A Discussion on The Left & The Working Class

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[NZA]

I'm not convinced the people truly want to be on the left.

the government has been at war with leftists at home and abroad for nearly a century. we dont really know what the true capacity for the left could be

 

[mc_brew]

i've come to a really somber realization that i don't like but is true nonetheless..... democrats represent marginalized groups.... marginalized groups are marginalized for a reason, the dominant society doesn't like them.... so what do the democrats have.....? they have to represent (and we can't even argue they do a great job at this) various groups that are disliked...... that's a tough sell.... the older i get the more i realize how deeply ingrained bigotry is in people and it is not going to change, it is the human condition period.....

 

[num123]

i've come to a really somber realization that i don't like but is true nonetheless..... democrats represent marginalized groups.... marginalized groups are marginalized for a reason, the dominant society doesn't like them.... so what do the democrats have.....? they have to represent (and we can't even argue they do a great job at this) various groups that are disliked...... that's a tough sell.... the older i get the more i realize how deeply ingrained bigotry is in people and it is not going to change, it is the human condition period.....

It is not even like that. The Democrats that have campaigned and governed for 20+ years have been corporate centrists that do not represent the average person. They have been content to be the lesser evil, the "vote against X" rather than "vote for" party. If republicans were less racist and less fascist they would win every election.

Harris' campaign was pretty much a "dont let Trump win" campaign. People know he is shyt, but having to accept less because you have to prevent garbage getting in is tiring. Who was the campaign speaking to being pro genocide, being pro Cheney, cozying up to Republicans, the tranny shyt, being corporate whores, etc....? Who does that speak to?

Again, if the only real reason to vote for you or your party is to keep evil out while getting little in return, people are going to tune out. People tuning out in the millions, your voters, is not going to win any campaign and knowing the Democrats they will go even more corporate, more Right and alienate their core voting base.

 

[Liu Kang]

Not sure a party funding death and destruction around the world, supported by the likes of Cheney etc. can be considered 'left'.

Much like in the UK, Labour are firmly in the centre-right and are almost indistinguishable from the Conservatives. To attribute their failings as a rejection of the left is bad faith analysis.

I wasn't so much talking about parties per se rather the global shift of workers/uneducated to the right. As you stated Social-Democrats are centrists (sometimes a bit left, sometimes a bit right) but how come workers rather move right than left of them ?

For example, In France, NFP is the left coalition (actual Left, there are greens, communists, anti-capitalists, socialists and social democrats in it)

However, our last legislative elections, the working class voted 57% for the far right and 21% for NFP. If we look at education, people without a college degree voted at 49% for RN and 17% for NFP. And the thing is that the middle class/high educated are actually the backbone of NFP voters.

 

[Liu Kang]

democrats dont actually want to be the left. that is a fundamental issue

Do you think if they actually did, they would succeed in getting votes from the working class/uneducated ?

 

[Liu Kang]

Sounds like by "working class" you mean white men. Maybe we need to start by saying what we mean and stop pretending the millions of black people that vote are somehow not working class. As long as we use their language they will control the conversation.

Maybe I didnt say it properly but the thread wasn't so much about the US and Dems, it was more about why the working class / low wage/service workers / no college education voters shift to the far right globally (or in the West at least) and if we can get them back.

I agree that there is definitely a racial/xenophobic component to their shift but then, as long as we live in multi ethnic societies, is it possible to keep winning elections without them ?

 

[Liu Kang]

I added a new poll option


Anyway, here's an article about that could be interesting :

How Europe’s Right-Wing Populists Win Working-Class Votes

Europe’s right-wing populist parties have increased their share of support among the working class by posing as pro-labor. In power, however, they have formed conservative coalitions to cut workers' rights and scapegoat immigrants.

jacobin.com

How Europe’s Right-Wing Populists Win Working-Class Votes
By Wouter van de Klippe
8 - 11 minutes

In a grand spectacle during which protesters held Spanish flags aloft, a union called for a general strike in Spain last November to protest the Pedro Sanchez government’s proposed amnesty deal with the Catalan separatists. This was no typical workers union, however.

