“a party that: lies to the working class, is run by the middle class, in the interests of the ruling class”

Richard wrote “the popular support of the coalition is a manifestation of how low expectations are among working people after close to three decades of neoliberal assault during which real wages (adjusted for inflation) have stagnated overall and even declined for many.” This is certainly true, and we could add greater insecurity, lower coverage for benefits and pensions, longer hours of paid and unpaid work, the intensification of work, greater employer power over workers in the workplace, less access to EI, workfare and more to a list of what the employers’ offensive of the last three decades has wrought.

Richard also argues that “Canadian labour has not been defeated in major industrial struggles. In a series of important confrontations in recent years, militants have demonstrated their willingness and capacity to resist attacks on their living standards and organizations.” Both claims are true, but to leave it there fails to take into account the overall impact of the neoliberal assault. The overall picture is that the level of union struggle in the last few years has been extremely low, despite the fact that official unemployment had fallen.

The percentage of estimated working time “lost” to strikes is in some ways the most useful measure of the scale of workplace struggle:

Jan-June 2008: 0.02
2007: 0.05
2006: 0.02

Although the historical data are less than fully reliable and comparable, if we use it we find that 2006-2008 have seen the lowest percentage of work time “lost” to strikes since the period 1938-1942 — a level similar to the period 1926-1932. Obviously 2006-2008 is quite different, in many respects (the economic situation is not as bad as the years after 1929, the percentage of workers covered by collective agreements is much higher than it was 80 years ago, the working-class movement is enormously different, etc.).

But it is significant that strikes sank to such a low level across the Canadian state _before_ the economic crisis broke, when unemployment was generally lower (although some sectors — such as manufacturing workers — were beginning to be hit). The low level of strike action is definitely not the whole picture, but it does tell us something about the cumulative impact of the neoliberal assault on the labour movement. This is one reason why my sense of “the mood in labour’s ranks” is different than what Richard briefly implies.

With not only lowered expectations but also little collective action happening in the workplace or on the streets, it’s little wonder that so many people responded positively to the Liberal-NDP coalition call (and that so far there has been so little push for extra-parliamentary mobilization by unions and community groups in response to the economic crisis). We need to recognize this as we do whatever we can to push for the “critical balance-sheet of the coalition episode” that Richard rightly calls for, as part of beginning to build an entirely different kind of response to the crisis.

Now, that Rae has tossed the towel, the coalition seems moribund, and Broadbent’s “Happy Days” moment was short lived indeed. The evolution of Bob Rae is indeed the best illustration of the fallacy and pitfalls of the coalition road. Layton who sat on the fence in the social contract crisis obviously has not learned that lesson.

But Bay Sreet doesn’t trust the agile svengali of class collaborationism. Perhaps they are saving him for another day? Shudder to think of the scenario: Bob Rae PM cum Layton as Labour Minister!

PS: I’m intrigued by RF’s formulation of the NDP as a “bourgeois party of a special type” Did I get that right, and if so why not include the BQ in that category, or the SPD, PSF etc?

Barry Weisleder posted his comment above to an email discussion list and I have responded there with a couple of posts. In the first, I explained in part:

“I was not attempting to ‘survey’ the radical left in that article. In that part of what was admittedly an awfully long article, I was deliberately citing a few sources to indicate a range of opinion on the coalition, not to comprehensively document all opinions.”

In my second post in response to Barry, I wrote, again in part:

Barry raises a good question. Narrowly put, I would phrase it this way, on this list: If you are in the NDP, what do you say to NDP members and supporters about the coalition tactic? Barry, his group Socialist Action, and the Socialist Caucus (and possibly others) say, it is wrong to participate in government with a capitalist party such as the Liberals. But it is not wrong for the NDP to lay out an agenda for action and to say that to the degree that the government (any government) acts to implement that agenda this party will not, at this point, vote to defeat it. That is normally what the NDP should do in Parliament, and if it chooses to put a clear working-class agenda in writing and sign to that effect — an Accord, if you wish — that is not only principled but could be an effective way of projecting an independent course for working people in this crisis.

I think Barry is right on this point. …

The parliamentary crisis gave the NDP an excellent opportunity to stake out an independent position, rather than opportunistically make a grab to join the ministerial ranks. (It was precisely the blatant opportunism in Layton’s manoeuvre that played a role in mobilizing opposition to the coalition among many working people, I suspect.) The NDP could have told the Liberals and the Bloc: We won’t enter a government. We want to replace you. But we are not strong enough to do so at this point. And an immediate election will not likely produce a radical change in the present configuration of forces. But here is our proposed legislative program for the crisis, based on consultations with our supporters in the unions and social movements. (Then some key demands, including of course immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, massive social infrastructure spending, etc.) If you act now on those lines we will not vote to defeat your government and precipitate an election at this time. On the other hand, if you do not do this, or you legislate against the interests of the workers, we will not hesitate to vote against you.

