My first note is more of a housekeeping issue than anything else: Let's start using the APEC Summit protest as the "first" major protest, instead of the Seattle WTO Ministerial. Here's why:
doing so will show that Quebec wasn't just a one-time tragedy, but just the most recent example of what in fact is now a regular trend in Canadian politics. There was also the Windsor OAS, Toronto OCAP rally, Calgary Big Oil meeting… you get the idea.
You might want to mention in there somewhere that only bad governments are protested against. Nobody mounts protests against good governments. A 7th century Irish philosophical texts says that "The true ruler, in the first place, is moved towards every good thing, he smiles on the truth when he hears it, he exalts it when he sees it. For he whom the living do not glorify with blessings is not a true ruler." But on the other hand, " The bull ruler strikes [and] is struck, wards off [and] is warded off, roots out [and] is rooted out, pursues [and] is pursued. Against him there is always bellowing with horns." The bull ruler is one whose rule is characterised by constant opposition, protest, and even military turbulence. But true rulers are loved and praised. There we stand: and the question arises, which of these kinds of leaders do we have, and which do we want?
New Politics
I am very pleased that the NPI is interested in a new politics, but what does that mean? An examination of the documents gives this interpretation: new politics is a new, different, alternative, and (presumably) socially-oriented, grassroots-empowered means of making political decisions. Everywhere in the vision statement this definition is contrasted with "new policies", which is asserted to be the standard means of decision-making, and is characterised as top-down, hierarchical, old and outdated, in opposition to the left-wing purpose, and not able to obtain the kind of decisions that we want to be able to make.
If this is what is meant by "new politics", this is very good. It doesn't often go recognized by decision makers, but actually we've known since at least the sixties that the very structure of an organisation influences the quality of energy and information flowing through it. This claim is, essentially, a variation of Marshall McLuhan's famous postulate, "the medium is the message". Any structure of human social organisation through which energy (such as labour) or information (such as human thought and feeling) could be transmitted, has its own "stamp", so to speak, which is placed on everything coursing through it. The stamp comes in the form of the transformation, subtle or radical, or even the outright removal, of information and energy that does not presuppose as right and true whatever basic principles the organisation is founded upon. So if we change the process by which we make decisions, we can change the quality of decisions that are made.
The average everyday multinational corporation is built on the basic principle of maximum profit return for the least possible cost investment. This principle of structural knowledge-processing explains why corporations cannot comprehend how the fulfillment of its basic principle is exactly what is responsible for the destruction of the environment (among other tragedies). Or, perhaps corporate directors do understand this, but do not recognise it for the moral wrong that it is, because they understand the profit-maximisation principle as morally right. Either way, you'll never hear the corporate-controlled media report something like "Our lower consumer prices have come at a social cost-- lowered wages, reduced health & safety, and environmental destruction."
A case can be made that the current form of Canadian democracy is structured in such a way that it denies the passage and free flow of certain kinds of ideas. I'm not talking about electoral reform here-- I'm talking about the bureaucracy. Canadian democracy has been so heavily corporatised (i.e. made to resemble a business) that the entire relationship of a citizen to her government has been totally transformed. Here is a couple of ways in which that has happened:
A "balanced budget" has become the over-riding priority of government fiscal policy for decades, rather than maximum service for Canadians with available government resources. Opinion polls now measure public satisfaction with the government in terms of its ability to balance the budget and decrease the debt. Mike Harris' most recent claim to greatness is three balanced budgets in a row-- as if the cutbacks in health, education, environmental protection, and the like were worthwhile sacrifices made to obtain it, and as if the balanced budget is of higher priority than safe water, accessible health care, and so on. The attitude of corporatism here is the attitude that matters having to do with money and the accumulation of money are more important than other matters, even matters concerning the livelihood of people, whole societies, and environments.
A citizen obtaining access to a government service is treated more or less as a consumer obtaining a product. Anyone who works in the public sector knows this: people are referred to as "clients". But I am not a client of my government, receiving a product that I paid for with my taxes. I am a citizen of my country. My government is, first of all, "mine"; secondly, my government is not separate from me as a consumer is separate from the retailer with whom he bargains; thirdly, my relationship with my government is not contingent upon, and does not end after, receiving a service or product which I paid for with my taxes. The attitude of corporatism here is the attitude that the citizen is theoretically separate from her government, and engaged in a relationship analogous to the relationship of a customer to a retailer.
