I think that Shane's analysis is closer to the truth than the analyses that we have been seeing in most of the establishment media concerning the recent elections in Europe. In western Europe most of the traditional social democratic parties have in recent years have morphed into neo-liberal parties. This is the sort of thing that has been called "third-way politics" - the sort of politics that was pioneered by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, in which traditionally social democratic parties, once in office, piss on their traditional constituents in order to curry favor with big business. No one should be too surprised that eventually in countries like Germany, where the electoral system offers other options besides the two main parties, that many left-wing voters should have decided to cast their votes for parties to the left of the traditional social democratic parties, with the result that the traditional social democrats have suffered immensely in the recent elections.
Compare and contrast with the US electoral system, where the two-party monopoly is locked into the system, such that the Democrats feel free to piss on their traditional constituents from now until doomsday.
Jim Farmelant
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] the European Left, they dead Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:50:06 -0400
This is deliberate disinformation. What kind of liar calls Blairism "left?" (even the LDs and Scottish Nats are programatically left of New Labor). The German elections "clobbered" the governmental social- democrats by a massive swing to the left parties (Die Linke and Die Grünen) and disgusted abstention by their expected clientele. The French EU elections showed an enormous surge to the Eurogreen left. Portugal last Sunday showed a big success for the Left Bloc. The European left is doing very well, thank you. The social-democrat leaders are doing abominably. In Germany the SPD "Grand Coalition" leadership has been kicked out of the government, and soon will no longer lead their party. Alles Güt!
Shane Mage
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