“When we talk about uber-capitalism in its rawest form – about greed that knows no limit, about corporations that viciously oppose the right of workers to organize, about the abuses of wealth and power that tear apart our society – we’re talking about Amazon,” writes Bernie Sanders in his new book. “And when we’re talking about Amazon, we’re talking about Jeff Bezos.”
These are typical lines in what comprises an attack on the status quo from every conceivable direction. Sanders addresses his own two ultimately thwarted campaigns to lead the Democratic party; the crisis in American healthcare and the chasms of health inequality shown up by Covid; the declining union movement and stagnation of wages; the burgeoning billionaire class and its impact on democracy; and the looming environmental crisis. Nothing he says will come as any surprise to his supporters, who are legion. Everything he says is quite unfashionable, from the macro – greed is bad, actually – to the micro, still using “uber” to mean “ultra”, as if Uber itself didn’t exist. He has no compunction about his reference points, which go from the obvious (F Scott Fitzgerald observing that thing about the rich) to the niche (a union organiser and folk singer named Florence Reece, who wrote a song in the 1930s called Which Side Are You On?). If his ideas were a band, they’d be the Ink Spots, with songs written a long, long time ago, and all the intros the same.
