways, to burst through the Demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tion­al frame­work in which it is now embed­ded—and, by the way, Sanders would not be com­mand­ing that mass audi­ence were it not in that frame­work: hence the Sanders Para­dox.

To be sure, it’s an incon­ve­nient para­dox for invet­er­ate anti-Democ­rats of the Left, but one to be acknowl­edged and exploit­ed rather than con­demned or ignored. The near-zero col­lec­tive polit­i­cal IQ of the coun­try urgent­ly needs rais­ing by any means pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary, and soon­er rather than lat­er, giv­en the cat­a­stro­phes that are bear­ing down on us. We can’t afford to dis­dain any advances right now, no mat­ter how messy or diver­gent from our ide­al scenarios.

Yes, we urgent­ly need an inde­pen­dent activist left par­ty, one that can have a real impact. We also need social­ism now, dras­tic car­bon reduc­tions and crash invest­ment in renew­able ener­gy 10 years ago, and so on. But the real­iza­tion of those all imper­a­tives pre­sup­pos­es the pow­er of an aroused cit­i­zen­ry armed with at least a rudi­men­ta­ry under­stand­ing of the major issues. That is, most assured­ly, not the Amer­i­can elec­torate as of 2015 — not by a long shot.

Buf­fet­ed by out­sourc­ing, unem­ploy­ment, under­em­ploy­ment, con­sumer and stu­dent debt peon­age, under­wa­ter mort­gages, and the rolling thun­der of environmental/​climate/​resource cri­sis, the mass of Amer­i­cans still lead lives of qui­et des­per­a­tion — and it remains most­ly qui­et because they are divert­ed from their gnaw­ing anx­i­eties and uncer­tain­ties by the tox­ic glit­ter of cor­po­rate cul­ture, a cease­less­ly drip­ping tox­in that mol­li­fies, numbs, and stu­pe­fies. In the words of Robert Crumb:

What we kids didn’t under­stand was that we were liv­ing in a com­mer­cial, com­mod­i­ty cul­ture. Every­thing in our envi­ron­ment had been bought and sold. As mid­dle class Amer­i­cans, we basi­cal­ly grew up on a movie set. The con­scious val­ues that are pushed are only part of the pic­ture. The medi­um itself plays a much big­ger part than any­one real­izes: the cre­ation of illu­sion. We are liv­ing sur­round­ed by illu­sion, by pro­fes­sion­al­ly cre­at­ed fairy tales. We bare­ly have con­tact with the real world.

The result is a woe­ful­ly detached and under­e­d­u­cat­ed pop­u­lace, in most of its leisure hours trans­fixed before glow­ing rec­tan­gles. Walk down the street of any aver­age Amer­i­can town or city (not Berke­ley or Seat­tle or Brook­lyn) and ask peo­ple if they know who Bernie Sanders is, much less Jill Stein, or even who the vice pres­i­dent is or what the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment are. Then ask them if they’ve ever heard about anthro­pogenic glob­al warming.

You’ll get a sur­pris­ing num­ber of blank stares, because an alarm­ing­ly large per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans spend most of their wak­ing hours either (a) at work; (b) watch­ing the NFL, pro­fes­sion­al wrestling, NASCAR, ​“real­i­ty” TV shows, or cot­ton-can­dy dra­mas and come­dies; © surf­ing the Inter­net (and most­ly not for news); or (d) chas­ing down sales at Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club to try to make ends meet. As for civic engage­ment, the clos­est most Amer­i­cans come is when they wait in line at the DMV, pay their tax­es, get stopped by the police, or watch Judge Judy. And the small per­cent­age who do take in a bit of news are get­ting hosed with a steady stream of lies from the Fox News Chan­nel, MSNBC, CNN or the hap­py talk crew on the late local news.

So this is the audi­ence the Left must address: not the doughty, bat­tle-ready pro­le­tari­at of far-left day­dreams, but the mas­sive­ly depoliti­cized and demor­al­ized casu­al­ties of the cul­ture indus­try and neolib­er­al piracy.

In the face of the major inroads Sanders is mak­ing against this mass reign of indif­fer­ence and igno­rance, urg­ing the virtues of an inde­pen­dent left par­ty and move­ment as an alter­na­tive is like urg­ing the virtues of fusion ener­gy over solar pan­els — a great-sound­ing idea, but one that has no pur­chase on real­i­ty for the fore­see­able future. The mass of Amer­i­cans is not going to advance mirac­u­lous­ly from wide­spread polit­i­cal nescience to apply­ing for mem­ber­ship in the Inter­na­tion­al Social­ist Orga­ni­za­tion in a sin­gle great leap. The far-left push for an inde­pen­dent ​“solu­tion” is a prac­ti­cal nul­li­ty right now and will remain so for some time to come — and hence amounts to self-indul­gent pos­tur­ing in the face of the calami­ties loom­ing on a near horizon.

