--- On Tue, 5/19/09, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> You have any evidence for this proposition? The big radical
> upsurges of the last century in the U.S. - the 1930s and the
> 1960s, and even the mini-upsurge that culminated in Seattle
> in 1999 - all happened under Democratic administrations. It
> wouldn't surprise me at all to see something similar happen
> in the next year or three.
>
[WS:] True, but it might be spurious coincidence rather than cause-effect relationship. To make a long story short. there is plenty of evidence that radical upsurges occur in the periods of economic prosperity or at least economic growth, and the said periods also tend to produce more liberal administrations. From that pov, both liberal (Dem in case of the US) administration and radical social movements have the same cause, growing economic prosperity, but are otherwise unrelated.
While I do not share Carrol's visceral hatred of Democrats, and I agree that lesser evil means less evil, I do not believe that electoral politics can significantly alter economic power relations. If they could, elections would be banned.
Nor do I think that social movements can accomplish that. If a real change in the economic power balance is to come, it will be produced by a state bureaucracy that is independent of both capitalist class interests - which in the US style capitalism works mainly through the court system and power of the judiciary and to a somewhat lesser extent through political parties - and populist pressures for wealth redistribution (rather than investment.)
Wojtek