Eastern Europe: Western Europe’s poor Second Cousin

The Berlin Wall – the physical barrier dividing the “communist” east from the “free” west – collapsed under the pressure of a magnificent mass movement in 1989. It was difficult, in 1989, not to be sympathetic with the beautiful sight of ordinary East German workers, physically dismantling an ugly barrier which had disfigured the city of Berlin since 1961. But among those in the West who were sympathetic to the revolt from below, most were influenced by what was without question accepted as a truism – that the collapse of the Berlin Wall symbolized the superiority of the market compared to "state-socialism". East and West started out in much the same shape after the war, the argument goes. But in the west the market, with all its flaws, led to France, West Germany, Sweden, etc. developing into some of the biggest economies in the world, while East Germany, Hungary and the rest of the East stagnated. State control just does not work and the market, with all its problems, has proven its superiority. The problem with this argument is that East and West Europe did not begin from the same point at the end of World War Two.

Western Europe is home to economies which were the first in the world to undergo industrial revolutions. First in Netherlands and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, followed by France in the late eighteenth century and finally Germany in the late nineteenth century — it was here that capitalism firmly took root, smashing up the old, peasant-based societies, and laying the groundwork for extremely rapid industrialization.[1]

The basis for this industrial strength was driving the peasants off the land, and turning them into wage-labourers in the sprawling new cities of Europe — Manchester, Paris, Turin, Berlin. The wealth produced by an industrial working class – working in large collective workplaces with access over time to more and more machinery and automation – is far greater than that produced by a peasantry working in labour-intensive conditions on small plots of ground in the countryside. The Dutch, the French and the English, on the basis of the massive growth of their industrial economies in the nineteenth centuries, embarked on a global competition for world supremacy, ultimately bringing all or part of every continent in the world under their imperial control.

They were joined by Germany and the New World upstart the United States in the nineteenth century. The rivalries of these capitalist giants twice exploded into world war in the twentieth century.

The situation in what, before 1989, was called “Eastern Europe,” was very different. Much of Eastern Europe had, until very late in the day, aristocratic ruling classes that were much more successful at resisting the advance of capitalism than were their counterparts in the west. The wealth of the aristocracy was based on peasants tied to the great landed estates. Thus the aristocratic ruling class had an interest in preserving the old, peasant-based economies, and resisting the advance of industrial capitalism.

For reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, this ruling class was much more successful in Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, Rumania, etc., in resisting the rise of an industrial capitalist class, than in the West.

In the East, the bulk of the population until well into the twentieth century, continued to live very traditional lifestyles in labour-intensive conditions on the land.[2] The development of the industrial working class occurred, but as a small minority inside society. It wasn't until the 1860s that serfdom was abolished in Russia. When the Russian Revolution happened in 1917, there were 15 times as many peasants as workers in the country. It was only as a result of defeat in World War II that the power of the old aristocratic ruling class in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up.

Similarly the Ottoman Empire – from which came Turkey as well as several of the southern republics of the Soviet Union – survived the beginning of the twentieth century intact, its semi-feudal ruling class a real barrier to capitalist development. Only with defeat in the First World War was this ruling class smashed up and the possibility of industrial development opened up.

In short, the bulk of the "Eastern Bloc" was carved out of those sections of Europe and Asia that had been very late in embarking on a path of industrialization. The bulk of the "Western Bloc" was comprised of those countries that had been the first to industrialize, that had made incredible strides in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in developing their industrial base, and had been able to, on that basis, spread their economic interests throughout much of the globe.

There are exceptions to this. Spain and Portugal in the Western bloc were late-industrializing countries, while East Germany in the Eastern bloc had been an historical heart of much of German industry. But in general, the pattern of most-advanced economies ending in the Western bloc, least advanced ending in the Eastern bloc, is accurate.

It means that the two sections of Europe that ended up confronting each other after World War II – a Western section under the hegemony of Washington, and an Eastern Section under the hegemony of Moscow – were coming from very different places. In the West, for the most part, were economies with a history and tradition of industrial capitalism going back generations. In the East, for the most part, were economies which until quite recently, had been under the thumb of conservative and reactionary land-based aristocracies, and which were, as a result, considerably poorer and considerably less industrialized than their counterparts in the West. It was not a contest between equals.

Previous article – "Twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall"

Read next: The Legacy of World War II



© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References


[1] See E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (Toronto: New American Library, 1962); Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems analysis: An Introduction (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2004).
[2] In one of his early, and largely overlooked books, Ygael Gluckstein (Tony Cliff) makes this exact point. “Of the total population those engaged in agriculture, fishing and forestry made up in Bulgaria (1934) 80 per cent; Yugoslavia (1931) 79 per cent; Rumania (1930) 78 per cent; Poland (1931) 65 per cent; Hungary (1930) 53 per cent; Czechoslovakia (1930) 38 per cent.” Ygael Gluckstein, Stalin’s Satellites in Europe (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1952), p. 13.

Afghanistan – Et tu Bruce?[1]

Bruce Cockburn sang against U.S. imperialism in Guatemala. He sang for the revolution in Nicaragua. He is now singing for Canadian imperialism in Afghanistan. Our movement is weaker for it.


In the 1980s, Central America was in the throes of revolution and counter-revolution. The signature event was the 1979 overthrow of the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an overthrow led and organized by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). That revolution was bitterly opposed by the Generals who controlled many Central and South American states at the time, and the United States which had long backed military regimes in the region. U.S. president Ronald Reagan, funded a bloody proxy war against the Sandinistas, leading to tens of thousands of deaths. Building solidarity with the Sandinista revolution – and with the other resistance movements in Central and South America – was a central political task for activists in the Global North in that decade.

Cockburn did his part. In 1983 he traveled to Mexico and Nicaragua, “with several other Canadian artists at the invitation of OXFAM, the world hunger organization.”[2] The result was a beautiful and moving 1984 album, Stealing Fire, many of whose songs were inspired by the repression and resistance he encountered on his trip. “Nicaragua,” “Dust and Diesel” and “Yanqui go home” are explicit tributes to the new society being wrenched from imperialism’s grasp in desperately poor and embattled Nicaragua.[3] “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” is the best-known track from the album, famously covered by Bareknaked Ladies.” It is not explicitly political, but when he calls out that you’ve “got to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight,” we knew what he meant.

Bruce has now stumbled into the darkness of support for Canada’s war effort in Afghanistan. His brother is a Captain in the Canadian military, and part of Canadian forces in Afghanistan. In early September, Bruce went to the country, visited his brother, and performed for Canadian troops while he was there.

“It’s a long discussion on whether we should be in Afghanistan” he said, “whether anyone should be in Afghanistan ... but since we are, and since we’ve gone this far, I don’t think it’s appropriate to leave at this stage.”[4]

This won’t do. Many of us have friends and relatives in Afghanistan. All of us want them to come home unharmed. All of us want them to come home without having done harm to others. But all of us – Cockburn included – have to ask ourselves the hard questions.

