Political conciousness in Europe

[Delta]

For those of you who live in Europe, could you give me a sense of the polical consciousness of the average citizen/worker? I live in the backwards U.S. and so I'm trying to get a feel for the situation in other countries. Are there many left-wing groups and publications in your area?

[Herman]

For those of you who live in Europe, could you give me a sense of the polical consciousness of the average citizen/worker? I live in the backwards U.S. and so I'm trying to get a feel for the situation in other countries. Are there many left-wing groups and publications in your area?

Sure. In Spain there are several small marxist/anarchist groups and parties, but the main parties with representation are PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español - Social-democratic in majority, more radical leftist current Izquierda Socialista [made up of marxists, democratic socialists and social-democrats]), PP (Partido Popular - Right-winged conservative with a neo-liberal current and a far-right current) and IU (Izquierda Unida which is a coalition of leftist parties, including green and republican parties. The party which leads the coalition is the Communist Party of Spain which is Eurocommunist in majority, but has elements of marxism-leninism as well). This is talking in a national scale. Within the most conflictive of provinces like the Basque country or Catalonia, it is different. I cannot tell you what the 'average' consciousness is, but what I can tell you is that PSOE and PP are the most voted parties.

[Dimentio]

We have two large parties on the scale of the EU.

The ESP, which is a federation of centre-left social democrat parties of the member states.

The EPP, which is a federation of christian democrat/conservative parties in the member states.

We have about 5-6 more parties in the European parliament, which is fairly corresponding to the situation in most national parliaments of the member states (we have about 5-10 parties in each parliament in a member state).

The most typical parties are the following, from left to right.

Social democrats/socialists.

Reformed communists.

Greens.

Centrists (peasant interest parties)

Liberals (social liberals + classic liberals) [corresponding to the Democratic Party in the US]

Conservatives [Often corresponding to the right-wing of the Democratic Party in the US]

Far right populists and neo-fascists.

The reason why we have so many parties in European assemblies, compared to the US, is that we instead of dividing the countries in smaller areas and let the winner in that area take all votes of the area after the votes are accounted for, we count percentage-wise on a national level (with a lower limit of 4%).

Europeans are generally critical of excess liberalism (in the classical sense), and there is a very high support of welfare. There are growing ethnic tensions and dissent from the EU.