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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29605 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Calling the British Labour party a "Marxist" party is stretching the word absurdly far.

Labour was an explicitly socialist party for decades. The plank calling for the socialization of industry/property was only removed, I think in the 80s or 90s. The communists didn't think they were hardcore enough and wanted violent revolution now, but that doesn't change the party's ideals in its early years. This was even more true of the Second International parties on the continent like the SPD, the SFIO, and especially the PSOE. Do you deny those parties were very popular with the working classes of their respective countries?

I said "marxism" not "communism" and explicitly identified both the social democratic and comintern-affiliated communist parties, because it's true that the latter alone never commanded a majority of working class support in European countries. Though they still did pretty good. The PCF got 15% of the vote in national elections France in 1936 (calling the red belt 'a single region' underrates it. It was the French equivalent of communists dominating the US industrial regions in the great lakes in the 50s). The KPD got 17% of the vote in Germany in 1932, especially from unemployed workers.

Do you deny those parties were very popular with the working classes of their respective countries?

No, my criticism was specifically regarding Marxist parties, not social democratic parties. Your original claim was about Marxism, which is related to but distinct from social democracy.

All of the major social democratic parties in Europe were explicitly Marxist for a long time. A different interpretation of Marxist from the Bolsheviks, but still Marxist.

Some were. The German Social Democrats were in theory, but not UK Labour or the Swedish Social Democrats.

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