[lbo-talk] Social Democracy

[Marvin Gandall]

Actually, there are many cases - the British Labour Party being the most
notable example - where SD's have moved right in the absence of "a viable
electoral party to their left". Not only the SD's, but avowedly more left
parties like the Italian and French CP's and the German Greens all moderated
their programs and rhetoric as they became more electorally successful.

There are also less frequent examples where mass parties have moved to the
left in periods of economic crisis, but these can include liberal and even
conservative("bourgeois") parties as well as socialist ones. The most
frequently cited example of the former is the Democratic Party during the
New Deal.

As a rule, political parties across the spectrum largely move in in tandem
to the right or left depending on the stability or instability of the
system. They generally moved left in the 30s and right in the 50s. It is
only if the system failed to rebound from an economic crisis that I think
you'd see a break in this pattern, with deep fractures and polarization
occuring within and outside of all of the parties. But we haven't
experienced that in our lifetime.

So it seems all parties in a liberal democracy are forced to adapt to the
public mood, which is shaped mainly, IMO, by access (or the lack thereof) to
jobs, income, and credit. The alternative is to electorally abstain or run
self-righteously uncompromised campaigns which amounts to the same thing.

Ideas and leadership count, but not nearly to the degree intellectuals like
to imagine. The masses lead for better or for worse and the parties follow,
not the other way round. The mutual recriminations of the reformist and
revolutionary left are largely beside the point in this larger context.

MG

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Social Democracy


> tfast at yorku.ca wrote:
>
>>Leaving the question of revolutionary socialism to the side, it does
>>strike me
>>that one is hard pressed to find an example, within advanced liberal
>>democracies, where SD's have not drifted to the center or right of center
>>as
>>the case maybe when they have faced a viable electoral party to their
>>left.
>>
>>Try inverting that one Doug:)
>
> Wouldn't want to. My point was that Carrol suffers from a chicken-egg
> problem, but he doesn't recognize it. For him, it just seems to be a
> matter of purity and will.
>
> Doug
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