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.
Showing posts with label progressive politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label progressive politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 04, 2020
Sunday, February 02, 2020
Brexit and the New World Order that Wasn't
Someone on CBC TV yesterday morning said something about how Britain would not be the same. The line was something like, for the first time in 44 years, Britons will not be part of the EU. This was followed by some reference to a "new world order" for Britain, free now to sign its own trade agreements, or something like that.
This is actually so bizarrely wrong that it is difficult for me to even get excited about. There are potential important implications to Brexit -- and I will say a word about those -- and important lessons from the Brexit process that can be linked to other challenges to globalization and neoliberalism. But, before doing that let me make the key point I want to make: foreign policy has been a problem for progressive politics for a couple of reasons. First, progressives have opposed neoliberalism but somehow let themselves get caught holding its bag (or, at least the blame for its failures). Second, this is because they have not really had an alternative to it. The result is that the foreign policy of progressives is often intensely moralistic and this moralism (which is, I would argue, a good thing) is not matched by its practice. Progressives cheer, as it were, for the right side. They are on the side of innocents who have suffered (say, refugees or victims of climate change). They oppose totalitarian governments and wants us to have no truck or trade with them; they support diversity and argue for individual rights.
These are all good things, but how does the rubber meet the road? With regard to globalization, it doesn't seem to. Progressive political parties question it, point out its problems, champion the rights of workers, but in the end, they don't really know what they should be building as an international order in its place. For Canada, this is particularly true. For example: how is a global reduction of green house gases going to be accomplished? Saying "the US has to cut" is not going to do much good if the US government chooses to ignore that statement. One of the things that Brexit highlights is the need for a progressive political rethinking of foreign policy and the conception of what an international order might actually look like.
This is important because Brexit is not that new world order. Make no mistake about it. Brexiters and UKIPs, and Conservatives are celebrating, but the next day Britons woke up with the exact same problems they had a week ago. Unemployment did not disappear, the national debt was not suddenly paid, racism and sexism did not resolve themselves, Scottish nationalists did not settle in a comfortable new Britain, pollution did not evaporate, etc., etc. If anyone thinks Brexit is a panacea, they are just wrong. Don't believe me? Look around you in a day, a week, a year.
There is an analogous test case: the US. There were many reasons that Trump won the last presidential election in the US, but one reason was that he said what progressive political leadership should have been saying: NAFTA was a problem. Its effects were uneven and, to be sure, some people really benefited from it. But, there were a lot of people who didn't. I am not in any way agreeing with the "Mexicans stole our jobs" discourse because there are serious empirical issues with that and I know the anti-NAFTA discourse became intensely racialized. I am in no way defending that. But, we also need to look at the truth of the matter: the American working class did not do well by NAFTA and it had nothing to offer them. It was a mature trade agreement: there were no more gains to be had by it and whatever gains there were ended passing a lot of people by. And, how did the Democrats respond to this reality? Well ... how did they respond to this reality? Seriously, I honestly don't know.
I'd make the same point about Labour in Britain. I know that the EU was divisive within the Labour Party and among Labour voters. But, what was Labour's policy regarding the EU? What would they have done if elected? In opposing the Tories, they actually came off looking like they were defending the EU and, again, this 44 year old treaty had little to offer British workers. It was not going to provide jobs, improve the standard of living and, in the case of some countries, say Greece, the EU actually imposed draconian measures on the country that caused a general decline in the welfare state and standard of living (particularly for seniors) as the price of helping the country out of the international global economic crisis.
Said differently, if I were a progressive, I'd not look on the demise of NAFTA (a story for another day) or Brexit as something to lament. At the very least, from a progressive perspective, these are international trade (and trade and political) agreements that have run their course. They do not provide inspiration for a new generation. Nor can they address persistent problems in a way that (at least in the case of the EU), they might have in the past. Exactly how progressive politicians have ended up defending neoliberal globalization is a bit of a mystery to me particularly since they did not agree with it (at least discursively) in the first place. What concerns me was the inability of progressive political leaders and parties to put together a viable alternative to neoliberal globalization.
If Brexit will not solve Britain's problems, it does tell us one thing: disaster does not follow if one challenges the institutions of neoliberalism. NAFTA is another case in point. One of the standard arguments against progressive opposition to globalization and neoliberalism was this: withdrawing from globalization = economic disaster. If one tampers with the EU or with NAFTA, something like the economic end of days is on the horizon.
Did that happen?
Well ... no. In the case of NAFTA there might be other reasons that are worth exploring in another post, but the doom of many prophets did not materialize with Brexit and I have deep doubts it ever will. Get me right: I am not saying Brexit will be good for Britain or the British working class. I doubt it will, although nationalism might cover this over for a while. I am just saying it did not usher in a reprise of the Great Depression.
