Why No US Political Party for Labor?
In contrast to Canada, Australia, Britain and Europe. Some surprising findings
More Youtube videos on the Labor Movement.
The American Sociological Association in 2016 asked, “Why Is There No Labor Party in the U.S.?”
“The conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. lacks a labor or socialist party because its political culture is hostile to socialism, and its electoral system is uniquely hostile to third parties.”
McGill University sociologist Barry Eidlin “challenges that conventional wisdom using a historical comparison with Canada, a country similar to the U.S. in many ways, but whose political culture and electoral system have ostensibly been more hospitable to labor parties.”
In essence, during the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt responded to labor unrest by rhetorical appeals to the "forgotten man" and policy reforms that successfully absorbed some farmer and labor groups into his New Deal coalition.
In contrast, Canada’s mainstream political parties responded to labor unrest in the 1930s’ Great Depression with “repression and neglect. This exclusionary approach left room for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a precursor to today's New Democratic Party (NDP), to organize them into a durable third-party coalition,” Eidlin wrote.
Why are the Canadian, Australian, British and European social safety nets so much more expansive than the US? Why are their labor unions so much stronger and labor laws so much stricter than in the US?
First of all, the industrial revolution started about 100 years earlier in Britain and Europe. Well before 1820, the industrial revolution was noticeable in England, and fully in place by the 1830s. By 1850, Britain led the world in industrial growth, producing:
one-half of the world’s iron;
one half of the world’s cotton. Between 1801 and 1850, Britain’s GNP rose 350 percent and per capita income rose 100 percent.
One could argue that living conditions were much worse (far more brutal) for longer periods than in America. Class structures were far more rigid. Karl Marx was a German philosopher who critiqued the deficiencies of capitalism in the industrial revolution and urged workers of the world to unite. Marxism was a much stronger presence in the UK and Europe, and the revolt of the working classes was much more widespread. Political representatives responded; labor standards and labor laws grew far stricter, and were set in place decades before the US.
The Industrial revolution — moving workers from farms to cities — started about 1800 in Europe. People moved from country to city to find work in cities, in factories and mines. European city populations doubled, even tripled. Rapid, unplanned population growth led to serious social problems:
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