[WS:] I did not use that argument. I do not have any string feelings about the Greens - I like a pro-environment agenda, but I do not think it makes a good political party programme - so I do not think they stand a chance as a political party regardless of the electoral system (they flopped under PR too.) If you wanted my opinion on this issue, pro-environment agenda is the matter of administrative regulation not party politics - which requires a strong government bureaucracy able to stave off political pressure in case of need. I also believe that Europe has some significant advantages over the US in this respect, and I can give you references supporting that, if interested.
As to your contention of Greens dismantling the European welfare system - I do not buy it. I do not think they mattered one way or the other. What is dismantling the European welfare system is the power of capitalists - especially their ability to blackmail the state to give them concessions they want, from tax reductions and social spending cuts to bailouts and protections of their profits. Employees do not have that power anymore, and that is why "Sarkozistas" feel that is safer to defy protesters than to defy capitalists. The French (or any other) state can afford a few broken windows and traffic backups, but it cannot afford a capital strike. As they say on this side of the pond "money talks, bullshit walks."
So not only the Greens, but the entire parliamentary political system and direct action do not matter much in this context. Elect Communists, and they will still cut the welfare state as the capital demands, albeit grudgingly (as if it mattered.) It will change only if employees will gain the power to make the capital scream, and the politicians (green, red, white and black alike) will follow.
Wojtek (this time signing off for good)
On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Angelus Novus
<fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Wojtek:
>
>> Differences in the voting system - first past the post (US)
>
> Sure, of course that means the U.S. Greens have no chance of coming to power.
> But that is exactly the Catch-22: the argument against the U.S. Greens selling
> out that you use is also the argument for not voting for them is futile in any
> case.
>
> If they will never turn to the right because they have no chance of coming to
> power anyway, then by that argument it is also useless to vote for them.
>
> I should note that I do not have some principled ultra-left opposition to
> parliamentary work; I think things like DIE LINKE or in France the NPA are
> welcome developments (whatever problematic aspects they both have). But the
> development of the German Greens is a cautionary tale. And this time the
> argument about "yes, the European welfare state is in decline, but it's still
> better than the U.S." doesn't hold, because the Greens in Germany were
> instrumental in **destroying** the welfare state: they are too young a party to
> have ever played a role in implementing it.
>
>
> To a certain extent the Greens are the living proof of what Slavoj Zizek says
> about the movements of 1968 being in a sense antcipatory of the "new spirit of
> capitalism".
>
>
>
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