Another Sheepdog Runs for the Democratic Party: Elizabeth Warren’s Speech at American University

Analysis of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s speech at American University, November 29, 2018.[1]

Senator Elizabeth Warren has recently indicated that she is contemplating a run for president in the 2020 election, and one of her recent forays into this field was her speech at American University in November 2018. Some hailed it as an important and bold speech, and they connected it with JFK’s legendary speech at the same venue just a few months before he was assassinated in 1963. The Nation said she “took a stand for democracy and enlightened internationalism” and called the speech “unsparing.”[2] One would think that by this time political writers on the left would be more wary of leaders like this who say the right things but offer no specific or radical proposals.

In terms of style and eloquence Warren’s speech doesn’t hold a candle to JFK’s speech, and instead of holding out an olive branch to adversaries and looking for a way out of the cold war, as JFK did in his speech, Warren’s speech directed insults at what she perceives as loathsome, emerging adversaries. Warren correctly diagnoses some current problems, but she has nothing new to offer. Bernie Sanders sang this tune in 2016, and Barack Obama did it before him in 2008. The problem is that Warren offers nothing in the way of treatments except the vague suggestion that they can be found somehow within the present system through a reliance on “shared values,” “democracy” and the better instincts of the American character. The speech was exactly what one would expect from a presidential candidate trying hard not to offend a diverse electorate. Many tout the failed strategy that candidates must be pragmatic and reform must start somewhere. Unfortunately, America’s problems are so severe right now that only radical solutions can have any effect. This is why her speech is so uninspiring.

Excerpts of the speech are in italics with my comments on them placed in between. Stick with it until the end to read the passage by the late great economist Sean Gervasi that illustrates why Warren’s approach will be utterly ineffective.

Freud asked, "What do women want?"
Raytheon and the Girl Scouts have an answer:
Equal opportunity in the arms industry.

__________

… many American politicians seem to accept—even embrace—the politics of division and resentment…

This is a strange way to start the speech because what follows is an explanation of how badly the middle class and the poor have been robbed by the rich for the last forty years. In contrast to what she states, it would actually be a good and natural thing at this time for the country to be divided on class lines and for the poor to be resentful.

There’s a story we tell as Americans, about how we built an international order—one based on democracy, human rights, and improving economic standards of living for everyone. It wasn’t perfect—we weren’t perfect—but our foreign policy benefited a lot of people around the world.

“Not perfect” is an understatement. Perhaps it is not for Americans to judge this international order and decide how imperfect it was. If you claim you gave a gift to someone, you leave it up to the recipient to evaluate it or to say whether she even wanted it.

Washington’s focus shifted from policies that benefit everyone to policies that benefit a handful of elites, both here at home and around the world.

Reckless, endless wars in the Middle East. Trade deals rammed through with callous disregard for our working people. Extraordinary expansion of risk in the global financial system. Why? Mostly to serve the interests of big corporations while ignoring the interests of American workers.

A general theme of the speech is that the interests of American workers have been ignored, both in domestic and foreign policy. It is good of Senator Warren to speak up for the poor and the middle class, but she tends to put their victimhood above the injuries that have been inflicted on people abroad. The emphasis is on the harm to Americans, not on the war crimes committed against foreign nations.

While it is easy to blame President Trump for our problems, the truth is that our challenges began long before him.

Senator Warren gets credit for making this point, but what does she mean exactly? How long before Trump did these troubles begin? She seems to be saying throughout the speech exactly what Trump says with his “make America great again slogan.” They both seem to imagine that America could go back to that magic moment in time between 1945 and 1980 when middle class living standards expanded steadily. The truth is that that was a unique historical circumstance that will never come again.

The globalization of trade has opened up opportunity and lifted billions out of poverty around the world. Giant corporations have made money hand over fist. But our trade and economic policies have not delivered the same kind of benefits for America’s middle class.

There is a contradiction here. If free trade really did lift billions out of poverty, then overall it was a great thing. Why should the interests of a few million Americans take precedence over the billions who were lifted out of poverty?

