Europe Is Not the Model for America

[Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

Doug's comparison of American and European workers reminds me of one
of the things that I have been thinking.  Many American intellectuals
on the Left think that Europe should be the model for America, but
America is not very like Europe.  (The only thing that America has in
common with Europe is that white people are the majority.  :->)
America is more like Japan, in terms of weakness of the working class,
and America is more like many nations of the South, in terms of
workers' commitment to religion.  Just as European capitalist
development can't be the model for the rest of the world, European
development of social democracy can't be the model for American
leftists as well as leftists in the rest of the world.  We just have
to take people where they are, among all other objective conditions,
and try to find actually existing strengths in them, and build on
them, instead of trying to find a European -- or more specifically
French -- condition (marriage of anti-clericalism and working-class
rebellions) here, which you'll never find, for it just doesn't and
cannot exist here.
--
Yoshie
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