It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism (2023)
Bernie Sanders (1941)
with John Nichols
305 pages
I’ve heard so many declarations over the years – both publicly and privately – about Senator Bernie Sanders’ apparently extreme positions. Even among those whose opinions I tend to have confidence in, their negative comments often seem difficult to square with what I’ve heard from Sanders himself, for example in the presidential debates some years ago. So, when I by chance came across his book It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism (shout out to The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, NC), I decided it was time to explore where the truth lies.
Dive into the text, co-written by John Nichols, a journalist for The Nation, and it quickly becomes clear that the attacks on Sanders in too much of the media – and parroted by those in the public inflamed by such reporting – tend to be hyperbolic exaggerations, if not outright mischaracterizations of his positions and proposed policies. The media criticisms of him seem driven not by facts, but rather by a fear that Americans hearing his actual proposals might begin to question what has been a carefully inculcated, dogmatic belief in unfettered capitalism and free market fundamentalism.
This deliberate indoctrination of the American mind creates a challenging deterrent to any nuanced conversation around Sanders’ proposals; historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway provide a comprehensive and engaging exploration of its origins and development in The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free market (my review linked to at right), in which they argue that:
By promoting a false dichotomy between laissez-faire capitalism and communist regimentation, market fundamentalists [have made] it difficult for Americans to have conversations about crucial issues, such as appropriate levels of taxation or the balance between federal and state authority, or even how to appraise the size of the federal government objectively. (118, Oreskes and Conway)
As Oreskes and Conway conclude, anything that violates the free market fundamentalist ideology becomes characterized as a threat to our country.
Take, for example, Sanders’ comment “I don’t think that billionaires should exist,” (96) which some in the media have trumpeted as proof he’s anti-capitalist. In fact, as he notes regarding his proposals just a few pages later: “This isn’t about creating a rigid system that discourages creativity and innovation. There’s nothing wrong with a business or an entrepreneur making a profit.” (100) His actual concern lies with the corrosive effects of the extreme wealth inequality now experienced in the US.
delicate balance between politics and market can be destroyed, [through either] state control over the economy [or] capitalist control over the state. (29, Wolf)
While major media outlets in the US can simply avoid engaging deeply with journalists and economists who propose such policies, when a politician does so, the hyperbole machine cranks up to protect the status quo for the wealthy. And, as Sanders points out elsewhere in the book, increasing media consolidation into the hands of a handful of wealthy businessmen in the US has given them ever more control over that narrative. Nonetheless, he emphasizes that his
point is not to demonize oligarchs. … They tend to work hard and take risks; they’re often innovative. … Inequality isn’t about individuals; this is a systemic crisis. (105)
His solutions are intended not as penalties against individuals, but rather as correctives to a system that has become increasingly out of balance.
Sanders makes a similar case for the need to fix our health care system, noting that “in America, we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as the people of any other country,” and yet our health care system in the US “rank[s] close to the bottom of major industrialized nations in outcomes.” He goes on to detail the variety of crises facing health care in the US, including “85 million Americans … underinsured or uninsured.” (124-126)
Sanders points out, however, that “the current American health care system is working exactly the way it was designed to operate – for the people who own it.” (123) This quite obvious, yet pointed conclusion parallels a similar observation by biologist and science writer Colin Tudge in his excellent book The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact, in which he notes that “the agricultural systems of the [modern] world are not actually designed to feed people.” For both our agricultural and our health care systems, the focus is on profit; in any trade-off between increasing profits and improving health outcomes, it’s clear how our economic system requires the decision to fall.
Generally, when the issues with the US health care system have been reported, they often seem to be treated as an unavoidable reality, instead of a pressing issue that needs resolved. Sanders, however, makes a straightforward proposal: build on what already works, by expanding Medicare over a five year period to cover the entire US population. He notes that, beyond giving everyone health coverage, it would benefit businesses by ending their need to provide employee health care coverage, it would remove the for-profit system that currently perverts health care outcomes, and it would mean that the under- and uninsured would no longer be left with only a last-resort, extremely expensive (for taxpayers) visit to the emergency room to address what could have been dealt with earlier at much less cost. He cites a Congressional Budget Office report as concluding that, depending on the approach, “a single-payer program would save the American people between $42 billion and $743 billion every year.” (151)
Here, again, the media and political pushback to his health care proposals, and similar ones from Elizabeth Warren, has less to do with the facts of the issue than with the deep pockets the health care industry has – due to the profits they make off the existing system – to propagate stories creating irrational fears over any change that threatens those profits. The result only reinforces Sanders’ concern about how wealth translates into the ability to craft public and political opinion in a way that increases that wealth, to the detriment of democracy.
Sanders notes that his proposals for dealing with both the social and political impacts of inequality and the health impacts of the for-profit health system are neither radical nor untested – variations of them have been in place and effective in many other major industrialized countries for decades. The US itself had significantly higher top end marginal tax rates in the middle of the 20th century, including during the economically strong 1950’s; and the majority of industrialized countries have universal health care coverage.
