Life on the Left

Québec solidaire struggles to define its space in shifting political landscape

2011-12-16T13:40:00.005-05:00

by Richard Fidler
MONTRÉAL – About 400 members of Québec solidaire met here December 9-11 in a delegated convention to debate and adopt positions on major social and cultural questions. The convention capped the third phase in a lengthy process of developing what the left-wing sovereigntist party describes as a program of social transformation.[1]

Only days earlier, the QS candidate had tripled the party’s vote in a by-election in Bonaventure, a rural riding in the Gaspé region; her 9% of the popular vote (up from 3% in the 2008 general election) has inspired high hopes in the party of equivalent or better results in a Quebec general election, which could occur next year. A wave of enthusiasm swept the delegates when the candidate, Patricia Chartier, was introduced. Although she ran third (behind the Liberals, 49%, and Parti Québécois, 37%), her tally seemed to many a successful result for a small pro-independence party that is generally portrayed in the mass media as anti-capitalist.

Election expectations were definitely in the air as delegates turned their attention to education, healthcare, social welfare, housing and cultural and language policy. These are the bread-and-butter issues on which the party hopes its proposals will resonate with an electorate fed up with neoliberal austerity, cutbacks, downsizing and offloading. And they are issues with which many of the delegates are well acquainted through their own lives as teachers, students, healthcare professionals and workers, and activists in the various social movements.

The common theme of most of the adopted proposals was defense of existing public services and their accessibility free of charge in opposition to the wave of privatizations that is ravaging such services as healthcare and education. But delegates also adopted a resolution proposed by QS members in Jean-Lesage riding (Quebec City) calling for “democratic management of public services” through mechanisms of participative democracy allowing users, workers and local citizens to determine local and regional priorities and the resources to be allocated to them.

The delegates reaffirmed Québec solidaire’s commitment to free-of-charge public education from kindergarten to university. They called for strengthening “a public, democratic, secular school system independent of market forces.” However, by a large majority they turned down a proposal for a single public school system, voting instead in favour of a mixed system comprising both public schools financed by the state and private schools offering equivalent curriculum but without state funding. Some 20 percent of Quebec elementary and secondary students attend private schools, which are funded at present by the government. Thus, while wealthy elites may still send their children to private schools, the effect of the adopted proposal would be to stream many students into the public system.

The adopted resolutions also called for an end to shaping the curriculum of junior colleges (CEGEPs) to the job market and the interests of big business, and for freeing university research and development from corporate influences. Schools would be encouraged to propose their own curriculum, democratically decided in consultation with parents, students and staff, in addition to the official program of the Ministry.

The proposals on healthcare reflected an approach that would focus on preventive medicine and greater attention to alternative and traditional medicines. Proposed measures include strengthening front-line services in the popular local community service centres (CLSCs), enhancing home-care and restoring the public educational role of the CLSCs. A major issue is the lack of doctors in rural areas and remote regions. But delegates rejected a proposal that would impose financial penalties on doctors who leave Quebec before working five years in a region (10 in a university health centre). And on a very close vote they rejected a proposal to integrate all family doctors in CLSCs, which would effectively put them all on salary instead of fee-for-service.

A major issue in Quebec is the urgent need to strengthen French as the common language of employment and public discourse. Delegates voted for revisions to the Charter of the French Language (Law 101) that would, among other things, prohibit employers from requiring knowledge of English unless it is demonstrated that English is indispensable to the job, and to strengthen French as the language of work by extending the Charter’s reach to companies with fewer than 50 employees (the current threshold). They rejected proposals to make French the sole language of instruction in the CEGEPs and universities, reflecting QS’s position that students who wish to study in English do so primarily because of job requirements and that the solution lies instead in reinforcing French in the workplace.

A separate resolution was adopted on “Immigration and the French language.” It outlined how recent (and often non-Francophone) immigrants could be encouraged to integrate with the French-speaking majority through such measures as increased accessibility to regulated trades and professions, affirmative hiring of immigrants in the public service, and an end to job discrimination by ethnic profiling.

On media and communications, adopted proposals included creating a Quebec public radio network, eliminating commercial advertising on public radio and TV, and creating an independent agency to supervise and regulate Quebec broadcasting (replacing the federal CRTC). A major debate occurred over the proposal to “place distribution of telecommunications under public control, including if needed complete (100%) nationalization.” As one delegate noted, Quebec has the highest rates in the world for cell-phone use. In the end, however, the entire set of proposals on this topic was referred to the party’s policy commission for further study.

Proposals for substituting public debate and culture in place of commercial advertising and marketing in the media, and even “complete elimination of commercial advertising,” were set aside. Delegates instead called for regulations to avoid sexism, racism, violence, etc. from the media.

Québec solidaire is now on record in support of a guaranteed minimum income. In the context of a full-employment policy, the adopted resolution reads, “for anyone who is unemployed or with insufficient income, the state will provide a guaranteed and unconditional minimum income paid on an individual basis from the age of 18. This income could be complementary to income from work or other income support where these are below the established threshold.” This proposal should be read in light of previous QS commitments for a substantial increase in the minimum wage and for a shorter work week without reduction in wages. However, the “established threshold” was left undefined.

Delegates selected guaranteed annual income over other options that were proposed, such as a “citizenship income” that would operate like old-age security but be paid to everyone, children included; a living wage (salaire à vie) related to skills, studies, know-how, etc.; and a “universal guaranteed social income” that would replace all tax redistribution measures and income support transfers other than family allowances.

The convention also voted in favour of establishing a universal retirement plan comprising a vastly improved Quebec Pension Plan that would replace the many private and public plans, including RRSPs. Benefits would be defined and indexed, available at age 60, and adapted to need and years worked, with supplements for low-income beneficiaries. Employee contributions would be geared to capacity to pay.

Other proposals adopted included a massive program of investment in quality social housing (public, cooperative and community), and limits on rents to no more than 25% of income.

Finance capital gets a pass
While the delegates managed, on a very tight agenda, to wade through the 65-page resolutions book, readily disposing of a mass of detailed resolutions and amendments that had previously been debated in draft form in local membership assemblies and aggregates, they seemed less comfortable with some unfinished business that had been referred to this convention from the previous one in March for lack of time. These were resolutions on “Nationalization of the banks” and a similar one on other financial institutions, and a set of resolutions addressed to tax policy.

In the wake of the developing global protests against capitalist austerity and government bailouts of the banks, it might be thought that expropriation of the banks and financial interests would be high on the agenda of a party that sometimes promises to “go beyond capitalism.” And indeed, in the lead-up to the March convention, the QS policy commission had proposed, in a draft resolution, that “to eliminate completely the influence of private financial power,” an independent Quebec would implement “a complete nationalization of the banking system.” The QS national coordinating committee (CCN) had responded, however, with a counter-proposal to nationalize banking “if and as needed,” this phrase (au besoin) being underlined in the resolutions booklet.

But many of the delegates at this December convention were relatively new to the party, and seemed less familiar than those in the previous convention with economic and financial questions. Also, the left-over resolutions attracted little attention in the pre-convention discussions. And this convention met in a context that was much more electoralist-oriented; QS is now an established party, much more subject to media scrutiny and criticism. (This was the first QS convention covered live by Radio-Canada television.) Opportunist pressures weigh more heavily on the members.

No less than seven options were presented and debated. Most advocated “socializing” or “nationalizing” banking and private finance (one called for complete expropriation). In the end, the convention, voting each proposal up or down in a process of elimination, simply opted “to establish a state bank, either through creation of a new institution or by partial nationalization of the banking system,” which would “compete with the private banks.” As a few delegates had noted, however, as long as most of the banking and financial industry remains privately owned, a single bank could compete with others only on much the same terms; Quebec has a vivid example of this in the caisses populaires, the credit unions that started as a chain of small parish-based banks but now comprise the giant Desjardins complex which largely replicates the lending and investment practices of the major chartered banks.

The proposals for “nationalization of financial institutions other than banks” were referred without debate to the policy commission for further study. And the proposals on taxation policy were referred once again to the policy commission for consideration when preparing the QS election platform. These draft proposals included placing personal incomes 30 times the minimum wage in the highest tax bracket, imposing estate taxes, shifting the tax burden from individuals to corporations, and reviewing consumption taxes as “regressive.” (In its 2008 election platform, QS called for abolishing the Quebec sales tax or at least adjusting it to meet ecological concerns.)

All said, it was hardly “a program of social transformation,” as alleged by one enthusiastic QS member. But the adopted proposals are probably a fair representation of many of the demands raised by the social movements in current struggles, and enough to distinguish Québec solidaire, as an independentist party, from the capitalist Parti Québécois.

An end to discussion on program?
At a post-convention news conference, QS president Françoise David said the party “has now adopted almost the totality of the program that shapes our vision for the next 15 years.” She and other QS leaders now plan to convert a subsequent program convention, scheduled for April 2012, into a more modest event designed to fine-tune an election platform.

However, there are in fact many topics that have not yet been addressed in this programmatic exercise — among them, agriculture and international affairs. Québec solidaire originated amidst the mobilizations of the altermondialistes, the opponents of capitalist globalization, antiwar activists, and proponents of global justice and solidarity with progressive movements and governments around the world. David herself was best known for helping to initiate the World March of Women. The Union des forces progressistes (UFP), a QS predecessor, took strong positions in opposition to imperialist war and “free trade” agreements. These are positions that should resonate with the new generation of activist youth, “the indignés” who just recently occupied public spaces in Montréal and Quebec City in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It is worth noting, however, that QS does occasionally address international questions. An important initiative was taken this past summer when the QS leadership designated Manon Massé as the party’s representative on the Boat to Gaza project, in solidarity with Palestine and the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment campaign unanimously endorsed at a previous convention. More such initiatives would be welcome.

Likewise, Québec solidaire has yet to develop its thinking on agrarian issues, or to connect in any significant way with farmers’ organizations that are fighting on behalf of “peasant agriculture” and organic farming practices. Some, such as the Union paysanne (UP), the Quebec affiliate of Via Campesina, are trying to abolish mandatory membership in the government-backed farmers organization, the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), which is dominated by major agribusiness interests. An agrarian program must be an integral part of any regional development strategy, and intersects closely with important environmental protest movements, including the mass movement now developing against shale gas exploration and development.

Another major area of Québec solidaire’s activity that remains largely undeveloped so far is the labour movement. Although the party adopted strong proposals on labour and trade unions at its March 2011 convention, it still lacks a consistent and coherent intervention in this milieu. A book recently published by QS leader Françoise David[2] outlining her vision for the party and Quebec scarcely mentions the organized labour movement or employment issues, although full employment and strong unions are key to achieving any serious redistribution of wealth in a capitalist society.

This lacuna has important implications for contemporary politics. The Charest government, taking advantage of recent exposures of corruption and union coercion in Quebec’s construction industry — and hoping to distract public attention from its own share of recent corruption scandals — has scapegoated construction workers by introducing legislation to abolish a longstanding practice of “placement syndical,” the union hiring hall by which jobs are allocated under the control of the respective unions the workers have chosen to represent them. Under Bill 33, workers will now be assigned to jobs by a government bureaucracy — unelected and not answerable to the workers. The main beneficiaries of Bill 33 will be the construction bosses, the very ones at the source of the industry’s corrupt practices. Yet Amir Khadir, the sole QS member of the National Assembly, did not fight the bill and was absent for the vote, when the 99 MNAs present voted unanimously in favour. A remarkable opportunity was lost for Québec solidaire to stand out as the sole defender of an important section of the Quebec working class.[3]

During a break in the convention proceedings, about 30 members, mostly trade unionists but also a few students, met in a meeting of the party’s “Intersyndicale,” an informal caucus of union members, to discuss ways to network and engage in possible future actions, especially in collaboration with student activists who are mounting a militant campaign for free education in opposition to the Charest government’s scheduled tuition fee increases. The Intersyndicale has recently published an attractive leaflet outlining the program on labour and the unions that was adopted at the March 2011 convention.

Major challenges ahead
Québec solidaire faces some imposing challenges in the coming period. The tectonic plates under Quebec’s political landscape are shifting. The capitalist parties that have dominated the province’s politics for the last 40 years or more are in crisis. Jean Charest’s governing Liberals (the PLQ) are mired in mounting scandals, and popular discontent with the party is fueled in particular by its flagrant collaboration with the resources multinationals; yet Charest’s new flagship program Plan Nord offers only further concessions to them. The Parti québécois, out of office since 2003, is bleeding profusely from the crisis that erupted in sovereigntist ranks on the heels of the New Democratic Party’s “orange surge” in the May federal election. To date, a half-dozen of its MNAs have defected, most of them in opposition to PQ leader Pauline Marois’ insistence on placing the fight for Quebec sovereignty on the backburner for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, a group of former Péquistes and Liberals led by ex-PQ minister François Legault and businessman Charles Sirois have formed a new party, Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), which advocates putting the national question on ice for the next ten years — a position which apparently appeals to many Québécois who have abandoned hope for any change in Quebec’s constitutional status for the foreseeable future. The CAQ has already absorbed the right-wing Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) and appears to be capturing substantial support from former Liberal and PQ supporters although it has yet to contest any election.

Québec solidaire is faced with an unprecedented opportunity to mobilize support among disaffected Péquistes as the independentist party with a relatively progressive social agenda. However, under the first-past-the-post electoral system, its electoral prospects are quite uncertain, and in a multiparty context it is impossible to predict how even an electoral score of 10% or more might — or might not — translate into seats in the National Assembly. In the circumstances, the party leadership — and a portion of the membership[4] — continues to entertain hopes of negotiating a deal with the PQ (or possibly the Verts, the “Green” party) under which each party would agree to stand down from running a candidate in one or more ridings where the two parties are in relatively close contention, thus facilitating the election of QS candidates. Many QS members are inclined to view the PQ as a party of the “left” — not so much because of its politics, which are thoroughly neoliberal, but because QS and the PQ appeal to much the same constituency of working class voters.

In recent months both Françoise David and Amir Khadir, the party’s co-leaders, have publicly spoken in favour of such a deal, to the dismay of many QS members, who voted at the party’s last convention in March to reject any such “tactical alliances.” With this in mind, QS militant Marc Bonhomme moved an emergency motion at the opening of the QS convention to add to the agenda a debate on the question of alliances, from the perspective of proposing that QS work instead to build a “left front,” both electoral and extra-parliamentary, with the unions and popular movements “against the Right of the banks, the bosses and the parties in their pay, the PLQ-PQ-ADQ-CAQ.” Bonhomme’s motion was defeated. Although the vote meant there was no debate on the strategic direction for QS proposed by the motion, it does mean that the March convention’s decision remains in force — as Amir Khadir later conceded to reporters who had been unaware of the vote taken in March in a closed session of that convention.

In any event, the PQ has virtually ruled out any talk of alliances. In a document on institutional reform to be debated by its National Council in January, the PQ leadership opposes any electoral reform that would offer proportional representation to parties (as proposed by Québec solidaire), and proposes instead a two-round system of voting in which, failing a majority for a candidate in the first round, the two candidates with the highest scores would face off in a second round. Given its present standing in the polls, Québec solidaire’s candidates would have little chance of election except in a very few Montréal ridings under this formula.

Still unclear is the possible long-term impact on Québec solidaire of the recent gains of the NDP, now a factor in Quebec politics and not just on the federal scene. Notwithstanding QS’s independentism, there is considerable overlap in popular support and even membership of the two parties. Significantly, the QS candidate in the Bonaventure by-election, Patricia Chartier, staffs the constituency office of the local NDP member of parliament. However, the NDP’s progress in Quebec may be ephemeral; judging from recent opinion polls, its stumbling on some issues related to the national question during the recent session of the federal Parliament — such as its acquiescence to the appointment of a unilingual Anglophone Supreme Court judge and federal Auditor General, or its contradictory reactions to Quebec’s exclusion from the recent multibillion dollar shipbuilding contract — is a factor in a serious decline in support in the province. The NDP’s historic inability to relate to Quebec’s national consciousness is demonstrated repeatedly, even on questions that may seem trivial to an uncomprehending audience in English Canada but are regarded by most Québécois as vital to their identity and existence as a minority nation within Canada.

Richard Fidler, December 16, 2011. Thanks to Nathan Rao, like me an observer at the convention, for his input.

[1] For reports on previous program conventions, see “Quebec left debates strategy for independence” and “‘Beyond capitalism’? Québec solidaire launches debate on its program for social transformation.”
[2] F. David, De colère et d’espoir (Montréal: Ecosociété, 2011).
[3] For an excellent analysis of the issues raised by Bill 33, and a critique of Québec solidaire’s silence on the matter, see “Comment comprendre l’abolition du placement syndical dans l’industrie de la construction?” by André Parizeau, the leader of the Parti communiste du Québec, a recognized collective within QS.
[4] See, for example, “Québec solidaire et les pactes tactiques : un mal nécessaire.” The author, Stéphane Lessard, is a former member of the QS national coordinating committee, the party’s top leadership body.

Massive protest in Quebec against huge hike in tuition fees

2011-11-11T12:37:00.003-05:00

About 200,000 university and college students across Quebec shut down their campuses on November 10 to protest a projected 75% increase in tuition fees in the recent budget of the Liberal government headed by Jean Charest. Up to 30,000 students and supporters marched in Montréal, while other demonstrations were held in some other regions. Here is a video of the Montréal demo:

The students were joined by smaller but significant contingents from some unions and other social movements. Marching with them were professors, teaching assistants and support staff. The university rectors and principals characterize the steep increase in fees as “reasonable,” and say it will be compensated for students from low-income families by increased loans and bursaries. The students point out, however, that it will only aggravate their indebtedness. “Eighty percent of the students are without access to financial assistance,” says Léo Bureau-Blouin, president of the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ). “Once a family makes $60,000, it is no longer eligible.”

Further actions are being planned, student leaders report. With the support already of about 10 Quebec student associations, an unlimited general strike could well take place this winter if the government does not retreat, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, a spokesman for the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSE), told Le Devoir. “This was the final warning for the Charest government.”

Québec solidaire (QS), which had a large contingent in the Montréal demo, published a four-page tabloid newspaper for distribution to the student demonstrators. It featured the party’s call for “free tuition from kindergarten to university” and an “end to public financing of private schools.” Here is its front page:

Addressing the demonstrators on behalf of Québec solidaire, Amir Khadir (the QS member of Quebec’s National Assembly) pointed to some of the alternative sources of revenue that might be used to pay for higher education: royalties on industries and business for their use of water, considered a “loaned” public property; increased royalties on mining production; restoration of capital taxes for financial firms; and increased taxes on the richest individuals. “He can go and find 5 billion dollars with these measures,” said Khadir. “Why choose, out of ideology, to ignore that?”

However, notes QS activist Marc Bonhomme, neither the QS tabloid nor Khadir indicated how they proposed to fund free education, let alone the massive reinvestment in health, public transport and energy efficiency that is also needed.

The colourful, enthusiastic demonstration in Montréal, says Bonhomme, showed that this demo was not the traditional trade-union “heroic last stand” before capitulation, or a safety valve with no follow-up. This was something new, as the students loudly demonstrated when some speakers raised the possibility of a general strike.

November 11, 2011

Ottawa tar-sands protest: reports and impressions

2011-09-29T15:53:00.001-04:00

I participated in the demonstration against the Alberta tar sands outside the Canadian Parliament here in Ottawa on September 26. As was widely reported, the civil disobedience component of the action resulted in over 200 arrests.

I am cross-publishing here two accounts of the day’s events that are much more informative than what appeared in the corporate media. And I follow them with some of my own thoughts about the action.

* * *

Sit-in protests Keystone XL pipeline

Civil disobedience on Parliament Hill results in more than 200 arrests

by Julie Dupuis, for Straight Goods News

(Cross-posted with permission)

OTTAWA, September 27, 2011, Straight Goods News — Nearly a thousand people gathered Monday on Parliament Hill in front of the Centennial Flame to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar sands crude oil to Texas. Organized by the Council of Canadians, Greenpeace Canada, and the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), the solidarity rally drew participants ready to risk arrest, by attempting a sit-in in the Centre Block or by supporting those engaging in civil disobedience.

Before the main event, several high-profile speakers addressed the crowd. Clayton Thomas-Muller, indigenous tar sands organizer for the IEN, kicked off the event by thanking the Algonquin First Nation for use of the “unceded land” on which lies the parliamentary buildings. First Nation Elder Terry McKay then led the gathering in prayer to the Creator, followed by a drum song.

“Justice!” resounded all around as, to fire up the crowd, Thomas-Muller called, “What are we here for?”

Chief Bill Erasmus of the Dene First Nation and the Assembly of First Nations took the podium, pointing out that people who live downstream from tar sands tailings ponds are dying of cancer.

“Shame!” cried the protesters.

Chief Erasmus noted that it takes four to five barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil.

“Shame!”

Chief Erasmus claimed that Canada’s goal is to become the #1 producer of oil.

“Shame!”

He said private landowners are concerned about cleaning up spills and that the original Keystone pipeline, operated by the same company that would operate the new proposed pipeline, has had twelve spills in the last fourteen months.

“Shame!”

Chief Erasmus concluded with an appeal to President Obama, who will decide next month whether to approve or reject the Keystone XL pipeline: “Obama, come up with a new sustainable way to deal with fossil fuels. We need your help.”

David Coles, President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), said about the pipeline, “It’s a no-brainer and Harper’s got no brains.”

Dispelling greenwashing claims, Coles asked, “What blooming idiot came up with the idea of ‘ethical oil’?”

Chief Jackie Thomas of the Sai-kuz First Nation attended the event as a symbol of solidarity. Her tribe is battling not the Keystone XL pipeline, but the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, which would transport tar sands oil from Alberta to BC’s coast. Her message to Enbridge: “Don’t try us.”

Lionel Lepine, lawyer for the Athabasca Chipewyan Dene Nation, said, “They call it the House of Commons. I don’t see any common sense in there.” Lepine said his community is suffering tremendously from tar sands development, its people dying of cancer and other illnesses. The documentary H2Oil demonstrates its plight.

“I vow until my dying breath to continue this fight,” finished Lepine.

Representing Greenpeace Canada and the Lubicon Cree First Nation, Melina Laboucan-Massimo said her family is also ill, but from the Albertan oil spill that was left unreported for five days last spring, until the federal election had passed. Her voice quivered at times as she enumerated her relatives’ symptoms, lamenting that a few individuals are profiting from their pain. Echoing Lepine, Laboucan-Massimo asserted, “This behind me is the House of Commons, not the House of Corporations.”

Former Senate page Brigitte DePape was there representing the Youth Climate Justice Coalition, which DePape revealed is organizing a tribunal to put the Harper government on trial. “This is where change is happening,” DePape told the protesters, saying she was happy to be standing with them and “not in there”, pointing behind her to Parliament. DePape’s parting message was to “organize together for another possible Canada”.

Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow referred to an imaginary map depicting current and proposed pipelines, and said, “It looks like a corporate snakes and ladders board game.”

“In my opinion,” said Barlow, “the people crossing the line today are not breaking the law. The people breaking the law are the Harper government.” Barlow cited the Fisheries Act, the Kyoto Protocol, the UN Declaration on the Human Right to Water, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“Today we stand on the face of change,” Thomas-Muller had told the crowd.

Sit-in participants lined up behind police fences and, in waves of six people, they crossed the fence to be arrested. The first to cross were Maude Barlow, George Poitras, former Chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, Dave Coles, Tony Clarke, Director of the Polaris Institute, and Elizabeth Bernstein of the Nobel Womens’ Initiative, among others.

Also in attendance at the rally were Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May and Dennis Bevington, NDP MP, Western Arctic. Charlie Angus, NDP MP, Timmins-James Bay, appeared to show his support around three o’clock, while Stéphane Dion, Liberal MP, St-Laurent–Cartierville, arrived at 9 a.m.

More than 200 people were arrested for trespassing, fined between $55 and $75, and banned from Parliament Hill for one year.

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline say the project violates First Nations Treaty Rights. It threatens food and water supplies because it crosses the Ogallala Aquifer, the world’s largest known underground lake, as well as countless farms. The project takes jobs out of Canada and contributes to added tar sands pollution, increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

As Dave Coles asked the crowd amassed in front of the Centre Block, “What about energy security for Canada?”

Thomas-Muller gave participants hope that positive change is forthcoming. “This is who we are,” he said, “but this is not who we will continue to be.”

Julie Dupuis holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Toronto (2005) and did post-graduate work in Creative Book Publishing at Humber College (2007). She has been writing for a living since 2006, has published four travel articles, and is the Associate Editor of Public Values.ca and Valeurspubliques.ca. She is an avid hiker and traveller.

eMail: julie@straightgoods.com. Web: http://juliedupuis-naturalnomad.com/.

* * *

Over 200 arrested at Ottawa tar sands protest

By Marco Vigliotti | September 27, 2011, rabble,ca

Over 200 protesters objecting to the federal government’s enthusiastic support for Alberta’s tar sands and the Keystone pipeline XL were arrested Monday morning as they attempted to stage a sit-in in the House of Commons.

The protesters wanted the chance to air their grievances with the environmentally reckless policies of the Harper-led Conservatives inside Parliament but were blocked from entering by fenced barricades and over 50 RCMP officers.

The protesters were encouraged by hundreds of boisterous supporters as they passed the media scrum and calmly hopped over police barricades.

Those arrested in the first wave of protesters trying to gain access to the House included chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Maude Barlow, and Dave Coles, the president of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, along with his executive assistant and rabble.ca blogger Fred Wilson.

Organizers want to deliver a strong message denouncing the Conservative government’s support for the Keystone XL pipeline and continuing tar sands development.

“We’re here today in solidarity with the multiple other NGOs, unions and every day citizens who decided to send a very united direct message to the Harper regime that we will not stand for this anymore,” said rally organizer and tar sands campaigner for the Indigenous Environmental Network Clayton Thomas-Mueller.

“We want energy justice, we want a zero carbon energy economy that doesn’t sacrifice certain communities for the benefit of shareholders of big private oil companies living thousands of miles away.”

No incidents of violence were reported and both sides in the rally behaved civilly, to the point that police placed a small step ladder on the far side of the barricade for protesters to safely descend.

“I think the police have conducted themselves in a peaceful way,” said Thomas-Mueller. “Their decision to only charge folks with trespassing versus a criminal charge, we definitely appreciate that.”

Thomas-Mueller noted the stark contrast of this peaceful protest with the turbulence of recent police and activist confrontations.

“This is a very welcome exchange from what we’ve seen in the G-20 and the Olympic mobilization where police definitely were a lot more hostile” says Thomas-Mueller, “so today was a good day.”

A diverse group of speakers kicked off the protest rally sharing their own personal stories of suffering from the colossal impact of the Alberta tar sands.

Chief of the Dene Nation, Bill Erasmus, spoke of the struggle that his community, which is 800 miles downstream of the tar sands, faces with water contamination and pollution.

“There are tailings ponds that total 700 square miles of toxic waste, that waste goes into the water system, we are downstream we feel it,” Erasmus said. “[Former Chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation] George Poitras spoke of members in his community dying of cancer, we’re only a couple of miles downstream from them and we’re starting to feel it.”

“Canada wants to become the number one world producer of oil at our expense,” added Erasmus.

“It was a changed landscape forever,” said Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Climate and Energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada about her Lubicon Cree community’s struggle with the Rainbow Oil pipeline leak this past spring.

“It consumed a whole stretch of our traditional territory, where my family once hunted, once trapped, once picked berried, once harvested medicine for generations and can no longer do it,” added Laboucan-Massimo.

The speakers shared a sense of frustration of being ignored by the Conservative government despite the scientific evidence and strong opposition against tar sands development.

“It is simply wrong to poison the fish and wildlife which indigenous people living downstream depend on for their livelihood thereby causing unprecedented high incidents of rare cancers in First Nations community, it is dead wrong,” Tony Clarke, the director of the Polaris Institute, said.

“The Harper government has taken its marching orders from Big Oil and has effectively shut out the voices of civil society.”

Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) Union president Dave Coles denounced the Harper government as foolish and incompetent for their Keystone pipeline projects.

“How the hell do you de-link jobs, the environment, the economy, First Nations rights? You can’t, it’s a package and you can’t put it in a pipe and ship it to Texas,” charged Coles. “Stephen Harper’s right, it’s a no-brainer -- and he has no brains.”

Many in the crowd spoke of the need to fight back against the continued development of the tar sands by coming together and strengthening the opposition movement.

“This rally is about bringing a common voice recognizing that the government is ignoring opposition to the tar sands development,” said Andrea Harden-Donahue, the Energy and Climate Justice Campaigner Council of Canadians, “The stronger our movement is the more power we will have.”

With the Conservatives controlling all levers of power in Ottawa, renegade page Brigitte Depape urged activists to use civil disobedience to oppose the Harper government.

“We have tried institutional means and they have failed, and we know change won’t happen in Parliament and we know it won’t happen from writing policy reports,” Depape said. “Change happens when we take action. We may not have the money and resources that government and companies have but we have people power.”

Marco Vigliotti is an Ottawa-based freelance journalist.

* * *

From witnessing to strategy?

A few brief comments of my own on some aspects of this action.

From the outset, the demonstration was explicitly designed to be “one of the largest acts of civil disobedience on the climate issue that Canada has ever seen.” Both the political message and the tactic to convey it were described by the organizers:

“Our goal is very simple: to peacefully and responsibly go through the main doors of Parliament to the foyer of Centre Block and sit-down so we can deliver our message: All people in Canada deserve a clean energy future that promotes climate justice, where Treaty and Indigenous rights are respected and the health of our communities and the environment are prioritized. To secure this for future generations we must turn away from the toxic tar sands industry and oppose Harper's reckless climate agenda.

“We are asking each person to make a personal commitment, to weigh all the factors and if you feel it is appropriate, to join with people from across the country in a peaceful, arrestable civil disobedience action on Parliament Hill.

“This is our objective: to enter the house of the people and send our message of hope for the future.”

Predictably, the tactic had to be radically amended. Only a huge mass movement linked in action to sympathizers working inside the building could hope to storm and occupy this holy of holies of Canadian representative democracy. The police foreclosed the plan by erecting a four-foot (1.3 metre) metal fence in front of the steps to the Parliament, with an additional 8 foot metal barrier at some distance behind the first fence — completely shutting down public access to the building. The Commons was closed to the commons.

Nevertheless, as a statement of moral protest against the environmental destruction of the tar sands, I think the action can be considered a modest success.

Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians explains the thinking behind the action:

“I took part in the two week rolling protests held in Washington in late August.... I was deeply moved by the dignified process of non-violent civil disobedience I witnessed there and vowed to help create a similar event in Canada.

“So with Greenpeace, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Polaris Institute, and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (who represent the tar sands workers), the Council of Canadians organized a similar demonstration of civil disobedience and worked with local police forces to make it as dignified and peaceful as possible.

“Over 800 Canadians gathered on the Hill, where we heard the stories of despair from First Nations people living downstream of the tar sands and the need to take our campaigns to the next step of direct action....”

This “direct action” of “civil disobedience” was by its very nature addressed to those already convinced of the enormous danger and destruction posed to humans and our environment by the tar sands operations and determined to manifest their opposition in dramatic fashion. It was designed essentially as a media spectacle, the mass arrests, that would startle public opinion and perhaps stimulate thinking in broader layers about why so many people were prepared to be arrested in this cause.

As Barlow explains, for her — and no doubt for many of the demonstrators — “It was not an easy decision to make.

“The charges could very well have been criminal and impair my ability to do work in the United States, which would have been devastating for me. I chair the board of Food and Water Watch in Washington and serve on advisory boards of several other organizations. I also speak to many American groups and at universities. The merging of the no-fly lists between Canada and the United States is a real and growing concern, as many of us fear such lists will be used to shut down peaceful dissent.

“But the day comes when you have to take a stand beyond the range of your comfort zone and for me, this was the day. I have four grandchildren I love more than life itself and I want them and all children to grow up in a safe and healthy world. I was lucky to have on one side Dave Coles, the fearless president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union and on the other, Fred Wilson, senior adviser to Dave and a wonderful board member of the Council of Canadians....”

As it happened, the police had decided in this instance not to employ the tactics they have so readily used in some recent protests such as the G20 demonstrations in Toronto in 2010. Instead, they turned the potential confrontation into a peaceful pantomime. But, as Barlow reminds us, the outcome could easily have been much worse:

“I was asked three times by a very respectful police officer to go back over the fence and when I refused, he arrested me for obstructing a police officer, a serious criminal charge. I was handcuffed, searched and escorted by an also respectful policewoman and sat, as did my friends, for a long time while they decided what to do with us. Finally, they thankfully decided on the lesser charge of trespassing and we, and the 200 others who followed us over the fence, were given a fine and an edict to stay away from Parliament Hill for a year....

“I realize that at no time was my life in danger as is the case for activists in some other countries or even some groups in our own. But I also for a short time, felt the unnerving experience of being totally and completely out of control of my life and it has left me shaken....”

However, Barlow concludes, she felt personally energized by the experience: “Mostly I feel privileged to have been part of a wonderful experience where people of all ages and from all over the country came together to put themselves on the line.”

Personally, I respect the commitment and dedication of those who engaged in this action. (Like the majority of the demonstrators, I chose not to go over the fence.) Theirs was a strong statement of personal witness, and may well have convinced many others to think more deeply about the issues.

And certainly, the action was a valuable opportunity for many activists from across Canada to connect with each other and establish links that will serve them well in future activities. On the day preceding the action, some 250 of us participated in a nine-hour training session at the nearby University of Ottawa that included a short teach-in on the issues, and group enactments of how to counter anti-climate propaganda and resist police intimidation. (There were few from Quebec, however, the province that has seen the largest environmental protests and mobilizations, most recently in opposition to shale gas exploration.)

Nevertheless, there were in my view some aspects to the action that also merit critical consideration.

An obvious one, to me at least, was the lack of any specific proposal for future action. Instead, the organizers are simply urging supporters to “take the pledge” — the pledge in question, published on their web site, being “to get involved in my own community to help build a clean green energy future where Indigenous rights are respected.”

Similarly, there is no proposal yet for a collective fight against the trespass charges. As the state’s response to the “civil disobedience” objective, these charges may be seen by some as a welcome confirmation of their success. In an email message today to the participants, the organizers say:

“We are currently consulting with lawyers to determine next steps for those who were arrested. At this point please feel free to deal with your [offence] tickets in any way you see fit. We will be communicating a follow-up legal strategy in the near future.”

Also worth noting, in my opinion, is a programmatic deficiency in some of the anti-pipeline agitation.

For example, although it was not publicized — and was even obscured by the organizers — not all of the participants agreed on the need to shut down the tar sands if not immediately, at the earliest opportunity, and to reorient the workers involved toward climate-sustaining employment.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) was the major union with a presence at the Parliament Hill action. It represents more than 35,000 workers in the oil, gas and chemical industry in Ontario, Alberta and several other provinces, including the tar sands workers in Alberta. But the union, while strongly opposed to the Keystone and other pipelines that export bitumen from Alberta, does not oppose the tar sands operations as such, although it opposes “additional oil sands development.” The union advocates a Canadian nationalist strategy of fighting to keep oil industry jobs in Canada and promoting “Canadian energy security.”

In a briefing note published by the CEP, the union lists its key demands:

The Canadian government should not support the U.S. approval of Keystone XL....
The Canadian government should develop a strategy to increase the bitumen upgrading and refining capacity in Canada.
The National Energy Board must be compelled to consider the impact on job creation when licensing pipeline projects.
The Canadian government should develop a national energy strategy that promotes energy security, environmental sustainability and job creation in Canada.

What the CEP shared with the other protesters in Ottawa on September 26 was opposition to the Keystone pipeline. In his speech to the rally, CEP president Dave Coles did not mention the union’s support for building refining capacity in Canada.

The CEP position is widely held in the Canadian labour movement. The Alberta Federation of Labour says Canada should “move up the value ladder with our oilsands resources, rather than sell our resources south of the border in their raw form.” The 2008 convention of the Canadian Labour Congress adopted a resolution on the tar sands which advocates:

“Regulate” the Tar Sands to “protect the environment”
“Minimize” the impact of Tar Sands on aboriginal communities
Limit unrefined raw oil exports in favour of refining in Canada
Declare a moratorium on “future” Tar Sands projects
Support Indigenous peoples struggling against Tar Sands developments.

The New Democratic Party has a similar position. In this year’s federal election, the party said it would “encourage value-added, responsible upgrading, refining and petrochemical manufacturing here in Canada to maximize the economic benefits and jobs for Canadians.”

The NDP gave at best lukewarm support to the September 26 protest. Two or three of the party’s MPs circulated in the crowd (as did Green leader Elizabeth May), although no party representative was invited to speak. In a rather droll gesture, a single NDP MP, Dennis Bevington, was allowed by police to stand between the steel barriers in front of the Parliament building and applaud those who were climbing over the fence to be arrested.

To some degree, these contradictions could be glossed over at the September 26 protest, with its emphasis on the Keystone pipeline. As Maude Barlow puts it, in her article quoted above, “by investing trillions of dollars into these pipelines, governments and the energy industry are ensuring the continued rapid acceleration of tar sands development, instead of supporting a process to move to an alternative and sustainable energy system.”

But what would that process involve? There was really no mention at the rally of any strategy or concrete demands for massive conversion from fossil-fuel dependency to climate-friendly jobs in renewable resource-based industries — despite the clear message from the overwhelming majority of the speakers, in particular the indigenous leaders, who called for not just an end to tar sands exploitation but a radical rethinking of the relationship between humans and our natural environment.

Nationalist appeals that are effectively calls to “keep our climate-killing jobs in Canada” will not build the movement that is needed. It seems to me that there is an urgent need for the labour movement, the NDP, and environmental activists to find ways to develop a coherent alternative program to the program of the government and the oil companies.

