There really is a Protestant work ethic. But the working classes of Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, at least, have been largely Catholic for as long as such classes, and in some cases such countries, have identifiably existed at all, producing political movements heavily influenced, not only (though undeniably) by the broadly Wesleyan and Calvinist traditions, but also by Catholic Social Teaching.
The strongly union-based, largely Midwestern, Catholic tendency still accounts for about one fifth of Democrats in Congress. Figures such as Marcy Kaptur, bailout-denouncing stalwart of the left-wing Progressive Caucus, opponent of embryonic stem cell "research", and supporter of the Stupak Amendment. Figures, of course, such as Stupak himself.
Parliamentarians in that vein used to be routine in Britain. What are we doing to make them so again?
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Good points. I can't speak for Britain, but in the US, our supposedly "left-wing" party, the Democratic Party, has decided that the votes (and perhaps more importantly, the money) of affluent social liberals are more important than those of working-class Catholics, whom they figure will vote for Democrats anyway, out of fear that the Republicans will be even worse for them on economic issues.
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats also moved toward the right on economics in order to be able to be able to bring in more corporate campaign contributions, with the result that the Democrats now often do just as well as the Republicans in getting funding from Big Money donors.
So, as to the UK, I will guess that perhaps it is the problem of money that keeps such Parliamentarians out of office? I think that is the reason why we don't have more socially conservative/economically populist legislators in the US, especially at the national level. It is the problem of campaign finance.