Blind to these tac­ti­cal exi­gen­cies, Sanders’s far-left detrac­tors mere­ly rein­force the polit­i­cal iso­la­tion that they seem to bran­dish as a badge of virtue; in real­i­ty it is a symp­tom of polit­i­cal debil­i­ty, a fatal estrange­ment from the tac­ti­cal chal­lenges and pos­si­bil­i­ties of the moment.

Lest some rad­i­cal crit­ics feel sul­lied by the intru­sion of the word tac­ti­cal, I must insist that there is no shame in left­ists’ think­ing tac­ti­cal­ly at times — in fact, it is a neces­si­ty if we are to stay attuned to mass­es of peo­ple in a way that gives heft impact to any con­ceiv­able move­ment against the sta­tus quo.

Here’s an exam­ple of such a crit­i­cal tac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tion: At the height of the anti-Viet­nam War move­ment in the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s, I was part of a coali­tion that was mobi­liz­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple in the streets around the con­crete (and prin­ci­pled!) slo­gan, ​“Out Now!”, peak­ing in the April 1971 march on Wash­ing­ton DC that brought 1 mil­lion peo­ple to the nation’s cap­i­tal to demand an imme­di­ate end to the war. At that time a cho­rus of very ​“prin­ci­pled” far left­ists scorned these pow­er­ful out­pour­ings — which mate­ri­al­ly aid­ed the besieged Viet­namese work­ers and peas­ants — because the key demand did not, in their view, go far enough or did not address an array of oth­er issues: they argued that we should declaim ​“Vic­to­ry to the NLF” or ​“Smash Impe­ri­al­ism” or ​“Defend the Rights of Pales­tini­ans” and so on.

Now the tac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tion was that pin­ning the actions to these far-flung ulti­ma­tist, simon-pure demands would have win­nowed the mil­lion marchers to maybe five thou­sand, thus depriv­ing the action of all mate­r­i­al impact on the war while deep­en­ing the delu­sion­al self-regard of a few enraged mid­dle-class rad­i­cals — and damn the Viet­namese work­ers and peas­ants in the process. So much for the gen­er­al con­sid­er­a­tions that make at least some degree of crit­i­cal sup­port for the Sanders cam­paign a no-brain­er for rad­i­cals hop­ing to make even min­i­mal head­way against the head­winds of mass igno­rance and indifference.

Now let’s tick off a check­list of some of the most com­mon far-left com­plaints about the Sanders cam­paign, along with brief rebuttals:

Sanders is ​“sheep­dog­ging” for the Democ­rats: This is self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy that pre­sup­pos­es that the mass of Amer­i­cans are indeed sheep that can be eas­i­ly herd­ed into to this or that politician’s pen. This argu­ment would car­ry more weight if Sanders were mere­ly feint­ing left, with vague Oba­ma-esque mar­ket­ing slo­gans. But clear­ly he is pro­pound­ing a refresh­ing­ly frank and spe­cif­ic poli­cies to reverse the ever-inten­si­fy­ing inequal­i­ties and injus­tices of the sta­tus quo, slash­ing with fine­ly honed specifics against the abus­es of the bil­lion­aire elite. Even if Sanders los­es the nom­i­na­tion, the pro­gres­sive issues and solu­tions he is pur­vey­ing to a mass audi­ence will embed firm­ly in pop­u­lar polit­i­cal thought and action, mak­ing a future break­away into polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence eas­i­er, not harder.

Sanders has vowed to sup­port who­ev­er is nom­i­nat­ed by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty: This is real­ly a corol­lary of the ​“sheep­dog­ging” the­sis, and the answer to it is sim­ple: So what? A rum­pled 73-year-old is com­mand­ing a mass audi­ence not for sex appeal but for his pas­sion and clar­i­ty on sub­stance; he is gal­va­niz­ing a huge groundswell of issue-focused vot­ers and activists who would oth­er­wise not be engaged in pol­i­tics at all. A whole gen­er­a­tion of vot­ers will be more recep­tive to any future left cam­paigns — includ­ing inde­pen­dent ones — thanks to his exer­tions, notwith­stand­ing any per­son­al endorse­ments he makes a year from now.