In a recent speech to audiences in Australia, the Canadian climate blogger Ian Angus calls for “a new industrial revolution, a new energy revolution.” He adds: “We need to change what we make and how we make it. Entire industries need to be eliminated and others need to be transformed.” And he cites an encouraging initiative by some trade-unionists in Britain:

“One powerful example is in Britain, where trade unionists in the climate change movement are promoting a call for One Million Climate Jobs. Not just loosely-defined ‘green jobs’ that clean up the mess while leaving the causes untouched, but specifically climate jobs.

Jobs building new energy sources and a new energy grid.

Jobs retrofitting homes and offices for energy efficiency.

Jobs expanding public transport and railroads.

And more

“In their document calling for One Million Climate Jobs they have documented just what has to be done, and what it will cost. They have shown that it is possible, and affordable, and essential.

“This campaign takes the concept of a ‘just transition’ into new territory – not just protecting current income, but actually fighting for a union-initiated transition to a new kind of economy.”

It is proposals like these that should be discussed and developed within the unions and the climate-change movement as a whole with the objective of developing campaigns around specific energy and job-conversion projects.

The North, the Arctic and the Indigenous national question – A Québécois perspective

2011-09-23T10:10:00.003-04:00

Introduction

In the September issue of the pro-sovereignty newspaper, L’aut’journal, editor Pierre Dubuc writes an interesting account of the geopolitics involved in the northern and Arctic development plans of the Canadian and Quebec governments, and spells out some of the implications for the Indigenous peoples who make up the majority of the inhabitants of these regions.

Dubuc concludes with a challenge to supporters of Quebec independence: Will they oppose the Inuit people as they assert their sovereignty claims, or “will they ally with the Inuit against the federal government, linking their struggle for the sovereignty of Quebec with that of the Inuit, within the framework of what could be a sovereignty-association?”

These are important questions for Québécois sovereigntists, who — like most Quebec and Canadian federalists — have often displayed indifference or even hostility to Indigenous struggles against capitalist “development” and for self-government and sovereignty of their territories and communities within the territory of present-day Quebec (Québec Solidaire is an exception in this regard.) The Parti Québécois leadership has historically devoted much greater attention to its hopes for association with capitalist Canada than it does to developing links of solidarity with the Inuit and the dozen or so other Indigenous nations formally recognized by the National Assembly in the mid-1980s.

Dubuc is a leader of a left-wing ginger group that campaigns for Quebec independence, although it still supports the Parti Québécois: Syndicalistes et progressistes pour un Québec Libre (SPQ Libre). L’aut’journal, which is funded in part by some Quebec trade unions, is widely read in Quebec. It is to be hoped that articles like this will help stimulate further discussion of these issues in Quebec’s nationalist, labour and left circles. The movement for Quebec independence can only succeed as a component of a much vaster emancipatory project.

Dubuc explains in a note attached to his article that much of the information he recounts is drawn from the recent book by Shelagh D. Grant, Polar Imperative, A History of Arctic Sovereignty in North America (Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2010). Here is my translation of the major part of his article; I have added a few notes of my own for clarification, in places.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

The North, the Arctic and the Indigenous national question

by Pierre Dubuc

The Far North and the Arctic are increasingly important regions for the governments in both Quebec City and Ottawa. In Québec, the Charest government is making its Plan Nord the key to Quebec’s future economic development. In Ottawa, the Harper government is vastly stepping up its trips and initiatives, especially those of a military nature, to guarantee Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic.

The new importance of the Far North and the Arctic is a consequence of the melting of the glaciers, which opens the way to mineral and hydrocarbon development. Up to 20% of the world’s undiscovered reserves of gas and oil are buried in the Arctic soil. The warming of the Arctic also opens the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and the Pacific to international trade. It is calculated that a trip from Tokyo to London would be shortened by 14 days in comparison to the Suez and Panama canal routes, saving about a third in fuel costs. Charest’s Plan Nord provides for a deepwater port on Hudson Bay and the shipping of ore to Asia through the Northwest Passage.

Canada wants to affirm its sovereignty over the Arctic — a region that represents 40% of its territory and on which 110,000 persons are living — and more particularly over the Northwest Passage, while the United States, Europe and Asian countries consider it is an international strait linking two oceans.

The United States cannot accept Canada’s position because it could create a precedent for the strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia or the strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, but Washington understands that Canada cannot renounce its claims and is legally bound to ensure that the waters in question are used safely. The two countries have therefore reached an agreement not to agree.

That did not prevent the Canadian government from announcing in 2010 the purchase of a fleet of six to eight offshore patrol vessels at a cost of $9 billion, in addition to the $720 million for the future icebreaker John G. Diefenbaker and some military bases to supply these ships. Parallel to this, Canada plans to increase its Ranger force from 900 to 5,000 men under the command of the Northern Joint Task Force, and to supply them with state-of-the-art material and equipment including stealth snowmobiles.

Journalists and experts query the relevance of these expenditures, noting that Canadian sovereignty is not threatened by foreign countries. But more seasoned observers know that the threat exists and that it comes from within. The Inuit of Nunavut and Nunavik are following with great interest the evolution toward complete independence of their brothers and sisters, the Inuit of Greenland, now scheduled for 2021.

During a consultative vote in November 2008, 75% of the Greenlanders voted in favour of independence. The referendum reinforced their position in their negotiations with Denmark on self-government. In this regard, the preamble to the Danish parliament’s legislation on Greenland stipulates that “the inhabitants of Greenland are recognized as a people under international law, with the right to independence if they so desire after the holding of a referendum and negotiations with Denmark.” At present, the Greenland government holds all powers except over foreign policy, security, the Supreme Court and the coast guard.

Coveted territories

There is nothing new in this interest in the Far North and Arctic. They have been the scene of wars between France and Great Britain, and rivalries between Canada and the United States. It is significant that the treaty for the purchase of Alaska from Russia by the United States was signed on the very same day [in 1867] that Queen Victoria placed her signature at the bottom of the British North America Act. In 1869, the United States was also thinking of purchasing Greenland and Iceland with the goal of acquiring the Arctic lands claimed by Canada.

It was under the governments of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1896-1911), but mainly Pierre-Elliott Trudeau (1968-1984), that Canada sought to secure its sovereignty over the Arctic — the United States, in the latter case, having taken advantage of two world wars and the Cold War to install its radio and radar stations and airports in the Arctic.

Under Laurier, Senator Pascal Poirier proposed the adoption of the sector theory, according to which, for any country possessing a shoreline on the Arctic Ocean, two lines pointing to the North Pole were traced respectively from the most western and eastern points, with everything falling within this pie shape pertaining to its jurisdiction. Laurier officially rejected the idea, but at the time, on several Canadian maps of the Arctic, the borders appear defined according to the sector principle.

The United States rejected this theory — there is no island to the north of Alaska — and considered the High Arctic as a terra nullius, that is, not belonging to any country. However, Russia and Norway adopted the sector theory.

Petroleum and territorial claims

In 1968-69, the discovery of significant quantities of petroleum in Alaska was to alter the course of history in the Arctic. To enable development to occur, the U.S. and Canada were going to have to settle the issue of aboriginal titles as well as their differences over the marine frontiers of the Beaufort Sea and the use of the Northwest Passage.

The discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast of Alaska had the Canadian oil companies drooling in hopes of making similar discoveries in the Beaufort Sea and the Mackenzie River delta. 1968 was also the year of Trudeau’s coming to power. It was the end of the “goodwill” policy with the United States and the emergence of a new Canadian nationalism, which would also be expressed in the Arctic. Gone was the time when the United States could consider its differences with Canada over the Arctic as a domestic issue that could be settled among civil servants. The Trudeau government would make these political issues.

The first challenge occurred in October 1968, when Humble Oil announced that its tanker converted into an ice-breaker, the SS Manhattan, would try to cross the Northwest Passage. Instead of prohibiting access to these waters, Canada proclaimed its right to control pollution in the Arctic waters, invoking its responsibility to uphold this fragile environment and ensure respect for the indigenous peoples who inhabit it. The fact that the two U.S. icebreakers accompanying the SS Manhattan needed assistance from a Canadian icebreaker, and that the Manhattan struck an iceberg, gave some credibility to the Canadian approach.

In 1970, the Trudeau government tabled two bills in the House of Commons. The first, Bill C-202, entitled the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act (AWPPA), created a zone of 100 nautical miles over which Canada would have authority to apply its anti-pollution regulations. The second, Bill C-203, amended the Territorial Sea and Fishing Zones Act to extend the limits of the territorial waters from three to 12 miles.

President Nixon immediately reacted by announcing that he was reducing the import quotas for Canadian oil and he threatened Canada with other retaliatory measures if the legislation was adopted. Simultaneously, the SS Manhattan undertook a second voyage through the Northwest Passage, and although Humble Oil had acquiesced with the list of stipulations issued by the Canadian government, including prior inspection of the vessel by the Canadian authorities, the U.S. government refused to recognize Canadian authority over the Northwest Passage. The House of Commons replied by unanimously adopting the bills and the Canadian Senate approved them in eight days.

But before the Senate adopted the legislation the United States proposed the holding of a multilateral conference on the Arctic waters, based on their priorities. Canada was invited to participate, but was not consulted on the list of invited countries or on the agenda. Ottawa lobbied actively against the project and found enough allies to abort it.

On the other hand, the Manhattan’s voyage occurred without incident. A Canadian observer was aboard the vessel and it was accompanied by the icebreaker John A. Macdonald, whose captain was instructed to end the voyage if the situation so required. Canada had won a battle, but the dispute was now on political terrain.

The sector theory

[At this point, Pierre Dubuc digresses to cite at length an episode he says occurred in 1971, when Jacques Parizeau, a leader of the Parti Québécois, was summoned mysteriously to Chicago and then taken to a meeting at a Wisconsin retreat attended by leading U.S. military and diplomatic personnel. While discomforted Canadian officials looked on, the Americans questioned Parizeau as to his opinion on the sector theory, and whether a sovereign Quebec would apply it. It seems that Washington was concerned that applying the sector theory to Quebec’s boundaries might give it a claim to sovereignty over most of Baffin Island, which at the time contained the second largest U.S. air base after Thule, Greenland.

The biography of Parizeau from which this account is taken apparently does not indicate what his reply was to the Americans — although it says he reassured them that a sovereign Quebec under the PQ would be part of NATO and NORAD.[1]

Dubuc concludes:

“The United States clearly showed the Trudeau government that they were prepared, in order to counter Canadian claims on the Arctic, to lend their support to the idea of Quebec independence, if its promoters did not recognize the sector theory.”[2]

But he adds:

“In 1995, Jacques Parizeau realized that the converse situation could occur when the Crees campaigned in New York and around the world against the Grande Baleine [Great Whale] hydro-electric project. On the eve of the 1995 referendum [on sovereignty], he announced the abandonment of the project.”]

Toward self-determination

In 1976, the U.S. courts recognized a form of self-government for the Indigenous peoples of Alaska, after six coastal villages with a population of 6,000 joined together following a referendum. Immediately, the new entity levied a tax on each barrel of petroleum produced. The money was used to improve the living conditions of its inhabitants, but also to finance the first meeting of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), held at North Slope, Alaska, in 1977.

In 1983, during the third general meeting of the ICC, the United Nations recognized the organization as an NGO and later the ICC played a key role in drafting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The ICC promotes the right to self-determination as a means of protecting the environment.

In 1979, following a referendum, the Greenlanders obtained Home Rule, a status of self-government. At the time, that was the most advanced form of self-government granted to a predominantly indigenous population.

In Canada, the indigenous relied on the recognition granted to them in Pierre Trudeau’s 1982 Constitution to demand what would become Nunavut. Section 35 of the Constitution Act confirms the recognition of indigenous rights, which allowed the Inuit to negotiate instead of having to resort to the courts. An agreement in principle was signed in 1990 and finalized two years later after a referendum was held in which the population approved by 85% the redrawing of the boundaries. On April 1, 1999, the Parliament of Canada adopted the Nunavut Act. In 2008, when a protocol was signed on the devolution of powers, it was obvious that they were heading toward provincial status.[3]

In 1997, the Inuit of Quebec resumed negotiations for the creation of Nunavik on territory formerly known as Nouveau-Québec, covering about 507,000 sq. km., a third of the territory of Quebec. The administrative centre for the population of about 11,000 persons in Nunavik is Kuujjuaq. The region is managed by the Kativik Regional Administration, created by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. An agreement was signed on December 1, 2006, creating the Nunavik Inuit Settlement Area, which includes 80% ownership of Quebec’s offshore islands and waters, with annual royalties paid by the federal government for natural resource development. On December 5, 2007, a new agreement in principle was signed. It seemed at the time to constitute a supplementary step toward the formation of a government of Nunavik. It provided for an elected, non-ethnic government under the jurisdiction of the province of Quebec. But the Inuit rejected this proposal in a referendum on April 27, 2011, because, it seems, they want an ethnic government independent of Quebec’s jurisdiction.

Some fundamental issues for the independentists

In the coming years the melting of the ice cap is going to make natural resource development possible in the Far North and Arctic. This has important implications for Canada. For example, the London Mining Company hopes to extract iron from a mine in Greenland and ship it to China via the Northwest Passage. Greenland, which already shares with Denmark the revenues from the development of its natural resources, sees an opportunity to end its financial dependence on Denmark and accede to political independence. The Charest government also wants to ship ore mined in the Far North through the Northwest Passage, and its Plan Nord provides for the construction of a deepwater port on the banks of Hudson Bay.

Nunavut and the other regional governments in Canada will be sure to pressure Ottawa for a more favourable distribution of revenues from natural resources.

The Arctic promises to be one of the political hot spots of the globe during the 21^st century. Thus, while Ottawa promoted the idea of Nunavut as a means to obtaining recognition of Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic, the Inuit see it instead as a step toward accession to their own sovereignty.

Quebec is currently the major arctic province of Canada, as a mere glance at a map will show. Nunavik covers a third of Quebec’s territory. But under the Canadian Constitution, Quebec’s territory stops at the shoreline, which leads to the absurd situation that islands situated a few hundred metres offshore, and frequented since time immemorial by the Inuit of Quebec’s Nunavik, are not part of Quebec. However, these Inuit hold rights over the waters and islands bordering Quebec that were granted to them by the federal government.

The Inuit of Nunavik maintain close ties with their brothers and sisters of Nunavut and Greenland. In some articles published in l’aut’journal, André Binette, a lawyer who co-chaired the study commission on Nunavik self-government (1999-2001), has clearly described Greenland’s process toward political independence, which appears inevitable, and in particular the possible bandwagon effect on the Inuit of Nunavut and Nunavik[4] — a phenomenon the Canadian government is perfectly aware of and which doubtless is a better explanation for the deployment of military forces in the Arctic by the Harper government than the existence of a foreign threat.

André Binette wrote: “Moreover, in the public meetings that I co-chaired in a dozen or so villages of Quebec’s Nunavik and in my conversations with political leaders in that region it was soon evident that for many Quebec Inuit the dream of a single country composed of Greenland, Nunavut and Nunavik was quite substantial, and that the independence of Greenland, the creation of Nunavut in 1999, and the establishment of a future autonomous government in Nunavik were perceived as major steps in that direction.”

Added to this is the fact that the United States does not recognize Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic waters and that nothing prevents them from supporting the claims of the Inuit, just as they flirted with the Quebec sovereigntists in 1971 to counter the northern policies of Pierre Trudeau, witness Jacques Parizeau’s trip to Chicago.

The situation could become extremely complex and the Quebec independentists will have to think carefully before taking a position on the Inuit claims. Will they make common cause with the federal government in opposing them, and defend Canadian unity, or will they ally with the Inuit against the federal government, linking their struggle for the sovereignty of Quebec with that of the Inuit, within the framework of what could be a sovereignty-association? The debate is open.

[1] Dubuc writes that he is quoting from Laurence Richard, Jacques Parizeau, un bâtisseur (Montréal: Éditions de l’Homme, 1992). A very similar account of this meeting is found in the major biography of Jacques Parizeau by Pierre Duchesne, Tome I, Le Croisé (Montréal: Québec Amérique, 2001). However, Duchesne dates the meeting in 1969, as does Jean-François Lisée, in Dans l’oeil de l’aigle. Washington face au Québec (Montréal: Boréal, 1990). And Duchesne reports that Parizeau told his questioners that “he was in full agreement” with the sector theory (pp. 595-96).

[2] For a less sanguine interpretation of US views of a sovereign Quebec, see Anne Legaré, Le Québec otage de ses alliés: Les relations du Québec avec la France et les États-Unis (Montréal, 2003). Legaré represented the Parti Québécois government in New England and in New York and Washington from 1994 to 1996. She quotes (p. 26) a statement by Parizeau himself, in his book Pour un Québec souverain (Montréal: VLB éditeur, 1997), on the obstacles the United States posed to Québec sovereignty: [Translation] “While, in the Department of Commerce in Washington, the State Department and the National Security Council of the White House, they readily agreed that Quebec could not be excluded from NAFTA, from there to recognizing Quebec as a sovereign country there was not only a step to be taken but an abyss to be crossed.”

[3] The actual chronology differs from this account. According to the National Library of Canada,

“An agreement-in-principle was finally reached in 1990, a final version of which appeared in December of 1991.... It was then put to a plebiscite in October of 1992, and saw a record turnout of voters. The Agreement passed the plebiscite with an overwhelming majority of 84.7%. Once past this hurdle, matters moved quickly. The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, ratifying the agreement, and the Nunavut Act [laws.justice.gc.ca/en/N-28.6/index.html], which created the new territory, were both passed on June 10, 1993....

“As with the ratification of the Nunavut Act in 1993, the actual birth of Nunavut on April 1, 1999 became an international news story. Parties, speeches, fireworks, traditional Inuit games and dances, and other activities marked the occasion.”

[4] See “Scottish, Québécois reactions to Greenland’s vote for autonomy”.

Daniel Tanuro: The Delusion of Green Capitalism

2011-09-02T10:34:00.001-04:00

Further to yesterday’s post, “Foundations of an ecosocialist strategy,” here is an interview with the same author, Daniel Tanuro, based on his book, soon to be published in English. Its working title, I am informed by the publisher Resistance Books (U.K.), is The Delusion of Green Capitalism. The translated interview, with my introduction, was first published in January 2011 on Ian Angus’s excellent blog Climate & Capitalism.

Introduction

Daniel Tanuro’s new book, L’impossible capitalisme vert, is a major contribution to our analytical understanding of ecosocialism.

Tanuro, a Belgian Marxist and certified agriculturist, is a prolific author on environmental history and policies.

Addressed primarily to the Green milieu, as the title indicates, this book is a powerful refutation of the major proposals advanced to resolve the climate crisis that fail to challenge the profit drive and accumulation dynamic of capital. Much of the book appears to be a substantially expanded update of a report by Tanuro adopted in 2009 by the leadership of the Fourth International as a basis for international discussion. That report was translated by Ian Angus and included in his anthology The Global Fight for Climate Justice.

Tanuro’s book includes much additional material elaborating his central thesis that climate degradation cannot be dissociated from the “natural” functioning of capitalism as a system and that a valid “emancipatory project” to confront and overcome the impending crisis must recognize natural constraints and aim for a fundamental redefinition of what we mean by social wealth.

Among the topics of particular interest to readers are extended critiques of popular writers on climate crisis ranging from Jared Diamond to Hans Jonas and Hervé Kempf, as well as his critical assessment of the contributions of Marxist writers such as John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett. Tanuro makes a compelling case against many ill-conceived nostrums such as the Sierra Club’s campaign for immigration controls, or such cost-efficiency based market mechanisms as carbon trading and ecotaxes.

A major feature of the book is its cogent explanation of how Marxist value theory explains the ecological crisis and points to its solution. He also addresses what he considers a major deficiency in Marx’s ecology, an inadequate appreciation of the crucial implications of capitalism’s reliance on non-renewable fossile-fuel resources. This aspect is explored in detail in Tanuro’s article “Marxism, Energy, and Ecology: The Moment of Truth,” published in the December 2010 issue of Capitalism Nature Socialism.

We hope that this outstanding book will soon be published in English and other languages.

In the following interview, Daniel Tanuro outlines some of the major themes in the book. My translation from the French, À propos du capitalisme vert.

—Richard Fidler

* * *

Concerning Green Capitalism

Daniel Tanuro, you are the author of L’impossible capitalisme vert, published by Les empêcheurs de penser en rond/La Découverte. You are also the founder of the NGO “Climat et justice sociale.” What is “green capitalism”?

D.T.: The expression “green capitalism” may be understood in two different ways. A producer of wind turbines may boast that he is engaged in green capitalism. In this sense — in the sense that some money is invested in a “clean” sector of the economy — a form of green capitalism is obviously possible and quite profitable. But the real question is whether capitalism as a whole can turn green, that is, whether the global action of the numerous and competing capitals that constitute Capital can respect ecological cycles, their rhythms, and the speed by which natural resources are reconstituted.

That is the sense in which my book poses the question and it answers in the negative. My main argument is that competition impels each owner of capital to replace workers by more productive machines in order to achieve a superprofit greater than the average profit.

Productivism is thus at the heart of capitalism. As Schumpeter said, “a capitalism without growth is a contradiction in terms.” Capitalist accumulation is potentially unlimited, so there is an antagonism between capital and nature, as the latter’s resources are finite. It may be objected that the productivity race leads capital to be increasingly resource efficient, as expressed for example by the observed decrease in the quantity of energy necessary for the production of a percentage point of GDP. But this tendency to increased efficiency obviously cannot be prolonged indefinitely in a linear way, and empirically we find it is more than offset by the growing mass of commodities that are produced. Green capitalism is therefore an oxymoron, like social capitalism.

This observation opens a debate between two opposing strategic conceptions. For some, the spontaneously ecocidal functioning of capitalism can be corrected through political action within the system by resorting to market mechanisms (taxes, fiscal incentives, tradable emission rights, etc.). For others, including me, our policy must be to break with capitalism because if the environment is to be saved it is absolutely indispensable to challenge the fundamental laws of capitalism. This means daring to challenge private property of the means of production, the foundation of the system.

In my opinion, the debate between these two lines is decided in practice by the example of the struggle against climate change. In the developed capitalist countries, we are confronted with the obligation to abandon the use of fossil fuels almost completely in barely two generations. If we exclude nuclear power — and it must be excluded — this means, in Europe for example, dividing by about one half the final consumption of energy, which is possible only by reducing to a substantial degree the processing and transportation of material.

The transition to renewables and reduction in energy consumption are linked and necessitate major investments which are inconceivable if the decisions remain subordinate to the dogma of cost efficiency. The alternative to cost efficiency can only be democratic planning focused on social and ecological needs. And such planning in turn is possible only by breaking the resistance of the oil, coal, gas, automobile, petrochemicals, naval and aeronautic construction monopolies, for they want to burn fossil fuels for as long as possible.

Climate change is at the center of your book. You interpret this change as a “climate tipping” [basculement climatique]. What do you mean by tipping, and why do you consider it to be otherwise more disturbing than a mere change?

D.T.: The expression “climate changes” (and I do mean changes, in the plural) suggests the repetition of climate variations analogous to those in the past. But between now and the end of the century, in a few decades, the Earth’s climate risks changing as much as it has during the 20,000 years that have elapsed since the last Ice Age. There is now no doubt that we are not very far from a “tipping point” beyond which it will no longer be possible to prevent the eventual melting of the icecaps formed 65 million years ago. The word “tipping” is indisputably more adapted to describing this reality than the word “changes”! The speed of the phenomenon is unprecedented and poses a major threat, for many ecosystems will be unable to adapt. This applies not only to the natural ecosystems but also, I fear, to some ecosystems engineered by human beings.

Look at what is happening in Pakistan: designed by the British colonizer to serve their imperialist interests, the water management mechanisms of the Indus using dams and dikes which supply an extensive irrigation system are proving inadequate in the face of exceptional floodwaters. And this risk is increasing because the warmer climate disrupts the monsoon regime and increases the violence of the downpours.

It seems to me illusory to hope that this race will be won by reinforcing the existing infrastructures, as the World Bank and the big capitalist groups specializing in public works propose. Instead of building dikes it would be more reasonable to restore the flexible management of water levels that was practiced prior to colonization. That is what is proposed by the International Rivers Network: allowing floods to clear the sediment and prevent the silting up of the basin, feeding the Delta, stopping deforestation, accommodating zones liable to flooding, etc.

But that requires a complete overhaul of the mechanisms over more than 3000 km, with major implications for territorial management, agricultural policy, urban policy, energy production, etc. Socially, such an overhaul, to be achieved in two or three decades (that is, very quickly for work of such scope!), means challenging the power of the landed oligarchy and the development programs that the IMF and World Bank impose through the debt. And this debt must be canceled or else the reconstruction will be heavily mortgaged and the country strangled, in danger of entering history as the first example of a regressive spiral in which global warming mutually links all the mechanisms of underdevelopment and multiplies their negative effects.

We see clearly in this how the social and environmental questions are interpenetrated. In fact, the fight against climate tipping requires a policy shift toward another model of development centered on the satisfaction of peoples’ needs. Without that, further catastrophes, even more terrible, may well result, and the poor will be the major victims. That is the warning emerging from the tragedy in Pakistan.

You think the countries of the South should “skip” the fossil energy stage in managing their development and go directly to that of renewable energies. What is your answer to those who object that renewable energies are not (technically and quantitatively) able to do this?

D.T.: I tell them they are wrong. The solar energy flow that reaches the surface of the earth is equivalent to 8 to 10 thousand times the planet’s energy consumption. The technical potential of renewable energies — that is, the share of that theoretical potential that is usable through known technologies, independently of cost — represents 6 to 18 times the world’s needs, according to estimates. It is certain that this technical potential could increase very rapidly if the development of renewables were finally to become an absolute priority in energy research policies, which it is still not at present. The transition to renewables certainly poses a host of complex technical problems, but there is no reason to think they are insurmountable.

The major obstacles are political. One: without exception, renewable energies remain more expensive than fossil energies. Two: the transition to renewables is not the same thing as changing fuel at the pump: it is necessary to change the energy system. That requires enormous investments and, at the beginning of the transition, these will necessarily be consumers of fossil energy and therefore additional generators of greenhouse gas; these additional emissions must be offset and that is why, in the short run, the reduction of final consumption of energy is the sine qua non condition for a passage to renewables which, once carried out, will open new horizons.

I repeat: there is no possible satisfactory solution without confronting the dual combined obstacle of capitalist profit and growth. This means, in particular, that the clean technologies controlled by the North must be transferred free of charge to the South, on the sole condition that they are implemented by the public sector and under the control of the local population.

You advocate a social ecology which you call ecosocialism. What is an ecosocialist? And how does he or she differ from a “plain and simple” ecologist or socialist?

D.T.: An ecosocialist differs from an ecologist in that he analyzes the “ecological crisis” not as a crisis of the relationship between humanity in general and nature but as a crisis of the relationship between an historically determined mode of production and its environment, and therefore in the last analysis as a manifestation of the crisis of the mode of production itself. In other words, for an ecosocialist, the ecological crisis is in fact a manifestation of the crisis of capitalism (not to overlook the specific crisis of the so-called “socialist” societies, which aped capitalist productivism). A result is that, in his fight for the environment, an ecosocialist will always propose demands that make the connection with the social question, with the struggle of the exploited and oppressed for a redistribution of wealth, for employment, etc.

However, an ecosocialist differs from the “pure and simple” socialist, as you say, in that, for him, the only anticapitalism that is valid today is one that takes into account the natural limits and the operational constraints of the ecosystems. This has many implications: a break with productivism and consumerism, of course, within the perspective of a society in which, the basic needs having been satisfied, free time and social relations constitute the real wealth. But also contestation of technologies and of harmful productions, coupled with the requirement of reconversion of the workers. Maximum decentralization of production and distribution in the framework of a democratically planned economy is something else that the ecosocialists stress.

One point that it seems to me important to stress is the need to question the traditional socialist vision that sees any rise in productivity of agricultural labour as a step toward socialism. In my opinion this conception does not allow us to meet the requirements of increased respect for the environment. In fact, an agriculture and a forestry that are ecologically more sustainable necessitate more labour, not less. To re-create hedges, groves, wetlands, to diversify crops and fight for organic produce, for example, implies an increase in the share of social labour invested in tasks of ecological maintenance. This labour may be highly scientific and highly technical — it is not a return to the hoe — but it is not easily mechanizable.

That is why I think that a culture of “taking care” (I borrow this concept from Isabelle Stengers) must permeate economic activities, in particular those that closely affect ecosystems. We are responsible for nature. In a way, this means extending the logic that the left applies in the area of personal care, education, etc. No socialists would argue that nurses should be replaced by robots; we are all conscious of the fact that we need more nurses who are better paid so that patients are better cared for. Well! The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the environment: if it is to be better cared for, there needs to be more labour, intelligence and human sensibility. Contrary to the “pure and simple socialist”, and even though it is difficult, the ecosocialist, because he is conscious of the urgency, tries to introduce all of these questions into the struggles of the exploited and oppressed instead of postponing them until after the revolution.

Many, including myself, are convinced that an effective struggle against climate change necessarily entails a break from productivist capitalism. To this effect, you appeal to “socialized man, the associated producers.” Who are they, and what specifically can they do?

D.T.: You are alluding to the quotation from Marx that serves as an epigraph to my book: “Freedom … can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature….” We must realize that in Marx’s thinking the rational regulation of exchanges is conditional on the disappearance of capitalism. Indeed, on the one hand the struggle of all against all permanently undermines attempts by producers to associate; on the other hand, a significant fraction of producers — the waged workers — are cut off from their means of production. The latter, including natural resources, are appropriated by the bosses. Deprived of any power of decision, the workers are unable to rationally regulate anything at all concerning production, let alone rationally regulate interchange with the environment!

To constitute social beings, producers must begin to join together in the fight against their exploiters. This struggle in an embryonic way points to the need for collective appropriation of the means of production and collective usufruct of natural resources. These in turn are necessary but not sufficient for a more harmonious relationship with nature.

That said, we can answer your question about concrete action by examining how different groups of producers understand — or don’t — the need to rationally regulate the interchange between humanity and nature. At present, it is striking that the most advanced positions of an ecosocialist type emanate from indigenous peoples and small farmers mobilized against agribusiness. This is not accidental: both groups of producers are not, or not completely, cut off from their means of production. Therefore they are able to offer concrete strategies for rational regulation of their interaction with the environment. Indigenous people see the defence of the climate as an additional argument in favor of preserving their precapitalist lifestyle in symbiosis with the forest.

As for the Via Campesina peasant movement, it has developed a whole program of concrete demands on the theme that “the peasants know how to cool the climate.” In contrast, the labour movement is lagging behind. This is of course due to the fact that each individual worker is inclined to wish for the smooth operation of the company that exploits him, in order to maintain his livelihood.

Conclusion: the greater the retreat in worker solidarity in the face of the neoliberal offensive, the harder it will be to develop environmental awareness among workers. It’s a big problem, because the working class, by its central role in production, is called on to play a leading role in the fight for the anticapitalist alternative needed to rescue the environment. Indigenous peoples, peasant organizations and youth have an interest in trying to involve more and more unions in climate campaigns — increasing collabouration, rank-and-file contacts, etc. Within the labour movement itself, the task is to promote demands that address the concerns about jobs, income and working conditions while helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

An important issue in this regard is the need for a generalized radical reduction in hours of work without loss of pay, with a drastic reduction in the pace of work and additional hiring to compensate. Another aspect is the extension of a public sector under the control of workers and users: free, first-rate public transportation, publicly owned energy services, public insulation and building renovation firms, etc. Ecosocialists have a role to play in promoting the emergence of such demands.

With L’impossible capitalisme vert, you do not seem to fear being accused of undue alarmism by those who have yet to understand that we have entered the Anthropocene Era, and that it is man that is primarily responsible for runaway warming, especially since the industrial era. Doesn’t green capitalism, like “sustainable development” and “greenwashing”, reflect a desire to deny this responsibility and to “continue as before”? If we are to abandon productivist capitalism, shouldn’t we first alter our behavior as consumers and producers?

D.T.: I am not an alarmist. In my book, I relied almost exclusively on the reports of the IPCC which, in terms of the diagnosis on global warming and its possible impacts, appear to me, whatever is said about them, to be an excellent summary of “good science”, subjected to peer review. It is true that the IPCC lags a bit when it comes to recent discoveries, but this does not change much in its findings.

In fact, I dread the discourse of panic and exaggeration. Too often, it tends to obscure the real threats and real responsibilities. Climate tipping easily lends itself to eschatology, and there is no shortage of gurus to claim that “the planet is in danger”, that “life is in danger”, that “humanity is in danger,” that the “photosynthetic ceiling” will fall on our heads, or whatnot. All of this is excessive. The planet fears nothing, and life on Earth is a phenomenon so tough that humanity, even if it wished, could probably not come to an end, even with atomic bombs.

As to our species, climate change, by itself, does not jeopardize it. The danger it poses is more circumscribed: around three billion people risk substantial degradation in their living conditions, and hundreds of millions of them — the poorest — are threatened in their very existence. Policy makers know this and do nothing — or almost nothing — because it would cost too much, and thus impede the smooth operation of business. That is the naked reality.

Too often, catastrophic discourse serves to obscure the potential barbarism and dilute the issues in a vague overall sense of guilt: “Don’t waste time quibbling about the responsibilities,” “we are all guilty,” “we must all agree to make efforts”, etc. Meanwhile, the energy lobbies quietly continue burning coal and oil non-stop.

This leads me to the second part of your question about changing our behavior as producers and consumers. Following on what I said earlier, it is worth noting that employees are incapable of changing their behavior as producers. Who produces, how, why, for whom, in what quantities, with what social and environmental impacts? In everyday life, only the bosses have the power to respond to these questions and, ultimately, they respond according to their profits. Employees can only try to have a say in management in order to challenge it and recognize their ability to do better, according to criteria other than profit. This is the dynamic of workers’ control, and ecosocialists should think about how this old demand may be revisited in order to encompass environmental concerns.

In terms of consumption, I think it is necessary to distinguish between individual changes and collective changes. All in all, it is certainly better if someone who travels by plane offsets his CO₂ emissions in one way or another, but this offset will mainly allow him to buy a good conscience on the cheap while diverting him from the political struggle for indispensable structural changes. To promote this kind of behavior is to engage in “greenwashing” and it actually means to “continue as before.”

Collective changes are a different matter. They help to validate another possible logic, favour the invention of alternative practices, and contribute to the realization that structural changes are necessary, and will come about through social mobilization. Those changes, such as group purchases of organic produce from farmers, or urban community gardening, are to be encouraged.

Can we fight against climate tipping regardless of the financial and social costs that it represents? Is it urgent to build another model and risk jeopardizing the entire society? Between nature and civilization, what choice is there?

D.T.: To say that another climate policy would jeopardize the entire society in the name of some priority of nature over civilization is to stand reality on its head! What happens in reality is that the present policy jeopardizes civilization while causing enormous and irreversible damage to nature, which is our common heritage. This policy is completely subordinated to the dogma of cost efficiency, and we see what that produces: peanuts. We are heading straight toward the wall.

Of course, a different policy cannot pretend that the cost of various measures is of no importance: between two equivalent strategies to reduce emissions, it is reasonable to choose the one that will be of least cost to the community, all other conditions being equal. But at bottom there must first be a different policy, guided by criteria other than cost, and especially qualitative criteria. In technical terms, an essential criterion is that of energy efficiency at the systemic level.

The great American ecologist Barry Commoner advanced this argument more than twenty years ago. It is thermodynamically absurd, he said, to transport coal over thousands of kilometres to produce electricity which, then conveyed over hundreds of kilometers, will be used to heat household water, something that can easily be done with a solar water heater. In social terms, a major criterion must be the protection of people and their well-being, particularly the protection of the poorest. This criterion today is widely ignored, hence the tragedy in Pakistan, among others.

Finally, do you think your ecosocialist project is feasible in the near future?

D.T.: The feasibility of this project depends entirely on the balance of forces between capitalism on the one hand, and the exploited and oppressed on the other. This balance of forces currently favours capital, we should not kid ourselves. But there is no third way possible: the attempts to save the climate through market mechanisms consistently reveal their ecological inefficiency and their social injustice. There is no way other than resistance. It alone can change the balance of forces and impose partial reforms pointing in the right direction. Copenhagen was a first step, a second was the summit in Cochabamba. Let us keep going, let us unite, let us mobilize and build a global movement to save the climate in social justice. This will be more effective than all the lobbying efforts of those who nourish illusions about a green capitalism.

October 7, 2010

Articles in English by Daniel Tanuro may be found at http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur54.

Foundations of an ecosocialist strategy

2011-09-01T13:00:00.003-04:00

Introduction
The following article by a leading European ecosocialist, Daniel Tanuro, was written especially for the latest issue of the Montréal-based journal Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme (NCS), which features a number of articles on what is commonly referred to as the ecological crisis (not yet on-line). Tanuro is the author of an important book-length Marxist critique of “Green Capitalism,” L’impossible capitalisme vert, soon to be published in English. Other articles by Daniel Tanuro, in both French and English, may be found at Europe solidaire sans frontières. I have translated below the French text of this article as published by NCS.

