On Clarity

The worse things get, the clearer the solution becomes.

I can't remember the last time I read the news and did not become actively pissed off at what I was hearing. Regardless of whether I learn something on corporate news networks or a Marxist blog, the facts themselves are almost always enraging. Despite the brief rays of hope we saw during the Arab Spring, and the events around the world inspired by the heroic struggles of the Middle East (e.g. Wisconsin), the powers-that-be are still to strong to allow events to spiral out of their control for too long. When the Arabs finally rose up in revolt against the brutal Western-backed dictators that had held them down for decades, the corporate elite was taken totally by surprise. Yet they clawed their way back to relevance through the most blunt expression of their power: brute military force.

NATO's Libya adventure has now lasted for months and is probably the most visible expression of the increasing lawlessness of the Western bourgeoisie. Barack Obama's autocratic decision to commit the United States to another Middle Eastern war was helped along by a Congress seemingly more eager than ever to demonstrate its own irrelevance. The Obamabots - those Democratic loyalists who will cheer whatever Obama does, despite criticizing the same conduct when Bush did it - fell for the ruse of a "humanitarian war" hook, line and sinker. The accompanying propaganda has been excruciating, as another designated official enemy - in this case, Libyan strongman Col. Qaddafi - becomes the latest Hitler.

Most mornings on the way to work, I read the free newspaper Metro that they hand out at the TTC train stations. It contains recut articles from the Associated Press and so you get the most blandly uninformative, "objective" (i.e. corporate-friendly) account of the news possible. Ever since the Libya war began, Western reporters have dutifully fallen in line, accepting any and all propaganda their governments feed them while playing the part of adversarial, hardcore journalists when it comes to reporting on the Libyan side. There's plenty of reason to doubt the allegations of Qaddafi equipping his troops with Viagra and condoms and ordering them to engage in mass rapes, but our "free press" are the best stenographers around when it comes to swallowing government claims wholesale.

Oh, today Obama dramatically escalated his other undeclared illegal war in Yemen, giving the CIA carte blanche to intensify its drone strikes. During all of this, of course, the overriding concern of the crusading journalists in the U.S. media was Anthony Wiener's wiener - naturally overlooking the fact that nothing illegal happened and this was a purely personal matter between the Representative and his wife. It makes me sick to see them question a humiliated, powerless figure like Wiener (despite the fact that I'm no fan of his slavish pandering to Israel and AIPAC) and pretend that they're the heroic checks on power they apparently still think they are. As always, Glenn Greenwald said it best.

Why do I mention all these disparate subjects? I guess because they illustrate the rapid decline of our media, politics, and socio-economic system over the last few decades, but especially the American one. All the way up to a few years ago, I would read blogs like Crooks and Liars to hear the latest inanities uttered by some Republican politician and get annoyed that anybody could be stupid enough to believe their lies. Now, of course, things are so exponentially worse that I don't even notice things like that anymore. I almost have more respect for the deluded Republican base than the Obamabots, because at least they're opposed to Obama, despite it being for completely fictitious and nonsensical reasons cooked up at False News and right-wing talk radio. I certainly have more "respect" (not the right word, but the best I could think of) for Republicans than Democrats, because at least they're basically honest about screwing working people and fellating the rich, while the Democrats lie their asses off pretending to care about ordinary people.

With the total bankruptcy of the two-party system - and that includes both Democrats/Republicans in the U.S. and the Liberals/Conservatives in Canada - the necessity for a socialist alternative has never been greater. In Canada the NDP is coming off strong from the recent federal election, when it finally became the Official Opposition. Down south, the need for a Labor Party is increasingly obvious even to the reformists; witness AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka finally getting the message and beginning the process of jettisoning labour from the Democratic Party. Most people in North America are far from having any kind of socialist ideology, but I've learned so much in the past several months from Fightback and the International Marxist Tendency that I have a far better grasp of theory than ever. The class struggle is an objective reality and most workers are beginning to realize that.

That's why the struggle in the years ahead, despite its difficulties, paints a clear picture of objective class relations that will become more and more obvious to everyone the worse the global economy gets and the more they push these austerity policies on us. I started writing again today because I've been reading for so long and it's time for me to start speaking out once more using the power of the pen. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Air Canada employees have both begun strike actions recently, which will set the tone for the years of struggle to come. It's time to get down to business - meaning it's time to fight business.

