The road not (to be) taken—Why there is no Linkspartei in the USA: The American Sonderweg and the structural barriers to popular third parties in the US political system

Abstract

The decline of neoliberal hegemony has by now spread from the periphery of the imperialist chain to some of the core capitalist countries themselves. The rise of new political formations such as Die Linke is evidence of this. But the defeat of the new imperialism that neoliberal globalisation has revealed itself to be requires a shift in the relationship of forces in the belly of the beast—in the USA. The US left has been undecided as to which strategy to adopt. It is therefore crucial to recollect the specific economic, political and ideological barriers that have historically and to this day frustrated the efforts of subaltern third-party class politics in the USA, and which will continue to do so, particularly given the present moment of class fragmentation and the Christian fundamentalists' ‘hijacking’ of the issue of class.