Are Canada’s troops – troops that include Bruce’s brother, two of my cousins, one of my close friend’s brother, and thousands of other Canadians either in Afghanistan or on their way – are these troops risking their lives for democracy and freedom?

What if the answer is “no?” What if we realize that the regime Canada is supporting is far from democratic (as the farce of the recent elections has clearly shown)? What if it is true that Canada is there for the same reason the U.S. is there, for the same reason the U.S. was, and is, in Central America – to expand the spheres of influence of the Great Powers in the region? And what if, as a brutal bonus, we conclude, as many military experts long ago concluded, that this war is not winnable?

For people of Bruce’s generation these hard questions might be hard to answer. In the 1980s, the progressive movement in Canada was dominated by “left nationalism.” Thousands in Canada understood the horror that was U.S. imperialism and joined movements to oppose it. But at the same time, many of those same people thought that Canada too was a victim of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. was bad, but Canada was good, peace-loving and democratic.

Cockburn’s confusion on Afghanistan represents the confusion of an older generation, looking to find the “good” Canada exporting its values abroad. Canada is at war in Afghanistan, and Canada is not the U.S., so maybe that makes Afghanistan “the good war,” a war to bring “Canadian values” to a far-off land? And besides, this war was problematic when it was conducted by the evil George W. Bush, but now we have the progressive Barack Obama in the White House. Surely Obama’s war is a good war?

Afghanistan is not a good war. The thing that made Afghanistan the wrong war was not that it was being conducted by George W. Bush – it was the wrong war because it was a war for U.S. corporate power. At the end of the day, that is what Bush represents – and it is what Obama continues.

The bitter reality is, that Canada is not one of the countries oppressed by the United States – it is a partner with the United States in keeping the world safe for corporate profits. They have Exxon and General Motors. We have Magna and Research In Motion. The fact of a border does not magically make “our” corporations any less greedy and avaricious than those in the United States. Our government is in bed with these corporations just as much as the U.S. government is in bed with its own corporations. This is what their democracy looks like, and it is not pretty.

Let’s not choose a “good” U.S. imperialism under Obama over a “bad” U.S. imperialism under Bush. Let’s not choose “good” Canada over “evil” United States. Whether we live in Canada or United States, we live in the privileged Global North that for too long has lived off oppressing the impoverished countries of the Global South.

Cockburn’s signature political song from Stealing Fire was, without a doubt, “If I had a Rocket Launcher.” He sang it to “wild applause” to members of Task Force Kandahar, after which – in a grotesque parody of the song and of Cockburn’s whole anti-imperialist past – he was temporarily presented with a rocket launcher by Task Force Kandahar commander General Jonathan Vance.[5]

Let’s not remember Cockburn for his new role as progressive cover for Canada’s imperial adventures abroad. Let’s remember him for his anti-war, anti-imperialist anthems from the 1980s. Let’s remember the helicopters which bring death and destruction to peasants and the poor in Guatemala, Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Here’s your playlist to help in that process.

• If I Had A Rocket Launcher
• Lovers in a Dangerous Time and as performed by The Barenaked Ladies
• Dust and Diesel
• Nicaragua
• Call It Democracy

This article written in memory of anti-war teacher Wayne McCrank, 1960-2009.


© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References


[1] From “Et tu, Brute?” William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” Act III, Scene I, line 77 in Peter Alexander, ed., Tragedies: William Shakespeare (London: Collins, 1971). “Perhaps the most famous words uttered in literature, ‘Et tu, Brute?” (Even you, Brutus?) this expression has come down in history to mean the ultimate betrayal by one’s closest friend.” “Et tu Brute? Shakespearean Quotes,” enotes.com.
[2] “Songs: If I Had A Rocket Launcher,” cockburnproject.net
[3] Bruce Cockburn, Stealing Fire (Toronto: Golden Mountain Music Corp., 1984)
[4] Canadian Press, “Cockburn visits brother in Afghanistan,” Sept. 10, 2009
[5] Canadian Press, “Cockburn visits brother in Afghanistan”

Twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall

August 19, 1989 hundreds of East Germans “attending a demonstration called the Pan-European Picnic, escaped into Austria from Hungary by storming a border gate that had been opened as a symbolic expression of unity.”[1] This was one part of an enormous mass movement which engulfed all of Russian-occupied Eastern Europe in the revolutionary year of 1989. As a result of this pressure, Hungary – then part of the Russian dominated Eastern Bloc – was forced to open its border with Austria, and thousands of East German workers – who could acquire visas to visit Hungary or get to Hungary through Czechoslovakia – took advantage of this hole in the “Iron Curtain” to pour across, into Austria, and from there into West Germany.[2] The pressure of this movement of millions, the pressure of a mass movement for democracy and freedom, ended with the November 1989 physical destruction of the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin. When that wall came down, a new era in world politics began.[3]

Before these momentous events, one theme dominated world politics – the competition between the United States and what was then called the U.S.S.R. – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (which dissolved in 1991). This rivalry was labeled “Cold” only because it did not erupt into a “Hot War” as did the earlier rivalry between Germany and Great Britain, a rivalry which was at the core of the charnel houses of World War I and World War II.

But Cold or Hot – it was terrifying. Three generations grew up in the shadow of the bomb – the nuclear weapons which were deployed in their thousands by both sides in the Cold War – living with the ever-present possibility of nuclear confrontation between the West (led by Washington) and the East (led by Moscow).

The 1980s in Eastern Europe opened with the great working class uprising in Poland in the early 1980s, creating the ten million strong union Solidarność, which by 1989 had been able to push aside the authoritarian Stalinist Communist Party and take governmental office.[4] This was the spark for the mass movements which were to sweep aside Stalinist rule throughout Eastern Europe.

East Germany, like Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, had been run as a one-party state since being incorporated into the Russian sphere of influence after World War II. The Berlin Wall itself had been erected in 1961 to prevent East German workers escaping to the West. Its construction was an open condemnation of the failing of the so-called “Peoples’ Republics” of Eastern Europe. Its fall was a direct result of the democratization movements that were happening throughout Eastern Europe in the 1980s – moving from Poland to Hungary and Czechoslovakia – which allowed a way out for East Germans who wanted to escape authoritarian rule.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of the Moscow-centred bloc and the end of the Cold War. The disappearance of the Russian bloc saw authoritarian regimes dissolve, first in Eastern Europe, then in Russia itself.

Now a story like this, in any other circumstance, would be inspiring for everyone on the left. Socialism began as a campaign for democracy and the right to vote.[5] Socialists are always campaigning for an increase in rights and political freedoms. Socialists have always historically identified with mass workers’ movements such as the one represented by Solidarność, and with movements for democratic rights such as those that swept Eastern Europe in the 1980s.

