I was amused and bemused when I read that the man the BBC styles Sinn Fein's most prominent supporter in the US Congress, Peter King, is a republican. It struck me as deeply strange that a big figure on the US right stands up and speaks favourably of a party that sits with the Communists in the European Parliament.

This set me thinking about the political spectrum in America, and I found myself coming back to the old question - why is there no left-wing in American politics? I know there are leftiwing Americans, but there's only one Congressman willing to call himself socialist (asusming he got reelected), there's no significant Socialist Party, Labour Party, Communist Party, Workers' Party etc., no-one would consider it a viable election strategy to declare themselves 'socialist and proud of it' as one of our parties has done for this election and so on. The European left may complain about the mainstream leftist parties not being particularly left, but we still have supposedly leftist mainstream parties, which are completely absent in the States.

I've heard various explanations, but none have really seemed convincing; so I thought I'd ask a board full of Americans to help me try and understand.

The word "socialism" has strong connotations of Soviet Communism, so it's avoided. There's no great aversion to the principles, but sometimes a socialist program will be called such to damage its credibility.

The Democrats are considered the leftist party, with principles such as government-funded welfare and health care, better state-sponsored education, government monitoring of corporate activity, etc. However, in America, not everyone in the parties follows the platforms exactly, so this isn't universal.

When I saw your thread title I thought "oooh, I had something to complain about, and here I can do it!" but your thread is about why America doesn't have a left, not about America's left. However, I think its still relevant.

I was listening to some venerable Democrat talking about how Democrats need to be in support of broad entitlement programs which benifit everyone, rich, middle class, and poor (like Social Security in its current state), instead of being for programs which benifit only the poor. The theory behind this was that no program just for the poor will remain strong for long; voters will support its erosion because it doesn't help them. I find myself thinking that Social Security reform might very well be a good thing, because it will simply destroy the program, we can get rid of it, and support only the poor old people with normal taxes instead of all old people with special taxes. The Democrat would argue strongly against this thought of mine.

So why does it seem politically important to support entitlement programs? Because the (mostly white, mainstream) culture in America sees being poor (or, more accurately, staying poor) as being caused by a flaw in the character of the poor person. They won't vote for things that too cushy for the "lazy", although they will vote for things that are cushy for them. Yes, this means there are more middle and upper class voters than poor voters. I assume that's true of both America and Europe.

Another huge factor is our two party system. With only two parties, there is less room for powerful fringes, and therefore less room for Socalists. Why do we have only two major parites? Because of our election systems. Essentially all of our legislative bodies are elected to single member districts. Only the top winner of votes gets the spot. If there is a really liberal district with greens and democrats, with democrat will win and the green will get nothing. If, instead, we had larger districts with more winners and systems were we ranked the candidates instead of just voting for one, then smaller parties could get into the mix.

Of course, one of our mainstream parties has some pretty extreme, fringe-party type positions at the moment, so I also have to explain why it is that the right gets the power the left completely lacks. This is due to the extreme religiousity of much of our population. I could look up the statistics, but I think everyone here agrees that the United States is much more Christian and much more Fundamentalist than Europe is. This fundamentalism skews our politics toward the right. Yes, some Democrats argue that the left should be the party of the religous, because charity and care for common man is an important value. However, most fundamentalists in America think that charity should be from the church, not the state, and the state should support conservative policies.

I am not sure about other european countries but austrias social system is often described as mainly distributing within the middle class. And campaigning against "welfare-parasites" is quite successfull here too. I guess the main difference is that people do like entitlements they get better then tax brakes and prefere higher taxes over cancelled entitlements. But programms only for the poor are seldom well funded and not particulary liked even by many people who in general vote left.

The 2 party system might be a factor but thoose european countries that have 2 strong parties one of them is social democratic at least in its official ideology.

Maybe the answer lies in history.
Continental European countries developed bona-fide radical marxist/socialist movements that were genuine (if not hugely popular) attempts to Overthrow The Ruling Class. Their positions became more moderate as parliamentary democracy became more established during the 19th C and the Socialists were co-opted into the system. Soft Socialist (but proud) parties remain in place today.