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.

ONDY Stands With Hamilton Steelworkers

Members of the Ontario New Democratic Youth (ONDY) showed their solidarity with Hamilton steelworkers Sunday evening when they joined picket lines outside a local U.S. Steel plant that had locked out hundreds of its employees after their union refused company-ordered pension cuts.


Youth delegates came straight from the 2010 ONDY Convention, which had seen a marked policy shift to the left as attendees embraced the street-level organizing of the Toronto Young New Democrats. Almost immediately, the new ONDY executive team illustrated their activist approach by dispatching representatives to the Wilcox Street steel mill in support of the United Steelworkers.

With white banner in tow proclaiming their group’s dedication to “socialism and freedom”, ONDY activists arrived on the scene in high spirits, singing “Solidarity Forever” and joining the crowd of 400 workers and their supporters. Company security struggled in vain to close the gates while police looked on, as a dozen ONDY representatives mingled with the workers in a sea of union flags and homemade signs.

Tension had been steadily rising in the days and weeks beforehand as U.S. Steel pressured Local 1005 USW into accepting changes to its pension system.

Management had two key demands: an end to the indexing of pension payments for the plant’s 9000 retired workers, and cancelling the existing pension plan for all new employees by replacing it with a defined contribution retirement savings plan. U.S. Steel claims its austerity measures are necessary to keep the Hamilton plant competitive, but union leaders accuse the company of sowing discord between younger and older workers in a cynical divide-and-conquer strategy.

“They’re trying to incite the younger workers,” said Local 1005 president Rolf Gerstenberger, “to get them to attack the pensioners and to say, ‘we don’t care what happens to the pensioners, nothing to do with us, we’re just worried about our jobs.’ So this is very deliberate on their part.

“They want to see if the younger workers will grovel, if they’ll submit, if they’ll be scared. They’ll do the Chicken Little routine and then they figure they’ll have control of the plant for the next generation. We’re calling on the younger workers, especially, to step up and to take their position and to fight like we did 30 years ago,” he said, referring to the 1981 Stelco strike.

Gerstenberger’s emphasis on young workers was a perfect fit for the ONDY delegation. Picketing workers expressed appreciation for the presence of dedicated young activists in their fight against corporate greed.

Elected representatives of the New Democratic Party were also out in full force, including NDP MPs Dave Christopherson (Hamilton Centre), Chris Charlton (Hamilton Mountain), Wayne Marston (Hamilton East – Stoney Creek) and MPP Paul Miller (Hamilton East – Stoney Creek).

“You cannot be a Hamiltonian working person and not be outraged by what’s going on here,” said Christopherson, a former president of CAW Local 525, in an impassioned speech to assembled workers.

“What happens to a retiree that enters into a period [of high inflation] with no protection whatsoever?” he demanded. “What’s the purchasing power of that pension? What’s the quality of their life? Why is that an issue here, when we’ve got so many people who’ve already worked a lifetime and they deserve that damn pension!”

The ONDY delegation remained at the gates for hours until the crowd finally began to disperse, leaving picketing to volunteers who signed up for 4-hour shifts.

As the lockout drags on into the indefinite future, those workers will form the front line of Local 1005’s defence, but they will not be alone. In this difficult struggle, Hamilton steelworkers and their families can count on the loyal and active support of the new ONDY – an energetic and growing organization.

Ontario New Democratic Youth "Fightback" at 2010 Convention

It's been quite a while since my last post, so a few updates may be in order. During the summer, in an amusing turn of events, I was hired as editor of The Garrison, Canadian Forces Base Kingston's community newspaper. My career as a paid propagandist was destined to be shortlived, however, when - days before my probation ended - the base commander made the unceremonious decision to cancel the newspaper. In August I was laid off and destroyed my car in an accident, but these unfortunate events left me more determined than ever to fulfill my dream of moving to Toronto and getting involved with Canadian Marxist groups. At the end of October, I moved to North York with a few thousand dollars in my bank account and endeavoured to find a job during the few months for which I could afford rent.

