tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7257493550531569180.post2879885491236518147..comments2024-03-26T16:16:22.535+13:00Comments on AGAINST THE CURRENT: THE HEIRS OF THATCHERUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7257493550531569180.post-89085423501793221512013-04-11T00:00:18.811+12:002013-04-11T00:00:18.811+12:00In NZ, Australia and South Africa political partie...In NZ, Australia and South Africa political parties associated with workers (Labour, Labor and the ANC) were the spearhead of the market reforms pioneered by conservatives like Pinochet, Thatcher and Reagan. <br /><br />The very reason for the generalised inability of organised labour to oppose the neo-cons was the legislative and bureaucratic tying of trade unionism to the parliamentary process, which was the legacy of social democracy and labour parties for the last 100 years<br /><br />Thatcherisms (and Rogernomics) success was inevitable BECAUSE of the success of social democracy in co-opting the labour bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy’s gut fear of breaking away from their parliamentary party of choice. <br /><br />This allowed allegedly worker-friendly parties to impose austerity and market solutions on workers who did not want them, because they had the support of the union leadership. And the union leadership accepted in large part the market rationalisations that the neo-cons championed (having given up on their residual Stalinism), even though they preferred to couch it all in (worker-) friendlier terminology.<br /><br />Regenerating the unions and “organizations of worker self-activity”, will require ripping them root and branch from the grasp of the labour parties and social democracy.<br /><br />To not do so would be to condemn us to reliving one of those historical “farces” that Mr Marx warned about.<br /><br />RuaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com