The relationship of client to professional is exactly the kind of relationship I have to my doctor or lawyer. Is it the relationship I want with my politician? The relationship of a client to a professional is a relationship characterised by power. The professional has the specialised expertise that the client both lacks and also needs, and even if the professional solemnly swears an oath to serve and to protect, his advantage is not abolished. Indeed, moral requirements placed on professionals to exercise their power in the service of humanity still presuppose that these professionals have power to exercise. The principle imported from corporatism here is the concentration of power in the hands of a minority, selected on the basis of specialised expertise attributed to them.
One more attitude imported from corporatism that needs no explanation: that is centralization of power and concentration in the hands of a few. When political scientists turned their attention towards corporations, they found that the structure of power strongly resembled a feudal aristocracy-- large numbers on the bottom had no power and no means to remedy grievances, and small numbers at the top had all the power and no accountability for it. They even had a proclaimed "divine right" to rule: the right of property owners to rule their property.
The NPI vision statement has done a good job of exposing issues of this kind and articulating a courageous rejection of them. But it is not enough just to assert what we oppose. We must additionally assert what we support. An important part of what I think is incumbent upon any 'opposition' party is to postulate alternatives and to demonstrate that such alternatives are possible, that they will work, that they may stand up to analysis and even experiment on their own terms. This is not evident when the NPI defines itself as different from the current NDP, or different from business parties, or different from the "usual way of doing politics". I think it essential to avoid "determinatio est negatio", definition by contrast with an opposite. It is essential to know who we are, not just who we are not. This obtains in the list of "core demands" but the core demands do not offer a substantial alternative to capitalism. They articulate the core demands of the grassroots anti-capitalism movement (it says as much)-- but these are calls for a kind of reversal of existing trends, so they are still assertions of what we oppose. What about adding to the list of core demands certain economic and political alternatives already well known to socialists, progressives, and activists, such as:
• the Tobin tax,
• Basic income,
• co-operatively owned and operated businesses and industries,
• the "Westray" bill: revocation of corporate charters of corporations found guilty of corporate crime, and personal fines and imprisonment for the human directors of guilty corporations …
…in addition to the existing excellent proposals for electoral reform, the reigning-in of corporate power, the protection of public works, and so on.
An assertion of a "new politics" that is not simply oppositional, but positively alternative, might include these issues which I here list.
• A truly new politics, understood as a new means of making political decisions, might entail more than just a re-structuring of the electoral process. It might entail throwing out Bourneot's Rules of Order, and experimenting with organic, egalitarian and (quasi-) consensual forms of collective decision-making. We might instead use the "talking stick" of aboriginal circles, for example. Ever notice how at conventions all the really good debate happens at the coffee breaks, or after hours at the bar? So why not have a convention that is nothing but coffee breaks? Meetings should be an "open space", not a lineup of members facing a head table with a chairperson. Leaders should arise from self-selected initiative, and have their leadership affirmed on the basis of their wisdom, erudition, charisma, and vision, not on the basis of their occupancy of an office or their possession of a title from which the person herself is theoretically separated. Decisions can flow organically, spontaneously, and still be followed with binding commitment: there are many alternative forms of meeting style and I think it well to investigate them.
A truly new politics will do more than simply re-define the relationship of a citizen to the state. It might assert an entirely new idea of a person's relationship to the whole of society: government, economy, education & media, church & religion, community, and even ecology. This may even accompany an entirely new idea of social and political consciousness. This may sound radical, and its relevance may not be immediately obvious. But it is not unheard of in political movements. 19th century socialists and communists attempted to produce "the new socialist man", with varying degrees of success.
The whole process of corporate globalisation is the process to get everyone eating at the same restaurants, wearing the same designer clothes, watching the same movies, playing the same video games-- in effect, it is the erasure of identity and its replacement with a homogeneous mass culture. When we have all lost our identity, when we are all reduced to the same insipid mediocrity, then the corporations, the investors who control them, and the governments who serve them, can apply an uniform force upon society to produce an uniform effect of social control. But this uniformity of consciousness is not the same as the collectivism of socialist or communist ideas. Market consumerism regards society as a group of more or less private individuals, and society "directs" itself through the aggregate of purchasing choices, election votes cast, and opinion poll questions answered.