I find this fascinating. One element of recent history that needs to be written is progressive political figures ambiguous, slow, embrace of the international institutions of neoliberalism, such as NAFTA and the EU (I know that the EU is more than a trade agreement). In some measure, I wonder if the Labour Party, the Canadian Liberals, American Democrats, accepted neoliberalism because they felt they had to. Was it because they believed the discourse of impending economic disaster if they pulled away from the process of globalization?
Turns out that might not have been the case. One of the potentially positive things Brexit does is to make it possible to reconsider the international economic order on a fundamental level. This could be a very good thing. It is time to try to think what a progressive global order might look like in real and practical terms. If progressive political parties don't do this, they may win elections but on the international stage ... would anyone notice? There are may things about Brexit that should give us pause but one of the good things is that it has shown that we don't have to accept the economic status quo; we don't have to accept globalization. We can think the international order differently. It is time to start.
This is actually so bizarrely wrong that it is difficult for me to even get excited about. There are potential important implications to Brexit -- and I will say a word about those -- and important lessons from the Brexit process that can be linked to other challenges to globalization and neoliberalism. But, before doing that let me make the key point I want to make: foreign policy has been a problem for progressive politics for a couple of reasons. First, progressives have opposed neoliberalism but somehow let themselves get caught holding its bag (or, at least the blame for its failures). Second, this is because they have not really had an alternative to it. The result is that the foreign policy of progressives is often intensely moralistic and this moralism (which is, I would argue, a good thing) is not matched by its practice. Progressives cheer, as it were, for the right side. They are on the side of innocents who have suffered (say, refugees or victims of climate change). They oppose totalitarian governments and wants us to have no truck or trade with them; they support diversity and argue for individual rights.
These are all good things, but how does the rubber meet the road? With regard to globalization, it doesn't seem to. Progressive political parties question it, point out its problems, champion the rights of workers, but in the end, they don't really know what they should be building as an international order in its place. For Canada, this is particularly true. For example: how is a global reduction of green house gases going to be accomplished? Saying "the US has to cut" is not going to do much good if the US government chooses to ignore that statement. One of the things that Brexit highlights is the need for a progressive political rethinking of foreign policy and the conception of what an international order might actually look like.
This is important because Brexit is not that new world order. Make no mistake about it. Brexiters and UKIPs, and Conservatives are celebrating, but the next day Britons woke up with the exact same problems they had a week ago. Unemployment did not disappear, the national debt was not suddenly paid, racism and sexism did not resolve themselves, Scottish nationalists did not settle in a comfortable new Britain, pollution did not evaporate, etc., etc. If anyone thinks Brexit is a panacea, they are just wrong. Don't believe me? Look around you in a day, a week, a year.
There is an analogous test case: the US. There were many reasons that Trump won the last presidential election in the US, but one reason was that he said what progressive political leadership should have been saying: NAFTA was a problem. Its effects were uneven and, to be sure, some people really benefited from it. But, there were a lot of people who didn't. I am not in any way agreeing with the "Mexicans stole our jobs" discourse because there are serious empirical issues with that and I know the anti-NAFTA discourse became intensely racialized. I am in no way defending that. But, we also need to look at the truth of the matter: the American working class did not do well by NAFTA and it had nothing to offer them. It was a mature trade agreement: there were no more gains to be had by it and whatever gains there were ended passing a lot of people by. And, how did the Democrats respond to this reality? Well ... how did they respond to this reality? Seriously, I honestly don't know.
I'd make the same point about Labour in Britain. I know that the EU was divisive within the Labour Party and among Labour voters. But, what was Labour's policy regarding the EU? What would they have done if elected? In opposing the Tories, they actually came off looking like they were defending the EU and, again, this 44 year old treaty had little to offer British workers. It was not going to provide jobs, improve the standard of living and, in the case of some countries, say Greece, the EU actually imposed draconian measures on the country that caused a general decline in the welfare state and standard of living (particularly for seniors) as the price of helping the country out of the international global economic crisis.
Said differently, if I were a progressive, I'd not look on the demise of NAFTA (a story for another day) or Brexit as something to lament. At the very least, from a progressive perspective, these are international trade (and trade and political) agreements that have run their course. They do not provide inspiration for a new generation. Nor can they address persistent problems in a way that (at least in the case of the EU), they might have in the past. Exactly how progressive politicians have ended up defending neoliberal globalization is a bit of a mystery to me particularly since they did not agree with it (at least discursively) in the first place. What concerns me was the inability of progressive political leaders and parties to put together a viable alternative to neoliberal globalization.
If Brexit will not solve Britain's problems, it does tell us one thing: disaster does not follow if one challenges the institutions of neoliberalism. NAFTA is another case in point. One of the standard arguments against progressive opposition to globalization and neoliberalism was this: withdrawing from globalization = economic disaster. If one tampers with the EU or with NAFTA, something like the economic end of days is on the horizon.
Did that happen?
