>>> nathan at newman.org 06/07/01 22:29 PM >>>
>Frankly, if you compare the actual governing policies of the Democrats
>compared to those enacted by Weimar SDP when in power, the Dems today
>promote more radical policies.
-Yeah, the Dems haven't killed Karl und Rosa even once! Volcker's deflationary policy wasn't even close to -German deflationary policy in 1923! Come on, Nathan - even lawyers and economists know that sometimes -ceteris ain't even close to paribus.
Hey don't use your fancy Latin on me- I won't even know how I'm being insulted :)
But the point remains that the SPD when it got into government in 1928 it did pass deflationary policies. They promoted a "reconciliation" between labor and capital in coalition government. The SDP was not alone in this- most of the socialist parties when they got into government as with the French Popular Front and the Labour Party did not pass particularly radical policies beyond New Deal like policies like the eight-hour day and collective bargaining laws. The main exception were the Scandinavians, but generally the "working class" parties of Europe were not particularly distinguishiable from Democrats in the US in actual policy.
After World War II, the large differences in party were due more to the weakness of capital's power in Europe after the war compared to the strengthed power of US capital in domestic politics. The convergence of European politics towards the US is largely due to the recovery of European capital over the years, not to some essentialist distinction between "working class parties" in one country versus another.
-- Nathan Newman