The alternative of socialism might turn out to be equally as undesirable: any attempt to produce a "socialist man" seems to presuppose that we are inherently socially-constructed, we are moulded and shaped by society in every respect, and there really is no private self. The fear of losing the self is why, I think, socialism is abjured by most people. No one likes the idea that their individuality is vulnerable to conformity within a "collective" over which she has no control.
These appear to be contradictory, exclusive positions. Traditionally, the argument for each has come attached to a negation of the other. A new politics might assert that both of these positions are wrong. You remember the parade and rally at Quebec? In many ways the colour, creativity, diversity, and celebration of the protest is the assertion of who we are, and also who we are not. Part of the protest is thinking of yourself as a person, instead of as a consumer, a worker, a job title, a client, a target market, or a number. We are not mere functionaries in the capitalist profit machine, as consumers or target markets. We are people. We are the land. Every major religious and spiritual tradition from oriental mysticism, the Hindu Vedanta and Buddhism, the ecstasies of mediaeval Christian saints, and the often-bizarre visions of contemporary Paganism, asserts that the concept of ego is an illusion. The many networks of inter-dependent connectivity with the conditions of life is/are the true, "deep" or "higher" Self. One finds this theme everywhere in aboriginal wisdom. It is not a rampant destructive individualism, nor is it the personality-negating conformity of collectivism: both systems postulate a self which actually does not exist at all. What exist is an ongoing rhythmic circular relationship of the self and the world in which she lives.
You might be surprised how many front-line activists understand well matters of social and political consciousness such as these. They've been reading Noam Chomsky and Paulo Freire all these years.
• A new politics, instead of exercising power with a different style, might have a different vision of what the purpose of government actually is. It would have to reject the model of government service-delivery that exists now: a model that relies upon the "nobliesse oblige" of the powerful giving charity to the less fortunate. Charity humiliates and degrades he who accepts it. Instead of merely helping the poor, a new politics might seek a re-arrangement of things so that poverty would be impossible.
The irony here is that problems of a systematic, structural nature, like poverty, are sustained by interpersonal actions as people fulfill the requirements of their position in the structure. "As above, so below"-- what happens on the grand scale also happens on the individual scale. This is a basic principle of magic, as any contemporary Pagan knows. So, the solution must be intertwined as well. A strong public commons and individual self-actualization also go hand in hand, they are not divided nor opposed. Self-actualization is not possible for people who do not have access to the means of life. Who has time to develop themselves if they are always scraping for the bare necessities? A civil commons enables and empowers individuals to be individuals.
You might recognise this line of thinking from Oscar Wilde's famous essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism, composed way back in 1898. This principle was also asserted by Paulo Freire in 1970, in his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He wrote, "…the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them'; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated… The solution is not to 'integrate' them [oppressed people] into the structure of oppression, but to transform the structure so that they can become 'beings for themselves'".
The alternative that a New Politics might assert would be something like the public commons, only alluded to in the vision statement, which is what I think Wilde meant by socialism. John McMurtry defined the public commons as "society's organized and community-funded capacity of universally accessible resources to provide for the life preservation and growth of society's members and their environmental life-host."
A truly new politics will do more than merely assert different policies and different means to achieve and implement them. It might assert an entirely new idea of what is a nation, a country, a community, what power is, what Canada is. I attended a public lecture delivered by His Excellency John Ralston Saul, in which he described something that he discovered in old cabinet meeting notes. It seems that shortly after Canada was proclaimed as a nation, dissidents in the Montreal area, some of whom were Quebec nationalists and some of whom were empire loyalists, set fire to the Parliament building and tried to kill the Prime Minister and deputy PM. At the next cabinet meeting, it was decided not to send in the army to root out the arsonists. Remember, this is the 19th Century, when all the world's "great powers" were countries of singular and unified "modern" principles: one nation, one language, one central government, one religion, one national mythology, one culture, and so on. Canada was probably the world's first country to not structure itself in this "modern" way: we decided to have two languages, four provinces, lots of religions, lots of ethnicities, and no real attempt would ever be made to bring this all together into a singular national identity. Indeed it was believed that as soon as you define yourself into one identity, there immediately arises opposition with whatever is deemed to be "different", and all the conflict that comes with that. Canada was to be the world's first "post-modern" nation, a nation in which dissent was allowed, even if that dissent came in the form of the torching of Parliament and the attempted murder of the PM and deputy PM.