Similarly, practical solutions have been implemented globally (including in the past in the US) for other issues he addresses in his book, such as the high cost of education and dramatically increasing media consolidation. In each case, the facts of the situation are beyond dispute, while Sanders’ proposed policy solutions, even if one has disagreements with them, are hardly radical, untested or extreme.
Along with policy prescriptions to address particular issues, Sanders also describes the more systemic challenges we face, in an economy based on free market fundamentalism. He argues that
Our struggle is to end a system that evaluates “worth” as a measure of market profitability, a system in which we are asked to believe – based on salaries paid – that the star athlete who helps a billionaire team owner increase his bottom line is “worth” more than a thousand teachers who help children escape poverty. (106)
Philosopher Michael J. Sandel makes this same argument in his excellent book 
The Tyranny of Merit (my review linked to at right), in which he notes that our idolization of merit has led to a false belief among the successful that what they have achieved is only due to their own actions – that they have merited their success – and an equally damaging and false sense among those who have not succeeded that it is due to their own failings. Sandel describes how
In market-driven societies, interpreting material success as a sign of moral desert is a persisting temptation. It is a temptation we need repeatedly to resist. One way of doing so is to debate and enact measures that prompt us to reflect, deliberately and democratically, on what counts as truly valuable contributions to the common good and where market verdicts miss the mark. (213, Sandel)
By re-orienting our understanding of where value lies, we can begin to adapt our economic system in ways that address the negative impacts of ballooning wealth inequality.
Beyond Sanders’ examination of the current social, economic and political situation in the US and his proposals for addressing his concerns, an appealing moment in the book for me was his nuanced characterization of the significant number of those who voted for Trump. Because so many Democrats don’t seem to get it, I’ll take the liberty of an extended quote here, from early in his book:
[Trump] did especially well in white, rural, economically depressed parts of the country. Why? Why did working-class people, many of them struggling economically, vote for Trump? Why was he able to hold rallies in the middle nowhere that drew tens of thousands of enthusiastic followers?
I know some pundits and politicians respond to those questions by suggesting that all of Trump’s supporters are racists, sexists, and homophobes; that they really are “deplorable” and there is nothing to be done. Sorry, I don’t agree. And I should know. I have been to almost every state in this country and, unlike corporate pundits, have actually talked with Trump supporters. Are some of them racists and sexist who vote for bigotry? Absolutely. But many are not.
I think the more accurate answer as to why Trump has won working-class support lies in the pain, desperation, and political alienation that millions of working-class Americans now experience and the degree to which the Democratic Party has abandoned them for wealthy campaign contributors and the “beautiful people.”
These are Americans who, while the rich get much richer, have seen their real wages stagnate and their good union jobs go to China and Mexico. They can’t afford health care, they can’t afford childcare, they can’t afford to send their kids to college and are scared to death about a retirement with inadequate income. Because of what doctor’s call “diseases of despair,” their communities are even seeing a decline in life expectancy.
Many of these voters have spent their lives playing by the rules. They worked hard, very hard, and did heir best for their kids and their communities. During the worst of the pandemic, they didn’t have the luxury of sitting behind a computer at home doing “virtual” work. They were putting their lives on the line at jobs in hospitals, factories, warehouses, public transportation, meatpacking plants, and grocery stores. They kept the economy going, and many thousands of them died as a result.
Many of these so-called racist Americans voted for Barack Obama, our first Black president, and for “hope” and “change” and “Yes We Can.” And they voted to reelect him. But their lives did not get better.
After almost fifty years of stagnation, Democrats were in charge – but we did not raise wages for workers. After a massive amount of illegal corporate anti-union activity, we did not make it easier for workers to join unions. We did not improve job security. We didn not address corporate greed for the massive levels fo income and wealth inequality. We did not provide health care fo all or lower the cost of prescription drugs. We did not make childcare and higher education affordable. We did not address homelessness or the high cost of housing. We did not make it easier for working people to retire with security and dignity. We did not reform a corrupt campaign finance system.
Today, tens of millions of Americans feel deep anger toward the political, economic, and media establishment. They look at Washington and corporate media and see rejection and contempt. They see not only a government that is ignoring their needs but politicians busy attending fundraising events with the rich, who have no clue as to what the lives of the great majority of Americans are about.
The absurdity of the current-day situation is that Trump – a phony, a pillar of the establishment, a billionaire, and an anti-worker businessman – has been able to fill that political vacuum and tap into that anger. (8-10)
If the extent of this anger remains unrecognized and so unaddressed by Democrats, it does not bode will for their success in upcoming election cycles.
It’s disappointing that those who disagree with the kinds of policy proposals Sanders makes in It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism too often resort to hyperbole and mischaracterizations about them, as opposed to debating them on the merits. One can interpret this, however, as a sign of the weakness of their counterarguments. By fearmongering about his proposals, his opponents don’t have to acknowledge that most if not all of them have been successfully implemented elsewhere, nor must they present coherent arguments for why these same prescriptions couldn’t benefit the American people also. Unfortunate, finally, that he was denied the opportunity to make his case as the Democratic candidate for president in the 2016 election.
Other notes and information:
This video of Sanders at a rally presents a condensed version of his concerns, his proposals, and their success elsewhere.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