– Richard Fidler

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Foundations of an ecosocialist strategy

by Daniel Tanuro

Contrary to the false but extremely popular Easter Island metaphor advanced by Jared Diamond,[1] the environmental deterioration we are now observing is not at all comparable to the damage that may have occurred in previous historical periods. The differences are not only quantitative (the seriousness and global scale of ecological problems) but also and above all qualitative. While all the environmental crises of the past stemmed from social tendencies to chronic under-production, hence the fear of shortages, the current problems originate in the converse tendency to over-production and over-consumption, which is specific to generalized commodity production.
Consequently, the expression “ecological crisis” is inappropriate. It is not nature that is in crisis, but the historically determined relationship between humanity and its environment. This crisis is not due to the intrinsic characteristics of the human species but to the mode of production that became dominant about two centuries ago — capitalism — and the modes of consumption and mobility that it entails. The serious damages to ecosystems (climate change, chemical pollution, swift decline in biodiversity, soil degradation, destruction of the tropical forest, etc.) constitute one dimension of the global systemic crisis. Together, they express the incompatibility between capitalism and respect for natural limits.

Productivism without limits
The fundamental reason for this incompatibility is straightforward. Under the whip of competition, every owner of capital is permanently seeking to replace living labour by dead labour, that is, to replace workers with more productive machines, since the latter procure surplus profit in addition to the average profit. Needless to say, this operation would be meaningless for the capitalist if it were not accompanied by an attempt to eliminate his weaker competitors through the increase in the mass of commodities placed on the market at low prices. The innovation, in this mode of production, lies not in the reduction in the volume of labour but in the never-ending accumulation of capital.
Accordingly, the capitalist’s constant search for new fields of added value leads him to produce a never-ending quantity of useless and harmful commodities which, to produce surplus value, must constantly create increasingly artificial outlets and needs. “Productivism” — producing in order to produce — necessarily implies “consuming in order to consume” and is part of the genetic code of this mode of production, just like commodity fetishism. Capitalism, said Schumpeter, “not only never is but never can be stationary.”[2] Indeed, if capitalism were to be stationary, it would be necessary to abolish competition between the numerous capitals that make up Capital, which is obviously absurd.
But, it may be objected, if efficiency in the use of resources were to increase more rapidly than the mass of commodities produced, the expanded reproduction of capital would not be accompanied by an increased depletion of natural resources. Capitalism would then be ecologically sustainable. Indeed. That is the thesis of the decoupling between GDP growth and the ecological footprint. It is illustrated by the so-called Kuznets bell curve, according to which the environmental impact of a given society will increase to a peak, then decline with the increase in its wealth and therefore the development of its productive forces.
True, of all the modes of production that have existed in history, capitalism is the one that has most spectacularly increased the productivity of labour and thus efficiency in the use of resources. That is because the quest for surplus profit that prompts mechanization simultaneously favours increased savings in the use of natural resources. However, this observation does not challenge the ecocidal nature of the system, and the Kuznets curve is false. On the one hand, the increase in efficiency is necessarily asymptotic, not a linear function of the increase in fixed capital — otherwise one would have to conclude that perpetual movement is possible since, if carried to an extreme, labour could be performed without loss of energy. (This glaring error was committed by the experts who assessed the share of European electricity consumption that could be covered by the Desertec solar power project in the Sahara.[3]) On the other hand, empirical observation shows that increasing the volume of production does more than offset the increase in efficiency, which is only relative. A striking example is the case of the automobile: the efficiency of the engines increases, but the global needs for hydrocarbon fuels and the greenhouse gas emissions explode as a result of the never-ending increase in the number of vehicles. Growth-obsessed capitalism inevitably implies a growing consumption of resources, which is irreconcilable with their finite nature and their rates of renewal.
The alarming increase in serious ecological problems poses the question of the theoretical limits to capitalist growth and consequently capitalist degradation of the environment. To answer this, we must clearly grasp that capital is not a thing, it is a social relation of exploitation, the development of which was historically made possible by the prior appropriation of natural resources (land, water, forests, etc.) by the ruling classes on behalf of profit. This appropriation then entailed that of the labour force, transformed into a waged commodity. The pillage of resources and exploitation of labor — when it is considered from the social standpoint — are therefore the two sides of the same coin.
However, leaving aside its social component (cooperation and its forms), human labour power can also be considered from the thermodynamic angle, as one among other natural resources (the human body is a converter of energy). In this case, pillage and exploitation are in fact but one and the same process of destruction, and surplus labour can be described as a quantity of energy monopolized by the employer.
Once this is recognized, it is possible to answer the question about the theoretical limits of capital. On the one hand, the expropriation of the direct producers, their alienation from the nourishing earth, has created a social class whose only means of subsistence is the sale of its labour power in return for a wage. On the other hand, the worker who is hired as an employee finds ready-made, placed at his or her disposal by the employer, the necessary ingredients for his or her productive activity — tools, buildings and energy — that are directly or indirectly derived from resources taken from nature through labour or transformed by it.
In this context, and taking into account the fact that the increase in efficiency is only relative, it goes without saying that the incessant quest for surplus profits through capitalist productivism weighs on both the variable and constant fractions of capital, so that it must inevitably consume an ever-greater absolute quantity of labour power and natural resources even though it favours their relative economy. Seen in this light, Marx’s enigmatic formula that capital has no limit other than capital itself simply means that this mode of production will stop on its own terms only after it has exhausted the only two sources of “all wealth: the land and the labourer.”[4]
This conclusion leaves so little room for optimism that some people desperately cling to the idea that some endogenous mechanism not yet identified might block the system before it has reached this theoretical limit. However, we must resign ourselves to noting that there is nothing of the kind, nor can there be. The reason, once again, is straightforward and has to do with the fundamental laws of capitalism: this mode based exclusively on the law of labour value has as its sole purpose the production of exchange values, not use values. Since value is determined by the labour time socially necessary for production, it is obvious that capital does not have any means that would enable it to account spontaneously for the resources that nature gratuitously puts at the disposal of humanity. The money form — the symbol and essence of value — by its very abstraction and the complete reversal of perspective that it engenders (money seems to give value to commodities, although it is commodities that give money its value) creates the illusion that unlimited material accumulation is possible.
It should be explained that capital, although it counts and measures everything, is incapable of taking natural resources into account both qualitatively and quantitatively, as is shown by the irresponsible insouciance with which it irreversibly destroys the stocks of numerous resources despite warnings of all kinds. This madness has even found its theoreticians in the person of ultraliberals who — in the face of all the evidence — defend the absurd thesis of the complete substitutability of natural resources by products of human activity.

A political answer?
Of course, SOME capital is invested massively in the green sector of the economy, for the profits there are attractive, thanks especially to public subsidies. But “green capitalism” as such is an oxymoron. The only meaningful issue is to what degree the ecological blindness of the commodity mode of production might be offset by policy measures exogenous to the strictly economic sphere. In view of what was said earlier, the answer is obvious: the efficiency of ecological policies depends entirely on the determination with which those who advocate them dare to challenge the freedom of capital, and to construct the necessary relationship of forces to impose them (which in turn involves linking the solution of the ecological question to the struggles of the exploited: the fight against unemployment, poverty, social inequality, discrimination and deterioration of working conditions).
And this is where the shoe pinches. Tim Jackson, for example, is probably one of the non-Marxist authors who best understands the productivist logic of capitalism as the fundamental cause of environmental degradation. In Prosperity Without Growth, rejecting superficial explanations, he writes perceptively that “the throw-away society is not so much a consequence of consumer greed as a structural prerequisite for survival,” for the system needs to “sell more goods, to innovate continually.”[5] But Jackson sidesteps the conclusion to be drawn from his own analysis: instead of challenging the mode of production, he veers toward questioning a “desire for novelty and consumption” that in his view is part of human nature. As a result, the mountain gives forth a mouse:

[Translation]
On the ecological side, Prosperity Without Growth pleads for government to set harsh limits on the use of resources subject only to environmental constraints. And that is what should be done.... However, one cannot pretend to ignore, as Jackson does, that the business class successfully opposes all drastic environmental regulation, even in those cases where the need for it is questioned the least;
On the social side, Jackson has the merit of arguing for a reduction in labour time, but he subordinates this measure to the maintenance of corporate competitiveness, so no figure is assigned to it. In his view, the reduction in labour time is in fact a form of flexibility, not an immediate collective response to unemployment or a tool for redistributing the wealth produced (without reduction in wages). He envisages it only as a last resort, whenever the conversion of economists to a new “macro-economic model” would not suffice to simply displace the focal point of economic activity from the value producing sector to dematerialized services.[6]

Generally, all of the proposals advanced to politically remedy the ecosuicidal nature of capital trip over the same obstacles: the logic of profit and the class nature of the institutions.[7]

Mirage of internalization
Einstein is reputed to have said “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This theorem is perfectly applicable to the idea that capitalism could embark on the path of sustainability if some political authorities assigned a price to natural resources. Since the ecological crisis is a consequence of generalized commodity production, the destruction of the environment cannot be stopped by “commodifying” water, air, carbon, genes or any other natural resource. Not only does this “internalization of externalities” not bring us any closer to a solution, it takes us in the opposite direction. Needless to say, the transformation of natural resources into commodities implies their appropriation by capital. Accordingly, the matter is settled because capital, by subjecting them to the law of labour-value, thereby tends to remove them from any governing principle other than profit.
In any case, independently of these considerations, and even more fundamentally, attempts to assign a price to natural resources come up against an insurmountable theoretical difficulty: how to evaluate in monetary terms properties whose production is not measurable in hours of labour, and which therefore have no value, and whose destruction is, moreover, deferred in time? Liberal economists attempting to answer this puzzle squabble over the current conversion rate and question to what degree consumers are willing to pay for the environment or to accept its degradation. The price of natural resources varies, then, according to whether the persons who are questioned are wealthy or poverty-stricken. Pushed to the limit, this method clearly reveals its absurdity: what commodity value should be given to sunlight, knowing that life on Earth depends on it?
The impasse of commodity calculation appears clearly in the proposal for a carbon tax to make fossil energies more expensive than renewables and consequently reduce carbon gas emissions. As we know, to have a reasonable chance of not overly exceeding a 2^oC increase in temperature from the pre-industrial era, these emissions must decrease by 80 to 95% by 2050 in the developed capitalist countries, and by 50 to 85% world-wide, with the inflection point being reached by no later than 2015.[8] These ranges — and it would be prudent to aim for the higher figures — mean abandoning fossil fuels within two generations, although these energy sources account for 80% of our present energy needs (and petroleum is the raw material of the petrochemical industry).
In fact, the scope of the reductions to be achieved, given the urgency and the size of the difference in cost between fossils and renewables, is such that even a tax of $600 a ton would not suffice (it would simply allow a reduction in global emissions by one-half by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.[9] Since the combustion of a thousand litres of fuel oil produces 2.7 tons of CO₂, it is understandable that such a measure would be socially inapplicable in reality: employers could accept this only if it were wholly transferred to the ultimate consumers, while the majority of the population, infuriated by the austerity that has prevailed for 30 years, will obviously oppose any such deterioration in its conditions of existence.
That is why, in practice, and notwithstanding all the sophisticated theories of ecological economics, the policy proposals for internalization of the costs of pollution are both ecologically insufficient and socially unsustainable. Supposing that the theoretical and practical obstacles can be lifted, the effectiveness of internalization would remain unpredictable because price is a purely quantitative indicator, incapable of capturing the qualitative differences between tons of CO₂ avoided by methods as different as the insulation of a home, installation of photovoltaic panels, a tree plantation, or the suppression of a Formula One Grand Prix. Quantitatively, there is nothing to distinguish one ton of CO₂ from another. But the qualitative differences are decisive in developing adequate ecological strategies in which the means implemented are consistent with the end — the passage without social destruction to an energy sparing and decentralized system based solely on renewable sources.

Rational management of the metabolism and class struggle
The ecosuicidal nature of capital has been a reality since the beginning of this mode of production. In the 19^th century the founder of soil chemistry, Liebig, was already sounding the alarm: as a result of capitalist urbanization, human excrements no longer returned to the field, and this break in the nutrient cycle threatened to cause serious impoverishment of the soil. In the course of his work, Marx raised the issue to the conceptual plane by posing the general need “to govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way.”[10] Then, armed with this ecological concept (before the term existed), he returned to the issue of soils in order to advance a radical programmatic perspective: abolition of the separation between town and country, the indispensable complement in his view to the gradual disappearance of the separation between manual and intellectual labour.
It must be stressed here that the expression “rational” management should not give rise to confusion. Nature, for Marx, is “the inorganic body of man.” The correct metabolism of the whole is not achieved by a bureaucracy of green technocrats but by the suppression of social classes. Indeed, the division of society renders impossible any conscious and organized mastery of exchange of matter with the environment. Not only because the drive for profit impels the bosses to pillage natural resources but also because their capitalist appropriation means that the resources are arrayed against the exploited as hostile forces from which the latter are alienated. Added to that is the competition between workers and the fear of unemployment, which encourages each, individually, to desire the profitable operation of “his” or “her” company, and thus to collaborate involuntarily in productivism. Finally, based on a certain level of development of capital, commodity consumption gives the workers a certain number of meager compensations for their alienation from production. None of these mechanisms can be broken except by the development of class solidarity on an ever-broader scale. That is why, for Marx, the rational regulation of the social metabolism can be realized only by the “associated producers.” And Marx explained that it is this alone that provides “the only possible freedom.”
Although Lenin referred to it in some positions he took on the agrarian question,[11] and Bukharin made an intelligent presentation of it in his handbook on Historical Materialism,[12] the Marxist concept of rational regulation of material exchanges subsequently sank into oblivion. No Marxist thinker assigned it the importance it deserves, and in fact none of them saw its relevance when the ecological question became a social issue in the 1960s. This is not the place to inquire into the reasons for this discontinuity in revolutionary Marxism.[13] Suffice it to warn the reader against simplistic interpretations: Stalinism is not the sole culprit, although in this field as well it did signify a terrible theoretical regression.[14] Rather, we will emphasize the fact that there is an urgent need to assign “Marx’s ecology” a central place in the theoretical thinking and programmatic development of the Marxists.[15]
The problem of global warming illustrates this need. The saturation of the atmosphere in CO₂, mainly due to the combustion of fossil fuels — that is, a short-circuit in the long cycle of carbon — is a flagrant case of irrational management of material exchanges, and this irrationality confronts humanity with a terrible dilemma:

On the one hand, three billion people live in disgraceful conditions. Their legitimate needs can only be met by increasing material production, and thus processing resources removed from the environment. This means consuming energy, 80% of which is of fossil origin today, a source of greenhouse gas;
On the other hand, the climate system is on the verge of a heart attack. If we are to avoid irreversible catastrophes (the major victims of which will be among the three billion people aspiring to a dignified existence), greenhouse gas emissions must be radically reduced. This means reducing the consumption of the fossil energies now needed for the processing of the resources taken from the environment, and reducing material production.

Within the short period of 40 years now left to us, according to the IPCC — and absent an extraordinary scientific revolution in energy — there is simply no acceptable capitalist solution to these simultaneous equations. A system based on competition for profit is quite simply incapable of satisfying non-solvable human needs on a mass scale while sustainably reducing the consumption of energy and material production. Attaining either of these objectives separately is already incompatible with the logic of capital, so how can they be achieved in conjunction? That this is not possible is clear from an examination of the climate scenarios proposed by governments and international institutions. The Blue Map scenario of the International Energy Agency, for example, aims at a reduction in global emissions of 50% by 2050.[16] It is more than probable that this objective is insufficient; in any case, it could be achieved only by massive recourse to nuclear energy, agrofuels and so-called “clean coal” (not to mention shale gas and oil sands). Blue Map would involve the construction each year, for more than forty years, of 32 nuclear power plants with a 1,000 MW capacity, and 45 new “clean” coal-fueled plants with a 500 MW capacity. There is no point in going further: the terrible catastrophe of Fukushima, Japan, is enough to show the aberration in such projects.
The strategic choice is therefore the following:

either we leave capitalism behind by radically restricting the sphere and volume of capitalist production and transportation, and it is possible to limit to the maximum the damages of global warming while guaranteeing a quality human development based exclusively on renewable energies within the perspective of a society based on some other economy of time;
or we remain within the capitalist accumulation logic, and climate deregulation radically limits the right to existence of hundreds of millions of human beings, while future generations are condemned to cope with the problems originating in the project creep of some dangerous technologies.

Obviously, we will opt for the first solution, but it must be emphasized that strict environmental constraints will subject the transition to socialism to some previously unforeseen conditions. There is no over-estimating the scope of the challenge. In the European Union, for example, reducing emissions by 60% (they should be reduced by 95%!) without resort to nuclear power would necessitate a reduction of about 40% in final energy demand.[17] It is not easy to gauge the cascading implications on material production and transportation, but it seems obvious that the objective will not be achieved simply by eliminating unnecessary and harmful production (weapons, advertising, luxury yachts and private planes, etc.), fighting the planned obsolescence of products, or reducing the ostentatious consumption of the wealthiest layers of the ruling class. More radical measures will be needed, and these will have some effects on the population as a whole, at least in the developed capitalist countries. In other words, the transition to socialism must be made in conditions very different from those of the 20^th century.
One indication is provided by the estimate of the share of agribusiness in total greenhouse gas emissions. According to the campaign “Ne mange pas le monde,” from 44 to 57% of greenhouse gas emissions are due to the present model of production, distribution and consumption of farm and forest products. This figure is obtained by adding together emissions due to strictly agricultural activities (11 to 15%), deforestation (15 to 18%), and the handling, transportation and storing of foods (15 to 20%) and organic residues (3 to 4%).[18]
The fight for the optimum possible climate stabilization cannot be limited, therefore, to the expropriation of the expropriators-polluters-squanderers. The change in property relations is only the necessary — but not sufficient — condition for an extremely profound social change involving a substantial modification in social modes of consumption and mobility. These modifications — travel otherwise, eat less meat and consume seasonal vegetables, for example — must be placed in perspective now, for they are urgently needed and they have immediate implications. This is possible, for they apply cultural and ideological mechanisms that have a certain autonomy in relation to the productive base of society. Although they themselves do not involve any structural change, they must be considered an integral part of the anticapitalist alternative. To the degree that they lead to collective practices, they can promote increased consciousness and organization.

A new period
The Transitional Program written by Leon Trotsky in 1938 begins with the statement that “The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism.” It concludes that “The objective prerequisites... have not only ‘ripened’; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.”
The founder of the Red Army refers firstly, of course, to the historical context: the victory of fascism and Nazism, the crushing of the Spanish revolution, and the imminent world war. His judgment on the putrefaction of the objective conditions, however, seems to have broader historical implications. This theme reappears, moreover, in Ernest Mandel’s writing: “Growing productive forces with growing commodity-money relationships can in fact move a society farther from the socialist goal instead of bringing it closer.”[19]
A remarkable quotation, the strategic implications of which deserve to be explored. For this is, in fact, the unprecedented situation with which we are confronted: in the developed countries, capitalism has gone too far in the growth of the material productive forces, such that a worthy socialist alternative implies no longer an advance, but a form of retreat. (We are speaking of the material forces, and not questioning the need for developing knowledge and cooperation among producers, of course.) It is this new historical conjuncture that is expressed in the pressing need to produce and transport less, in order to consume much less energy and totally eliminate fossil CO₂ emissions by the end of this century.
The fact that the development of the material productive forces has begun to move us objectively further from a socialist alternative is the major fact on which the new concept of ecosocialism is founded and justified. Far from being only a new label on the bottle, this concept introduces at least five novel aspects, which I have outlined in my book L’impossible capitalisme vert, and which I will briefly recall here:[20]
1. The notion of “human mastery of nature” must be abandoned. The complexity, the unknowns and the evolving nature of the biosphere involve an irreducible degree of uncertainty. The systemic social and environmental interrelationship must be conceived as a process in constant movement, as a production of nature.
2. The classic definition of socialism must be completed. The only possible socialism now is one that satisfies actual human needs (freed from commodity alienation), democratically determined by the interested parties themselves within the limits of the resources and by carefully questioning the environmental impact of these needs and the way in which they are satisfied.
3. It is necessary to go beyond the compartmentalized, utilitarian and linear vision of nature as the physical platform on which humanity operates, as the store from which it draws the necessary resources in the production of its social existence, and as the dump in which it unloads its garbage. Nature is at once the platform, the store, the waste receptacle and the set of living processes which, thanks to the contribution of solar energy, circulate material between these poles while constantly reorganizing it. Wastes and their mode of deposit must therefore be compatible in quantity and quality with the capacities and rhythms of recycling by the ecosystems. In other words, the proper functioning of the whole depends on biodiversity, which must be protected.
4. Energy sources and the methods of conversion that are used are not socially neutral. Socialism, consquently, cannot be defined, as Lenin did, as “soviets plus electricity.” The capitalist energy system is centralized, anarchic, wasteful, inefficient, dead-labour intensive, based on non-renewable sources and oriented toward accumulation. A socialist transformation worthy of the name necessitates its gradual replacement by a decentralized, planned, thrifty, efficient, living-labour intensive system, based exclusively on renewable sources and oriented toward the production of durable, recyclable and reusable use-values. This concerns not only the production of energy in the narrow sense but the entire industrial apparatus, agriculture, transportation, recreation, and land development and planning. This extremely profound transformation can only be achieved on a world scale.
5. Going beyond the threshold from which the growth in the material forces of production complicates the passage to socialism involves a critical attitude toward increasing the productivity of labour. In a number of fields the implementation of an anticapitalist alternative respectful of ecological balances necessitates the replacement of dead labour by living labour. This is clearly the case in agriculture, where the ultra-mechanized agribusiness system, a huge consumer of inputs and fossil energy, will have to give way to another mode of operation that is more intensive in human labour. This applies as well to the energy sector, for decentralized production based on renewables will necessitate a lot of work, particularly in maintenance. Generally speaking, the quantity of living labour must increase radically in all fields directly linked to the environment. A parallel can be drawn with personal care, education and other sectors in which the left considers the development of public employment as a given: human intelligence and emotion, combined in a culture of “care-taking,” are in fact necessary in matters directly pertaining to interaction with the biosphere.
Some dogmatic minds will fear that these thoughts open the door to a revision of revolutionary Marxism in the form of concessions to the austerity offensive against the working class in the developed countries. There is no truth to this. It is not a question of yielding the least parcel of terrain to the guilt-tripping discourses that use the ecological crisis to try to disarm the labour movement and its representatives. One line of demarcation between ecosocialism, on the one hand, and the political ecology of degrowth, on the other, is the attitude toward the class struggle. We remain firmly convinced that the exploited learn through the experience of collective struggles, which begin with the defense of wages, jobs, and working conditions. Every struggle of the workers, even the most immediate, must be supported and considered as an opportunity to increase consciousness and orient it toward a socialist perspective.
Within this strategic framework, the observation that the socialist transition must now operate under environmental constraint does not weaken anticapitalist convictions; on the contrary, it reinforces them. However, only the truth is revolutionary. We cannot hide the fact that the socialist transformation will very probably involve renouncing certain goods, services and habits that profoundly influence the daily life of broad layers of the population, at least in the developed capitalist countries. The task, then, is to advocate objectives capable of compensating this loss by a substantial advance in the quality of life. In our view, the priority should be given to the pursuit of two such objectives: (1) gratuity of basic goods (water, energy, mobility) up to an average social volume (which implies the extension of the public sector); (2) a radical reduction (50%) in working time, without loss of salary, with proportional hiring and a decrease in the pace of work.
In the last instance, said Marx, all economics comes down to economy of time. To affirm the necessity of producing and consuming less is to demand the time to live, and to live better. It is to open a fundamental debate on the mastery of social time, on what is necessary and to whom, why, and in what quantities. It is to awaken the collective desire for a world without wars, in which we work less and otherwise, in which we pollute less, in which we develop social relations, in which we substantially improve welfare, public health, education and democratic participation. A world in which the associated producers re-learn how to “dialogue” collectively with nature. That world will not be less rich than the present world (as the Right says), nor “as rich for the great majority of the population” (as a certain Left says). It will be infinitely less futile, less stressed, less hurried — in a word, richer.

[1] Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (London: Penguin Books, 2005). Among the criticisms of Diamond’s thesis, see Benny Peiser, “From ecocide to genocide: The rape of Rapa Nui,” Energy and Environment, Vol. 16, No. 3-4 (2005); Terry L. Hunt, “Rethinking Easter Island’s ecological catastrophe,” Journal of Archaeological Science, No. 34, pp. 485-502 (2007); and Daniel Tanuro, “Catastrophes écologiques d’hier et d’aujourd’hui: la fausse métaphore de l’île de Pâques,” Critique Communiste, No. 185 (December 2007).
[2] Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3^rd ed. (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008).
[3] L. Possoz and H. Jeanmart, “Comments on the electricity demand scenario in two studies from the DLR: MED-CSP & TRANS-CSP,” ORMEE & MITEC engineering consultancy, Belgium, on-line at http://tinyurl.com/65fzvqs.
[4] Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Section 10.
[5] Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (Earthscan, 2009).
[6] Daniel Tanuro, “Prospérité sans croissance”: un ouvrage sous tension.
[7] This applies, in particular, to the proposal for alternative or complementary indicators of GDP. Clearly, GDP does not measure the quality of the environment; that is not its purpose, nor the purpose of capitalism. GDP measures the accumulation of capital. It is therefore perfectly adapted to capitalism. To claim that altering the measurement tool would suffice to change the logic of the system is evidence of naiveté if not intellectual fraud.
[8] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report, 2007.
[9] IEA, Energy Technology Perspectives 2008- Scenarios & Strategies to 2050.
[10] Marx, Capital, Vol. 3 (New York: Vintage, 1981), p. 959.
[11] V.I. Lenin, The Agrarian Question and the “Critics of Marx”, chapter IV.
[12] Nicholae Bukharin, Historical Materialism, A System of Sociology (New York, 1965).
[13] Daniel Tanuro, “Marxism, energy and ecology: The moment of truth,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, December 2010, pp. 89-101.
[14] Daniel Tanuro, “Le lourd héritage de Léon Trotsky”.
[15] See J.B. Foster, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (New York, 2000).
[16] IEA, op. cit.
[17] Wolfram Krevitt, Uwe Klann, Stefan Kronshage, Energy Revolution. A Sustainable Pathway to a Clean Energy Future for Europe (Stuttgart: Institute of Technical Thermodynamics & Greenpeace, September 2005).
[18] Reported by Esther Vivas, “‘Ne mange pas le monde’: Une autre agriculture pour un autre climat,” French translation of an article published in the Catalan daily Publico.
[19] Ernest Mandel, “Ten Theses on the Social and Economic Laws Governing the Society Transitional Between Capitalism and Socialism.”
[20] Daniel Tanuro, L’impossible capitalisme vert (Paris: La Découverte, 2010).

Québec Solidaire: A Québécois Approach to Building a Broad Left Party (Part II)

2011-08-30T12:07:00.001-04:00

In Part I, I outlined how this party originated. In this, the concluding part, I describe how it functions and explore some major challenges it faces and how it is confronting them.

A work in progress

Québec Solidaire celebrated its fifth anniversary in February 2011. How has it fared? The balance sheet is uneven.

During its first year, Québec Solidaire’s membership rose from 3,000 to just over 5,000, about 50% of them women, but since then has remained fairly stable. The party has just over 70 local associations organized on the basis of their respective electoral ridings as well as some university campus sections. About one third of these associations are considered “very active,” another one third less so, while the remainder function only minimally.[1] In the last election, in 2008, the party nominated candidates in almost all of Quebec’s 125 electoral counties, or ridings.

Québec Solidaire strives for male-female parity in its structures and representation at all levels, and is headed by two “co-spokespersons”: Françoise David, the party president, and Amir Khadir, currently its sole member of the Quebec legislature, the National Assembly. The party has an office with a small full-time staff, a web site and members’ intranet, and makes ample use of modern communications media such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and videos. However, it has no newspaper, although this deficiency is partially compensated by various independent alternative media published by members and sympathizers of the party.[2] The party lacks an internal discussion bulletin or email list, so there is little horizontal communication at the general membership level apart from organized pre-convention discussions, which are held in general assemblies in areas of greater membership density such as Montréal and Quebec City.

A national (i.e. Quebec-wide) Policy Commission is composed of a dozen or so theme committees, responsible for drafting papers and proposals for program development. A national Women’s Commission is composed of delegates from the various regions of Quebec, and is charged with ensuring adherence by the party to the values of feminism.

In the December 2008 general election, Québec Solidaire scored a major breakthrough. Despite an undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system, it managed to elect a member to the National Assembly. The election of Amir Khadir in Mercier riding brought welcome media attention to the party. His effective interventions in the National Assembly have given the party considerable media exposure, and he has been able to speak out on many issues not previously associated with the left.[3] However, his high media profile and popularity — opinion polls recently rated him the “most popular” MNA in Quebec! — have not translated into corresponding support for the party as a whole. Although some recent polls have attributed 8-10% or more support to QS among the electorate, the overall score of its candidates in the two general elections since its founding (2007 and 2008) has been just under 4%. A handful of individual candidates, including David, have won electoral scores of between 10% and 30%, however; in each such case they are well-known activists in trade unions or other social movements.

Although it styles itself “a party of the ballot-box and the streets” — a party of mass action as well as elections — this has not been an easy balance to establish or maintain. The political context, at least until Khadir’s election, has been a difficult one in which to find opportunities to establish a visible presence in Quebec’s political landscape.

As in other parts of North America, Quebec experienced a general downturn in extra-parliamentary mobilizations after 9-11, with the notable exception of the massive antiwar actions prior to the Iraq war. Added to this was the political demoralization of many militants following almost a decade of neoliberal austerity under a Parti Québécois government that for many discredited the very idea of Quebec “sovereignty” as envisaged by the PQ. The trade union movement has suffered major defeats in the face of an antilabour offensive orchestrated since 2003 by the Liberal government. The student movement has been relatively quiescent since a successful mobilization against tuition fee increases in 2005. Although antiwar sentiment remains high, mass actions are fewer and smaller. Thus, Québec Solidaire has had to build itself in a period of general retreat for the very movements that generated its existence.

In addition, Québec Solidaire has found its attention, energy and finances absorbed by election organizing, often to the detriment of extra-parliamentary mobilization. In its first three years the party faced two general elections and more than a half-dozen by-elections. Besides meeting the demanding legal requirements of a registered party, it had to find and train candidates, raise funds, and hold successive delegated conventions to cobble together interim election platforms.

The 2007 election platform,[4] was limited to modest reforms that (as the party admitted) could be implemented within the “neoliberal and provincial framework.” It featured proposals for modest social reforms, free education, a publicly-owned pharmacare (prescription drugs insurance) agency, repeal of antilabour legislation, electoral reform through institution of proportional representation, tax reform, nationalization of wind power and expansion of public transit. However, this platform did not even reflect the minimal basis of agreement between the party’s founding components. For example, it called for a constituent assembly to determine Quebec’s political and constitutional future, but did not call for sovereignty or independence.

The 2008 platform[5] was much more elaborate. It called for “making Quebec a country by way of popular sovereignty,” and included detailed proposals on language rights, intercultural secularism and international solidarity (for example, replacing free trade agreements with “new international treaties based on individual and collective rights, respect for the environment and a widening of democracy (such as the ALBA[6]).” But it also contained some notable omissions; for example, it opposed “Canadian imperialist intervention” in the war in Afghanistan but did not mention NATO or Canada’s other military alliances.

In the 2008 election, more than half of Québec Solidaire’s 122 candidates were women — a first for a party in Quebec and possibly in Canada. The party was endorsed by the Montréal Council of the CSN, and some candidates were endorsed by other unions.

Adopting a program

In 2009 the party launched a lengthy process aimed at producing a formal program setting out Québec Solidaire’s proposals for a “democratic transformation of the whole of society over the medium and long term.” The program is distinguished from an election platform, which applies to a single government mandate, or an emergency program, a plan of action addressed to a specific context or issue.[7]

Over a three-year period, culminating before the next Quebec election, a series of delegated conventions are being held, each to debate and adopt sections of the program organized according to subject matter. The first convention, in November 2009, adopted resolutions on the national question, electoral reform, immigration policy and secularism. A second convention, held in March 2011, was addressed to the economy, the environment, and labour. Other topics — health and social services, education, social and formal justice, culture, agriculture, and international solidarity and altermondialisation — will be addressed in subsequent conventions.

Under the complex procedure the party has chosen for conducting its program debates, initial written submissions by the members (or by “citizens’ circles” composed of both members and non-members) must not exceed 800 words in length. The policy commission then compiles a “perspectives booklet” presenting concise demands based on what it considers the “principal orientations” in these submissions. These are discussed and amended or added to by QS local associations and general assemblies, following which the policy commission produces a “synthesis booklet” that arranges the revised demands by topic and, where appropriate, lists differing resolutions addressed to a particular issue as “options” (a half-dozen or so, in some cases) for debate and decision at the convention — first in topic workshops, then in plenary session, where delegates are limited to two or three minute interventions from the floor.[8]

At each stage the draft documents are published on the members’ intranet. (In the lead-up to the first convention, written contributions to the debate by individual members or groups of members were published on the QS web site; however, it appears this practice is no longer being implemented.)

Whatever the democratic merits of this procedure – and there are some, to be sure – it effectively precludes lengthier written contributions within the party structures that could outline a general strategic or programmatic framework on the given subjects and allow a broader debate among opposing approaches. As noted earlier, the party has no public or internal discussion bulletin or even an email discussion list that would allow such debates.

The main topics for debate at the first program convention, in November 2009, were the national question and reform or creation of “democratic institutions.” The three hundred delegates agreed, by large majorities:[9]

that the Quebec “nation” includes all residents of Quebec, and is based not on ethnic origin but on voluntary membership in the political community, with French as the common language of public communication; this nation being composed historically by the successive integration of people originating from other communities, including the Anglophone community. QS also acknowledges the sovereignty of “the ten Amerindian peoples and the Inuit people who also inhabit Quebec territory,” and their fundamental right to national self-determination, however they choose to exercise that right.
that “Canadian federalism is basically unreformable. It is impossible for Quebec to obtain all the powers it wants and needs for the profound changes proposed by Québec Solidaire.” A new relationship with the rest of Canada can only be negotiated once the Québécois have clearly established their intent and ability to form an independent state.
that independence should be achieved through a process of participatory and representative democracy, through election of a Constituent Assembly composed equally of women and men, with “proportional representation of tendencies and the various socio-economic milieus within Quebec society.” The Assembly would conduct an extensive consultation of opinion and, following its debates, its conclusions — in effect, a draft Constitution — would then be put to a popular vote in a referendum.

These positions mark a major advance in the party’s understanding of the national question, when compared with the minimal agreement on this question at its founding. And they clearly delimit it from the PQ’s sovereignty-association and ethnic nationalism, as well as its referendum strategy which limits popular input to a vote on a question negotiated between the parties in the National Assembly.

The convention also addressed another of Québec Solidaire’s founding “values” — laïcité, or secularism — basically, separation of church and state. This is a hot-button issue in Quebec, where right-wing ideologues, narrow nationalists, and some leftists and feminists have campaigned in recent years against “reasonable accommodation” of ethnic minority practices. Those particularly targeted include Muslim women wearing “ostentatious symbols” of their religious faith such as the hijab, or scarf, which are deemed threats to national identity or challenges to women’s rights. The QS delegates ratified the party leadership’s concept of “open” and “intercultural” secularism and opposed proposals for state-enforced dress codes that would effectively outlaw the wearing of symbols of religious belief. Debate continues in the party on some related issues such as the growing demand by many nationalists and feminists that the government adopt a “Charte de laïcité,” a charter to control more generally the expression of religious beliefs in the public sphere.

The convention also adopted progressive proposals on measures to integrate immigrants into Quebec society and on democratic reform of electoral institutions. In regard to the latter topic, QS advocates a system of proportional representation that would elect 60% of MNAs as individual riding representatives, the other 40% of the seats being allocated to the various parties in proportion to their respective shares of the popular vote.

The second program convention, held in March 2011, focused on environmental, economic and labour issues.[10]

Environment. The 350 delegates voted for a major turn to “green energy,” including:

A reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, and by 95% by 2050. Abandonment of fossil fuels by 2030.
Opposition to carbon taxes, carbon trading and storage schemes, biofuels, and geo-engineering.
“Public control” over energy firms, defined as majority participation of the state up to and including 100% nationalization as needed.
Prohibition of any new hydro-electric development. Production of renewable energies: solar, geothermal, wind, to limit to the maximum any supplementary resort to hydro-electricity.
An end to all exploration and development of fossil fuels, such as petroleum in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (Old Harry), shale gas, and LNG ports. Elimination of Quebec’s nuclear reactor system, and an end to the exploration and development of uranium mines.
Development of electrified transportation to ensure the accessibility, universality “or even gratuity” of public transit.
Support for a new, legally binding international agreement, and participation in the world movement linking climate and social justice. It was noted that this movement is inspired by the alternative peoples’ summit on the environment held at Cochabamba, Bolivia in April 2010.

Natural resources. The convention voted by large majorities that the mining and forestry industries should be placed under “public control,” with up to 100% nationalization “as needed.” In addition:

All resource industries to be subject to strict environmental regulations, and no project to be approved without meaningful public consultation in the communities concerned and a veto by local or regional authorities over development plans. Mining royalties to be increased and shared equitably between the resource region and the government.
In the forest industry, elimination of laws allowing clear cutting and cutting in the boreal forest north of the 49^th parallel. A reduction in disparities between natural and managed forests, and a need for prior agreements with the indigenous people in all regions under aboriginal treaties or land claims.
Fresh water, whether surface or underground, to be considered a “non-commodified common good accessible to all but the property of no one,” with the state as guardian. Water used by industry and businesses to be considered a “loaned” public property subject to royalties and post-treatment controls.