Champions of cutthroat capitalism pushed former Soviet states to privatize as quickly as possible, despite the risk of corruption. They looked the other way as China manipulated its currency to advance its own interests and undercut work done here in America.

As one crisis after another hit, the economic security of working people around the globe was destroyed, reducing public faith in both capitalism and democracy.

It is notable that she portrays Russia as a victim of American capitalism, but later in the speech denounces Russia as aggressive and authoritarian. And again, she contradicts herself. Were billions lifted out of poverty or was the economic security of workers around the globe destroyed?

Russia has become belligerent and resurgent. China has weaponized its economy without loosening its domestic political constraints. And over time, in country after country, faith in both capitalism and democracy has eroded.

The Pentagon has a budget of $700 billion, but it is China that has weaponized its economy! Here Warren plays along with the current Russophobia delusion of her party’s faithful that Russia has committed acts of aggression. Whatever this perceived belligerence may be, it pales in comparison to the aggression of the United States since 1898, all those military interventions which Warren claimed created a beneficent world order, with, admittedly, some less-than-perfect moments along the way. The Russian belligerence she refers to consists of restrained actions in Georgia and Eastern Ukraine to protect Russian minorities and prevent full-scale civil wars on Russia’s border. The annexation of Crimea fulfilled the wish of the majority of the population to be a part of Russia—something that should have happened before Ukraine’s independence was recognized in 1991. Crimeans and ethnic Russians living in Ukraine and Georgia were glad to have been protected from the damage caused by the failed Ukrainian state created by American intervention.

I believe capitalism has the capacity to deliver extraordinary benefits to American workers. But time after time, our economic policies left these workers with the short end of the stick: stagnant incomes, decimated unions, lower labor standards, rising costs of living.

If she continually finds so many flaws in capitalism, it is reasonable to ask if she has discovered the intrinsic nature of capitalism. A more benign version of is not possible. Peter Joseph stated something similar when he commented on an event at which Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were featured speakers:

And I think the general gravitation of the democratic socialists and others of this mindset is also that you can kind of regulate [capitalism] in hard rigid laws that will preserve some degree of equal access, even though the entire society is premised on unequal access as a driver of industry and innovation, by the way. Once someone does attempt to create such legislation, like FDR did decades ago, you’ll notice that the general pressure is always to dismantle such programs in the name of free markets, and the problem here, effectively, is consistency. You cannot have contradictory social patterns and expect both of them to preserve themselves.

And while we do see differences between the United States and the Scandinavian countries and other social democracies in terms of how they collar capitalism, the United States itself exists in a completely different level of the sickness, so that even if you regulate in free education, free health care, free medical leave, free extended vacations—all these other things common in the pop culture socialism as we know it today, it would just be a matter of time before a new constituency would come in and remove those safety nets in favor of larger-order capitalist rationalization.[3]

The federal government has certified that NAFTA has already cost us nearly a million good American jobs—and big companies continue to use NAFTA to outsource jobs to Mexico to this day.

NAFTA 2.0 has better labor standards on paper but it doesn’t give American workers enough tools to enforce those standards.

NAFTA 2.0 is also stuffed with handouts that will let big drug companies lock in the high prices they charge for many drugs.

And NAFTA 2.0 does little to reduce pollution or combat the dangers of climate change.

Warren claims to be an advocate of capitalism, but she might eventually figure out that when she speaks of the need for enforcement, regulation and better deals and so on, she is really implying that a very different economic system is needed. She is talking about a planned economy in which surplus value of labor is diverted to maximum social benefit. The only way to succeed in this project is to be a revolutionary. It cannot be done under the present US constitution. The country would need to create a new constitution that guarantees social rights—rights to such necessities as employment, housing, education and health care. Any candidate for office or any political party that advocated for the erosion of these rights would be in violation of the constitution. What would emerge is a society where there were no billionaires, or perhaps even no millionaires. This, of course, seems ludicrous and unrealistic to most Americans. As the saying goes, poor Americans like to consider themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. However, Americans will eventually have to realize that under the present system, any gains they make in the area of social rights will be under constant assault and will eventually be lost. One reason Warren is so easily dismissed and ridiculed is that her talk about inequality comes off as unrealistic for this very reason. Critics say she’s crazy and ask “Who’s going to pay for it?” and they are right to react this way. She is crazy if she thinks anything can be achieved without articulating a plan for a radical and revolutionary reform of the economy.