Well ... no. In the case of NAFTA there might be other reasons that are worth exploring in another post, but the doom of many prophets did not materialize with Brexit and I have deep doubts it ever will. Get me right: I am not saying Brexit will be good for Britain or the British working class. I doubt it will, although nationalism might cover this over for a while. I am just saying it did not usher in a reprise of the Great Depression.
I find this fascinating. One element of recent history that needs to be written is progressive political figures ambiguous, slow, embrace of the international institutions of neoliberalism, such as NAFTA and the EU (I know that the EU is more than a trade agreement). In some measure, I wonder if the Labour Party, the Canadian Liberals, American Democrats, accepted neoliberalism because they felt they had to. Was it because they believed the discourse of impending economic disaster if they pulled away from the process of globalization?
Turns out that might not have been the case. One of the potentially positive things Brexit does is to make it possible to reconsider the international economic order on a fundamental level. This could be a very good thing. It is time to try to think what a progressive global order might look like in real and practical terms. If progressive political parties don't do this, they may win elections but on the international stage ... would anyone notice? There are may things about Brexit that should give us pause but one of the good things is that it has shown that we don't have to accept the economic status quo; we don't have to accept globalization. We can think the international order differently. It is time to start.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Reconfiguring Progressive Politics Part III: Something Other than Socialism
Recent efforts to the NDP to define and mobilize what we might call a "progressive" political coalition is not simply politics. It is not, for instance, just a political party looking to find some way to appeal to voters. I am sure that there are a few NDP partisans whose intentions might be less than noble but, by and large, the NDP is both part of and helping to organize a redefinition of the Canadian left, or what Ian McKay once called a "left formation." This begs two questions: what is a left formation and how does it affect Canadian public life?
A left formation represents an effort to define an alternative politics. It mobilizes a certain language the identifies problems and ways of responding to them. It involves political education: asking people to think about particular issues and raising questions for them. It involves political organization in an effort to win election (or, at least secure representation) that is intended to build a coalition that can challenge socially, economically, and politically powerful interests that otherwise organize state policy in their interests or, at the least, ignore issues that need to be addressed if the country is to improve.
There can - and should -- be a debate about what the word "improve" means. I have come of late to understand it means radically different things to different people and different political perspectives. (This is an important issue that I will address later.) But, in the case of the NDP and other "progressive" thinkers, there are specific considerations they take into account.
1) Society is riddled with inequalities that break down on a number of lines: gender, race, class, sexual orientation, disability, etc. These inequalities translate into various forms of social, economic, and political marginalization that deprives people of an equal voice in public affairs, imposes undue restrictions on equality of opportunity, and impedes the natural growth and development of people. For instance, it serves to perpetuate poverty over time. One goal of government is to address these inequalities in ways that break cycles of poverty or marginalization and which broaden access to the public sphere.
2) Inequalities also affect the character and scope of democracy. Because some people have an undue influence (by virtue of inequalities) on government, they misdirect government policies away from their proper end. Government should, for instance, be assuring high quality education, living and improving wages for workers, proper access to health care, and other like matters. It should not be providing tax cuts to already wealthy corporations or cutting needed and necessary public goods in order to balance the books.
3) The environment is important and we cannot have a false "jobs versus the environment" debate. The effect of this debate is to lead us to make decisions as a society that are not in the public interest. In particular, it leads us to continue to pollute the environment when there are alternatives that don't cost jobs. Canada needs to plan its move away from a carbon-based energy economy and toward a greener economy that provides for the future.
4) Canada is not playing a constructive role in international affairs. It used to. Its blind support of Israel, come what may, for instance, has led it away from its former ability to play the role of the honest broker and get a few things done. Canada did not bring peace to the middle east, but it is not doing that now. In fact, its stance is more of an impediment to peace. But, its older approach was more humane and did positively affect people's lives. We need to find a way to regenerate that positive role.
5) There is a place for public goods in our economy. Whether it be roads, schools, science, or R and D, the state can and should play a role in society because it evens out the inequalities. There are financial constraints; no one says that there are not. But, we need to also acknowledge that there is more than one way to get things done and that some ways might have more social benefits than others. Everyone, for instance, benefits from higher levels of formal education, better roads, less waiting time for health care, and the like.
Now, we need, as always, to be careful. Conservatives, for instance, might not disagree that there are problems with health care wait times. What they disagree with is solution to this problem. Their solution is (more or less) to expand privatization. We reduce health care wait times not by providing hospitals with the funding they need, but by allowing some people to buy their way to the head of the cue. This is a philosophical point. One either agrees with it or disagrees with it. Those who agree will say "why should I wait in line when ....?" Those who disagree say "why should a rich person have a small problem addressed, say plastic surgery, before a poor person's life is saved?" In other words, the "progressive" perspective favours need over wealth. It is, oddly, a very Christian perspective because it is about an ethics of care and priorities. Christians are (supposedly, at least) to be "their brother's keeper." One is supposed to be concerned about other people, their lives, their futures, their children, etc. One does not go in and boss them around, but one should help out if one has the chance. If it comes to a choice between the convenience of the wealthy and the health of the poor, we need (Christians say) to side with the poor.
