Morning Ed: Labor {2016.11.21.M}

LeeEsq says:

Historians have been spelling ink about why the United States never developed a Labor or Social Democratic Party like other Western democracies for over a century. There isn’t any obvious answer but a myriad of small answers. The structure of American politics doesn’t bode well for any third party. The Radical Right used to hate the Democratic Party and the Republican Party during the New Deal Era and World War II but eventually decided that the only way to achieve political power is through one of the parties. They picked the more congenial Republican Party and began the take over and reshaping of American politics.

The American Further Left, those that would be Laborites or Social Democratic party members in a European country or even farther to the Left, had no stomach to work through the Democratic Party or through the structure of American politics. They would rather be pure and engage in theatrical protest politics than the dirty world of electoral politics. A week or two before the election, the New York Times had an article from a man whose parents were active in the Socialist Workers Party. He wrote that his parents were so against American culture that he wasn’t allowed to watch football on tv or celebrate birthdays as a kid. Its a extreme scenario but would be American Socialists always had some element of this hatred to them. You have to play by the rules of the system your in, not the rules of the system you want to get somewhere politically.

There are also severe cultural reasons for the lack of a Labor Party in the United States. A significant number of Americans always perceived Leftist ideas of even the most mildest sorts with deep and hostile suspicion. When German immigrants began organizing labor unions and demonstrations during the 1850s, the Know Nothings accused them of introducing anti-American ideas into the body politic. Outside of mine workers, Anglo-Protestant Americans tended to stay away from anything remotely smacking of Leftist politics and unions. Most of the union drive came from immigrants or their American born children. You aren’t going to develop a Labor Party in a country where many people see such beliefs as deeply un-American. The Radical Right thought that the comparatively mild New Deal marked the end of American capitalist and Protestant civilization. Why would anything more radical succeed?

You also have the issue of race and religion to complicate things. Outside of the Russian Empire, Labor or Social Democratic parties thrived in homogeneous societies without much in the way of ethnic or religious division but much in the way of class hierarchy like the United Kingdom or Imperial Germany. In late 19th and early 20th century America with its divides between Whites and African-Americans, native born and immigrants, Protestant and Catholic/Jews/Eastern Orthodox you weren’t going to get a Labor Party.Report