Sanders is not a ​“true” social­ist: This is anoth­er ​“so what?” cou­pled to a ​“who cares?” Any of the 5,757 vari­eties of social­ists rang­ing from Bernie Sanders to the Spartacists will tell you that they alone are the true social­ists and that all the oth­ers are frauds. The Fox News Chan­nel con­sid­ers Oba­ma a social­ist; the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca would ridicule this fool­ish­ness, but they in turn would be called out as faux social­ists by Trot­sky­ist groups like the ISO and Social­ist Alter­na­tive, who would in their turn be denounced as fraud­u­lent by the ultra-Trot World Social­ist Web Site (Social­ist Equal­i­ty Par­ty), who would in yet anoth­er turn be reviled as moun­te­banks by the Mad Hat­ter-Trot Spartacists.

Who, then, has unearthed the Holy Grail of ​“true” social­ism? It’s a hope­less, absurd quest, on a par with defin­ing ​“God” or the mean­ing of being. We need only recall that the Bol­she­viks, social­ists who actu­al­ly made a rev­o­lu­tion rather than mere­ly blovi­at­ing about it, deployed as their main agi­ta­tion­al slo­gan not ​“social­ism now” or ​“nation­al­ize the means of pro­duc­tion” — they reached the mass­es by advanc­ing the very con­crete ​“land, bread and peace,” sen­si­bly grasp­ing that des­per­ate work­ers and peas­ants were more inter­est­ed in tan­gi­bles than abstrac­tions. This is a les­son well worth pon­der­ing for the arm­chair rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies lead­ing the charge against Sanders.

Elec­tions are a trap and diver­sion from real orga­niz­ing: See once again the Bol­she­viks, who reg­u­lar­ly ran in elec­tion cam­paigns as a means of pur­vey­ing their ideas — it worked pret­ty well for them. As long as elec­tions are viewed as a tac­tic in a broad­er move­ment-build­ing strat­e­gy, it is sim­ply fool­ish to abstain from the rea­chout oppor­tu­ni­ties they afford. This leads to the next point:

The Sanders cam­paign sub­tracts ener­gy and resources from inde­pen­dent par­ties like the Greens: Sup­port­ing the Sanders cam­paign right now vs. build­ing an inde­pen­dent par­ty and move­ment is not a zero-sum game in which every dol­lar or ounce of ener­gy devot­ed to the for­mer is nec­es­sar­i­ly sub­tract­ed from the lat­ter. Sanders is pos­ing pro­gres­sive and class-based issues with a bold­ness and blunt­ness and hon­esty that set him apart from past pro­gres­sive Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry aspi­rants. And no recent left-lean­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial aspi­rant has sparked any­thing close to the firestorms of enthu­si­asm spring­ing up around the Sanders cam­paign. This com­bi­na­tion of mass momen­tum and pro­gram­mat­ic bold­ness make the Sanders cam­paign a unique­ly explo­sive force in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics right now. If Sanders can­not win the nom­i­na­tion and endors­es Clin­ton (or whomev­er) with the usu­al less-evil incan­ta­tions, he will, by dint of the pow­er of his cam­paign, have unleashed ener­gies and insights into the polit­i­cal sphere that will have a life of their own well beyond his cam­paign and will redound to the ben­e­fit of future inde­pen­dent orga­niz­ing efforts.

Sanders can­not win the nom­i­na­tion or the gen­er­al elec­tion: This is the most curi­ous of the far-left objec­tions to the Sanders cam­paign. Arun Gup­ta wrote a whole arti­cle for Coun­ter­Punch on just this issue. The entire essay traf­fics in main­stream media horse-race prob­a­bil­i­ties rather than polit­i­cal sub­stance, as though Gup­ta were a hedge-fund man­ag­er assess­ing a pos­si­ble invest­ment rather than a rad­i­cal seek­ing the most favor­able vehi­cle for spread­ing his ideas. He adduces from var­i­ous sources that 1) Sanders can­not win the nom­i­na­tion and 2) he can­not win the gen­er­al elec­tion — a point that would seem to be moot in view of point 1. He proph­e­sies, ​“Sim­ply put, you have a bet­ter chance of Jen­nifer Lawrence or Idris Elba call­ing you up and say­ing they want to be your friend with ben­e­fits than Bernie Sanders has of becom­ing the next president.”

