On 2012-01-27, at 3:14 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Marv: "Neither the Catholic nor Protestant churches have had any
> success in sponsoring union federations to rival the vastly larger
> ones initiated and controlled by social democrats and Communists in
> Western Europe "
>
> [WS:] I do not think it was their goal. Their goal was to split the
> labor movement and weaken it vis a vis the capitalists as well as to
> counter socialist organizing. You can see that by comparing countries
> with strong organized religion, such as the Netherlands, Germany,
> Italy, Spain or Portugal, where socialists had at best a limited
> success, and those with weak religion (e.g. Sweden where the Catholic
> church was virtually non-existent, and the Lutheran church was subdued
> by the crown and incorporated into the state bureaucracy) were
> socialists were very successful in labor organizing.
I suggest you read up on the history of the trade union and socialist movements in Germany, Italy, and Spain, in particular, before making such sweeping assertions. Even predominantly rural Portugal has a militant tradition of working class struggle (1976). Neither social democrats nor Marxists in Europe or North America were much concerned about being supplanted by priests and pastors at the head of the industrial proletariat. That is another of your untethered theoretical constructs.
Time, I think, to bring this thread to a close.