By-elections of the 44th Australian Parliament (2013-2016)

[EPG]

The parties that represent old-style left-wing views do much worse than the modern social democrats almost everywhere in Europe and the West.

[EPG]

That's open to the reader's interpretation, but to choose one possible example, let's consider parties that want much higher income taxes, much higher capital taxes, more state aid for and intervention in industry. Generally, this would just move countries back to 1970s levels of economic intervention rather than anything unprecedented in the West. Yet we don't see those parties doing as well as their social democratic predecessors in the post-war generation, when unions and low-skilled industries were major forces in Western society. My thesis is centre-left political actors have responded to changes in society rather than being wilfully naive or malevolent. Anyway, this is a bit off-topic for an Australian by-election thread, other than noting that as in the UK, strong unions in left-wing parties tend to lead to factionalism rather than resolving it.