Maybe look at other countries piecemeal. Brazilian voting machines,
Belgian health insurance.
The latter is not a silly idea. It's a bit like US auto insurance:
everyone has to have it, and it is provided through private (mutual)
insurance companies.
I just found a thread from January 24 (re:Re: NYT magazine on
Sanders) where I contradict what I said here about models. I think I
can say without a hint of embarrassment that each country needs its
own model, each can borrow ideas from others, and it looks like
Yoshie's making a start.
At 16:50 1/03/2007, you wrote:
On 2/28/07, Gar Lipow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 2/28/07, Robert Scott Gassler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So go for it. Describe the model for America.
I think that is unfair. Yoshie is at the beginning of a process. A
fairer challenge would be to ask Yoshie to list a few things leftists
should NOT do... In other words a good test of the insight would be
for it to be the basis for an article about "What is NOT to be done".
Not only are trade unions in the USA uninterested in social democracy
but they are _strongly opposed_ to it. So, in the USA, it is vain to
hope to go through trade unions and get to social democracy.
And when an intellectual like Ralph Nader enters electoral politics
and proposes a social democratic program, almost all leftists, first
of all, do all they can to make sure that it will never get a serious
hearing. In the foreseeable future, most US leftists will _never_
defect from the Democratic Party, which is also _strongly opposed_ to
social democracy. So, in the USA, it is vain to hope to go through
electoral politics and get to social democracy.
In short, the USA lacks traditional building blocks for social
democracy. It doesn't make sense to aim for social democracy when you
don't have political vehicles that can struggle for it, especially at
a time when actually existing social democracies in Europe are all
going in one direction: less social democracy, more American-style
capitalism.
On 3/1/07, Jean-Christophe Helary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Why should there be a model for America ? Yoshie is only saying that
Europe should not be thought as one. Is there a model for Europe ?
For Japan ? For Africa ?
Among the social democratic systems in Europe, Sweden's is most often
held up as the model by leftists in the USA, but it's impossible to
even put the Swedish system in practice in all of Western Europe, even
if you exclude "New Europe." The Swedes know that, too. They
rejected the euro.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