Following my arrival in the city, I met with representatives of Fightback, who offer what I consider this country's best political analysis. They suggested that I attend the 2010 Ontario New Democratic Youth (ONDY) Convention that weekend in Hamilton, which promised a large presence by Fightback loyalists and their associated group the Toronto Young New Democrats (TYND). In an act of scandalous red-baiting reminiscent of the McCarthy era, the TYND had recently had their charter removed for the apparent crime of "allegiance with Fightback". To my delight, a large and vocal contingent of fellow sympathizers were more than ready to challenge the rightist elements of the party at the convention.


A full write-up of the weekend's political trajectory is available here. True to the article's title, the weekend was indeed an "historic win for the Left". My initial skepticism towards the idea of associating with the NDP - which had largely abandoned any real adherence to socialism in theory or action - dissipated when I saw the immense passion and radical activism of the youth at ONDYCon. Indeed, the more radical elements of the convention largely outnumbered the "moderates". The division was evident in the list of proposed resolutions and amendments we debated over the weekend. All of the most interesting ideas in that document originated in the TYND and Fightback, and addressed real issues of concern to workers and youth: free education, universal dental care, the effects of the G20, a call to fight police brutality, and the further development of the NDP as a mass movement encompassing socialist, anti-war, anti-globalization, feminist, anti-racist, and other ideologies. All other resolutions, suggested by the more moderate elements, were of a fairly dull and bureaucratic nature (e.g. raising the youth age limit from 26 to 30).

As something of an NDP newbie, I was not altogether up to speed on the constitutional debates that periodically erupted over the weekend, but even I could see the sharp divide visible from the beginning between supporters and opponents of Fightback and the TYND. The Toronto-based group had been de-charted without even the courtesy of seeing the charges laid out against them. In addition, their official show trial took place in an "in camera" session, meaning a closed-door meeting with no observers and no records kept. Only days before the convention, an anonymous e-mail was sent out that warned of a "Trotskyist takeover" of ONDY. Whoever was behind that red-baiting, anti-democratic tripe was presumably an insider, since they evidently had access to the official mailing list.

Throughout the weekend, delegates sympathetic to that anti-communist view engaged with Fightback loyalists in a battle for the heart and soul of the party. In the end, every one of the resolutions championed by the TYND and debated at the convention passed with flying colours. New drama came during during the run-up to voting for the new executive team, during which a constitutional drama unfolded in real time. The crucial question was whether only established party members could vote, or if those who had joined at the convention itself could be permitted a voice. Representatives of the NDP Socialist Caucus, including Barry Weisleder, derided such measures as stalling tactics. I had personally encountered similar measures when I was almost denied membership at the registration table on Friday evening, only to have the executive ultimately revert to previous policies.


The final vote was a triumphant victory that helped take ONDY to the left, as all preferred candidates of the Slate for a Democratic and Activist ONDY rode to victory on the coattails of widespread sympathy for Fightback and the TYND. As its first order of business, the new, ethnically and sexually diverse ONDY executive team voted to re-charter TYND - a massive repudiation of the bureaucracy's anti-democratic intimidation strategy. Their provocative move will almost certainly invite retaliation from the party leadership, but what form such reprisals take remains to be seen. Their second move was to order a delegation to support Hamilton steelworkers locked outside their plant, a report of which I have written above for official purposes.

For me, the ONDY convention was a revelation on both a personal and political level. While in Kingston my Marxist agitation was largely a solitary effort, in Hamilton I was bowled over by the passion, intelligence and dedication of the individuals around me. I met some incredible people and realized for the first time how much of an appetite for radical change existed among Canadian youth alienated from conventional politics. TYND had proven itself such a smashing success in organizing by appealing to the real concerns of working class youth that even the rightist party leadership felt compelled to admit its recruiting success. And in-between the spirited political debate, there was also some good old-fashioned partying. It was the best weekend I've had in a long time. Now the hangover begins. But whatever heavy-handed tactics the party leadership responds with, this vital political youth movement has only just begun to make its influence felt.

