Comments on: Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States?

By: Adrian

Adrian — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:06:02 +0000

“Unlike their counterparts in countries where feudal values remained influential, they did not have to defend the desirability per se of social equality or freedom for all. Their goals could be presented…as the completion of the American project and the fulfillment of its promise.”

I’d always thought that some residual feudal values helped the left. Class antagonism comes naturally to Europeans because class boundaries are clearly marked by accent, family history, etc. Like race in America, class in Europe doesn’t need to be explained through much agitation or education.

Also, a feudal history tends to lend the culture an anti-bourgeois attitude in which businessmen are viewed with suspicion. In the U.S. on the other hand, these elites enjoy important cultural legitimacy — the Founding Fathers were mostly merchants, speculators and planters, and that’s a-ok in the USA.

By: jp

jp — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:42:12 +0000

Ok Brad, I’ll try once more: in Connecticut, when the Green Party challenged, in court, campaign finance reform that further established the two dominant parties and effectively marginalized third parties, the WF not only didn’t support the third party challenge, but actually supported the law as written/passed…

If they are a real party, let alone a labor party, please explain their willingness to enthusiastically accept the minor party caste system in CT.

I’ll bet you can’t – or won’t.

By: Brad Kerr

Brad Kerr — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:16:18 +0000

Hey, Chris. The idea that fusion parties are fake parties, and that they don’t really seek power, is an accident of history. The Populists, Prohibitionists, Grangers and more, would have disagreed.

By: Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:53:22 +0000

What’s interesting is how Labour remains a coalition partner and not a ruling party in Ireland. I had the fortune of studying there during their last majority coalition with one of the centrist parties (both major parties are centrist, they differ on the NI issue only, really). Their support ends up being key to forming a government for some parties. If Labour isn’t happy, they can pull their support and the majority party loses their rule. They’ve also managed to stay rooted in the unions in this sense. They still act as a political arm of the major ones, even sharing the office space next to the dump I lived in. I guess you’d say it’s a pressure-partner party, or something like that.

By: Chris Maisano

Chris Maisano — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:16:09 +0000

The WFP does not seek state power for itself. It tries to pressure another party into supporting policies that it wants implemented. That’s a pretty big difference. The strategy of the WFP (at least for now) seems to gradually transform the Democrats into the equivalent of a labor party, and since that has not happened yet, we don’t have a labor party in NY (or anywhere in the US).

By: Brad Kerr

Brad Kerr — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:09:43 +0000

Hi, Jason!

1890. That’s when states started banning electoral fusion, isn’t it?

By: Brad Kerr

Brad Kerr — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:01:48 +0000

Doesn’t seek power for itself? What?!?

By: Jason Schulman

Jason Schulman — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:51:43 +0000

Well, specifically, I was addressing the fact that while nationwide labor parties were founded in other countries in the 1890s, it didn’t happen here. One could also ask why a U.S. labor party wasn’t founded in the 1930s, when industrial (as opposed to craft/occupational) unionism was (finally) on the rise here. But Archer’s book is solely about the 1890s — about decisions made which still have ramifications in the present.

By: Brad Kerr

Brad Kerr — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:44:23 +0000

JP, I’m not arguing that WFP is a Good Thing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But Jason asked why the U.S. doesn’t have a labor party. I answered: some states do — and maybe more would if fusion were more widely practiced.

By: jp

jp — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:46:39 +0000

Brad, WFP doesn’t ‘make use’ of fusion – it almost exclusively cross-endorses labor-friendly D candidates. I already said i don’t have a problem with their MO.

I do have a problem with your insistence on framing this discussion around criteria for a ‘real party, and your consequent failure to address the result. The Connecticut experience is telling, and you won’t touch it.

A ‘Labor Party” which endorses candidates of empire, slaughter, wage/debt slavery, torture, rendition, imprisonment in perpetuity without habeus corpus, covering up massive criminal conspiracies, ad nauseum? Those of us who work for a living can do without that.