What the NDP is part of, then, is an effort to build a specific vision of the country that will, in the event of a successful federal election, be implemented through policy. This is what the NDP is trying to do right now in Alberta. Where it does not do this -- develop ideas that can be implemented as policy as part of a vision for the future -- the NDP runs into problems, if it wins elections. It was, for instance, successful in Saskatchewan for a fair piece of time precisely because it knew what it was doing and where it wanted to go. Same thing in Manitoba (although there seems to be a bit of a loss of direction of late). In Ontario under Bob Rae and more recently in NS, the opposite was the case. The NDP won elections, but actually did not have a direction in which it clearly wanted to move. It had a bunch of ideas, philosophies, etc., and there were complicating factors (in the case of Ontario, an international economic downturn), but in both of those cases the party ended up alienating its own supporters.
I am not certain that these points I have articulated above amount to a "revolutionary" philosophy although I do think they are a reform agenda of serious importance that merits consideration. I can think of worse things that redefining Canada's role on the world stage to make the country more relevant. I can think of worse things that lower health care wait time as opposed to providing wealthy people with easier access to services that the rest of us will not be able to afford. What the NDP is attempting to do is to build a basis of support for these ideas by talking to people who, more or less, already favour them ... the ideas; not the party. The NDP, to be sure, reaches out to all types of voters as we saw provincially in Alberta. But, it particularly is interested in people who might share these ideas but who don't vote or don't support the NDP. The language of progressiveness is a rubric that both represents their ideas and defines a philosophy, a way to approach policy and public life.
This is, in my view, not socialism. Let me say that clearly: progressive politics is not socialism. If the CCF and the NDP were once socialists, the current NDP no longer is. A capitalist economy will continue to exist under the NDP. There will continue to be big business; markets will function. The stock market will not close down. If the CCF called for capitalism to replaced by the cooperative commonwealth, that was a long time ago. Those were ideas articulated as part of a transition to an industrial society and in the midst of a the great depression. If the NDP once thought about "industrial democracy," it gave up on that idea (for good or ill) over a generation ago. The type of progressive politics is different. And, that is not a bad thing. As I said in a previous blog, politics changes over time. Political philosophies and visions of nation should not be creatures of fad, but they also have to be right for the times. No one would hold any political movement to the ideas of the 1920s and rightly so because we do not live in the 1920s.
Other groups are attempting to politically organize "progressive" people as well. Here in NB, and also from what I can tell in PEI, the Green Party fishes in the same lake. While many Green supporters are people who, in fact, were not previously politically active, their message is a message that NDP supporters also like (particularly, in NB, owing to changes in the provincial party). In Quebec, QS supporters are more leftish, to be sure, but also reach out to a similar demographic. I do not know for sure, but I suspect the BQ will, as well, in the next federal election in Quebec. NGOs, coalitions, lobby groups, and others may also be operative in the same political space. This is not unusual, but it does raise questions about how to proceed and whether or not people are willing to cross political boundaries or form temporary political alliances.
I do not know. What I do know is that the NDP has been far more successful so far than I imagined it would be, say, a number of years ago. Four years ago, in fact, NDP success was more or less laid at the feet of Jack Layton and, no doubt, he deserved a lot of credit. Regardless of what one thinks of progressive politics, his commitment should be admired. But, it is also clear that something other than a "we love Jack" movement was going on. It is evident that the success of the NDP represented a new coalescences of leftism, a potentially evolving new left formation. Where it goes from here ... is something that remains to be seen.
A left formation represents an effort to define an alternative politics. It mobilizes a certain language the identifies problems and ways of responding to them. It involves political education: asking people to think about particular issues and raising questions for them. It involves political organization in an effort to win election (or, at least secure representation) that is intended to build a coalition that can challenge socially, economically, and politically powerful interests that otherwise organize state policy in their interests or, at the least, ignore issues that need to be addressed if the country is to improve.
There can - and should -- be a debate about what the word "improve" means. I have come of late to understand it means radically different things to different people and different political perspectives. (This is an important issue that I will address later.) But, in the case of the NDP and other "progressive" thinkers, there are specific considerations they take into account.
1) Society is riddled with inequalities that break down on a number of lines: gender, race, class, sexual orientation, disability, etc. These inequalities translate into various forms of social, economic, and political marginalization that deprives people of an equal voice in public affairs, imposes undue restrictions on equality of opportunity, and impedes the natural growth and development of people. For instance, it serves to perpetuate poverty over time. One goal of government is to address these inequalities in ways that break cycles of poverty or marginalization and which broaden access to the public sphere.