We've come a long way since then, have we not? The Canada described in Saul's speech certainly is not the Canada that built the barricade in Quebec.
• A new politics might have a new way of handling political competitors. Instead of insulting and denigrating them, the very antics that made the last federal election into a circus, it might try a more Ghandi-like strategy. His strategy was to fight back but not through direct counter-attack: his strategy was to scrupulously document and publicise evil, and through civil disobedience give the oppressor every opportunity to manifest its corruption, whereupon the oppressor would collapse under the weight of its own openly-exposed evil.
Actually there's nothing new about this: this has been the operating principle in civil disobedience for a century.
• A new politics might make do more than just propose new policies, or formulate their policies in different ways. It might start addressing the spiritual regions of human being. This isn't a church-state issue. It's an issue of political consciousness: Some of the problems that the movement must overcome are problems that exist on the spiritual plane-- the plane of ideas, beliefs, values, principles, and thoughts. Some of what I have to say here may seem a little odd, and even counterproductive. Socialists are generally a practical people, interested in real-world problems and solutions, less interested in abstract speculation or theoretical issues. Certainly the vision statement eschews theorizing in favour of bold assertions of what must be done, except that it grounds the whole enterprise in the principled claim that "we need a new politics".
So, why have I carried on so much about personhood, identity, the self, and consciousness? Because this movement has unleashed a lot of raw energy, productivity, dynamism, and creativity-- which even activists understand as a distinctly spiritual activity. "I wouldn't do it if it wasn't beautiful" one activist friend told me. But if unaccompanied by a clear and critical examination of our first principles it may easily dissipate, or be hijacked to serve more destructive forces, or be degraded into the same apathy that turned the old NDP into the ineffective lug that served the labour movement, its creator, such an horrible betrayal. I even wonder if the NPI and its overt drive to "take back the NDP" is an attempt to avenge this betrayal. The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses certainly hasn't forgotten being legislated back to work within six hours by a provincial NDP government. Nor has Ontario forgotten Bob Rae's "Social Contract". But I certainly hope that retribution is not the true drive-wheel of the New Politics Initiative. The last thing the left needs is internal conflict. An holistic political consciousness, with its critical exposure and examination of first principles, can help here to avoid it.
Most important among the values that I think must be addressed in this re-examination of first principles is the "me-first" attitude. The "me-first" attitude is one of the basic prejudices of civilization; it appears to have existed in every state-level society, right from humanity's first attempts at statehood in ancient Sumeria, through to the nation-states of today. It is programmed and conditioned into us almost as soon as we are able to speak. It may be defined thus: the belief that people looking out for themselves and striving to gain for themselves is somehow good for all of society.
This idea is easy to see through-- for an adult. Children usually lack the logic skills to penetrate it, and yet we are first exposed to it as children, which is why it works so well. When we become adults it becomes much more insidious, because it appeals to our sense of "me-first" (gained as we were taught to be individuals) without apparently contradicting our cultural indoctrination to "play nice" (gained as we were taught to contribute to society, care about others, and/or conform). The precise formulation of the principle of intelligent self-interest does not operate in the forefront of our consciousness all the time, but it is always there. It is the basis of an economic principle generally known as 'trickle-down theory', which most are accepting without question these days. What's trickle-down theory? It is the theory that the people at the bottom of society will get more table-scraps than they usually do, contingent upon the comfortable and privileged people above them becoming more comfortable and privileged. This is also the basis of the FTAA. Formulated as I have done here, its counter-intuitive non-sequitor should be obvious.
