One of the things that always amazed me was how American neo-Conservatives managed to run against themselves and win. What do I mean? Well, Presidents Reagan, Bush, Sr., and then Bush, Jr. (in their second term), managed to campaign against "government." Now, I concede that government -- particularly in the US -- is a complex thing but Reagan and Bush, Jr., in their second terms and Bush, Sr. in his were ... well ... were the head of the very government against which they were campaigning. When I would hear things about government overreach (which was not a term used much then), I wondered about it. If you are the head of government and you don't like government overreach ... why didn't you stop it already? How did you end up blaming your opponent (who was not in power) for the things you did while in power and how did people believe you?
Whatever the reason it worked. The issue is not quite the same thing with progressive political approaches to neoliberalism and globalization, but it is close. In Canada, at least, the institutions of neoliberalism were not created by progressive political forces or parties. They were built by capitalists to promote capitalism, something with which progressive (rightly, in my view) have a serious reservations. Yet, the progressive political parties (which are moderate, centrist, or social democratic) like the Liberals in Canada, Democrats in the US, and Labour in Britain, seem to have gotten caught in its back draft. It is an odd thing: how did parties (say, like the Liberals in Canada), who supposedly opposed free trade and worried about the effects of globalization become its last line of defence and what does this tell us? I suspect it tells us several things but the key thing, I think, it tells us is something about the character of middle-class progressive politics, particularly (but not exclusively) in Canada.
It is clear that the opposition of some parties to neo-liberalism, globalization, free trade agreements and whatnot -- the institutions of a neoliberal globalization if we want to call it that -- was actually not a hard and fast opposition. The Liberal Party in Canada is a classic example. If we think back to the historically recent free trade elections (1988 and 1993), what we find is that the Liberals opposed these agreements ... sort of. They adopted a nationalist stance and argued that the agreements were a threat to Canadian sovereignty, but the truth of the matter was that they were moving their thinking in the same direction anyway. They lost the 1988 election but won in 1993. The modifications that the Liberals asked for as the price of agreeing to that deal (NAFTA) were, in reality, meaningless (they amounted to a couple of side agreements that had no regulatory teeth).
The Liberals in this sense occupied an ambiguous centrist position, which should not surprise us for an centrist party. The Liberal Party has, historically, had certain strengths but its relationship to capitalism is one that creates troubles for it. Its supposedly progressive tendencies lead it to wonder about the effects of capitalism as an economic system but its practical side leads it to make peace with the very economics about which it wonders. Why is this?
For some people, this is part of the "Liberals are just as bad as the Tories" line, or the Liberals are Tories in disguise or Tories with a smile or something like that. I don't think that is the case. The Liberal ambiguity about international trade agreements and neoliberalism in general is, I think, a product of its specific class position. Canadian liberalism is, by and large, based in the middle class. Look at who votes Liberal. And, the middle class (or, at least the Canadian middle class) is an odd economic animal. Its political culture is, by and large, progressive. The Canadian middle class is a bastion of support for gender and LGBTQ equity, it is -- by and large -- supportive of environmental protection, public health care, workplace accommodation for disabled people, and a range of other good things.
Yet, it also is committed to capitalism and this creates a torn and contradictory dynamic. In an economic sense, the Canadian middle class supports an economic system that subverts the very ideals to which it wants to subscribe. Environmental protect might be the best example we could give because here the issues seem particularly stark in Canada. The Tories have stacked out the we support fossil fuel position but the Liberals have actually not been all that far behind. The carbon tax is often given as an example of an attack on the industry, but is it? The fact that it is painted as such, I argued in a previous post, tells us more about the state of Tory policy, ideology, and discourse than it is an accurate reflection of reality. The bigger question is: have the Liberals attacked the energy industry?
There is just no evidence that they have. They bought a pipeline to support it, have consistently and without fail pursued every legal mechanism they could to get these pipelines built, and have done precious little to develop alternative energies that could compete with the oil industry. The Chretien Liberals did absolutely nothing to stem the increased flow of oil production that was exported to the US.
I am not, btw, saying this as a defense of the Liberals but to illustrate the argument. In terms of international commitments, trade, economic policy, the Liberals are trying to serve two masters. To the left, this makes them look like hypocrites; to the right, it makes them look like the left, but it really is neither. It is emblematic of the contradictory dynamics embedded in the class politics of the modern Canadian middle class. It can recognize the problem but its commitment to capitalism as an economic system leads it in a policy direction that undercuts, on a pragmatic level, the very values to which it subscribes.
It is, I would argue, this contradiction that future progressive politics needs to think through, particularly with regard to alternatives to it.
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