2) Inequalities also affect the character and scope of democracy. Because some people have an undue influence (by virtue of inequalities) on government, they misdirect government policies away from their proper end. Government should, for instance, be assuring high quality education, living and improving wages for workers, proper access to health care, and other like matters. It should not be providing tax cuts to already wealthy corporations or cutting needed and necessary public goods in order to balance the books.
3) The environment is important and we cannot have a false "jobs versus the environment" debate. The effect of this debate is to lead us to make decisions as a society that are not in the public interest. In particular, it leads us to continue to pollute the environment when there are alternatives that don't cost jobs. Canada needs to plan its move away from a carbon-based energy economy and toward a greener economy that provides for the future.
4) Canada is not playing a constructive role in international affairs. It used to. Its blind support of Israel, come what may, for instance, has led it away from its former ability to play the role of the honest broker and get a few things done. Canada did not bring peace to the middle east, but it is not doing that now. In fact, its stance is more of an impediment to peace. But, its older approach was more humane and did positively affect people's lives. We need to find a way to regenerate that positive role.
5) There is a place for public goods in our economy. Whether it be roads, schools, science, or R and D, the state can and should play a role in society because it evens out the inequalities. There are financial constraints; no one says that there are not. But, we need to also acknowledge that there is more than one way to get things done and that some ways might have more social benefits than others. Everyone, for instance, benefits from higher levels of formal education, better roads, less waiting time for health care, and the like.
Now, we need, as always, to be careful. Conservatives, for instance, might not disagree that there are problems with health care wait times. What they disagree with is solution to this problem. Their solution is (more or less) to expand privatization. We reduce health care wait times not by providing hospitals with the funding they need, but by allowing some people to buy their way to the head of the cue. This is a philosophical point. One either agrees with it or disagrees with it. Those who agree will say "why should I wait in line when ....?" Those who disagree say "why should a rich person have a small problem addressed, say plastic surgery, before a poor person's life is saved?" In other words, the "progressive" perspective favours need over wealth. It is, oddly, a very Christian perspective because it is about an ethics of care and priorities. Christians are (supposedly, at least) to be "their brother's keeper." One is supposed to be concerned about other people, their lives, their futures, their children, etc. One does not go in and boss them around, but one should help out if one has the chance. If it comes to a choice between the convenience of the wealthy and the health of the poor, we need (Christians say) to side with the poor.
What the NDP is part of, then, is an effort to build a specific vision of the country that will, in the event of a successful federal election, be implemented through policy. This is what the NDP is trying to do right now in Alberta. Where it does not do this -- develop ideas that can be implemented as policy as part of a vision for the future -- the NDP runs into problems, if it wins elections. It was, for instance, successful in Saskatchewan for a fair piece of time precisely because it knew what it was doing and where it wanted to go. Same thing in Manitoba (although there seems to be a bit of a loss of direction of late). In Ontario under Bob Rae and more recently in NS, the opposite was the case. The NDP won elections, but actually did not have a direction in which it clearly wanted to move. It had a bunch of ideas, philosophies, etc., and there were complicating factors (in the case of Ontario, an international economic downturn), but in both of those cases the party ended up alienating its own supporters.
I am not certain that these points I have articulated above amount to a "revolutionary" philosophy although I do think they are a reform agenda of serious importance that merits consideration. I can think of worse things that redefining Canada's role on the world stage to make the country more relevant. I can think of worse things that lower health care wait time as opposed to providing wealthy people with easier access to services that the rest of us will not be able to afford. What the NDP is attempting to do is to build a basis of support for these ideas by talking to people who, more or less, already favour them ... the ideas; not the party. The NDP, to be sure, reaches out to all types of voters as we saw provincially in Alberta. But, it particularly is interested in people who might share these ideas but who don't vote or don't support the NDP. The language of progressiveness is a rubric that both represents their ideas and defines a philosophy, a way to approach policy and public life.
This is, in my view, not socialism. Let me say that clearly: progressive politics is not socialism. If the CCF and the NDP were once socialists, the current NDP no longer is. A capitalist economy will continue to exist under the NDP. There will continue to be big business; markets will function. The stock market will not close down. If the CCF called for capitalism to replaced by the cooperative commonwealth, that was a long time ago. Those were ideas articulated as part of a transition to an industrial society and in the midst of a the great depression. If the NDP once thought about "industrial democracy," it gave up on that idea (for good or ill) over a generation ago. The type of progressive politics is different. And, that is not a bad thing. As I said in a previous blog, politics changes over time. Political philosophies and visions of nation should not be creatures of fad, but they also have to be right for the times. No one would hold any political movement to the ideas of the 1920s and rightly so because we do not live in the 1920s.