Trade union and labour rights. Among the programmatic demands adopted by the convention — usually by large majorities, in some cases unanimously — are the following:

Constitutional protection of the right to join unions, bargain and strike, including the right to political and solidarity strikes (strikes for political objectives and in solidarity with striking workers and students).
Prohibition of lockouts, and strict controls on layoffs and shutdowns — including mandatory justification before a government agency, protection of company pensions, compulsory retraining and re-employment in similar jobs, etc. State assistance to employees wishing to form local worker coops when companies relocate.
Union rights for farmworkers and self-employed workers, and the right to multi-employer certifications.
Right of full employment in safe, stable, socially useful, ecologically sound work free of discrimination, with social protection in case of loss of employment, incapacity and ageing. Affirmative action for women, disabled, visible minorities and indigenous.
Immediate reduction in the workweek to 35 hours, and “gradual” transition to 32 hours with no loss of pay, compensatory hiring and no speed-up in workload or pace. Legal restrictions on the use of overtime work.
An immediate increase in the minimum wage to the low-income (poverty) threshold for a person working full time, with a “gradual” increase to 50% over this threshold, indexed to the cost of living. This would mean a gradual increase from $10.66 to $15.99 per hour.
Expanded public employment in social services, construction, infrastructures maintenance and environmental clean-up.
Accessible programs for job retraining, free and funded by employers and government.

Virtually all of these demands have been raised by the unions and social movements; Québec Solidaire sees itself as their political and electoral representative.

Beyond capitalism?

Introducing the preconvention debates, the policy commission asked QS members to consider a question that goes to the very heart of the party’s conception of its overall objective:

“As we work on our program, we should spell out the nature and limits of the system, and ask ourselves the following question: isn’t the capitalist system, based as it is on maximizing profit and irresponsible exploitation of nature, the main obstacle to social progress and a healthy relationship to the environment? We need a serious debate on the question so we can determine whether our social problems can be corrected by reforms that respect the logic of the system or if we need to adopt the perspective of going beyond the system.”[11]

This was also the question put by the Québec Solidaire leadership in a Manifesto issued for May Day 2009, entitled “To emerge from the crisis, should we go beyond capitalism?”[12] The Manifesto’s anticapitalist rhetoric met with a very favourable response in QS ranks.

This defining issue was debated briefly during the preconvention period, although not in official party publications. Some members argued that QS should remain a “rainbow coalition,” fighting “for immediate changes realizable within the framework of the present capitalist state and system.” Others, however, argued for a more radical perspective: “ecosocialism,” and an explicit attention to “the class interests of the workers’ movement.”[13]

Judging from the debates at the March convention, these questions remain open for “serious debate” in Québec Solidaire. In the plenary session on “general orientations,” delegates voted by a large majority for a statement declaring that “QS ultimately intends to go beyond capitalism,” and calling for a “plural economy” and “an eventual socialization of economic activities, based on a strengthened public economy (state-owned companies and nationalization of major enterprises in some strategic sectors), a greater role of the social economy (cooperatives, community-owned firms), and a controlled private sector, with much greater emphasis on promoting small and medium enterprises (SMEs).”

No relative weight was assigned to any of these sectors. A number of delegates objected that many SMEs are low-wage sweatshops, the proprietors being bitter opponents of trade unions. Their alternative motions were outvoted after brief debate.

Delegates voted as well that:

Nationalized enterprises are to be operated in a framework of national and democratic planning, with decentralized management including representatives of employees, the community, and First Nations where applicable. Forms of self-management are to be promoted in place of bureaucratic oversight.
Economic growth must cease to be considered an objective in itself. A QS government will take immediate legal, regulatory, fiscal or other measures to discourage over-production, over-indebtedness, and over-consumption.

The emphasis on the “social economy” is not surprising, perhaps, given the traditional prominence within Quebec society of farming co-operatives, the caisses populaires (originally, parish-based credit unions), and similar service-based not-for-profit organizations, with self-defined “social missions” and relatively democratic decision-making structures.[14] The attention to the “domestic economy” reflects as well the traditions and roots of many QS members in the feminist movement and its recognition that many important economic functions of society go unpaid or underpaid relative to other economic sectors.

However, many of these undertakings operate in low-wage ghettos, and they often serve to legitimize the privatization of public services. And although some sectors, as in the childcare industry, have managed to unionize, some major proponents of Quebec’s “social economy” are heavily implicated in collaborating with the trade union-sponsored investment funds such as the FTQ’s Solidarity Fund or the CSN’s Fondaction, which have served as a major economic and ideological bulwark for the conservative union bureaucracy.[15] The “social economy,” as it actually functions in Quebec society, is an integral part of its capitalist economy. And some of its components, such as the massive Desjardins Movement, a dominant player in retail banking and insurance in the province, are major institutions of “Québec Inc.,” the new Francophone corporate elite.

A packed agenda did not allow time for debate on important resolutions on banking and the financial industry — where some draft proposals called for complete expropriation — and taxation, where proposals included, inter alia, rejection of consumption taxes and radically shifting the tax burden from individuals to corporations. These topics were left for future debate and decision.

A party of the ballot boxes... and the streets?

Aware that “politics” is conventionally viewed as electoral and parliamentary activity, Québec Solidaire has established itself as an officially recognized party under Quebec law. Since its founding, and particularly since Khadir’s election in 2008, the focus has been increasingly on a strategy of building the party through the ballot box, to the neglect of extra-parliamentary action “in the streets.” A “development plan” adopted at a National Council meeting, in June 2010, summarized the objectives for the next two years as “advancing our ideas in the population, gaining a greater presence in public debates, electing more MNAs and appreciably increasing our percentage of the vote in the next general elections.”

A draft resolution of the QS policy commission, still to be debated and adopted in a future convention, addresses “the relations between Québec Solidaire, the trade-union movement and the social movements in general.” The draft text outlines a strategy by which QS, “as a party and as a government, should seek to strengthen the capacities of the social movements, encourage their unity in action and participate in them on the basis of a program of social transformation.” It proposes that QS members who belong to the various social movements be encouraged to “network” within the party — that is, coordinate their activities within the unions and other movements around a strategy of reciprocal reinforcement of the movements and the party while respecting “the organizational and political autonomy of the social movements.” This draft text addresses an important lacuna in Québec Solidaire’s activities.

Québec Solidaire works alongside the unions and some social movements in a number of coalitions, such as the pro-independence Conseil de la Souveraineté. But its modest campaign in relation to the public-sector unions’ negotiations with the Quebec government last year, labelled “Courage politique,” failed to mount a clear defense of the unions’ demands and was largely confined to arguments in support of existing social programs and opposition to privatization. The party has no organized presence as such in the unions.

As the policy commission puts it, the conquest of political power requires “a structured political organization whose program integrates the demands of the social movements and an overall projet de société [program for society].” And thus it is important to think in particular about the party’s relation with “the trade-union movement, which occupies a central place within Quebec’s social movements.”

The undemocratic first-past-the-post system in Quebec (as in every other jurisdiction in Canada) poses some formidable obstacles to a new party with radical ideas facing a hostile mass media in a multiparty environment. Québec Solidaire promotes a detailed proposal for a system of proportional representation, but recognizes that there is no early prospect of its adoption. With this in mind, the party leadership asked delegates to the March convention to consider whether QS should seek electoral agreements with other parties under which each party would agree not to contest certain ridings in which the other stood a better chance of electing its candidate. Two options were on the table: (a) a possible tactical agreement with the Parti Québécois and/or the Verts (a small Green party); or (b) a possible tactical agreement with the Verts alone, a “strategic alliance” with that party being deemed conceivable if based on the Global Greens Charter, but ruled out for “practical reasons pertaining to internal decisions of the Verts in Quebec.”

After an intense debate, the delegates rejected any such alliances, despite appeals from both Amir Khadir and Françoise David, among others, in support of either option. Opponents noted that such alliances would blur Québec Solidaire’s programmatic differences from the other parties, particularly the PQ, and in any case were impractical — the PQ is apprehensive of the growing popularity of QS among many of its traditional supporters, and PQ governments have always resisted implementing any form of proportional representation. The vote also reaffirmed the members’ determination to build Québec Solidaire as an independent left-wing political alternative to the Parti Québécois.

A ‘country of projects’

The unexpected surge in support for the New Democratic Party in the May 2 federal election, and the sharp decline in the Bloc Québécois vote,[16] have underscored the volatility of the Quebec electorate and stimulated hopes in Québec Solidaire, which does not run for federal office, for major gains in the next provincial election. It has also given a powerful boost to the party’s campaign “for a country of projects,” launched in mid-April of 2011 pursuant to a resolution adopted at its November 2009 convention.[17] The campaign web site sets out the party’s vision of sovereignty and the approach it favours for achieving it. It also outlines the party’s approach to strengthening the status of the French language, especially in Montréal. As the web site explains:

“Some of these projects can be achieved here and now, without affecting Quebec’s constitutional status. However, the people’s ambition to realize many other projects will soon be hobbled by the total or partial absence of any latitude for Quebec in areas as fundamental as the environment, foreign policy, foreign trade and even language. The full mastery of our destiny is therefore indispensable for achieving all of the projects of our dreams.”

Associated materials (all on-line) include a historical survey that dates a Québécois quest for sovereignty back to the 18^th century, a critique of Canadian federalism and the failure of past efforts to reform the system, and a critique of “the impasse of the PQ and its referendum strategy,” to which it counterposes Québec Solidaire’s proposed grassroots campaign to build support for sovereignty and, eventually, the election of a democratic non-partisan Constituent Assembly to adopt a constitution for an independent Quebec. Associated articles describe parallel “inspiring experiences” in Bolivia, Ecuador and, most recently, in Tunisia.

In the fall of 2011, the campaign will feature a tour of Quebec by QS president Françoise David and public meetings “on themes chosen by local party associations.”

This campaign has the potential to boost Québec Solidaire’s profile as the left wing of the independence movement, with a “project for society” and a “country of projects” that points toward an anticapitalist alternative vision that breaks sharply with the PQ-Bloc strategy for independence — a strategy “based on alienation from Canada,” and “fuelled by resentment,” as Amir Khadir described it in a recent analysis of the federal election results.[18]

21^st century socialism?

The rightward evolution of the traditional sovereigntist parties, the PQ and BQ, has left a very broad space to their left, one that Québec Solidaire aspires to fill. The party has managed to cast a wide net, encompassing leading activists from the women’s movement and community social action groups, veterans of previous but unsuccessful attempts to found viable parties of socialism and a Marxist left, and some trade unionists.

It cannot (yet) be classified as anti-capitalist, or a party of 21^st century socialism as that concept has generally been conceived. But it is clearly much more than a Québécois version of the federalist NDP, notwithstanding hopes expressed by QS leaders that the NDP will some day prove a valuable Canadian interlocutor for Quebec as it moves to independence.

Québec Solidaire’s support of Quebec independence means that its strategic framework is not limited to the existing form of the state; it opens the party’s imagination and perspectives to conceiving another, very different Quebec based on the “values” or principles upheld by the party. This is not a line of march that facilitates accommodation with the Canadian bourgeoisie or its Quebec component. This independentism is one of Québec Solidaire’s strongest programmatic assets, offering it the potential to build a party that encompasses and represents the driving forces for progressive social transformation within the Quebec social formation.

There are other important features of the party, however, that underscore its sui generis nature in the Quebec, and indeed Canadian, political landscape and that offer hope for its evolution and development into a mass socialist party with deep roots among Quebec working people.

The party’s strong commitment to feminist principles has given it a compass in navigating through the shoals of the public debate over Quebec identity and “reasonable accommodation.” Despite some backsliding by the party leadership,[19] QS has generally stood firm behind its support of “open secularism” in the face of harsh criticism from some on the left. The near parity of women with men in the party’s membership and structures is unique in Quebec, and in Canada.

Québec Solidaire’s internationalism has been given limited expression in its opposition to capitalist trade and investment deals, its opposition to the war in Afghanistan, and in its sympathy toward progressive governments in Latin America. The party has been harshly attacked in the mainstream media for its participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israeli apartheid, which the delegates to its November 2009 convention voted unanimously to endorse — a position that demarks Québec Solidaire from the NDP’s strong support of the Zionist state.[20]

The party’s commitment to defence of the environment, if adhered to consistently, points it toward anti-capitalist solutions and the formulation of a radical ecosocialism that can link up with the worldwide movement developing in the wake of Bolivia’s Cochabamba conference of 2010.

Last but not least, the pluralism of Québec Solidaire, its desire to include within its ranks all those in Quebec who wish to fight for another, better world, opens space for revolutionary socialists and Marxists to join the party and to fight for their perspectives within the party as organized “collectives” democratically recognized by the party’s statutes although not represented as such in its leadership bodies. Although they have maintained a rather low profile so far, some of these collectives could play a leading role in helping to bring theoretical understanding and clarity to the evolving debates on the party’s program and its activities. Perhaps more importantly, they could help to overcome a glaring deficiency in the party: its lack of any coherent organized educational effort among its members and the larger left constituency.

This paper has described in considerable detail the process of formation of Québec Solidaire because it has features that can serve as guides for other processes in other settings.

The left groups that initiated the process recognized a shift in the objective situation — in this case the growing disillusionment with the PQ, the new vibrancy of the women’s movement, and the appearance of a new altermondialiste movement mobilizing young people in opposition to capitalist oppression and injustice. They laid down a minimal set of principles for regroupment and consolidation:

a strategic framework of striving for the independence of Quebec;
feminism, both programmatically and organizationally (as in male-female parity in party structures);
pluralism, inclusion of all who agreed to support and work to implement the party’s “values” and general orientations, and respect for minority opinions including the right of members with particular perspectives to organize within the party in support of their views;
internationalism — placing anti-imperialism, solidarity and global justice at the core of the new party’s politics.

And throughout, they were willing to let the process follow its own rhythm. As Pierre Dostie said, in describing the UFP’s approach to fusion with Option citoyenne, the latter “had to comply with its own process, [so] we sought areas of convergence and we entered into a dialogue.” (note 15, supra)

The goal is to build a party that encompasses and represents the leading militants in all those movements that are, in various ways, engaged in struggles against capital.

The future of Québec Solidaire is closely linked to its ability to become more integrated in Quebec’s broad labour-radical subculture, and to develop the “reciprocal relationship” with the trade union and popular movements that is outlined in the policy commission proposal.

To the degree that it does this, the social and ethnic composition of the party will change. QS is still a “white” party, for example. Neither its membership nor its leading bodies reflect the diverse ethnic and immigrant composition of Quebec. It is no accident that its major achievements so far, the election of Amir Khadir, an Iranian-Québécois with deep roots in the independence movement, was scored in one of Montréal's most ethnically diverse constituencies.

Québec Solidaire cannot yet be characterized as an anticapitalist party. But it is fair to say that it is much more than a Québécois version of, say, the federal NDP. Some important features of the party underscore its sui generis nature and offer hope for its evolution and development into a mass socialist party with deep roots among Quebec working people.

________________

This article is scheduled for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Alternate Routes. It is an expanded and updated version of a presentation to the third annual conference of the Critical Social Research Collaborative, held March 5, 2011 at Carleton University, Ottawa, on the theme “Varieties of Socialism, Varieties of Approaches.” I thank John Riddell and David Mandel for their critical comments on an earlier draft. The usual caveats apply. Published with the permission of Alternate Routes. – Richard Fidler

[1] Information provided at the party’s Fifth Convention, November 2009.

[2] Presse-toi-à gauche (on-line webzine), À Bâbord ! (bimonthly magazine), and Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme (semi-annual journal, which also hosts a webzine).

[3] To see Khadir’s interventions in the Assembly (there are hundreds of them since his election), click on http://www.assnat.qc.ca/fr/deputes/khadir-amir-25/interventions.html.

[4] Engagements Électoraux De Québec Solidaire. Summarized in “Québec Solidaire Adopts a Program for Government,” Socialist Voice No. 103.

[5] Engagements 2008 de Québec Solidaire (in English). Discussed in “Québec Solidaire scores major breakthrough in Quebec election.”

[6] Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), a progressive economic and social alliance for fair trade and mutual assistance initiated by Venezuela and Cuba, which now comprises eight countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

[7] See Québec Solidaire, “Définition du programme politique,” http://programme.quebecsolidaire.net/definition.

[8] In the most recent discussion, prior to the Sixth Convention held in March 2011, the policy commission received about 150 submissions. Following publication of the perspectives booklet, members submitted about 600 amendments and new proposals or comments from about 40 local associations or committees entitled to representation at the convention. (Introduction to the Cahier Synthèse – Programme) This suggests that most of the internal preconvention discussion was on the basis of the perspectives document, with its succinct specific demands.

[9] For a full report, see “Quebec left debates independence strategy,” Socialist Voice, December 3, 2009.

[10] See “Beyond capitalism? Québec Solidaire launches debate on its program for social transformation,” http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/491.php.

[11] Québec Solidaire, “Pour une société solidaire et écologique...”, Cahier de participation au programme, Enjeu 2, June 2010, p. 5.

[12] “Pour Sortir de la Crise: Dépasser le Capitalisme? Manifeste de Québec Solidaire,” May 1, 2009.

[13] For excerpts, see “Beyond capitalism? ...,” note 28.

[14] In Quebec as a whole, the “social economy” comprises more than 7,000 “collective enterprises (cooperatives and non-profits)” employing 125,000 workers and accounting for 8% of the province’s GDP. See Chantier de l’économie sociale, Définition. A recent study of the “social economy” in Montréal alone lists close to 4,000 establishments with $2 billion in revenues and employing more than 65,000 salaried workers (women occupying about 59% of full-time and 66% of part-time jobs). They encompass a wide variety of undertakings: housing cooperatives, child-care centres, caterers, domestic care agencies, as well as some major operations in the retail, finance and insurance sectors. See “Portrait statistique de l'économie sociale de la région administrative de Montréal,” available at http://www.chaire.ecosoc.uqam.ca/.

[15] See, for example, “Integration with trade unions is key to the success of Social/Solidarity Economy initiatives,” an interview with Nancy Neamtam, available at http://www.chantier.qc.ca/?module=document&action=get&uid=1059.

[16] The NDP took 43% of the popular vote in Quebec, electing 59 of the province’s 75 MPs. In 2008 it had polled only 12.2%, electing one MP. The Bloc vote fell from close to 40% in 2008 to less than 24%, and it elected only 4 MPs, although it had elected a majority of Quebec’s MPs since 1993. See The federal NDP’s electoral breakthrough in Quebec: A challenge to progressives in Canada, and More on that election. The Bloc’s collapse has touched off a profound crisis within the Parti Québécois and traditional pro-sovereignty movement: see Behind those resignations from the Parti Québécois.

[17] See “Quebec left debates strategy for independence,” http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2009/12/quebec-left-debates-strategy-for.html. The interactive campaign web site may be accessed at www.paysdeprojets.org.

[18] “Après les élections fédérales – Le Québec qui nous attend,” Le Devoir, May 14, 2011. Translated in More on that election.

[19] QS has given critical support to the Charest government’s Bill 94, which would deny government-funded health care, education and child care services to all whose clothing prevents disclosure of their face, and would bar them from government and public-service employment. The bill patently targets a tiny number of Muslim women who wear niqabs or burqas. And when some Sikhs sought to appear before a parliamentary committee to express their opposition to Bill 94, Amir Khadir added his vote on a PQ motion, supported by the other parties, to exclude them from the National Assembly because they were wearing their ceremonial dagger, the kirpan. This action is arguably inconsistent with the resolutions on laïcité adopted a year ago, mentioned in this paper.

[20] Québec Solidaire was a strong supporter of the recent “Boat to Gaza” solidarity project, delegating a QS leader, Manon Massé, to participate personally on the party’s behalf in the international attempt to breach the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian statelet.

Québec Solidaire: A Québécois Approach to Building a Broad Left Party (Part I)

2011-08-29T17:38:00.001-04:00

The following article is scheduled for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Alternate Routes. It is an expanded and updated version of a presentation to the third annual conference of the Critical Social Research Collaborative, held March 5, 2011 at Carleton University, Ottawa, on the theme “Varieties of Socialism, Varieties of Approaches.” Part II will discuss the evolution of Québec Solidaire since its founding.

Québec Solidaire: A Québécois Approach

to Building a Broad Left Party

By Richard Fidler

A number of attempts have been made in recent years to launch new parties and processes, addressing a broad left or popular constituency, that are programmatically anti-neoliberal if not anti-capitalist, some of them self-identifying as part of an international effort to create a “socialism of the 21^st century.” They vary widely in origins, size, social composition, and influence.

The process has gone furthest in a number of Latin American countries; among the best known are the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), led by Hugo Chávez, and the Bolivian Movement Towards Socialism–Political Instrument of the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP), led by Evo Morales.

Efforts in Western Europe, such as Italy’s Refoundation Party, Germany’s Die Linke, or France’s Parti de Gauche originated in part in splits in the traditional parties of “20^th century socialism,” in avowed rejection of both Stalinism and Social Democracy. Many of these parties include members who in the past were associated with one or another of the Marxist currents identified historically with Trotsky’s anti-Stalinist legacy. In France, the Nouveau Parti Anti-capitaliste (NPA) was initiated under their aegis.

Parallel developments have not yet occurred in the United States or Canada, where anticapitalist ideas and movements have less presence in the political landscape today than they had a century ago. However, as it does in so many respects, Quebec constitutes something of an exception. A new left party, Québec Solidaire, created during the past decade, is attracting considerable interest and growing support as an anti-neoliberal alternative to Quebec’s three capitalist parties. While not explicitly anti-capitalist or socialist, it defines itself as a party “resolutely of the left, feminist, ecologist, altermondialiste,[1] pacifist, democratic and sovereigntist.”

This paper will outline how this party originated, describe how it functions, and explore some major challenges it faces and how it is confronting them.

The Quebec exception

Quebec’s political evolution has always followed a distinct trajectory within the Canadian social formation. A crucial determinant has been the province’s character as the homeland of a distinct nation, with its own territory, language, culture, historical tradition and a well-defined national consciousness as a minority people within Canada and North America. Until well past the mid-20^th century, French-Canadian nationalism was essentially defensive, focused on protecting the autonomy of Quebec, the last major enclave of the Francophone presence in Canada, against involvement in imperialist wars and the increasing encroachment on the province’s constitutional jurisdiction by the federal state with its expanding economic and social functions. Industrialization and the concomitant urbanization and growth of trade unions aggravated these tensions, disrupting the social and political culture of a Francophone population long dependent on church and parish for the provision of basic social and community services.

In the 1960s a new, more assertive nationalist dynamic gained force as Quebec rapidly moved to modernize its industrial infrastructure, nationalized hydro-electric power resources and expanded and secularized its education, health and social welfare systems. A large provincial state bureaucracy developed, increasingly directed to stimulating the expansion of a skilled labour force and the growth of a Francophone bourgeoisie through the provision of financial and other assistance. Quebec pushed increasingly — but unsuccessfully — for constitutional changes that would give it greater autonomy within the federation, especially in areas crucial to its national identity and development. Union membership expanded exponentially. A veritable cultural revolution occurred with the appearance of many new radical publications and other media, many of them raising the demand for Quebec autonomy, political sovereignty or independence. On the left, pro-independence movements sprouted, their members inspired by the post-war Afro-Asian decolonization and, closer to home, the socialist ideology of the Cuban revolutionists.

National consciousness and class consciousness have maintained a close and reciprocal relationship in Quebec in recent decades. But this social ferment, both a product and promoter of rising Québécois national consciousness, largely bypassed the parties of the existing “20^th century” Canadian left. Their historical failure to sink mass roots in Quebec was directly related to their programmatic orientation toward strengthening the Canadian state and their indifference to Quebec’s national oppression and/or hostility to Québécois nationalist sentiment. The Regina Manifesto, the founding document of Canadian social-democracy, omitted any reference to the Quebec national question.[2] The Communist party expelled Québécois members who developed a pro-autonomy interpretation of the party’s formal support of Quebec’s right to self-determination.[3]

The labour-based New Democratic Party, founded in 1961, has been unwilling to embrace any fundamental alteration to Canada’s existing institutional structure that would reflect Quebec’s national character, or even to develop a coherent approach that differed significantly from the constitutional priorities of the federal government of the day.[4] Soon after its founding, its Quebec section voted to form a distinct Parti Socialiste du Québec (PSQ). The PSQ advocated that Quebec and Canada be constitutionally recognized as “associated states.” If such an agreement proved impossible, it said, “Quebec should declare its independence.”[5] But the PSQ was upstaged on its nationalist flank by the pro-independence Rassemblement pour l’Indépendance Nationale (RIN), while the Quebec trade unions were still unprepared to drop their longstanding support of the Quebec Liberals in favour of independent labour political action. The PSQ dissolved in the late 1960s.

In the absence of a viable left-wing alternative sympathetic to Québécois national aspirations, this consciousness was politically channeled into support for the pro-sovereignty Parti Québécois. Founded in the late 1960s, the PQ came to hegemonize the national movement as its political expression. Moreover, its increasing attraction for the leaderships of Quebec’s three big union centrals — which gradually shifted to seeing the PQ, and not the Liberals, as their preferred vehicle for political influence and reform — tended to eclipse early attempts by some union militants to found independent and anticapitalist political formations. A notable effort, the Front d’action politique (FRAP), a radical municipal party initiated in part by the Montréal section of the CSN, foundered in the wake of the October 1970 crisis and repression. An upsurge in mass nationalist and pro-sovereignty sentiment fueled a radicalization in the labour movement that in the early 1970s saw all three labour centrals[6] issue and debate anticapitalist manifestos. But the capitalist PQ was the primary political beneficiary, although a nationalist left within the party that included some prominent union officials often had a problematic relationship to the party hierarchy.

The PQ project was, and remains, to achieve a bourgeois-nationalist form of state sovereignty associated — the political context permitting — with Canada outside Quebec, or if necessary functioning as a fully independent (but thoroughly capitalist) Quebec state. The PQ’s popular support derived from its advocacy of sovereignty, its strong defense of the French language, culture and national identity and, initially at least, its promise of social reforms.

During its first term in office, the PQ enacted some important reforms, particularly in the area of French-language rights, although its legislation in this regard has been subject to constant challenges and adverse court rulings over the years. But after a total of 18 years in government (1976-1985, 1994-2003), the party no longer inspires the hopes for change that it once did. PQ governments have on occasion viciously attacked unions, as in 1982 when the Lévesque government legislated a 20% reduction in the salaries of government workers. The PQ has consistently supported anti-worker “free trade” and investment agreements and its governments have imposed harsh austerity programs.

Although opinion polls have registered high and remarkably consistent support for Quebec independence,[7] the PQ has failed to win its two sovereignty referendums. Equally important, ongoing developments in bourgeois politics — such as the 1982 unilateral patriation of Canada’s constitution without Quebec’s consent; the 1990 defeat of the Meech Lake Accord; or the federal Parliament’s enactment of the Clarity Act in the wake of the narrow 1995 referendum defeat — have signalled the lack of sympathy in Canada’s ruling circles not only for Quebec sovereignty but for any meaningful constitutional recognition of Quebec’s national identity, let alone unfettered provincial autonomy in jurisdictions essential to that identity.

The new Francophone bourgeoisie that has developed since the Sixties, with state support (both provincial and federal), functions largely as a subset of the Canadian bourgeoisie and no major component favours Quebec sovereignty. Today the Parti Québécois has less appetite for independence, although the goal of “sovereignty” is still article one in its program. Doubts are growing about the party’s ability to capture enough popular support for its program to create the “winning conditions” for a successful referendum vote on sovereignty.

The PQ’s commitment to working within the neoliberal order, which has often brought it into sharp conflict with the unions, has fueled disenchantment with the party among the very social layers that are the driving force of the national movement.

However, a credible left alternative to the Parti Québécois was slow to emerge within the broad Québécois nationalist and left milieu. Until the early 1980s, when they unceremoniously collapsed, the Mao-Stalinist currents that largely dominated the far left for a decade opposed Quebec sovereignty, which they regarded as a purely bourgeois objective dividing the “Canadian” working class. And although they opposed the PQ, they also opposed proposals within the trade unions in favour of establishing an independent working-class party, advocating instead, in true sectarian fashion, the constitution of their own “proletarian party.”[8] Like the CCF and pro-Moscow CP before them, this “far left” was ideologically defined around international events and alliances that had little or no resonance in the conditions of Quebec, where the class struggle tends to unfold within a nationalist framework of opposition to linguistic and cultural oppression.

There was always, of course, a smaller left that favoured independence and rejected the PQ and its capitalist program. Sporadic attempts were made in the 1980s to build new parties of the left, but without lasting success. The trade unions remained resistant to proposals to engage in political action independent of the PQ. And during the 1980s and 1990s, the major labour centrals initiated — with political support and generous tax breaks from both levels of government — investment funds that have enmeshed the unions in the financial industry, company management structures and other strategic “partnerships” with capital.

During the late 1990s, however, some cracks began to appear in the edifice of bourgeois sovereigntist hegemony in the left. Feminists, the one broadly-based social movement that had largely survived the neoliberal onslaught of the 1980s — waging a successful defense of abortion rights, for example — organized a mass “march for bread and roses” that directly challenged Lucien Bouchard’s PQ government and its “zero deficit” austerity program. They followed up with further demonstrations and, in 2000, sponsored a World March of Women that mobilized tens of thousands in Quebec and elsewhere. When the government rejected their modest demands for an increase in the minimum wage, women’s federation leader Françoise David publicly mused on the need to create a “feminist left-wing political alternative” to the Parti Québécois.

Then, in 2001, tens of thousands mobilized at the Quebec Summit in opposition to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Opponents of neoliberal globalization — “altermondialistes” as they are known in Quebec — were soon joined by hundreds of thousands more in massive demonstrations in the lead-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the largest antiwar mobilization in Quebec history. For the first time in decades, there was now a realistic potential for a new configuration of progressive forces.

Regroupment and fusion

The initiative was taken — first separately, then in combination — by three far-left groups:[9]

The Parti de la démocratie socialiste (PDS) originated as the Quebec section of the federal NDP. In 1995 it broke definitively from the NDP; adopted its new name; defined itself as “anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal, feminist, internationalist and independentist”; and campaigned for a Yes to sovereignty in the referendum. The PDS was joined by some independent left-wing nationalists who had left the PQ. Members of Gauche socialiste, a section of the Trotskyist Fourth International, were prominent in the PDS leadership.
The Rassemblement pour une alternative politique (RAP) was founded in 1998, in response to a public appeal for a “political alternative” issued in November 1997 by prominent left-wing personalities including former PSQ leader and union militant Michel Chartrand; Pierre Dubuc (editor of the popular independentist monthly L’aut’journal); and Paul Cliche, a journalist who in 1970 had led the left-wing municipal party FRAP in Montréal. The RAP later (in November 2000) voted to change its name to Rassemblement pour l’alternative progressiste.
The Parti communiste du Québec (PCQ), the Quebec section of the Canadian CP, now led by individuals who had once been prominently associated with Quebec’s Mao-Stalinist parties.[10]

In the 1998 general election, the RAP ran seven candidates while the PDS contested 97 ridings; their overall vote was small (36,000), although in Jonquière the RAP candidate Michel Chartrand took 15% of the popular vote against the PQ’s Premier Lucien Bouchard.

In 2000, a joint public meeting in Montréal organized by the PDS, RAP and PCQ attracted some 650 persons to discuss “unity of the political left and progressive forces.” A liaison committee was set up by the three groups along with the Bloc Pot (a marijuana legalization group) and the Quebec section of the Green Party of Canada, with the objective of establishing common positions and actions. In April 2001, just days before the huge protest demonstrations at the pro-free trade Québec Summit of the Americas, independent candidate Paul Cliche won 24% of the popular vote in a by-election in Montréal’s Mercier riding. His campaign, supported by the liaison committee, some trade unions and community organizations, indicated the positive potential of left unity. The liaison committee then became the coalition of the Union des forces progressistes (UFP). In December 2001 the RAP voted by a narrow majority at its congress to join the UFP.[11]

At a convention in June 2002 the UFP was founded as “a federated party that seeks to become a mass alternative to the parties of neoliberalism.” Those attending included a large number of independent activists in addition to members of the PDS, RAP and PCQ.[12] At a subsequent policy convention in February 2003 the new party adopted a radical platform opposing free-trade agreements and calling for international solidarity (Palestine, Cuba, Iraq), cancellation of third-world foreign debts, defence of the environment, extensive social and educational reforms, electoral reform, labour rights, First Nations self-determination, and a constituent assembly to draft a constitution for a “progressive, republican, secular and democratic Quebec.”[13]

The UFP adopted a pluralist structure recognizing the right of organized tendencies (“political entities”) to “promote specific orientations compatible with the platform and statutes of the UFP.” The PDS was now a political entity called Démocratie socialiste (later Québec socialiste), although it soon dissolved as such. The RAP, for its part, simply dissolved into the UFP, while the PCQ became a recognized political entity within the new party.

In the April 2003 general election the UFP, now registered as an official party, ran 73 candidates (26% were women) and obtained just over 40,000 votes — barely attaining the 1% of the popular vote required to qualify for partial rebate of expenses under the Elections Act. The highest vote was Amir Khadir’s 18% in Mercier riding. This campaign was considered a success; some UFP candidates were endorsed by unions, and a post-election report noted that a considerable number of students had been recruited. The party now claimed a membership of some 1,800 members, almost double its membership in 2002.

At a June 2003 meeting, the UFP Council adopted an ambitious agenda of social movement participation, antiwar mobilizing, unification talks with the Parti Vert (a resuscitated Green party), and fighting for an electoral regime of proportional representation to help overcome Quebec’s “democratic deficit.” The members voted to investigate possible participation in municipal elections and creation of a “youth organization... both independent of and in solidarity with the UFP.”

Meanwhile, during the fall and winter of 2002-03, D’abord solidaires, a “non-partisan collective” of activists from the women’s and other social movements, had been formed independently of the UFP to mount a public campaign against a rise in right-wing politics that was aimed primarily against Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), a party that split from the provincial Liberals in the early 1990s on a pro-autonomy program and at one point in the months before the 2003 election was registering 40 percent support in public opinion polls on a platform centered on “family values” and “old-stock” Québécois identity issues. D’abord solidaires was officially indifferent between the governing PQ and the opposition Liberals, not opposing a vote for either as a “lesser evil” to the ADQ. As it turned out, the ADQ polled just 18%, the PQ was defeated — its vote dropped by 10 percentage points from its previous result — and the Liberals led by Jean Charest formed the government.[14]

In May 2004, one of the three component collectives in D’abord solidaires, led by feminist leader Françoise David and social housing activist François Saillant, founded Option citoyenne (OC – citizens’ choice). It favoured political action to the left of the PQ but initially rejected an invitation to join the UFP.[15] David toured Quebec promoting her book Bien commun recherché (“seeking the common good”) and probing support for a new left party. David encountered much support for uniting the political forces to the left of the PQ, and considerable openness to the idea of joining with the UFP in a new party — notwithstanding the reservations of many of her supporters, and David herself,[16] about the UFP’s strong commitment to Quebec independence.

In December 2004 Option citoyenne began negotiations with the UFP to explore the possibility of forming “a single progressive, ecologist and feminist party.”

The year-long fusion process posed some major challenges to both groups. Each had its distinct constituency or corporate culture. The UFP’s membership included young people from the global justice movement — internationalist and strong supporters of Quebec independence, which they saw as essential to their anti-capitalist politics — along with an older layer of members, many with long experience in left and far-left politics. OC members, on the other hand, were primarily active within feminist and community organizations (60% were women) and in local grass-roots organizing around tenants’ rights, food and housing co-ops and the like, a milieu in which the politics of consensus and accommodation of conflicting views and interests are valued. OC members tended to radicalize around anti-poverty concerns, and were less likely to be concerned with Quebec’s national question. But the UFP was adamant that the new party must advocate Quebec independence.

Over a year, beginning in November 2004, Option citoyenne held three “national [Quebec] meetings” of its membership to develop a programmatic basis for negotiations with the UFP. Draft position papers were circulated and resolutions adopted on feminism, democracy, pluralism and economic questions.[17] A typical resolution declared that “a party of the common good, inspired by feminism” should be oriented around “values of social justice, equality, peace, solidarity, respect for the integrity of individuals and the environment, while recognizing the importance of struggles against forms of exclusion, racism, discrimination and violence, including those that continue to be exercised against women in the private and public sphere.”

A resolution on economic issues, adopted unanimously, proposed that the “private-public” economic model be replaced by a “plural model” based on “the domestic economy” of family and gratuitous or volunteer services, the “social economy” of non-profit community or cooperative agencies, in addition to “private undertakings... that agree to function in accordance with collective (social, environmental, etc.) rules,” and a “public, state and parastate” sector providing equal and accessible services to the entire population. These positions differed substantially from the explicit anti-capitalism of the UFP’s program.

The most contentious issue among OC members was the national question, and it was not resolved until the last OC national meeting in October 2005, when the 300 delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of Quebec sovereignty, thus fulfilling a key condition for UFP consent to a merger. The coordinating committee’s position paper justified its position largely on the basis that there was no credible or workable perspective for a renewed federalism that would allow Quebec the additional powers it needed in order to resolve its social problems, but insisted that the defining characteristic of the new party should be its “social agenda” (projet social) and not its position on the national question. The delegates then voted unanimously to join with the UFP to form a new pro-sovereignty party.

