Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on stage at a “Fighting Oligarchy” rally at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley on March 21, 2025. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline
Lenin called out Kautsky’s fake socialism more than a century ago—today, Bernie and AOC are playing the same game, trading radical change for liberal theatrics.
"In falsifying Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialects is the easiest way of deceiving the people. It gives an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social development at all."
- V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution.
On April 30, 2015, Senator Bernie Sanders, with little to no fanfare and less than 10 media outlets in attendance, announced his intention to seek the presidential nomination of the Democrat Party. The setting, a small enclave near the U.S. capitol building, could not have been less banal - yet what followed certainly took the nation and the Democrat Party by surprise as his candidacy emerged into an undeniable force that jockeyed the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and their preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, so much that the party resorted to malfeasance and corruption so blatant it forced them to quarantine then DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, during the 2016 convention in Philadelphia.
What’s followed since 2016 are hard truths about Sanders and his true intentions as nothing more than a DNC agent of controlled opposition. In short, Bernie Sanders’ “political revolution” of 2016 is suffocated, and he’s the one holding the pillow.
Sanders’ recent so-called Fight Oligarchy national tour along with his acolyte, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is proof of this and represents a cautionary tale for what happens to movements when they are co-opted and recuperated by both liberal and corporate forces. In this case, I use the term recuperation as characterized by anarchist and author Peter Gelderloos in their book, The Failure of Nonviolence, “Recuperation is the process by which those who attempt to break away from current power structures to rebel are induced to rejuvenate those power structures or create more effective ones. They either turn their rebellion into the mere symbol of rebellion, as a way to exorcise whatever anger or discontentment led them to rebel, or they direct it against only a small part of the system, creating a change that allows the State to function more effectively overall.”
This is a fitting depiction of the Fight Oligarchy tour, which has produced nothing more than acute catharsis in the short term. However, what the tour has exposed is much more instructive, including the fact that if V.I. Lenin were alive today, Bernie Sanders would be his modern day Karl Kautsky - a leading theoretician of the late 19th Century German Social Democratic Party (SPD). A quick review of Lenin’s State and Revolution reveals that in addition to a polemic of Kautsky, Social Democrats, and opportunists of his time, this work also acts as a prescient admonishment for true anti-capitalists and revolutionary forces of the emergence of characters like Bernie Sanders, his acolytes, and, perhaps most importantly, his sycophants who remain stubbornly ensorcelled and hoodwinked by his grift. The result is a greater militancy displayed by followers when it comes to defending Sanders from those who critique him, than a requisite militancy against the forces that uphold capitalism, imperialism, and far too many elements of white “supremacy.”
It becomes necessary, then, to interrogate what Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are currently undertaking in an effort to prevent their continued machinations that has already adulterated the true precepts of socialism as part of a surreptitious plot to lure people into the clutches of a derelict, unprincipled, genocide-supporting, false climate solution promoting, and corrupt Democrat party.
When it comes to the Fight Oligarchy tour, we have to ask ourselves some serious and pertinent questions including, but not limited to, what is its actual, in the parlance of liberal NGOs, theory of change? Many will say that the tour represents a form of “resistance” and shows that the masses are finally showing some signs of life after seeming dormant and shook during the first two months of Trump’s second presidency. Others contend that the tour demonstrates that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are doing what the Democrat Party won’t - stand up to Trump and the capitalist regime he currently resides over. Tammy Burgess, who attended a recent rally proclaimed, “I like that they’re fighting against this oligarchy and the administration,” she added, because a lot of Democrats “are too scared” to do so. But what does, “fighting against the oligarchy” really mean?
