>From a Financial Times article sent by Marvin Gandall
Finally, there is a sense in which even the private sector believes his ideology could help him. Mr Fox tried to raise taxes and privatise the energy network from the political right. But many in Mexico believe that a politician of the opposite stripe might be more successful, pointing to the progress made elsewhere in Latin America by left-leaning politicians. "The Lula effect will be here big time," says one businessman. "By that, I mean the belief that only someone from the left can carry out some of the reforms. Only Nixon could approach China."
I don't understand how you can be friendly to social democracy while at the same time supplying a perfect example of how social democrats in power function. They trade on their leftist credentials to ease the introduction of neoliberal policies that traditional rightists would have a harder time implementing because they lack such credentials. -------------------------------------------------------------------- When you suggest I'm "friendly to social democracy" - who do you mean? Friendly to the leadership or to the ranks of these parties? I plead guilty to being friendly to the latter; I assess their leaders more critically.
I'm going to probably repeat I've said before, so some may want to hit the delete key now. I support the parties in each country where the unions and the social movements are heavily represented and which, in varying degrees, promote the demands of these movements in the legislative and regulatory arenas. We know what these multi-movement demands are: trade union rights, improved labour and workplace safety standards, public health care and public education, environmental regulation, rights of women, gays, and minorities, separation of church and state, etc. By the same token, I'm against the parties in each country who oppose these movements, which treat their demands with derision and hostility from top to bottom. For this reason, I support the social democratic parties ahead of the conservative parties, and in the US - where the socialist tradition has not taken root - the Democrats over the Republicans. That's where I start from.
And that's where I would end. I don't support these parties unconditionally - only for so long as the social movements referred to above continue to support them.
Nor do I believe I have any illusions about what they can accomplish. The leaders of such parties often renege on their programmatic commitments when they are elected, and even agree to rollback previously hard-won gains, as you note. But I think many leftists, including perhaps yourself, have a simplistic and moralizing view that these leaders do what they do because they're venal and corrupt and cowardly. Some are that, as in any institution, but the actions of most are driven by the level of class struggle, which arises out of social conditions. When union and political party leaders succumb to pressure from the capitalists, it's usually because of how they read the relationship of forces, how far they calculate each side is willing to go - whether the capitalists, for example, are willing and able to follow through on their threat to provoke job losses through capital flight, and how willing and able are their own supporters to confront this power in defence of their own interests. Invariably, any deal that is cut in the political and industrial arena is based on this calculation.
Sometimes the assessment of the reformist leaders will be accurate, sometimes not. Where they are wrong, or appear to be wrong, they will be criticized. Where deeper differences develop over the party's general direction, organized oppositions will form within. When the differences become intolerable, more progressive leaders will leave the party, hoping to take the social movements with them. This is the stage we've arrived at in Brazil now. When to join an exodus from an existing reformist party has, IMO, historically been the most important question facing the left, and it is a tactical not a principled one. The reasonable answer seems to me to be when it becomes apparent that the social movements have stopped seeing these parties as instruments to advance their interests. So far there is no indication they are about to leave the parties they currently support - certainly not in the US, in response to entreaties from tiny left groups outside the Democratic party, nor even in Brazil where the left is far, far more powerful both inside and outside the PT.
I posted the article on Mexico's Lopez Obrador not to make a comment on social democracy, except incidentally, but to show how the international bourgeoisie was reacting to his probable victory - with "cautious confidence", as it earlier reacted to Lula. If you can filter out the propaganda of the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Economist, they are very candid and informative and the best mirror of the collective opinion of what passes for the ruling class.
MG