http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/17/german-elections-die-linke-party
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-shift-to-the-right-in-europe-2009-09-30
But the left in Germany remains very strong, commanding nearly half of the electorate -- represented now in three different parties instead of just one. The environmental Greens party supported the center-left government of Schroeder, and got more than 10% of the vote in this last election.
The other new force is the Left party, formed by a splinter faction of the SPD that found the party had moved too far to the center, and the rump Communist Party in East Germany that has survived as a political force in the East German states.
Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html
--- On Wed, 9/30/09, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] the European Left, they dead
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 2:07 PM
> [WS:] Last year we had a visiting
> scholar from Germany, of a strong leftist
> persuasion. She was quite surprised to find that
> Marxism was still alive in
> the US academia. According to her account it was all
> but dead in most Euro
> academic institutions.
>
> I do not want to speak to whether the US is "behind" or
> "ahead" of the curve
> - I think it is different, but that does not imply a
> position in a linear
> development, which I do not think exists. But the
> fact of the matter is
> that the Left as a political force does not exist anymore
> on any side of the
> pond. It survived mainly as a cultural identity in
> the US - perhaps because
> the Left did not have any meaningful political power
> here. Therefore it
> retained the allure of an exotic but forbidden fruit.
>
> In Europe, however, the Left was a victim of its own
> political success.
> Having succeeded in introducing to the mainstream most of
> its social and
> political agenda it became indistinguishable from other
> mainstream parties
> in terms of policy. It maintained mainly its cultural
> identity which was
> effectively undermined by the demise of the Eastern
> European communist
> system. The Left's attempts to reinvent itself atfer
> that blow was
> embracing neo-liberalism.
>
> This resulted in a peculiar paradox of the EU politics: iit
> is the
> righ-leaning (pro-business or nationalist) parties that are
> today the main
> champion of welfare policies that in th epast were
> implemented by the Left.
> And since it is the welfare policies that matter for the
> great majority of
> the population, it is no surprise that the Left is losing
> it spopularity at
> a fast rate.
>
> PS. Google spell checker really sucks. I have a
> slight motor disorder that
> makes it difficult for me to type (I cannot press keys
> accurately) and I
> heavily depend on spell checking as I type to correct
> typos. The problem is
> that Google spell checker does not work most of the time
> (it captures only a
> fraction of missspelled words) and I really hate doing a
> spell check after
> composing the text. Does any one know how to change
> that in Gmail?
>
> Wojtek
>
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 1:29 PM, James Heartfield <
> Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> > Wojtek writes
> >
> > 'The Euro left has been long dead - as political
> identity that is. Most of
> > what used to be the Left's agenda has long been
> accepted by mainstream and
> > right leaning parties (or I should say pro-business
> parties, as the
> > Left-Right distinction has lost most of its
> meaning.)'
> >
> > Which is definitely the case. I remember a good, if
> cynical article (Martin
> > Seymour Lipset?) about the disappearing problem of
> 'American
> > Exceptionalism'. Responding to political scientists
> who asked the question
> > why there was no socialism in the US, considered the
> exceptional condition,
> > the author looked at the evidence of the decline of
> the left, and argued
> > that it was not that America was exceptional, with the
> implication that
> > sometime, the US would catch up with the rest, but
> that it was ahead of the
> > trend. Like I say, a miserable conclusion, but an
> accurate account of the
> > now (if not the to come).
> >
> > Still, Andy Williams tells me that the US is under
> Marxist-inspired
> > leadership, so there's hope yet.
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
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>