… our policies should not prioritize corporate profits over American paychecks.

We can start by ensuring that workers are meaningfully represented at the negotiating table and build trade agreements that strengthen labor standards worldwide.

Again, she misses the chance to promote radical ideas. On this point she could talk about the need to democratize the enterprise, to let workers own the firms where they work, in which case they would never vote to relocate the factory out of the country. On the last point, one could ask whether the US can or should do much to strengthen labor standards in other countries when it has proven it cannot strengthen domestic labor standards.

We can make every trade promise equally enforceable.

We can curtail the power of multinational monopolies through serious antitrust enforcement.

We can work with our international partners to crack down on tax havens.

To address corruption, we need transparency about the movement of assets across borders.

The logical conclusion that comes from all these criticisms of free trade and corporate excesses in the global economy is to follow exactly what Trump has called for in his incoherent and inconsistent way; that is, economic nationalism. However, “nationalism” has been turned into dirty word by the self-defined progressives in the United States, so it is quite difficult to talk about protecting American workers in the contemporary discourse without being smeared as xenophobic and racist. Adherents of neoliberalism have erased positive nationalism from the imagination. In order to eliminate the problems she brings up, Warren would have to promote an American version of what they call in North Korea juche—extreme self-reliance, or importing nothing that you can’t make for yourself. The reduced carbon footprint of the economy would be an obvious benefit.

To make progress on climate change and protect our higher standards here in the US, we should leverage foreign countries’ desire for access to U.S. markets as an opportunity to insist on meaningful environmental protections.

None of this requires sacrificing the interests of American businesses—although it will require some of them to take a longer view.

Of course business interests are going to suffer if anything serious is to be done about climate change. You can’t have it both ways.  Once again, Warren is engaging in wishful thinking without having to specify how such goals could be realized. She is calling for a degree of restraint on private enterprise that has never existed. She is like a doctor who is good at diagnosis but terrible and prescribing the necessary drastic treatment that will come with many unpleasant side-effects.

We should be on the side of American businesses, protecting them from unfair practices abroad. That means aggressively targeting corruption and pay-to-play demands from unscrupulous governments. It means fighting back against the threat of forced technology transfer in exchange for market access. And it means penalizing the theft of American intellectual property.

This statement overlooks the fact that American businesses were willing participants in pay-to-play demands and agreements on technology transfers. They always had a choice not to play, but they favored the short-term benefits of having access to cheap labor. Warren must know this. She knows corporations have no loyalty to country, but she avoids coming to the conclusion that this is the nature of how capitalism functions within the American political system. The wish to change it must be acknowledged as the wish to replace it with something radically new.

The human costs of these wars has been staggering: more than 6,900 Americans killed, another 52,000 wounded. Many more who live every day with the invisible scars of war. And hundreds of thousands of civilians killed.

It is interesting that the total of 58,900 Americans killed and wounded in America’s foreign interventions is mentioned before the hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians killed by them. Of course, she is catering her message to domestic voters, but a little more concern for the immorality of war would be nice to see.

Widespread migration of millions of people seeking safety from war-torn regions has allowed right-wing demagogues to unfairly blame the newcomers for the economic pain of working people at home.

Does Elizabeth Warren know what party she belongs to? Her party, along with the Republican Party, was the instrument that created the situation she laments. How far does she think she is going to get with such talk within the Democratic Party? The last thing that Bernie Sanders supporters need is another sheepdog candidate who caves in to the party establishment after making a “noble effort” that goes nowhere.

