On 2010-12-02, at 2:05 AM, SA wrote:
> On 12/2/2010 1:39 AM, Bhaskar Sunkara wrote:
>> I wouldn't blur the line between populist parties (which by their nature
>> are inchoate ideologically, multiclass, never pose the question of
>> structural transformation) and parties lead by the working class. Isn't
>> there a difference between a populist party like Peron's Partido
>> Justicialista or the Workers' Party in Brazil. Or between labor parties and
>> social liberal ones (like the Democrats)?
>
>
> On the difference between the Peronists and the Workers' Party, I don't know the answer. What do you think? On the difference between labor parties and social-liberal parties like the Democrats….
I suggest there aren't any essential differences. They're all reform parties based on the unions, lower-income workers, liberal and socialist intellectuals, and the various single issue reform movements which have coalesced with them at different times. They have typically been opposed by the upper bourgeoisie and landed classes, conservative intellectuals and small propertyholders, the senior ranks of the armed forces and clergy, etc. seeking to maintain the status quo or to roll back the gains introduced by the reform parties. The Democratic party is the most conservative reform party because of its shared responsibility for US imperialism, which also contributed to the living standards of its base while thwarting the development of its political consciousness.
> You linked to a piece on the CPGB website defending the idea that the Labour Party is still a bourgeois workers' party, but I couldn't really make heads or tails of the argument.
The Labour Party was formed by the British trade unions which still have a loyalty to it. But like the other worker-based parties described above, it has always been subordinate to the British ruling classes and has never, despite its earlier pretensions, fundamentally disturbed the distribution of power and property in capitalist society. The subordination of these parties to the bourgeoisie in all countries becomes more evident the closer they come to holding (governmental) power, with their leaders and policymakers increasingly integrated into bourgeois social networks and the state apparatus.
> Is the Labour Party so different from the Democrats? What about the Labour Party of 2010 versus the Democratic Party of 1940?
Or a more contemporary example - the Labour Party of Tony Blair and the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton. If you had put Blair in the White House and the British LP in Congress, and Clinton and the US Democrats in the British Parliament, you would have seen no noticeable change in either US or British foreign and domestic policy.
> I think the important differences have to do with the vibrancy of the movements (if any) that underlay the parties. Whether the movements in question happen to be made up of industrial workers or not seems secondary. The U.S. People's Party was a radical movement because of the vibrancy of the Farmers' Alliance movement that under-girded it. So what if they were farmers rather than workers?
The farmers' movements belong to the past, when the US was still primarily an agrarian society. The only vibrant social movements in advanced capitalist societies today are based in the cities, whether they appear among trade unionists, national minorities, students, women, gays, environmentalists, human rights and antiwar activists, etc.