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.

Janine Krieber's Liberalism

Janine Krieber does not like the "Toronto elites" or Michael Ignatieff ... who does? OK, that's too quick of a quip. The "Toronto elites" surely exist but they are also a convenient boogie man, dragged out of the metaphorical closet as a way of explaining X or Y, a sort of value elitist, economic group who secretly controls of the levers of power, at least, it seems, within the Liberal party. Focusing on unnamed Toronto elites is a good way to mobilize regional grievances. I live in NB. This kind of thing has been going on for years. Heck, my grandfather used to complain about "Upper Canadians."

The target of Ms. Krieber's vindictive, then, must be a bit less real and a bit less tangible then it first seams. The objective of her concern -- the supposed disintegration of the Liberal party -- is not. What I want to do in this blog is pick up on Ms. Krieber's concerns and suggest a different way of looking at them. What I want to suggest is that what is looking more and more like the slow death of the Liberal Party cannot be easily blamed on Paul Martin, the media, Toronto elites, Michael Ignatieff, or any other cause. Instead, what I want to suggest is that problems through which the Liberal Party is passing reflect a change in the dynamics of Canada. The Liberal Party "made hay," as it were, as the guardian of one particular vision of Canada. Because we don't often think in terms of visions beyond what are reported as feel-good, motherhood issues (everyone for world peace, put up your hand), the idea that vision is important is usually neglected in public commentary.

Perhaps the word "vision" is not the right word. Pick another one that you like better because understanding the idea behind what I say is more important than agreeing with my language. By vision I mean conception of Canada, a philosophy of nation, as it were: an ontology of the state or polity or civil society and state, an image of a different way of organizing public life.

The Liberal Party was the vehicle through which a specific conception of Canada naturalized itself as "the" Canada, except among those people who disagreed in some fundamental sense it. I don't have space to go into this here, but the Liberal party defended a conception of Canada that Michael Ignatieff called "civic nationalism": the ideal of a small l liberal polity. The logic of this ideal of Canada leads -- more or less directly -- to a series of policy reforms designed to transform Canada from the country that it was into ... well ... the country we have now. Multiculturalism, official bilingualism, regional economic development, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, universal health care, and other such reforms follow logically from basic "civic nationalist" ideal: individualism, equality of opportunity, etc.

For right or for wrong, for good or for ill, the Liberal Party defended this conception of Canada against alternatives to it: ethno-linguistically based nationalism in Quebec, socialism, conservative traditionalism, etc., and did so mainly with the support of middle-class suburbanites, whether they spoke French or English at home. This Canada had much to recommend it. It had serious weakness and I don't have space to get into these either (suffice it to say, I've never been a supporter of this particular vision). But, it did appeal to a wide number of Canadians because it was committed to justice, equality, capitalism, and those are things that middle class Canadians like. They have some reason to. The point system for immigration - -whatever its appreciable weaknesses -- was better than the racialized system that preceded it. Canada remains deeply mired in sexism but at least there is strong protection for gender equity in the Charter, and on the down the line. The civic nationalist Canada of today is, in marked ways, a more equal and just place than was the pre-civic nationalist Canada of the century before the 1960s.

What is going on, I think, and the reason I offer this admittedly rushed history lesson, is that the liberal or civic nationalist order appears to be running into its first serious challenge in some time. Civic nationalists -- in an admittedly odd coalition -- were able to defeat the Mulroney mega-constitutional reforms that would have changed the character of Canada (or, at least maybe). They were able to rule Canada with only that one exception, virtually without stop from the mid 1960s to the first decade of the new century. Why? Two reasons: (1) on some level middle-class Canadians shared the Liberal's philosophy of nation are were willing to turn out and vote for it, and (2) the opposition was divided. Those who rejected the ideal of the civic nation could not agree among themselves on an alternative and so were willing, for the sake of power, to make some form of peace with liberalism. The promoters of Quebec independence abandoned Marcel Chaput's discourse of "separatism" and instead adopted referenda, talked of "interculturalism," and "associations" with Canada, and promised to wait for "winning conditions" and be a good government in the meantime. Canadian socialists ditched the "waffle" and "industrial democracy" and talked vaguely about the "ordinary" Canada and slowly shift their economic policies to the centre (indeed, it appears a third of the NDP's federal caucus now feels so comfortable with the abrogation of socialism that they can openly reject gun control).

As to the Tories ... well ... they just stopped being Tories. No one really knew what a "community of communities" was anyway and, as George Grant noted forty years ago, most conservatives no longer subscribed to anything that could actually be called conservatism, at least of anyone had the faintest idea what the term meant in a philosophical sense. Mulroney tried, to be sure, but he either failed (Meech Lake), backed away (de-indexing pensions), or promoted reforms that were consistent with liberal political-economy (free trade). In other words, by the time he was done, Mulroney's government ended up representing -- perhaps against its will -- a variant of liberalism as opposed to an alternative to it.

What is going on in the Liberal Party today is something other than bad political management or bad leadership politics. What is going on is that the Liberals are losing their base of support. Is this because the Liberal ideal of Canada has become so naturalized that Canadians no longer feel it necessary to vote Liberal? In other words, are liberal ideals -- equality, multiculturalism, bilingualism, a role for the state in the economy -- so common place that Canadians feel that what we can do is debate the merits of this or that policy by voting for parties that represent one or another trend of civic nationalism?

This is an interesting idea. But, I don't think that this is the case. I think the massive self-disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of Canadians -- those Canadians who chose not to vote -- is the thing we should look at to explain the demise of Canadian liberalism. After all, the Liberals have not changed much. Michael Ignatieff may be beholden to the Toronto elites but he's really just an anglophone Pierre Trudeau in terms of his ideology. I'd argue, instead, that the civic polity in Canada has been affected by two forces: (1) it has reached its outer limits in terms of improving Canada. The Party itself, in this sense, has succeeded in its mission but that mission cannot accomplish all its goals (or, at least the goals Canadians would set for it). And, (2), the balance of class power has shifted. In this sense, Ms. Krieber has isolated something important. She's just not explained very well why this important thing is occurring.