January 23, vote with our class / march 18, rally
against war
‘NO’ to the parties of the bosses
Every major paper carried the picture – Paul
Martin wrapped in a union jacket, and in the arms of a beaming CAW
president Buzz Hargrove.
Hargrove was sending out a message loud and clear to
his members, and to workers everywhere – Paul Martin is a man we can
support.
Of course strategically. Of course vote NDP where the
NDP has a chance of winning.
But where they don’t have a chance – vote
for the ex-CEO of Canada Steamship Lines.
Vote for the man who has thrown five Muslim men into
jail on unknown charges, and thrown away the key.
Vote for the man who is sending 2,000 Canadian troops
into an imperialist adventure in Afghanistan.
Vote for the man who is refusing to let the war
resisters stay in Canada.
Vote for the man who – as finance minister
under Jean Chrétien – presided over the great robbery of the
Canadian treasury – diverting billions from health care and social
services, and redirecting those billions to the banks and the corporations.
Buzz Hargrove has taken the “logic” of
strategic voting to its bitter, brutal, appalling conclusion.
Buzz didn’t deal with the fact that the record
of strategic voting is one of appalling failure.
In 1988 we were told to vote strategically to stop
the Tories and the FTA. When that strategy failed, sections of the English
Canadian left bitterly blamed voters in Quebec for “not
understanding” that the Tories were worse than the Liberals, giving
anti-Quebec chauvinism a left cover.
In 1993, we were told to vote strategically to stop
the Tories and NAFTA. We “succeeded” – the
Chrétien Liberals were elected – who then proceeded to
implement NAFTA (and keep the GST).
Strategic voting is based on the premise that the
Martin Liberals are a “lesser-evil” to the Harper Tories.
And it’s true that Harper’s
Reform-Alliance-Tory caucus is an appalling collection of backwardness and
bigotry.
One of Harper’s first salvoes in the election,
was to call for the debate on same-sex marriage to be re-opened. Harper and
the Tories pander always to the most right-wing sentiments in Canadian
society.
But the essence of political parties is not
determined by the utterances of their leaders, but by the big forces
– the class forces – in society that they represent.
And the Liberals and Tories are, in equal measure,
parties of Bay Street and the corporations.
You will find boards of corporations peppered with
ex-Tories like Brian Mulroney.
But you will also find Jean Chrétien, Frank
McKenna and a host of other ex-Liberals.
Canadian business can operate very comfortably with
either the Tories or the Liberals in office.
It is only the New Democratic Party that has some
independence from the corporations.
Its roots are in the Depression-era Cooperative
Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress – who more
than 40 years ago, came together to launch a new party, independent of
corporate Canada.
That the NDP is a flawed party, is no secret to
activists on the left.
We have seen the actions of NDP governments in office
– Bob Rae in Ontario, Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan and elsewhere
– who have been only too willing to implement a neoliberal agenda.
We have seen provincial NDP leaders like Carole James
who turns her back on workers going into action against the Campbell
Liberals.
But this is a fight we can have out inside the
institutions of our class – in the unions, in the movements and in
the NDP itself. Our fight with the Raes, James and Romanows of the world is
that they have betrayed the promise of a workers’ party.
Our fight with Harper and Martin is that they are
loyal allies of the billionaires who run the country – the CEOs whose
class agenda is completely opposed to everything that we are fighting for.
We should vote with our class – and debate
inside our class about the limits of the NDP.
And we should give not one finger of support to a
neoliberal warmonger like Paul Martin.