But many of those who deride Sanders’s chances will be sup­port­ing Jill Stein of the Green Par­ty, whose like­li­hood of win­ning the gen­er­al elec­tion is on a par with any of those crit­ics win­ning both Power­ball and Mega-Mil­lions on the same day. Yet Jill Stein’s sta­tis­ti­cal-hope­less­ness-unto absur­di­ty will not deter the Bernie con­tras from tout­ing Stein or some oth­er quixot­ic lefty inde­pen­dent in the gen­er­al elec­tion. So it appears the far-left derid­ers of Sanders’s steep odds are not so averse to lost caus­es after all — purists in this as well, they sim­ply pre­fer caus­es that are lost unto near-invisibility.

And let’s pose this ques­tion to those who argue from prob­a­bil­i­ty: What if the long shot Sanders comes through and wins the nom­i­na­tion and/​or gen­er­al elec­tion? Then what would you do?

Sanders will not be able to imple­ment his pro­pos­als even if elect­ed because he will face oppo­si­tion in the Con­gress and the Courts: Sanders him­self is the first to acknowl­edge this point, which is based on a mis­un­der­stand­ing of his pur­pose in run­ning — he is not pre­sent­ing him­self as a per­son­al sav­ior and cure-all for the world’s ills; he express­ly states his inten­tion of using his cam­paign — and his nom­i­na­tion and elec­tion should they come to pass — of spurring the Amer­i­can peo­ple to orga­nize to win these goals for them­selves. As he stat­ed in a cam­paign speech in Iowa last month,

Let me tell you some­thing that no oth­er can­di­date for pres­i­dent will tell you. And that is [that] no mat­ter who is elect­ed to be pres­i­dent, that per­son will not be able to address the enor­mous prob­lems fac­ing the work­ing fam­i­lies of our coun­try. They will not be able to suc­ceed because the pow­er of cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, the pow­er of Wall Street, the pow­er of cam­paign donors is so great that no pres­i­dent alone can stand up to them. That is the truth. Peo­ple may be uncom­fort­able about hear­ing it, but that is the real­i­ty. And that is why what this cam­paign is about is say­ing loud­ly and clear­ly: It is not just about elect­ing Bernie Sanders for pres­i­dent, it is about cre­at­ing a grass­roots polit­i­cal move­ment in this country.

The case for rad­i­cal sup­port for Sanders amounts to this: before we can arrive at point omega from point alpha, we have to tra­verse points beta, gam­ma, delta and so on. There are no mag­ic super­left fly­ing machines that will pro­pel us non­stop over all those inter­me­di­ate steps from neolib­er­al despo­tism to rad­i­cal democ­ra­cy — we know this if we are orga­niz­ing on the ground rather than the­o­riz­ing in the clouds. The tem­po of that jour­ney will depend chiefly on advances in the con­scious­ness of the mass­es, not advances in the vehe­mence of far-left declamation.

Some left­ists can fan­ta­size that they are doing a great ser­vice to human­i­ty by scoff­ing at the tac­ti­cal trade­offs that are essen­tial to build­ing a tru­ly mas­sive, pow­er­ful grass­roots move­ment — but in so doing, they’re mere­ly iso­lat­ing them­selves even fur­ther from the are­nas of real polit­i­cal work and poten­tial mass out­reach, like a swa­mi med­i­tat­ing in a cave. Such rad­i­cals remind me of the holy men described by Swa­mi Vivekananda:

The high­est men are calm, silent and unknown. They are the men who real­ly know the pow­er of thought; they are sure that, even if they go into a cave and close the door and sim­ply think five true thoughts and then pass away, these five thoughts of their will live through eter­ni­ty. … These Sâttvi­ka men are too near the Lord to be active and to fight, to be work­ing, strug­gling, preach­ing and doing good, as they say, here on earth to humanity.

The hour is late. We face plan­e­tary emer­gen­cies of unprece­dent­ed grav­i­ty. Some rep­utable sci­en­tists say that it might be too late to avert them. Plato’s vision of human­i­ty trapped in the dark cave — our cave of col­lec­tive igno­rance — is no mere para­ble: it a prophe­cy turned all too real. We must nev­er­the­less choose to act as though there is a way out, even if we sus­pect that our choice is more an affir­ma­tion of faith than of rea­son. The Sanders cam­paign has mus­tered enough of an audi­ence to bol­ster that frag­ile belief. It is not a panacea — it is a ten­ta­tive first step of hope that Amer­i­cans can be roused in suf­fi­cient num­bers to help save human­i­ty from itself. No per­son of con­science should refuse to join in that step and push it as far as it can go.

This arti­cle first appeared in Coun­ter­punch.