> Yoshie was wondering the other day why the lefts in the U.S.,
> Britain, and Australia had so little influence compared to those of
> continental Europe.
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The left has historically been weaker in the English-speaking countries -
the socialist tradition has been virtually absent in the US - and we've
inherited that legacy. This may well have to do with these countries never
having experienced a major war on their soil and the attendant social chaos
which accompanies it. Europe experienced a succession of these disastrous
conflicts, and, as the celebrated phrase puts it, war is the midwife of
revolution - or, at least, of revolutionary ideologies like Marxism and a
generally more developed social and political consciousness. Also, all three
English-speaking countries had expanding frontiers - internal in the case of
the US and Australia and external in the case of the British Empire - which
both served a source of profit and as a safety valve to release
accumulating working class pressures in the urban centres.
This is undoubtedly not all there is to it, but these factors strike me as good starting points for understanding the historical weakness of the English-speaking left relative to the European. Of course, Europe is now much more integrated, peaceful, and prosperous, which is also reflected in the taming of its left, which has come more and more to resemble our own. But I think there is still a residual popular consciousness in Europe which is less individualistic, which is why the attack on the welfare state has come later and is proving more difficult to execute by the state and corporate sector.
MG