But this story was different. Russia called itself communist. Its East European satellite states called themselves communist. Liberal politicians and theorists had argued that the Cold War was a contest between capitalism in the west and communism in the east, and most on the left agreed. So in the wake of the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of these “communist” states – the confusion in much of the left was extreme. Accepting that these regimes were, in some way, socialist, post-capitalist or "workers' states" drove many on the left into confusion at what they saw as the victory of the market over the state. Instead of joining in the celebrations, and dancing on the fallen wall, many on the left looked on in horror. By contrast, there was a triumphalism among liberal, pro-capitalist theorists. Francis Fukuyama talked about the “end of history”.[6] The argument was pounded home that 1989 proved the superiority of the market and capitalism over the state and socialism.

There was just one problem. The regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe might have been dominated by the state – but they were in no way socialist. Socialism is not about state power, but about the power of the working class and the oppressed. It is not about the suppression of democracy, but about the extension of democracy from the state to the economy. We need to not just elect members of parliament once every few years, but to elect our bosses, our administrators, our judges.[7] The key institution of socialism is not the state bureaucracy, the Politburo, the Party or the Central Committee. The key institution is the workers’ council – an institution of mass working class democracy and accountability. The outlines of this kind of direct democracy were sketched first by the workers of Paris in 1871, and then again by the workers of Russia in 1905 and 1917. A brilliant but short-lived sketch of a workers’ council state occurred in Budapest, Hungary, during the magnificent 1956 uprising against authoritarian rule and Russian occupation.[8]

Russia had seen viable workers’ councils for a few months after the revolution of 1917. But they had quickly disappeared in the cauldron of civil war, imperialist blockade and resulting starvation. The regime which emerged under the leadership of Joseph Stalin in no way resembled the hopes and dreams of those who toppled the Czar in 1917. It was not socialist but state capitalist.

At the end of World War II, when Russian troops occupied much of Eastern Europe, Stalin installed regimes modeled on his own. These regimes had the label communist. But like Russia they were best understood as state capitalist – economies run by the state, enmeshed in competition with the rest of world capitalism through the mechanism of the arms race.[9]

Those on the left who understood this – those of us who had said “Neither Washington Nor Moscow” through the long Cold War – had supported the great Polish uprising led by Solidarność and did not mourn in 1989, but joined in the celebrations when the wall fell.

Read next – "Eastern Europe: Western Europe’s poor Second Cousin"



© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References


[1] Fernanda Santos, “Recalling the Day that Ripped An Opening in the Iron Curtain,” The New York Times, May 4, 2009, p. A.18
[2] Richard A. Leiby, The Unification of Germany (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 28
[3] For a useful collection of background material, see The Center for History and New Media, “Making the History of 1989” (Fairfax, Virginia: George Mason University).
[4] For a gripping account of the origins of Solidarnosç, see Colin Barker and Kara Weber, Solidarność: From Gdansk to Military Repression, (London: Bookmarks, 1982).
[5] In the 19th century in Britain, for instance, socialists trace their movements origin to the struggle for the franchise led by the Chartists. See John Charlton, The Chartists: the first national workers’ movement (London: Pluto Press, 1997). For an overview of the centrality of political democracy to the left and the workers’ movement (again limited to a focus on Britain), see Paul Foot’s last book, Paul Foot, The Vote: How it Was Won and How it was Undermined (London: Penguin, 2005). Lars Lih has documented that the struggle for political democracy was far more central to the political orientation of the Russian Bolsheviks than is commonly understood. See Lars T. Lih, Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (Boston: Brill, 2006), especially Chapter 2, “A Russian Erfurtian,” (pp. 111-158).
[6] Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” National Interest, Summer, 1989
[7] This idea goes back to the great democratic experiment of the Paris Commune in 1871. Writing about this, Karl Marx described the “from below” institutions of mass democracy created by the Paris workers as “essentially a working-class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour.” (Karl Marx, The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works Volume 51 (New York: International Publishers, 1986), p 334. The necessary basis for working class emancipation, then, is the direct democracy of the producing class. Through this political act – the completion of the democratic revolution, if you will – the producing class will be able to begin working out how to end economic exploitation.
[8] See Peter Fryer, Hungarian Tragedy (London: Index Books, 1997) and Chris Harman, Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe (London: Pluto Press, 1974).
[9] Two Russian Marxists, Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin, provided the theoretical foundations for the theory of state capitalism. Trotsky himself used the term “degenerated workers’ state” to analyze Russia in the 1930s. But two of his most important books from the last years of his life are central in the understanding of the counter-revolution which shaped the new Stalinist regime emerging from the wreckage of Civil War. See Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company Inc., 1937), and the unfinished work (unfinished because of Trotsky’s assassination by a Stalinist agent) Trotsky, Stalin: an appraisal of the man and his influence (London: Hollis and Carter, 1947). Bukharin’s key work was Imperialism and World Economy (which really should be translated as World Economy and Imperialism), newly republished in Phil Gasper, ed. Imperialism and War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009). Leon Trotsky’s one-time administrative assistant, Raya Dunayevskaya, was one of the first Marxists to develop a worked out view conceptualizing the U.S.S.R. as a form of state capitalism. See Raya Dunayevskaya, “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a Capitalist Society,” Internal Discussion Bulletin of the Workers’ Party, March 1941, and Dunayevskaya, “The Nature of the Russian Economy,” The New International, December 1946/January 1947. She was joined in this viewpoint by one of the 20th century’s most respected Marxist theorists, C.L.R. James. See C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, “State Capitalism and World Revolution”, 1950. In the last decades of the 20th century, the theorist most closely identified with the theory of state capitalism was Ygael Gluckstein (Tony Cliff). See Tony Cliff, Russia: A Marxist Analysis (London: International Socialism, 1964).

Shed no tears for the SPP

Finally it has been publicly (if quietly) acknowledged that the so-called “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” (SPP) is no more. Stuart Trew of the Council of Canadians drew our attention to the obituary, finally posted on the official SPP site.[1] Truth be told, the SPP has been dead for a couple of years. The following obituary was written in October, 2007[2] – and if you ask yourself why this death been kept so secret, you open the door to many insights into the current impasse of neoliberalism.

OCTOBER 13, 2007 – In an extraordinary article, published in The Globe and Mail, long-time Globe columnist John Ibbitson declared that, according to the Trilateral Commission, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) “is defunct”.[3]

What a remarkable statement. It was just August of this year that thousands demonstrated in Ottawa and Montebello, Quebec, against the SPP summit. The anti-SPP movement rightly identified that the SPP was trying to codify the neoliberal assault on social services, wages and the environment, an assault that has been a hallmark of governments in the west since the 1980s.

