Bernie Sanders uses Dublin speech to urge workers to prevail in ‘war with oligarchy’

By David Young, PA

Bernie Sanders has urged working people in Ireland and across the world to unite to stop the rise of oligarchy as he delivered a keynote speech in Dublin.

The 83-year-old Vermont senator used an address at the Robert Tressell Festival at Liberty Hall to criticise what he characterised as a new generation of billionaires who do not believe in government or democracy.

He also expressed concern that artificial intelligence and new technology were being used against working people, to take their jobs, rather than being harnessed to benefit workers and generate wealth across society.

He denounced President Donald Trump, describing his administration as a “government of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires”.

The independent senator, who lost out to Hillary Clinton in a bid to become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, also accused the party of cutting ties with the working class people of the US.

“Why did he (President Trump) win the support of the majority of the American people? The answer is everything to do with the fact that working class people believe that the Democratic Party no longer represents them,” Mr Sanders told the event on Saturday night.

“And by the way, this is not just an American phenomenon, it is happening to social democratic parties all over the world. And these parties have to make a choice – if they think they are going to survive defending a status quo which is destroying the lives of millions of workers in America and around the world, they are dead wrong.”

He added: “All over this world is an understanding that we are at war with an oligarchy that couldn’t care less about the people in Palestine, care less about the people in Ireland, or care less about the people in the United States of America.

“These oligarchs are not like the rich (of the past) – I’m not a historian, but my impression is they are not like the wealthy of past generations.

“The rich have always wanted tax breaks. The rich have always wanted to break unions, anti-unionism. (But) these guys are different. And the difference is they do not believe in the concept of government. They do not believe in democracy.

“You know, 150 years ago there was this divine (right), the kings in Europe, the tsar in Russia, they told their the constituents that they had the right to rule, the divine right to rule.”

The senator said many leading billionaires of the present day subscribed to the same theory.

“They believe they are high IQ people who have developed these big technology companies, they are so smart they have created billion-dollar companies, they have the right to rule, and they don’t want you or democracy or government or unions or consumer groups to get in the way,” he said.

“I will tell you that they are moving very, very rapidly, (with) this artificial intelligence and robotics. What they did to (US) federal employees (cutting jobs), and we’re seeing right now, literally, what they did to federal employees is a signal to every corporation in America – ‘Hey, we did it. You can do it. And if your workers stand up, you tell them, they got machinery coming in, we got AI coming in, we got robotics coming, we don’t need that any more’.

“So if we do not get our act together, if we do not raise a class consciousness which understands that that technology must be used to benefit working people, not just to make the billionaires even richer, if we don’t raise the consciousness to understand that in the world we live today, there is no reason why we should be experiencing the kind of poverty and economic misery that we are.

“Economic rights, as I think most people in this room know, are human rights.

“People have a right to proper health care. They have a right to decent housing. They have a right to good quality education. They have a right to decent incomes. This is not a utopian vision. We’re not living in the 1850s any more.

“We have the technology to know how to create the wealth that we need to create a decent life for every man, woman and child. We can do it. But we can’t do it unless we come together globally, unless the working class stands up and says ‘enough is enough’ to the oligarchs, they are not going to have it all.

“It is our world, and we’re going to take power and create a society that works for all of us.”