Largest party in Europe

[moderator2]

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[Young Master Smeet]

So, taking Engels' article as a starting point, we can look at the in-built advantages the wealthy have in the electoral system: they (at the turn of the 20th Century) occupied all the corridors of power, had all the money and controlled the means of communication.So, the 20th century has seen an expansion of the civil service, meaning people from a non-traditionally bourgeois background have risen to high office, and the gate keepers of the universities have (to some extent) been opened up.  Labour has at least helped that, and been a useful conduit for ambitious workign class people to rise in politics both electorally and through the appointed bureaucracy.Money: the wealthy dominate the political spending, Labour gets plenty of money from millionaires, as well as its millions from trade unions (trade unions have traditionally been on the conservative end of the party, because, well, they're in business, and I think this fits in with my theme of the need to udnerstand the working class does have a stake in capitalism and sees avenues other than socialism to its advantage).  Unions are a key conduit of labour propaganda, and shape and enforce the pro-market side of the party.The unions also provide the labour backbone of the party, officials and organisers have the time to campaign and build a party, (and also 'middle class' professionals too have the space and freedom topush to the front of the political edge of the party, and become candidates).To borrow from Chomsky & Herman's propaganda model, it's a series of filters that makes it harder for any radical notion to get to the front of the party: as we've seen with Corbyn, he jumped one filter, by getting elected, to run into the filter of sitting MPs and journalists who genunely cannot understand him.So, what I'm suggesting is:1) Filters make it easier to go along with existing structures.2) The capitalist class have in-built home advantage in those structures.3) The lived experience and interest of the working class, or the politically engaged/active sections, is fulfilled by labour.4) Workers whose politics extends merely to voting operate a gift relationship with those who capture the political levers. 

[alanjjohnstone]

I've always admired the writings and speeches of Eugene Debs but i sadly acknowledge that he was a minority in the Socialist Party of America  and that that the prevailing influence and direction were people like Victor Berger.Jondwhite provided a link to when the SPA was indeed becoming a force to be reckoned worth in American electoral politics. It is a series of maps of the strength of the SPA across America http://depts.washington.edu/moves/SP_intro.shtmlI suppose a related question to why the UK Labour Party has become the largest in Europe, is how the American one dwindled into insignificance. (i think we can understand how the German SPD lost its standing as the "greatest" workers' party, but again perhaps not)

[jondwhite]

In response to Lbird, if the Tories are materialist, not Marxist, represent the ruling ideology and Labour are materialist, not Marxist and you contend the SPGB are materialist not Marxist, then why are Labour 600,000 strong, the Tories around 100,000 strong and the SPGB less than a thousand strong?

[Anonymous]

Well, The Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela was able to obtain more than 6 millions members in a few months or a few years. Are they large because they are Materialists, Idealists, or Materialist-Idealists ?They are large because they have offer a lot of reforms to the working class, and most peoples are already used to reformism.The RCPUSA ( Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA ) is a Maoist group, and they have a large membership and they have bookstores, and they are able to collect a large sum of money when they make a campaign for collection. What is their secret ?  The Socialist Labor Party of America which had much  better principles lost its membership 

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