ABSTRACT
This chapter examines elements of the political system that cause the submergence of redistributive issues. It describes the possibilities of political decision making through party conflict. Countries with a strong democratic Socialist party seem to typify the pattern of political conflict. Internalized ideological prohibitions discouraging the formation of redistributive demands, coupled with a policymaking process designed to thwart those redistributive demands that do surface, explain the safety and stability of inequality. The elitism implicit in consensus politics is justified as the primary means of inhibiting the formation of redistributive demands, moderating those that do get presented, and insuring the maintenance of accommodative processes, all toward reducing threats to the political and economic systems. Chief among the ideological supports for consensus politics in United States trade unionism is the desire for an interdependent, symbiotic relationship between labor and management. Economic inequality and the structures that support it constitute the silent partners in labor-management agreements.