The USA had a democratic system all along, so the appeal of a Revolutionary Working Class Movement was less. Roosevelt was the closest they got to Socialism. Then along comes the Cold War and the word "Socialism" becomes the province of the Pinko Commies in Russia.

But then, I can't seem to explain Britain. And I've left out America's slavery and racial segregation. But then, how is it that the two big countries that actually had Socialist revolutions didn't even have proletariats? They were full of farmers.

There was a fairly influential Socialist party in the US back in the early years of the 20th Century; a combination of platform stealing (by the Democrats in the New Deal) and open criminality by the big two (especially down California way) kept them from ever getting more than a couple of congressmen elected.

There are a few left wing parties out there in the US; I occasionally vote for one (Working Families). However, they're rather local; so far they only elect county and state level officials.

In my opinion, the US left a long time ago. What's here is just the remnants of a once great society, and the parasites who squabble over scraps among the ruins.

Whaddya mean, that's not what the title meant?

Yup, there's still no labor party or socialist party completely because of the cold war. Not that socialism wasn't frowned upon before then, especially in the early industrial heyday of capitalism. Unions? Who needs 'em??

The 'it's all because of the Cold War argument just doesn't hold water, because we were on the same side. The Cold War probably contributed to the demise of the CPGB, but we already had an established social democratic party that wasn't going to go away just because Churhcill and Stalin fell out.

Nor can the fsilure of the States to have had an entrenched social-democratic party be blamed on the electoral system - because ours was the same. Labour gradually attracted working-class votes from the Liberals until they had a massive majority by 1945. Our winner-takes-all system has never produced the strict two-party system of the US, even if it does slant things in favour of the biggest two.

It's the religion and economics.

Most major religions are heirarchial, making religious followers more likely to feel comfortable with authority, a classic right-wing value. Right-wing governments also have a history of supporting the "status quo" religion - since most Americans are Protestants, the US right has aligned itself with Protestant values, making them attractive to a large portion of the populace. This attraction pulls the whole country to the right.

Adam Smith's ideas were embraced by Americans whole heartedly, and have been a basic part of American life since its conception. Socialism is really an economic model, not a governmental one, and it lays in direct opposition to capitalism. Since capitalism is so deeply entrenched in American culture (the so-called "American Dream" would not exist without capitalism,) socialism has a dreadfully difficult time making inroads against it, despite Christianity's inherent socialistic streak.

Continental Europe went through bouts of more extremist politics than the US did. Pre-war Germany's Communist party was almost as strong as the Fascist party, before it got squashed, that is. I was only guessing that the appeal of extremist politics in Continental Europe was stronger because democratic systems had yet to be firmly established there. It was quite a common belief in the early 20th C that democracy as a system wasn't any good. Both the far right and the far left resisted it.

Maybe Britain's geographical proximity to Europe meant that it shared those political and ideological debates much more than America did. Marx lived in England didn't he? But to the Americans, "socialism" was a strange invention of those zany Europeans. It scarcely got to the US before McCarthy launched a massive campaign against it. And then there were the Korean and Vietnam wars...

Yes, I forgot McCarthy. McCarthy's probably responsible for a lot of why socialism can't rear its head in the US. "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" was a death knell in Washington. Even though he was wholly disgraced, the stigma remains.

It wasn't the Cold War; it was McCarthy.

Now now. Don't forget that the US had a Red Scare before McCarthy ever came along...back in the 20's or 30's, I can't remember which decade. "Socialist" has been a dirty word for a long time. I blame that on big business not wanting to bow to the Unions. So blame Capitolism for Socialism's lack of respect in the US, and blame the nasty bits that come along with uncontrolled capitolism such as the "just business" mentality. (i.e., I am your friend, but I can screw you over to get more money out of you if I sell you something. Don't get mad, it's just business) The desire to care only for the self and not for others is why Socialism gets a bad rap.

I think anyone looking at relatively recent causes is going to be disappointed. The US hasn't always been the way it is now, but it started going down a different path from Europe (with Australia, Canada, and NZ) a long time ago.

Hmm - the US got universal white male suffrage in the 1830s. The British Labour and Communist parties were set up about the time the franchise was reaching full extension, so voters hadn't had time to get really attached to the Liberals yet, whereas by the time the US Socialist Party came along, maybe voters had built up a greater level of party identification. Iffy, but possible.