Max B. Sawicky wrote: > Life support how? These days I'm reading about European Community plans to > build crazy high speed rail everywhere.<
> That's why I asked what lefts do in a soc-dem context. > You've already got social insurance. Lots of things are > nationalized already, and those that are don't always work > splendidly. I suppose you could be fighting privatization. As I said, it depends on one's definition of "social democracy." We don't have SD in California, but we're building high-speed trains. I'd say that most Europeans have much more of a welfare state than we do, but it's largely a hangover from the period when labor was stronger, before intensified globalization and the establishment of the Euro-zone, before the end of the USSR as a threat to capitalism, etc. The US has been working hard to get rid of these vestiges. Maybe Obama will stop that effort, if we're lucky. I think of "social democracy" as involving (1) a political organization that's a lot like what we USians call (New Deal) "liberalism" which is (2) linked intimately to a serious and strong mass labor movement, with the latter having significant amounts of impact on the decisions of the former. The French Socialists or Communists might fit this definition (I don't know) but the "new" British Labor Party does not. -- Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