Next, let’s cut our bloated defense budget… We can start by ending the stranglehold of defense contractors on our military policy. It’s clear that the Pentagon is captured by the so-called “Big Five” defense contractors.

Warren ignores the unpleasant reality that the defense budget is not just money that creates millionaires and disappears down a hole after that. It circulates in the economy and appears as suburban homes, health care premiums, vacations, cars etc. People vote for congressional representatives that will keep the money flowing to the jobs in their districts. Raytheon is headquartered in her state! Everyone understands the problem, but no one has a solution for how to retool Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing etc. to be training centers for teachers, nurses and whatever other occupations one can imagine a new peace economy could be based on. This could not possibly be a painless transition.

… alliances are about shared principles, like our shared commitment to human rights…

Warren makes some bold assumptions about basic American goodness. There are millions of people in America who aspire to creating a nation committed to human rights, but in the actual historical record it is doubtful to claim that the United States and its allies share honorable principles and a commitment to human rights.

… the President has threatened Russia with a nuclear arms race, saying we’ll simply outspend our rivals. Boy, is that wrong. The United States has over 4,000 nuclear weapons in our active arsenal, and our conventional military might is overwhelming. Trump’s nuclear arms race does not make us-or the world-any safer.

Let me propose three core nuclear security principles. One: No new nuclear weapons. I have voted against and will continue to vote against this President’s attempt to create new, more “usable” nuclear weapons. Two: More international arms control, not less. We should not spend over a trillion dollars to modernize our nuclear arsenal, at a time when the President is doing everything he can to undermine generations of verified arms control agreements. Instead, let’s start by extending New START through 2026. Three: No first use. To reduce the chances of a miscalculation or an accident, and to maintain our moral and diplomatic leadership in the world, we must be clear that deterrence is the sole purpose of our arsenal.

Warren proposes some sensible steps here that have been advanced by others who work in nuclear disarmament, but it is notable that she finishes with a commitment to deterrence but not disarmament, which the United States is obliged to work toward according to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

We need to be smarter and faster than those who wish to do us harm. We need to tap our creativity to anticipate and evaluate both risks and responses. And we need to better weigh the long-term costs and benefits of military intervention.

“Those who wish to do us harm”? I have heard this phrase countless times in American political speeches. In other countries leaders speak of national defense, but in America now leaders imagine a world full of people “who wish to do us harm.” It might actually be logical to conclude that after a 120 years trying to rule the world there is a lot of accumulated desire for payback out there. There is nothing like a guilty conscience to fill a head with fear of punishment. But still I wonder why Warren can’t be more imaginative and avoid this tired phrase, or why she can’t just say “we need good national defense.”

America can project power abroad only if we are strong and secure at home.

Why does she assume America needs to project power abroad? Most nations don’t think of such a need. They may want to practice diplomacy, or have a high standing among nations, but “projecting power” is something altogether different. If Warren really wants to solve the problems caused by the media-congressional-military-industrial complex, she may have to give up the idea of projecting power. The two goals are incompatible.

At a time when growing inequality stifles economic growth, Congress’ response has been a $1.5 trillion tax giveaway to the wealthiest.

Life expectancy in the U.S. is falling as drug overdoses skyrocket, and our health-care system struggles to respond. The U.S. is slashing domestic investments in education and infrastructure even as potential adversaries double down on those same priorities. Our government guts environmental protections while coastal cities spend days underwater and California burns.

A 21st century industrial policy, for example, would produce good jobs that provide dignity, respect, and a living wage, and it would also reinforce U.S. international economic power.

… infrastructure to increase connectivity and expand opportunity across the United States. Immigration policies to yield a more robust economy. Education policies to equip future generations without crushing them with debt. High-quality, affordable health care. An economy that is fair and open to entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes. A progressive tax system that requires the wealthy to pay their fair share. A government that is not for sale to the highest bidder.

