Tactical advances good---revolution is just tactical accumulation and rejection is mere self-isolation from potentially productive actions

(William, “Why Radical Leftists Need To Stop Worrying and Back Bernie Sanders,” http://inthesetimes.com/article/18425/why-the-radical-left-really-really-needs-to-quit-whining-about-bernie-sande)

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.