Just three days earlier, on October 19, a right-wing manifesto had been published by former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard, some other prominent péquistes, and equally prominent Liberals. Entitled Pour un Québec lucide (For a clear-eyed vision of Quebec), it castigated “big unions” and called for lifting the freeze on university tuition fees, raising electricity rates and consumption taxes, focusing on debt reduction, opening the doors further to private sector investment in public infrastructures and ending the “unhealthy suspicion of private business that has developed in some sectors.” The important challenges facing Quebecers, it proclaimed, were declining demographics and increasing global competition from Asia — not sovereignty. The manifesto reflected a strong rightward drift of both the neoliberal PQ and its federal counterpart the Bloc Québécois.[18]

Thus, while the traditional pro-sovereignty parties were shifting further to the right and some prominent péquistes like Bouchard were retreating from their previous commitment to a sovereigntist perspective, there was a perceptible trend developing in the opposite direction on the left, which now tended overwhelmingly to see a sovereign Quebec as the framework for its social agenda.

During 2005 Option citoyenne and the UFP participated in some common actions and published joint briefs on sustainable development and electoral reform. And in response to the lucides’ manifesto, they initiated a counter-manifesto, Pour un Québec Solidaire, that garnered more than 2,500 signatures.

A special convention of the UFP in November 2005 voted unanimously in favour of a fusion with Option citoyenne, and in February 2006 the two organizations held a joint congress to establish the new party, Québec Solidaire. The founding declaration of principles defined it as a party “resolutely of the left, feminist, ecologist, altermondialiste, pacifist, democratic and sovereigntist.”

It was an impressive achievement — uniting leading activists in the women’s movement, some prominent trade-union militants, grassroots community organizers and long-standing leftists around a project to build a new Québécois political movement based on popular and national sovereignty grounded in general principles of solidarity with the oppressed and exploited. (To be continued)

____________________

I thank John Riddell and David Mandel for their critical comments on an earlier draft. The usual caveats apply. Published with the permission of Alternate Routes. – Richard Fidler

[1] In French, those who advocate “another world” of global justice and solidarity.

[2] http://www.saskndp.ca/assets/File/history/manifest.pdf. The Manifesto was adopted by the first “national” convention of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), in 1933.

[3] Henri Gagnon, Les Militants socialistes du Québec.

[4] For a summary of NDP positions in this regard, see Murray Cooke, “Constitutional Confusion on the Left: The NDP’s Position in Canada’s Constitutional Debates”, http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2004/Cooke.pdf. For a critique of the NDP’s Sherbrooke Declaration, its most complete and recent statement on the Quebec national question, see “The federal NDP’s electoral breakthrough in Quebec: A challenge to progressives in Canada,” http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2011/05/federal-ndps-electoral-breakthrough-in.html. See also “Layton chooses Supreme Court, Clarity Act over NDP’s Sherbrooke Declaration,” http://lifeonleft.blogspot.com/2011/05/layton-chooses-supreme-court-clarity.html.

[5] Parti Socialiste du Québec, Programme 66 (Longueil: Les Presses Sociales, 1966).

[6] The three centrals were the Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ), the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) and the teachers’ union, the CEQ (now the Centrale des syndicats du Québec, or CSQ).

[7] Opinion polls indicate that even today more than 40% of Québécois support independence (more than those who declare support for the PQ), and a substantial majority favour greater autonomy for Quebec.

[8] For a critical analysis of this experience, see François Moreau, “Balance Sheet of the Quebec Far Left”, http://www.socialisthistory.com/Docs/History/Bilan-Moreau-English.htm. For a more extended analysis, see Pierre Dubuc, L’autre histoire de l’indépendance (Éditions Trois-Pistoles, Éditions du Renouveau québécois, 2003), especially chapters 3 and 4.

[9] The following chronology borrows in part from Pierre Dostie et al., Quelques repères dans l’histoire de la gauche politique québécoise (website of the Union des forces progressistes, January 2006, no longer available). See also Josiane Lavallée, “Du parti de la démocratie socialiste à Québec Solidaire,” in La gauche au Québec depuis 1945 (Bulletin d’histoire politique, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2011), at pp. 202-14.

[10] The PCQ separated from the Canadian CP in 2005 when a majority of its members voted to support Quebec independence. Some members of the reconstituted Quebec section of the Canadian CP are members today of Québec Solidaire, but they do not constitute a recognized “collective” within QS.

[11] RAP founder Pierre Dubuc, in the minority, abandoned the project of building a political alternative to the PQ. In June 2005, he joined with some trade union leaders and “left” PQ members (péquistes) to found Syndicalistes et Progressistes pour un Québec Libre (SPQ-Libre), which for a time was officially recognized as a “club” within the PQ.

[12] According to an internal UFP study cited by Amir Khadir, 56% of the members were under the age of 35 and 29% were under 29; 50% of them were first-time party members; there was a minor yet real presence of Anglophone activists as well as several members of Montreal’s cultural communities (Amir Khadir, interview by Pascale Dufour, March 2006), cited in Dufour, “From Protest to Partisan Politics: When and How Collective Actors Cross the Line. Sociological Perspectives on Québec Solidaire”, Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 34(1) 2009 p55.

[13] See Richard Fidler, “Quebec’s new united left party,” Green Left Weekly, December 10, 2003. http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/28531.

[14] In the 2007 election the ADQ managed to displace the PQ as Official Opposition until the following year’s election, when it was reduced to 7 seats.

[15] UFP leader Pierre Dostie later explained that his party would have preferred that OC simply join the UFP. “But reality is very often more complex than we imagine. Once we found that this political movement, given its composition and what it represented, had to comply with its own process, we sought areas of convergence and we entered into a dialogue.” (“Négociations UFP-Option Citoyenne: Go! Go! Gauche!” À Bâbord !, February-March 2005.

[16] David was once a member of En Lutte, a Mao-Stalinist group that opposed Quebec independence.

[17] These can be consulted at http://www.lagauche.com/lagauche/spip.php?article1078.

[18] At its convention in October 2005, the Bloc voted to support NATO membership, an EU free-trade (and investment) agreement, and the development of a Quebec army and air force that would participate actively in international “peacekeeping”, as in Canada’s occupation of Haiti. At about the same time, Pierre Dubuc, the left-wing SPQ-Libre candidate, received barely 1% support in his campaign for the PQ leadership.

Some Québécois reactions to the Turmel affair

2011-08-05T15:48:00.001-04:00

“L’affaire Turmel”[1] continues to make waves, and not just in English Canada. But unfortunately, the NDP has so far failed to mount a defense of its interim federal leader Nycole Turmel.

The disclosure that Turmel had until very recently held memberships in two parties (Bloc Québécois and Québec Solidaire) that support Quebec sovereignty at first attracted little attention in Quebec. After all, as columnist Michael Taube, a former speech-writer for Stephen Harper, notes in today’s Ottawa Citizen, “Many Quebecers have freely shifted their votes from the BQ to NDP because of the two parties’ similar social democratic values and likeminded policy proposals.”

But Canadian politicians were quick to echo the media attacks on Turmel. Taube’s old boss, the Prime Minister: “It’s very disappointing.... I think Canadians expect that any political party that wants to govern the country be unequivocally committed to this country.” Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae, himself an ex-New Democrat: “According to her own admission, she’s still in agreement with the Bloc’s policies. Someone has some explaining to do.”

Not to be outdone, former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion — author of the infamous Clarity Bill (which says the federal Parliament alone has the right to determine the legitimacy of any Quebec decision on secession), asks in an op-ed piece in today’s Le Devoir: “How many NDP members of parliament were, or still are, members of sovereigntist parties? Will they be staying? How many would vote for independence if a referendum was held?” Dion is quick to add, of course, that he is not — oh no, heaven forbid! — contributing to any witch-hunt.

Other commentators in Quebec, noting the virulent reactions in English Canada, have now turned to the issue.

To the surprise of many, former Parti Québécois premier Bernard Landry is now calling for Turmel’s resignation as interim NDP leader. “It is seldom that I am in harmony with English Canada,” he told Le Devoir, “but I think they are right.” Referring to Turmel’s former membership in the Bloc Québécois and Québec Solidaire, Landry opines: “To have totally opposite convictions in two independentist parties, to be active in a federalist party and then become leader of the official opposition in Canada, there is something not quite right. This is a very bad example for the youth.”

Landry, understandably, does not want the NDP to offer even the image of sympathy for Quebec’s national aspirations. That might help to make it a serious long-term contender for the votes of Québécois looking for a progressive alternative to the neoliberal BQ and PQ. Those parties prefer an NDP that is resolutely and unequivocally federalist, the same party whose MPs voted in 2000 to support the Clarity Bill. Nycole Turmel — and how many other newly-elected NDP MPs from Quebec? — don’t quite fit that profile, they fear.

A very different reaction, however, comes from Pierre Beaudet and François Cyr, writing in the webzine Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme.[2] Both are members of Québec Solidaire (Cyr was president of the QS predecessor, the Union des forces progressistes), although QS itself has made no public statement on the Turmel affair.

Beaudet and Cyr begin by noting that the attacks on Nycole Turmel are a continuing manifestation of the hostility with which the “Canadian elites” have always viewed Quebec nationalism. They express dismay at the NDP’s vacillation in the face of these attacks: “Some ‘deny’ having ‘really’ been sovereigntists. Others conceal their past.” But “in reality, many newly-elected NDP members have been associated with the sovereigntist cause, as members of various independentist parties, or in the context of their involvement in the social movement (trade unions, popular or student movement, etc.).

“This defensive or shame-faced attitude is probably not the best way to handle things,” they write with studied understatement, “even if the NDP leadership is busy demanding these denials out of fear of being accused in the English-Canadian media of being a “traitor to the (Canadian) nation.” And they continue with some insightful explanations that deserve translation:

But the reality is quite simple in Quebec. The cause of social justice has almost always been associated with that of national emancipation. The majority of left-wing supporters has been and remains sovereigntist, whether as members of sovereigntist parties or as activists in most of the left parties that have populated the political landscape in Quebec for 50 years.

The NDP in Quebec was itself on two occasions ‘converted’ to the cause of national emancipation, and this earned it ostracization by the federalist Anglo-Canadian leadership.[3] The other left parties (other than the Canadian Communist Party and various so-called Marxist-Leninists in the 1970s) linked the struggle for social transformation to that of popular and progressive independence.

The reasons for this reality have nothing to do with a “deviation” or a nationalist ‘obsession.’ The Canadian state, a product of the ruling classes, was built on the oppression of the Quebec nation as well as that of the aboriginal nations. The exploitation of the popular classes has been based on and expressed in the domination of these nations. Until the development of Québécois nationalism in the 1960s, the peoples of Quebec were, as Pierre Vallières put it, the ‘White niggers of America.’ The struggle against that exploitation could not help but be interlinked with the struggle for national emancipation.

Eventually, Quebec nationalism soared through a vast social alliance dominated by a developing Québécois elite but including the majority of the urban and rural popular classes. For most of the left at the time (including NDP members in Quebec), the creation of an independent Quebec state would facilitate a genuine overturn to the benefit of the popular classes. After its election in 1976, the PQ for some time responded concretely to their expectations by working within a generally social-democratic perspective. The fact that this project failed in the face of the stubborn resistance of the Canadian elites, and that it led to the PQ’s rightward turn after [the defeat of the referendum in] 1980 did not alter this situation, overall.

During the last decade the popular movement in Quebec has continued its struggles both nationally and socially. The demarcation with the PQ has sharpened in the wake of the party’s alignment with an aggressive neoliberalism imposed by the Canadian and Quebec elites via their tools and mechanisms, which advocate submission to the established ‘order,’ that is, to unfettered capitalism and the federal state. From these hard-fought battles new political projects are emerging — including Québec Solidaire.

Thus national emancipation is part of a social agenda [un projet de société], and is explicitly integrated within a program for refounding the state, the society and the economy. In this context, it is completely normal and legitimate that many left militants, including within the NDP, have enrolled in this project and have even viewed their political action at both the federal and provincial levels as complementary to it.

Apart from the hatred expressed by the Canadian elites, this ‘affair’ reveals other major divisions. The federal leadership of the NDP, the various provincial sections of the NDP, generally speaking the dominant sectors of this social-democratic party, have always been hostile to the Québécois national project, hence their repeated difficulties with their own supporters in Quebec. This hostility reflects a capitulationist posture in relation to the Canadian elites, and a profound lack of understanding of the popular struggles in Quebec within the social-democratic formations.

Notwithstanding some recent statements, the NDP has not crossed the ‘red line.’ It has not spoken out clearly for the right of self-determination of the Quebec people. It has not seriously fought the threats of the Canadian elite against the Quebec nation (as we saw a few years ago when the NDP supported the so-called ‘Clarity’ Act to hobble the sovereigntist process in Quebec).

In reality, this attitude reflects some ambiguities and weaknesses. The NDP need not carry the ‘banner’ of the Canadian state as historically constituted. It need not defend the interests of the elites on the pretext of some bogus ‘patriotism.’ It need not barter positions of principle for a short-sighted electoralism. It must, resolutely and systematically, fight for social justice — which includes fighting for the rights of the Québécois and indigenous peoples, even if it means working hard to convince voters in the popular classes of certain regions of Canada that have been contaminated by the hostility to Quebec that sometimes borders on racism.

Beaudet and Cyr conclude with an appeal specifically addressed to the NDP’s Quebec caucus:

Nycole Turmel, Alexandre Boulerice and many other NDP MPs who come from the Quebec social movement (obviously, we are not speaking about Thomas Mulcair and a hard-core federalist minority) should say it clearly and proudly. Fighting to alter the federal state is not contradictory with involvement in the Québécois social and national movement, on the contrary. Progressive parties like the NDP, the Bloc and Québec Solidaire have an interest in working together, including in an uncompromising struggle for the fundamental rights of the Quebec people....

This is a call that should resonate within the trade unions, the social movements and the NDP in English Canada. However, the reactions to date are not encouraging. This attack on the NDP, and Quebec itself, has been met with silence in the unions and other mass organizations. Ominously, the NDP leadership have been less than forthright in their own defense. A Google search turns up only a couple of newspaper reports quoting members of the federal NDP caucus: two MPs from Windsor, Ontario, and a brief comment from Libby Davies, a Vancouver MP and a deputy leader of the party. (To my knowledge, the other deputy leader, Quebec MP Thomas Mulcair, is keeping mum.)

Davies is quoted as saying “To me it’s just a blip.” Like the Windsor MPs, she simply reiterates Turmel’s tortured explanations of her ambivalent positions and emphasizes her professions of federalist commitment. But this won’t do. The NDP can no longer evade the long overdue debate on the Quebec national question and the party’s relation to it. It may run, but it can’t hide. The capitalist media and politicians are already making that perfectly clear. The only way to counter their attacks is to develop a strong democratic defense of Quebec’s rights, including its right to self-determination — and an understanding of what this means for progressives in Canada.

The party leadership should open up a discussion within the membership — and why not the much broader ranks of its supporters, as well? — on how to relate to progressive opinion in Quebec. A sharp change in course is imperative, if the party is to hope for any credibility on these questions.

Richard Fidler, August 5, 2011.

[1] See “Nycole Turmel’s induction in the federalists’ wonderland.” Also available at Canadian Dimension and Socialist Project.

[2] The article is also published as an op-ed piece in today’s Le Devoir.

[3] The authors are presumably referring to (1) the support for Quebec autonomy among the initial NDP forces in Quebec, in 1962-63, and the resulting split in the party that led to the formation of the Parti Socialiste du Québec; and (2) the support for Quebec’s right to self-determination by the Quebec NDP in the early 1970s. As well, the Quebec NDP under the leadership of Jean-Paul Harney was sympathetic to Quebec sovereignty during the late 1980s, but was rebuffed by the Broadbent leadership of the federal party and largely collapsed in the early ’90s.

Nycole Turmel’s induction in the federalists’ wonderland

2011-08-03T15:45:00.001-04:00

Surprise, surprise! Belatedly, the Globe & Mail “discovers” that an elected NDP member of parliament — in this case interim party leader Nycole Turmel — has been a member of a Quebec sovereigntist party. And not just one but two!

Turmel acknowledges that she was a member of the Bloc Québécois for five years, surrendering her membership card in January of this year as she was about to accept the NDP’s nomination in Hull. And it seems that Turmel — as well as some other recently elected NDP MPs (how many is unclear) — is a member of Québec Solidaire, “a provincial party dedicated to socialism and sovereigntism,” warns the Globe. Sufficient reason to doubt her loyalty to Canada, let alone to the NDP!

In fact, Turmel’s opponents, and the media, baited Turmel repeatedly during the election campaign over her past public support of Québec Solidaire. Whatever the effect of this witch-hunting, Turmel was elected with a hefty 23,000 majority vote over the Liberal incumbent on May 2.

The Globe’s editors — and, in their train, a pack of baying commentators in the business media — have seized the occasion to lecture the NDP on its “responsibilities” to uphold the federal regime. Just days after effusive expressions of sympathy for party leader Jack Layton, forced to relinquish his post by a renewed bout with cancer, they have returned the spotlight to a central contradiction facing the federal NDP: the obvious clash between its ambitions to pose as a staunchly federalist “government-in-waiting” in Ottawa, and its attempt to build an electoral base in Quebec, where progressive-minded voters are for the most part inclined to favour Quebec sovereignty or independence.

“Not since [BQ leaders] Lucien Bouchard and Gilles Duceppe has someone whose loyalty to federalism appeared so tepid and fair-weather served as leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition,” fulminates the Globe. If the NDP’s federal council, which endorsed Layton’s nomination of Turmel for interim leader, knew of her history, they are “reckless” and “if they did not, then they are incompetent. Either way, the NDP’s suitability for the role of government-in-waiting is at best tenuous, unless the government in question is that of a sovereign Quebec.”

‘Sovereigntists, Go Home’

Federal office, you see, is closed to any Québécois who harbours doubts about the nature of the existing federal regime. When it comes to federal party leadership, only “an outspoken federalist” may apply, the Globe pontificates. And its editors point to several modest proposals by Layton’s NDP that it claims justify “concerns over the NDP’s Quebec caucus and indeed its Quebec policies,” citing “its support for the extension of Quebec’s provincial language law to federally regulated employers and Mr. Layton’s commitment to protect Quebec in any redistribution of House of Commons seats on the basis of population.”

Nycole Turmel, for her part, has been less than clear in her own defense. Yes, she has taken out BQ membership, but she voted no in both the 1980 and 1995 sovereignty referendums. She notes there is no contradiction in belonging to both the NDP and Québec Solidaire, as the latter, unlike the NDP, is a Quebec-only party and they do not compete; but she will drop her QS membership anyway. As a member of the NDP for 20 years, including a stint on its federal executive in the 1990s, she says she supported the BQ and QS for other parts of their programs. And indeed, as president of the Public Service Alliance union, she worked closely with both the BQ and the NDP.

All true, but how to explain her ambivalence between Canadian federalism and Quebec sovereignty? In fact, Turmel is by no means alone in this confusion among Quebec supporters of the NDP.

The NDP’s dilemma – a failure of leadership

A good part of the explanation is outlined in a major op-ed piece [1] in today’s Le Devoir by political scientist André Lamoureux, author of the book Le NPD et le Québec 1958-1985 (Éditions du Parc, 1985), a book that has unfortunately never been translated into English. He documents the NDP’s chronic failure to address the Quebec national question and to confront what the Québécois struggle for self-determination entails for building a mass party of the left in the Canadian state.

In 1961, the party’s founding organizers in Quebec wanted the new federal party to recognize the existence of two nations in Canada (at the time, there was little consciousness of the aboriginal “first nations” among Canada’s settler communities). Some even thought of putting the issue of Quebec’s right to self-determination to the founding convention, although they dropped this proposal as “premature” when faced with strong opposition among the party leaders in English Canada. Instead, they decided to focus on amending the party’s proposed statutes, to substitute the word “federal” in place of “national” in describing its structure and elected bodies. After tumultuous debate, they were successful on August 3, 1961 — 50 years ago to the day. “A timorous victory,” says Lamoureux, “since it was not reflected in any real and convincing translation in the party’s program.” And he notes:

“The concept of Quebec people or Quebec nation was not yet fully developed in the thinking of the New Party’s supporters in Quebec. So there was no question of recognizing the Quebec people and their right to self-determination in 1961, contrary to what has often been repeated since the most recent federal election campaign.”

This initial ordeal encountered by the Québécois at the NDP’s founding convention was followed by a series of even more difficult ones in succeeding years, Lamoureux writes, as “successive leaderships in the party consciously decided to turn their backs to the national aspirations of the Québécois, which they considered contrary to the objectives of Canadian social-democracy.

“The refusal of the NDP’s convention in 1977 to recognize the right to self-determination of the Quebec people (in the wake of the Parti Québécois’ election); the party’s participation in the Pro-Canada coalition on the eve of the 1980 referendum; its unconditional support to Trudeau’s constitutional power grab in 1982; the centralizing orientation favoured by the various leadership teams, overriding provincial powers; the campaign against the Meech Lake Accord during the final phase of that constitutional bargaining; the support given to the infamous referendum ‘clarity law’ (C-20) — so many insults to Quebec, which led the party to marginalize itself and suffer an uninterrupted series of setbacks before the surprise of the May 2 federal election.”

True, the party opposed the War Measures in 1970, but that could not alter the party’s course in regard to Quebec, Lamoureux adds.

An unresolved issue

Today, in the wake of its stunning victory in Quebec on May 2, he says, there is a real danger that it will dodge the Quebec national question and try to sweep it under the carpet. This is the primary challenge facing the NDP: “If it does not fully come to terms with this issue in its positions and its actions, the problems of the past will surely reappear.”

Is it simply inadvertence that the party’s web site lists Nycole Turmel as chair of the “national caucus” not federal, he asks. Is the party’s support for Harper’s 2006 motion recognizing the “Québécois nation” completely meaningless?

The so-called Sherbrooke Declaration, likewise adopted in 2006, was brandished by Layton and deputy leader Thomas Mulcair during the recent federal election to compensate for the complete lack of commitments to Quebec in the party platform. It can no longer substitute for an orientation concerning Quebec, writes Lamoureux. Adopted in the wake of the divisions within the party over the Clarity Act, it recognized the right of self-determination, a constitutional right to opt out of federal programs with full financial compensation, and the rule of a simple majority in any future referendum on sovereignty. But it is just a statement of intention, with no real influence. There is no prospect of reopening the constitutional issue, so the Sherbrooke Declaration is nothing more than vague conjecture.[2]

Most disquieting, says Lamoureux, is that there was no resolution concerning the Quebec question put to the NDP’s federal convention in Vancouver in mid-June. “Astonishingly, nothing. Quebec, which had just supplied more than half the NDP’s parliamentary deputation, remained in the waiting room. No statement, even of general intention, was developed.”

This, despite the fact that the convention delegates voted on a resolution aimed at establishing a new “nation to nation” relationship with the indigenous peoples of Canada, so as to defend their rights and interests and establish the basis for a new equitable relationship in Canada. “Why was something similar not voted on for the people of Quebec?”

Lamoureux ends his article by noting that Nycole Turmel says the party’s parliamentary caucus will be establishing their strategic framework for the coming session in September. “Let us hope that the Quebec question is not left high and dry, once again.”

Why the ambivalence?

Nycole Turmel’s apparent equivocation on the issues of Quebec sovereignty and Quebec’s relation to Canada reflects the ambivalence of many Québécois, including many in the labour movement — especially among those like Turmel with a long history of activity in unions operating in the federal jurisdictions. Not untypical perhaps are the mixed feelings so clearly articulated by former postal workers’ leader Jean-Claude Parrot, an outstanding labour militant who played an instrumental role in building the Canadian Union of Postal Workers into one of the more progressive unions in Canada today. In his autobiography, My Union, My Life (Fernwood Publishing, 2005) Jean-Claude writes:

When I moved to Ottawa after my election in 1971, I had already long been a strong supporter of Québec independence. While still working in Montréal, I supported the formation of the Rassemblement pour l’Indépendance Nationale and later became a member of the Mouvement Souveraineté Association, and then of the Parti Québécois (PQ). I was a great admirer of Pierre Bourgault and André D’Allemagne, who both wrote and spoke in the 1960s on Québec independence.

I first became involved in the early 1960s when Marcel Chaput, a federal government employee in Ottawa, began a fast to protest the lack of recognition of the French language in federal government departments. I collected money to support his cause at the postal station on St. Laurent Street in Montreal where I worked. ...

When I first moved to Ottawa, I attended PQ meetings in Hull but, because I lived on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River, I was soon told that I could no longer be a member. This made sense, and I stopped going to PQ meetings, but I never stopped supporting the cause.

After the PQ came to power in 1976, the issue of Québec’s relationship to the rest of Canada was the subject of sharp discussion across the country. This was certainly true of the labour movement, and at CUPW’s 1977 National Convention in Halifax, delegates adopted a policy that called for the right to self-determination for the people of Québec. It took no particular side on the issue of Québec’s place in Canada, saying only that this was a matter for the people of Québec to decide on.

The first to speak on this resolution was Brother A. Galley from the Burlington local. He raised concerns that this could divide our union in two. He ended his comments by saying, “First and foremost, I am a Canadian, and I wish and hope that there will be no such thing as the withdrawal of the Québec region from this union and that we stay as one united national union.”

The next speaker, Brother Marcel Perreault from Montréal, indicated that there was no question of making a regional union with this resolution, only that Québec was one of two nations within Canada.

One speaker, Brother T. Penney, said that twenty-eight years earlier Newfoundland, which had the right to self-determination, had used that right to join Canada and that nobody was going to tell him that today the people of Newfoundland didn’t have the right to leave Canada if they wanted to. “This is a right that Québec must also have,” he said.

Brother [Evert] Hoogers from Vancouver also spoke, saying that he stood irrevocably for the principle that the people of Québec had the absolute right to determine their destiny:

“I stand here as a Canadian worker, and I say that the only way I can have unity with my brothers and sisters in Québec, with Québécois workers, is to underline and actively work for their right to decide on their own destiny themselves. When people, workers especially, in English Canada respond to the phony issue of national unity, I just want to bring to their attention that what they are responding to is the call of a man — and the call of a government — who has hardly been the friend of CUPW. If we look over the history of the regime of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, we see a Prime Minister who has consistently worked in the interests of big business and large corporations. Never once has he worked in the interests of workers in this country. Why do we think, because he is calling for us to unite with him around the issue of national unity, that somehow he is working in our interests now? To the call of Prime Minister Trudeau for unity with him, I say never.”

All other speakers spoke in favour of the resolution, and it was adopted unanimously.

Brother Hoogers was certainly correct in his comments on Prime Minister Trudeau. Although Trudeau oversaw the implementation of the Official Languages Act in 1969, which recognized the French language in Canada, he never had the courage to meet the aspirations of the people of Québec.

Trudeau pretended to never recognize that people in Québec were looking for sovereignty-association with the rest of Canada, not outright independence. To him, they were just a bunch of “separatists” who wanted to destroy “our country.” Trudeau used the term “separatist” in a very derogatory way, and because of this many Canadians turned against the people in Québec.

Trudeau was admired in English Canada because of his intelligence and charisma. He came from Québec, was fluently bilingual, and he made it look to many in English Canada as if the country was under attack by Québec. Many in English Canada had been asking, “What does Québec want?” Trudeau managed to get many of these people to change that question into a statement: “If Québec gets it, we want it too.”

Trudeau successfully put Québec in the position of being just one among ten provinces. He never tried to find a solution to the aspirations of the people of Québec. On the contrary he encouraged many in English Canada to oppose any accommodation with Québec.

Whenever I hear people say that Trudeau saved Canada, or that he united it, I get a knot in my stomach. This guy never united Canada: he divided it. Many people in the rest of the country don’t want to hear about the aspirations of the people of Québec. In some parts of the country, there is even hatred against people from Québec. Bilingualism in federal government services is seen by some as a way to give jobs to French-speaking people ahead of English speakers. In 1980, some even suggested that the army be used if the people of Québec voted “yes” in the referendum on sovereignty-association that was held that year. The appointment of a francophone as director of an Ottawa hospital was denounced fanatically, despite his recognized competence, because at one point he had shown sympathy to the PQ.

It was never properly explained to the rest of Canada what the PQ was really asking for in the 1980 referendum. There was a clear difference between sovereignty-association and full independence. René Lévesque’s position was quite clear, and he never deserved to have the term “separatist” used against him in the derogatory manner Trudeau did.

Today the provinces are demanding that the federal government give them more power, yet, strangely, nobody calls them “separatists.” This is all that Québec under René Lévesque had demanded, that more power be delegated to Québec without affecting the existing status of the other provinces. Québec wanted much more responsibility in such areas as immigration, social programs, and a larger voice in the international field.

I wasn’t at all surprised when the Bloc Québécois was formed as a strategic move to let the Liberals and others in English Canada understand that, whether they liked it or not, Québec is a distinct society. Indirectly, that “great Canadian,” Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was largely responsible for the formation of the Bloc.

The fact remains that people in Québec believe in a strong Canada, and whatever happened in the past or will happen in the future, Québec will never be a province like the others. Québec, whatever form its relationship to the rest of Canada may take in the future, will always be a good thing for Canada, especially once Canadians accept Québécois as friends, not enemies.

The policy CUPW adopted in 1977 in support of Québec’s right to self-determination has been renewed at every convention since, and it remains the policy of CUPW today. Not long after we adopted this position, it was also adopted by the CLC [Canadian Labour Congress].

I was happy to see, in 1994, the CLC, on behalf of all the provincial Federations of Labour, sign an agreement with the Fédération des Travailleurs et des Travailleuses du Québec (FTQ). We in the labour movement love to call it our sovereignty-association agreement. It allocated more funds to the FTQ to allow it more autonomy on issues that had before been strictly the responsibility of the CLC. It also recognized a role for the FTQ in the international activities of the CLC. It was agreed that one of Canada’s two seats on the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions be given to the President of the FTQ. The role of the CLC in the francophone countries around the world was also transferred to the FTQ.

I hope that someday our politicians will have the courage to act in a similar manner regarding the relationship between Canada and Québec. The CLC-FTQ agreement shows that Canadians and Québécois can find solutions that work for both parties. [pages 288-291]

Like Nycole Turmel, a good many other new MPs from Quebec may think that membership in the NDP is not necessarily incompatible with support of Quebec sovereignty — although, of course, Turmel, who is under tremendous pressure from the media, the other parties, and no doubt her own party, strenuously affirms her support for federalism. That is her — and their — contradiction. It is understandable, however, and Jean-Claude Parrot’s defense of “sovereignty-association” between an autonomous or sovereign Quebec and a “strong Canada,” his (naïve?) hope that an accommodation can yet be reached between the people of Quebec and Canada short of independence, but also his typically understated indignation at the violence and ignorant abuse with which Quebec’s aspirations are met on a daily basis, tell us much about the challenge facing the workers movement in the days, months and years ahead.

Incidentally, when I last attended a meeting of the federal NDP in my riding, Ottawa-Vanier, Jean-Claude Parrot (still a sovereigntist, he assures me) was chairing the policy debate — as always in both English and French, in equal measure.

-- Richard Fidler, August 3, 2011

[1] Entitled, in translation, “50 years after the NDP’s founding — from the ordeal of Jack Layton to the issue of Quebec,” the article argues that Layton’s current illness is not the only cause for concern about the NDP’s future. “The Quebec national question as a whole, contrary to what some may think, has not been eclipsed, either, by the NDP’s dazzling victory in the election of last May 2.”

[2] For a detailed critique of the Sherbrooke Declaration, see “The federal NDP’s electoral breakthrough in Quebec: A challenge to progressives in Canada.”

Behind those resignations from the Parti Québécois

2011-06-07T18:19:00.003-04:00

It’s “an earthquake that could become a tsunami,” said former Parti québécois leader Bernard Landry, reacting to the sudden resignation of three prominent PQ members of the National Assembly from the party’s caucus June 6.

The resignations were ostensibly in response to the party’s support of a private bill that would shield a management deal between Quebec City and Quebecor Media Inc. from being challenged in the courts, even before formal contracts have been signed to build the proposed amphitheatre that would, the City hopes, lure back the Québec Nordiques professional hockey team.

Quebecor Media is Quebec’s second largest media chain, and publishes some of its largest-circulation tabloid newspapers. It has become notorious for its anti-union policies. Only recently it ended a two-year long lockout of its employees at the Journal de Montréal, who continue to publish an on-line daily newspaper they started during the conflict, Rue Frontenac.

The bill, sponsored by PQ MNA Agnès Maltais, has prompted outrage among PQ members at the blatant attempt to infringe the right of citizens to take legal action against the deal, which was struck without public tender.

But much more is at issue than Pauline Marois’ determination to force her MNAs to support the bill. The members who have resigned are among the strongest supporters of Quebec independence in the party’s caucus. As Landry says, the hope is that their departure will prompt a reconsideration of Marois’ reluctance to campaign for sovereignty — what he hopes will be the “tsunami” to follow the resignations earthquake. They accuse Marois of imposing her views through increasingly authoritarian practices.

Marois wants the project of holding a referendum on sovereignty — the PQ goal, article 1 in its program — to be put on hold indefinitely, and says that winning voters’ support for sovereignty would not be her main objective in government. Instead she has focused on identity issues, such as proposing adoption of a Quebec citizenship with fluency in French as a precondition for eligibility. She has sought to woo supporters of the right-wing Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), which favours more autonomy for Quebec, but not sovereignty. And she hopes to frustrate efforts by François Legault, a former PQ cabinet minister, to establish a new right-wing party that includes both sovereigntists and federalists.

Soon after assuming the PQ leadership in 2007, Marois engineered the expulsion from the party of a leftist “club”, Syndicalistes et Progressistes pour un Québec Libre (SPQ-Libre), which campaigned for a clear commitment to independence and the reinforcement of Quebec’s legislation protecting French-language rights.

But this failed to stifle criticism of her strategy. In March, former PQ leader Jacques Parizeau, in a widely publicized article, urged delegates to the party’s April convention to adopt a clear position in favour of sovereignty and to prepare and promote it in government through a campaign using public funds. However, a resolution to this effect by his wife Lisette Lapointe, the MNA for Crémazie riding, was rejected by party leaders, who refused to include the Crémazie motion in the proposals put to the convention delegates. Lapointe was one of the three who resigned from the party’s caucus June 6, the others being Louise Beaudoin and Pierre Curzi. (Another, Jean-Martin Aussant, resigned today, and called for Marois’ resignation as leader.)

Marois successfully engineered a 93% vote in support of her leadership at the convention. But unease continued to simmer in the party, and it has flared up in the wake of the May 2 federal election, which resulted in a catastrophic drop in support for the PQ’s federal pendant the Bloc québécois, its vote dropping from 38% in the 2008 election to 23% and its seats from 49 to 4, while the federal New Democratic Party’s Quebec vote ballooned from 12% in 2008 to 43%, the NDP winning 59 seats in the province.
The NDP surge has been interpreted by many as an indication of an incipient realignment of Quebec politics, long polarized around the national question, along left-right lines as well.

Did the voters’ rejection of the Bloc spell trouble for the Parti québécois, which in recent months seemed headed for government in the next election, polling well in advance of the governing Liberals? Some péquistes have voiced concern that the party could be losing support to Québec solidaire, the new left pro-independence party whose sole MNA, Amir Khadir, has been rated Quebec’s most popular politician owing to his outspoken attacks on the neoliberal politics of the capitalist parties, the Liberals, the PQ and the smaller right-wing Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ).

It was Khadir who brought the issue of the Quebec City-Quebecor deal to a head in the National Assembly. Owing to a technicality, the PQ member’s private bill ratifying the deal had to receive a unanimous vote if it was to be sent for debate and adoption in the current session, which ends this month. Khadir initially refused to vote for it, thus frustrating the bill’s supporters in both the Liberal government and PQ opposition. Later, Khadir said he would allow debate to proceed in committee, but would vote against the bill, which has been criticized on legal grounds even by the government’s own lawyers.

In fact, given QS opposition, the bill was doomed from the start. And Premier Jean Charest has today put the bill on ice until September. According to Le Devoir, “Mr. Charest announced this decision after finding that the Québec solidaire MNA, Amir Khadir, was going to obstruct adoption of the amendment [to the Cities and Towns Act] demanded by [Quebec City mayor Régis] Labeaume.”

Khadir has been the target of some vitriolic attacks in recent weeks by prominent PQ leaders and supporters. When Khadir wrote, following the May 2 election, that he personally had voted NDP, the PQ president Raymond Archambault accused Québec solidaire of making defeat of the PQ its primary objective, ahead of beating the Liberals. The PQ, you see, thinks it should monopolize the independence vote. (The full text of Khadir’s article is translated below.)

Khadir’s opposition to the Quebecor-Quebec City private bill brought down further calumny upon him. Columnist and essayist Denise Bombardier, in a particularly defamatory piece, compared him to a follower of Mao, described him as a “phobic opponent of modernity” and a macho politician, and even questioned his Québécois authenticity (“an heir of the great cultivated bourgeoisie of Iran”).

However, Le Devoir political columnist Michel David took a more generous view. “Of the 125 elected members of the National Assembly,” he wrote, “Amir Khadir seems to be the only one to convey the point of view of the millions of taxpayers who are already opposed to having the construction of an amphitheatre primarily intended to enrich a multimillionaire [Quebecor head Pierre Karl Péladeau] entirely financed by their taxes. And who now see their MNAs ready to adopt, even if it means holding their nose, a bill that would legalize an agreement that the government’s own lawyers suspect is illegal.”

Some corporate media commentators have speculated that the new wave of dissidence in the Parti québécois will bolster the prospects for Legault’s new right-wing party project. I think it is more likely to bolster pro-sovereignty forces to the left, in the first place Québec solidaire.

