[Marxism] The rise and fall of the NPI - lessons for the radical Left

[eugene <eugene@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The rise and fall of the NPI - lessons for the radical Left
by Nathan Rao
New Socialist
June 2004
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ttp://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/extra/d0609nr.htm

The rapid rise and fall of the New Politics Initiative (NPI) is rich with
lessons for the radical Left. This is so for contradictory reasons. On the
one hand, in the more promising and fluid days that followed the April 2001
protests at Quebec City, the NPI was able to attract broad support for a
strategy aimed at building a new activist Left party in the country. For
their part, the various components of the radical Left had no comparable
strategy and were easily relegated to the political sidelines. On the other
hand, the NPI's dramatic collapse highlighted the weakness of its priority
orientation to the NDP.

The wave of protest and radicalization associated with Seattle, Quebec City
and Genoa effectively came to an end some time ago -- in the USA and Canada
at least. The "chilling effect" of the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001 and the American response to them played a big role in this, but there
were other important factors at play.

The radical Left correctly identified the significance of the first youth
radicalization in a quarter century, the growing street protests, and the
broader discrediting of the neo-liberal globalization project. But, like
the NPI, we overlooked the ongoing weakness and growing accommodation to
neo-liberalism of the major social and mass movements - chief among them
labour. We didn't fully grasp that a long period of rebuilding and
rethinking lay before us, and did little or nothing to address the glaring
absence of any credible anti-capitalist strategy let alone a vision for a
post-capitalist future.

One result is that the radical Left has entered the new political phase as
the essentially same small, divided and marginal force that we were going
into the post-Seattle radicalization. Looking at the NPI's failures is
useful to help us identify our own analogous mistakes and fashion a more
constructive orientation in the new and more difficult period we have
entered.

NPI: a short chronology

The New Politics Initiative (NPI) was launched in June 2001, a few weeks
after the massive protests in Quebec City against the Summit of the
Americas. The launch also took place with a view to the NDP convention in
Winnipeg in November later that year, which many predicted would be a
turning point for the party.

The NPI's stated objective was to launch the movement for a new Left party
with stronger ties to the social movements, a more activist practice, and a
more democratic and dynamic internal life. Its strategy was to convince the
NDP to initiate the new-party process itself. If that failed, the NPI would
break away from the party and pursue the new-party project on its own.

At the Winnipeg convention, the NPI received just under 40 percent support
for its new-party resolution. Though the motion was defeated, NPI
supporters were generally pleased with this strong result, which
contributed to the considerable momentum the project had gathered coming
into Winnipeg and at the convention itself.

Soon after the convention, however, the project stalled. With Alexa
McDonough poised to announce her resignation as leader, debates in and
around the NDP were focused on the imminent leadership race. This paralyzed
the NPI leadership and prevented the project from defining its own agenda
and activities. When the leadership race began in June 2002, and with no
discussion among NPI supporters, the two sitting NDP MPs in the NPI
leadership announced their support for Jack Layton. They were soon joined
by most NDP members within the NPI. Although it only officially disbanded
some two years later at a small meeting in Toronto, this effectively marked
the end of the NPI as a viable autonomous project.

The NPI's strategic gamble

While the NPI's formal statements on policy and strategy provide some
guidance, it is difficult to account for the motivations and expectations
of all those inside and outside the NDP who supported the initiative. Two
things nonetheless stand out.

One strong sentiment shared by most NPI supporters was that it was both
necessary and possible to soundly defeat the drift towards "Third Way"
politics that characterized the latter part of Alexa McDonough's leadership
of the party. Leadership efforts in a "Blairite" direction had previously
been partially stymied, notably at the 1999 federal convention, creating an
impasse within the party. This impasse was amplified into an open crisis by
the party's poor showing in the 2000 federal elections.

