Crawling from the
Wreckage
Thoughts on the Rebuilding the Left
Project
In October of 2000 hundreds of activists and radicals gathered in
Toronto, Ontario for a conference entitled "Rebuilding the Left, " a
conference billed as a small first step in creating a structured
movement against capitalism. While the capitalists and their media
have focused on shattered windows and property destruction in the
post-Seattle world, some on the left has seen in the protests against
the international agencies of capital, the emergence of an "uneven,
process of developing a new anti- capitalist movement." (For
R&BN' s notion of the difficulties inherent in the phrase
anti-capitalism' see "All the World's a
Rage?")
For the organizers the conference was a huge success which far
exceeded their dreams. More than six hundred people crammed into a
forum on the opening night of the conference to hear speakers address
the question of why the "left" had failed and the steps that it would
be necessary to undertake in order to rebuild.
The following day hundreds of people returned to discuss in
greater detail these same questions. The attendance stood in stark
contrast to past initiatives of this kind such as the
Alternatives to the NDP' conference in 1994, which had to end
prematurely because by the late afternoon session barely the
organizers and their friends were present in the auditorium. That
debacle has not been the case for Rebuilding the Left: Follow-up
meetings have continued to draw large numbers of people, by the
left's standards.
The genesis of the Rebuilding the Left project was an article in
the November/December 1998 issue of This Magazine by Sam Gindin, then
a staffer with the Canadian Auto Workers. Gindin was a Marxist'
intellectual in the CAW bureaucracy, intellectually aligned with Leo
Panitch of the Socialist Register. Gindin's article, entitled "The
Party's Over" did not entirely dismiss the pale pink social democracy
of the New Democratic Party, but argued that it was no longer an
adequate vehicle for the left in Canada. Out of Gindin's article came
that idea that the task before the left was to create something that
was more than a movement, but less than a party. It was this idea
that some, such as the New Socialist Group, developed into the notion
of an extra-parliamentary, activist, anti-capitalist movement.
What constitutes anti-capitalism, however remains a subject for
discussion. On the email list set up to build the conference
discussing this subject was actively dissuaded and viewed as in
itself a sectarian exercise. A number of the organizers felt that
such discussions would drive people away from the project.
During the conference and at subsequent meetings many participants
spoke of the past sins of the left and of its various failures. This
failure however seemed to be viewed almost exclusively in
organizational terms: The left does not have enough people of colour,
has not addressed questions of special issues, doesn't pay enough
attention to native issues etc. It cannot be denied that the old
labour movement was at times indifferent at best, and at others
hostile to even the discussion of such oppressions as race, gender
and sexuality under capitalism; however, reducing the solution to
these problems to one of representation is simply a matter of
rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The biggest obstacle to rebuilding the left is not however the
number of white people in the organization, but its own stated goal.
For rather than a failure, the left has been a victim of its own
success. Broadly speaking, the left that was had a vision of the
future dominated by a social democratic and a statist view of the
possible transformation of society. And it is a view still held by
many: That the state can be utilized as an instrument of progressive
social change.
The first mass socialist party, the German Social Democratic Party
(SPD) was not the vindication of Marx and Engels' ideas, but those of
their rival Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle, who developed the notion of
a people's state sought help from the Prussian state to achieve his
ideas, and indeed it was under Bismark that some of his ideas were
realized.
Since then social democracy in all its forms, be they reformist
(parliamentary) or one of the many variants of Leninism, have
essentially seen political power as something which had to be seized
and wielded. In the case of the reformists the only action the
workers had to engage in was to vote for them on election day, while
for the Leninists the workers were to come together under the
guidance of the vanguard party.
This statist view of society and struggle has seen the left take
on the role as the last remaining defenders of Keynesianism. To argue
that the welfare state represents a gain mistakes form for content.
The welfare state came partially as a result of workers' struggles
but also because of the development of capitalism, the so-called
Keynesian revolution. Far from being designed to make the lives of
workers more pleasant, the welfare state was designed to make the
capitalist system run more smoothly. As a result workers paid into
unemployment insurance schemes, pension plans and medical schemes.
Being able to take your children to the doctors and receive
free' health care rather than watching them die in squalid
poverty is of course a good thing, but with the welfare state comes
the bureaucratic state. Anyone who has tried to get something out of
the state such as social assistance, knows that the bureaucracy is
there to intimidate, to harass and to affect a measure of control
over the most vulnerable elements in society. The current campaign
waged against welfare recipients and those seen as "parasites" on the
healthy body is evidence of how the state uses welfare to demonize
sectors of society.
The rightist Canadian Alliance often conjures up an idealized
community of old, where people cared for each another without the
state. This community is indeed a myth, but it is true that the
modern state has worked to undermine traditional working class
solidarity through the destruction of the community.
The old organizations developed by the working class such as the
mass political parties and the unions no longer have an independent
existence as working class organizations, but operate within the
framework of capitalism. To make such a claim is not simpleminded
conspiracy theory, but a description of what these organizations do
in this society.
Is it possible to rebuild these institutions? For decades the left
has been obsessed with the idea of capturing or worse recapturing
these organizations without success. At any given time the mass of
workers is not revolutionary; as such both the anti- capitalists and
their anti-capitalism can only serve capitalist ends. When the mass
becomes revolutionary, the distinction between the revolutionary
minority and the unrevolutionary mass disappears. In that situation
as in previous revolutionary situations new organizations will be
created.
The evolution of the capitalist state away from Keynesian methods
has led to the destruction of the left that identified itself with
that state. Its passing is not a cause for mourning.
J. F.
First published in Red & Black Notes #13, Spring
2001
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