By: Mel Watkins
The ideas of the political right largely rule this country but the left is alive and has the potential to be well.
Consider the upside that risks getting lost in the spate of obituaries for the left in the mainstream media. Canadians, notably the Council of Canadians' Maude Barlow, played an active role in derailing the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), were on the streets in Seattle to frustrate the World Trade Organization (WTO), and were a presence at the recent World Social Forum in Porto Alegro, Brazil, the people's summit to counter the corporate World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In April when the Summit of the Americas takes place in Quebec City, Seattle will come to Canada and we (I hope to be there) get to throw slush in the machinery of hemispheric free trade.
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Even the present division between the CAW and CLC may be an asset because workers often benefit from competition between unions for their membership |
And - to continue this listing of Canadian content - one of the very best analysts and critics of globalization-as-we-know-it is Canadian author and columnist Naomi Klein. Consider too that the Canadian labour movement has hung tough and hung on through hard times and remains in a militant mood. Its opposition to globalization will be evident in Quebec City.
Even the present division between the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) may be as much an asset as a liability. Historically, workers have benefitted from competition between unions for their membership. And might not the politics of the Left become more exciting and relevant, not less, were the labour movement openly to debate democratic left strategy?
But there's no denying the downside, and that's the troubles of the federal NDP. (And the Ontario NDP. And perhaps everywhere except Manitoba and Saskatchewan.) Faced with the tidal wave of neo-liberalism, social democratic parties have tried to survive by embracing the so-called Third Way that attempts to blend the free markets of neo-liberalism with the social justice of social democracy. The greater commitment to the market that this involves means a rightward move to the centre.
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The federal Liberals are one of the wonders of the world in their ability to occupy the middle ground and ooze right and left as circumstances beckon |
Now whatever the morality of this - and from a left perspective it leaves much to be desired - it may make electoral sense in a two-party system where the electorate has moved right. Indeed, it was the British Labour Party which invented the Third Way in the face of Thatcherism and got itself elected.
But where the NDP has traditionally been a minority taste, at the federal level (and in Ontario), the Third Way can't work because the Liberals are already there proclaiming it and, albeit to a lesser degree, practicing it. The federal Liberals are one of the wonders of the world in their ability to occupy the middle ground and ooze right and left as circumstances beckon. To attempt to sit somewhat, slightly, modestly to their left - again, when the main action is on the right - is to risk extinction.
Perhaps some, even at the highest level, will say, "So be it, let's throw in the towel and join the Liberals." But even if we can imagine that the Liberals are more liberal than neo-liberal, they are not and never have been and never will be social democrats.
Social democracy has been around long enough for it to be evident that it is a distinct political paradigm that insists on a higher priority for equality and social justice and the public sector ("the commons") than other parties.
And - this is critical - while itself a reformist party, it tolerates within its ranks those who are of an explicitly anti-capitalist persuasion; call them left-wing social democrats who can co-exist with right-wing social democrats but not with liberals. Without that leaven, it is difficult for a social democratic party to maintain its edge.
So understood, social democracy is manifest in every economically advanced country except the United States, and it will hardly be a happy day for the ordinary people of this country if we follow that example.
Mel Watkins is a political economist and a political activist who speaks and writes extensively on contemporary issues.
Coming up:
Part Two: the party-movement tension. Part Three: a look at the party's new commitment to anti-globalization
Other articles from The common good
Posted: February 05, 2001
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