As long as the NDP style social democracy maintains a degree of credibility, it will be impossible to have a successful workers party due to the dilution effect of the NDP.

As to the intentions of the CLC and other labour leadership, I cannot say. They have their political alliance with the NDP though it grows more arms length with time. Will they ever either force the NDP back towards the Regina Manifesto or abandon it to move left or right?

Again, better that true colours are shown, than being fed platitudes and the results of focus group polling.

I do not see how this can be viewed as a step forward.

The question you must answer is whether it is helpful to the labour movement for its leaders to hitch it to the Ignatieff wagon. Suppose you were a delegate to a labour convention voting on the NDP-Liberal coalition project — how would you vote?

I don’t think that labour support to the Liberals is excusable on the grounds that it may do the NDP some harm. I am sure you agree.

John Riddell

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It is the orientation towards the Liberals itself which does damage, even if it never means a formal coalition government in the short term.

Thanks for picking up these pieces.

Paul

The questions raised by the coalition and about an appropriate action by the NDP are of significance. Sometimes, we jump to the end without looking at the ground that must be crossed to arrive. Often the short term battle to defend and improve workers’ rights (economism) is confused with the long term struggle to bring about a modern society with the priority of the state to be the needs and aspirations of the producers (socialism).

Politically conscious workers and allies know that no band-aids or restructuring can bring a stable and just society when the basis of our current society is the exploitation of workers, domestically and abroad. But the mass of our population is not clear that a complete break is necessary and the NDP is a panacea to this view.

As long as the NDP remains outside of power, the nature of its politics will never be revealed to the broader population, charitably we can say, for good or ill. Until the NDP has been at least part of government, the people cannot have the direct lessons of its nature.

We cannot jump over the ground between us today and a new bright future for our nations. For that reason, a Lib-NDP-Bloc coalition could be a milepost on the long trek that will, in all likelihood, not end in our lifetimes.

For those who have a vision of a better world, the economic collapse allows us, for the first time since the 1930’s, to engage people about the unsustainable nature of a society based on profit. At the same time, we cannot abandon the day to day struggle for workers’ political and economic rights. There is nothing black and white about these challenges and the exposure of the NDP’s politics of connivance is an important step towards the growth of a viable workers party, a party to rally workers towards a new dawn.

When the NDP and the trade unions began campaigning to replace Harper with a Liberal-NDP coalition government, socialists divided three ways: some supported the project; some were indifferent; some were opposed.

Now the popular movement to oust Harper, limited as it was, is behind us. The coalition deal survives, not as a framework for a popular movement to oust Harper, but as a perspective for political struggle by the CLC and its allies.

It now seems unlikely that the coalition will come to be. The newly chosen Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff has shown little inclination to support it, while Harper has been taking a more conciliatory approach in his relations with the Liberals. But the NDP and Canadian Labour Congress remain committed to the project of installing the Liberals in government. And even if the coalition proposal lapses in the coming months, it will still set the framework in which the NDP and labour will face the next federal election – unless there is a change of course.

We do not know how many programmatic concessions the NDP made to get the original deal. But as Paul Kellogg points out, one such concession has been admitted: an NDP pledge to accept the Liberals’ policy on Afghanistan. Sure enough, although the death toll of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan has mounted quickly in recent weeks, the NDP has fallen silent, shackled by its coalition commitments.

The NDP and CLC leaders, along with some socialists, argue that the Liberals in government would be a “lesser evil” compared with the Tories. But as we know, for more than a century, the Liberals have been the principal governing party of Canadian capitalism. In recent decades, they have played the central role in imposing vast cuts to social programs and democratic rights in this country. As Nathan Rao argued in Socialist Project’s The Bullet on October 30 (www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet151.html), the strategy of working for a Liberal-led “centre-left” government is incompatible with that of building the independent power of working people.

Some socialists argue in favour of remaining silent on the coalition issue on the grounds that party politics are not that important, and that union and social activists should focus their attention and activity at the rank-and-file level. Many young activists share this view. And many working people, especially the young, are alienated from party politics.

Yet all workers’ and social movements, when they achieve some size and influence, have to grapple with the task of influencing governments. The conventional way to do this is through lobbying, cap in hand, and through exchanges of favours with capitalist politicians. The coalition project feeds into this trend, by chaining the workers’ movement to a capitalist government-in-waiting. Unwillingness to publicly oppose this project is equivalent to acceptance; socialists have to project an alternative course.

A united and effective socialist movement cannot simultaneously support, oppose, and ignore capitalist governments. This also applies to capitalist governments that carry the NDP label. A choice must be made.

Those of us who took divergent approaches to the Liberal-NDP coalition in December should now explore the possibilities for agreement around a strategy of building an independent, working-class alternative to the capitalist government. Working out such a common understanding will take discussion. The sooner this discussion takes place, and the farther it reaches, the better.

John Riddell