Those resigning from the PQ caucus, as mentioned earlier, are among those long associated with the independence cause. Their resignations from caucus are not necessarily resignations from the PQ itself (at present, there is some unclarity on this). Some péquistes, such as Bernard Landry, evidently hope that the open crisis will provoke a debate within the party over party strategy that has largely been sub rosa in recent years. On the other hand, it may simply be a new stage in the crisis of the traditional bourgeois sovereigntist leadership, which seems unable to rally popular enthusiasm for its neoliberal “governance” strategy, looking to some new crisis in federal-provincial relations to foster the “winning conditions” for a referendum yes vote to “sovereignty.”

In fact, the resignations this week bear a certain resemblance to the 1984 resignations of Finance Minister Jacques Parizeau and several other ministers from the PQ government in protest against René Lévesque’s decision to postpone the battle for sovereignty in favour of the “beau risque” of gambling on hopes for post-Trudeau constitutional change that would accommodate Quebec. The crisis at that time was followed by the party’s election defeat in 1985 and a decade-long exclusion from office.

However, it is Québec solidaire which — from its founding five years ago — has articulated, with increasing force and credibility, a strategy for independence that is transparent, democratic and activist-oriented — a strategy for building a new “country of projects.” In mid-April, it launched a campaign along these lines, in accordance with a resolution adopted at its November 2009 convention.[1] The campaign web site sets out the party’s vision of sovereignty and the approach it favours for achieving it. It also outlines the party’s approach to strengthening the status of the French language, especially in Montréal. As the web site explains:

“Some of these projects can be achieved here and now, without affecting Quebec’s constitutional status. However, the people’s ambition to realize many other projects will soon be hobbled by the total or partial absence of any latitude for Quebec in areas as fundamental as the environment, foreign policy, foreign trade and even language. The full mastery of our destiny is therefore indispensable for achieving all of the projects of our dreams.”

Associated materials (all on-line) include an historical survey that dates a Québécois quest for sovereignty back to the 18^th century, a critique of Canadian federalism and the failure of past efforts to reform the system and a critique of “the impasse of the PQ and its referendum strategy,” to which it counterposes Québec Solidaire’s proposed grassroots campaign to build support for sovereignty and, eventually, the election of a democratic non-partisan Constituent Assembly to adopt a constitution for an independent Quebec. Associated articles cite and describe parallel “inspiring experiences” in Bolivia, Ecuador and, most recently, in Tunisia.

In the fall of 2011, the campaign will feature a tour of Quebec by QS president Françoise David and public meetings “on themes chosen by local party associations.”

This campaign can boost Québec Solidaire’s profile as the left wing of the independence movement, with a “project for society” and a “country of projects” that points toward an anticapitalist alternative vision that breaks sharply with the PQ-Bloc strategy for independence, one “based on alienation from Canada,” and “fuelled by resentment,” as Amir Khadir describes it in the article below.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

After the federal elections – The Quebec that awaits us

by Amir Khadir, MNA (Mercier)
Spokesman for Québec solidaire
Le Devoir, May 14, 2011 [my translation]

The forceful rise of the New Democratic Party was desired by many progressive sovereigntists like me. But not at the price of such a sweeping defeat of the Bloc québécois. Québec solidaire had called for voting for progressive candidates, whether of the Bloc or the NDP. Would I have voted for the NDP candidate had I known that my MP and friend Gilles Duceppe was in danger in his riding? No, without a doubt. But now, I confess, I have no regret. The one for whom I voted, Hélène Laverdière, will make an excellent MP for Quebec.

Nonetheless, I am sad about Gilles and so many others of his colleagues. Duceppe did not deserve that. My “useful vote” — anti-Harper and intended to strengthen the rise of the NDP in Canada — was not against my Bloc MP but it contributed to his defeat. It seems that many other sovereigntist voters had the same experience. An incongruous election experience, which highlights two major problems that must be addressed frankly in the independentist movement: (1) the effects of the “useful vote”; (2) the political exhaustion of a certain sovereigntist orthodoxy.

The downside of the useful vote

The May 2 results are explained, first, by a rapid shift of a major share of the Bloc’s electorate (4 out of 10) very largely toward the NDP. In five weeks, BQ support sank from 40% to 23%. Five weeks earlier, a major share of the 17% of voters who abandoned the BQ were independentist or nationalist. Did they abandon en masse their sovereigntist convictions?

That is not plausible, we don’t change convictions so abruptly. Rather, the Bloc was a victim of a massive shift of its electorate, a major part of which voted pragmatically. The useful vote is based on an individual’s political calculations, not on convictions. But the May 2 results indicate above all the aberration of this type of vote, a product of our non-proportional electoral system. The BQ garnered a quarter of the votes, but obtained only a twentieth of the seats. Those who would prefer to forget the necessity to reform Quebec’s foully undemocratic voting procedures must now grasp the danger that the lack of a proportional representation system constitutes for any sovereigntist formation.

Other reasons have also been offered to explain the orange wave that overtook Quebec last May 2, whether or not they are complementary to the useful vote: hostility to Harper; weariness with the Bloc, either because it is considered responsible for a sterile impasse in Ottawa or because it is too closely associated with the PQ, with its disappointing wait-and-see approach [to sovereignty]; eagerness for change associated with rejection of the governing political elites; a new electoral alignment on a left-right axis instead of sovereigntist-federalist, especially among young people, etc.

These elements of a new electoral dynamic have their equivalent in Quebec’s political landscape: emergence of a new left-right electoral alignment; massive rejection of the Charest government; lack of enthusiasm for the PQ, perceived by some as belonging to the power elite and distressing others by its refusal to engage in the necessary fight for independence.

One possibility comes to mind, then: the electoral dynamic that drove thousands of sovereigntists to vote in an unorthodox way and create the orange wave could reproduce itself in the Quebec elections. But to whose benefit? Everyone thinks of QS, but our formation still has a long way to go before it can arouse such passion. However, no party can now consider itself the proprietor of the sovereigntist vote. With all the actors present and to come on the Quebec election chessboard, no party is immune to reverses from the useful vote and the aberrations of the present electoral system.

The orthodox sovereigntist strategy is becoming exhausted

Another observation resulting from the new electoral dynamic is that the BQ’s defeat is not so much the defeat of its leaders or structures as it is the exhaustion of the strategy that the leadership of the sovereigntist movement has pursued federally through the BQ. This strategy for independence, elevated to orthodox status by many sovereigntist leaders, was summarized in this way by Duceppe when he addressed the Parti québécois convention during the election campaign: “Elect as many sovereigntists as possible in Ottawa... for the next stage, elect a Parti québécois government in Quebec City... [and] it all becomes possible again, as far as sovereignty is concerned.” This orthodoxy has been dropped by a large number of sovereigntist voters and the stageist project is cracking.

The situation may discourage some. But without prevarication, we should recall the words of Miron: “With my stubbornness... my pigheadedness, I have endurance, I have a tough skin, a raw hide.”[2] Those who have acted for 20 years in accordance with a strategy for independence based on alienation from Canada were no doubt right to try. But the approach has failed; it is time to try something else. And this cannot be strictly electoral, derived from above by some elected members lying in wait for those fleeting “winning conditions”.

Quebec, this country of projects

Quebec, this country of projects that awaits us, can only be born from the firm will of our people and the dreams that sustain it. Quebec’s march toward its independence cannot be fueled by resentment. We have to imagine a strategy by which the acts taken for Quebec are aimed toward a ‘rupture de dépassement’ [freely, a challenging break from the present]. Innovating socially and economically. Taking the ecological and political turn that can reveal the exciting potential of freedom to our own people.
It must be positive, and necessarily involve huge popular mobilizations. Québec solidaire imagines it in the framework of a constituent assembly, which secures a formidable relationship of forces and a compelling legitimacy. (Consult the web site http://www.paysdeprojets.org/ for further details.)

It will be up to our people to decide. And when they have decided, since any independence will involve negotiations for new collaborations and agreements, Quebec will have every interest in seeing that a more open Canada emerges, under the leadership of principled, generous and open people — like Jack Layton and the NDP, who have undertaken to respect our right to self-determination.

[1] See “Quebec left debates strategy for independence.” The interactive campaign web site may be accessed at Pays de projets.
[2] A free translation. The original: “avec ma tête de tocson... ma tête de semelles nouvelles j'ai endurance, j'ai couenne et peau de babiche.” From L’homme rapaillé, by Gaston Miron (Montréal: Éditions TYPO, 1998).

Layton chooses Supreme Court, Clarity Act over NDP’s Sherbrooke Declaration

2011-05-25T16:56:00.001-04:00

It did not take long for the NDP’s contradictory positions on the Quebec national question to surface within its new parliamentary deputation.

Yesterday, as Jack Layton presented his full caucus of 103 MPs — 59 of them from Quebec — to the media, on Parliament Hill, there was no denying the existence of deep rifts among them on whether Quebec has the right to self-determination, and what it means to defend that right.

In an earlier post, I pointed to the contradictions in the 2005 Sherbrooke Declaration, the NDP’s major statement on Quebec. A central one involves the party’s attitude toward a future Quebec referendum on sovereignty. The Declaration says the NDP “recognizes... that the right to self-determination implies that the Assemblée nationale [the Quebec legislature] is able to write a referendum question and that the citizens of Québec are able to answer it freely.” But it immediately adds: “It would be [up] to the Federal government to determine its own process in the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling” on the 1998 Secession reference.

The problem is that the Supreme Court ruling — and the federal Parliament’s Clarity Act, adopted in 2000 pursuant to that ruling — made Quebec sovereignty following a successful “yes” vote contingent on agreement by the federal Parliament. The Sherbrooke Declaration does not mention the Clarity Act. In 2006, Layton endorsed the Clarity Act, reversing his previous opposition to it.

The Declaration says the NDP “would recognize a majority decision (50% + 1)” in a referendum on Quebec’s political status. But the Supreme Court, in the Secession Reference, said the referendum vote must represent a “clear majority” on a “clear question” — as determined not by Quebec but by Ottawa and the other provinces, in clear violation of Quebec’s right of self-determination. Those conditions are now entrenched in the Clarity Act.

Responding in yesterday’s press conference to repeated questions by Quebec reporters, Layton first dodged the issue, then stated his own position.

“We’ll follow the decision of the Supreme Court judges,” he said. “We think that’s an appropriate framework. We don’t need to be revisiting legislation.” At the same time, he said in French that he stood by the Sherbrooke Declaration.

Other members of his caucus expressed differing opinions. Among those saying they would recognize a 50% + 1 vote for sovereignty were Quebec MPs André Boulerice (Rosemont-La Petite Patrie) and Guy Caron (Rimouski-Neigette-Témiscouata-Les Basques). Boulerice is also a member of the left independentist party Québec Solidaire. Caron is a former president of the Canadian Federation of Students. Both are trade union officials: Boulerice with the Canadian Union of Public Employees; Caron with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.

West Coast MP Peter Julian likewise said a simple majority vote was the party’s position.

"The NDP has for years recognized Quebec's right to self-determination and for me it's clear that means the 50-percent rule must be respected," said Boulerice.

Among those expressing instead their support for the Clarity Act were Nova Scotia MP Peter Stoffer and Winnipeg MP Pat Martin. The latter maintained that there was no contradiction, that a simple majority was enough — provided there was a “clear question” however.

Le Devoir political columnist Manon Cornellier aptly summed up Layton’s dilemma. “Yesterday’s scene was the perfect illustration of a leader caught between a rock and a hard place,” she wrote. “And it won’t be the last time.” Layton says he wants to create “winning conditions” for Canada in Quebec and thereby avoid the referendum threat. “But one of those conditions is to speak frankly and forthrightly about the rules by which he intends to play. But can he do so at this point without upsetting the rest of the country, or Quebec?...

“For Jack Layton, the solution is through a Parliament that functions, that improves things for families, that produces changes in people’s lives. But the Harper government has a majority and is under no obligation to take account of the opposition, even if it is full of good will.

“The Mulroney and Chrétien [majority] governments sometimes gave a helping hand to the opposition parties, but only when the policies they defended divided their own caucus, as on the issues of abortion, the long-gun registry, gay rights and same-sex marriage. If not, the steamroller was the rule. To impose the GST, reduce transfers to the provinces, slash government spending, limit access to employment insurance.... It will be no different this time around.”

Layton’s fundamental problem is that he is trying to square the circle — claiming to support Quebec self-determination, and the nationalist aspirations of the vast majority of Québécois, while hoping to convince them of the merits of the federal regime and fend off hard-line federalists within his caucus. Layton’s “winning conditions” require as a first step a progressive federal government and a “parliament that functions”, impossible goals in today’s conditions.

The solution will not be found in Parliament. Nor will it be found in the Clarity Act or a judgment of the Supreme Court. And still less in the Sherbrooke Declaration. The Declaration was a transparent attempt to paper over contradictory positions, to reconcile rhetorical support for Quebec’s right to national “self-determination” with a commitment to federalist hegemony over any attempt by the Québécois to exercise that right.

For as long as the NDP had no real presence in Quebec, and no Quebec members of its parliamentary caucus other than Thomas Mulcair, a committed federalist and opponent of Quebec sovereignty, these contradictions could be covered up. But no longer. They are now mirrored within the NDP’s parliamentary deputation.

The NDP has no choice but to confront the Quebec question and attempt to develop a coherent and principled position. This can only be done through a wide-open discussion throughout the ranks of its members and supporters, and through engagement with the movement for Quebec independence — and especially with the progressive leading edge of that movement, Québec Solidaire. The debate must be conducted above all within the working class and its organizations outside Quebec, in the other provinces and territories. It is long overdue, and the NDP will pay a serious price for any further attempts to evade it.

It should be clear by now that no lasting resolution of Quebec’s national aspirations can be found short of a fundamental change in its constitutional status. It should be equally clear that only a successful drive toward Quebec independence can lay the basis for any genuine partnership of equals between the peoples of Quebec and Canada — including the aboriginal First Nations.

Canada’s ruling class, including its Québécois component, are firmly opposed to a sovereign Quebec and the prospect of losing control over what is at present a key component part of their state. They will use every resource at their disposal to fight the movement for Quebec self-determination and political independence. This poses an enormous challenge to the working people of Canada, who must be won to consciousness of the need for ongoing solidarity and active support to their Québécois sisters and brothers.

This will be no easy task. As the Le Devoir columnist says, it will “upset” a lot of people — conditioned as we are by the constant trivialization of “the Quebec question” by a hostile mass media and capitalist politicians.

“My message to Quebecers is clear,” said Jack Layton yesterday. “You can count on me to defend your interests.”

Layton may think he can be the sole arbiter of their interests. But the more than 1,628,000 Québécois who voted for the NDP on May 2 were not just voting for Jack Layton; their vote was for the NDP. It was their way of saying — within the constraints of our electoral system — that they wanted a closer connection with progressive opinion in the Rest of Canada than the Bloc Québécois was able to provide.

We cannot afford to disappoint them.

-- Richard Fidler

More on that election

2011-05-18T11:10:00.001-04:00

Some further thoughts about Canada’s May 2 federal election and its implications for the left...

A reader asked me what I thought about the significant decline in the combined votes for the capitalist parties over the last decade — from 78.5% for the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and Alliance in 2000, to 59% for the Liberals and Conservatives in 2011.

I think the figures reflect three developments, essentially.

1. The ongoing decline of the Liberals. The combined Tory/Reform/Alliance vote in 2000 is 37.7%, exactly the same percentage as the Tories got in 2008. They increased this only slightly, to 39.6%, in 2011. But the Liberals have declined steadily throughout this period: from 40.8% in 2000, to 36.7% in 2004, to 30.2% in 2006, to 26.3% in 2008, to 18.9% in 2011.

2. The shift between the Bloc Québécois vote and the NDP in Quebec in 2011. The BQ took 39.9% in 2000, 48.9% in 2004, 42.1% in 2006, 38.1% in 2008 (about where it was in 2000). But in 2011 it sank to 23.4%.

3. The ongoing increase in the NDP vote, and of course the surge in 2011. The NDP polled 8.5% in 2000 (1.8% in Quebec), 15.7% in 2004 (4.6% in Quebec), 17.5% in 2006 (7.5% in Quebec), 18.2% in 2008 (12.2% in Quebec). Then the party surges to 33.1% in 2011 (42.9% in Quebec).

A closer analysis might show that the NDP has been steadily gaining support against the Liberals, and in 2011 it also overtook the Bloc. More than 4.5 million people voted for the NDP on May 2, about 2 million more than in 2008 — a huge shift in the popular vote.

A possible hypothesis: The trends reflect a polarization of opinion, with the Liberals being the main losers (especially outside Quebec), mainly to the NDP. In 2011, Quebec caught up with this trend in the Rest of Canada (ROC); a Léger post-election poll published in Le Devoir indicates that a desire to forestall a Conservative majority in Ottawa was the primary factor motivating Quebec’s NDP voters. Harper and the mass media campaigned for a majority government, free at last to implement their “full” program. In turn, the broad “left” and “progressive” milieu in the ROC made the danger of a Harper majority the main issue. This was noticed in Quebec, where it was interpreted by many as well as a further threat to Quebec’s national interests and integrity. This fed into a debate that had been developing for some years: was the Bloc’s presence a sufficiently effective means of warding off these dangers? Could the NDP, the only potential alternative, be of use?

And Francophone Quebec, when it detects a developing shift in opinion, tends to vote as a nation, particularly in the federal context, a reflection of its consciousness as a national minority that is wary of federal intrusion on its jealously guarded jurisdictions, especially in the realm of language and culture. In 2011 public opinion seems to have reached a kind of tipping point, when the NDP vote in Quebec suddenly ballooned at the expense of the declining Bloc (already down from almost 49% in 2004 to 38% in 2008).

I should add, perhaps, that the shift to the NDP from the Liberals (and now the Bloc) is most remarkable because it largely occurs outside of any real increase in extra-parliamentary mobilization.

What the NDP seems to offer for many of its voters, I suspect, is a way to compensate for their perceived lack of perspectives; a means to fend off worse attacks by the capitalists, but without much sense of taking a radical turn. Layton’s campaign seemed cleverly calculated to appeal to that lowest common denominator of potential support: modest tinkering in the interests of “working families”, with a cheerful message that no one need feel threatened. Nevertheless, the voters’ turn to the NDP, elevating it to Official Opposition status — within striking distance of forming the federal government — represents a huge collective protest against the right-wing thrust of politics in this country.

Obviously, there is much more to be said — for example, about the nature of this electoral polarization, and the development of the Reform-Alliance formations in the 1990s, their takeover of the Progressive Conservative party a decade ago, and the social bases, content and aims of this very conscious right-wing formation (and social and ideological coalition) now enjoying unprecedented control of the federal government. But for socialists the key question to think about now is what the election means for the course of working-class politics in Canada in the next period.

Amir Khadir: Quebec vote shows need for a left strategy for independence

In the coming weeks, I plan to report and sometimes comment on various interpretations of the results that are being made within left and progressive circles. I will start today with a major op-ed article in the May 14 issue of Le Devoir by Amir Khadir, the Québec Solidaire member of Quebec’s National Assembly: “After the federal elections: the Quebec that awaits us”. Khadir makes a number of points worth pondering.

He begins with a comment similar to earlier ones he made, to the effect that the NDP surge in Quebec is a good thing, but he regrets that the Bloc suffered such a defeat. (In passing, he says he voted NDP in his riding against his good friend [BQ leader] Gilles Duceppe, and would not have done so had he known Duceppe would personally be defeated; but he adds that the elected NDPer, Hélène Laverdière (a long-time Canadian foreign service officer) “will make an excellent MP for Quebec.”

Khadir says he was voting pragmatically, against Harper and to strengthen the NDP’s rise in Canada. This “vote utile”, he says, by contributing to the defeat of Bloc Québécois MPs like Duceppe, illustrates a problem “that must be addressed frankly in the independentist movement”: the lack of a system of proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system resulted in the Bloc, with almost a quarter of the votes in Quebec, getting only one-twentieth of the seats. We now have to grasp, he says, “the danger that the lack of a proportional voting system poses for any sovereigntist formation”.

The second lesson of the Quebec results, says Khadir, is “the political exhaustion of a certain sovereigntist orthodoxy”. He points to “a new electoral dynamic”: “emergence of a new left-right electoral anchorage; massive rejection of the Charest [Quebec] government; lack of enthusiasm about the PQ, which is perceived by some as belonging to the power élite and distresses others by its refusal to engage in the necessary fight for independence.”

Who will benefit from this new configuration of the political landscape, he asks. “Everyone thinks of QS, but our formation still has a long way to go before it can arouse such passion. However, no party can now consider itself the proprietor of the sovereigntist vote.... No party is immune to reverses from the ‘useful vote’ and the aberrations of the present electoral system.”

Québec Solidaire has consistently campaigned for reform of the electoral system to include some form of proportional representation. A poll released May 14 in Le Devoir shows QS with 9% popular support; a system of PR could give it 10 seats or more with a vote like that. (Khadir is so far its only elected member.)

As to the defeat of the BQ, says Khadir, the “new electoral dynamic” reflects “the exhaustion of the strategy that the leadership of the sovereigntist movement has pursued federally through the BQ.” He quotes Duceppe, at the PQ convention in April: “Electing as many sovereigntists as possible in Ottawa... for the next stage, electing a Parti Québécois government in Quebec City... [and] it all becomes possible, as far as sovereignty is concerned.”

The basic problem with the BQ-PQ scenario, says Khadir, is that it bases a strategy for Quebec independence on alienation from Canada. “But the approach has failed; it is time to try something else. And this cannot be strictly electoral, derived from above by some elected members lying in wait for fleeting winning conditions” — a reference to the PQ’s oft-repeated formula for a referendum victory based on taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by a conjunctural set of circumstances, such as the 1990 defeat of the Meech Lake constitutional amendment package.

“Quebec, this country of projects that awaits us,” says Khadir, “can only be born from the firm will of our people and the dreams that sustain it. Quebec’s march toward its independence cannot be fueled by resentment. We have to imagine a strategy by which the acts taken for Quebec are aimed toward a ‘rupture de dépassement’ [freely, a challenging break from the present]. Innovating socially and economically. Taking the ecological and political turn that can reveal the exciting potential of freedom to our own people. It must be positive, and necessarily involve huge popular mobilizations.”

Khadir then draws attention to Québec Solidaire’s concept of moving toward sovereignty through a constituent assembly that would help build a stronger relationship of forces in favour of independence, with a compelling legitimacy. The party counterposes this to the PQ’s top-down referendum strategy that excludes popular participation in formulating a program for an independent Quebec.

Khadir concludes:

“It will be up to our people to decide. And when they have decided, since any independence will involve negotiations for new collaborations and agreements, Quebec will have every interest in seeing that a more open Canada emerges, under the leadership of principled, generous and open people — like Jack Layton and the NDP, who have undertaken to respect our right to self-determination.”

Optimistic language, to be sure — and at this stage, excessively so! But the point is well made: The Quebec independence movement cannot overlook the need to win friends and allies in the Rest of Canada. And the NDP victories in the recent election, in a context of developing or deepening ideological, political and class polarization in the electorate in both Quebec and the Rest of Canada, open some new perspectives for doing this.

-- Richard Fidler

The federal NDP’s electoral breakthrough in Quebec: A challenge to progressives in Canada

2011-05-08T17:26:00.001-04:00

If Jack Layton’s election-night speech to his Toronto supporters is an indication of what lies ahead, the NDP is going to have a hard time coming to terms with a parliamentary caucus now composed of a majority of MPs from Quebec.

To a crowded room in which nearly everyone was waving Canadian flags, the NDP leader delivered two thirds of his remarks in English without ever mentioning the expression “Quebec nation”. The scene, televised across Canada, did not go unremarked in Quebec, where most of the NDP’s sudden support had come from nationalist-minded voters, including many sympathizers of Quebec independence.

The NDP breakthrough was the big surprise of the May 2 federal election. In a wave of support that developed into a veritable tsunami, the NDP took 42.9% of the Quebec popular vote, winning 58 of the province’s 75 seats under the first-past-the-post system and defeating most MPs and candidates of the pro-sovereignty Bloc Québécois, now shrunken from a caucus of 50 to only four MPs in the House of Commons. And along the way the NDP candidates reduced the much smaller contingents of Quebec Conservatives and Liberals to six and seven seats respectively.

In the Rest of Canada (ROC), the NDP share of the popular vote increased from 17.5% in the previous federal election (2008) to 26.3%, largely on the coattails of the Quebec surge. But the party’s net gains outside of Quebec were limited to five new seats.

With a total of 102 seats — 60% of them from Quebec, where in 2008 the party took 12.2% of the vote and only one seat — the NDP now constitutes the Official Opposition. This is clearly a major achievement for the party. It was won despite the almost unanimous opposition of the big-business media: 31 Canadian newspapers editorially endorsed Harper’s Conservatives; one, the Bloc Québécois (Le Devoir); and one, the NDP (Toronto Star).

However, it is an Opposition with little parliamentary clout. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, the “Tories”, with just 39.6% of the popular vote, elected 167 MPs, giving them a clear majority in the 308 seat House. As for the Liberals, they elected only 34 MPs, an all-time low for that party.

The NDP can abandon its dream of “making Parliament work.” It will work well, but not for the NDP’s natural constituency — what it referred to in the campaign as “working families.”

A new Conservative hegemony

Over the next four or five years, the reinforced Harper government can be expected to pursue even more vigorously the right-wing agenda it has followed for the past five years of its minority government: more war and militarization, privatization of social services and federal institutions (Canada Post?), the weakening or abolition of many regulatory bodies, more “free trade” and investment deals, increased spending on police and prisons, and a complete flouting of the most minimal environmental measures that has already turned Canada into an international pariah petro-state. Quebec will be further marginalized through the addition of new parliamentary seats in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, where the Tories are strong.

With the crushing defeat of the Liberals, Harper has now established the Conservatives as the hegemonic party of capital. But this hegemony comes at a price. Capital in Canada has traditionally ruled through a system of alternance between Liberals and Conservatives, each ready to replace the other if defeated in Parliament or by the electorate. However, with the crushing defeat of the Liberals, and the victory of the NDP, the scenario has radically changed. Although the Tory government’s parliamentary majority is secured for four or five years, the alternance is now up for grabs. For Canada’s ruling circles, this poses a dilemma. Should they bank on rebuilding the Liberals? Or should they start thinking of the NDP as an acceptable option at the federal level, as they already do in some provinces where the NDP has governed for many years?

Provincial office is one thing. But the central government, with its crucial jurisdiction over banking and finance, foreign affairs, the military, trade and commerce, criminal law and the senior courts and judiciary, etc. — and above all its role in protecting the territorial and institutional integrity of the state and forestalling any challenge by Quebec to that integrity — that’s a somewhat different matter.

The difficulty here, of course, is that the NDP, created at the aegis of the trade unions in English Canada, has historically been viewed by Capital and labor alike as a workers party and for that reason has never enjoyed the confidence of big business — despite all the efforts of NDP leaders down through the years to neutralize and overcome that antipathy.

For the time being, a choice between a reconstituted Liberal party and the NDP as the party of federal alternance remains open for debate. The outcome will depend very much on how the situation in Quebec evolves. Meanwhile, Harper is being reminded that he must rule in the interests of the entirety of the capitalist class, and not just a right-wing faction of the class. Whether or not that will require him to rein in some of the more extreme rightist elements in his caucus remains to be seen.

Little policy debate

Despite the serious stakes involved, the election campaign was characterized by a remarkable absence of discourse on the major issues confronting the country — from the wars in Afghanistan and now Libya to the looming climate and environmental catastrophe, the economic crisis and the “national question,” the ongoing disaffection of Québécois with their place as a nation in the Canadian constitutional setup. In the media and party platforms, voters were essentially asked to choose between competing menus of promises that purported to increase their disposable income in various ways, as if politics and citizenship itself involved little more than a consumer marketing exercise. Most media analysis during the campaign centered on speculation as to how many seats the shifting percentages in the polls might yield to each party as a result of tactical vote-splitting between parties in the multi-candidate ridings. But serious policy debate? There was very little of that. It is not easy, therefore, to decipher what the May 2 vote indicates about shifts in public opinion.

Le Devoir’s Josée Boileau expressed the frustration of many on the lack of substantive policy debate, in an April 29 editorial on the federal election:

An ageing Canada is spinning its wheels [s’autosuffit]. It does not dream, does not assume new challenges, does not see itself as a source of inspiration, nor does it draw inspiration from what is done elsewhere. ...

Last week Le Devoir interviewed Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, who reported on his moves to get the UN to adopt a Charter of the rights of nature. Bolivia itself, seeing the climate changes that have melted its glaciers by one third, adopted similar legislation last December and has appointed an ombudsman to enforce it.

Moreover, the country dreams of an international tribunal of climate justice, and of replacing the notion of GDP by an indicator of sustainable development. In short, Bolivia is talking 21^st century! Here, we are still talking ancient Greek.

It was also — and even more importantly — an election campaign nearly devoid of serious mobilizations outside the electoral arena around issues of importance to working people that could have contributed to policy debate. The antiwar demonstrations in mid-April were small. Despite the threat to abortion rights and equality legislation posed by a Conservative victory, the women’s movement was largely unheard. A Parliament Hill demonstration on May Day, initiated by the Hamilton Steelworkers union locked out by US Steel, attracted only a thousand or so demonstrators, although it was addressed in part to an issue of great concern to millions — the vulnerability of pensioners who are being deprived of their life savings and old-age security by corporate bankruptcies and downsizing.

In the youth-based environmental and social movements, many activists are inclined either to abstain from electoral politics or to focus their political action on the community rather than “national” level.[1] Some who did become involved in the election were initially at least attempting to forge an informal “anybody but Harper” coalition that could elect candidates of any party but the Tories. The NDP’s sudden surge in pre-election polling tended to convert many of these to NDP votes, which on election day helped to defeat a few Liberals and allow the election of some Tories.

Notwithstanding the lack of substantive debate, a few observations can be made, I think, about the trends revealed in the May 2 voting. With special reference, as usual, to Quebec, that deep and decisive fault line in Canada’s political landscape.

The Liberal fall from grace

For the Liberals, now down to 34 seats with only 18.9% of the popular vote — their worst result ever — the election was catastrophic. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, defeated in his own riding, resigned as party leader the next day. Ironically, the voters’ immolation of “Iggy” coincided with the news on election eve of the U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden; Ignatieff first sprang to public prominence in the wake of 9/11 as a Canadian professor at Harvard who authored newspaper articles defending torture in the pursuit of terrorists.

Throughout most of the 20^th century, the Liberals ruled as Canada’s “natural governing party,” the party’s parliamentary representation traditionally drawn from most parts of the country, including Quebec. That hegemony originated in the late 19^th century when a Conservative government suppressed the Northwest Rebellion of French-speaking Métis and Indigenous peoples and hanged its leader Louis Riel. Quebec’s resulting hatred of the Tories endured for well over half a century.

The Liberals’ slow decline began almost 30 years ago, in the wake of the Trudeau government’s unilateral patriation — despite unanimous opposition from Quebec’s National Assembly — of Canada’s constitution imposing a complex amending formula that virtually rules out fundamental constitutional change and a Charter of Rights specifically aimed at overruling crucial features of Quebec’s language laws. Their unpopularity in Quebec crucially paved the way for the victories of Brian Mulroney’s Conservative governments in 1984 and 1988.

The Liberals enjoyed a decade-long return to government beginning in the early 1990s in the wake of the defeats of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional agreements, which broke up Mulroney’s alliance of western provincial autonomists and Quebec “soft” nationalists and produced the Reform and Bloc Québécois parties. In 2000, the Liberals were even able to outpoll the Bloc in Quebec as a result of popular disaffection with the Parti Québécois, the BQ counterpart, and the PQ government’s “zero deficit” austerity program. But the Liberal party was massively rejected shortly afterwards when the sordid details emerged of the “sponsorship” scandal in which the federal Liberals had spent millions of government dollars on illegal funding to subvert the Quebec sovereigntist movement. The Bloc Québécois recovered its lead and the Liberals were once again relegated to their largely Anglophone enclaves.

Having gone through three leaders in the last five years, the federal Liberals are now in existential crisis.

In 2006 the Conservatives regained office, this time as a merged and blatantly “neoliberal” Reform-Conservative party under Stephen Harper. But they had few seats in Quebec, and now they have lost their tiny enclave of ridings in Quebec City to the NDP.

The Bloc Québécois: An exhausted strategy?

The big loser in Quebec was of course the Bloc Québécois. How did this happen?

The BQ originated as a party of disappointed federalists; its first MPs, in 1991, were Conservatives and Liberals who broke from their parties in the wake of English Canada’s rejection of the Meech Lake constitutional agreement, which had been intended to legitimate Canada’s Constitution in the eyes of the Québécois. The Bloc was to be Quebec’s agency in Parliament during the negotiation of Quebec’s independence following the 1995 Referendum.

When the Referendum narrowly failed — just under 50% of the voters opted for the “yes” — the Bloc evolved into an insurance policy for Quebec, a means of avoiding the conflict of legitimacy for the Quebec nation that had arisen in the early 1980s when the National Assembly voted against the patriation deal but the Quebec MPs in Ottawa voted for it. As such, the Bloc’s MPs, for five successive elections comprising two-thirds of Quebec’s deputation in the House, became an enduring symbol of Quebec’s alienation from the Canadian Confederation. They purported to defend “the interests of Quebec” conceived as a purely nationalist non-class specific counterpart to the Parti Québécois and its bourgeois independentist perspective.

The Bloc’s program was similar to the NDP’s in many respects, excepting the Bloc’s allegiance to a sovereign Quebec — at best, proposals for modest reforms within a neoliberal context. Where it differed, it was sometimes to the right. For example, while the NDP promised to “review” the Tories’ decision to spend billions on the purchase of new F-35 fighter jets, the Bloc demanded only that a “fair share” of the planes’ manufacture, deployment and maintenance be done in Quebec — a position that grated on the antiwar sensibilities of many Québécois. However, both Bloc and NDP voted with the Tories and Liberals in favour of Canada’s participation in the NATO assault on Libya. And the NDP program promises to “maintain the current planned levels of Defense spending commitments.” This general all-party agreement on Canada’s massive increase in military spending under recent Liberal and Tory governments helped to preclude debate on foreign policy during the election campaign.

In recent years, with little prospect of an early move toward sovereignty under the PQ, progressive opinion in Quebec increasingly questioned the Bloc’s utility in Ottawa and began to look for potential allies in English Canada. During the 2008 federal election campaign, a debate opened up within the pro-independence left over whether to vote for the Bloc or the NDP. It foreshadowed the movement from below that suddenly erupted during this year’s campaign. And when the polls this April indicated swelling support for the NDP, the Bloc reverted to its specifically sovereigntist base, hoping to mobilize support through speakers like PQ leader Pauline Marois and former premier Jacques Parizeau, ghosts of elections past. This reinforced the popular perception that the Bloc had outlived its claim to represent Quebec’s interests, broadly defined, on the federal level.

The NDP: A vote for the party, not the candidates

The NDP’s Quebec candidates surfed into office on a wave of popular disenchantment with the Tories, Liberals and Bloc. A post-election survey by Léger Marketing published May 7 reveals that the uppermost concern among Quebec voters, including many former Bloc supporters, was to find some way to block the Conservative government and that the Bloc was no longer seen as the best rampart. The NDP was perceived as the one party that offered some prospect of change. At the same time, NDP voters indicated that the potential for constitutional change was not a major factor in their decision. The Québécois have largely abandoned any expectation of constitutional change coming from Ottawa or the ROC — which does not mean they have abandoned their desire for greater national autonomy or independence.

The huge majorities the NDP registered in many ridings were gained without real organization or presence of the party. However, it fielded a candidate in every riding, not only to sustain the illusion of a potential party of government but also to benefit from the generous state funding for every vote a party gets under the election laws.[2] Many of these candidates were poteaux (“poles”), as they are known in Quebec — stand-in placeholders without known roots as activists in unions or social movements in the respective communities. At the outset of the campaign, they were not expected to win. Some are already proving an embarrassment to the party, such as the young woman elected in a rural 100% Francophone riding who does not speak French, lives a three-hour drive from the riding, and vacationed in Las Vegas during the campaign.

There are some notable exceptions, of course. One is Nicole Turmel, a former president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, one of Canada’s largest unions. Another is Romeo Saganash, elected in a far northern riding, a Cree leader who was one of the negotiators for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. At least one new MP, Alexandre Boulerice, a trade unionist and environmental activist, is a member of the left-wing pro-independence party Québec Solidaire; he was communications director for the NDP campaign in Quebec and says he is a supporter of Quebec independence.

Two of the party’s Quebec MPs are former Liberals. Thomas Mulcair, deputy federal leader, was once a cabinet member in the province’s Charest government and is former legal affairs director of Alliance Quebec, the Anglophone lobby that has led the fight against Quebec’s language laws. Françoise Boivin is a former Liberal MP. They are committed opponents of Quebec sovereignty. The particular views of most of the other new MPs are not known. It is a safe bet that many support Quebec’s traditional nationalist demands for linguistic, cultural and jurisdictional autonomy; some probably harbour sovereigntist sympathies. This ensures a sharp conflict within the party if the Layton leadership pursues the NDP leadership’s longstanding dream of replacing the Liberals either through elimination (their original project) or merger — an attractive goal to them today, when they could be in the drivers’ seat in any such agreement. We had a foretaste of this in December 2008, when the Liberals and NDP signed onto a coalition government agreement (with Bloc support) in an unsuccessful effort to defeat the Harper minority government.

The electoral breakthrough in Quebec will — at least for the next four or five years, the term of Harper’s majority government — bring the NDP face to face with the reality of Quebec and the national question. This will be a new and no doubt unsettling experience for the party and its hundreds of thousands of members and supporters across Canada. If the NDP is to develop a meaningful understanding of the national question and foster relations of active solidarity with the progressive forces within Quebec, it will have to jettison a lot of baggage from its past. This will involve much more than a rhetorical adherence to Layton’s concept of “asymmetrical federalism” — which, by the way, was not mentioned in the party’s formal election program. The pressures will grow exponentially if, as opinion polls predict, the PQ forms the next government in Quebec.