But I have only appealed to reason to overcome the "me-first" attitude. The forces that want to captivate you with this prejudice do not appeal to reason to indoctrinate you with its value-programme. Such forces appeal to your heart, your feelings, and desires. Everywhere you go, and especially in urban environments, you are constantly exposed to its message. Mass-media advertising is at all times commanding you to appease this self of yours, to indulge it, to see to its needs; in fact advertising tells you what the self's needs actually are and thereafter commands you to satisfy them. It teaches you to want the products and services it offers for sale.
Think about any corporate slogan you know. "Gotta have it". "Obey your thirst". While you are at it, count how many corporate logos you can identify and compare that to how many species of local plants you can name. This is the content of your mind, the language and medium by which you think, speak, communicate, and express your self. "the medium is the message"-- the very language we use is more than just a delivery device for our thought; it is the structure of thinking itself. Philosophers of virtually all major schools of opinion have known this for almost two centuries, maybe more. It is the reason why, for instance, early Russian communists attempted to reduce the vocabulary in official dictionaries. By reducing what people can think and speak, you render them easier to control.
A new politics may need to find a way to address problems of political consciousness (obviously the dominant theme of my comments). It would need to find ways to address, and eventually to overcome:
• the attitude of "intelligent self interest",
• the belief that the individual person and the society in which she lives are separate; that there is a "self" objectively confronting the "world" apart from herself,
• the paternalism of professional experts making policy from on high on behalf of masses who are grateful because they believe themselves incapable of knowing what is best for themselves,
• the belief that democracy entails voting in elections, and little else (you have heard the phrase, "it's democracy only once in every four years"),
• the powerlessness that people feel when confronted with global capitalism, the world-wide destruction of the environment, the power of the bosses,
• the attitude that diversity should be tolerated (when what we should really be aiming for is not tolerance at all but acceptance and encouragement of it-- especially in a multicultural country like Canada),
• the attitude that the pace of economic and political activity must be fast (i.e. a "rat race", in which one "runs faster and faster to stay in the same place"),
• the attitude that class divisions are inevitable,
• the attitude that all authority, good or bad, should be respected (maybe something like a "healthy disrespect for authority" might be in order),
• the saturation of our sensory fields with corporate advertising,
• the attitude that land or resources that are not "productive" are being "wasted"; the attitude that all value consists in productivity and profitability,
• the assumption that the aggregate of individually-made consumer choices is the engine of social activity, as if advertising, marketing, corporate power, and political authority play no role at all,
• the attitude that a thing is valuable only if and to the extent to which people are willing to pay for it,
• the attitude that all the major parties are the same anyway,
• the inability of many people to see how they connect to the larger political and economic structures in which they live, as exemplified by the common saying, "it's so far away, it doesn't affect me",
• the scapegoating and stigmatization directed at people who work for change, their dismissal as "radicals", "rabble-rousers", "special interest groups", and so on,
• the attitude that the problems we face are insurmountable (an intellectually crippling attitude if there ever was one, for it stops people from working for change before they even begin).
Ten things about the vision statement that I think need to be clarified, and please permit me to play devil's advocate here:
1.
There are controversies within the left wing movement today, which were evident in Quebec among other places. Everybody knows this, and it is in fact one of the ways in which the right discredits the left. There are two that seem to me most important: one controversy is the question of what are we to do about the multi-national trade deals-- should we try to get rid of them altogether, or should we "fix" them, by including clauses for the protection of the public commons or otherwise influencing their implementation? The other is the question of confrontation: just how confrontational are we going to be to get the core demands happening? Some people were willing to get in the way, "to pull down the fence", as it were, and join OCAP's recently proclaimed campaign of economic disruption; others wanted to make their statement from a safe distance, with posters and letters to newspaper editors and MP's. I don't have a clear picture from the vision statement of where the NPI stands on either of these controversies.
2.
There is much talk in the vision statement of how "active citizen's movements are the real engine of social change". I like this; I especially like the phrase "speaking truth to power": it is reminiscent of a Welsh proverb, "The Truth against the world", meaning that one ought to assert the truth even (and especially) when "the world", the economic and political circumstances of the day, appears to be going against it. It is also reminiscent of my earlier comment about Ghandi. A phrase like "fighting for our rights" has the potential to invite much explosive confrontation-- nonetheless one gets the impression that the statement wants to not exclude people who aren't ready for confrontation, and who what to become "responsible insiders"-- even knowing the game to be phony. Is it the NPI Vision Statement's purpose to strategically include as much of the left-wing spectrum as possible, or is it going to locate itself along that spectrum?
