> ...the Left got bogged down in the hundred
> year old bread and butter mantra, and does not have much to offer in the
> "identity and values" department. The bread and butter mantra simply lost
> most of their traction, people want to hear about who they are and what
> their place in the world is - and the Left ceded that market to the Right
> and religions.
==================================
Maybe at present. If bread and butter issues lack "traction", it is not
because they no longer matter to people, but because we have been in a long
period of capitalist expansion and relative prosperity, made possible by
revolutionary advances in transportation and communications and the opening
of new markets in China, East Europe, and other parts of the world economy
which were previously closed to capitalism. The period has been
characterized politically, as we would expect, by only small oscillations to
the left and right of centre, with barely discernible differences in the
program and leadership of the major parties which emphasize continuity
rather than change. If bread-and-butter issues lie dormant, it is because
there is bread and butter, but it doesn't follow, as you suggest, that jobs
and income are no longer the central concerns of voters.
These issues become manifest in those periods when capitalism contracts and jobs and income decline. Politically, the parties on the far left and far right find a broader audience, while the liberal and social democratic parties displace the conservatives as the favoured parties in the centre, including within the bourgeoisie which comes to appreciate the need for increased government intervention in the economy to compensate for the weakness of the private sector and to preempt further movement to the extremes of the political spectrum.
I'm sure these points have been made before, but the discussion is a recurring one because people, especially in a period like the present, commonly offer interpretations of broad political developments which ignore or dismiss how closely aligned these are to changes in economic conditions.