A dismal history of failed encounters

Historically, the NDP has failed to gain even a modest foothold among Quebec’s French-speaking majority. Shortly after its founding in the early 1960s, the party’s Quebec supporters split, a largely Anglophone minority refusing to follow the majority in establishing an autonomous albeit sympathizing Quebec counterpart, the Parti Socialiste du Québec. The PSQ advocated a new constitutional relationship of two “associate states”, Quebec and Canada, but was outflanked by the pro-independence RIN[3] and later the development of the Parti Québécois. (PQ founder René Lévesque incorporated the “associate states” formula in his party’s program, with the proviso that Quebec had first to separate before it could negotiate a new relationship with the ROC; he called it “sovereignty-association”).

In the early 1970s, the NDP’s exceptional opposition to the War Measures repression in the October Crisis attracted to the party a contingent of Francophones led by union leader Raymond Laliberté.[4] At the party’s 1971 federal convention, most of them allied with the left-wing “Waffle caucus” delegates around resolutions in support of Quebec’s right to self-determination; they lost interest in the party when it subsequently expelled the Waffle.

In the early 1980s, the party leadership under Ed Broadbent endorsed unilateral patriation of the Constitution without Quebec’s consent, and in 2000 the party voted in favour of Bill C-20, the Clarity Act, which (among other things) made Quebec sovereignty following a successful “yes” vote contingent on agreement by the federal Parliament — a blatant violation of Quebec’s right to self-determination.

This brief historical sketch omits many incidents of a similar nature in the course of the NDP’s problematic relationship with the Quebec national question. It is now 50 years since the party’s founding. Whatever excuse there may have been in 1961 for the party’s ambivalence on the Quebec question, the electoral breakthrough today occurs in a very different context — characterized most notably by the existence of a powerful pro-sovereignty movement and the existence in Quebec politics of a fledgling left-wing party, Québec Solidaire, which seeks to arm the independence movement with a progressive social agenda that differs radically from that of the capitalist PQ and BQ.

Yet in every major confrontation over the national question that has arisen, the NDP’s Canadian nationalism — its commitment to the federal state structures — has trumped any sympathies for Québécois nationalist challenges to those structures.

It need only be added that this blindness if not hostility to Quebec’s concerns and demands has not elicited major opposition within the NDP’s ranks. Globe & Mail political columnist Jeffrey Simpson notes: “As we saw during the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional debates, rank-and-file NDPers are no more inclined to humour Quebec than supporters of other [federalist] parties.” However, I would argue that such indifference more often than not reflects ignorance of what is at stake than it does conscious opposition to Quebec’s fundamentally democratic aspirations as a nation with its own dynamic of development. Getting up to speed on these issues now becomes a major challenge facing NDP members and supporters in the Rest of Canada. Let us hope that the new contingent of MPs from Quebec can assist them in this task.

The Sherbrooke Declaration

When Jack Layton took the leadership of the NDP in 2003 he undertook to shift the party’s approach toward a more sympathetic stance on some longstanding Quebec demands.[5] In 2005 the General Council of the party’s Quebec section adopted a document now commonly known as the Sherbrooke Declaration. Entitled in part “Federalism, Social-Democracy and the Québec Question,” it was subsequently endorsed by the federal NDP at a 2006 convention and is the most complete statement of the NDP’s current position on the national question.[6] What does it indicate of current NDP thinking?

The Declaration is thoroughly federalist in orientation. It rules out any prospect of constitutional change, the usual way the national question is posed in Canada. It admits that the refusal of successive Quebec governments (both sovereigntist and federalist) to sign on to the 1982 Constitution “is a real untenable problem in the long term” but states the party’s objective “in the medium term” is “to get results that could allow Quebec to embrace the Canadian constitutional framework.” In the TV debates, Layton referred to this as “creating winning conditions” for Quebec.

The document refers to Quebec only once as a “nation” (quotation marks in the original) and says that Quebec’s national character “can be expressed in the context of the Canadian federation.” It “recognizes Quebec’s right to self-determination,” but emphasizes that in the NDP view this right can be “exercised within Canada,” and that in any case it “is not useful or necessary” to “legally formalize this process.”

It says the NDP “would recognize a majority decision (50% + 1)” in the event of a referendum on Quebec’s political status but cannily formulates this as 50% + 1 “of the Québec people” (and not voters!). And it adds that the federal government must “determine its own process in the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling” on the Quebec Secession question (1998). That ruling specifically denied that Quebec could secede without the consent of the other provinces as well as the federal Parliament, or without determining the borders of an independent Quebec. (Significantly, the Sherbrooke Declaration, in its definition of the Quebec “nation”, does not include a reference to territory.[7])

The Sherbrooke Declaration does not repudiate past positions of the party on the Quebec national question. In fact, it is explicit that the Declaration “does not make obsolete the other positions taken earlier,” citing (inter alia) NDP positions on bilingualism and multiculturalism. French is defined as the “language of work and the common public language” in Quebec; but Quebec’s Charter of the French Language (Law 101) says French is the official language and the common language, full stop, not simply of the “public” sphere. Instead, the Declaration proclaims the party’s support of the federal Official Languages Act within Quebec — a law that grants equal rights to English in federal institutions.

There is nothing in this document that is incompatible with the parliamentary NDP’s support of the infamous Clarity Act.[8] In fact, these positions are largely incongruent with the Québécois nationalism that has fueled the province’s emergence as a self-conscious nation in recent decades and — in the face of intransigent resistance from Ottawa — stimulated the movement for sovereignty or independence.

However, these issues were not aired much in this campaign, other than in the French-language leaders’ debate, when Layton sidestepped Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe’s challenge to support the Bloc position on applying the provisions of Law 101 to federal government institutions in Quebec.

A repudiation of sovereignty?

It is unlikely that many of those who voted for the NDP were aware of the party’s actual positions and record on these issues. For most, it was probably enough to know that the party differed in significant ways from the Tories and Liberals, and seemed more sympathetic to some of Quebec’s outstanding national grievances. In any event, a commonly expressed theme of voters’ comments in talk shows and media interviews was that Quebec’s constitutional status would and should be determined in Quebec, not Ottawa. Thus the “poteaux” phenomenon; people voted for a party, not the individual candidates.

Does the NDP sweep denote a repudiation of Quebec sovereignty by the Québécois, as alleged by prominent NDP supporters in the ROC such as Stephen Lewis? No serious commentator in Quebec — from committed federalists to disappointed Bloc Québécois supporters — makes that argument. Sovereignty still registers about 40% support in opinion polls, and the Bloc, while reduced to four seats, still managed to win the support of 23.4% of Quebec voters. It broods on the sidelines, hoping no doubt that the NDP’s neophyte deputation in Ottawa will implode before the next federal election, when the Bloc could again be a potential contender!

It is significant, however, that once again the Québécois have voted overwhelmingly for parties that do not form the government in Ottawa, a manifestation of their alienation from the federal regime. (Prior to the Bloc’s formation, Quebec tended to vote in federal elections for the party perceived as likely to form the government, in the hope that this would guarantee it a voice in the cabinet.)

The durability of the NDP’s gains in Quebec is by no means certain. The party faces many challenges as the Layton leadership strives to incorporate its new Quebec MPs into a functioning caucus in Parliament, and the latter in turn face a major challenge in the need to build understanding and support for Quebec aspirations within the party, and among its working-class supporters, in the ROC.

And Québec Solidaire?

The NDP victory is naturally attracting much interest, and speculation as to its meaning, in Québec Solidaire, the independentist party of the left that seeks office only within Quebec. In a post-election statement, QS co-leader Amir Khadir expressed regret at the Bloc defeat, but praised Layton for his “intelligence and understanding of Quebec.” The NDP, he said, “will show itself worthy of the confidence the people of Quebec have placed in it, and will reject the opportunism of the federalist elites who interpret that support as rejection of the idea of sovereignty.” And he added, in this optimistic vein:

Quebec has shown once again to what degree it is a distinct society. The Québécois have demonstrated a thirst for change and an attachment to progressive values. When the day comes that we decide to be independent, no one will be able to prevent us. Independence does not belong to a political party, it belongs to the Quebec people.

Responding to a reporter’s question at his media scrum April 21, Khadir noted:

I think a Quebec in which Québec Solidaire were in power might be better able to negotiate Quebec’s future, a sovereign future decided by the Québécois, with a Canadian government led by Jack Layton rather than a Michael Ignatieff or a Stephen Harper. It seems to me that this should be obvious for most sovereigntists.

Writing in the May 3 issue of the webzine Presse-toi-à-gauche, Bernard Rioux, a leader of the QS collective Gauche Socialiste, welcomed the NDP’s gains and the division in the sovereigntist vote between Bloc and NDP.

It is the sign that we in Quebec can no longer present sovereignty as being beyond the left-right polarization. Already, on the Quebec scene, the birth of Québec Solidaire posed this need to link the project of an egalitarian, feminist and ecological society, the project of national independence, and the democratic process of achieving independence, as the three dimensions of a redefinition of our struggle for national emancipation. This is the orientation that should inspire us to redefine the struggle for real social transformation and for our national independence.

Rioux pointed as well to the internal dynamics of the NDP. These, he thought, will also be radically transformed.

As Official Opposition, the NDP will be placed in the centre of Canadian politics. It will be traversed by a series of strategic debates: over orientations in opposing the Conservative government, over relations with the Liberal party, over Quebec’s place in the Canadian confederation. With more than half of its caucus from Quebec, it cannot be content with an economistic discourse in abstraction from all the questions related to Quebec’s national oppression.... With the Canadian nationalism that oozes from this party, and the presence of sovereigntists in its caucus, other waves could shake the party.

The election result is a startling reminder of the volatility of Quebec politics. At the same time, it underscores the centrality of events in Quebec not only to Canadian politics but especially to the fate of progressive forces in the Rest of Canada. It demonstrates the potential for Quebec to become, once again, a bulwark of resistance to the aggressive rightist program of the Harper government.

Socialists in the ROC will have to think about possible means of taking advantage of this new situation, and especially of engaging positively with Quebec progressives and independence supporters who will be encouraged by the NDP’s electoral advance to take a new interest in developments in the Canadian state.

May 8, 2011

[1] A notable exception to this pattern occurred on Vancouver Island, where a community-based electoral mobilization managed to elect Green Party leader Elizabeth May, that party’s first (and only) Member of Parliament. In that riding, Saanich-Gulf Islands, the voter turnout was 75.3%, the third highest in the country. Overall, only 61% of the electorate voted, not much higher than in the 2008 election.

[2] Harper has promised to put an end to federal state funding of political parties. This will be a harsh blow to the Liberals, while also depriving the NDP of its major source of funding. As for the Tories, the new “natural ruling party” of big business, they don’t need it.

[3] Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale, led by Pierre Bourgault.

[4] Laliberté was a former president of the then teachers’ union (now the CSQ).

[5] For an account of some of the key steps in this process, see “How the NDP managed to win nationalist voters in Quebec.”

[6] To my knowledge, the federal NDP has never published the Sherbrooke Declaration, although it was frequently cited in the Quebec media during the recent campaign. A few NDP candidates in Quebec linked to it on their web sites. The English version cited here was published bilingually by Layton’s then “Quebec lieutenant” Pierre Ducasse when he ran unsuccessfully in the 2008 election campaign.

[7] This is not a trivial question. As Pierre Dubuc, editor of the left sovereigntist monthly L’aut’journal notes, “When Stephen Harper speaks of the Québécois nation, he refers to the ‘Québécois’ and not Quebec — as a diplomatic note of the U.S. Embassy, revealed this week by Wikileaks, has just reminded us. This does not involve recognition of Quebec territory.... This opens the door to partition of Quebec territory. Soon after the 1995 referendum Harper, a [Reform party] MP, tabled a private bill describing the procedure to be followed for partitioning Quebec in the case of a possible victory of the Yes.” Just as the British did in separating Northern Ireland from Ireland when conceding the latter’s independence! Divide and rule...

[8] Jack Layton was critical of the Clarity Act, adopted before he was an MP, but later repudiated his opposition.

How the NDP managed to win nationalist voters in Quebec

2011-04-28T12:32:00.001-04:00

The Canadian media are now forced to devote some attention to figuring out how the NDP happened to win major support in Quebec, as recent opinion polls suggest. Among the more perceptive accounts is this one by William Johnson, a former president of the Anglophone "rights" lobby Alliance Quebec. He underscores a point that socialists in the Rest of Canada should absorb: that the NDP's apparent surge in Quebec does not by any means put paid to the importance of the Québécois national question in Canadian politics. On the contrary. A lot of expectations will be riding on the NDP in the next period, not least in Quebec.

The apparent surge in NDP support in English Canada is not unrelated to the initial surge in Quebec. As some of us have long maintained, the NDP's credibility as a party of government at the federal level has always been largely contingent on its ability to pose as a credible alternative in Quebec. In this election, at least, the party seems to have managed to make major strides in responding to that challenge, partly because Québécois hopes for meaningful change in their constitutional status within Canada are admittedly quite limited by now.

The Bloc's decline -- in the last analysis, it was never more than Quebec's "insurance policy" in the hostile federal environment -- has been developing for more than a decade, staved off until now only by the popular response to the Liberals' sponsorship scandal and the widespread antipathy to Harper's Tory agenda. In all but the national question, the Bloc and NDP don't differ radically, although the NDP has managed to appear more consistently antiwar; that too, is undoubtedly a factor in its progress.

It remains to be seen how popular support for the NDP will translate into parliamentary seats on May 2, under the undemocratic "first past the post" system. But, whatever the result, my Socialist Project comrades will have to ponder an important implication: that as far as the NDP is concerned, "the party is [NOT] over”... yet.

-- Richard

Ottawa Citizen, 28 Apr 2011

How Jack Layton courted Bloc voters

By William Johnson

William Johnson is the author of the biography, Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada.

The game-changer of the 2011 election campaign is the New Democratic Party’s surge in Quebec while the Bloc Québécois declined.

None had predicted it. It took all by surprise. But was it an entirely unaccountable phenomenon? Hardly.

From the time he won the NDP leadership in 2003, Jack Layton manoeuvred to build his party in Quebec from the ground up by courting the nationalist clientele of the Bloc Québécois. His strategy followed that of Brian Mulroney when the Progressive Conservative party was defunct in la belle province. The Tory leader built support in Quebec by recruiting separatists like Marcel Masse and Lucien Bouchard, then launching nationalist messages like treating the 1982 patriation of the Constitution as an infamy.

In his first election campaign as leader in 2004, Layton sent out two messages targeting Bloc supporters, as reported in The Globe and Mail on May 29 by Steven Chase. “NDP Leader Jack Layton, trying against tough odds to win the first Quebec seat for his party in 14 years, said yesterday he would repeal Ottawa’s 2000 Clarity Act on secession.”

On that same occasion, Layton repudiated the 1998 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the secession of Quebec, which said that secession was not a right, it could only be accomplished legitimately with the consent of the other provinces and the Parliament of Canada, and that it would require a number of conditions, such as determining the new borders of an independent Quebec.

As Steven Chase reported, “Mr. Layton also said the NDP would recognize a unilateral declaration of independence by Quebec after a referendum vote.”

To understand what is happening now in Quebec, one should consult a 2,782-word portrait of Layton published in the July 1, 2003 issue of l’Actualité magazine. There, the new leader of the NDP revealed himself and his intentions to an ultra-nationalist journalist, the late Michel Vastel. The title was significant: “The left, Quebec and Jack Layton.” More significant was the subtitle: “We will see Jack Layton a lot this summer because, to revivify the NDP, Jack Layton has undertaken to court the supporters of the Bloc Québécois.”

As Layton described himself, he had always supported Quebec nationalist causes. He was a student at McGill University in 1969 when a huge demonstration was held under the slogan, “McGill français.” Some 10,000 people marched to have McGill transformed into a French-language university. Vastel wrote: “During an agitated demonstration in 1969, Jack Layton found himself at the sides of turbulent personalities like union leader Michel Chartrand, as well as Robert Lemieux, official lawyer for the Front de libération du Québec bomb placers, and the separatist professor Stanley Grey who had invited him to the event.”

Layton revealed that he had been a pacifist who joined demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. He said he converted to the NDP when he heard Tommy Douglas denounce the invocation of the War Measures Act during the 1970 October Crisis.

He described with approval how his father, Robert Layton, broke with the Liberal party: “He left the Liberal Party when Pierre Elliott Trudeau pushed through a new Constitution in 1982 without the consent of Quebec. ‘ He thought that Trudeau had committed a grave mistake, and had acted arrogantly besides,’ the son recalled.”

Already, in 2003, Layton was anticipating supplanting the Liberals and evoking the possibility of a coalition: “Our program and the list of our candidates will be such as to convince people that we are ready for everything,” he promised, “to govern, to form the official opposition or to participate in a coalition.”

In the years since 2003, Layton has consistently taken positions dear to Quebec nationalists. He is for conferring special status or distinct society status on Quebec, which is what he calls “asymmetric federalism.” He is for applying to federally regulated industries in Quebec — such as banks or VIA Rail — the restrictions on the use of English contained in the Charter of the French Language. He favours a law that would prevent the appointment of any judge to the Supreme Court of Canada who was not fluently bilingual. And he opposes the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision that would allow some students who have studied long enough in unsubsidized private schools to acquire a right to public English schooling.

Finally, in pacifist Quebec, he has called constantly for the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan.

On December 5, 2005, during the federal election campaign, Jack Layton stated: “If you are absolutely convinced that there is no place for you in Canada and you don’t see your future within the Canadian federation, then you will vote for the Bloc.” He later explained away those words, just as he had later withdrawn his promise to rescind the Clarity Act. But a message had been sent.

Layton’s pitch, fundamentally, is that Quebecers are wasting their vote on the Bloc when they can get exactly the same policies from a Canada-wide party that can hope some day to form the government or be part of a governing coalition.

‘Beyond capitalism’? Québec solidaire launches debate on its program for social transformation

2011-04-04T18:09:00.004-04:00

by Richard Fidler
MONTRÉAL – At a convention held here March 25-27, Québec solidaire concluded the second round in the process of adopting its program. More than 350 delegates from party associations across the province debated and adopted the party’s stance on issues in relation to the economy, ecology and labour. And they reaffirmed their determination to build the party as an independent political alternative, rejecting proposals by QS leaders to seek “tactical agreements” with the capitalist Parti québécois and/or the Parti vert (Greens) that would have allowed reciprocal support of the other party’s candidate in selected ridings.

This was Québec solidaire’s sixth convention since its founding in 2006. Faced with two general elections within the party’s first three years, QS members had adopted election platforms in their first conventions addressed to major issues that could be dealt with in the course of a Quebec government’s term of office, but left the elaboration of a more sweeping program — outlining the party’s overall orientation and strategy “within a perspective of social transformation” — to a more prolonged process of debate.[1]

That process was launched at the party’s fifth convention in November 2009, when delegates adopted positions on the national question, secularism, electoral reform and integration of immigrants.[2] Future program conventions, to be held over the next two years or so, will address such topics as health and social services, education, social and legal justice, culture, agriculture, and international solidarity and altermondialisation (anti-capitalist globalization).

Go beyond capitalism?

The debate on the social and economic issues that were the subject of the March convention promised to reveal an underlying tension within the party that has existed from the outset — one that is familiar to virtually all broadly based organizations and parties of the left. The QS policy commission put the issue directly in its “participation booklet,” a preliminary document posing questions for discussion by the membership:

“As we work on our program, we should spell out the nature and limits of the system, and ask ourselves the following question: isn’t the capitalist system, based as it is on maximizing profit and irresponsible exploitation of nature, the main obstacle to social progress and a healthy relationship to the environment? We need a serious debate on the question so we can determine whether our social problems can be corrected by reforms that respect the logic of the system or if we need to adopt the perspective of going beyond the system.”[3]

This was also the question put by the Québec solidaire leadership in a Manifesto they issued for May Day 2009, entitled “To emerge from the crisis, should we go beyond capitalism?”[4] Although the Manifesto’s specific proposals to overcome the crisis generally failed to go much beyond a timid social liberalism, its anti-capitalist rhetoric met with a very favourable response in the QS ranks. Some members were more critical, however. Among these were François Cyr and Pierre Beaudet.[5] In an article published just as the debate was getting under way, with the suggestive title “Québec solidaire must remain a rainbow coalition,”[6] they argued that the task of a left-wing party is “to fight for immediate changes, realizable within the framework of the present capitalist state and system.”

“The very essence of a large mass party,” they wrote, is that it is “a permanent coalition capable of carrying out the compromises and arbitration that are necessary both in terms of program and the internal equilibrium of its networks.” Québec solidaire should “avoid confining itself to a terrain that is too limited.... it is necessary to unite all those who want to oppose neoliberalism and reaction....
“It is an error to think that the socialist perspective, even in its most interesting recent developments (ecosocialism, for example) now constitutes an alternative in Quebec. It must be admitted, it is not.”

A few QS members responded to Cyr and Beaudet with their own articles. Roger Rashi, a member of the party’s theme commission on environment and energy and of Masse critique, a recognized collective within QS, wrote:[7]

“It is necessary to deepen the basis of unity of Québec solidaire by exploring the ultimate goal of the struggle against neoliberalism, by outlining the basic framework of an alternative, ecological, democratic and self-managed society without social inequality and without poverty, in other words an ecosocialist society. This does not mean eliminating Québec solidaire’s character as a political united front, or if you prefer a rainbow coalition, but it does mean getting this united front to evolve toward going beyond the capitalist system. The objective and subjective conditions are favourable to such an evolution.”

QS members André Frappier, a Montréal leader of the postal workers’ union (CUPW), and Bernard Rioux, a member of the Gauche socialiste collective, argued the case for programmatic clarity around a clear class line:[8]

“...we must seek to attract broader layers of activists to Québec solidaire, in the popular, feminist and trade union movement. But will we do that by making programmatic compromises? And at what level, on what aspect? [Cyr and Beaudet] do not say. They argue that socialist ideas and practices have few roots among the people. That does not hold water. History is full of examples teaching us that the workers movement learns from the struggle.... Whenever parties claiming to be on the left have not indicated clearly where the class interests of the workers movement were situated, where the program confused mass struggle and class struggle, where the ruling classes’ interests were not identified, on each of these occasions the workers movement experienced a terrible defeat....
“What have we learned from the Popular Unity [government] in Chile? From the Popular Front in France? In neither case was the defeat of the workers movement due to an exaggerated radicalism, and certainly not to a lack of broad alliances, but rather to the programmatic confusion that deprived it of all its resources and enabled the bourgeoisie to survive and regain the initiative.”

A ‘serious debate’?
This initial public debate, however, unfolded largely outside the formal structures of Québec solidaire, in a few left journals and on-line blogs.[9] Within the party itself, the “serious debate” on capitalism invited by the QS policy commission did not unfold in the preconvention discussion. One reason lies in the obstacles to conducting general discussions on perspectives within Québec solidaire.

Under the complex procedure the party has chosen for conducting its program debates, initial written submissions by the members (or by “citizens’ circles” composed of both members and non-members) must not exceed 800 words in length. The policy commission then compiles a “perspectives booklet” presenting concise demands based on what it considers the “principal orientations” in these submissions. These are discussed and amended or added to by QS local associations and general assemblies, following which the policy commission produces a “synthesis booklet” that arranges the revised demands by topic and, where appropriate, lists differing resolutions addressed to a particular issue as “options” (up to six, in some cases) for debate and decision at the convention — first in topic workshops, then in plenary session, where delegates are limited to two or three minute interventions from the floor.[10]

Whatever the democratic merits of this procedure — and there are some, to be sure — it effectively precludes lengthier written contributions within the party structures that could outline a general strategic or programmatic framework on the given subjects and allow a broader debate among opposing approaches.[11] Moreover, the party has no public or internal discussion bulletin or even an email discussion list that would allow such debates. And in this round, unlike the previous public debate leading up to the fifth convention, none of the members’ commentaries were published either on the intranet or public websites. (The website itself is dominated by statements on issues of the day by the party’s joint spokespersons, Françoise David, the QS president, and Amir Khadir, its sole elected member of the National Assembly.)

Despite these constraints, on many topics the delegates to this convention revealed a readiness to link demands for immediate reforms to a longer-range perspective of radical democratic and social transformation.

A green energy agenda
At this convention, Québec solidaire voted for a major turn to green energy, including:

A reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, and by 95% by 2050. Abandonment of fossil fuels by 2030.
Opposition to carbon taxes, carbon trading and storage schemes, biofuels, and geo-engineering.
“Public control” over energy firms, defined as majority participation of the state up to and including 100% nationalization as needed. Another proposal, for complete nationalization of energy firms, was defeated. Some delegates voiced concern that Quebec government nationalization might not respect First Nations jurisdictions.
Prohibition of any new hydro-electric development. Production of renewable energies: solar, geothermal, wind, to limit to the maximum any supplementary resort to hydro-electricity.
An end to all exploration and development of fossil fuels, such as petroleum in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (Old Harry), shale gas, and LNG ports. Elimination of Quebec’s nuclear reactor system, and an end to the exploration and development of uranium mines. In recent months mass movements have developed in many Quebec communities against local gas and uranium exploration projects, and some delegates mentioned their involvement in these actions.
Development of electrified transportation to ensure the accessibility, universality “or even gratuity” of public transit. A leaflet distributed at the convention by Montréal members of QS outlined some methods and proposals by which the party could deepen its involvement in the developing movement to stop the Turcot interchange, a major highway intersection. The proposals include a campaign for free public transit, massive expansion of public transit infrastructures, and conversion to efficient green energy sources.
Support for a new, legally binding international agreement, and participation in the world movement linking climate and social justice. It was noted that this movement is inspired by the alternative peoples’ summit on the environment held at Cochabamba, Bolivia in April 2010. A table in the convention foyer promoted the “Cochabamba Plus One” conference to be held in mid-April in Montréal, and pamphlets on ecosocialism produced by the Gauche socialiste and Masse critique QS collectives.

Natural Resources
The convention voted by large majorities that the mining and forestry industries should be placed under “public control,” with up to 100% nationalization “as needed.” In both cases, the demand for outright nationalization received substantial support but was defeated. In addition:

All resource industries to be subject to strict environmental regulations, and no project to be approved without meaningful public consultation in the communities concerned and a veto by local or regional authorities over development plans. Mining royalties to be increased and shared equitably between the resource region and the government.
In the forest industry, elimination of laws allowing clear cutting and cutting in the boreal forest north of the 49^th parallel. A reduction in disparities between natural and managed forests, and the need for prior agreements with the indigenous people in all regions under aboriginal treaties or land claims.
Fresh water, whether surface or underground, to be considered a “non-commodified common good accessible to all but the property of no one,” with the state as guardian. Water used by industry and businesses to be considered a “loaned” public property subject to royalties and post-treatment controls.

Trade union and labour rights
Among the programmatic demands adopted by the convention — usually by large majorities, in some cases unanimously — are the following:

Constitutional protection of the right to join unions, bargain and strike, including the right to political and solidarity strikes (strikes for political objectives and in solidarity with striking workers and students).
Prohibition of lockouts, and strict controls on layoffs and shutdowns — including mandatory justification before a government agency, protection of company pensions, compulsory retraining and re-employment in similar jobs, etc. State assistance to employees wishing to form local worker coops when companies relocate.
Union rights for farmworkers and self-employed workers, and the right to multi-employer certifications.
Right of full employment in safe, stable, socially useful, ecologically sound work free of discrimination, with social protection in case of loss of employment, incapacity and ageing. Affirmative action for women, disabled, visible minorities and indigenous.
Immediate reduction in the workweek to 35 hours, and “gradual” transition to 32 hours with no loss of pay, compensatory hiring and no speed-up in workload or pace. Legal restrictions on the use of overtime work. Delegates rejected demands for an immediate 32 hour workweek.
An immediate increase in the minimum wage to the low-income (poverty) threshold for a person working full time, with a “gradual” increase to 50% over this threshold, indexed to the cost of living. This would mean a gradual increase from $10.66 to $15.99 per hour. Proposals to raise the minimum wage by lesser amounts or an immediate $15.99 were rejected.
Expanded public employment in social services, construction, infrastructures maintenance and environmental clean-up.
Accessible programs for job retraining, free and funded by employers and government.

Anticapitalism? Or a mixed capitalist economy?
The radical thrust of the positions adopted on the ecology and labour questions — many pointing, at least implicitly, in an anticapitalist direction — was not matched in the decisions on the economy, which necessarily addressed fundamental issues of how Québec solidaire envisages its proposed “democratic transformation” of the economic organization of society. In the plenary debate on “general orientations,” delegates voted by a large majority for a statement declaring, in part:

“To allow collective and democratic control of the principal economic levers of Quebec, QS ultimately intends to go beyond capitalism. It seeks to establish an economic and political system promoting the common good, with greater respect for communities and individuals, that allows us to define the objectives of our lives in respect for the surrounding environment. We propose a plural economy, based on values of equity, solidarity, diversity, self-management, liberty, in conditions of ecological balance and efficacy, including the exploration of alternative economic systems.”

Another resolution proposed to abandon “the dual (private-public) economic model” in favour of adopting a “quadripartite model,” composed of

a social economy composed of enterprises with a social and non-profit objective but also community, collective or cooperative organisms that render innumerable services to the people.
an essential domestic economy based on the services provided in the family, by natural caregivers (primarily women) and more generally on free or volunteer services that we wish to find means of social recognizing and accounting for at their fair value.
a public, state and parastate economy, the importance and social role of which in the equitable provision of accessible services to the entire population throughout the territory, inter alia, should be enhanced.
a private economy composed of private enterprises the purpose of which is to sell products and services and which agree to function in compliance with the collective (social, environmental, etc.) rules that Quebec society establishes.

This mix of “exploring” alternatives, including an “ultimate” anticapitalism, along with promoting a “plural economy” entirely consistent with a regulated capitalism, albeit with a somewhat naive emphasis on the “social economy,” was reflected in many of the proposals adopted under the “economy” rubric.

The emphasis on the “social economy” is a reflection of Québec solidaire’s social composition, its membership, and their activities — heavily weighted to professionals, social workers, and marginalized working class layers unemployed or precariously employed, with very limited trade-union membership. The attention to the “domestic economy” reflects as well the traditions and roots of many QS members in the feminist movement and its recognition that many important economic functions of society go unpaid or underpaid relative to other economic sectors.

Important as these economic sectors are — a recent study found that more than 80,000 people are employed in Montréal alone in the “social economy” of charities, NGOs, and volunteer social agencies — they are at best a complement to the fundamental competitive and exploitative wage-labour dynamic of capitalism.

These ambiguities were reflected in other resolutions on the economy, including:

Québec solidaire aims for an eventual socialization of economic activities, based on a strengthened public economy (state-owned companies and nationalization of major enterprises in some strategic sectors), a greater role of the social economy (cooperatives, community-owned firms), and a controlled private sector, with much greater emphasis on promoting small and medium enterprises (SMEs). A number of delegates objected that SMEs and organizations operating in the “social economy” are generally low-wage sweatshops, SME owners being bitter opponents of trade unions. Their alternative motions were outvoted.
Nationalized enterprises are to be operated in a framework of national and democratic planning, with decentralized management including representatives of employees, the community, and First Nations where applicable. Forms of self-management are to be promoted in place of bureaucratic oversight. Delegates were almost evenly divided on whether compensation for nationalized firms should take into account “unpaid taxes, monopolist super-profits, pillaging of resources and pollution”; after three successive hand votes, the motion was referred to the QS policy commission for later consideration.
Economic growth must cease to be considered an objective in itself. A QS government will take immediate legal, regulatory, fiscal or other measures to discourage over-production, over-indebtedness, and over-consumption.

Thus, the party tends to fall between two stools: immediate demands on major issues that often point beyond capitalism, and a general orientation that is consistent with a perspective of simply reforming capitalism. These ambiguities are probably an accurate reflection of the diversity of perspectives within Québec solidaire’s membership. Still lacking is a comprehensive approach that can help bridge the gap between today’s struggles and an anticapitalist perspective — between the short and longer terms — to help the party demonstrate in the actuality of today’s struggles the need to “go beyond capitalism.” Or, as the QS program definition puts it, “beginning now, to work toward the realization of its social agenda.”[12]

Some important omissions
The convention agenda did not allow sufficient time to cover all the issues before it and some items had to be dropped. Unfortunately, it was decided to postpone to a later convention the debate on some important topics. Among these were Banking and Financial Institutions, where the draft proposals on offer ranged from complete expropriation of the banking system and other financial institutions through to “socialization,” promotion of cooperatives and mutuals, competition by a state bank, or no nationalization at all.

Another postponed topic was Taxation. In its 2008 election platform Québec solidaire called, inter alia, for a 100% capital gains tax (except for family farms), an increase in personal income tax brackets, and exemption of necessities from the Quebec sales tax. Draft program proposals this year included putting salary levels 30 times the minimum wage in the highest tax bracket, reviewing consumption taxes as regressive taxes or even abolishing them outright, adoption of limited succession duties, and shifting the tax burden from individuals to corporations.

Banking and taxation were the subjects on the convention agenda that most clearly posed the national question, since many proposals under these headings could only be implemented by a sovereign Quebec with full jurisdiction in these areas. However, QS leaders have displayed a notable reluctance to formulate their proposals as a program for “another, independent Québec,” despite the party’s formal support of sovereignty. Was this a factor in the proposal to adjust the topics for debate to omit these points?

A party of the ballot boxes... and the streets?
Yet another important omission from the agenda of this phase of program adoption was a decision by the party’s policy commission a few months ago, in the midst of the party debate, to withdraw from discussion at this convention a proposal it had drafted on the relation between Québec solidaire and the social movements (including the trade unions). The draft text outlined a strategy by which QS, “as a party and as a government, should seek to strengthen the capacities of the social movements, encourage their unity in action and participate in them on the basis of a program of social transformation.” It proposed that QS members who belong to the various social movements be encouraged to “network” within the party — that is, coordinate their activities within the unions and other movements around a strategy of reciprocal reinforcement of the movements and the party. This draft text addresses an important lacuna in Québec solidaire’s activities.

Up to now, this extraparliamentary and extra-electoral aspect of the party’s intervention has remained largely under-developed. Since its founding, and particularly since Amir Khadir’s election in 2008, the focus has been increasingly on a strategy of building the party through the ballot box, to the neglect of extra-parliamentary action “in the streets.” A “development plan” adopted at the last National Council meeting, in June 2010, summarized the objectives for the next two years as “advancing our ideas in the population, gaining a greater presence in public debates, electing more MNAs and appreciably increasing our percentage of the vote in the next general elections.”

Québec solidaire works alongside the unions and some social movements in a number of coalitions, such as the pro-independence Conseil de la Souveraineté. But its modest campaign in relation to the public-sector unions’ negotiations with the Quebec government last year, labelled “Courage politique,” failed to mount a clear defense of the unions’ demands and was largely confined to a defence of existing social programs and opposition to privatization. The party has no organized presence as such in the unions; its social base continues to be heavily composed of students and workers in unorganized sectors of the work force such as the “social economy.” This lack of experience in the union milieu no doubt contributed to some of the abstractness of the convention debate on economic models.

‘Tactical agreements’ with other parties?
As it happens, this convention did debate “alliances” — not with trade unions and social movements, but electoral agreements with either the Parti Québécois or the Verts (Greens). Aware of the difficulty of electing more MNA’s under Quebec’s undemocratic first-past-the-post system, the national council had appointed a committee to study possible “tactical agreements” with other parties under which each party would agree not to run a candidate against the other in selected ridings. In its report to the convention, the committee favoured electoral agreements but was divided on which parties to approach.

It ruled out a “strategic alliance” with the Liberals, ADQ and PQ which, it said, “diverge a lot from QS programmatically.” But it put two options before the delegates: (A) a possible tactical agreement with the PQ and/or the Verts; or (B) a possible tactical agreement with the Verts alone, a “strategic alliance” with that party being conceivable if based on the Global Greens Charter, but ruled out for “practical reasons pertaining to internal decisions of the Verts in Quebec.”

The danger in the proposed alliances, of course, was that Québec solidaire might well blur its programmatic differences with the other parties, a major problem in the case of the PQ, a decidedly capitalist party. The proposed agreement with the PQ was sugar-coated with the argument that the PQ might accept such a trade-off as a virtual recognition of the principle of proportional representation. But PQ governments have always resisted implementing any form of PR. Furthermore, the PQ is apprehensive of the growing popularity of QS among many of its traditional supporters. Both QS and the PQ are addressing much the same audience: a progressive working class electorate, which may well be more inclined to vote PQ as a “lesser evil” to the Liberal government. QS needs to find ways to counter that reasoning, not reinforce it.

A third option, of course, was to reject any such alliances. And that is exactly what the delegates did in the opening Friday night plenary session, rejecting appeals from both Amir Khadir and Françoise David, among others, in support of either option A or B.[13]

A CROP-La Presse opinion poll published March 28, the day after the convention ended, will have strengthened QS militants’ hopes for electoral breakthroughs. It reported that both the Parti québécois and the governing Liberals had lost support — the PQ registering 32%, the Liberals 22% in voters’ intentions — while support for Québec solidaire had risen to 15%, far above the barely 4% support it registered in the last Quebec election, when it nevertheless managed to elect Khadir in Mercier riding.