This World is Going to Hell...How to Stop It

That hoary old cliché, “the world is going to hell in a handbasket”, seems truer every day. Wake up this morning and you can read about the ongoing worst environmental disaster in human history, a gushing torrent of crude oil destroying not only one of the world’s most diverse wildlife preserves, but the economy and way of life for millions of Gulf state residents. You can read about Sergeant James Patrick Macneil, 28, the latest Canadian soldier to die in our pointless imperial war in Afghanistan. Closer to home, we see that the federal government is getting its money’s worth out of the $1 billion it squandered on security for the G20 summit in Toronto. Pepper spray, LRAD sonic weaponry, plastic bullets, and now, we get word that they will indeed be breaking out the water cannons. Yes, free speech is alive and well in the Great White North, as you can tell by the ominous police presence that surrounds any hint of spontaneity or protest. But it’s not just here that speaking out about injustice can get you tossed in a jail cell. The Supreme Court of the United States just voted 6-3 to severely restrict First Amendment rights by declaring that verbal support for non-violent, lawful activity is equivalent to giving material aid to terrorists. Jimmy Carter better be careful the next time he monitors elections in Lebanon. Finally, I just looked up at the TV to see that Canada has placed additional sanctions on Iran, the pariah state that absorbs all the collective wrath of the wealthiest nations on earth on behalf of oil companies and the military-industrial complex. I’ve said what I wanted to say about the ongoing propaganda campaign to depict this weak nation - which has fully complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, unlike other countries which refused to even sign it - as some kind of sinister threat to world peace. Unfortunately, the Money Boyz control the flow of information and they are fixated on regime change in Iran. Which, of course, has nothing to do with oil.


It’s bad enough to read all this bad news. But what’s far, far worse is watching the media trot out, day after day, the same people who are responsible for these disasters and injustices, who profit from them, who keep them going, to defend the actions of the elite, block any positive changes, and shower blame on the victims of their criminal policies. Of course, it’s hard to beat the American media elite for sheer tone deafness. Jabba the Hutt lashed out at the poor again on his radio show the other day, literally ridiculing children who go hungry and depend on school lunches to obtain sufficient nutrients. Fat man Rush, who likely hasn’t seen his toes since his last Vietnam deferment, suggested they could just look in the fridge for ding-dongs, and if not, there's always the dumpster. There is literally no difference, save a couple centuries, between his despicable "advice" and Marie Antoninette suggesting that the solution for starving French peasants is to “let them eat cake.”

Then there is the ever-more extreme backwaters of the American far right, which gets nuttier by the day to the corporate media’s delight. Sharron Angle brought out an old Republican standby – denigrating the poor and unemployed as “deadbeats” determined to stay on welfare. The meme was echoed by Fox News talking heads, who rubbed salt in the wounds of the 1.2 million Americans whose unemployment benefits just ran out by declaring that they spend most of the money on junk food, beer, cable TV and comic books anyway. Also, Tea Party favourite Dr. Rand Paul insisted that the unemployed are just afraid to get their hands dirty and need to start doing lousy jobs, but that didn’t stop him from defending high pay for medical practitioners. Doctors, he declared, “deserve to earn a comfortable living.” As Digby declared, isn’t it funny how those advocating “tough love” austerity policies are never in danger of being affected either way?

I despair for humanity. The only real solution for the problems that plague the world today, from foreign wars to ecological disaster to extreme inequality, is socialism, the democratic control of society’s resources and the means of production on behalf of the working class. But such a proposal is unthinkable to the corporate overlords that control our society and the information that reaches the masses. They actively fight it through their politicians and their media, but there’s only so much they can do to control an enraged population faced with long-term unemployment and governments they correctly feel do not represent them. More dangerous is when they take that legitimate rage and deploy it against powerless targets like unions, the poor and minorities, through the help of bought-and-paid for demagogues like Glenn Beck or whoever his Canadian equivalent will be on the just-announced Sun TV News Channel. And the scariest part is that it seems to work.

No matter how bad things get, the broad masses appear equally unable to imagine alternatives to the status quo, despite their much-hyped exasperation with it. Elections across the world have repeatedly returned to power the same bourgeois political parties, all with the same deranged, nonsensical neo-Hooverist prescriptions for the global economy: austerity, cutting spending, and reining in the deficit, because what matters is continued profits for banks, not the devastation which prolonged unemployment continues to wreak on working people. And yet the people just keep voting them back in. Britain elects Conservative David Cameron. Germany throws in its lot with Angela Merkel and the free market-worshipping Free Democratic Party. No matter how much bad press Stephen Harper gets, Canadians remain enslaved to the Conservative-Liberal big business duopoly while the NDP runs from any thoughts of socialism. American primary voters backed corporate whores like Blue Dog “Democrat” Blanche Lincoln (D-AK), the senator from Wal-Mart, simply because Obama endorsed her. They also rejected progressive voices like Marcy Winograd in California. It seems there’s only one direction for working-class politics in America to go – further and further right.

