[mobglob-discuss] A Response to "A response to 'Disappointing NDP due to failure to use "S" word"

Wed Jul 7 09:31:49 PDT 2004

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From: Mike Palecek [mailto:Mike_Palecek at telus.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 10:43 PM
To: 'Derrick O'Keefe'; bcynd at yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [bcynd] response to 'Disappointing NDP due to failure to use
"S" word'

A response to "A response to 'Disappointed NDP due to failure to use the "S"
word'"

Firstly, I think the point was that the reforms being proposed by the NDP in
this election were very mild reforms.  Still, the platform was utopian, as
were those of all the other major parties.  Every party's platform was based
on capitalist growth and an immediate return to a booming economy.  The fact
is, we're living in a time when capitalism cannot afford reforms.  Cuts and
attacks on the standard of living for working people are the order of the
day.  Not because of this or than mean spirited government, but because of
the confines of capitalism.

Sure, your average worker would appreciate the little reforms that were put
forward, but they weren't all that different from what the Liberals were
promiseing.  Yes, one could argue that the liberals never deliver on their
promises, but they would quickly be met by the same arguement about the NDP
from anyone upset by past NDP provincial governments across the country.

I don't think anyone is expecting workers to rally around the slogan
"expropriate the means of production" tommorow.  There's alot more to a
socialist platform than "expropriate the means of production".  As Tommy
Douglas said "Planning is not an end in itself.  Nationalization is not an
end in itself.  They are simply tools by wich people can take control of
their own future."  Now, had the NDP come out with a bold demands such as:

Full employment

National minimum wage of 2/3 the average wage

Shorter work week without loss of pay

Withdraw from NAFTA, FTAA, WTO and all the other boss' deals

The right to strike, the right to union representation, the right to
collective bargaining

Free education

Free public transit

Defend and expand healthcare

No More Wars!

Democratic control of the economy

These are the demands that could bring the NDP to power.  These are demands
that every working person can relate to.  Of course you will be met by "How
are you going to pay for it?" and the answer is simple:  We're not going to,
Jimmy Pattison is.

As far as the "snide" comments about Bev Meslo, I don't think they were
snide.  They were entirely comraderly criticisms.  I happen to know that
alex has a tremendous ammount of respect for Bev and considers her a friend
and ally.  In fact, alex and I raised all of those exact points in a face to
face conversation with Bev over a drink in the early days of the campaign.
She disagreed.  She didn't want to scare away the middle class voters.  We
argued that the only way that riding could be won was with a socialist
programme.  You have to remember, 40% of voters didn't even bother to vote
because they didn't think there was anything worth voting for.  Those are
the votes that could bring the NDP to power.  Had Bev come out and said what
she actually believes in, boldly put forward demands that meet the needs of
working people and vowed to fight for them tooth and nail even if her own
party wouldn't, then she could have pulled out all those people who thought
there was nothing worth voting for.  She would have been viewed by the
public as the strong, passionate, committed fighter that she really is.  You
can't expect people to give up the little time they have with their families
unless you give them something real to fight for.

Lets learn from Cope's victory in the vancouver civic election.  How did
cope win?  By putting forward concrete demands that people could relate to
(mainly: clean up the downtown east side and stand up to Gordon Campbell).
With this platform they managed to bring out all those people that normally
don't bother voting and sail to victory.

"Finally, a number of NDP campaigns suffered from a lack of financial
resources and activists on the ground.  The difference between having 30
volunteers and having 60 volunteers can't be underestimated, and in many
cases the NDP just didn't have the people power necessary to compete with
the financial resources of the Liberals and Conservatives."

Finally something I can agree with.  The NDP will never have the finacial
resources of the Liberals or the Conservatives.  The only way we can compete
is with people power.  But the only way we'll get that people power, is by
raising concrete socialist demands that people can relate to.

In Solidarity,

Mike Palecek

-----Original Message-----
From: Derrick O'Keefe [mailto:sankara83 at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 1:10 PM
To: bcynd at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [bcynd] response to 'Disappointing NDP due to failure to use "S"
word'

A response to 'Disappointed NDP due to failure to use "S" word'

There are a number of factors that explain the disappointingly low number of
seats that the NDP was able to win, but we think it's unfair to reduce the
election results to a rehashing of ideological and programmatic debates
within the party.  These debates are healthy and necessary, but the "told
you so" tone is misplaced, in terms of a discussion of electoral results.
It was not possible to run on a Marxist, or anti-capitalist program, in this
election because the NDP has not adopted such a program.  Whether or not we
agree with the program, that's where the party is at.

'An average worker might think, "I like the NDP's reforms, but the Liberals
are offering the same sort of thing and the NDP are going to work with them
in a minority anyway, so I'd better be safe and vote Liberal to keep the
Conservatives out."'

This explanation for the voting patterns of average workers actually
contradicts the author's prescription for the NDP.  If the typical worker
likes the NDP's reforms, but might vote Liberal, the NDP needs simply to
focus on the fact that the Liberals have not inacted any of these reforms
despite their previous promises.  It is quite a leap of faith to assume that
the typical worker will favour the expropriation of the means of production,
simply because the reforms proposed by the NDP were popular.  