Khadir’s election brought welcome media attention to the party. His effective interventions in the National Assembly have given the party considerable media exposure, and he has been able to address many issues not previously associated with the left.[14] Opinion polls have recently rated him the “most popular” MNA in Quebec, and no doubt this popularity is a major factor in QS’s polling results. It remains to be seen how durable it will be in a general election, however, when voters usually vote to make or unmake governments — and Québec solidaire’s support is strongest among young people, where abstention rates are highest.

‘Radical left’ marginalized?
Addressing a news conference after the convention, Québec solidaire president Françoise David expressed relief that her positions, especially on the “quadripartite economy,” had triumphed. She had feared the influence of “a more radical left,” she said, but was happy that the more left-wing members of the party still recognized that QS was the only party that could truly “go beyond capitalism” and “create other alternatives.”[15]

No matter how many fine resolutions Québec solidaire members adopt in conventions, the reality in QS is that day-to-day policy — and the interpretation and weight given to the party’s formal program — is largely determined by its two “spokespersons,” who virtually monopolize media coverage of the party. Both Françoise David and Amir Khadir took pains during the convention to rally support for their conception of a “plural economy” with ample room for a regulated capitalism. A party news release issued at the close of the convention stressed that the delegates had voted to support “a plural economy in which the social economy — cooperative, non-profit community, public, domestic and private — have their place.”

At the convention itself, only hours after the members’ resounding rejection of tactical or strategic pacts with parties to the right of QS, David took a quite different stance in her closing speech. Centering her remarks on the just-declared federal election campaign, she issued a “solemn appeal” for a united front to defeat the Harper government: “My appeal is addressed not only to the members of Québec solidaire but to all the voters: You must not vote Conservative!” She left open the suggestion that a vote even for the federal Liberals was an acceptable option. A strange position for a party that purports to support Quebec independence! A QS news release explained that the party, while rejecting the Conservatives outright, will not advocate support for any other party, but will urge Québécois to vote for “progressives.”

This position will not satisfy many QS members, of course. We can expect a debate to arise on these issues in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, Québec solidaire is launching the third phase of its program debate later this month. It will be addressed to issues of social justice, education policy, healthcare and cultural policy. The party policies will be determined at a convention now scheduled for December of this year.

[1] A resolution to that effect adopted by this convention defines the party program as “a proposal for democratic transformation of the whole of society over the medium and long term,” as well as “strategies...that will enable Québec solidaire, beginning now, to work toward the realization of its social agenda [projet de société] together with the social movements and the people.” The platform, on the other hand, is said to comprise immediate measures appropriate to specific situations and contexts. See “Définition du programme politique.”
[2] See “Quebec Left Debates Independence Strategy.” The resolutions are published (in French) on the QS website.
[3] Québec solidaire, “Pour une société solidaire et écologique...”, Cahier de participation au programme, Enjeu 2, June 2010, p. 5.
[4] “Pour Sortir de la Crise: Dépasser le Capitalisme? Manifeste de Québec solidaire,” May 1, 2009.
[5] Cyr is a former president of the Union des forces progressistes, a founding component of Québec solidaire. Beaudet is the former director of Alternatives, a Quebec-based international NGO.
[6] Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme, “Québec solidaire doit rester une coalition arc-en-ciel,” June 15, 2010.
[7] Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme, “Vers un parti anticapitaliste s’inscrivant dans un large mouvement de lutte au néolibéralisme,” August 17, 2010.
[8] Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme, “Le défi de Québec solidaire, devenir un parti de transformation écologique et sociale…,” July 6, 2010.
[9] A valuable source of perceptive (and somewhat acerbic) analysis of Québec solidaire’s activities and debates is the blog of Marc Bonhomme, a QS member in Montréal.
[10] In the initial phase of the discussion, the policy commission received about 150 submissions. Following publication of the perspectives booklet, members submitted about 600 amendments and new proposals or comments from about 40 local associations or committees entitled to representation at the convention. (Introduction to the Cahier Synthèse – Programme) This suggests that most of the internal preconvention discussion was on the basis of the perspectives document, with its succinct specific demands.
[11] In a post-convention analysis, Bernard Rioux (QS – Quebec City) lauded the decision “to debate orientations on the basis of proposals for action to attain precise objectives and not general ideological definitions.” This approach, he said, “made it possible to outline the essential tasks before us without obscuring the existing diversity of objectives and strategies in this quest for social transformation that unites Québec solidaire.” But a debate confined to “essentials” meant that the convention “overlooked many issues the party will not always be able to evade. This approach to the debates will have to be modified to allow greater explanation... of the full implications of both the analyses underlying proposals and the strategies that will have to be deployed....” The party needs “more time for discussion and mastery of issues that are not always easy.” Bernard Rioux, “Québec solidaire concrétise son projet de société,” Presse-toi à gauche!, March 29, 2011.
[12] See note 1, above.
[13] For a detailed report on the proposals and debate, see Marc Bonhomme’s blog.
[14] To see Khadir’s interventions in the Assembly (there are hundreds of them since his election), click on http://www.assnat.qc.ca/fr/deputes/khadir-amir-25/interventions.html.
[15] “Québec solidaire veut marginaliser sa «gauche radicale».”

People’s Summit in Quebec issues call for antiwar actions

2010-11-28T21:08:00.003-05:00

The People’s Summit Against War and Militarism, which met in Montréal November 19-21, was attended by 225 persons from a wide range of organizations. It issued a Joint Declaration endorsed by more than 70 organizations including trade unions, women’s and student organizations, civil liberties groups, and other social movements and grassroots community organizations in Quebec. The declaration is also supported by seven peace groups in English Canada, including the Canadian Peace Alliance. See the list of signatories.

The People’s Summit was called by the Montréal antiwar collective Échec à la Guerre (Stop War), which organized the massive antiwar demonstrations of almost a quarter million in the streets of Montréal in 2003, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In addition to opposing Canada’s war of occupation in Afghanistan, the collective campaigns against Canada’s military spending and military recruitment in educational institutions, and in support of war resisters in the military.

The People’s Summit opened with an address by keynote speaker Jean Bricmont, author of the book Humanitarian Imperialism, and was followed by a day of workshops and panels on the issues and campaigns facing the antiwar movement in the coming period. The participants agreed to publicize and obtain signatures for their Declaration, to continue actions in opposition to the war in Afghanistan, and to campaign for the holding of a wide-ranging public debate on Canadian foreign policy and the role of the Canadian army.

For background on the People’s Summit and the work of Échec à la Guerre, see “People’s Summit Against War and Militarism to be held in Montréal.” Following is the text of the Joint Declaration, which I translated from the French for Socialist Voice.

-- Richard Fidler

For an End to the Logic of War and Domination!

As Quebec organizations devoted to the defense and expansion of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, here and throughout the world,

As citizens of Quebec yearning for peace and justice and anxious to develop international relations of co-operation founded on equality and solidarity,

1. WE ARE OUTRAGED BY:

Canada’s descent into an increasing spiral of war and curtailment of democracy;
Canada’s participation since October 2001 in a war of occupation in Afghanistan, sowing death and destruction under the pretext of a fight for democracy, security and women’s rights in that country, and which is now spreading into Pakistan;
the Canadian parliament’s vote extending that intervention at least until July 2011, in violation of the will of the majority of the population;
the ceaseless increase in the public funds allocated to this logic of war (in Canada alone, $58 million dollars per day in 2009-2010) to the detriment of social spending and genuine development assistance;
Canada’s complicity with torture, both of Afghans captured in combat and of some Canadian citizens imprisoned abroad;
the militarization of Canadian society, which entails increasing violence, especially against women;
the fear-mongering about a terrorist threat that is exaggerated in order to justify the war and the many measures of surveillance and repression eroding our rights and freedoms;
the pervasive public relations activities of the Canadian army in major sports, social and family events, and their recruitment campaigns in educational institutions, even the elementary schools;
the increasingly serious social and environmental effects of the wars and military training exercises; and
the growing militarization of the Arctic hand in hand with environmentally harmful economic projects and denial of the rights of the Indigenous peoples.

2. WE DENOUNCE THE “HAWKS” HERE IN CANADA

successive Canadian governments, both Liberal and Conservative, that have led us into this dynamic and justified the war with groundless arguments;
the major business interests, headed by the Business Council on National Issues, who see only opportunities for profits, especially for the military industry;
the political parties that implement war policies or oppose them only half-heartedly; and
the major media, which soft-peddle the opposition of a majority of the population to the war and do not report its tragic consequences for civilian populations.

3. WE CATEGORICALLY REJECT the false discourse of the “war against terrorism” and Canada’s direct or indirect military involvement alongside the United States in the context of a policy designed to extend their hegemony to the planet as a whole, characterized by

the many wars initiated and conducted in violation of international law, including international humanitarian law: Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Lebanon (2006), Gaza (2009); and others that are apprehended against Iran and North Korea, even with threats of nuclear strikes;
the hijacking of the UN Security Council, which does not condemn these illegal assaults or the war crimes they entail or the blatant projects of foreign control implemented by the aggressors in violation of international law;
NATO’s provocative expansion to the East and its dual transformation — as the armed wing of US hegemony intervening throughout the world, and as a proxy for the UN — thereby profoundly discrediting the UN in the eyes of world public opinion;
the threats and destabilization plans in regard to some countries that refuse to submit to the “New World Order” imposed by the United States; and
a renewed arms race, including the development of new nuclear weapons and the increased militarization of space.

4. WE CALL ON THE PEOPLE OF QUEBEC TO MOBILIZE to help reverse this destructive world dynamic, by demanding

of the Government of Canada:

the immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan;
a large reduction in military spending and the holding of a wide-ranging public debate on Canadian foreign policy, the role of the army, the military industry, and the arms trade;
an end to Canada’s military partnership with the United States, including Canada’s withdrawal from NATO; and
an end to its discourse instrumentalizing women’s rights and promoting the “responsibility to protect” in order to justify the war, and a firm condemnation of any intervention that is inconsistent with international law;

and of the international community:

the democratic renewal of the UN, and in particular full respect for its Charter, a stronger role for the General Assembly and a far-reaching reform of the Security Council, including abolition of the right of veto; and
the application of Resolution 1325 of the UN Security Council concerning the involvement of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace processes.

November 21, 2010

Mariátegui and the ‘problem of the Indian’ — a critical appreciation by Luis Vitale

2010-10-06T14:29:00.003-04:00

Introduction

Luis Vitale, a prominent Chilean revolutionary socialist and prolific Marxist historian, died in Santiago on June 27, 2010. Born in Argentina in 1927, he had moved to Chile at an early age and from the mid-1950s was an active militant in the labour movement and far-left parties, both in that country and in exile, until this century.

Vitale’s political engagement began as a member of the Revolutionary Workers Party (POR), a small party affiliated with the Fourth International. During the late 1950s and throughout the ’60s he was a leader of the Chilean trade union central, the CUT, including the period when it was headed by the legendary Clotario Blest. In 1965 Vitale helped to found the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), drafting its statement of principles.

Forced out of the MIR when it called for a boycott of Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular in the 1969 presidential elections, Vitale joined the new Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR). Although he was by then working primarily as a university academic, he was active in the workers’ struggles in the militant cordones industriales as they fought to extend the revolutionary process. Following the military overthrow of the Allende government, Vitale was arrested, tortured, interned in a concentration camp for nine months, but eventually found his way to exile, first in Europe then in Venezuela, before returning to Chile in the early 1990s. In his later years, Vitale described himself as a “libertarian Marxist”.

During the 1960s, Vitale began writing what became his major work, the eight-volume Interpretación Marxista de la Historia de Chile. This was followed by a nine-volume history of Latin America and a host of books on a wide range of topics: social history, the Indigenous peoples; the “social protagonism” of the women’s movement; the environmental crisis; the labour movement; student and other social movements; popular music, etc. — a total of 67 books, 77 pamphlets, 188 learned papers and 209 articles! Many of these works are available on-line (Spanish only).

I have translated below Vitale’s appreciation and critique of the theoretical contributions on the Indigenous question of an early Latin American Marxist, the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui. It offers some insightful thinking on such questions as the relationship between ethnicity and class; Indigenous identity, autonomy and self-determination; and the relationship between Indigenous concepts of land and the environment. The paper reveals the vibrancy and relevance of the thought of both Mariátegui and Vitale in today’s context of increasing radicalization of the Indigenous peoples in anticapitalist struggles and political mobilization, and not only in Latin America. To his last breath Luis Vitale was a strong defender of the Mapuche peoples in Chile, and spoke out in defence of the Indigenous militants who are now on a lengthy hunger strike to protest their jailing on “terror” charges based on legislation from the Pinochet dictatorship.

My translation is made from the Spanish text. (See “Vigencia y limitaciones de Mariátegui”, under the heading Pueblos Originarios.) I have added a few notes, signed “Translator”, to those supplied by Vitale.

Despite his prodigious literary output, few of Vitale’s writings are translated into English. Three such articles, however, are available on line and I have referenced them at the conclusion of Vitale’s piece on Mariátegui. The first two, published in 1963, are strong defences of the Cuban revolution and its impact on Latin America. The third article, written in 1964, outlined Vitale’s view on the tasks facing the Chilean left in the years immediately leading up to Allende’s electoral victory.

-- Richard Fidler

* * *

Mariátegui’s Contemporary Relevance and

His Limitations Concerning the Original Peoples

by Luis Vitale

Presentation at the International Symposium on “AMAUTA And Its Period”,[1] Lima, September 3-6, 1997

To the memory of Enrique Espinoza (Samuel Glusberg), principal popularizer of the thought of Mariátegui in Chile during the 1940s and 50s

The backbone of Mariátegui’s thinking in the final ten years of his life was the National Question or, more accurately, in the words of Tito Flores Galindo, “this dual axis formed by Marxism and the nation meant that Mariátegui’s life was both a page in Peruvian history and a page in the history of socialism.... As a matter of fact, based on his particular articulation between Marxism and nation, Mariátegui managed to develop a specific way — Peruvian, Indo-American, Andean — of interpreting Marx and, as always, precisely because it was more Peruvian it became universal.”[2]

Without saying so in so many words, Mariátegui posed a revolutionary epistemological problem for his period, and it is still relevant for anyone seeking to fundamentally transform the present capitalist system, which is more neoconservative than liberal: Latin America from Marx, or Marx from Latin America? We know the standpoint of the Latin American Eurocentric Marxists of that time, alluded to by the amauta: “Neither imitation nor copy”.

For Mariátegui, the national question included not only the national anti-imperialist struggle but the Indigenous problematic, an innovation that broke with the orthodoxy of those who continued to cling to Marx’s initial thinking. While Marx certainly did not manage to systematize a theory, he did contribute some criteria on the national question in the epoch of bourgeois ascendency at the time when various nation-states of Europe were being formed. In reference to Latin America, Asia and Africa there is not a single word in the Communist Manifesto and other, later writings on the national question, because it was thought that this question would be resolved when the socialist revolution triumphed in the highly industrialized countries. In Europe this applied as well in the case of the self-determination of the Polish and Irish peoples, but in other cases in Eastern Europe it did not, for they were “peoples without history”, as Hegel said. And Marx was mistaken on the Latin American national question, when he referred to the independence struggles and in particular to Bolívar and the French invasion of Mexico under Maximilian. Lenin signified a qualitative leap with his thesis on the self-determination of peoples, but he made no reference to our America, focused as he was on “the Eastern questions” discussed in the Second Congress of the Communist International (1922).[3]

While not a Marxist, José Martí had a better understanding than any Marxist of the scope of the national question, explaining that it was not limited to imperialist oppression. Together with his Guatemalan compañera, he visited the communities that were heirs to the Mayan splendor, making such original appraisals that he can be considered the precursor on the national question for Latin America. And it still remains to investigate the possible influence on Mariátegui of the thinkers of the nascent and vigorous national and anti-imperialist current headed by the Colombian José María Vargas Vila in his anti-Yankee work Ante los Bárbaros, published in 1912, and his repeated calls for Latin American Unity in opposition to the Pan-American Union. Similarly, it would be strange if Mariátegui, who was well informed, was unaware of the writings of Manuel Ugarte, who in 1910 broke with the Argentine SP of Justo with his book El Porvenir de la América Española (or Latin America), and in 1911 began an extended tour of our America. In 1927 he addressed a Manifesto to the Youth: “América Latina para los latinoamericanos”, writings compiled later in La Nación Latinoamericana (Caracas: Ed. Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1978).

In addition to the investigative works of the Peruvian comrades on the national and continental context I would like to add studies that were condensed in volume V of my Historia General de América Latina (1890-1930), where in addition to the thinkers and Yankee assaults, I analyzed the social and economic structure, especially in the evolution of the workers movement, of the middle strata and the struggles of the peasantry and Indigenous movements of those times in the praxis of Mariátegui. The amauta must have derived renewed strength from the revolutionary cycle of 1910 to 1930, expressed in the Indigenous struggles in Ecuador[4] led by Quintín Lame in 1925, which coincided with the anti-oligarchy July [1925] movement in Ecuador; the “Prestes column” in Brazil; and in Colombia the battles of the PSR led by María Cano, the victorious strikes of the oil and railway workers (1926-27) and above all the banana workers strike of 1928, commemorated by García Márquez in Cien años de Soledad. Nor could Mariátegui have been unaware of the Venezuelan general strike (1928) against the lengthy dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, and especially the epic achievement of Sandino.

The heterodoxy of the amauta enabled him, in the subject matter we are discussing, to initiate a break with the Eurocentric conception of socialist politics and unilinear history signified by the positivist idea of “progress”. From that perspective, he once said something that is very profound: “Unanimity is always unproductive.” (Temas de Nuestra América, Lima, 1900,[5] p. 19. The word “nuestra” he may have taken from Martí, who was the first to use it to differentiate this America from the United States of North America and to reaffirm the Latin American identity.) If this heterodox Mariátegui were to listen today to his uncritical apologists, he would say (paraphrasing Marx): I am not a Mariateguista.

Starting from the historical recognition of the contemporary native peoples and their role, Mariátegui was able to pose in a novel way an alternative society to capitalism, Indo-American Socialism, appropriate to the specific features of Latin America unforeseen by the theoreticians of Marxism: “While socialism has born in Europe, like capitalism, it is not specifically or particularly European.... Indo-America, in this world order, can and must have individuality and style.” Hence his eagerness to find the socialist roots in the “communism” of the ancestral Indigenous communities and his novel conception of the Myth as a social force in history, although he fell into an idealization of the Inca empire which clearly was based on a state with obvious social inequalities and governed by a military and priestly bureaucratic caste. The important thing, for Mariátegui, was that the Inca period constituted for the oppressed people a social myth after the Spanish invasion, raised with the best forces of history by the rebellion of Túpac Amaru, which curiously is not analyzed closely by the amauta.

Mariátegui could also rethink a new type of socialism, based on the specific features of the Latin American revolution because he knew how to analyze his dependent and basically agrarian country in which the Indigenous people and peasants constituted, together with the proletariat, the motor force of the revolution — or, in the present sociological terminology, the “new social subjects”, as Flores Galindo says.[6]

His intellectual legacy led him to incorporate in his philosophy of history concepts from ideologues as disparate as Bergson, Nietzsche and Sorel. Some say that Mariátegui did not read the latter until his travels in Europe. Our doubts were dispelled by Guillermo Rouillón and Alberto Flores Galindo, who have demonstrated the contrary. Mariátegui incorporated from Sorel such contributions as his dimension of the social myth, the criticism of the idea of progress, but more than that the antisystemic force of revolutionary syndicalism, even though this exposed him to accusations of anarchism. The orthodox, especially those of the Stalinist International of the 1930s, tried to characterize or pigeon-hole Mariátegui as a Sorellian, or as having amalgamated the ideas of Marx with those of Sorel, apparently unaware that the latter was, in the years immediately prior to the First World War, one of the first, along with Rosa Luxemburg, to be an unyielding critic of the trade union bureaucracy and the reformism of parliamentarist social democracy — questioning the verticalist conception of the party and fundamentally promoting revolutionary syndicalism as distinct from pure libertarianism or abstract anarchism. In this sense, we are of the opinion that Sorel pursued to their ultimate consequences certain considerations by Marx that the renowned Marxists of his time never dared to pursue “to the very end”. Still to be investigated is whether Sorel, on some key points, was more Marxist than many of the epigones. And it is precisely because he enriched historical materialism with the contributions of Sorel and other iconoclastic thinkers that Mariátegui was the most illustrious and heretical Marxist in Latin America.

However, this process of uninterrupted creativity in Mariátegui, suddenly cut short when he was 36, had some limitations that we will take the liberty of discussing before this select audience of Peruvians, more informed than I of the thinking of the amauta.

Interest in Mariátegui’s ideas resurfaced with the frustration that arose as a result of the crisis of so-called socialism and of what to the majority of the leftist spectrum was almost sacrosanct. The centennial of Mariátegui’s birth coincided with the culminating moment of the crisis, stirring the need to search for a new alternative. Even some left-wing Europeans — usually indifferent to or negative about thinkers outside their continent — were at pains to discuss Mariátegui and issues as remote from their anthropological and ethnocentric reality as the situation of the original peoples [pueblos originales] of our America. Having turned their backs to them over a long period, they now turned to apologetics and uncritical applause. Some Argentine communists went so far as to say, in April 1994, that “just as we rejected Gramsci, we also rejected Mariátegui”, without any self-critical acknowledgement that their old leader, Victorio Codovilla, was the architect of this intellectual interment.

Mariátegui’s limitations on the Indigenous question

I want to propose to comrades, especially Peruvian comrades, that we discuss some of Mariátegui’s limitations on this subject in the hope that this will facilitate us in at least two respects: one, to try to understand in his real dimension one of the most relevant thinkers of the 20^th century, not only in Latin America but in the world; two, to contribute to the formulation of a strategic program of the original peoples of today’s world.

A discussion of the first point is timely because the resurrection of Mariátegui’s thought, after being buried for decades, has promoted a tendency to idealization. And strictly speaking, he, like any thinker, is limited to and conditioned by his epoch and, in the last analysis, his discourse reflects the period in which he lived. One of the factors conditioning Mariátegui’s thought was that in his day Marxism was beginning to be codified. Gramsci was one of the few who dared to break through the ideological fence by his defiance of anything that would impose geographical limits on his thinking.

Class reductionism and the concept of the vanguard

Mariátegui was unable — and it was virtually impossible in the theoretical context of the left — to escape class reductionism and the concept of “vanguard”, that is, the introduction from outside, by way of the Party intelligentsia, of revolutionary consciousness or ideas to the proletariat and other oppressed sectors, a conception that Lenin inherited from Kautsky. In this sense, Mariátegui is more orthodox than those who believe and are attached to the resolutions of the first four congresses of the Communist International — political categories that were at the base of his limitations when he addressed the topic of the original peoples.

His class reductionism permeates his writings, above all in his reply to Luis Alberto Sánchez: “The program we put forward is the program of labour. It is the program of the working classes, without distinction as to coast or mountain, Indian or mestizo.” Nevertheless he agreed: “If in the debate — this is theoretical — we have differentiated the problem of the Indian it is because in practice they are also differentiated.”[7] Anticipating the analysts of the ethnic-class relationship, he noted: “The class factor is complicated by the race factor in a form that a revolutionary policy cannot fail to take into account. The Quechua Indian sees his oppressor in the ‘misti’, in the white.”[8]

The ethnic-class relationship was deepened as the Indigenous, in substantial numbers, were forced to proletarianize or become small shopkeepers and landowners. Yet Mariátegui argued that the revolutionary process had to be hegemonized by the proletariat, as did the Marxists of his time, on the assumption that “the problem of the Indian has to have a social solution. Those who produce it must be the Indians themselves.”[9] The greater the number of workers of Quechua origin, the closer the relationship of ethnicity and class: “In Peru the masses — the working class — are four-fifths Indigenous. Our socialism would not be Peruvian, nor would it continue to be socialism, if it did not solidarize firstly with the Indigenous demands.”[10]

Self-determination and nationality

It should be noted that, notwithstanding this originality for his time, Mariátegui was saying that socialism had to solidarize with the Indigenous demands without saying explicitly that the original peoples could autonomously, without delegation to the party, themselves govern their process toward socialism. Therefore, his program lacks a strategic objective for the Indigenous communities, other than the problem of the land, respect for their language and culture, but not basically recognition that they are one (or more) people-nation, a nationality with the right to self-determination; a people-nation, like the Quechua, Aymara or Mapuche who cohabit in various “nation”-states: Peru and Bolivia (Quechuas), Chile, Argentina, Bolivia (Aymaras), Chile and Argentina (Mapuches). Mariátegui was unable to visualize this, but we can no longer continue to overlook his omissions as they concern the original peoples and, above all, in order to rescue some of the remains of this “orthodox” left that continues to try to impose its ideological terrorism on whoever dares to place on an equal footing (albeit not with such force, perhaps) the proletariat and the original peoples, peasants, other wage-earners in the middle classes, the women’s movements, ecologists, poor inhabitants in the urban peripheral zones, students, youth in general, liberation-theology Christians, pensioners, the elderly, homosexuals, lesbians and other social movements.

Mariátegui failed to clarify that the original peoples had to be autonomous in order to adopt their own politics and their own communitarian type of society inherited from the past and prior to the Spanish colonization and obviously prior to the Peruvian state and society. Because, strictly speaking, the original peoples are not Peruvians or Bolivians or Chileans or Mexicans, etc. although Mariátegui did not say this. That is, concretely, the Quechuas are not Peruvians, they pre-exist the Peruvian state. Behind this omission of Mariátegui was not only his conception of the nation-state but also his desire to formulate a national-political project led by the proletariat (represented by the single party), which, as we know, never respected Indigenous autonomy, with the exception of the Sandinistas after their self-criticism in 1982 in regard to the errors committed initially with the Miskitos.

The question of identity

Failing to recognize clearly that the Quechua and other original peoples are a nationality or a people-nation within the Peruvian state, Mariátegui became lost in a search for the Peruvian identity, going so far as to say that the Spanish conquest “frustrated the only Peruvianism that existed.”[11]

Wrong. The Quechua obviously did not express “Peruvianism” prior to the conquest nor do they now, although they are required to possess identity documents. In any case, Mariátegui lamented that the Quechua were kept at the margin: “[T]he elements of the nationality being developed were unable even to blend or unite. The dense Indigenous layer is kept almost totally outside of the process of formation of that Peruvianism that our self-styled nationalists are in the habit of exciting or inflating.”[12]

Mariátegui failed to pose clearly the right of self-determination of the original peoples because he was unable — perhaps owing to the ideological pressure of those who feared a supposed separatism of the original peoples — to appreciate that the Quechua had for centuries constituted a nationality. With this confused ideological “substratum” it was impossible to address clearly the problem of identity.

Above all, it must be observed, without reservation, that the original peoples, in their majority, have an identity that the Peruvians and other non-Indigenous inhabitants of Latin America, whether mestizos or whites, have failed to grasp. Not even the Blacks and Mulattos have the degree of identity of the original peoples.

Mariátegui realized the difficulties involved in achieving national identity and unity: “In Peru, the problem of unity is much deeper because the task here is not to overcome a plurality of local or regional traditions but to contend with a duality of races, languages and sentiments originating in the Spanish invasion and conquest of Indigenous Peru by a foreign race that has not subsequently fused with the Indigenous race, nor eliminated it or absorbed it.”[13] Nevertheless, Mariátegui continued to insist in many of his writings on the need for national unity with the Quechua and to form with them the Peruvian identity: “The Indian is at the foundation of our nationality in formation.”[14]

The formation of our identity as Latin American mestizos or whites is a process in permanent development. There is no sense that we are seeking in the Indigenous past an identity that we never had, although it is possible to encounter certain roots. The identity is made in historical continuity, in membership in a region, in linguistic idioms, in day-to-day life, in culture, in belonging to a social class. It began to be forged with the revolution for Independence and the rejection of European and North American aggression. Identity will be created in the anti-imperialist and anticapitalist struggle, as it is likewise reaffirmed in the movements challenging cultural dependency. In any case, that is no single identity. Let us forge a Latin American identity, and as a nation, that at the same time coexists with the Indigenous, Black and class and gender identity, and the identity of territory, whether of a province, a common region, or a city — identities that are never closed or finished in this process with its advances and retreats.

Land and Territory

Mariátegui makes no differentiation between land and territory, like the Latin American left to this day, and continues to insist that the Indigenous problem is solved with the grant of land or the recovery of part of those lands belonging to them before the Spanish and Portuguese invasion.

For the original peoples, territory is an essential category, and it means much more than the demand for land. In today’s terms, territory is the environment, that is, the intimate relationship between human and natural global society. Territory is the habitat of the original people-nation who continue to fight for its reconquest. It is the area in which daily life and communication in a common language are carried on. It is where we work and produce collectively, harmoniously integrating ourselves with nature without damaging it irreversibly.

For mestizo or white peasants land means individual ownership, whereas, for the original peoples it is collective possession (not ownership). Territory is the physical space of the original people-nation and therefore contains identity and culture, which is not only intellectual activity but also songs, dances, specific foods, games, sports and forms of sexuality. In this sense, the cosmovision of the original peoples can help to overcome the dualism between society and nature, the dichotomous criterion of the ideologists of so-called “western civilization”, as if human beings were outside of the environment — the ambiente, and not the medio ambiente popularized by the ecologists, because if the environment encompasses the whole of nature and society it cannot be medio.[15]

In any event, we speak only of “geographical environment” or “natural environment”. Which led — imagine that! — Marx, in one of his many strokes of genius, to say: “One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of humanity. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist.... My relation to my environment is my consciousness.”[16] And he added: “Society is therefore the perfected unity in essence of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the realized naturalism of man and the realized humanism of nature.”[17] In other words, the know-it-all European marxologists were not paying attention, because ecology could “alter” the axis of the class struggle. We have made this digression because, as we said earlier, we not only want to discuss Mariátegui but to contribute to the original peoples.

Nation state

Mariátegui failed to disentangle the ideological theorizations behind the concept of the nation state. I am not saying that he talked about the nation state as such, but that his arguments were based on no other conception of the state than the one used by the left of his day. Mariátegui wanted to break with Eurocentrism, but he did not manage to break with the Eurocentric conception of the state.

At no time did he make the necessary distinction between “nation”-state and nationalities. Today we have a deeper understanding of this differentiation, for it is obvious that within a given state there can exist various oppressed nationalities, as in the case of the Spanish state with its Basque, Catalan, Galician, and Andalusian nationalities, each with their own identity, language and ancestral customs. Something similar is happening with the Corsicans in the French state, the Serbs, Bosnians and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia and in other countries of Eastern Europe, especially in the former USSR with the Chechens, Ukrainians and other nationalities — problems unresolved by the so-called “actually existing socialism”. Not to mention the armed conflicts of the Tamil ethnic group in Ceylon [sic] or the Kurds in Iran and, above all, the ethnic wars in the heart of Africa.

Not accidentally, the ideologists of the ruling class coined the term nation-state to justify their subjugation of the pre-existing nationalities with the formation of the state, misnamed nation, as they did in the case of the Sicilians and other nationalities in the so-called “unification” of Italy in the mid-19^th century. The concept of nation-state arose in modern Europe in accordance with a specific mode of production with a strong industrial and agricultural foundation and an expanding internal market, where the agrarian question was closely linked to the national question. As Pierre Vilar argues, until the early 19^th century the state, as a political form, was confused with nationalism as a political ideology.[18]

Otherwise, the nation state — arising out of armed struggle and extolled by most of the left, especially when it is in power — is not a supreme value or an absolute principle, as Hegel thought. Rather, it is a product of history, the appearance and extinguishment of which is commensurate with the existence and end of social classes. So far, no society in transition to socialism has taken steps toward the gradual disappearance of the state, notwithstanding theoretical considerations presented by Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky and Che Guevara, with their thoughts on value theory, the consolidation of socialist consciousness, and women and the new man.

By adhering uncritically to the concept of the nation state, Mariátegui was ideologically blocked from recognizing the Quechua as a people-nation within the Peruvian state. In any case it was virtually impossible in Mariátegui’s time for some theoretician to envisage the multinational, multi-ethnic or pluri-ethnic state or a plurality of nationalities as the Sandinistas or, more recently, the social movements in Colombia, have managed to do. Not even the Zapatistas have raised this concept although they are clear about their identity; they do not use the concept of people-nation although they conduct themselves as such. Is it possibly a new disinformation subterfuge of Subcomandante Marcos aimed at avoiding negative reactions in the Mexican people to the potential separatism of the inhabitants of Chiapas?

While he clearly did not anticipate all the nuances of the national question,[19] Mariátegui was the first Latin American Marxist to incorporate the problematic, although he was more focused on the agrarian question. And he ended with an expression of historic significance: “The Indigenous community still retains sufficient vitality to be converted gradually into the cell of the modern socialist state.... Socialist doctrine can give a modern, constructive meaning to the Indigenous cause.”[20]

In light of the failures of the so-called “socialism”, a socialism without the inverted commas will have to reflect as to whether the future alternative society to liberal neoconservatism should integrate in our Latin American project many of the contributions of Mariátegui and the new social movements. It is not a question of amalgamating Mariátegui’s contributions — which go far beyond the Indigenous question — with those of the social movements, but of integrating them in a theory of revolutionary social change, which leads us to formulate one key thought: If today the revolutionary conception created a century and a half ago (1998 will be the 150^th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto) has proven insufficient, does this not suggest the need for a “refoundation” of the theory of the radical transformation of the present capitalist society to incorporate the contributions of Mariátegui, Che Guevara and the new and old social movements in order to take account of the specificity of Indo-American socialism?

If Mariátegui dared to enrich Marxism with the contributions of Sorel and the Indigenous praxis, we too should dare to incorporate in historical materialism — not as an addition or complement but as an integral part — anti-patriarchal and antisystemic feminism, subversive environmentalism, liberation theology, class-struggle syndicalism, counter-cultural workers and the strategic ideas of the original peoples oriented toward the multi-ethnic or plurinational state.

Mariátegui’s statement in 1925 is more relevant now than ever before: “And from the crisis of this skepticism and this nihilism is born the necessary compassion, strength, decisiveness of a faith and a myth that moves men to live dangerously.”[21] ... “The new generation burns with the desire to go beyond skeptical philosophy. The materials of a new mysticism are being prepared in the contemporary chaos.”[22]

This is our outstanding debt to the amauta. [End of translated article]

See also three articles by Luis Vitale, published in English:

Fidelismo and Marxism

Phases of the Cuban Revolution

Which Road for Chile?

[1] Amauta, a Quechua word meaning “elder” or “person of great wisdom”, was the name of Mariátegui’s newspaper. It is used here by Vitale to refer respectfully to Mariátegui himself. – Translator

[2] A. Flores G.: La agonía de Mariátegui, Int. de Apoyo Agrario, 3^rd ed. (Lima, 1989), pp. 22-23.

[3] Sic, actually in 1920. – Translator

[4] An apparent slip. Quintín Lame fought in Colombia, not Ecuador. – Translator

[5] Sic – An obvious typo. Probably should be 1924. See Vol. 12 of the Obra completa of Mariátegui. – Translator

[6] Ibid., p. 191.

[7] Alberto Sanchez: Ideología y Politica (Lima, 1969), p. 233.

[8] Ibid., El problema de las Razas, p. 32.

[9] J.C. Mariátegui, Peruanicemos al Perú (Lima, 1970), p. 33.

[10] J.C. Mariátegui, “Intermezzo Polémico”, published in the magazine Mundial, No. 350, February 25, 1927.

[11] J.C. Mariátegui, “Realismo y futurismo”, in Peruanicemos al Perú, op. cit. p. 26.

[12] Temas de Nuestra América, op. cit., p. 24.

[13] J.C. Mariátegui, Siete Ensayos, p. 261.

[14] “Realismo y Centralismo”, in Siete Ensayos, p. 206.

[15] Vitale makes an important point here. Contemporary Spanish uses both the noun ambiente and the phrase medio ambiente to refer to “the environment”. But the latter term, by attaching ambiente to medio (which means, depending on context, average, half, resources, etc.) refers to something less than the totality of the environment as it is understood by Indigenous peoples. Medio ambiente, literally, can be taken to mean something like “the surrounding environment”, not the whole thing, and thus not necessarily incorporating humanity. – Translator

[16] K. Marx, The German Ideology.

[17] K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

[18] P. Vilar, Iniciación al vocabulario del análisis histórico, (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1982), p. 171.

[19] To be clear, I use “national question” as it is currently used in political sociology and in the left. But in my opinion it is one of the many concepts of Eurocentric origin that the Marxist classics were unable to escape, adhering as they — and the vast majority of our Latin American theoreticians — did to the nation-state category.

Strictly speaking, it is a serious error to attempt to apply the nation-state concept to Latin America, long populated by millions of Indigenous people, since we have various nationalities among the original peoples. Furthermore, the nation-state in each country was precisely the one that seized their lands and overwhelmed their languages and cultures, except in the case of the Guarani. (See Aníbal Quijano, Raza, “etnia” y “nación” en Mariátegui: cuestiones abiertas (Lima: Amauta, 1993), and by the same author, “Colonialidad del poder y democracia en América Latina”, Revista Debate, March-May 1994. There is much to ponder in both essays, as in others by Aníbal.

It is urgent, therefore, to undertake a critical analysis of the conceptualization and traditional sociological, historical, political and cultural terminology, as the feminists are doing in respect to the male chauvinist semantic of the social sciences.

[20] J.C. Mariátegui, Obras, Vol. 2, p. 312 and Obras, Vol. 1, p. 213.

[21] J.C. Mariátegui, “Dos concepciones de la vida”, 9-01-1925, in Obras Politicas, selected and annotated by Rubén Jiménez (Mexico City: Era, 1979), p. 398.

[22] Ibid. p. 398.