[lbo-talk] Chicago mayor takes legal action over strike

[Bill Bartlett]

At 8:42 AM -0400 21/9/12, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>The absence of a Labor party in the US can explain quite a bit, but it
>itself begs the question - why such a party has not been established
>here?
>
>My own hypothesis is - in a nutshell - that democracy came to the US
>too soon.  The US considerably expanded suffrage to virtually all
>white males way before any other country did.  This institutional
>development was unprecedented in history and that lack of precedence
>had profound consequences for setting the institutional path of
>development.  Contrary to neoliberal pretensions, humans are not
>innovators but followers and imitators.  They follow and imitate even
>when they innovate, as the Old Man aptly observed in the opening to
>his "18th brumaire."
>http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

[...]


>I think that history, or rather path dependence, matters quite a bit
>and can shed some light why the US does not have a labor party like
>most other industrialized countries do.

Are you familiar with how labour parties operate, where they exist? 
As I understand it, they are mainly focussed on using the electoral 
system to attempt to gain political power. But in particular, to gain 
political power in order to implement a political platform favourable 
to labour, to workers and labour unions.

They do this by nominating candidates who adhere to the labour 
platform, the politcal platform determined by the members of such a 
labour party. This is possible under electoral systems that allow a 
political party to nominate candidates. That is to say, electoral 
systems that are radically different to the US electoral system, 
which makes it impossible for the members of a political party to 
determine who its electoral candidates shall be.

 From my limited understanding, the US did have some promising labour 
parties at the turn of the twentieth century, who were starting to 
get some electoral traction. Then the electoral system was amended so 
as to make it virtually impossible for a political party to determine 
its own candidates, they were instead determined by "primaries", that 
is to say anyone and/or his dog could get in on the act of deciding 
who would be the Labour Party (or whatever) candidate.

It must necessarily follow that any labour party would henceforth 
have no control over who its candidates for electoral office might 
be. So obviously any labour party would have even less control over 
what its political platform would be. In fact a cohesive political 
platform was impractical for any political party under such a system.

So my hypothesis is that not only does the US lack a labour party, it 
lacks ANY political parties as we might understand them in the 
democratic world.

The US may very well have got democracy too early, but that is not 
the problem, the problem is it lacks the essential elements of 
democracy now.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas