Let's find out just how far you're willing to follow your own logic. Was the creation of the Labour Party in the UK a strategic error? After all, it was achieved at the price of the near-destruction of the Liberal Party, and turned the Conservative Party into the party of government for most of the twentieth century. So, first-past-the-post electoral system, a party of capital with a left wing that needed support, a powerful right-wing party to fend off. In your own words, before the Labour Party was created "the vast bulk of working class forces" had to make do with the Liberals. Wasn't the Labour Party really a prime example of irresponsible adventurism, a case of Third Period sectarianism avant la lettre?
How can I resist mentioning that as soon as Labour decided to model itself on our own Dems, cutting the party loose from the TUC, they moved decidedly to the right of the Lib-Dems?
No betrayal by the Dems would make you cut yourself loose from them because "the party doesn't exist"? It's worse than I thought.
Michael McIntyre
>>> nathan at newman.org 06/08/01 12:01PM >>>
The SPD came back to government in 1928 as well.
As for the SPD being "institutionally" more working class, who cares if it doesn't lead to better policies? And you can't compare proportional representation systems to first-past-the-post systems, a point seemingly lost continually in these discussions.
To create a working majority, under proportional systems, inevitably "working class" parties AFTER an election form alliances with sectors of capital represented by moderate and liberal parties. In first-past-the-post systems, working class organizations such as unions etc. form such alliances BEFORE an election to nominate someone who can win a majority.
Alliances with capital or other non-working class forces are made in either system. Proportional systems just allow working class forces to get into office before doing so.
Yes, and just as such electoral alliances to govern parliamentary systems are opportunistic and often lack strategy, so neither does the "Democratic Party" - not a party in any sense comparable to European proportional systems - but it is the component working class forces within the party such as unions etc. that do have strategy, including which Democrats they support and which they withhold support from - see the demise of Rep. Martinez last year.
What betrayal would make me "leave the Democratic Party"? None, since the party doesn't exist. Believe it or not, I voted both Green and Republican at points for strategic reasons, but as long as the vast bulk of working class forces operate in Democratic primaries, that is where progressives should be.
-- Nathan Newman