Re: Re: Re: Argentina, Australia and Canada

["Ken Hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Left nationalism is nothing new in Canada and it certainly not a novel
theory of Ross Dowson. Left nationalism was a strong current in the NDP (New
Democractic  Party) a social democratic party that ruled in BC,
Saskatchewan, Manitoba and even Ontario for a while. It still governs
Manitoba and Saskatchewan.  This is a federal manifesto though of 1969

Cheers Ken Hanly

The Waffle Manifesto
Waffle Resolution 133



Our aim as democratic socialists is to build an independent socialist
Canada. Our Aim as supporters of the New Democratic Party is to make it a
truly socialist party.

The achievement of socialism awaits the building of a mass base of
socialists in factories and offices, on farms and campuses. The development
of socialist consciousness, on which can be built a socialist base, must be
the first priority of the New Democratic Party.

The New Democratic Party must be seen as the parliamentary wing of a
movement dedicated to fundamental social change. It must be radicalized from
within and it must be radicalized from without.

The most urgent issue for Canadians is the very survival of Canada. Anxiety
is pervasive and the goal of greater economic independence receives
widespread support. But economic independence without socialism is a sham,
and neither are meaningful without true participatory democracy.

The major threat to Canadian survival today is American control of the
Canadian economy. The major issue of our times is not national unity but
national survival, and the fundamental threat is external, not internal.

American corporate capitalism is the dominant factor shaping Canadian
society. In Canada American economic control operates through the formidable
medium of the multinational corporation. The Canadian corporate elite has
opted for a junior partnership with these American enterprises. Canada has
been reduced to a resource base and consumer market within the American
empire.

The American empire is the central reality for Canadians. It is an empire
characterized by militarism abroad and racism at home. Canadian resources
and diplomacy have been enlisted in the support of that empire. In the
barbarous war in Vietnam, Canada has supported the United States through its
membership on the International Control Commission and through sales of arms
and strategic resources to the American military-industrial complex.

The American empire is held together through world-wide military alliances
and by giant corporations. Canada's membership in the American alliance
system and the ownership of the Canadian economy by American corporations
precluded Canada's playing an independent role in the world. These bonds
must be cut if corporate capitalism and the social priorities it creates is
to be effectively challenged.

Canadian development is distorted by a corporate capitalist economy.
Corporate investment creates and fosters superfluous individual consumption
at the expense of social needs. Corporate decision making concentrates
investment in a few major urban areas which become increasingly
uninhabitable while the rest of the country sinks into underdevelopment.

The criterion that the most profitable pursuits are the most important ones
causes the neglect of activities whose value cannot be measured by the
standard of profitability. It is not accidental that housing, education,
medical care and public transportation are inadequately provided for by the
present social system.

The problem of regional disparities is rooted in the profit orientation of
capitalism. The social costs of stagnant areas are irrelevant to the
corporations. For Canada the problem is compounded by the reduction of
Canada to the position of an economic colony of the United States. The
foreign capitalist has even less concern for balanced development of the
country than the Canadian capitalist with roots in a particular region.

An independence movement based on substituting Canadian capitalists for
American capitalists, or on public policy to make foreign corporations
behave as if they were Canadian corporations, cannot be our final objective.
There is not now an independent Canadian capitalism and any lingering
pretensions on the part of Canadian businessmen to independence lack
credibility. Without a strong national capitalist class behind them,
Canadian governments, Liberal and Conservative, have functioned in the
interests of international and particularly American capitalism, and have
lacked the will to pursue even a modest strategy of economic independence.

Capitalism must be replaced by socialism, by national planning of investment
and by the public ownership of the means of production in the interests of
the Canadian people as a whole. Canadian nationalism is a relevant force on
which to build to the extent that it is anti-imperialist. On the road to
socialism, such aspirations for independence must be taken into account. For
to pursue independence seriously is to make visible the necessity of
socialism in Canada.

Those who desire socialism and independence for Canada have often been
baffled and mystified by the problem of internal divisions within Canada.
While the essential fact of Canadian history in the past century is the
reduction of Canada to a colony of the United States, with a consequent
increase in regional inequalities, there is no denying the existence of two
nations within Canada, each with its own language, culture and aspiration.
This reality must be incorporated into the strategy of the New Democratic
Party.

English Canada and Quebec can share common institutions to the extent that
they share common purposes. So long as, Canada is governed by those who
believe that national policy should be limited to the passive function of
maintaining a peaceful and secure climate for foreign investors, there can
be no meaningful unity between English and French Canadians. So long as the
federal government refuses to protect the country from American economic and
cultural domination, English Canada is bound to appear to French Canadians
simply as part of the United States. An English Canada concerned with its
own national survival would create common aspirations that would help to tie
the two nations together once more.