The traditional left within the party remained relatively strong and the
leadership was having a difficult time defining a viable "centrist"
strategy in a political landscape dominated by the centre-Right Liberals
and the hard-Right Canadian Alliance. The neo-liberal project appeared
increasingly vulnerable, thanks to post-Seattle wave of protest, the
bursting of the "new economy" bubble and related corporate scandals. In
such a context, it appeared that it shouldn't be too difficult to defeat
Blairism within the NDP.

Realizing, however, that merely defeating the Third Way within the NDP
wouldn't be enough to restore the broad Left's electoral prospects let
alone to fulfil its aspirations for real and lasting change, the NPI set
itself a second objective. This was its second strategic gamble: that it
was both necessary and possible to launch a movement towards a new Left
party in the country. This was to be achieved by combining as far as
possible the energy and participatory methods of the new protest movements
with the social weight and accumulated political experience of the NDP and
its social base in the trade unions. Success would also depend on the
readiness and strength of the various social movements and campaigns - such
as the women's movement and the Council of Canadians -- which, through the
course of the 1990s, had grown apart from the NDP, if ever they had been
close to it in the first place. Finally, the NPI expected to draw strength
from its relationship to the World Social Forum process.

In short, the NPI's analysis had two fundamental pillars. One, that the NDP
was strategically weak and therefore open to the kind of change the NPI was
proposing. Two, that bringing the existing social movements closer to a new
NDP-centred party (or to the NDP itself) would fundamentally change that
party and improve its prospects.

Weak NDP, strong social movements?

Here we come to the crux of the matter. For one thing, it is now quite
clear that the NDP was not weak in the way described by the NPI. It does
not appear to be true, as many on the radical Left have themselves argued,
that the harshness of neo-liberalism has condemned Social Democracy in
Canada or elsewhere to "turn left or perish".

Under the Layton leadership, the NDP has doubled its membership and is
poised to make a strong showing in the coming elections. Indeed, it has
secured the kind of hegemony over the broad Left (both "social" and
"political") that it has not enjoyed since before the Bob Rae debacle in
Ontario. The reasons for this are complex, but it is not credible to say
that it is due to a turn to the left or a clear break with neo-liberalism
and the "old politics".

A more important factor is the renewed commitment by the trade-union
leadership and left-liberal professionals and middle classes that dominate
party life to building an independent political and electoral force - after
some years of hesitation and agonizing in certain sectors. In a context in
which the neo-liberal project has lost some of its gloss, the NDP has
benefited almost automatically by the Liberals' pronounced shift to the
right. Beyond this, Layton in particular has had some success in filling
the void created by the Liberals around questions such as the
"modernization" of political life and the "urban agenda" - neither of which
necessarily signal a turn to the left, and could just as well be part of a
drift toward the political centre.

With regard to the other component of the NPI's analysis, if defeating the
neo-liberal drift of the NDP is the objective, it is very difficult to
argue that the social movements or trade unions per se can or will lead the
charge. As argued above, while local struggles continue to take place, even
the height of the anti-corporate street protests was a period of relative
social passivity in the broader society. These movements have been on the
defensive themselves, partly as a result of the sheer scale and accumulated
effects of the corporate offensive, partly in keeping with a conservative
desire among sections of their leaderships and social base to carve out a
niche within the new neo-liberal dispensation. The fight for a genuine Left
alternative has to be waged in both social and political arena.

On the one hand, we have a fundamentally unchanged NDP rising in the polls
and positioning itself to face (or even join) a Liberal minority or
reduced-majority government. On the other, we have weak and largely
demobilized social movements. In such a context, it is difficult to see how
the NPI's original call to "bring the political Left and the social
movements together" can achieve much beyond locking the social movements
even more tightly into a moderate and top-heavy electoralist strategy. This
merely puts off to an even later date the necessary rebuilding and
remobilization of these movements, not to mention the building of a new
genuinely Left political and electoral force rooted within them.

This is the basic difference between those who now look to the Layton-led
NDP to fulfill the objectives of the NPI, and those who have made the
decision to remain outside the NDP to build the independent radical Left
and the different campaigns and movements where we have some presence.


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