Some are seeing the announced death of the SPP as a smokescreen. But we should take the report quite seriously. The Trilateral Commission, founded in 1973 by one of the biggest of the big capitalists – David Rockefeller – along with longtime adviser to U.S. imperialism, Zbigniew Brzezinski[4] – has been an important think tank for world capitalism for more than 30 years.

It is possible that the news out of the Trilateral Commission reflects the other aspect of the SPP – that its announcement, in 2005 was not just an attempt to continue the neoliberal assault, but also an attempt to save face after the collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

2005, the year of the SPP’s birth, was after all the same year the FTAA was supposed to come into effect. The FTAA was designed to be an institutional embodiment of the neoliberalism held so dear by successive U.S. and Canadian administrations – a neoliberal hemisphere under U.S. hegemony.

But the FTAA was made impossible with the rise of mass radical movements throughout the south of our hemisphere. The crucial turning point was the April 2002 attempted coup against the radical nationalist government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

Chávez had been the only head of state at the FTAA summit in Quebec City in 2001, to oppose the project. Eliminating him from the scene would clear the way for the FTAA steamroller. But one million of the poor masses in Caracas made that impossible when they surrounded the presidential palace, forced a split in the armed forces, and forced the coup leaders to back down.

That opened the floodgates to a massive upsurge in radical movements in South America, including the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the creation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)[5] as an explicitly anti-neoliberal alternative to the FTAA.[6]

The FTAA was the real prize sought after by the U.S. and Canadian governments, and since its demise, they have been unsure of which way to turn in their attempt to pursue their agenda. John Ibbitson says that the reported demise of the SPP “is very bad news.” He is wrong. It is a sign of confusion and disorientation at the very centres of power in the leading capitalist countries of our hemisphere – the U.S. and Canada.

We need to take advantage of this confusion, and build movements in solidarity with the popular forces in the Global South, forces which have begun to carve out an alternative to neoliberalism.


© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References


[1] See Stuart Trew, “The SPP is dead, so where’s the champagne?” rabble.ca, August 19, 2009 and “SPP.gov: A North American Partnership”
[2] Paul Kellogg, “Is the SPP Dead?” in Paul Kellogg, PolEconJournal 2001-2007 (Toronto: authors' collection), October 13, 2007
[3] John Ibbitson, “Say goodbye to North America’s special partnership,” The Globe and Mail, October 10, 2007, p. A.21
[4] Holly Sklar, “Trilateralism: Managing Dependence And Democracy – An Overview,” in Holly Sklar, ed., Trilateralism. The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980), pp. 1-2
[5] Since renamed “Bolivarian Alliance for Our Americas,” see “ALBA changes its name to Alliance,” ACN, Cuban News Agency, June 25, 2009
[6] Paul Kellogg, “Regional Integration in Latin America: Dawn of an Alternative to Neoliberalism?” in New Political Science, Volume 29, Number 2, June 2007, pp. 187-209

Missing the point on boycotting apartheid

Rick Salutin, well-respected columnist for The Globe and Mail, and rabble.ca has published a criticism of the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel.[1] Below is one of the responses posted to his column when it appeared on rabble.[2] • It is not credible for Rick Salutin to paint all boycott campaigns with the same brush. U.S. sanctions against Cuba are an attack by an imperialist country on a small oppressed nation. U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s cost hundreds of thousands of lives and were the preliminary act in the horror that became the Iraq war.

The civil society movement to isolate South Africa through a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions was, by contrast, a movement against imperialism and war – a call to isolate a racist, sub-imperialist power. This is of a kind with the civil society movement to isolate Israel through a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions. Israel is a sub-imperialist power that is built on the basis of the racist exclusion and oppression of the Palestinians. The issue is -- are we with imperialism and its allies, or with the oppressed and their allies in the fight against imperialism?

Salutin then changes the goal posts and questions the efficacy of such campaigns. That is something that has been discussed at length in the social movements. Very few maintain that BDS alone brought down apartheid. The key factor in the fall of apartheid was the generations-long struggle by the black people of South Africa themselves – from the uprising in Soweto to the magnificent illegal miners' strikes. This movement received considerable support from others in Africa (and from the armies of Cuba), engaged in their own struggles against colonialism and racism. Finally, to the extent those of us in the West could play a role, it was through exposing our governments' and corporations' complicity by calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

And "self-righteous language on each side"? In what way can the use of the term "apartheid" be equated with the Israeli state banning the use of the term "nakba?" Both express a truth – that the Israeli state is based on the racist exclusion of the majority of the Palestinians. The reality of the mass ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians does in fact make 1948 a catastrophe (nakba), just as the ongoing exclusion, fragmentation, isolation and separation of the Palestinians is a fact that deserves the label "apartheid". What unites both these terms is the way in which their use has been greeted with hysteria. We must not use the label "apartheid" or the term "nakba" – because these terms make it difficult for a complacent political class to continue to wallow in 61 years of willful ignorance about the reality of Israel's oppression of the Palestinians.


© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References


[1] Rick Salutin, “Mr. Cohen doesn’t do Ramallah,” The Globe and Mail, July 24, 2009 .
[2] Salutin, “Mr. Cohen doesn’t do Ramallah,” rabble.ca, July 24, 2009

Toronto city workers’ strike: Silence on the left strengthens the right

During Toronto’s historic 39-day city workers’ strike, the left-wing members of Toronto’s city council at worst sided openly with the mayor, at best sat silently, and in the process opened the door for a newly-invigorated right-wing. It was a débacle several years in the making.

David Miller – Toronto’s mayor – was swept into office in 2003. A long-time member of the NDP, Miller – with a solid caucus of NDP and progressive councilors behind him – was a welcome change from the long run of pro-business Mel Lastman. Without question it has been a much better situation for workers and the poor in Toronto, to have a council headed by a mayor and council with links to the unions and to the NDP.

But there was always a tension. Where does progressive change have its roots? Do we fundamentally change our position in society through the good offices of friendly progressive councilors? Or is the foundation of our progress the mass action of the workers and social movements? Any examination of history will show that it is the latter – the mass movements – from which we win our gains. But there is a tendency, once in office, to forget the mass movements on which all progressive politicians stand, and to develop the illusion that progress comes from the work of a small progressive elite. This was reflected in the quiet withdrawal of Miller from the NDP in 2007. He was choosing the mayor’s office over the workers’ movement.[1]

Enter the confrontation between Miller and the city inside and outside workers. The 24,000 members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) locals 79 and 416 – were asking for a modest pay increase. But the issue around which the dispute came to revolve, was an old provision in their collective agreement, allowing retiring workers to “cash in” unused sick days.

This is a very small benefit – a few thousand dollars at the end of a long career is a small price to pay workers for years of service. It is also a benefit shared by police and fire-fighters in the city – a point that few opponents of the strike bothered to mention. But it became the rallying cry for an extremely organized anti-union right-wing on City Council.[2]

The so-called “Responsible Government Group” went into action from the first minutes of the strike. Profiled in the press again, and again, and again, right wing councilors like Case Ootes and Denzil Minnan-Wong, a pro-business section of council demagogically portrayed itself as “friends of the common person,” the working people inconvenienced by the withdrawal of city services.[3]

It is not hard to respond to this kind of conservative union-bashing.