Like Barry, I start with the understanding that the NDP is part of the workers movement. Yes, a bourgeois party in its overall program. But a bourgeois party of a special type that operates primarily in the workers movement as a political expression of the trade unions in English Canada. Keep in mind that the program of the unions, as they exist today, is itself “bourgeois”, not anticapitalist.

For us, the line of principle should not be whether or not to belong to the NDP, or whether or not to place demands on the NDP. The principled question in this instance is, For or against the coalition with the Liberals? Within the anti-coalition camp, there is every reason to try to formulate an appropriate tactical line of march for the NDP, as Barry and a few others are attempting to do.

This is not only a tactic for use within the NDP, moreover. It is a tactic addressed to the working class and its social movement allies more generally. The unions, for example, need to be challenged to formulate an action program and place those demands on the NDP, fight for them within the NDP.

The debate in the left provoked by the parliamentary crisis has highlighted a major problem for many of us, and I realize that I have been affected by it too. Some of us have been attempting to “regroup the left” for some years now. Socialist Project in Ontario is a part of that process. But we have, consciously or unconsciously, made NDP membership or support in itself a question of principle, excluding it from consideration in elaborating socialist strategy. This is a huge error.

And to some degree it lies at the root of the “regrouping the left” movement. A seminal document was Sam Gindin’s essay in 2000, “The Party’s Over”. Sam called for building “a structured movement” to build an anticapitalist alternative, and most of the subsequent discussion centered on that proposal. But it is often forgotten that the first half of Sam’s article was an attempt to prove that the NDP was no longer a workers party and was fundamentally irrelevant to socialist strategy. At the time Sam was on the CAW staff, and it did not escape some of us that his political line was not inconsistent with the right-wing direction the CAW was beginning to take at that time around such issues as “strategic voting” for Liberals, etc. Since then of course Sam, now retired from the CAW, has been a strong critic of the CAW’s slide to the right.

It is no accident that [in some circles] the recent debate on the coalition has focused on how one characterizes the NDP, and the fault-lines in the debate are basically between those who consider the NDP to be a relevant factor in labour politics and those who don’t. And it is revealing to see how those who dismiss the NDP can easily fall into the trap of thinking the coalition is of no importance, and that somehow an independent course of action by labour can be staked out without confronting the issue of the coalition.

Other groups too are not immune to this problematic. It seems to me that the problem is also reflected in the IS comrades’ emphasis on “bottom-up fight-back” while ignoring how that fight-back is expressed in and around the NDP itself. Inside the NDP, you cannot ignore the question of principle posed by the coalition tactic. The IS sidesteps it because it is not in the NDP — or, if some of its members are in the NDP, they are silent on the coalition or indirectly supporting it by simply placing “demands” on it while not challenging its existence.

In solidarity,

Barry

The whole tone of the SW supplement is to greet the appearance of the Coalition. Harper’s government, we are told, is “on the brink of collapse”. (But which party came near to collapse, by the way?) “The Tories are in complete panic.” Really? They seem to have managed the crisis quite well, thanks in part to the Governor General (appointed by the Liberals, BTW). And there’s more….

“The crisis shows that we don’t have to wait for elections to change governments. And it shows that workers have a central role to play in fighting back against the concessions and attacks….” What central role, in fact what role period, did the workers play in all this, other than to be rallied as cheer-leaders by the union bureaucracy in support of the coalition with the Liberals? And how big, how representative of the working class, were those rallies? SW says it was “a huge surge of support” for the Coalition. “From coast to coast, people are rallying around the call to support such a coalition government.”

Well, it may have looked like that for a brief moment, especially if our eyes were glued to our email lists and computer screens. But I think we need to acknowledge, if only in retrospect, that such statements exaggerate the real scope of the enthusiasm. And I suspect that many of those who were responsive to the Coalition may be doing some rethinking about the wisdom of that strategy in light of subsequent events.

I look forward to debating you on this at your Thursday IS meeting.

In solidarity,
Richard

In short, the IS supports ousting Harper but argues that the only way we will any demands in the here and now is a mass movement advancing its own demands independently of any coalition government. This is made quite clear in the last sections of the SW supplement.