This is an interesting discussion. I hope however in your next post you can spare some column width to discuss leftwing parties outside the western world. In the sixties, many radical leftwing parties took power across Africa on the wave of revolutionary anti-imperialism. However within a few decades, many of these parties become complet…
This is an interesting discussion. I hope however in your next post you can spare some column width to discuss leftwing parties outside the western world. In the sixties, many radical leftwing parties took power across Africa on the wave of revolutionary anti-imperialism. However within a few decades, many of these parties become completely dedicated to the interests of public sector employees, and disinterested in the needs of informal sector workers and the rural poor. Sometimes these workers were highly organized in unions concentrated in capital, in others the "workers" were mostly soldiers and officers. In both cases leaders were incentivized to increase public sector payrolls year after year, regardless of utility.
This was part of why neoliberal reforms eighties were so politically difficult in the eighties, they directly attacked the interests of the ruling parties and their political base. However by the nineties, although still often focused on the parochial interests of the capital professional class, most of these parties entirely abandoned leftist ideology to become generic establishment conservatives. Their gentrification was complete.
This is an interesting discussion. I hope however in your next post you can spare some column width to discuss leftwing parties outside the western world. In the sixties, many radical leftwing parties took power across Africa on the wave of revolutionary anti-imperialism. However within a few decades, many of these parties become completely dedicated to the interests of public sector employees, and disinterested in the needs of informal sector workers and the rural poor. Sometimes these workers were highly organized in unions concentrated in capital, in others the "workers" were mostly soldiers and officers. In both cases leaders were incentivized to increase public sector payrolls year after year, regardless of utility.
This was part of why neoliberal reforms eighties were so politically difficult in the eighties, they directly attacked the interests of the ruling parties and their political base. However by the nineties, although still often focused on the parochial interests of the capital professional class, most of these parties entirely abandoned leftist ideology to become generic establishment conservatives. Their gentrification was complete.