• Where was the right-wing when we were fighting for childcare?
• Where was the right-wing when we were fighting for improved pension benefits?
• Where was the right-wing when we were fighting for improved health and safety?

They were of course, nowhere. But given a chance to lead an attack on Toronto’s unions – these right-wing councilors suddenly discovered their concern for ordinary people, putting aside for a moment their cocktail parties with Real Estate developers.

But for this simple response to the right wing to get a hearing, the response had to be organized by the left on council. There were people who were in a position to do just that. Adam Giambrone, Janet Davis, Paula Fletcher, Pam McConnell, Howard Moscoe – these are all individuals whose entire political careers have been bound up with the left and the workers’ movement. What we needed was a “Solidarity Caucus” to meet and counter the nonsense coming from the pro-business councillors.

But that would have meant breaking from David Miller. It would have meant showing up on the picket lines (which Moscoe to his credit did) and supporting the striking workers against the position of the mayor. It would have meant a political divide. So instead of solidarity, we got silence.

Sometimes it was worse than silence. July 8, Miller emerged from a closed-door briefing with council where by all reports, councilors – left and right – were united against the workers and in support of Miller.[4]

We risk paying a steep price for this in the months to come. There is contempt and hatred for Miller in the wake of the strike. But the most visible voice articulating this anger has been the pro-business section of council.

We know where this can lead, those of us who remember the years of then NDPer Bob Rae as premier of Ontario. He led a sharp attack on workers’ rights through the “Social Contract.” But NDP members of the legislature would not break from Rae. So the anti-Rae sentiment was captured by the Tories, leading to the brutal years of Mike Harris in office.[5]

Let’s not make the same mistake. We need a left on council and outside council to stand up and challenge Miller for his anti-union stance. We need the anger against Miller to be captured by the left and not the right.

An important step in this direction was the decision by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council to refuse to invite Miller to the annual Labour Day parade. A strike is a line in the sand. Miller stood on the wrong side, and must now pay the price.


© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References


[1] Donovan Vincent, “Miller won’t back any candidates,” Toronto Star, Sept. 9, 2008, p. A.16. The drift away from the NDP was visible much earlier. In 2006 Miller backed Liberal John Godfrey in that year’s federal election.
[2] John Bonnar, “Incomplete information turns the public against CUPE strikers,” rabble.ca, July 17, 2009
[3] Allison Hanes, “ ‘It’s getting harder with every day’; Councillors facing prospect of a long civic workers’ strike,” National Post, July 18, 2009, p. A.15 and Hanes, “Poll serves as warning to pols,” National Post, July 22, 2009, p. A. 10
[4] Brodie Fenlon, Jennifer Lewington, “Council determined not to yield as unions threaten long strike,” The Globe and Mail, July 9, 2009, p. A.10 and Alison Hanes, “Council supports city stance; United Front,” National Post, July 9, 2009, p. A. 12.
[5] For an overview, see Robert MacDermid and Greg Albo, “Divided Province, Growing Protests: Ontario Moves Right,” in Keith Brownsey and Michael Howlett, eds. The Provincial State in Canada: Politics in the Provinces and Territories, Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2001, pp. 163-202.

May 1919: When the workers ran Winnipeg

Ninety years ago today, May 15 1919, at 11 a.m., the Winnipeg General Strike began. Until the Quebec General Strike of 1972, the 1919 strike stood as the most profound class confrontation in Canadian history. The article here is based on a talk delivered 10 years ago, on the 80th anniversary of the strike. • Workers’ power – the working class of the world sweeping away the corporate directors, the financiers and the back room boys of the state apparatus – workers running the world without the bosses. It is an inspiring vision. And when we examine a page of Canadian working class history, it is clear that, in the right conditions, the vision can become a reality. Eighty years ago this month that page was written in the 41-day Winnipeg General Strike.

It began Thursday May 15, 1919, as a near-unanimous show of support by the workers of Winnipeg for their co-workers in the building and metal trades.[1] The demands of these tradesmen were very humble. The Metal Trades Council struck May 2 for shorter hours (a 9-hour day!), a wage increase and union recognition. The Building Trades Council had struck a day earlier over similar issues. The economic demands were modest enough in a situation where wages, throughout World War One, had not kept pace with inflation. Canadian socialist Ross Dowson, writing 31 years after the strike, said that between 1914 and 1919, wages had gone up only 18 per cent, while prices had skyrocketed by 80 per cent.[2]

But for the employers, it was not the economic issues that were central. This was the first attempt by both the Building and Metal Trades Councils to represent building and metal workers industry-wide. Industry-wide bargaining gives the workers much greater power than bargaining shop by shop, plant by plant and was to prove one of the biggest issues in the great industrial unionizing drives of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) in the 1930s and 1940s. The Winnipeg metals and trades employers wanted to end industry-wide bargaining before it got started, so they refused even to negotiate with the two councils.

GENERAL STRIKE

So the two trades struck, and on May 15, all 12,000 unionized workers in Winnipeg went on a sympathy general strike in their support, to be joined within a few days by all other 15,000 wage-workers in Winnipeg – organized, unorganized, women and men. Virtually every working person in the city went out on a general strike; 35,000 workers who, with their families, represented the vast majority of Winnipeg's 170,000 people. "It wasn't just the trade unionists who threw down their tools and walked off the job," said Fred Tipping, socialist and one of the strike leaders. "It was workers everywhere. There was no strike pay for anyone. They had nothing to live on,"[3] and still they went on strike.

The breadth of the strike is difficult for us to imagine whose only experience with a general strike is the one-day variety of October, 1976 or the series of one-day rotating strikes during Ontario’s Days of Action. Even the police, by a vote of 149 to 11, joined the strike. But with that vote began a new dimension to the strike. The police voted to go on strike, but stayed on the job at the request of the newly constituted Strike Committee. This committee was composed of the executive of the Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council (TLC), five rank and file members of the council, and three delegates from each and every union in the city, and as the strike progressed, it began to function more and more like the city's government.

At the request of the Strike Committee: waterworks employees went back to work to maintain sufficient pressure for domestic use; staff was supplied to the hospitals; and after they met with the frightened (and powerless) members of the old City Council, milk and bread delivery carts made their rounds through the city with large signs on their doors, BY AUTHORITY OF THE STRIKE COMMITTEE.

The Women's Labor League set up a kitchen financed by donations and collections taken at mass meetings to feed women strikers free and supply them with funds for room and rent. Anyone without funds and with a ticket from the Strike Relief Committee was given free meals – 1,200 to 1,500 meals were served daily. By authority of the Strike Committee, a daily paper, the Western Labor News was started up. Without the authority of the strike Committee, nothing moved in Winnipeg.