Nor can the present treatment of the constitutional issue in isolation from
economic and social forces that transcend the two nations be anything but
irrelevant. Our present constitution was drafted a century ago by
politicians committed to the values and structure of a capitalist society.
Constitutional change relevant to socialists must be based on the needs of
the people rather than the corporations and must reflect the power of
classes and groups excluded from effective decision-making by the present
system.

A united Canada is of critical importance in pursuing a successful strategy
against the reality of American imperialism. Quebec's history and
aspirations must be allowed full expression and implementation in the
conviction that new ties will emerge from the common perception of "two
nations, one struggle". Socialists in English Canada must ally themselves
with socialists in Quebec in this common cause.

Central to the creation of an independent socialist Canada is the strength
and tradition of the Canadian working class and the trade union movement.
The revitalization and extension of the labour movement would involve a
fundamental democratization of our society.

Corporate capitalism is characterized by the predominant power of the
corporate elite aided and abetted by the political elite. A central
objective of Canadian socialists must be to further the democratization
process in industry. The Canadian trade union movement throughout its
history has waged a democratic battle against the so-called rights or
prerogatives of ownership and management. It has achieved the important
moral and legal victory of providing for working men an effective say in
what their wages will be. At present, management's "right" to control
technological change is being challenged. The New Democratic Party must
provide leadership in the struggle to extend working men's influence into
every area of industrial decision-making. Those who work must have effective
control in the determination of working conditions, and substantial power in
determining the nature of the product, prices, and so on. Democracy and
socialism require nothing less.

Trade unionists and New Democrats have led in extending the welfare state in
Canada. Much remains to be done: more and better housing, a really
progressive tax structure, a guaranteed annual income. But these are no
longer enough. A socialist society must be one in which there is democratic
control of all institutions which have a major effect on men's lives and
where there is equal opportunity for creative non-exploitative
self-development. It is now time to go beyond the welfare state.

New Democrats must begin now to insist on the redistribution of power, and
not simply welfare, in a socialist direction. The struggle for worker
participation in industrial decision-making and against management "rights"
is such a move toward economic and social democracy.

By strengthening the Canadian labour movement, New Democrats will further
the pursuit of Canadian independence. So long as Canadian economic activity
is dominated by the corporate elite, and so long as workers' rights are
confined within their present limits, corporate requirements for profit will
continue to take precedence over human needs.

By bringing men together primarily as buyers and sellers of each other, by
enshrining profitability and material gain in place of humanity and
spiritual growth, capitalism has always been inherently alienating. Today,
sheer size combined with modern technology further exaggerates man's sense
of insignificance and impotence. A socialist transformation of society will
return to man his sense of humanity, to replace his sense of being a
commodity. But a socialist democracy implies man's control of his immediate
environment as well, and in any strategy for building socialism, community
democracy is as vital as the struggle for electoral success. To that end,
socialists must strive for democracy at those levels which most directly
affect us all-in our neighbourhoods, our schools, our places of work.
Tenants' unions, consumers' and producers' co-operatives are examples of
areas in which socialists must lead in efforts to involve people directly in
the struggle to control their own destinies.

Socialism is a process and a programme. The process is the raising of
socialist consciousness, the building of a mass base of socialists, and a
strategy to make visible the limits of liberal capitalism.

While the programme must evolve out of the process, its leading features
seem clear. Relevant instruments for bringing the Canadian economy under
Canadian ownership and control and for altering the priorities established
by corporate capitalism are to hand. They include extensive public control
over investment and nationalization of the commanding heights of the
economy, such as the key resources industries, finance and credit, and
industries strategic to planning our economy. Within that programme,
workers' participation in all institutions promises to release creative
energies, promote decentralization, and restore human and social priorities.

The struggle to build a democratic socialist Canada must proceed at all
levels of Canadian society. The New Democratic Party is the organization
suited to bringing these activities into a common focus. The New Democratic
Party has grown out of a movement for democratic socialism that has deep
roots in Canadian history. It is the core around which should be mobilized
the social and political movement necessary for building an independent
socialist Canada. The New Democratic Party must rise to that challenge or
become irrelevant. Victory lies in joining the struggle.







. Recently, a founder of Canadian
> Trotskyism named Ross Dowson passed away. He developed the rather
> novel theory late in life that Canada was semicolonial and promoted a
> kind of left-nationalism. He was quite wrong. I am trying to help
> Marxists make elementary distinctions that will help them carry out
> solidarity work, not develop a class analysis of Great Britain or
> Canada. If I were to do so, I would be posting for the next 10 years.
> My time is limited.
>
> --
> Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 04/14/2002
>
> Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
>