Kingston Whig-Standard Editorial November 30, 1993
International Socialists deserve greater recognition
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The Kingston IS don't get nearly the recognition they deserve.
Some dismiss them as a band of misguided lunatics. Others assume
they're mostly pampered Queen's undergraduates and ignore
everything they say. Still others brand them, say, intellectually
stunted hypocrites who rail against capitalism while enjoying its
benefits daily.
This is excessively harsh, and more than a little unfair. The IS
are to be congratulated for enriching public debate on important
issues. Debate is always healthy and theirs is healthier than most.
If you didn't know better, you'd think their debates went jogging
every morning and ate nothing but tofu and whole-wheat cakes.
The truth is, the party's operatives are everywhere lately;
demonstrating about this, protesting that. During the recent
federal election, the IS appeared at all-candidate's meetings to
heckle Reform Party candidates. Most recently, they've launched a
campaign against the hiring of a welfare investigator for the city
of Kingston.
Unlike some other activists, the IS never get bogged down with
boring, pedantic detail. They keep the issues clear enough for even
the masses to understand. On the "welfare cop" issue, for instance,
the party maintains that any effort to root out fraud in the system
is an "assault on the poor." Of course, the issue is far more
complex than that. But ambiguity is so messy. Far better to
illustrate ideas with good guys and bad guys, like a John Wayne
movie. Then everybody know's what going on.
Take, as an added example, the IS constitutional position as laid
out by party stalwart Sean Purdy at a public meeting in October.
Francophones in Quebec, we were told, are the long-standing victims
of bigotry by English Canadians. This must be redressed by giving
Quebec special powers within Confederation.
Activists less clever than Purdy would allow themselves to ve
shaken from this conviction by, say, the testimony of the Cree of
northern Quebec, or the Haitian immigrants of Montreal, or the
anglophones of the eastern townships - three groups which have at
times been made to feel less than welcome by their francophone
brethren. But the IS stay the course.
Then there's the IS position on revolution. As a revolutionary
party [we wish!] it looks breathlessly toward the establishment of
a Marxist state. In most places in the world today, leftists blush
at the mention of the word Marx. They think of the devastated
nations of eastern Europe. They think of the days before the fall
of the Soviet Empire, when Moscow schoolboys played soccer with
loaves of bread (The government gave them away).
But the IS are steadfast. They're convinced that Marx had the right
idea, but for some reason the hundreds of millions of people who
tried to make a go of his system for 70 years just weren't up to
it. They didn't try hard enough. They weren't smart enough.
Whatever.
Let's be honest, it takes strong convictions to cling to ideas like
that.
Additional evidence of the party's sincerity is its continuing
belief in violent struggle. It dreams of the day when Canada's
cruelly oppressed workers - that is, Canadians who have jobs and
collect a regular paycheque - will throw off their chains and take
up arms against the capitalist foe. That would mean blood and death
and killing of innocent people. It would mean chaos, at least for
a while. But the IS do not shrink from their duty. They are
prepared to trash peace, order and good government. Their sights
are set on utopia, a state in which each person gives according to
his ability, and takes according to his need. Leave it to Beaver,
but on a grand, perhaps global, scale.
Without a doubt, such devotion takes chutzpah.
But perhaps the greatest achievement of the IS is their successful
fight against personal cynicism and moral decay.
Think about it; these people object viscerally to the system that
produces their food, their clothing, their jobs, their heat in
winter, their cars, their bicycles, their telephones, their medical
care,their old-age pensions, their beer and the paper that binds
their Marxist tracts. Yet they never lose their capacity to judge.
They never lose their capacity to moralize. They never become
convinced that they should move to a place like Northern Brazil,
where socialists put their lives on the line every day to save
people's habitats and livelihoods. In spite of the yawning gap
between their standards of livings and those of the teeming,
struggling masses of this planet, the Kingston IS never lose their
self-respect.
And that is a feat worthy of recognition - indeed, of awe.