In these events is one of the most significant lessons of the strike. The working class downed tools and closed down the city of Winnipeg in defiance of their employers and the law. And then, through their own committees, their own organizations, began to open the city up again. For over a month, the city of Winnipeg was effectively under workers' control: not to the extent of challenging political power – the Winnipeg workers never attempted that – but to the extent of keeping a city functioning and alive in siege-conditions.

CLASS and the STATE

Through the Citizens' Committee of 1,000 the employers began to regroup. David Jay Bercuson describes this committee as mainly comprising members of organizations such as the Board of Trade, the Manufacturers' Association and the Bar Association. They represented Winnipeg’s social, economic and political elite.[4] Their first tactic was to try and divide the ranks of the strikers. They called a meeting of the war veterans (who looked like likely allies – two months previously they had rioted and raided the Socialist Party headquarters in the city). The Citizens’ Committee tried to get the veterans to oppose the “alien, bolshevik” strike. Instead, the veterans used the meeting to declare their support for the strike and elect delegates to the Strike Committee.

This made it very clear that such attempts at "divide and conquer" were fruitless. Increasingly, the employers turned more and more to various levels of government for support.

First the municipal government stepped in. The Police Commission instructed police to sign a pledge indicating that they would not join any sympathetic strike or affiliate to any labour body. None signed, all were fired. Next the federal government stepped in. Throughout 1918, a hotly debated issue had been whether or not public employees should have the right to strike, an issue, 80 years later, with which we are all too familiar. Senator Robertson, acting on the authority of Tory Arthur Meighen (then Minister of Justice, soon to be Prime Minister), called a meeting of all postal employees, all of whom were on strike. But in good postal worker fashion, the meeting was boycotted. Undaunted, Robertson still managed to hand them an ultimatum to return to work on May 26, to never again take part in a strike, to sever all connections with the Trades and Labour Council – or lose their jobs, their pensions and their right to ever again work on a government job. Only 16 returned to work. A similar ultimatum was handed to women strikers at the Telephone Exchange with similar results. Once the strike was smashed, the state held true to its word – 403 postal employees, 119 telephone workers and 53 firemen got the sack.

But that is jumping ahead. While the strike was on, as other tactics failed, the various levels of government more and more resorted to force. The fired municipal police were replaced by some 2,000 vigilantes. On June 6, these were reinforced through the federal government by units of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (RNWP), predecessors of today’s RCMP. That same day, an amendment was passed to the Immigration Act by the Ottawa government, in such a manner, that it should forever put to rest the impression that our bureaucracies can only move at a snail's pace. The amendment made it possible for Canadians not born in Canada to be arrested on charges of sedition, tried in secret without being present at the enquiry without access to a regular court, trial by jury or appeal to any court or judge, and deported to the land of their birth. The amendment (directed at the strike leaders, some of whom were British immigrants) was given the necessary three readings and given the Governor General's assent in an unheard of 45 minutes.

With the weight of the federal government thrown into the balance, the strike was defeated. On June 16, ten leaders of the strike were arrested in line with the Immigration Act amendment. On Saturday, June 21 – after a nation-wide storm of protest – six of the arrested strike leaders were released on bail, the last victory the strikers were to have. In Winnipeg: that same day, 10,000 veterans massed to stage a silent, peaceful parade in support of the strike. The peaceful parade of the unarmed veterans was to turn into the strike’s “Bloody Saturday.” It was dispersed by the armed forces of the special constables and the RNWP. Armed with clubs, the mounted police charged the demonstrators, and were met by a hail of stones. The next time they charged, they used guns, killing one demonstrator and injuring 30. With clubs and baseball bats, the “specials” finished the mopping up. The Western Labor News was banned and on June 25, the Strike Committee called off the strike. It petered to an end about one week later.

But if the strike was defeated in terms of its immediate demands, in another sense it was a great success. It was a magnificent school for tens of thousands of young workers.

The strike showed that when militant action is taken, there could be massive support and sympathy all across the country. On May 20, organized labour in Toronto voted 17,700 to 6,250 in favour of a sympathetic general strike in support of Winnipeg (which was unfortunately, never called). On May 26, 41 unions in Calgary walked out. On June 2, 42 unions went out in Vancouver. Within days, the whole city was shut down, a general strike with its own strike committee and aspects of workers’ control not unlike those in Winnipeg. On June 23, 5,000 Victoria metal trades workers struck in sympathy with Winnipeg. On June 18, New Westminster went out in a general strike. General sympathetic strikes of at least some duration occurred in “...all other Western cites, the Lakehead, Toronto and some Nova Scotia points.”[5] In Calgary, workers called for a Canada-wide strike. Union after union, local after local, called upon the Dominion Labor Congress for one-day strikes, or for an indefinite general strike.

The strike showed that unity could be created between the “two solitudes” of English-Canadian and Québécois workers. “On May 28, a mass meeting was held at Maisonneuve market in the East End of Montreal, bringing together English-Canadian, immigrant and French-Canadian workers. Many of them were strikers from the Canadian Vickers plant.” The 2,000 in attendance unanimously passed a motion, read first in French and then in English, which pledged “... moral and financial support to our brothers [on strike in Winnipeg] in order that they may secure a complete victory in the present struggle; and in the event of a general strike being called in Montreal, all here present are prepared to bear their share of the burden.”[6]

But the strike also revealed a stark divide between ordinary workers in the ranks of the movement, and the union bureaucracy which dominates the movement. A nation-wide general strike was possible, and could have led to victory for the Winnipeg strikers. But in spite of repeated calls for solidarity action, Tom Moore, president of the Canadian Council of Trades and Labour (CCTL), remained silent, and then two days after Bloody Saturday in a letter addressed to the Winnipeg Council, “formally withdrew his support for the general strike.”[7] Some of the leaders who didn’t remain silent, probably should have. M.T. Provost, a union leader in Montreal, justified his refusal to call a sympathy strike saying: “We are not Bolsheviks nor anarchists. What the others are complaining about doesn’t concern us ... As far as we are concerned, there will be no sympathy strike. We will fight that till our death.”[8]

It also showed the class nature of Canada and the reality of its “impartial” state. It painted in clear letters the word PROFIT over the democratic façade of society. It showed, when it came to the crunch, democracy, freedoms, living standards, even human lives would be sacrificed to maintain the sacred profits of the capitalists and their state. The 1919 strike showed, in other words, that to win workers were going to have to challenge not just economically, but politically as well.