3.
After Darth Harris' second election victory in Ontario, suddenly all those arguments about how the average person really doesn't know what is good for society or for themselves became very appealing. After the APEC summit in Vancouver, suddenly the Marxist argument that all major punctuations in social progress, for good or ill, are a result of class conflict, also became appealing. The talk in the vision statement about communities fighting for their rights as the major engine of social change, does in a way skirt the Marxist principle of class conflict. It is accompanied by the implicit claim that fighting for remedy of grievances is (part of) democracy, and a kind of democracy more active and involved than voting. It is also accompanied by a denial that "responsible insiders" can be effective-- yet getting elected inherently makes one into an "insider". Svend Robinson, for better or worse, is an insider, as a member of parliament-- and he's been able to do much good from that position. Naomi Klien has been criticised by activists on the grounds that she's a columnist for the Globe and Mail, and therefore an insider-- but her word has to get out somehow. Moreover, the criticism is going to arise that the respectable and moral way to achieve social change is to work from the inside. Is there no place at all for the responsible insider?
4.
The "core demands" listed in the Vision Statement appear remarkably familiar: they resemble an amalgamation of the platforms of the Greens and the Canadian Action party. I have long thought that the CAP and the Greens have the platform that the NDP ought to have. Is there any thought among the NPI leaders to include the left-wing fringe parties?
5.
Moreover, is there any contingency plan for what to do if the NPI resolution does not pass at the NDP convention?
6.
I'm probably the only lefty in the whole country who still believes in an appointed Senate. (I wrote to the PM not so long ago to demand better quality Senate appointments-- in fact I asked him to appoint me. I'll show you the letter if you like; you might find it entertaining.) A standard argument in favour of an appointed Senate runs like this: Senators don't have to dress up for the regular media feeding frenzy of an election campaign, they are released from worrying about their public image and popularity, and are therefore able to make important decisions entirely from their own reason and judgement, however unpopular those decisions might be. After all, thirty-three million people really can be wrong. The NPI is going to encounter objections of this kind: how might you respond?
7.
Connected to that, Canada's constitutional links with the British monarch provides important ritual and symbol to Canadian sovereignty. Don't get me wrong-- I'm Irish, and have no love for the English Queen, and will be glad to see her gone. But people are motivated and united by ritual and symbol. It's part of political consciousness. It grants an important sense of continuity and dignity to the exercise of power. It is also capable of certain things that ordinary politicians can not do: during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, for instance, the non-Jewish King of Denmark wore a yellow star in solidarity with his Jewish subjects, and soon everyone in the land was doing it, which resulted in the sparing of thousands of Jews because it was impossible to tell who was Jewish and who was not. If we abolish our constitutional connexion to the sovereign, what would replace it? I would favour our own head of state, retaining the title "Governor General".
8.
One of the items mentioned was a demand to lower the voting age to sixteen. A standard objection might be that teenagers are not better educated and sophisticated than past generations. Any high school teacher will tell you that the large majority of them are disrespectful, apathetic, unmotivated, and wrapped up in the quick-fix stimulations of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Of course that was said about every up-and-coming generation. But how do we know that this is less true of the current crop of teenagers than of previous ones?
9.
Will any attention be given to the traditional "moral" issues, such as "family values", abortion, euthanasia, gun control, and so on? And if the answer is "no", I'll accept it-- I regard them as having low political priority anyway compared to the matter of corporate globalisation. But there will be a large swath of society who will demand that the NPI take a stand on the issues, one way or another.
10.
The NPI wants a deep-structural change in politics, not just a cosmetic change of a political party's image. Nonetheless, is a cosmetic change coming? Perhaps the NDP could be renamed the "Labour & Social Justice Party" (there is a catchy acronym in that), or simply "The Socialist Party". There's nothing "new" about the New Democratic Party anymore.
That's all I have for now. If you read all the way through this in one sitting, I thank you for your patience.
And I thank you for the opportunity to comment! I hope to hear from you again.
Solidarity,
Brendan Myers
