Originally Posted by Isbjørn

Why not? Not even progressive reforms come without a pressure from below. Bernie Sanders is no revolutionary, but the only reason he was able to win support was because people in America were already sick of economic inequality, political corruption, starvation wages and crippling debt. Sanders' promise to punish the bankers responsible for the financial crisis of 2008 wasn't something he came up with himself, it had been written on the signs of Occupy Wall Street protestors years earlier. Also, politicians have a tendency to get assimilated by the establishment once they're elected. The Norwegian Labor Party gained popularity based on their revolutionary socialist platform. But when they came in position, their revolutionary edge was gradually blunted, and today they're the most ardent supporters of capitalism and the general status-quo. This applies to most European social-democratic parties.

As Billy Bragg put it in his version of "The Internationale": "although they offer us concessions, change will not come from above".

This is true. Also, he re-popularized the word "socialism", though in the most vulgar meaning of the word. I just hope the class-consciousness, anti-elitism and political disillusion that have arisen lately develop from electoral politics and obedience (as is the case when Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton) to a mass movement based on direct action and a struggle for actual socialism.

Things happened.

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.