The self-professed “patriotic union” named Solidaridad was formed in 2020 and has deep ties to Spain’s right-wing populist party Vox, which claimed on May Day this year that the country’s historical unions are the “greatest enemies of Spain’s workers.”

Solidaridad is one of a number of right-wing labor unions attached to Europe’s far-right populist parties that are hoping to capture the support of Europe’s discontented working class and weaken the existing labor unions of the continent.

These alternative right-wing unions are just one example of the sophisticated strategies employed by the Right to hamper the strength of Europe’s labor unions.

In a report published by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, professor of political economy Hans-Jürgen Bieling describes how right-wing populist parties across Europe have impacted labor unions. These parties, Bieling contends, are trying to diminish the strength of labor unions by eroding four different forms of power — structural, organizational, institutional, and societal.

At the center of the Right’s attack on organized labor is a fundamental attack on unions’ values of universalistic class-based solidarity.
Usurping the Social Question

Geert Wilders, the leader of the right-wing Islamophobic Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), made two promises throughout the 2023 election: he’d be tough on immigration, and his agenda would be the most “social” of any political party in the campaign.

This is part of a larger trend in which Europe’s right-wing populist parties are campaigning on supporting strong welfare states, although in a way that is chauvinistic, nativistic, and frequently ethnonationalist.

This is a dramatic shift. In the 1980s and 1990s most right-wing populist parties across Europe were arguing for neoliberal policies to slash public budgets and displayed general hostility toward the welfare state. Now, the picture has become more muddled — at least in terms of their rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Bieling told Jacobin that in the past, “the social question wasn’t really on the agenda. It was more or less about the control of borders and fighting against the idea of a multicultural society.” But the growth in working-class support for the Right has also led to a shift in terms of the programs that these parties have put forward.

Central to this change is the idea of welfare chauvinism. Rather than attacking the welfare state, the Right now takes aim at its universal class-based solidarity. The erosion of class solidarity through welfare chauvinism presents a serious, albeit indirect, threat to the organizing strength of labor unions.

The irony is, Bieling explains, that when these parties enter into parliament they frequently vote against the interests of workers, undermine labor unions, and align themselves with existing bourgeois parties.
Dismantling the Institutional Power of Organized Labor

Europe’s right-wing populist parties are also undermining the different ways that labor unions have historically sought to build power through institutions. For example, many Nordic countries organize their unemployment support through what’s called the “Ghent” system. Under this system unions, rather than the state, administer unemployment support payments. As a result, the system significantly contributes to the high degree of union membership common to these states.

This system has come under attack by Nordic far-right populist parties over the past years. In Sweden, the right-wing Sweden Democrats have fought to replace the system with a state-organized welfare system that would diminish the role for unions. In Denmark, the nationalist Danish People’s Party worked alongside bourgeois parties to allow competing cross-industry insurance schemes.

In Austria, labor legislation has historically been negotiated with the country’s largest unions and the country’s Chambers of Labour, a legal representative of the interests of workers funded through a compulsory contribution of 0.5 percent of the wages of all workers. The right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has undermined labor unions by bypassing them when writing labor legislation and has attempted to cut the funding of the country’s Chambers of Labour — effectively weakening the voice of organized labor in the country. Undermining the institutional structures in which labor unions are embedded is a strategy aimed at eradicating the function that they play as intermediaries between workers and the state.
Eroding Finland’s Industrial Relations

One of the most comprehensive recent assaults on unions has emerged in Finland, where the right-wing Finns Party has allied with the bourgeois National Coalition Party (NCP) to implement a broad swathe of limitation on the right to strike. Last year, Finland held an election that saw the Right overtake the incumbent Social Democrat–led coalition in a campaign that focused on inflation, the war in Ukraine, and rising inequality.