Other groups are attempting to politically organize "progressive" people as well. Here in NB, and also from what I can tell in PEI, the Green Party fishes in the same lake. While many Green supporters are people who, in fact, were not previously politically active, their message is a message that NDP supporters also like (particularly, in NB, owing to changes in the provincial party). In Quebec, QS supporters are more leftish, to be sure, but also reach out to a similar demographic. I do not know for sure, but I suspect the BQ will, as well, in the next federal election in Quebec. NGOs, coalitions, lobby groups, and others may also be operative in the same political space. This is not unusual, but it does raise questions about how to proceed and whether or not people are willing to cross political boundaries or form temporary political alliances.
I do not know. What I do know is that the NDP has been far more successful so far than I imagined it would be, say, a number of years ago. Four years ago, in fact, NDP success was more or less laid at the feet of Jack Layton and, no doubt, he deserved a lot of credit. Regardless of what one thinks of progressive politics, his commitment should be admired. But, it is also clear that something other than a "we love Jack" movement was going on. It is evident that the success of the NDP represented a new coalescences of leftism, a potentially evolving new left formation. Where it goes from here ... is something that remains to be seen.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Reconfiguring Progressive Politics Part I: Something Other than Socialism
In Reds, Rebels, Radicals, Ian McKay argues that there are a variety of ways to be a leftist in Canada. Leftism is less a specific and unchanging set of doctrines than an historically evolving political philosophy that moves to address different issues at different times as these gain importance because of changed circumstances. This much, one supposes, might be said about all political movements but McKay's point is a useful reminder because of the tendency in the media to treat the left as a single perspective that never changes: once a socialist, always a socialist. Exactly what it means to be "on the left" these days is, however, a matter of discussion (although not necessarily debate), the changed historical circumstances in which the political left finds itself operating, and its own efforts to define a meaningful politics and set of public policies that can produce stable alternatives to what it sees at the misguided policies that have reigned over Canada for longer than a decade.
A few blogs ago, I tried to address the confusing mish-mash of Canadian conservatism and what it means as a political option for Canadians. In this blog, I'd like to look more directly the NDP, and to some extent the Liberal Party, to try to engage the other options Canadians will have before them when they turn to the polls this fall. One of the mistakes that the political right has made, has been to assume that the Liberals and NDP are basically the same. Taking a page from American conservatives, Canadian conservatives got into the habit of referring to everyone who was not conservative as "left." Indeed, there was even some discursive connection of the liberalism with socialism. No less a figure that Stephen Harper, in fact, made such statements. It would be difficult to overstate how wrong this perspective actually is. What I want to do here is trace the development of what I will ultimately call "progressive" politics to set the stage for a further consideration of its current manifestations, which I'll likely address in a blog after this one.
Socialism and Civic Nationalism
Part of this connection of liberalism with socialism (the Liberal Party with the NDP) was political. It was a cheap effort to get votes by calling opponents names. Deployed against liberals, it became an odd sort of red baiting. Another part of it was political blindness. For a variety of reasons, commentators on the left simply did not understand the distinctions between post-WW II Canadian liberalism and the socialism (or, social democracy, if one prefers that term) of the NDP. There were, in fact, important and appreciative difference on the level of policy and philosophy even if individual supporters of one party or the other could periodically move fluidly between them. The distinction between liberals and socialists was not who was more progressive (or, who was the "real" progressive, or words to that effect) but distinctions of ideology that were, on some level, fundamental.
In the past, I have called the liberalism that came to dominate Canada after WW II "civic nationalism" and the name remains as good as any name. It was organized around a series of beliefs that focused on the individual and its protection in society. This included equality of opportunity, Charter rights, regional development programmes, a commitment to accepting diversity, and other measures, such as bilingualism. I am not saying that all these different policies fit together seamlessly, but they were, more or less, a coherent policy framework that was implemented in a reformist measure with the broad support of middle-class Canadians and which served to re-tool Canada. Voting Liberal, in other words (and I will have more to say on this later), meant something specific. It meant supporting a specific vision of the country and its future.
Voting NDP (or, for a socialist or social-democratic option) meant something else. Again, for purposes of analysis, we should put our views as to which perspective is better on hold. In other words, we should not be partisan and array a hierarchy of ideological perspectives. Canadian socialists -- who by and large inhabited the NDP -- did not reject diversity politics or oppose bilingualism or Charter rights, but were, simply, interested in different matters. These included labour codes, workplace health and safety, industrial democracy, limiting connections between the state and big business, finding mechanisms to address the social inequalities of power in Canadian society, working-class wages. In other words, they were different; not better; not worse. Different.