The typical worker perhaps wants to protect public medicare, or perhaps
wants cheap/free childcare, but the typical worker will not vote for a party
that says that these goals can only be achieved by the overthrow of
capitalism.  An earlier article by the same author claimed that "the NDP
platform is fundamentally utopian while Canada has a capitalist economy."
Although the editorial opinions of tiny communist groups certainly had
little effect on the outcome of the election, it is interesting to note that
the author thinks the NDP's reforms were popular yet impossible.  If the
average worker were to hear or read these arguments they might conclude "the
NDP has nice ideas but they can't be achieved under capitalism, so I might
as well vote Liberal because they have achievable goals, as do the
Conservatives and Greens, for that matter."

The author argues that proportional representation will not help the lives
of working people since it will lead to the formation of coalitions between
the Liberals and NDP.  The truth is that proportional representation would
greatly increase the role of the NDP in parliament and would even allow the
possibility of representation for parties that wish to be identified as
Marxist, revolutionary, or even Green.  

The NDP could start calling itself a Marxist party at every opportunity, and
starting calling for the destruction of capitalism, but there is certainly
no guarantee that this would translate into electoral success, given the
uber-marginal importance and vote totals of the Communist Party of Canada,
or the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist).  These parties are
unable to obtain the votes of ordinary workers despite the fact that they
are identified with the destruction of capitalism, and offer a comprehensive
set of radical demands for transitional reform.

There is no magic word or manifesto that can shoot the NDP to a majority
government in Canada.  In fact, the deck will remain thoroughly stacked to
make this task exceedingly difficult.  The only way this can be achieved is
by hard work both during election campaigns, and between them.  Major
electoral success for the NDP, even given its current program of rather
moderate reform to capitalism, will also only occur with the help of an
upsurge in struggles by labour and other social movements.

For this reason, the snide comments for Bev Meslo and the Vancouver South
campaign are unfair.  Yes, Bev ran for the leadership of the party as the
candidate for the Socialist Caucus, a small tendency within the party; the
politics expressed by Bev during her leadership run were not mere
"verbiage," but actually reflected her radical, socialist politics and the
direction she felt that the party should take.  The NDP, though, did not
adopt a revolutionary socialist program, or leader, and therefore Bev was
obliged to run on the program of the party in this federal election.  She
did an admirable job, running an energetic and successful campaign with very
limited resources.  Successful, because in fact the NDP tripled its vote in
this riding --no small feat!  To suggest that she would have defeated the
machine that was Ujjal's campaign (or attract votes in the strong Liberal
polls west of Cambie St.) if only she had put forward a socialist program is
not plausible, to say the least. 

As for the reasons for the low number of seats, there are a couple that are
fairly obvious.  The vote was too spread out, and the electoral system is
unfair.  The NDP doubled its percentage of the popular vote, and yet only
got 5 more seats.  Clearly, some form of proportional representation would
yield better results.  There is also the factor of the Greens.  Though --in
this election and with their new leader --their program was probably to the
right of the Liberals, there is no doubt that in places like B.C. they took
some votes from the NDP.  Of the Green candidates that we observed, many
were people with values similar to the NDP, but who simply wanted to run,
for their ego or whatever reason.  For those not sufficiently experienced or
articulate to secure an NDP nomination, --or unwilling to even consider
starting the difficult task of securing a nomination -- the Greens can be
attractive, because there is almost no competition at all to become a
candidate.  

Finally, a number of NDP campaigns suffered from a lack of financial
resources and activists on the ground.  The difference between having 30
volunteers and having 60 volunteers can't be underestimated, and in many
cases the NDP just didn't have the people power necessary to compete with
the financial resources of the Liberals and Conservatives.  Certainly, the
NDP needs to continue the trend --initiated at least somewhat under Jack
Layton's leadership --of working more closely with and supporting social
movements, such as anti-poverty and anti-war movements.  This will, aside
from giving crucial support to important movements and causes, help to
attract new activists to work on the party's election campaigns.  And this
will be a critical factor in achieving greater electoral success in the
future.

Aaron O'Keefe

Derrick O'Keefe

July 6, 2004

****

Canadian Election Results

Disappointing NDP due to failure to use "S" word

By Alex Grant

As predicted, Canada now has a minority Liberal government. The results
were: Liberals 135, Conservative 99, Bloc Québécois 54, and NDP 19. This
puts the Liberals 20 seats short of a majority government. With the NDP
unable to prop up the Liberals it is likely Canadians will head back to the
polls within a year. Workers and youth who look to the NDP need answers so
that the poor showing will not be repeated in the next election.

There were two big losers in this election campaign. Despite their apparent
euphoria the Liberals have suffered a significant setback. Only six months
ago they were riding high in the polls with their new leader Paul Martin the
darling of the corporate press. Everything turned sour, however, when the
sponsorship scandal broke and this acted as a lightning rod for years of
accumulated discontent. Fortunately the Conservatives were unable to
capitalize on the Liberals' crisis and were also rejected by the voters.
Despite being pumped up by the right-wing press and increasingly partisan
(and wildly inaccurate) polling firms, the new Conservative party could not
attract significant support. This shows that Canadian workers are looking
for change, but not change at any price.

