A major issue, is the willingness of nominally revolutionary groups to drop their own independent politics to endorse social democratic charlatans. Downplaying their own revolutionary politics and using their own resources to promote social democrats is opportunism and demonstrates a lack of principles. The most recent example of this behaviour are the endorsements flowing from Australian groups such as Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, the Greens and also Labor “left” to different extents for Bernie Sanders in the US Democratic Party primaries. With the rise in popularity and media coverage of personalities like Sanders and Alexandria Osasio-Cortez, these left forces have seemingly adopted the same policies of democratic socialism and a “Green New Deal”. To understand what is wrong with this move, it’s important to understand what democratic socialism and the Green New Deal are.

Democratic socialism and its proposed social contract of the Green New Deal is a modern iteration of an old technique for herding a working class that is growing more conscious of the contradictions of capitalism back into the electoral sphere and away from radical movements. Democratic socialism is the belief that socialism can be implemented through electoral means and would therefore be truly democratic. An example of a social contract is the Harvester Judgement of 1907 where Justice Higgins of the Arbitration Court ruled that a workers wage be based on the cost of living for a worker and his family, regardless of the company’s profits[1]. This set the basis of the minimum wage in Australia, where an agreement was made between the employer and employee on the minimum wage the employee would receive. Modern democratic socialists are trying to implement their Green New Deal as a new social contract which is less focused on the financial security of the worker and more on re-implementing the welfare state popularised by Roosevelt in the 30s & 40s in America, while also appeasing the environmental movement with green reforms.

So how have these political parties supposedly ended up with the same political program: Toxic, middle class opportunism, wrapped nicely with the gaslighting “harm reduction” label.