The following article is excerpted from Socialist Worker (Canada). For sub
information write Socialist Worker, Box 339, Station E, Toronto, Ont. Canada
M6H 4E3. ($10 Can; U.S. and Overseas $20 Can.) September 1993
Vote NDP...But It's Time for a Real Socialist Alternative
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The NDP [Canada's Social Democratic Party] is collapsing in the polls and
losingit'sbase of support. At the end of last month, federally the party stood
at eight per cent, less than the right-wing, populist Reform Party.
In Ontario, the party announced that in 1992, its membership declined from
25,000 to 20,000, an unprecedented one-year decline. Fully 10 percent or 500 of
those who did not renew their memberships, indicated explicitly that the
reason was the NDP's abandonment of party policy, its attacks on the working
class and social services.
And this was before the so-called "social contract" was announced and
ruthlessly rammed down the throats of Ontario's 900,000 public sector
workers.
But that is not yet the worst news.
There are two types of memberships in the NDP - individual through
constituency associations (which the above figures represent) and collective
through membership in a union local affiliated to the NDP.
The largest industrial local in Canada, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) local
based in the massive autoplex in Oshawa, voted overwhelmingly to sever its
ties with the NDP. This led the CAW as a whole withdrawing its support from the
provincial NDP (while retaining support for the federal NDP).
The reasons for the dissatisfaction are clear. Particularly in Ontario, the
NDP in office has been associated with attacks on the welfare state, and on
collective bargaining rights. Bill 48 has just been passed in Ontario, the
most draconian anti-working class bill passed by any level of government in
decades.
These developments are a direct confirmation of everything Socialist Worker
has argued about the NDP. When we said in 1990 in Ontario and in 1988 in the
federal election "Vote NDP without illusions" it was because we knew, from
bitter experience, that while the NDP is the only party resting on workers'
organizations, and thus at election time should be voted for as against the
parties of the business, it is a party that in office, will manage the system
in the interests of business. It will attack wages and social services if that
is what it takes to preserve a "good business climate."
The question posed in this election is, however, does the scale of the
attacks, particularly those launched by Bob Rae's Ontario NDP, mean that
workers should no longer vote for the NDP?
First, we should see the big picture. With all of the criticisms Socialist
Worker has of the NDP, we recognize that the existence of the NDP has
historically been important for the Canadian working class. We need only
compare the experience here with that of the US for that to be clear.
The US has no equivalent to the NDP, a party based on the union movement and
with no support from any section of the capitalist class. Since the 1930s, the
US unions have been tied hand and foot to the Democratic Party, one of the
two parties of American capital.
Look at the consequences. The one serious attempt to create a labour party
happened at the end of WWII. The CIO, the great industrial union federation,
forged in mass sit-down strikes against the Democratic government of
Roosevelt, not surprisingly contained many in its ranks who thought that the
working class should have a political organization as well as a union
organization.
Just as this idea was being discussed, the CIO began the greatest
organizing drive since the 1930s, Operation Dixie. Because of slavery and its
legacy, there is a deep race divide inside the US. One expression of this was
labour relations in the South, where, at the time, the majority of Blacks
lived and worked.
Racist Jim Crow laws allowed management enormous scope in breaking unions,
and led to the lowest wages and worst working conditions in the nation.
Operation Dixie was designed to change this, and bring the Black working class
in the South into the national labour movement.
But this directly posed the question of political organizing. The very
bosses they were up against in the South were the bulwark of the southern
Democratic Party, the party to which the CIO was tied. In order to organize
against these bosses, then, they would have had to break from the Democrats
and build their own political party in opposition.
They refused to do so, Operation Dixie was only half-heartedly built, and
finally terminated. The CIO leadership had faced a choice - Black workers or
"liberal" Democrats, and had chosen the latter. The inability of the CIO to
put forward an independent working class party, even at the level of elections,
is a sign of its weakness, not just in questions of independent class politics,
but on questions of race.
So it is important to recognize that the creation of an independent union-
based electoral party is an expression of a certain and important level of
political advance compared to places like the US where this did not occur. It
is not insignificant that in the US, with the failure of Operation Dixie, the
south was structured as a huge low-wage, non-union zone (in some states,
unionization is at 8 or 9 percent, compared to 25 or 30 percent in the
industrialized North-East and 40 percent in Canada), severely weakening the
ability of the working class as a whole to fight.
It is not unrelated to the fact that Canadian workers, beginning with a
CCF government in Saskatchewan, were able to force through more significant
reforms to the welfare state (not the least of which was medicare) and the US
workers were not.