This lesson was learned in different ways by different people. J.S. Woodsworth was one of those arrested in 1919. Two years later, he was elected to the House of Commons, and would of course go on to be central in the founding of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), predecessor to the NDP. “When the Meighen Government arrested me,” he said, “it nominated me for Ottawa.”[9]

Less well known are the young workers who went through the school of Winnipeg, and became part of the early years of the Communist Party of Canada, a party which was to be a the centre of the great industrial union drives of the 1930s. There is no question that without the deep political lessons of Winnipeg 1919, there would have been a much weaker foundation for the radical left of the 1920s, and the unionization drives led by that left in the 1930s.

The society we have today is one where profit still trumps democracy, where union bureaucrats still sit idly while workers’ suffer, and where it is still necessary to forge political alternatives based on the self-activity of the oppressed. We should learn well the lessons of Winnipeg so we will be ready for the Winnipegs which lie ahead.


© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] Information for the article comes from three main sources. Norman Penner, ed., Winnipeg 1919: The strikers’ own history of the Winnipeg General Strike, (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1975): David Jay Bercuson Confrontation at Winnipeg (Montreal: Queen's University Press, 1974): and Bercuson, "The Winnipeg General Strike" in Irving Abella ed., On Strike (Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 1974). See also articles in Labour/Le Travail 13, Spring, 1984 and Paul Jackson, History of the General Strike: Winnipeg 1919 (Montreal: Red Flag Publications, 1979).
[2] Ross Dowson, "The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919", in Labor Challenge, June 1950, p. 4.
[3] Fred Tipping, interviewed in Canadian Dimension, June 1969, p. 11.
[4] Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg, p. 121.
[5] H. Clare Pentland, "Fifty Years After", in Canadian Dimension, June 1969, P. 16.
[6] Cited in Jackson, p. 3.
[7] Jackson, p. 3.
[8] Cited in Jackson, p. 12.
[9] Cited in Penner, p. viii.

Norman Penner – A life for the struggle

May 3, close to 200 people crowded into Glendon Hall in Toronto to pay tribute to the life and work of Norman Penner, who sadly passed away April 16 at the age of 88.[1] There could not have been a more appropriate month for such an event. May is after all, the month where every year we celebrate May 1, International Workers’ Day. It is also the month where the great Winnipeg General Strike began, 90 years ago, a strike that remains the defining moment of the Canadian working class movement, and a strike which was brought back to life for a new generation, in large part through the efforts of Norman Penner. For this alone, Penner’s life would be worthy of commemoration. We were reminded May 3 that there was so much more – a life genuinely lived for the struggle.

Penner’s father, Jacob Penner, had been a leading socialist in his own right, and as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Canada, an opponent of conscription during the slaughter of World War I. When the Winnipeg General Strike erupted in 1919, Penner was one of the strike leaders.[2]

Norman – born into a family of the left – carried on the tradition from a very early age. We heard, at the memorial, of his 1930’s activism as a teenager – speaking to mass audiences, campaigning in defence of among others, his father, when the city of Winnipeg was trying to strip the now communist Jacob Penner, of his elected seat on Winnipeg’s city council.

Norman himself would become a leading member of the party. But he would not let organizational loyalty trump principles. When the supposedly “communist” Russian tanks moved in to crush the workers’ uprising in Hungary in 1956 – the same year that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev exposed the crimes of Joseph Stalin to a stunned international left – Penner resigned the Communist Party, even though that meant leaving behind his employer in a decade of intense anti-communism.

He found a way to make a living as probably the only Marxist electric heating salesman in Canada. In the mid-1960s, he set out on a university career, acquiring his degrees, and from 1972 until his retirement 24 years later, teaching in the Political Science department at Glendon College, part of York University in Toronto.

It was at Glendon as a professor, that Penner had his biggest impact. In 1973, he edited a riveting book on the Winnipeg General Strike, bringing back to life, in the words of the strikers themselves, that defining moment in Canadian labour history. In 1977 he wrote a careful and balanced assessment of the Canadian Left, that remains indispensable reading for any who aspire to fight for social change in this country. Perhaps more important than his books, however, were his classes, where with patience and intelligence – and humour – he would genuinely engage with young people from a new generation, tell them about the lessons from the past, and most importantly, listen to the new insights that every new generation brings to the social movements.

It is this latter quality that set Penner apart from many in his generation – the capacity to listen. While many from the old left, shaped by the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression, were too often suspicious of the long-haired radicals of the 1960s and 1970s, Penner found real joy in their company. He would have loved the fact that in Toronto, the day before his memorial, young radicals of this generation, members of No One Is Illegal, had led a spirited May Day march through the streets of the city, taking over Yonge Street for a period, draping banners off the Eaton Centre, and then joining up with members of the Tamil Community, demonstrating against the terrible genocide underway in their homeland. He would have known that today – as in 1919, as in the 1930s, as in the 1960s – the future of the social movements is in the hands of the impatient youth, much more than it is in the tidy offices of this or that union or party bureaucracy.

His grandson, Dylan Penner – himself an anti-war activist in the tradition of Norman and Jacob – in one of many moving tributes given by family and friends, gave us all the proper framework in which to remember the life of this remarkable man. In the words of Industrial Worker of the World activist and songwriter Joe Hill – “don’t mourn, organize.”[3]

Books by Norman Penner, available from online booksellers

Winnipeg 1919: The Strikers’ Own History of the Winnipeg General Strike (1973)
The Canadian Left: A critical analysis (1977)
From Protest to Power: Social Democracy in Canada 1900-Present (1992)
Canadian communism: The Stalin years and beyond (1988)

© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] See “Professor Emeritus Norman Penner was a Glendon mainstay,” YFILE, April 24, 2009 and “Norman Penner,” The Toronto Star, April 25, 2009
[2] There is some information about Jacob Penner on wikipedia. His story, and the story of his wife Rose Penner, has been documented on video (Cathy Gulkin, “A Glowing Dream: The Story of Jacob & Rose Penner,” Episode 33, A Scattering of Seeds: The Creation of Canada, Season III, White Pine Pictures, 1999)
[3] See “Joe Hill, (1879-1915),” AFL-CIO: America’s Union Movement; and “The Joe Hill Project,” www.joehill.org

Coalition gives Harper new life

We now know that there was nothing spontaneous about the coalition gambit initiated by Jack Layton and the NDP in the dying weeks of 2008. Far from the “grass-roots” affair as it was painted by the NDP press room, the coalition idea was nurtured “on secret NDP ‘scenario committees’ during the past three federal campaigns.”[1] The fact that it was a backroom deal has now exploded in Layton’s face.

Had it been driven from the grass-roots, the NDP would have been looking down, responding to its base. But the NDP was doing the opposite. Layton was looking up, to a deal with the Liberals – indistinguishable from the Tories as a corporate-backed party. Part of the deal he had to strike was to put on the shelf both the war on Afghanistan and increasing corporate taxes. This made it impossible for the NDP to appeal to its base – because the base of the party is anti-war and anti-corporate.

But while Layton was looking up and disorganizing his base, Harper was doing the opposite. He knows his base precisely, and in unleashing a vicious Quebec-bashing campaign, he suddenly had an army of reactionaries ready to do battle.

