[Marxism] Nader throws support to Edwards

[Marvin Gandall]

Lüko Willms writes:

On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:43:45 -0500, Marvin Gandall wrote:

> It's worth noting in the same vein that the evolution of the labour
and
> social democratic parties in Europe and elsewhere has pretty much
paralleled
> that of the Democratic party, except that the DP has had the
additional
> "bipartisan" responsibility of administering an empire - with its
attendant
> domestic xenophobia and militarism - giving it a more reactionary
character
> than these other liberal worker-based parties.

  You get something fundamentally wrong by writing this.

  The stalinist and social-democratic parties are products of the
working class movement and are nothing without that history, while the
"Democratic Party" of the USA has never been an organic outgrowth of the
working class.
=============================================
I distinguish between the old Socialist and Communist parties, including
under Stalin, and my reference was only to the social democrats.

It's true that, unlike the DP, the labour and social democratic parties were
formed by the trade unions which had a constitutionally-defined relationship
with them. They were nominally committed to socialism, and many union
heads became leaders of these parties in opposition and in government. The
American unions, though they solidly supported and financed the Democrats,
did not enjoy that degree of influence and were always subordinate to the
party's bourgeois leadership.

However, I question how "fundamentally" different in practice the DP and
SP's were - even prior to WWII. The working class in the US used the DP as
its vehicle to fight for labour rights and social programs in much the same
way the European and British Commonwealth working classes used the SD
parties to achieve similar reforms within the electoral framework of their
own capitalist societies.

The differences between the parties are even more obscure today. The social
democrats no longer pay even lip-service to a "gradual and peaceful"
transition to socialism, and the "organic ties" which once existed between
the unions and these parties have either been greatly eroded or severed
altogether. Instead the SD's and DP are equally pro-capitalist liberal
parties which retain the support of the unions and other popular
organizations and movements in their own countries against the conservative
parties to their right. Their leaders are generally drawn from the affluent
professional strata.

Notwithstanding their different origins, then, how is it "fundamentally
wrong" to suggest that the policies, leadership, and base of the British
Labour, German SPD, French SP, and US Democrats are essentially similar - a
point the parties themselves, at both the membership and leadership levels,
readily acknowledge? What important distinctions do you make between a
Clinton and a Blair, Mitterand, or Schroeder?