political parties

[mj2397]

We as americans are not simply limited to democrat or republican. I myself am a libertarian. This country was based on freedom of speech and expression, and thats why we have the ability to become anything we want, whether it be an anarchist, communist, or anything in between. I would like to use this thread to discuss our many different veiws. Tell about your veiws, declare your idealisms, let the world know what you have learned in lifÿe

[Stavros]

Maybe the question is -Do two party systems produce more stable government? Although for years in the UK there was a relatively simple choice between -in the 19th century, Conservatives and Liberals, and in the 20th Century, between Labour and Conservative, the Liberals never really died out, and we now have the fourth coalition government in a 100 years because the voters in 2010 did not give the Tories a clear Parliamentary majority. France had a shambolic parliamentary system under the Fourth Republic, where, as in Italy, there were coalition governments coming and going every 6 to 18 months because they kept falling out with each other: and yet the top jobs were often occupied by the same people and the civil service kept the countries going. France reformed its system in 1958 to create an executive Presidency precisely to break the gridlock in policy, something Italy failed to emulate -it soldiered on with a decrepit system that worsened under Berlusconi to become some kind of lurid game show.

Do coalitions reflect the reality that you can't fit the people into either/or political choices, because people often want to be on both sides? Such as people who are liberal on social policy and conservative on economics. Has the dominance of two parties over time in the USA lead to the corruption of the vision your leaders had in 1776?

Or do coalitions create corruption by giving power to parties that represent less than 15% of the electorate, and who find ways of staying in power -eg, by making sure their supporters reap the benefits of power?

Maybe in the US the question is why no major party has emerged to challenge the existing two, and why in the UK, the parties we have did not dissolve and reform into something new after the end of the Cold War, because there have always been factions in those parties who could -in a few individual cases did- swap sides.

[Prospero]

Israel is further proof of the tragic difficulties created by coalitions with whichever party forms the majority government having to do deals with all kinds of extremist minority and religious parties.

One could argue that a third party has emerged in the US - but instead of standing on its own the Tea Party has tunnelled into an existing party and ousted its mature and more moderate members and replaced them with intransigent oppositionists. it is an entryist ploy that Labour successfully fended off in the UK decades ago when it faced down the Militant Tendency.

[Stavros]

Not sure I agree with the latter part. The Tea Party is not a conventional party but a collection of fringe groups some of which are financed from very large donors like the Koch Brothers.

In the UK, the entryists in the Labour Party were from an organised fraction of Trotskyists who were 'following' the line that Lenin laid down in 1921 when he suggested that new Communist Parties that were weak should graft themselves on to stronger parties and turn them to the left, win comrades, and thus build a bigger base before breaking away to lead the revolution, even though when Rosa Luxemburg tried it in Germany it trashed the party and she ended up dead, although I suppose we have the Spartacists as a result, if you call that a result. Entryism was revived by the 4th International in the late 1940s but as usual the comrades kept falling out with each other morphing from the Revolutionary Communist League into the Revolutionary Communist Party by 1949 and subsequently three of the most ambitious -Ted Grant, Gerry Healy and Tony Cliffe (who had in fact already been expelled from the 4th International for deviationist tendencies)- created their own vehicles, and while Healy initially was an entrist (in the early 1950s) he later turned against it, and only Grant through Militant opted for this course of action. I had dealings with these 'Strasserites' in the 1980s and it was very unpleasant, and they weren't all from Liverpoool either.

[Prospero]

I am well aware that the Tea party is not "conventional" but at this point the evidence suggests it is more a confederation than a collection. They have successfully diverted the Republicans from its old status as a responsible party prepared to compromise and on occasions co-operate to one of total intransigence. For instance the Romney/Ryan campaign is now pushing hard Obama's failure over the economy when all and any moves made by the President were totally blocked by the House from the mid term elections onwards. In that sense the Tea Party, while having no formal national party organisation do have an overall and shared vision on key plicy elements. So should the GOP fail in this election you could see either a more concerted attempt to oust the remaining Rhinos from the GOP (Republicans in Name Only) and to further radicalise the Republican Party or the possibility of the emergence of a new radical Rightist party. (I think the former is more likely)

[danthepoetman]

It seems to me that the dynamics are largely different between Europe and the US. With something like 300 lobbyists for every representative elected in Washington, who would possibly understand the real distribution of power if there were more than two parties? It would result in a world of confusion. I find it’s this outside element that complicates any possible divergence in the democratic process in the US, the extreme proximity of the corporative world with the political system. And that also explains the traditional ideological tenuity between the two parties anyways. The influence of the Tea Party might have increased the real political polarity in the system, but there’s nothing there to dissatisfy the corporations. I wander if a shift to the right is not inevitable in such circumstances, but I can’t see a leftist or even a more centered party coming out of such a mechanic…