The resulting government led by the NCP’s Petteri Orpo includes the pro-business and conservative NCP and the nationalist right-wing Finns Party, which has described itself as a “workers party without socialism.” Capitalizing upon an (albeit moderate) increase of public debt as a result of the pandemic and Europe’s inflation crisis, the Orpo government has introduced a swathe of anti-worker legislation.

Plans include limiting the role of union representatives in the workplace, making cuts to social security, imposing new fines on strikes that courts deem to be illegal and limiting the duration of political strikes. The legislation is a blatant attack on some of the central tenets of Finnish labor organizing that have long been the bread and butter of its strength.

Despite the largest trade union confederation of Europe organizing a campaign against the policies, the Orpo government has been able to implement several of the cuts.

Nevertheless, the labor union organizing may have proved successful, as Finland’s Left Alliance outperformed all expectations in the European parliamentary elections this June, while the Finns Party nearly failed to secure a single seat.

Fighting to Represent Europe’s Workers

An uncomfortable truth is that increasing shares of blue-collar workers in Europe are finding the vision of a chauvinistic welfare state appealing.

Around 60 percent of blue-collar workers in Austria voted for the FPÖ in 2017, and around 27 percent in Sweden for the Sweden Democrats in 2022. In Germany and France, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and Rassemblement National (RN), respectively, have had relatively stable support from the working class in recent elections. In the most recent European parliamentary elections, Germany’s working class and low-income population disproportionately voted for the far-right AfD.

For Europe’s labor unions there is a challenge in terms of how to respond to rank-and-file members aligning with right-wing populist parties. Some unions such as the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union have forbidden shop stewards or union leaders from being members of these parties; other unions have instead tolerated right-wing party memberships.

The European parliamentary elections of this June highlighted yet again that Europe’s right-wing populists are on the rise. While the role for unions in promoting a vision of class-based solidarity will no doubt remain crucial, they will ultimately be limited by the weakness of the Left within society as a whole. Thus far, the normalization of right-wing chauvinist talking points has made plausible the rise of reactionary elements within the labor movement, but this is not an irreversible shift.

 

[No1]

Do you think if they actually did, they would succeed in getting votes from the working class/uneducated ?

Obama did just that. Obama literally ran a campaign calling Romney a corporate raider.

 

[No1]

Maybe I didnt say it properly but the thread wasn't so much about the US and Dems, it was more about why the working class / low wage/service workers / no college education voters shift to the far right globally (or in the West at least) and if we can get them back.

I agree that there is definitely a racial/xenophobic component to their shift but then, as long as we live in multi ethnic societies, is it possible to keep winning elections without them ?

Faux-populism. The left isn’t good at that because they’re too buttoned up and whenever they try - the corporate and institutional democrats tell them to stop. Team Biden told Walz to stop calling republicans weird. Sanders was criticized harshly by democrats on TV for calling Bloomberg an Oligarch. Democrats aren’t allowed to use the same language as republicans.

 

[acri1]

Obama did just that. Obama literally ran a campaign calling Romney a corporate raider.

To be fair, Obama didn't have the whole social media alt-right ecosphere working against him in 2008/2012.

Yes, there was FOX News, which is more than bad enough, but it's not the same. I'm not sure Obama could win in 2024.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[Jesus H. Christ]

Distance yourself from popular working class economic policies that Dems and Republican voters favor, brehs.

@☑︎#VoteDemocrat what's the point of trotting out Bernie to the working class when Dems are just going to keep proposing cookie crumb liberal policies. Trump voters won't be swayed, the Dems FAFO and look how it resulted. This ain't the 90s.

I hope you get bushed again.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Distance yourself from popular social economic policies that Dems and Republican voters favor, brehs.

@☑︎#VoteDemocrat what's the point of trotting out Bernie to the working class when Dems are just going to keep proposing cookie crumb liberal policies. Trump voters won't be swayed, the Dems FAFO and look how it resulted. This ain't the 90s.

I hope you get bushed again.

Voters rejected all that shyt Biden did.