I would add to my previous comment that workers can move equally decisively in the other direction - from left to right - as we saw with the triumph of fascism in Italy, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere.
In stable periods, elections are mainly a popularity contest and the parties of the centre which are barely distinguishable from each other count for less. But economic and social crises force workers to pay more attention to politics. While they have historically moved to the left, on those occasions when they have built and supported mass left-wing parties which have proved incapable of resolving the crisis and have been presented with a far right alternative encouraged and funded by the bourgeoisie, the workers most susceptible to racist, jingoistic, and other reactionary prejudices have joined with the petty bourgeoisie to provide a mass base for fascism. The did so in the desperate hope that the fascists would do what communists could not - restore order, revive the economy, and lift them out of their misery. These are clearly not the circumstances we face today. While the crisis is deepening, it has not yet reached the scale or depths of the Great Depression, nor are there any longer mass leftwing working class parties vying for power, nor any need for the ruling class, fearful of losing its power and property, to scuttle its favoured system of bourgeois democracy in favour of a single party regime in which it would be politically subordinate. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40541): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40541 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117601828/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