If quantity in itself is an indicator of success, then it can’t be argued that the tens of thousands drawn to the Fight Oligarchy rallies vindicate their effectiveness. However, if quality is the chief indicator, these rallies are nothing more than the latest caper of the Vermont Senator and his New York City-based apprentice to build their latest bridge to nowhere, a circular argument that does not direct the masses to do much at all beyond calling their representatives and making Trump into more of a pariah than he already is for many. They both seem to indicate that an oligarchy can be properly usurped without usurping the very system that established and maintains it, that a system that is working exactly as it was designed to is “broken,” and a few tweaks here and there will allow it to finally serve a plurality of people.
This myopic and sophomoric political positioning is precisely what Lenin warned of in State and Revolution. As part of his polemic of Kautskyism, Lenin highlights an exchange of articles between Kautsky and the Dutch revolutionary, Anton Pannekeok, who, at the time of the exchanges, along with Rose Luxemburg, believed Kautsky was moving to the “center” and away from the true tenets of Marxism. In an article response to Pannekoek, Kautsky asserts, “the object of the mass strike cannot be to destroy the state power, its only object can be to make the government compliant on some specific question, or to replace a government hostile to the proletariat by one willing to meet it halfway.” He then concludes, “The aim of our political struggle remains, as in the past, the conquest of state power by winning a majority in parliament and by raising parliament to the ranks of master of the government.” To this, Lenin contends, “in this controversy, it is not Katusky but Pannekeok who represents Marxism, for it was Marx who taught that the proletariat cannot simply win state power in the sense that the old apparatus passes into new hands, but must smash this apparatus, must break it and replace it with a new one.”
Lenin’s response elucidates the contradictions of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez adroitly. Consider a recent interview Sanders took part in with a Vermont-based publication in which he proclaims, “So what I think we need is a political revolution. You open the doors and you demand that Congress starts taking on the oligarchy and the special interests, and fights from the needs of working class people.” But in the same interview, Sanders did not call for an end to working within the Democrat party, he doubled down on the idea that it can still be reformed, even perambulating the idea of moving on from corporate-captured leaders in the party like Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Scumer. Sanders, when asked about Schumer and the Democrat party retorted, “It's more than Schumer. If you're looking at just Schumer, the question is, "OK, who replaces him in the Senate? What is the agenda?" And more importantly, do we need fundamental reform of the Democratic Party?” He goes on to note that the Democrat Party is out of touch with working class people and suggests, “So what I am trying to do, along with some others, including Alexandria [Ocasio-Cortez], is force open the Democratic Party, to bring in working class people, bring in young people, bring in people of color.”
What’s missing from this pablum is any firm program to build up the masses as part of developing a proper political opposition - and this omission of a comprehensive program that is independent of the Democrat party may inform many of Sanders’ contradictions including how he gets to and from each of his rallies - it was recently reported that he has spent over $200,000 on private jets for him and the Congresswoman in the first quarter of 2025 alone (talk about being out of touch with the working class) - to what he’s saying and not saying during them.
What’s not being said was on full display during a rally in Boise, Idaho during which at least three pro-Palestine protesters were expelled from the venue for unfurling a Palestinian flag. While the protesters were being escorted out and detained, the crowd booed in consternation and began loudly chanting, “Free Palestine.” Rather than stand with the protesters, Sanders, who clearly realized he lost the crowd, instead circumvented the issue at hand and quipped, “I know this is a sensitive issue, but we have to focus on is not only the crisis people are facing in Gaza, but the crisis facing the working class people in this country.” To be sure, the working class people of the U.S. are in a crisis, but they are also not being subjected to genocide, ethnic cleansing, the barbabric destruction of their homelands at the hands of an occupying force, or being intentionally starved as an act of war. This all followed a common element of Sanders’ speeches in which he declares that Israel has a right to defend itself while also carefully going out of his way to bifurcate the Netanyahu government from the overall settler colonial project that is the basis of the Israeli ethnostate.