The confusion between the NDP and Liberals, between socialism and civic nationalism, then, arose from a variety of factors including: conservative politics and an effort to win votes by lumping their opponents together; an inability of right-wing commentators to understand the distinction between civil nationalism and socialism; an imported American rhetorical framework that divided all politics up into "left" and "right" in a way that broached no further diversity. And, I would also argue that they NDP confused matters themselves because they fished off the same pier, as it were, as the Liberals. For example, they were passionate defenders of minority groups. Indeed, they were likely more passionate than the civic nationalists who looked to find means to protect minorities as individuals who faced discrimination. And, they could use the same mechanisms (Charter rights) as liberals to make their defence. Economically, Canadian socialists -- sometime after WW II -- stopped talking about supplanting capitalism, made their peace with it, and looked to modify and manage it. There were important differences between the civic nationalist and socialist view of the economy but both believed in some form of management via the state. If liberals continued to believe in capitalism (which they did) ... oddly, so too did the NDP in practice. Theoretically, Canadian socialists argued against capitalism; in practice they accepted it and used liberal economic management tools.
Progressive Politics in Practice
What did this mean? A number of things:
1. Canadians who were looking to cast non-conservative, more progressive (for lack of a better word) votes had different options and those options were not a question of who was more progressive than the other. They were different visions of the future.
2. In practice, however, this difference could be confused and compromised both because of the politics of manipulation and because of some degree of convergence on means (even if the ends remained distinct).
3. Long-term success for the federal Liberal Party of Canada. As is well known, the federal Liberals ruled the roost for most of the last half of the twentieth century. If we begin after WW II, we have Liberal governments in power from 1945-57; 1963-84 (with the Clark interregnum), and 1993-2006. We don't need to get into this history. Civic nationalism did not "win over" Canada. It was clearly buoyed by the idiosyncrasies of the First Past the Post System. This allow it translate its support among a plurality of Canadians ... into majorities of working minorities in Parliament.
4. NDP -- socialism -- remained a minority option for Canadians. While drawing committed support from an not insignificant number of people, the NDP tended to succeed provincially in areas where liberalism was weak, class politics increased political polarization, and the middle class tended to look to conservatism (as opposed the liberalism) as its political home.
Implications
I mention all of these points because, for a long time, I was rather down on the idea that the NDP and the Liberals could be anything other than temporary allies, which, historically, has been precisely the case. Even when they might have competed over the same voters, they saw the world differently. They could cooperate, now and then, because they each saw the politics of conservatism as something to be avoided, but this did not mean that they parties could or would merge or even work together (say, via strategic voting). The reason for this was patently evident to most of the activists in both parties: they could not merge because they were different. Resistance to abandoning the NDP, for instance, was not just a dislike of Liberals (say, Martin or Chretien, each of whom could talk a progressive game) or personal political ambition. It was a sense that there was a fundamental incompatibility to the parties.
And, I think, by and large this was right. This is what I have tried to explain above. Supporting the NDP meant something different form supporting the Liberals.
A question that we have to ask, I think, and an important one, is this: is this any longer the case? If there was, say, a fundamental incompatibility between, say, industrial democracy and civil nationalism, does this type of incompatibility still exist today. Is the NDP a socialist political party any longer or ... if it is ... what is 21st century Canadian socialism? Can -- will? -- the civic nationalism of the Trudeau-Chretien era still appeal to Canadians? Are the political circumstances of today so different that its appeal might be more or less moot, as the need to address other issues and different problems becomes more pressing for the electorate?
There are no easy answers to this question. I will argue in my next blog, however, that the NDP is moving toward trying to address them by defining what we might call (and, what they do call) a "progressive" agenda for Canada. What this entails, is what I'll next address.
A few blogs ago, I tried to address the confusing mish-mash of Canadian conservatism and what it means as a political option for Canadians. In this blog, I'd like to look more directly the NDP, and to some extent the Liberal Party, to try to engage the other options Canadians will have before them when they turn to the polls this fall. One of the mistakes that the political right has made, has been to assume that the Liberals and NDP are basically the same. Taking a page from American conservatives, Canadian conservatives got into the habit of referring to everyone who was not conservative as "left." Indeed, there was even some discursive connection of the liberalism with socialism. No less a figure that Stephen Harper, in fact, made such statements. It would be difficult to overstate how wrong this perspective actually is. What I want to do here is trace the development of what I will ultimately call "progressive" politics to set the stage for a further consideration of its current manifestations, which I'll likely address in a blog after this one.
Socialism and Civic Nationalism
Part of this connection of liberalism with socialism (the Liberal Party with the NDP) was political. It was a cheap effort to get votes by calling opponents names. Deployed against liberals, it became an odd sort of red baiting. Another part of it was political blindness. For a variety of reasons, commentators on the left simply did not understand the distinctions between post-WW II Canadian liberalism and the socialism (or, social democracy, if one prefers that term) of the NDP. There were, in fact, important and appreciative difference on the level of policy and philosophy even if individual supporters of one party or the other could periodically move fluidly between them. The distinction between liberals and socialists was not who was more progressive (or, who was the "real" progressive, or words to that effect) but distinctions of ideology that were, on some level, fundamental.
