On Mar 14, 2012, at 3:34 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>> [WS:] This begs the question whether party "identities" are written in
>> stone or are subject to political pressures from below. My hunch is
>> that is a mixed bag, or to be more precise, about 1/4 of the former
>> and 3/4 of the latter. That is to say, while parties have some parts
>> of their identities that are relatively fixed over time, they are also
>> in the business of winning elections, which makes them responsive to
>> pressures from the public (however defined.)
>
> No question. You could not understand the evolution of the social democratic and Communist parties or of the German Greens any other way. Let me qualify that. Trotskyists, anarchists, and others to the left of these parties attribute the adaptation to electoral politics of these opposition parties to the "treachery" of their leaders. That's a lot of treachery by many trade union and socialist leaders in many countries over many generations.
But leaders develop their own interests, no? They flatter themselves into thinking they can become junior partners of the real rulers. Their ego puffs up with feeling like an insider. So "treachery" is the wrong word. A better way to think of it might be that they get tempted by access and influence. As some unnamed labor top told Bill Fletcher about Obama, it's better to be inside and not listened to than it is to be outside.
Doug