[mobglob-discuss] "The Left, the Right, and Language as a Mechanism of Control" - Van-K chronicle Issue 5 is out.

[Alan Ward]

- Our apologies for any duplicates -
Dear friends,

Below is the lead article of issue #5 -October 2003- of the New
Vancouver-Kingsway Chronicle.
This nicely laid out issue (it includes our own photos) also contains an
interview with the BC NDP leadership candidates, summarizes the BC Liberal
record, and highlights the role Kingsway is playing to strengthen our
constituencies while furthering internal democracy in the BC NDP.  If you
wish to be mailed a copy, please make a cheque out to NDP Vancouver-Kingsway
for $5 (or more) and mail it to 4184 Brant St., Vancouver, BC, V5N 5B4.


The Left, the Right, and language as a mechanism of control

by Alicia Barsallo

   Measures like the $6 an hour minimum wage decreed by the BC Liberals, or
the 25% income tax cut that benefits only the rich, are often cynically
presented as necessary for the social good.

   To do this, terms like "competitiveness," "progress," "production,"
"flexibility," are used as if they had a universal meaning.  The illusion is
that they serve alike bosses and workers, the rich and the poor.

   "Competitiveness," for example, is often lauded as intrinsically good.
But this is trickery.

   "BC must become competitive," says the newspaper, bringing to the
unsuspecting wage-earner images of better wages and a thriving community.

   But "competitiveness" means something quite different for the corporate
elite that owns our pretending-to-be-naive media.

   What "competitiveness" means for a corporation, is selling its wares at
prices that can put its competitors out of business.  And to do this, pay
ever less money to workers and to the public treasury to reduce the cost of
production.

   In BC it is this definition of the word "competitiveness" that we are
living right now.

   In the name of "competitiveness" our workers are being exploited; our
forests, depleted; our rivers, polluted; our railway, put on the block; our
public education, starved; our hydro, endangered; our health care,
privatized; our seniors, left to live their last years unattended; and our
children, faced with the choice of either working for miserable wages or
begging in the streets.

   This is because capitalist bosses are most "competitive" when resources
and wage-earners are the least protected.

   It is poor communities with large pools of cheap labour and privatized
services and resources, that are the best environment for quick billionnaire
profits.

   So, inherently, the interests of corporations run counter to the
interests of our communities.

   Therein lies the crux of  our differences with the  BC Liberals.

   While the BC Liberals are here to advance the interests of  BC's
corporate elite, we must defend BC from unbridled capitalist competition and
insatiable capitalist hunger for profits.

   There is an "us" and a "them," and we have not invented it.   There is a
"left" and a "right," and we have no choice in the matter.

   Ours needs to be not a kinder gentler corporate vision, but an altogether
different vision.  And the NDP cannot buy into corporate language.

   We need to be clear.  Former BC Liberal voters will vote for the NDP when
they realize that aggressive capitalist globalization is pushing us in a
direction that is opposite to that which builds community.

   The more corporate deceit in the use of language is exposed, the better
off the NDP is, and the better the chance that BC voters will not make
another tragic mistake.

   The poor need to know that they should vote for us because we will be the
ones guaranteeing them decent wages and living conditions.  The better-off
need to know that they should vote for us because without us, they will not
have a community that is free from poverty and crime -- a community they can
be proud to leave to their children.

   Defeating the BC Liberals, then, requires courage and political clarity
from our candidates and party leaders.

   Defeating the BC Liberals requires your participation, and a collective
vision of an NDP government on the side of social justice.


NEW Vancouver-Kingsway Chronicle
Edited by Andrew Adler -
Published by the NDP Vancouver-Kingsway Constituency Association -
4184 Brant St., Vancouver, B.C., V5N 5B4 - #5 - October 2003