... Capitalists usually prefer the A team (Republicans, Tories) when the latter can produce results. It's when the A team is having a hard time putting the class agenda accross that capitalists may turn to the B team (Dems, New Labour). Reagan and Thatcher (initially) were popular, so there was no problem. But do you remember, when Thatcher's act was wearing thin because of the poll tax, the ease with which the staunch Conservative, Rupert Murdoch, switched to Blair? Or how quickly the Reagan team cashiered Marcos when Filipinos rose against him, and threw its support behind Corey Aquino? Smart capitalists appreciate the virtues of "alternance", not least as a result of situations in which they found themselves without a safe alternative to their usual people--like France, 1968, or Iran, 1979. As Hearst/Kane/Welles remarked to a plutocrat in the movie, "You're lucky to have me as the voice of the common man instead of some radical." ---------------------------- Yes, I agree with how you formulate it: "Capitalists usually prefer the A team...but may turn to the B team" when they are having a "hard time" - usually when the the system is threatened and the A team is wholly discredited.
That's rather different than suggesting, as others have, that these parties are basically the same in that they are all working towards the "destruction of the welfare state". Or, even beyond that, that the capitalists themselves don't really know their own interests because if they did they would be actually be supporting the parties favoured by organized labour and the social movements ahead of the Republicans and Conservatives as their best "long-term" means of accomplishing this goal. There has even been the related suggestion that the most powerful capitalist class of all, in the US, is losing control of its "preferred" party to a ragtag collection of Jesus freaks. None of these analyses ring true to me.
There are still important distinctions to be drawn between the liberal and conservative parties in relation not only to the central economic issues (level of public benefits and regulation), but also social (reproductive and minority rights), and political (separation of church and state and defence of democratic rights) ones. Some minimize these issues and differences out of a sense that no matter how they are resolved, the system of power and property will still remain largely intact. But the reform parties are not for the overthrow of the current system, never have been. In that sense, they "support capitalism". Some revelation. And while it's true that, within this framework, the distinctions have become blurred between the system's parties, this is mainly a reflection of the structural shift in the balance of forces between Labour and Capital over the past three decades. The shrinking social weight of organized labour has diminished its political ability to affect the direction of these parties.
But there's scant evidence that the liberal parties are committed in theory or practice, as are the conservative parties favoured by Capital, to the general destruction of the welfare state, and most of their followers don't interpret the behaviour of their leaders in this way. The splits in these parties mostly turn on whether the strategies for reform being pursued by their leaders are too timid (or, sometimes, too risky), rarely on the perception that they are out to dismantle the social safety net on behalf of the capitalists.
To see the evolution of these parties otherwise - as primarily the result of treacherous misleaders befuddling their members on behalf of the corporations - is misleading and disarming. It's why accusations of "betrayal" ring hollow to the ranks - to the consternation of many on the left who bemoan the "low level of consciousness" of the masses, without at the same time acknowedging to themselves that, if this is so, it must sooner or later lead to the conclusion that the masses have a congenital inability to make the right choices to govern themselves.
MG