Part of the problem is that there is no strong, organized working class movement in any of these countries that can find representation in government. Traditional social-democratic parties are a joke, having been completely enslaved to neoliberal dogma years ago. All will embrace the austerity policies that make the working class pay for the banksters’ crimes (see: France’s Socialist Party, the British Labour Party). The decades-long demonization of Marxist ideas during the Cold War has ensured that the most powerful theoretical tool for understanding the current economic crisis goes ignored by the masses that would most benefit from that knowledge.


The Canadian citizen who wishes to take a Marxist approach to the political struggle has a range of choices, none of them all that appealing. The Communist Party of Canada is the second-oldest political party in the country after the Liberals, yet its historical associations with Stalinism have left it on the political fringe. The party membership has aged to the point where it cannot represent an active, youthful political movement. As good as the People’s Voice newspaper is, its writers retain a 1930s view of the working class and revel in archaic terminology. Whatever the party’s policies, its unwillingness to confront the legacy of Stalinism or adopt the internationalist approach of Leon Trotsky means it will remain glued to the Soviet past. To take a coldly realistic view of the situation, it is highly unlikely that any party with the word “Communist” in its name will be able to avoid the totalitarian connotations of historical Communist parties led by Stalin and Mao, with their gross crimes against humanity. That fact also condemns the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), which ran out of steam around the time it fixated on Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha as its anti-revisionist model.

The Socialist Equality Party (Canada), which I’ve written about before, seems to have by far the best platform of any leftist party. Its policies are Trotskyist in nature and internationalist in scope, which in my mind points the way forward for the proletariat: the unity of workers across borders against their exploiters in the parasitic corporate-financial class. Unfortunately, my early enthusiasm for the SEP has waned somewhat after discovering how little infrastructure the party has in Canada – in my experience, basically none. The SEP’s Canadian office does not even have a phone number or e-mail address, and there’s little realistic hope for a party with such a laughable lack of organization. Short of spreading the word through social media and registering the SEP as an official political party, it remains very much a movement in theory only.

That leaves the New Democratic Party. I was made aware via Facebook that there is in fact an NDP Socialist Caucus. I completely agree with the Caucus’ policies and their general direction, i.e. the only way the NDP can survive as a relevant party is by moving to the left. Canada already has a centre-left bourgeois party: the Liberals. The NDP need to reclaim the ideological high ground by drawing on their roots with Tommy Douglas and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which declared its intention to work until capitalism was eradicated. While the NDP leadership is considerably to the right of its rank and file, its existence as a major political party with representatives in Parliament gives it a clout that no other Canadian party to the left of the Liberals can boast. For now, with the SEP little more than a publishing organization, there seems to be little alternative to pushing for the adoption of socialist principles within the NDP. Ontario party leader Andrea Horwath has indicated her openness to this approach, suggesting an NDP where members need not “check their socialism at the door.”

The political element is an important part of the class struggle, but any real progress is years away and will not affect the underlying dynamic of Canadian politics today, nor the subservience of our politicians to the interests of transnational capital. For the moment, the only course of action is mass organization, demonstrating on the streets in defiance of our government’s corporatist polices. I call for this tactic regularly, but too often it remains purely abstract and theoretical, with no real-world lynchpin.

Well, the opportunity arrives this weekend as the G20 congregates in Toronto. The Harper government’s monstrous waste of $1 billion for security, not to mention the overall tone of media reports promoting new weapons the police seem keen to use, indicate that the state is fully prepared to use violence as a means of crushing dissent. That fact in itself is not surprising, but the media’s approach suggests they will pin any blame on protesters. The use of police provocateurs to justify a crackdown is not out of the question. The decisive factor is, will the citizenry allow itself to be intimidated? Or will it make its presence and concerns known to a nationwide, nay, worldwide audience? Will it refuse to submit to the bludgeoning force of the modern police state?

I’ll be in Toronto this weekend to answer in the affirmative. So should you. Make your voice heard!

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.