In the past, I have called the liberalism that came to dominate Canada after WW II "civic nationalism" and the name remains as good as any name. It was organized around a series of beliefs that focused on the individual and its protection in society. This included equality of opportunity, Charter rights, regional development programmes, a commitment to accepting diversity, and other measures, such as bilingualism. I am not saying that all these different policies fit together seamlessly, but they were, more or less, a coherent policy framework that was implemented in a reformist measure with the broad support of middle-class Canadians and which served to re-tool Canada. Voting Liberal, in other words (and I will have more to say on this later), meant something specific. It meant supporting a specific vision of the country and its future.
Voting NDP (or, for a socialist or social-democratic option) meant something else. Again, for purposes of analysis, we should put our views as to which perspective is better on hold. In other words, we should not be partisan and array a hierarchy of ideological perspectives. Canadian socialists -- who by and large inhabited the NDP -- did not reject diversity politics or oppose bilingualism or Charter rights, but were, simply, interested in different matters. These included labour codes, workplace health and safety, industrial democracy, limiting connections between the state and big business, finding mechanisms to address the social inequalities of power in Canadian society, working-class wages. In other words, they were different; not better; not worse. Different.
The confusion between the NDP and Liberals, between socialism and civic nationalism, then, arose from a variety of factors including: conservative politics and an effort to win votes by lumping their opponents together; an inability of right-wing commentators to understand the distinction between civil nationalism and socialism; an imported American rhetorical framework that divided all politics up into "left" and "right" in a way that broached no further diversity. And, I would also argue that they NDP confused matters themselves because they fished off the same pier, as it were, as the Liberals. For example, they were passionate defenders of minority groups. Indeed, they were likely more passionate than the civic nationalists who looked to find means to protect minorities as individuals who faced discrimination. And, they could use the same mechanisms (Charter rights) as liberals to make their defence. Economically, Canadian socialists -- sometime after WW II -- stopped talking about supplanting capitalism, made their peace with it, and looked to modify and manage it. There were important differences between the civic nationalist and socialist view of the economy but both believed in some form of management via the state. If liberals continued to believe in capitalism (which they did) ... oddly, so too did the NDP in practice. Theoretically, Canadian socialists argued against capitalism; in practice they accepted it and used liberal economic management tools.
Progressive Politics in Practice
What did this mean? A number of things:
1. Canadians who were looking to cast non-conservative, more progressive (for lack of a better word) votes had different options and those options were not a question of who was more progressive than the other. They were different visions of the future.
2. In practice, however, this difference could be confused and compromised both because of the politics of manipulation and because of some degree of convergence on means (even if the ends remained distinct).
3. Long-term success for the federal Liberal Party of Canada. As is well known, the federal Liberals ruled the roost for most of the last half of the twentieth century. If we begin after WW II, we have Liberal governments in power from 1945-57; 1963-84 (with the Clark interregnum), and 1993-2006. We don't need to get into this history. Civic nationalism did not "win over" Canada. It was clearly buoyed by the idiosyncrasies of the First Past the Post System. This allow it translate its support among a plurality of Canadians ... into majorities of working minorities in Parliament.
4. NDP -- socialism -- remained a minority option for Canadians. While drawing committed support from an not insignificant number of people, the NDP tended to succeed provincially in areas where liberalism was weak, class politics increased political polarization, and the middle class tended to look to conservatism (as opposed the liberalism) as its political home.
Implications
I mention all of these points because, for a long time, I was rather down on the idea that the NDP and the Liberals could be anything other than temporary allies, which, historically, has been precisely the case. Even when they might have competed over the same voters, they saw the world differently. They could cooperate, now and then, because they each saw the politics of conservatism as something to be avoided, but this did not mean that they parties could or would merge or even work together (say, via strategic voting). The reason for this was patently evident to most of the activists in both parties: they could not merge because they were different. Resistance to abandoning the NDP, for instance, was not just a dislike of Liberals (say, Martin or Chretien, each of whom could talk a progressive game) or personal political ambition. It was a sense that there was a fundamental incompatibility to the parties.
And, I think, by and large this was right. This is what I have tried to explain above. Supporting the NDP meant something different form supporting the Liberals.
A question that we have to ask, I think, and an important one, is this: is this any longer the case? If there was, say, a fundamental incompatibility between, say, industrial democracy and civil nationalism, does this type of incompatibility still exist today. Is the NDP a socialist political party any longer or ... if it is ... what is 21st century Canadian socialism? Can -- will? -- the civic nationalism of the Trudeau-Chretien era still appeal to Canadians? Are the political circumstances of today so different that its appeal might be more or less moot, as the need to address other issues and different problems becomes more pressing for the electorate?
There are no easy answers to this question. I will argue in my next blog, however, that the NDP is moving toward trying to address them by defining what we might call (and, what they do call) a "progressive" agenda for Canada. What this entails, is what I'll next address.
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