Doug Henwood wrote: >> the >>right won a series of electoral victories over the last 25 years in >>Britain, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, India...and managed to >>turn previously leftish parties into milder versions of themselves. >>How did they do this?
Bill Lear wrote: > I'm sure you know the answer to this: with a combination of vast sums > of money, populist appeals to fear and patriotism, suppression of > dissent and franchise, violence, intimidation, fraud, clever > marketing, and most importantly perhaps, active help from the other > side of the aisle whose dullness, aloofness, stupidity, criminality, > cravenness, and thinly veiled totalitarian desire is perhaps even more > loathsome than that of the right. doesn't the neoliberal movement within social democracy (which Doug refers to) have some sort of popular base? a lot of "middle class" people (small businessfolk, professionals) vote for these "leftish" parties, didn't they? and some "enlightened capitalists"? don't these groups often find free-market mantras attractive? further, over time, many members of the social-democratic leaderships (another popular base) find that their "comparative advantage" (as it were) is in being technocrats and find that they are being held responsible to the rank-and-file of the party and the labor unions less and less. might not they find free-market "solutions" as more fitting, especially fitting their career interests? most important, I think, is the sea change after the fall of the old USSR, which ended the counteracting force to US interests, ending the pressure for capitalism to "look better, more humanistic" than those godless commies. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