This is not an argument that the NDP itslef makes a difference. It is an
expression of a level of class confidence inside the working class. It is that
class confidence which makes the difference, not the party which partialy
expresses it.
Parties like the NDP will betray workers. But supporting the NDP compared to
the Liberals, or the US Democrats is an expression of an important step
forward for workers. Therefore socialists are with those workers as against the
Liberals or Tories, as against the Democrats and Republicans.
This is not the first time we have seen this. Social democracy always betrays
its supporters when in governs during a crisis. IN 1975, the British Columbia
NDP smashed the strikes of 60,000 public sector workers. This did not mean that
the BC working class was in 1976 ready en masse to leave the NDP and join a
revolutionary socialist organization.
The British Labour governments of Wilson and Callaghan were in some ways more
anti-worker than the Tories that preceded them. This has not meant that there
are now millions of revolutionary socialists in Britain.
Reformist parties like the NDP have mass support because the very existence
of capitalism creates the dream of reformism. We are taught over and over
again, that change can come peacefully, through parliament and through the
ballot box.
Therefore the disillusionment with the NDP does not necessarily mean mass
radicalization to the left. What it means is a sense of betrayal by thousands
of workers who retain a belief in reformism. This sense of betrayal can lead to
passivity. It can also lead a few years later to looking to a new leader to
get the NDP project back on track. But it does not easily translate into
thousands of workers coming towards revolutionary socialism.
This is important. In the Oshawa vote, the retreat of the advanced workers
did not mean an increase in the ideas of revolutionary socialism. What it
meant was a silence on the left, and increased "noise" from the right. It was
the Reform Party with ideas about the NDP being too hard on workers - and too
soft on Natives, too soft on women - which suddenly gained an increased
respectability.
The collapse of support for the NDP does not mean that the entire working
class is moving left. It means, in this context, that many workers are moving
into confusion and abstention from politics. The brutal truth is that there is
no left-wing force big enough to fill the vacuum.
To the workers who leave the NDP, socialists say "what you are seeing is a
direct confirmation of Marxist politics. The NDP is a party that will manage
capitalism, not replace it." But then the real arguments start. Some workers
will say "Let's teach them a lesson and vote in another party." We argue hard
against that, showing the Liberals and Tories to be identical, and the Reform
Party to be a right-wing party of middle-class idiocy.
Some will say "I won't vote, it doesn't matter anymore." But all this does
is strengthen the hand, again, of the parties openly based on capital and/or
the Reform Party.
Workers should still vote for the NDP, as the only party based on the
organizations of our class.
But we should not rely on it in the slightest. The NDP in office will attack
our jobs and services in the interests of business. We need to begin now
constructing a real socialist alternative.
And that means that for the minority who are breaking from the NDP to the
left, they need to seriously face the task of beginning now the construction
of a new organization of revolutionary socialists that can be an alternative to
the NDP.
Build the Socialist Alternative
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Voting for the NDP is just one small part of the socialist approach to the
federal election campaign.
When the choice is between parties tied directly to big business, on the one
hand, and a party with links to the labour movement, on the other, we choose
the latter despite our thoroughgoing criticisms of NDP politics.
But genuine socialists must do more than simply call for a vote for the NDP.
We must try to build actions which show what a socialist alternative to the
NDP looks like in practice.
Whereas the NDP focusses on elections, parliament and MP's, revolutionary
socialists concentrate on real action - demonstration, rallies, pickets,
strikes, anything which mobilizes working people and the oppressed in struggle
for their own basic interests.
The electoralist approach of the NDP treats people as passive supporters who
merely mark an "X" on a ballot. The activist approach of genuine socialists
looksto the struggles of workers and the oppressed as the key to changing
society.
For this reason, while calling for a vote for the NDP, Socialist Worker and
the International Socialists are also launching an action campaign built
around the slogan "Build the Socialist Alternative."
Whenever possible, we will be organizing pickets of Tory cabinet ministers
when they come to speak in major cities. We will be raising the issues of mass
unemployment and of cutbacks to health care, education and welfare; we will be
denouncing the government's plan to spend nearly $6 billion dollars on attack
helicopters while millions live in poverty; and we will be attacking the
Tories' and Reform Party's racist policies on immigration and refugees.
At the same time, we will be organizing meetings on the theme of "Build the
Socialist Alternative," putting forward the case for a fighting socialist
alternative to the sell-out policies of the NDP.
For information on how you can get involved, call us today at 416-972-6391 or
contact your Socialist Worker seller or the International Socialists.
Kick out the Tories! Healthcare Not Helicopters!
Vote NDP... but it's time for a real socialist alternative.
