The concessions obtained through SocDem goverments in European countries came about because all those countries had thousands of actual communists in varying posts in the government and the concessions were to reduce class consciousness and weaken the communists.

To understand the magnitude of difference, imagine if the US House of Reps (total seats 435) had 40 honest-to-god Communists in power, with another 80 left-of-Bernie SocDems : thats what the French legislature was like in the 60s and 70s.

Instead the US has 3 extremely mild SocDems who may or may not be grifters.

I hope you see the magnitude of difference here, there is no real way of moving the admin left and whatever minor leftward shift you may see is what the ruling class themselves, by their own accord, decide is necessary to keep the threat of civil unrest from getting too high.

So whenever you see any liberals IRL or online talk about how we need to become like Norway or whatever, remind them No Communists in govt = No European style Social Democracy

  • FamilyGuy [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Since the 70s there's always been some kind of ultraliberal fringe that want US conditions with basically no social programs, but the parties specifically for these people like Fremskridtspartiet or Liberal Alliance don't do any better than the "socialist" party, which is to say they have influence but only so far as the two big centre parties want to court them for support over others.

    There's old school communists around, but usually older urban workers or things like a small maoist fisherman groups. Class is not a serious political topic because most people are relatively well off, and the "socialist" party has become more centre-left over time.

    Unless you want the ultra liberal voters, which aren't that many, you don't say that you want to privatise healthcare or university, since even centre-right people want these things done by the state, though they would also support having private alternatives. What the less radical right leaning parties support are typically budget cuts and sometimes tax cuts, but in actuality they can't do much because the left parties just fight them in parliament and they need to get the votes from either the ultra liberals or the centre-left parties, and getting the latter votes for some concessions is usually easiest.

    It's actually the centre-left that ends up privatising the most, since the right leaning parties won't stop them when they're in power and propose this, and third way style social democracy has been a thing since the early 90s. Denmark will be one of the last countries in the world to have a revolution, the status quo simply dominates both in politics and in the minds of the majority of people.