Lenin, Entryism and the NDP

My experience thus far with Fightback and the NDP has been a truly mixed bag (more because of the latter than the former). While I wholeheartedly admire the determination and drive of my Toronto comrades who attempt to transform the NDP into a vehicle for their socialist platform, it's impossible for me to ignore the demoralizing effects of the ONDP's Administrative Committee ruling that the election to vote in a new ONDY exec is null and void just because they say so. How effective an electoral force can we be if we're constantly struggling against our own party leadership?

I've done some reading in the last week that's directly pertinent to this situation. In addition to Lenin's "Left-Wing" Communism - An Infantile Disorder, I perused Patrick Webber's study Entryism in Theory, in Practice, and in Crisis: The Trotskyist Experience in New Brunswick, 1969-1973 based on a comrade's recommendation. Oddly enough, despite its demoralizing narrative of a split in the Canadian Trotskyist movement and a labour rank-and-file mobilized only by its opposition to so-called radical elements infiltrating the NDP, I found much to inspire me in the tale of the League of Socialist Action's aborted attempt to influence the NB NDP. Specifically, I realized that the Trotskyist section of the NB Waffle was surprisingly close to exerting a large influence on that provincial party until the Toronto-based executive choked. Given how close that radical movement got to controlling the provincial branch of a major political party, I paradoxically see the sorry saga of the NB NDP as cause for celebration regarding the party's potentially radicalized future. Go figure.

The fact of the matter is that our country is closer to outright economic depression than at any time since the 1930s; some might even argue that the Great Recession is merely the Great Depression with a larger social safety net. The contradictions of the capitalist system have never been more acute, whereas the ill-fated 1970s infiltration of the Trotskyists into the NB NDP took place in a generally productive economic environment. In general, the mid-20th century was a middle class playground in which all questions of class conflict were relegated to a seemingly distant past. But history's forward march relegated idealized mid-century North America to Leave It To Beaver reruns, a source of nostalgia dangerously incongruent with the actual capacity of capitalism to cannibalize itself as available markets were tapped out.

Since I arrived in Toronto, I've discovered a larger radical socialist community than I ever imagined possible in a small-c conservative burg like Kingston. But with that larger crowd of comrades come questions of tactics and strategy. At the rally outside the American consulate to protest the impending execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Fightback endured a storm of condemnation from ultra-purist sects like the Trotskyist League which characterize our involvement with the NDP as virtual treason against revolutionary principles. It was difficult for me to defend the NDP leadership in the face of such criticism, and indeed, the recent McCarthyist red-baiting within the party has made me doubt the effectiveness of entryist tactics when as much energy seems to be consumed confronting the rightist party leadership rather than the Big Business Conservatives and Liberals.

But ultimately, given the Canadian political landscape as it exists today, I find myself unavoidably bound to the entryist strategy for the simple reason that there is currently no real alternative to the NDP as a Canadian labour party. While Lenin would likely condemn their social democratic platform, given his critiques of "left" communists who refused to participate in bourgeois parliaments, he would likely agree with the assessment that the NDP is the only effective parliamentary outlet for working class rage in Canada today. The recent decision by Stephen Harper (aided and abetted by Michael Ignatieff's Liberals) to extend the Canadian mission in Afghanistan to 2014 without so much as a vote in Parliament is startlingly undemocratic. While sectarians such as the Trotskyist League condemn the federal NDP as "pro-imperialist", the fact remains that Jack Layton & Co. are the only party to advance a policy of withdrawal from Afghanistan. The predictable abdication of responsibility by the Liberals leaves Layton's NDP as the closest thing to a true antiwar voice in Parliament.

The coming m0nths will illustrate the real divisions of power in Canada's bourgeois Parliament.