“Affordable health care.”!!! Not a single-payer government program financed through payroll deductions or higher corporate taxes! Otherwise, what she gives here is a common description of well-known problems.

… we must remain vigilant and fight for our democracy every single day. That starts with protecting our elections and democratic processes, and making it clear that there will be severe consequences for those—foreign or domestic—who meddle, hack, or undermine them. It means ensuring a meaningful opportunity for every American citizen to vote. And it means fighting for equal justice and protection under the law for all.

Again, Warren signals appropriately to the party faithful that she accepts the Russophobic nonsense peddled as an excuse for Hillary Clinton’s loss. As with her entire speech, she is positioning herself as a presidential candidate, saying the right things in order to not lose favor with the deluded voter block that has drunk the Russia-did-it koolaid.

It also requires us to speak out against hateful rhetoric that fuels domestic terrorism of all kinds, … Just like the hateful terrorism of Al Qaeda and ISIS, domestic right-wing terrorism is completely incompatible with our American values. It is a threat to American safety and security, and we must not tolerate it in the United States of America.

American values. What are they exactly? These comments raise questions about whether Warren is too optimistic about what those values really are.

… after years as the world’s lone superpower, the United States is entering a new period of competition. Democracy is running headlong into the ideologies of nationalism, authoritarianism, and corruption.

This comment alludes to but doesn’t mention China and Russia by name, and it reeks of arrogance because of its implication that America as the lone superpower was the pinnacle of achievement in history and what will follow in a world where power that is shared is “nationalism, authoritarianism and corruption.” As I pointed out above, Warren’s stated wish for a better deal for American workers is its own sort of nationalism. Why does she have to drum up this fear that only worse things will happen in this new world order? China and Russia have their problems, but who is to say that these societies won’t evolve in their own ways, without American help, in a positive direction?

China is on the rise, using its economic might to bludgeon its way onto the world stage and offering a model in which economic gains legitimize oppression. To mask its decline, Russia is provoking the international community with opportunistic harassment and covert attacks—including just this week, when Russia seized three Ukrainian Navy ships near Crimea.

China “bludgeons” its way onto the world stage. Ask someone from the Philippines or a Native Hawaiian how America came onto the world stage. Russia in decline? Elizabeth, have you seen the economic and social statistics on Russia since the year 2000?

Both China and Russia invest heavily in their militaries and other tools of national power. Both hope to shape spheres of influence in their own image. Both are working flat out to remake the global order to suit their own priorities. Both are working to undermine the basic human rights we hold dear. And if we cannot make our government work for all Americans, China and Russia will almost certainly succeed.

Warren has just finished telling us that the American defense budget is too large, but now she says sees malicious intent in China and Russia “investing heavily their militaries.” Russia has a population roughly the same as that of the United States, while China has a billion people, but they both spend far less than the United States. Russia recently decreased its military budget while the United States increased its own. Why would I know such things but a US Senator would not? Obviously, she knows but chooses to obfuscate the issue.

But here’s the thing about authoritarian governments—they are rotten from the inside out. Authoritarian leaders talk a big game—about nationalism, and patriotism, and how they-and they alone-can save the state and the people.

Many American political leaders are now in the habit of making such allegations of “authoritarianism” against foreign leaders they don’t like, and the theme is echoed in the media. Yet the term is applied very selectively. To cite just one possible example of nations left off the list of bad actors, the speech contains no criticism of Israel’s recent murder of unarmed protesters by snipers.

