[PEN-L:9396] Re: The discussion about social democracy

[Anders Schneiderman <aschneid@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:32 AM 4/8/97 -0700, Sid wrote:

>My
>personal experience with social democracy is that there is a huge gulf
>between the rank and file activists within social democracy and the full
>time, bureaucratic careerists who tend to dominate the organization, its use
>of resources and its overall priorities.  (The former being much more
>progressive and the latter being much more conservative/"pragmatic" -- i.e.
>prone to focus on the shortest time frame and to be guided in their actions
>by changes in the political wind as gauged by the latest polling results.)

Isn't this true of all political parties--or for that matter, all large
political organizations with any power?  I'm not defending social democracy
here, I just don't understand why narrowing + moving towards the center +
more pragmatic should be seen as a particular problem of social democrats.
Haven't commies in France had the same problem?  Hell, even on the Right
this is a problem.  I heard an interview with Terry Randall (sp?), head of
the Rightwing anti-abortion Operation Rescue, attacking Ralph Reed of the
Christian Coalition, on exactly the same grounds that you're laying out. It
seems to me that this is an obstacle in any democratic system no matter
what your ideological stripes.

If anything, it seems to me that the real problem with social democratic
parties isn't what they did in their respective countries but rather what
they _didn't_ do outside their countries.  The Swedes did a great job of
taking care of workers in Sweden, but they did a lousy job of helping
workers in the Third World (an issue that briefly worried the Swedish trade
unions right after WWII).  I don't know how the budget for most European
unions is, but it's got to be pretty big; the AFL-CIO is around $5
billion/yr.  If European unions had put just 1% of their budgets into
funding + protecting their lighter-skinned brothers and sisters overseas,
pushing world-wide wages up, I doubt we'd see austerity programs throughout
the West today.  In fact, I think you could see the collapse of social
democracy as a nice example of poetic justice.

Anders Schneiderman
Progressive Communications