On 2012-03-15, at 11:09 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> It is
> amazing to what degree English colonies reproduced liberal capitalist
> institutions of England even in the relative absence of social classes
> (landed aristocracy turned industrialists) that originally created it
> in England. Take Australia or New Zealand - they spearheaded
> neoliberalism even when Labour was in power and managed to avoid
> continental-style welfare state. Canada is more of a mixed bag,
> probably due to the large presence of the French minority.
Ah, the idealist Hartz thesis.
"Hartz rejected Marxism, indeed turned it upside down, finding in the power of an idea the explanation of that inexplicable nonevent for Marxists, the absence of socialism in America.[1]
"In The Founding of New Societies (1964), Hartz developed the idea that the nations that developed from settler colonies were European "fragments" that in a sense froze the class structure and underlying ideology prevalent in the mother country at the time of their foundation, not experiencing the further evolution experienced in Europe. He considered Latin America and French Canada to be fragments of feudal Europe, the United States, English Canada, and Dutch South Africa to be liberal fragments, and Australia and English South Africa to be "radical" fragments (incorporating the non-Socialist working class radicalism of early 19th century Britain).[citation needed]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Hartz