JF

Thinking recently about the American dark age that appears to loom behind a (still likely) Sanders loss, and while trying to avoid blind optimism I have to point out some principles - ostensibly shared by communists - that at least suggest an alternate future.

To prephase, this presumes the reader is already on board with "Bernie or Bust," ie that Sanders' assault on the Democratic party is the defining opportunity of our moment. One common objection being, accepting this premise, what next when he loses?

The standard glum answer to this is four to eight more years of Obama followed by another, worse Trump, the clock starting either in 2021 or after Trump's second term, depending on which way the general goes. Possibly another 16-100 years before we get another such opportunity.

I don't like to use this kind of language, but this projection is undialectical. If you take away one message from Hegel, it should be that history is unidirectional. It's a ratchet. This is what separates us from the anarchists and trads.

Ideas don't disappear after they're discredited so as to to recur later. They remain in the form of *discredited ideas,* things that haven't worked. For the left and for workers, Obama is objectively in this pile. It's one of the few things these two groups seem to agree on.

Trump will fulfill this same role for the far right, and the workers who shrugged and let him shoot his shot in 2016 will agree that he didn't do much for them either. What probably won't happen is a flight to AOC and "the squad" as the new hope.