People like Warren claim that Trump is reckless and putting the nation at risk of nuclear war, and they call for better diplomacy, but what could be worse diplomacy than these insulting allegations against the leaders of China and Russia which actually increase risk of war? In fact, I can’t think of any head of state of any large industrialized nation who is or was not authoritarian. Leaders who can stay at the peak of a hierarchy and implement positive changes always have a mix of viciousness and benevolence that gives historians a complicated legacy to evaluate. In a lecture about Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti spoke to a timeless truth about the effective exercise of power:

My view is that with popular leaders it’s not an either/or formulation. It’s a little more complex than that. Popular leaders want the opportunity to pursue policies that benefit the common people, as well as win mass support and gain some power because it’s needed to challenge the ruling class power and get their policies into operation. At the same time they might enjoy the personal gratification and glory that accompanies such a risky but popular undertaking. Few leaders are either entirely impervious to popularity or motivated exclusively by its pursuit. Likewise, no leader can afford to be indifferent to considerations of power and hope to survive as a leader. They have to worry about their power base. They’ve got to be concerned about developing a power base, and that concern and that genius to develop a power base among powerless people does not automatically make a popular leader a demagogue, especially when these leaders are moving against tremendous odds, against the existing power structure. Rather than speculating about leaders’ motives and personality, I think it’s better to inquire into their actual course of action. We need to ask what social forces thrusted these popularists to the fore in Rome when such social force was the much-maligned proletariat.[4]

Warren could also familiarize herself with an explanation of America in the 21st century as an “inverted totalitarianism”:

Inverted totalitarianism is different from classical forms of totalitarianism. It does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in the faceless anonymity of the corporate state. Our [American] inverted totalitarianism pays outward fealty to the facade of electoral politics, the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, and the iconography, traditions and language of American patriotism, but it has effectively seized all of the mechanisms of power to render the citizen impotent.[5]

With this explanation in mind, we can understand why politicians like Warren always seek solutions within the present system and refer to vague notions of a “sacred democracy,” “humanitarianism,” or “shared values.” These don’t need to be defined. They are just assumed. The authoritarian says he alone can save the state while the servile leaders of inverted totalitarianism say the present system alone can solve all problems.

Vladimir Putin attacks the free press and thumps his chest about the power of Russia, but his real power comes from state-run corporations conveniently overseen by his friends and cronies. Corruption.

Russian-speaking specialists such as Stephen Cohen say this view of Putin and Russia is false, uttered by people who know nothing about contemporary Russia. Responding to similar comments spoken by the President of Ploughshares, Joe Cirincione, Cohen said:

Trump has driven once-sensible people completely crazy. Moreover, Joe knows absolutely nothing about internal Russian politics… what he just said is ludicrous. And the sad part is... that once-distinguished and important spokespeople for rightful causes, like ending the nuclear arms race, have been degraded, or degraded themselves by saying things like he said to the point that they’re of utility today only to the proponents of a new nuclear arms race.[6]

In China, President Xi consolidates his power and talks about the “China Dream,” while state-owned and state-influenced corporations make millionaires out of friends and family of Communist party elites. Corruption.

Note how Warren punctuates her idea with a one-word sentence just like Trump often does. He says, “Sad” and she says, “Corruption.” In any case, was the USA ever so different from what she alleges China to be like? In China, were millions of people lifted out of poverty or not? Were state-owned and state-influenced corporations overall a good thing or not? It is ironic to hear an American complaining that the system made a few well connected people into millionaires while economic growth benefitted the majority. That is the usual defense of American free enterprise.

Americans are an adaptive, resilient people, and we have met hard challenges head on before. We can work together, as we have before, to strengthen democracy at home and abroad. We can build a foreign policy that works for all Americans, not just wealthy elites.

What she says about Americans could be said about the human race in general. Yes, we are adaptive and resilient and we meet challenges head on. Aside from that, does she have a point to make? Can she not do better than the recycling of these stale bromides lifted from the speeches of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders?

I end with a passage from American economist Sean Gervasi who worked first for the Kennedy administration then at the UN and various international assignments between 1960 and 1996, when he passed away. He gave a brilliant lecture twenty-seven years ago, on January 26, 1992, on the crises that gripped both Russia and the USA at the time, crises which have still not been resolved. This short excerpt from the lecture makes plain what Elizabeth Warren’s speech lacks in both style and substance:

I ask you to reflect on that when we confront the enormous economic difficulties from which there follow all kinds of social problems in our society today which we face. These are connected to, and, if you like, made possible by the arrangements conceived by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. If this crisis which we have been living in for 20 years, and have become more acutely aware of in the last 10, is intractable, it is, above all, intractable because of this invisible concentrated power which exists today after industrial growth—the rise of the large corporations in the framework conceived by Madison, Hamilton and the other Federalists.

