[lbo-talk] European Socialist Parties

ken hanly northsunm at yahoo.com
Sun May 22 19:19:38 PDT 2011


So they are called socialist only because they were once socialist but have abandoned their youthful illusions. What is annoying is that there is not even the pretense of trying to replace capitalism by a socialist system. One can understand that constraints would limit what could be done in terms of moving towards socialism but such basic moves as attempting to nationalize industries and orient production more towards need than turning a profit does not even seem to be part of ;party platform or am I wrong about that? Your analysis seems about right.

However, electoral politics itself might not be that much of a constraint if campaigning were based upon a critique of capitalism and developed alternatives.Surely it should be obvious to many in the working classes in Europe that it is capitalism that is the problem. That is why the Spanish protesters call for people not to vote for either of the two major parties the Socialists or the Popular Party;

Cheers, ken

----- Original Message ---- From: Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Sun, May 22, 2011 3:04:14 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] European Socialist Parties

On Sun, 22 May 2011 12:19:10 -0700 (PDT) ken hanly <northsunm at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> Why are socialist parties in countries such as France, Portugal
> Spain, and
> Greece called socialist? What do they do that is socialist. They all
> seem to be
> doing precisely what one would expect a right wing capitalist party
> to do.
> Impose austerity and cutbacks and a shrinking social safety net on
> working
> people to please capitalist investors.

Well, they all were socialist parties at one time. They were all formed from mergers of smaller leftwing parties, including both Marxist and non-Marxist factions. I remember reading many years ago an interview with Francois Mitterand, in which he discussed this in reference to the PSF. French socialism, Mitterand explained, represented a fusion of several traditions, including Marxism, Positivism (going back to Comte and Saint-Simon), and Catholic socialism.

All of these parties became participants in electoral politics, and yes, they have all seemed to have moved in a rightwards direction over the past thirty years or so. I think that's linked to the decline of trade unions (which in turn is linked to the decline of the traditional manufacturing industries in the core capitalist countries). With a weakening of unions, these parties have become increasingly dependent on the support of big business. However, even putting that aside for the moment, the fact that these parties have all chosen to function as electoral parties within the bourgeois democratic systems imposes constraints on them, since they must ultimately please investors and the financial markets in order to keep the economy going and so remain in office. And now a days, with the rise of the EU, these parties (indeed all electoral parties) are increasingly constrained in terms of their economic policies, so it matters only marginally whether conservative parties or social democratic parties are in office.

Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math


>
> Cheers, ken
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> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

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