You Don't Know Jack

Jack Layton came to Kingston the other day, and I had the good luck to catch him as he swung by Queen's University. Supporting the Harper government has been a pretty controversial move on the NDP's part, and the crowd made sure Jack registered its disapproval, with a friend of mine even asking why he was helping to continue Stephen Harper's "reign of terror." Honestly, I think it's a pragmatic move. The NDP has fallen pretty low in the polls lately, with a mere 12% approval rating, so an election probably wouldn't help them at this point. I also believe the party is sincerely focused on expanding Employment Insurance. Besides, if you're a party that has never formed a government in the history of Canadian federal politics, there's no need to force an election merely on the desire to see your party back in power (Iggy, I'm looking at you).

As a politician, Jack seems very much a man of the people, even coming out to the Grad Club for a few post-speech beers. Certainly to a greater extent than the more "bourgeois" parties, the NDP represents working-class Canadians and activists motivated by social justice issues. But at the same time, the party has come a long way from its more socialist roots with the CCF. During question period, I asked Jack whether he would consider incorporating a more explicitly anti-capitalist message in the party's platform, given the enormity of the global financial crisis. Since the Conservatives and Liberals will label the NDP "socialists" whenever the party gets on their bad side, I reasoned that they should embrace both the word and the ideology, in the same way that rappers reclaimed the N-word and made it a positive thing.

In his answer, Jack said the party was open to new and radical ideas, and made reference to their past support for the nationalization of Hydro Quebec and the party's efforts to promote a massive green jobs campaign. I was satisfied with the answer, since Jack is obviously constrained by political reality from saying anything too obviously threatening to the status quo, and the programs he mentioned were exactly what comes to my mind when I imagine what a democratic socialist government could do for Canada. At the same time, the NDP's reluctance to advance a straightforward critique of capitalism bear witness to how far the party has come from Tommy Douglas and the CCF. The Regina Manifesto of 1933 bluntly stated that "No CCF Government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation [a] full programme of socialized planning."

Given the obvious failures of a command economy as practiced in the former Soviet Union, these sentiments may seem overly simplistic and ideological to modern ears...but is it any more ideological than the "free market" fundamentalists in the United States urging more deregulation as the solution to every problem, where everything can be solved by the magic of the market? It's like this: if you were to ask me whether I'm a capitalist or a socialist, my answer would be socialist for the simple fact that I consider the progression of society a more important value than the accumulation of my own personal capital. The NDP should embrace the "socialist" moniker because socialism envisions a more just society than that of a callous laissez-faire capitalism. While the party advances sensible policies that embody socialist values, it should not be afraid to make its bold opposition to the status quo known. After all, should the party continue in the opposite direction - forever watering down its policies, becoming the "Democratic Party", moving rightward until it is indistinguishable from the Liberals or even the American Democratic Party - then the purpose of the NDP ceases to exist. The party is a vehicle for the impassioned Canadian Left, and the magnitude of the current crisis should make it more open to radically different ideas.

I understand concerns about "electability", but honestly, there's nothing that would rouse my political passions more than a party that pledged to make radical changes in the fight for a more egalitarian society. The cautious pragmatism of the current NDP stands in sharp contrast with the more radical socialism of workers in the 1930s, and this is a pattern I've seen in many countries. After 30 years of neoliberal indoctrination, we seem to have accepted the omnipresence of the capitalist mode of production as a historical inevitability, and lost our agitation for more radical change. Call such an approach "old-fashioned" if you must, but you have to compare the huge gains made by the more radicalized Left in the 1930s to the incremental progress made today, where those of us concerned with social justice often content ourselves with writing stuff on the internet (guilty as charged). If there's one thing I've learned from the American health care debate, it's that passion and emotion, no matter how misdirected, can still be a powerful force in political discourse. If we could just turn out with the same force as the teabaggers, but with facts and history on our side...we might be unstoppable.