The Liberals clung on to power by demonizing the Conservatives for their
dramatic tax cuts, cuts to social programs, and support for the Iraq war.
The Conservatives were of course guilty of these accusations, but the
Liberals have done and will do little different. The Liberal tactics were
not aimed so much at Conservative supporters but at the NDP. NDP voters were
told, "Don't split the anti-Conservative vote. Voting for the NDP will let
the Conservatives in and Liberal policies are not that different from the
NDP's anyway." This tactic yielded significant results – the NDP went from
polling 20% to a final result of 16% of the popular vote. Frequently these
tactics served to actually elect the Conservatives as NDPers split their
vote to the third place Liberal (voters were fooled by the press into
thinking the NDP had no chance). In many seats the NDP only lost by 1 or 2
percent. If the NDP's vote was not eroded by vote splitting, (equal to about
4%), they could have doubled their seats and would be in a far better
position for the next election. The question arises, how does the NDP combat
the vote splitting tactic?

Jack Layton, the NDP leader, ran a fair campaign and was forceful in putting
forward his reformist program. The main problem with this program is that it
never explained the source of the problems workers face (Capitalism), or the
solution (Socialism). When you compare the NDP and Liberal programs you see
that the Liberals propose money for healthcare and the NDP proposes more
money for healthcare. The Liberals propose childcare spaces and the NDP
proposes more spaces. The Liberals propose phased-in money for cities and
the NDP proposes money for cities now. Combine this with the inability of
the NDP leadership to rule out a coalition with any of the capitalist
parties and you can see how the Liberals' claim to have the same values as
the NDP can be convincing. An average worker might think, "I like the NDP's
reforms, but the Liberals are offering the same sort of thing and the NDP
are going to work with them in a minority anyway, so I'd better be safe and
vote Liberal to keep the Conservatives out."

Layton is proposing proportional representation as a solution to vote
splitting. He correctly pointed out that the NDP's best result in 1988
yielded over 40 seats with 2.2 million votes while this time they won only
19 seats with 2.1 million votes. But is PR really a solution? While it can
seem more democratic it is in fact merely a diversion. Pinning our hopes to
a system that leads to coalitions means the NDP bureaucrats will always have
an excuse to water down the party program. We do not need another method of
shuffling the seats on the HMS Titanic of bourgeois democracy. We need
policies that actually improve the lives of working people and win support
both at the ballot box and on the streets.

So what is the real solution? The only way to avoid the vote splitting is to
adopt a socialist program and explain that the capitalist Liberal and
Conservative parties are incapable of solving the problems of Canadian
workers. The NDP bureaucrats will answer that the workers will not support a
"radical" socialist program – this only goes to show that the bureaucrats
have no understanding of how their politics breed defeat. In the past
workers did not support the NDP because it was not offering them anything
and they could feel that the leaders had no confidence in their ideas.

As soon as the NDP actually started offering reforms (not enough, but still
a start), their support jumped to 20%. The Liberals then proposed a
left-sounding program (that they have no intention of implementing) and
undercut the NDP's support. Do we need any more evidence that left policies
win support? However, it is not enough to just put forward good promises. To
avoid vote splitting it is necessary to explain how only by breaking with
capitalism will the promises be achieved.

The most tragic example of how a reformist strategy leads to defeat was in
the constituency of Vancouver South. Here Bev Meslo, former leadership
candidate for the left-wing NDP Socialist Caucus, faced Liberal candidate
Ujjal Dosanjh. Dosanjh was the former NDP premier of British Columbia who
betrayed his party by defecting to the Liberals. This campaign was a
fantastic opportunity to combat right-wing bureaucratic careerism with a
working class socialist campaign that could enthuse this mostly working
class and immigrant riding. Unfortunately Bev forgot all of her previous
socialist verbiage and said, "We have to be careful not to scare away the
middle class voters." This did not stop voters being scared by the prospect
of the Conservatives and the NDP lost by a 2:1 margin. We hope Bev has
learnt her lesson, as well as those on the left who believe that socialism
is a great idea but it will never be popular. These middle-class radicals do
not understand that socialism, and its scientific expression Marxism, are
merely the culmination of 150 years of working class struggle. Socialist
policies are popular when workers believe victory is possible and worth the
risk fighting for. Socialist policies are popular because they have been
formulated by the workers themselves when struggling to solve their
problems.

The final story of this election is the historically low turnout. Only 60%
of those eligible bothered to vote despite the wall-to-wall media coverage
and the close race that led to an exciting campaign. This is the lowest
turnout since Canada became an independent country. 40% of Canadians do not
have any hope in political parties. These are predominantly young workers
who are the most exploited and oppressed in society. The NDP can attract
these disenfranchised workers with a radical campaign that links up with
their experience and offers them hope for the future. A socialist campaign
leads to victory, not just in parliament but in the lives of workers.

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