So if you want to argue today that we need to reconsider this framework, you run into very fundamental problems. You run into the problem that the Constitution is treated like an icon, that people are unaware that the preamble to the Declaration of Independence is not the law of the United States, that people are unaware of the fact that the Bill of Rights, which is supposed to compensate for some of the failings of our constitutional system, has been systematically shredded by the two most recent administrations…

… what does it mean that the Soviet Union now has disappeared as a result of the kind of process that I’m talking about, a combination of internal difficulties and external pressure and intervention? Does it mean that socialism doesn’t work? Does it mean that [there is no alternative to] the kind of capitalism that we live in today, which I think increasingly of as a return to irrational and savage 19th century capitalism? If you walk through the Bronx and Brooklyn and Harlem, how can you not conclude that we are living in an irrational and savage capitalism in which the leveling attacks of democracy have been dealt with, in which the possibility of remedying that situation by the constitutional means which exist in the normal political channels of our government are very small, that electoral changes, in other words, are not going to be very significant, until there’s a mass mobilization of American people to make something happen.

… The Soviet Union was conceived at a time when, in Marxist terms, it was not ready. The Soviet Union did not have the material base of abundance which would make it possible to create a society at once egalitarian and democratic because the struggle to create that base would require a degree of repression and authoritarianism, particularly heightened by external intervention and attack, which inevitably would distort the nature of socialism… the critical fact for us is this: the Soviet Union was a society conceived as a socialist society prior to the creation of the economic base which would permit the creation of a socialist society with ease. We live in a society whose capacity to produce, whose potential abundance is so great that the inability to make use of it is literally tearing this society apart.

We live in a society which is ready, and when I say that, I want to go back to the terms of the discussion on the constitutional conventions. Why can’t we have economic democracy? … Economic democracy inevitably would mean a number of these things: the accountability of the enormous concentrated power which exists in our society today to public democratic institutions. The planned rational use of resources at the public level, with democratic participation in the same manner that that planned rational use is conceived within the framework of the corporations, where the exercise of those decisions is not accountable. So it seems to me that in our day, when our society is riven by its contradictions, unable to use its abundance, unable to use its productive capacity in a rational, humane and democratic manner, that what is on the agenda today is the democratization of economic power, the rendering accountable of the enormous economic potential and power that exists in our society to make this a better and decent and democratic world.[7]

For more analysis of Elizabeth Warren’s bid for the presidency and her ties to the defense industry, see:

Alexander Rubinstein, “Elizabeth Warren’s Ties and the Military Industrial Complex,” Mint Press News, January 4, 2019.

Update, May 17, 2018, Tweeted by Elizabeth Warren on May 15, 2019:

Notes

---

[1] Nik DeCosta-Klipa, “Read the transcript of Elizabeth Warren’s big foreign policy speech,” Boston Globe, November 29, 2018.

[2] John Nichols, “Elizabeth Warren Just Took a Crucial Stand for Democracy and Enlightened Internationalism,” The Nation, November 30, 2018.

[3] Peter Joseph, Bernie Sanders’ “Inequality in America” Town Hall Meeting, March 19, 2018: Peter Joseph’s structural analysis of American “progressive” consciousness. Link above goes to the transcript. Video at the The Zeitgeist Movement’s Youtube channel.

[4] Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Seattle, April 5, 1998.

[5] Chris Hedges, “Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism,” Truthdig, November 2, 2015.

[6] Aaron Mate, “Debunking the Putin Panic with Stephen F. Cohen,” Real News Network, July 24, 2018.

[7] Sean Gervasi, “How the US Caused the Breakup of the Soviet Union,” Global Research, November 24, 2017. The lecture took place on January 26, 1992.