And then Harper found out he didn’t need these bigots. A much bigger wave was coming his way, a wave of revulsion. Ordinary people instinctively dislike secretive backroom deals. The smell of opportunism was all over the coalition, and suddenly, this translated into an evaporation of support for the NDP and the Liberals in English Canada, and a sudden surge in support for the Tories.

Three polls done in the immediate aftermath of the coalition announcement had Harper sitting in majority territory. The Strategic Counsel had the Tories at 45 percent nationally, Ipsos Reid had them at 46 percent, and an Ekos poll gave the Tories a crushing 20 point lead over the Liberals. Just weeks before the Tories had managed to win only 37.6 percent of the vote.[2]

The scary thing is – this surge in the polls was in spite of a collapse for Tory support in Quebec. The Quebec bashing in the first Tory counter-attack had the effect of destroying the Quebec base Harper had been trying to build. According to the Strategic Counsel, while Tory support was down to 18 percent in Quebec, it had soared to 53 percent in the rest of Canada, including 61 percent support in the West, and 50 percent support in the previously Liberal stronghold of Ontario.[3]

These numbers won’t last. Stephen Harper is unlikely to stay at these levels of support for very long. But what this Tory surge exposes very clearly is the folly of the Coalition strategy. A backroom deal with one of Canada’s corporate parties did not build the NDP – it built support for Harper and his Tories.


© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References



[1] “Inside a crisis that shook the nation,” Macleans.ca, December 12, 2008
[2] “Canada’s Harper has crushing poll lead on crisis,” December 5, 2008
[3] Strategic Counsel, “Harper’s Conservatives versus Liberal-NDP Coalition: What is the State of Canadian Public Opinion?”, December 4, 2008

Gaza: Occupation is still the issue

The war in Gaza is a completely unequal contest. Israel – receiving billions of dollars in military aid every year from the United States – has one of the most sophisticated killing machines in the world. Gaza is an open-air prison, whose only outlet to the outside world for months has been through tunnels dug deep beneath the border with Egypt. Rockets fired from Gaza have killed a handful of Israelis. Israel’s offensive has killed more than 600 – including the slaughter of 40 at a U.N. school.[1] Yet in spite of these facts, the NDP official statement on the war acts as if both sides are equally to blame.

Canada’s New Democrats “condemn the unacceptable escalation of violence in the Middle East,” the statement begins. This escalation is about “airstrikes by Israel” and the “ongoing rocket attacks”.[2] Not a word about occupation. Not a word about Israel’s strangulation of Gaza. Not a word about Hamas being democratically elected. Not a word about Harper being the first to jump on a boycott of Hamas, giving a green light to Israel.

Israel, Stephen Harper, the United States, F16 fighter planes, tanks, artillery, pilotless drones – against a few hundred Hamas fighters with some rockets. In what way are these two equal sides? Israel has stolen the homes of the Palestinians, forced them into a strip of land by the sea, is now mercilessly pounding them, but “New Democrats believe that Canada must pursue a balanced approach to the Middle East crisis.”

So let’s have a balanced approach. Let’s always tell the truth when we talk about the war in Palestine – the balanced, careful truth. That truth is that Israel is occupying Palestinian land, is expanding its settlements illegally, is carving up what remains of Palestinian land in a way little different from the way South Africa carved up the Bantustans under apartheid, and that until this illegal occupation ends, there will be no peace.



© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References



[1] For facts on the war, see Electronic Intifada
[2] “New Democrat statement on the situation in the Middle East,” December 29, 2008

Dear Jack: Do you really want this war?

Open Letter to Jack Layton, federal leader of the NDP • Everywhere I go they are burying Canadian soldiers. Walking down Donlands Avenue December 12, there were the cameras and the men in uniform – waiting outside the Metamorphosis Greek Orthodox Church for the funeral of Private Demetrios Diplaros, killed in Afghanistan the week before.[1] Back at work in Peterborough, preparations were underway at Calvary Church for the funeral of Private Michael Freeman, killed in Afghanistan.[2] But this is the war that you say you want to inherit.

Your only Quebec MP, Thomas Mulcair has told the press, "the NDP is putting aside its differences that have existed historically with the Liberals on such issues as Afghanistan."[3] And Jack, your coalition government – if it gets its way – will stay in office till 2011. Will there be another 100 Canadians killed on its watch? Another 200? And how many thousands of Afghanis?

Knowing that the NDP was calling for an immediate troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, was an enormous boost of confidence for thousands. Your actions have completely betrayed those thousands.

Last election, young people – the young people I see every day as a teacher, the young people that you and I both saw when we were both teachers at Ryerson University – just didn’t care about a choice between Harper, Dion or yourself. They didn’t see themselves in any of the parties. But I was able to tell them – in good conscience – that there was a big difference between your party and the others. Your party was committed to bringing the troops home – the troops sent to war by the Liberals, and dying in increasing numbers under the Conservatives. That argument worked. Young people hate this war. So when they were told that there was one party calling for an end to the war, they voted for you.

You have now lost their vote. You have sent them the message that principles like stopping a murderous, barbaric war are not as important – as what? What exactly did you get from your deal with the Liberals? Afghanistan is on the shelf. Taxing the corporations is on the shelf. The only thing you seem to have “won” is the promise of six cabinet seats. A religious man who greatly influenced me – an anti-war minister of the United Church – would have known what to call this – a mess of pottage. Look it up.

The coalition gambit was a top-down bureaucratic, back-room deal – and has been perceived as such by millions of ordinary Canadians who are recoiling in horror. The terrible effect of this backroom coalition adventure has been to bring Stephen Harper back from the dead – he’s soaring in the polls – and to accelerate the arrival of Michael Ignatieff as head of the Liberals – the same Michael Ignatieff who supported George W. Bush’s war on Iraq. Do you really want to sit at the cabinet table with Michael Ignatieff in the chair?

The war has come home, Jack. That funeral on Donlands was in your riding in Toronto, the riding that has time and again come out to the polls and sent you to Ottawa. If you say “troops out now” you have something to say to those folks. If you say “we’ll talk about it in 2011,” you have nothing to say that is any different from the Harper Tories.

Whatever. The movement goes on without you. We’ll be demonstrating April 4 in Toronto and in dozens of other cities chanting “troops out now!” You’re welcome to join us. There will be thousands of other NDP members there with us. But don’t expect a very warm welcome. On those marches, being against the war is a principle, not a bargaining chip.


© 2009 Paul Kellogg

References

[1] “A hero’s farewell,” Toronto Sun, December 12, 2008
[2] “Holidays delay Peterborough soldier’s funeral,” thestar.com, January 2, 2009
[3] Murray Brewster, “NDP will not oppose Afghan war while in coalition,” Canadian Press, December 3, 2008