And while it’s true that Sanders has attempted to pass resolutions that would stop arming Israel, it’s also true that he refuses to refer to what Israel is carrying out as a genocide, he did not apply this level of righteous indignation when Biden was still in power, and he endorsed Biden and Harris’s runs for president event though both are complicit and have Palestinian blood on their hands. The incident in Boise and Sanders’ overall approach to Israel’s brutal repression and subjugation of Palestinians reveals to truths - he is a low-key zionist and he does not intend to use these rallies as an instrument to leverage people power to dismantle the zionist ethnostate, nor liberate the Palestinian people. How else can one explain why he, nor AOC have even mentioned the incident or offered to stand or speak with the Boise protesters after what they were subjected to at the hands of law enforcement. Moreover, why did law enforcement remove and arrest them in the first place unless this was directed by organizers of the “Fight Oligarchy” tour - this warranted question deserves a clear answer and until one is provided, we should all be skeptical of the Bernie camp and inquire about its collusion with law enforcement, which is to say the State, at their rallies.
Another contradiction that must be interrogated is the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez approach to the Democrat party in itself. While both purport themselves to be socialists, though not as profoundly as of recent, they still through words in actions, or lack thereof, contend that the Democrat party can act as a vehicle to deliver policies both are known best for including Medicare for All and a Green New Deal (albeit a watered-down, semi-capitalist version of it). And this is what makes their gallivanting grift even more problematic as both must by now know that the reforms they are proposing have no chance of becoming reality via the Democrat Party. If anything, the party has moved farther to the right since Sanders’ first run in 2016 and Ocasio-Cortez’s election to Congress in 2018. The question becomes, what then are they playing at and who are they actually playing for?
It should be noted that while Sanders indicated during an interview with the New York Times, “One of the aspects of this tour is to try to rally people to get engaged in the political process and run as independents outside of the Democratic Party.” Really? Because this is certainly not a talking point that he or Ocasio-Cortez have espoused during any stop of their $15,000 per plane ride travelling tour. It's lost on no one that both run as Democrats, caucus with the Democrats, and endorse zionist Democrats from Tim Ryan, to John Fetterman, Joe BIden, and Kamala Harris. Moreover, it’s not like the “Fight Oligarchy” tour is putting any infrastructure in place to build up Independent candidates, nor an independent party. Ironically, neoliberal and Democrat party hacks like James Carville have called for a schism and for the Sanders/AOC wing of the party to form their own political institution. This may be the best counsel ever provided by Carville, so why don’t Sanders and Occasio-Cortez take him up on his invitation and use the “Fight Oligarchy” tour to split from the party?
The answer to this question is contained in Lenin’s polemic of Kautsky which contemporaneously exposes the contradictions of the German Social Democrats of the late 19th century as well as the malfeasance of today’s Democrats in socialism-face, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez specifically. As such, it’s the duty of Black people who uphold the Black Radical Tradition and that of our multiracial, multi-ethnic, and multi-gender comrades to prosecute their Tour de Farce and do all we can to emancipate the masses from a sadistic sycophancy that can only be described as a drug addiction. This includes exposing the mendacity of “socialist” publications like Jacobin who provide cover and mechanisms for the likes of Sanders and AOC to construct a horizontal Overton Window that is attempting to move socialism to the right, and right into the hands of the Democrat party.
For when we dissipate the fog of the Sanders sycophancy it will be clear that he and his acolyte, AOC, are not so much change agents as much as they are agents of an underhanded and insidious plot to render socialism into a 21st century version of Keynesianism that will lead the planet into an uninhabitable sphere of calamity, characterize truly revolutionary elements into enemies of the State, and otherwise keep inculcating and leading people back to an intransigent DNC plantation that will never wean itself from the oligarchy they purport to fight, nor offer transformative improvements for poor and working class people here and abroad.
When it comes to Sanders and AOC, Lenin is rolling in his grace while Kautsky is laughing his ass off in his.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate/environmental liberation and racial justice advocate and practitioner, a writer, and policy expert who resides in the United States with his family and mischievous cats, “Evil” Ernie and MalaChai ‘the Mayhem Maker.” He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST
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