Michael McIntyre
>>> nathan at newman.org 06/08/01 01:39PM >>>
NN: The Labor Party was established as essentially a caucus within the Liberal Party, much as the Progressive Caucus in the Dems now operates, although the latter has less of a formal electoral coalition. I would actually fully support labor unions, enviros and others more strategically forming a Labor-Progressive Caucus within the Dems. If at some point secession made sense, so be it. But starting with a third party wasn't how the Labour Party formed and won't work in the US.
MM: The Labour Party had as its founding constituents the ILP, the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation, and the TUC. As soon as it was formed in 1900, it ran its own candidates in the general election (and every election thereafter). It was in no sense a "caucus" within the Liberal Party.
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NN: Whether splitting from the Liberals was a strategic error or failed in its implementation is an open question-- the results were not socialism and the post-war statist policies of both France and Britain were pretty much a bi-party consensus due to the weakness of capital in the wake of the WWII.
MM: France and the absence of socialism are red herrings. Are you seriously suggesting that the reforms implemented by the Attlee government were a bipartisan consensus, that Churchill would have done more or less the same thing?
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MM: >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?
NN: Hardly proves your point since that rightward move was done with the full support of the labor unions that largely controlled Labour; it was often the mass membership (in the equivalent of Dem primaries) that resisted the rightward lurch. Just note the recent Livingstone race in London.
MM: You have conveniently forgotten here Blair's successful campaign to reduce the dominant position of the TUC within Labour, replacing it with a one-member-one-vote (OMOV) policy. When OMOV threatened to slate Livingstone, Blair changed the rules again, but it is precisely the absence of the institutional weight of the TUC that has allowed Blair to manipulate the voting rules of the party at his whim.
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NN: The Labour Party is probably the best support for exactly the point I was making, since the Labour Party had so much trouble building majoritarian status and only did so when it opened itself up for de facto internal alliances with sectors of capital.
MM: The argument has never been about whether Labour or Social-Democratic parties make alliances with capital. Of course they do. The argument is about whether there is a distinction between a party (like pre-Blair Labour) whose lifeblood is tied to the working class and its institutions, preeminently trade unions, and a party (like the Dems) who keep the labor vote as a captive constituency byt whose lifeblood is tied to sectors of capital.
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NN: In parliamentary systems, social democrats served in government in much of the post-war period, but only by making deals and alliances with bourgois-based parties.
The results have been pretty much the same, with the Scandanavians as always being the most interesting exception.
MM: Last post it was first-past-the-post that made the difference. Now it's parliamentary systems. You're making it up as you go along. Your case was stronger the first time around, since Labour has not been part of a coalition government since 1945.
This is a pitiful performance. You're wrong about the foundation of the Labour Party, wrong about the reforms Blair has made within the Labour Party, and attached to an almost ludicrous counterfactual regarding the Attlee government. Every time you're pinned to the wall you bob, weave, and change the subject. When circumstances demand it, you'll even adopt the rhetoric of left sectarians. You're shocked - shocked! - to discover that social democrats make alliances with capital and haven't ushered in socialism. You refuse to even entertain the central proposition that there's a difference between a party controlled by the working class and a party for which the working class votes for lack of a better alternative. The real giveaway is your profession that you won't give up on the Dems no matter how badly they screw you. Give it ten years. You're going to extenuate and excuse your way right into the DLC.
Michael McIntyre